This, over on Disco Stu’s blog made me chuckle. I’m always one for trying to see what’s on the shelves to the rear of shots on TV, or I study those shelves in pictures in magazines. Unfortunately I missed this one.
I just received this email from ‘Xanares’, which is interesting and certainly food for a lot of thought:
Hey there Neal,
Thought you might be interested in this one. It’s about (an) independent writer’s success publishing novels on Amazon Kindle. It’s of course Vampire fiction (I know I know sigh), but it goes to tell that at least some parts of the writing industry are on their way towards the same business-idea that parts of the gaming industry have been playing with for a while now:
“Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling “indie” writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn’t have a publishing deal, Novelr says.
And she shouldn’t. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales — and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it’s usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.”
Admittedly she’s selling some of her books for just $1 to $3 each but, if you average that then consider that percentage above, she gets more than I get on a damned paperback or even hardback. I will have to carefully consider any future contracts I sign, I think.
Xanares concludes his email with: For us old romantic book-sniffers it’s odd, but hey… science fiction is here.
Peter Watts, author of the superb Blindsight and the pretty shit hot Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth, has NOT been having a good time. Last year he was getting roughed up by border police and now he has something called necrotizing fasciitis. Do not click on this link if you are squeamish. Seriously.
Best wishes to you Peter, and get someone to put a harpoon in that vicious fucking gremlin that keeps following you around.
His blog is here. Avoid the ‘Moving Pictures’ post if you want to enjoy your lunch.
And go and buy his books. You won’t regret it.
Okay, Joe Abercrombie has got me. I’ll keep buying his books so long as he keeps producing excellent tales like this. Before They Are Hanged is easy reading full of enjoyable characters that change in ways you like to see them change, throughout a stonking story. The subtext added by the torturer Glokta’s thoughts as he carries out his ‘duties’ raises a chuckle at such (understandable) cynicism. I enjoy Luthar’s climb out of naivety and Logen’s pragmatic wisdom, and I love every one of the other northern ‘named men’ who have already crept up into the region of legend in my mind: Black Dow, Dogman, Harding Grim, Threetrees and Tul Duru Thunderhead. Honestly, reading this book has made me realize that I didn’t go off fantasy over the last couple of decades, I just wasn’t getting hold of any of the good stuff.
This is the good stuff.
Incidentally, his blog is worth a look too.
Huan Tan put me onto a discussion about me over on this bulletin board. There are some nice things being said about my stuff there but also some of the usual ‘it’s not literature’ and ‘it’s not high-brow’ and ‘it’s a bit pulpy’. In a general sense I don’t particularly have a problem with these descriptions, since ‘literature’ and ‘high-brow’ are usually defined by literary snobs and ‘a bit pulpy’, from what I know about the pulps, is something of an accolade. However, I do get bugged by their condescension and that attitude of, ‘I enjoy reading them but don’t want to be seen reading them’.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to change any time soon. I don’t want one of you reading this to one day pick up one of my books, ready to relax into some sensawunda, weapons porn, weird monsters and high-tech violence, and end up scratching your head because I’ve decided to explore the deep social implications of cock-transplant technology – as seen by a miserable can’t-get-laid psychology student living in a garret.
But I do wonder if I’d started out claiming to write deeply meaningful socially relevant stuff about the effect of technology on identity, the meaning of death when its borders are blurred and the drawbacks of immortality, if the memes about me would have been different. Perhaps, for example, in interview and so forth, I should have focused on how with the Prador I was exploring the implications of a social structure based on utterly alien biology, rather than on their tendency to eat people and blow stuff up? Perhaps I should have pontificated about the subjective contraction of time in the mind of an immortal, rather than on how an old captain can rip off your head?
Now, removing my tongue from my cheek, I wonder if perhaps it is the case that if I fob people off with, ‘Nah, I’m just about the explosions, mate,’ many of them won’t explore my hidden shallows any further?
What do you think?
First…curse you Neal Asher for limiting it to five books.
That out of the way I am subverting your rules slightly in order to pick ‘some’ of my most favourite books – ones I’d always want to have with me. Let’s pretend 9 is 5 in new math.
Crown of Infinity – John Faucette: For some reason I come back and back to this book. It has elements of Cordwainer Smith in it, early grand ‘today-style’ serious grunge space opera (echoes of Reynolds, Asher, Mieville and Banks within), with cybernetic human/machine/ship amalgams and a story of revenge that takes millennia. I do not know much about Faucette other than he is paired with a number of other authors in many of my Ace Doubles.
Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester: SF Grandmaster with good reason. This book currently seems in fad again with everyone calling ‘teleporting’ – ‘jaunting’. While based on a classic French novel – The Count of Monte Cristo – it is a fundamental building block to many later cyberpunk tropes. For me it is a guilty pleasure if I need a quick and bracing read.
Rynemonn – Terry Dowling: I quickly fell in love with the tales of Tom Tyson when i first found these stories collected in 4 books and a few anthologies. One part Cordwainer Smith, one part Moorcock, one part lowtechpunk, one part just damn fine literature. This is the ‘current’ final story collection in the series and collects many of my favorite stories, the last one of which “Sewing Whole Cloth”. I have read probably 20 times and, each time, I find the ending strikes me in a different way.
Use of Weapons – Iain M. Banks: As I look at the books I’ve picked I find most of them have a common theme of revenge and love. This is certainly no exception to that. It is my personal favorite Banks novel. I thought the ending stunning and it still moves me.
Time Enough For Love – Robert Heinlein: I’ve read all of Heinlein’s works over and over (and though I know he is currently out of favor for many of his views he is still and forever will be one of the founding fathers of SF). This book strikes me as him at the top of his game in the long novel form. I feel for Lazarus in this as he watches those he loves grow old around him. The chapter with him and his wife being held hostage by rapists and Lazarus’ subsequent solution to that dilemma is still exciting even though I know what will happen. This is one of the few books in my collection with a cracked spine and well-worn pages. And that is saying something for me.
The Confluence Trilogy – Paul McAuley: To me – a beautiful circular trilogy/bildungsroman about a boy growing to manhood and the mistakes he makes. McAuley had a wonderful mix of Ringworld style world building with a variety of cultures of different technology levels and biological types. Of special interest to me is that the 3 volumes are circular and end where they begin. I once read all 3 of these twice through and found the second immediate reading does change after you read all the books the first time and arrive at the circular point and begin again.
Last Legends of Earth – A.A. Attanasio: I think he remains little known as an author but I quite enjoy this book and have read it several times. It is the 4th in a series with massive overlapping of narratives in multiple instances of time and space. It has an Olaf Stapledon eon-spanning feel to it. Again another book of love and revenge and how the two intertwine.
Souls in the Great Machine – Sean McMullen: Australian air-punk (not even steampunk level tech allowed in this alternate Australian future) featuring living computers made of slaved mathematicians, a huge cast of Canterbury Tales style characters and a unique to me plot mystery solved over the course of the three books of the trilogy.
Elric – Michael Moorcock – still my favorite fantasy series. What more can be said?
It’s always worth keeping and eye on what’s going on here:
George Whitesides has recently replaced Will Whitehorn as the CEO/President of Virgin Galactic. In an interview with Sander Olson, George Whitesides discusses suborbital spaceflight, orbital hotels, and the Government’s role in cultivating commercial spaceflight.
From the last answer George Whiteside believes we could see daily suborbital flights by 2020 and thousands of people will have flow to suborbit.
So here we have Disco Stu’s blog where he displays my last two video clips and posts:
Only notice the date! 10 days have elapsed and this author still wears the same nondescipt t-shirt – no doubt not even being allowed to leave the room! His bleary eyes watery and aching from constant work. His legs wasting away and back deformed as he hunches interminably over his desk of confinement.
So now we see the truth of publishing! 10 days later and what was ostensibly a video blog can be seen for what it really is – a cry for help!
Can you not hear the clink of the manacles hidden below sight while I slave away at my desk – manacles that are tight around my swollen sledgehammer-broken ankles?
Bloody hell, I didn’t know it was a fashion show. I’ve now got to check which shirt I was wearing in the previous video clip when I do a new one. Or, alternatively, being me, perhaps from now on I should ensure I always wear the same T-shirt in future clips!
