And if not, why not?

Let’s fix that.

Starting today and running for the next three weeks, I’m in a StoryBundle called “Extreme SF.”

We talked about the project previously, and how it kinda snuck up on me over the summer. Here was a chance to be in a bundle with some some folks I really like and admire, and who I had a bunch of their books on my shelves from before I became a writer myself.

And for me, it was the chance to do something totally new. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I sat down on that Sunday and said: what story could I tell?

I knew I could hit theme and length in the time I had allotted. And I know I can tell a good story. But could I entertain you?

And this was all about extreme sports in the science fiction future. How do I go there?

In the end, none of my current series did the trick. Javier Aritza would have been closest, but those are all going to be shorter. Novellas (personal decision until at least such time as I need to tell the end of series one, in which case I might double up and stretch the story over two episodes with a cliff-hanger between them).

So Dani Cooper was born. When we first meet her, she’s a rush-junkie woman-child who has never really bothered to grow up. And then she gets in over her head, and has to use all her skills, all that time practicing her games, all the finesse she can muster, just to survive, while her own people, back at base, are desperately trying to save her on an alien world that has just gotten more dangerous than anyone ever dreamed.

To top it off, I wanted to try something new. Every project, I try to explore some new facet of craft, be it a theme, a story-telling technique, or a voice. Dani was going to be even more interesting, because literature (and especially SF) tend to ignore all that icky body stuff. When was the last time you read a book where a woman had to deal with her period. And I don’t mean a story that centers around it, but one where, oh, by the way, pardon me for ten minutes while I run off to the bathroom. I’m starting to bleed. Be right back. And then we can go save the universe.

The fun for me, when writing this story, was trying to get all those details right on what goes through a woman’s head on that particular day each month when the neuro-chemistry goes sideways for 12-24 hours and shit can get dark and oppressive in there. Those made for interesting conversations, interviewing the Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and walking slowly through the process, the feelings, the changes. My notes are weird.

Because Dani is a flawed person. Broken, in many ways. And she knows it, fights against it, tries to overcome it. Here, she’s up against the wall, and that little bitch in the back of her head keeps whispering darkness, reminding her that there’s always an easy way out.

All it takes is a few kilos of pressure on that trigger. And all that darkness can go away.

—-****SPOILER ALERT****—-

She finds a way to survive. I won’t tell you the interesting bits, but it sets her up for a series of new novels that explore some seriously Hard Science themes and motifs, rather than some of the silly, popcorn space opera I normally write with Jessica and Javier. And this is space exploration with a bunch of academics. Nerds instead of lantern-jawed herostuds and their buxom, alien princesses needing to be rescued from their virginity before its too late.  😉

——————————————-

So, StoryBundle. Down at the bottom of the page is the relevant information, for those of you who have never done this sort of thing before (and need to be rescued from their own virginity). You pick the price you want to pay. For a base price, you get the first five novels: Dean, ML, Kevin J., Dan, and JR. For a higher price, you also get me and several others: Kris, Mike, more Dan, and an issue of the fantastic Fiction River series: Risk Takers. You can pick how much of the money goes to us, and how much helps Jason keep the lights on at StoryBundle. And you can even allocate some of your money to charity.  What’s not to love?

Personal Note (and where I get to blush some this morning)

Here’s what the curator of the bundle had to say:

When you need fast-paced hard science fiction adventure, Blaze Ward is your man. This might be why I have yet to read one of his tales that I didn’t immediately love. Blaze’s fast, no-nonsense voice effortlessly marries the best of Golden Age SF with the characterizations that modern audiences demand. When I asked him to come into the bundle, he didn’t just say yes, he used the theme to hand-craft a brand new adventure with a kick-ass lead heroine. Trust me—you don’t want to miss this one. – J. Daniel Sawyer

So go buy the bundle, and tell all your friends. (And tell them I sent you. I’d like to be invited to more bundles in the future.)

You have three weeks from today to get the job done, and then this bundle goes away forever, and you have to pay full price for everything.

Questions?

(Mind rant warning)

A question came up the other day, in regards to the post I did from WorldCon where I watched the dipwad from NY Publishing talk about Amazon and Indie publishing in the vein of being a “vanity press.”

He didn’t get it. Many folks wedded to the idea of New York Publishing™ don’t get it. But a significant part of their problem lies with what I frequently see as two different definitions of success: Money and Fame.

As a rule, prestigious journals (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Alfred Hitchcock, Strange Horizons, etc.) pay six cents per word. Figure a story that runs five thousand words published, and you are making three hundred dollars US. That’s it. And six cents per word is a fairly recent increase, roughly 2014. Before that, the rate went from three cents to five cents in around 2004.

There is upward pressure to increase that number, but it is still not keeping pace with inflation. Not by a long shot.

Warning: Math Nerd Ahead

If you look at the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in January 1946, it sat at a rate of 18.2. In January 1966, it stood at 31.8, so not quite a doubling of overall prices for consumer good in the course of twenty years. The 70’s saw a huge burst of inflation, for those of us old enough to remember it, or the stories. In January 1976, the rate had doubled in ten years, up to 55.6. In 1986, we’re at 109.6, so another rough doubling of consumer prices in a decade. In 1996, 154.4, so inflation has cooled some, but still going like hell. In 2006, the rate stands at 198.3. This last year, January 2016, the rate was at 236.9.

Math Nerd over

What does this mean? It means that in the old days, at a penny per word, you could make a nice, middle-class living, by churning out 3-6 short stories per week and keeping them all out at the various magazines (and there were a whole bunch more magazines paying professional rates in those days). Lester Dent did it quite successfully. So did a number of other writers. The problem is, there are fewer magazines out there these days paying standard rates. And more writers with the skill and craft to compete.

One of the reason behinds there being fewer magazines is the explosive growth of the Indie Press over the last ten to fifteen years, driven in large part by the success of Amazon and the creation of a standard, easy-to-use marketplace, both for readers and for writers.

In the old days, Traditional Publishing saw itself as a gatekeeper of quality. If a story was going to be published, it had to meet certain standards (and occasionally also bizarre themes), set by the editor. Those standards relaxed as you went down the ladder of prestige and importance, but there were still many more stories written than ever got published.

(We call the leftovers “trunk stories” indicating that you tossed them in a trunk and forgot about them. If you got famous, maybe the publisher put out a collection of your short stuff that was otherwise too “something.”)

So that’s what we’ll today call Small Press Publishing.

These are periodicals and publishers still wedded to the way things have been done for the last century. Writers submit a story. Editors judge them and keep the ones that best fit. (Not the best stories, mind you, but the ones that hit a set of monthly themes best, as determined by the editor.)

Writers get paid up front at the going, professional rate, or some lesser number indicating their willingness to take less money at a lesser magazine, in trade for the publicity of being published. Of “being someone,” as it were.

That is the path of prestige, such as it is. If you publish a story, as we covered above, maybe you get a check for $300US.

How many of those would you need, monthly, to cover all your needs? How many stories would you have to write for every one that actually made the cut and earned you money?

I’m guessing the numbers don’t add up for you, either.

On the other side of the coin, you have Indie Press publishing.

The only filters on Indie Press today are those limits imposed by ebook reader devices, which require a fairly sophisticated, technical format. One that is easy to hit, once you have learned the nuances.

I can put out any novel, novella, or short story I write. Any length. Any theme. Any idea, as long as I’m willing to sign my name to it and have you judge it.

I have First Readers and copy editors that I pay to make sure the quality of the story and the coherence of the words is better than it first comes out of my mind, but they are not in a position to say “you aren’t allowed to publish this, it is the wrong (length, theme, gender, genre, socio-economic thesis, etc.).”

If I want to write stories about a pre-cognitive ant nest exploring outer space, that’s my prerogative (Hive 3 will be going off to the New Yorker for standard rejection in a month or so).

I just got a “complaint” from reader yesterday that she loved Queen of the Pirates, but (SPOLIER ALERT) was pissed at me that I killed Warlock. She understood why, and loved the story, but wanted Jessica to have a better ending. I could end it the way I wanted, because I don’t have an editor telling me the story I have to write, if I want it to be published.

The fourth Jessica, Goddess of War, is, in many ways, radically different from the first three. I can do that. I just started the fifth one this last Saturday, Flight of the Blackbird. It will be even more different. I can do that, too.

I get to tell my story.

Why?

In many ways, the modern writer frequently has a rather stark choice to make. They can pursue the prestige of being published in a major magazine. They can hone their craft over years of occasional short fiction publication, until they feel they can undertake writing a novel. Then they must find an agent, and either write the novel, or build a proposal package sufficient to entice a publisher. That’s the traditional way. Tried and true. Old School.

With luck, they get a novel deal.

With even greater luck, theirs is one of the handful of novels that actually breaks out every year, and they get offered better novel deals and riches. A generation ago, you might be able to have several novels published as you honed your craft and found your audience. Today, you pretty much have to make your sales numbers out of the gate (and I mean in the first month), or you’re cut loose.

On the Indie side: I put out collections of short stories on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc., because we didn’t know any better. I would tell someone starting out today to just put up everything they have individually, and keep putting up short fiction as fast as they can. People who could save money buying the collection still go get the individual stories instead. (No, I don’t know.)

After twenty or so short pieces, I stretched and wrote a novella (24,000 words instead of 6,000, when my previous longest story had been about 16,000). And I can publish a novella, and people will buy it, as long as I price it right and look like a professional. After several novellas, Fabulous Publisher Babe™ told me I should try writing novels.

It is an interesting facet of writer psychology. There appears to be a distinct social hierarchy, as I have watched TradPub writers interact. If you are a novelist, you rank higher than a “mere short story writer” and I have watched them circle each other like wary hounds, sniffing at that difference. (Think sharks looking for weakness.)

The definition of novel, per SFFWA (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the main organization), is 40,000 words. That’s not really that much more than the 24,000 I had done several times previously, so I set out to write a long novella, by making sure I crossed 40,000 before I ran out of words.

I managed. And learned how to tell a longer story coherently.

After that, I did the first three Jessica novels back to back to back. (70k/90k/85k). It is a muscle you develop. My sixth novel is coming out in a little more than a week. Number Seven comes out in mid-October.

Where does that leave us? (aka tl;dr)

If I wanted to pursue Traditional Publishing, I would have to spend a great deal more time chasing leads, researching editor tastes, and keeping a number of short stories (3,000-6,000 words only) in the mail. As each got rejected, send it on to somewhere else. And it would be very hard to do, because you and I are competing for magazine space with a whole bunch more people that we did twenty years ago, to say nothing of fifty.

(That, by the way, is time I’m spending not honing my craft by writing.)

I might have even had some success. I think I’m a good enough technical storyteller by now to compete in short fiction, if I had focused on it. I know several people who do make livings these days playing the short game, but most of them are sending things out for the magazines a few times, and then just putting it up for sale on Amazon or their web site. For them, the occasional magazine title puts them in front of a wider audience and helps with discoverability. But then tend to make their money on their own fan base and cross-pollinating with bundles and anthologies.

If I had gone down the TradPub path, I would not have been in a position to be publishing my seventh novel, and starting on my eighth. Period. I don’t make enough money each year to be able to support myself entirely on my writing. I don’t expect to.

Yet.

There is a theory I have heard that somewhere around ten to fifteen novels not only in the same genre, but the same sub-genre, you hit a breakthrough in terms of reaching a new monthly plateau of sales, fans, and exposure. I’m not there yet. I’m not close. Jessica will be nine novels plus associated tales. Kai Di is a trilogy I still have to write two-third of. Fairchild will be a whole new series, but I will need at least three there as well to call it that.

I’m three to five years away, I think. Six of the nine Jessicas. All of Kai Di. Several Fairchilds. Some others.

But I can see it in the distance.

I will probably never be up for consideration for a Hugo, or a Nebula, or any of the major awards. Those currently tend to go to Traditionally Published authors. Folks who pursued prestige.

To date, I do not have a single “professionally-qualifying” publication to my name, since the few places I have put stuff out other than Knotted Road Press do not count to make my bones with SFWA. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and I joke that one of these days, I’ll accidentally start my Campbell Award clock timer with something I send off, because “what’s the worst thing the New Yorker could do? Publish me?”

There is simply a major divide in the world these days, between those seeking prestige, and those seeking money. In the old days, you might be able to get rich if you turned out to be another Stephen King, or some brilliant writer like that. Today, there is less and less chance you will be the one who turns out to be JK Rowling or Suzanne Collins.

On the other side of the divide, I made good money last year. I will make good money this year. Not enough, but a stable starting point that helps me grind down the debts from building the farm, and get my monthly needs down to a point where I might make enough, one of these days.

Hell, SFWA even changed their membership rules over the last few years, to recognize that there were a whole bunch of people making a living without ever going through New York, and thus, not qualifying for inclusion. I would qualify easily, if I wanted to produce my sales figures from the last few years for them to review.

In another few years, I might even consider it, but only after some of the old dinosaurs who look down their nose at me finally die off. The ones who think doing Indie via Amazon and Kobo amounts to vanity press. The ones who make a small fraction of my annual writing income, and from whom the smell of sour grapes frequently wafts (or moldy paper, hard to tell).

As TradPub faces an ongoing existential crisis (see previous blogs about the 6,000 people who went to WorldCon versus the 165,000 at San Diego Comic Con), very few people are making the leap successfully. Wordfire Press (run by Kevin J. Anderson) is one. Kevin has seen the future, understood it, and adjusted. He’s acting like an Indie Press rather than trying to emulate the old model. And he is a big enough name that he might convince people. Those of us on the Indie side will continue to experiment with what works and what doesn’t, and adjust.

I want to have a career as a writer, and not just a one-and-done novel shot followed by barely making coffee money every month. If I have to be a complete unknown in Manhattan, that’s even better, as long as you people tell your friends, and I can keep making money.

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

this is only a test. Had this been a real blog post, I would have put something useful here, instead of a filler message while I try to figure out why my posts have stop feeding to facebook.

If you see this on FB, you should take it as a sign that you’ve missed a bunch more over on bw.com.

🙂

Met up  yesterday with a group we call the “Bellevue (WA) Writer’s Lunch” to talk business. It’s a monthly thing we do (if interested in joining us sometime, lemme know, we’re not actually meeting in Bellevue these days) where a group of us get together and talk about the business of writing, rather than the craft. We’re all writers with years of experience in Indie Press, so we chat about what’s working, marketing trends, whether a cover works, etc. Mostly, it is an excuse to hang out with other writers and learn from them.  And it is well worth the time do to so.

One of the guys suggested that the optimum length for a genre fiction series was five books. I found this fascinating, because historically, a trilogy is the measure of a series, following the classic Three Act model of story-telling. So we made him explain himself in better details.

(CAVEAT: He writes generally horror, so I don’t know if the rules apply elsewhere, but here goes:)

From a marketing standpoint in Indie Press, where you don’t have a TradPub(tm) marketing department or budget behind you, he puts book one up as perma-free. (That is, free everywhere you can, and I think you can only go to $0.99 on Amazon, but I might be wrong.)

This is a teaser (the first hit is always free) designed to get your words in front of a reader and let them judge you as a writer. The second book he will also send you for free as an ebook, in trade for you joining his mailing list. This helps him build up a larger audience, hopefully of people that like his books and will pay for the rest. Books three through five will be up at the “regular” price and that’s where the money comes from.

His logic is that you basically end up not making any money on the first two books, and then recoup it later in the last three. We don’t talk money at these lunches, so I don’t know how successful he had been with this process. Hopefully, it works for him.

For me, I’m at an earlier point in my career as an Indie writer. My sixth (Fairchild) and seventh (Goddess of War) novels are coming out over the next six weeks. Fairchild is the first of what will be a new series of much-harder science-fiction novels. Goddess of War is the fourth Jessica Keller novel of what I plan to be nine core books and various associated ones. (Associated, because there will be some more like Siren and tied directly into the Jessica storyline, as opposed to stories in the same universe (Javier, Doyle, Henri, etc.))

As soon as I finish a small project for an anthology that will come out next summer, I’ll start working on the next Jessica novel, which will be the fifth (Flight of the Blackbird) and will come out sometime next spring, if all goes well. At some point, I expect Fabulous Publisher Babe(TM) to drop the price of Auberon , maybe all the way to nothing. I don’t know, because that’s her decision. It is her publishing company.

At that point, my series will look like this

Jessica: 4

Javier: 3

Doyle: 3

Additionally, the following are novels set up for series, but I haven’t written book twos yet:

Kai Di Peng

Rick Pine

Fairchild

After the fifth Jessica, I have several other projects planned. Certainly the fourth Javier. And either the next Kai Di or the next Fairchild, depending on how sales and feedback go over the rest of the year for those two.

Helpfully, while I was laying down a batch of mead for the Fabulous Publisher Babe(TM)’s wine and chocolate party next Feb, writer-brain helpfully popcorn kittened me with YET ANOTHER science fiction series of books I could write one of these days. I also got a might inspired to finally write the next installment of the dieselpunk books (Moscow Gold as book one).

I’ll never run out of ideas, but I will eventually die at my keyboard, I suspect.

Getting back to the top of this shaggy dog story, I also have several novella and short-story series in various states of multiple books. And over the next few years, I plan on greatly expanding the various series, both inside the Alexandria Station universe and across the others. At that point, I might end up dropping various book ones and first novels in price, but I will also have an entire bakery of things for people to read once they do discover me.

My goal, like his, is to make enough money from the writing to be able to not have to day job. We all have to put a roof over our heads and food on our tables. We would all love to be able to get up each morning and spend HOURS making shit up and getting paid for it afterwards.

In the past, in that mythical land we call TradPub, there were gatekeepers who saw their job as dictating who got to be read by the broader public. Hundreds of people spent their lives honing their craft in short fiction they submitted to the various genre magazines, building up a reputation and a back catalog.

After a time, they would try their hand at writing a novel. It is a skill, just like any other. Learning to write short fiction does not teach you how to write novels, but it does give you the tools to learn. From there, you would locate an agent eventually, who would use their contacts to get you a deal to write novels.

In the way past, you, the budding new novelist, would have a chance to write several novels, finding your audience and developing your skill.

That doesn’t happen any more.

You will have to hit a high sales number with that first novel, pretty much right out of the gate, to be offered a contract for a second novel. Many do, but many more do not, and are cast adrift. As a result, they never write a full series, especially since that first novel of theirs will remain the property of the publisher for the next thirty-five years, unless you negotiated some good terms in your contract to get the rights back.

If you do succeed, you will probably be contracted to write a trilogy, and then your publisher/editor will tell you what they want the next trilogy/series to be about. Your choices are starkly limited if you want to be published by them.

In the IndiePress world, I can publish whatever I want, as fast I can write it and turn it into something I’m not embarrassed to own. I can write several series, kinda all at the same time, in whatever order inspiration hits, as long as I communicate to you, the reader, what I’m up to, how far along I have gotten, and when and what they can expect next.

What I’m doing is far more messy than what my friend did, but he and I have very different ways of thinking. And we write different things, at different speeds, for different audiences.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for things.

That’s not why we all go to lunch. We do it to talk about what we’re doing, and what seems to be working for each of us. And that answer is different for everyone.  As it should be.

Kai Di (White Crane, book one of Modern Gods) is the first of what will only be a trilogy, as far as I can tell.  It will be one long coming-of-age story. But there will be other stories in that same universe. The novella I’m close to finishing, for the anthology next summer, takes place in that world.

Conversely, Fairchild is going to be a larger series than Modern Gods, but not a sequential thing like Jessica Keller.

So, tl;dr: What are your thoughts? Do you prefer a single series being written and published at a time, or do you want to wander all over the cosmos with a writer who has too many ideas and too much freedom to pursue them?

Who are you, as a reader?  🙂

shade and sweet water

bd

finally back West of the Mountains, WA

I don’t want to call them social networks. A social network, these days, is a tool, not a construct. What I imply is an older term. A network made up of personal connections and obligations. I’m at 36,000 feet as I write this, westbound from Kansas City, Missouri and the 74^th Worldcon/MidAmeriCon II. It was a really good con, as they go.

I’ve written elsewhere about my impressions of the future of fandom as the old folks today understand it, and how the world has already changed, but has also left them utterly bereft by the side of the road.

Through Fabulous Publisher Babe™ I met several new folks that she had known for twenty or more years, from her days in Minneapolis and other places. We also ran into other people we know, some from the west coast, others from elsewhere, but almost all of them almost entirely from conventions we all attend.

They are con-buddies. People we hang out with at panels. Bar-conning co-conspirators. Instigators of mischief, as well as witnesses at later dates.

What has changed over the last few years is that we no longer only stay in touch with each other via email or online bulletin boards where we argue with each other. The rise of technology has worked to even-more eliminate the virtual distance between us, so that we can stay in some manner of abstract day-to-day contact. Our feed is filled with their news: birthdays, weddings, parties, dirty jokes, silliness, etc. They see our lives.

My online feed is almost entirely business, mostly because Blaze Ward, Storyteller is a construct I maintain for that purpose. I rarely talk about general things, unless something or someone really pisses me off, and I have not deleted anyone from my life just because they are fools. Racists dumb enough to be racists in public these days, or anti-vaxxers who want to talk about how a vaccine is going to suddenly give their child a genetic disorder. Those folks get the boot. I don’t have time for that truck.

People who are on the other side of various social and political divides will, at most, simply get un-followed, at least for a while. When you reach the point where I feel like you’ve got nothing important to say, I stop listening. It has happened a few times this year.

One other group comes up in my life now and again: relatives. I freely admit I was the black sheep of the family in the old days. Folks who have known me long enough (and there are a few of you within the sound of my voice), can attribute to how angry I used to be. How hurt. How defensive. How mean I could get when provoked.

But we all change.

I chose to become someone entirely different a little more than three years ago. Woke up and realized I didn’t like the current me, and I needed to become someone else. Fewer grudges. Less anger.

Starting over.

I have striven to reach out to various members of my estranged family so that they could see what I have become, and maybe be proud of me that I turned out to be less of a shit than they expected. (You all have that person in your family tree somewhere.)

One of the things that struck me over the last few years has been how bad some of the grudges people hold against me. In some cases, I don’t even know why. In others, I have tried to apologize and make amends.

It hasn’t always worked, but I have tried.

There is nothing greater than that. I tried.

If you chose to dislike me anyway at this point, that is your prerogative. But it has consequences. I don’t know what your reasons might be, but something changed in me over the last few days.

I often reinvent myself. Once or twice a year I will take an inventory, keep the things I like, toss the things I don’t. Does it bring me joy, or angst? If not joy, then it is onto the trash heap of history with you.

This week, for reasons that doubtless made sense to them, several folks chose to not have anything to do with me. That is their right.

But there are always consequences.

You will decide that a wall needs to be built up between us.

I get to choose if that wall will be three feet tall, or fifty.

And I’m not even sure that I was the offending party, or just happened to be the closest male figure upon which a female (in all three cases recently: female) was allowed to safely heap her scorn and derision.

I try to live my life by a few simple ethical observations:

• If you don’t tell people lies, you don’t have to keep track of what you’ve told them.
• If the world gives you a little extra, it is better to build a longer table than a higher wall.
• Your word is your bond.

I’m sure there are others, if pressed or inebriated, but I start there.

But occasionally, I have to take inventory. If you can still hear these words, you weren’t one of the people I decided to permanently excise over the last few days.

I became someone else. Someone not as willing to take your shit, particularly when I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve it. Even Fabulous Publisher Babe™ has had to shrug her shoulders and make excuses for folks a few times lately.

But as someone I greatly value recently told me: this is not my circus, these are not my monkeys. I am happy to be helpful for no other reason than I can be. I am also quite content to hold a grudge forever.

And that is a terrible concept: forever. It means that I have built a wall fifty feet tall between us. Not five, where you might be able to jump up and see over it. Not ten where you could climb with some effort and see things on my side.

Tall enough to shadow the sun.

I would like to offer a few people the best of luck on their journey, and hope they manage to find a safe harbor, because they have sailed off beyond my horizons, and done so forever.

Tall enough to shadow the sun.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

So on Saturday, the first panel I went to was about small press publishing. Moderated by one of the editors at Locus Magazine. Seriously. “Small Press.”

There was a very fascinating gentleman from Israel named Ron Yaniv who publishes original SF work in Hebrew, and also translates things from English. He was useful to listen to, as he had original ideas about building a brand, communicating yourself to your real and potential audience, what sorts of things work and what don’t. I don’t read Hebrew, but he would have been someone I followed up with after the panel if I did.

The rest of the panel was a waste of my morning. The gentleman from Locus basically stated that going Indie Publishing through Amazon was functionally equivalent to a vanity press as far as he was concerned. And the definition of important versus unimportant publishers hinged on having a Manhattan office.

Seriously, I considered walking to the front of the room and peeing on the guy, just so he had no doubts what my position was, but he had his head so firmly up his ass he still might not have even noticed.

Part of the reason I get my back up with these people is their undying devotion to the idea that you can only be successful on NY terms. You have to earn your SFWA bones with “reputable” magazines and publishers to be considered anything greater than dog shit with them. It has been a conversation I have had more than once.

And more than one person has asked me why I haven’t joined the Science Fiction Writers of America. Cat Rambo is doing amazing things reforming the organization into someplace where I possibly won’t get insulted by the majority of the membership. In another few years. When pressed, I remind them that I was a best-selling Indie author before I was actually eligible to join their little club.

I have still had to deal with too many long-standing members who could be politely described as assholes in their private conversations when I “identified” myself as an indie. I suspect Cat will have to simply offer up about a dozen to a score of human sacrifices on the front lawn in order to move the organization to someplace I would consider “accessible.” But Groucho Marx covered this topic.

I wish her luck.

Later, I attended a panel on archaeology in SF, and what things writers get right and wrong. All four of the panelists were working archaeologists before becoming writers, and one still was. It was fascinating hearing them talk about their field, and how it could have implications for futurism. That was the first panel all weekend where I’ve actually taken notes. My Fairchild series, while it does not have aliens and the need for xeno-archaeology yet, I could see needing to interview an archaeologist for a story, as they pursue some topic.

After that, a panel on political world-building in SF. Again, taking notes. I knew the name Ken Liu, and something of his reputation for smarts, especially after his Hugo last year, but I had never encountered him. He was leaned back, looking kinda bored and “why am I here?” and then it came time for him to say something.

He leaned forward in his chair, dropped his weight onto his toes, and turned on the charm. It was like he hit the room with a searchlight. And then he proceeded to get arcane on how democracy and bureaucracy were technologies in SF, and how to understand and detail them in your writing in a way that is powerful and compelling.

I can see why he won his second Hugo a couple of hours later. He was simply an amazing speaker, particularly in his ability to take something that could be phenomenally boring, and make it interesting and useful. And I learned a lot from him.

Next to Ken was Ada Palmer, a historian by training who Fabulous Publisher Babe™ absolutely adores, both as a person and a writer. I had never heard of her before yesterday. She held her own with Ken Liu and was just as compelling about building up a world in layers (think pearls) by addressing how the politics used to work, and how they changed, and what odd little bits got left over and stuck around in the present tense of your work and your world.

Like I said, I took copious notes.

The last panel of the day was on Yaoi and Yuri, which is shorthand for m/m and f/f themes in Japanese Manga. Didn’t understand anything about the topic, but Lyda Morehouse was moderating, so I figured it would be fun. It was. One lesbian who reads, by her own admission, like a twelve-year-old boy looking for boobs, robots, and explosions. One demi-/bi-sexual woman. One other who never specified. All three panelists extremely smart women. Two of them librarians. All of them experts on the topic, having a very introductory bit on the what, followed by a quick tour of their favorites, and then a long Q&A on the why. Learned a lot. Expanded my literary horizons. Giggled a whole bunch.

Spent the evening trying to talk one of Fabulous Publisher Babe’s friends into Indie. He’s firmly wedded to TradPub, but even he can see the writing on the wall. That model is dying. I talked about it yesterday in my post. They have not replaced the current generation, and don’t “get” it.

And I made my choice early on for Fortune over Fame. I plan to build myself up to a comfortable mid-list lifestyle, all the while flying under the radar of the ijits in New York.

And then, last night, the Hugo awards. The last few years have been dominated by a group of racist, sexist dinosaurs who are deeply wounded that females and minorities have the audacity to commit speculative fiction, which they feel should be exclusively a white male prerogative.

If you haven’t see the results this morning, all three of the fiction categories were won by women last night (including Naomi!!!!!!). Two of those women are black. It was utterly awesome for the future of the field.

Got a lovely quote forwarded into my facebook feed this morning that made me giggle

“It’s hard being a straight white guy in 2016. Everything was always supposed to be all about us 100% of the time and now it’s down to like, 98%.”

It’s sad, but that’s been the case in the past. It is slowly changing, as the useless mouth-pieces die off and get replaced by people who aren’t assholes.

One last story: I am smiling about a mile wide today, because I met a unicorn this week. I talked about Cerece Rennie Murphy yesterday, and her panel on Afrofuturism. Fabulous Publisher Babe and I were seated almost directly in front of her, third row, during the panel, so maybe fifteen feet away from Cerece. Apparently, we were smiling and nodding at the right moments as she talked.

I saw her yesterday and went up to thank her for such a wonderful and useful panel. She recognized me and my sweetie, and she thanked us for helping her get over her nerves as she was surrounded by a potentially hostile crowd. We both got hugs.

So in addition to being an amazingly-smart, capable black woman writing science fiction, she’s also really, really nice and friendly. I need to go buy some of her books so I can write up reviews for everyone.

Going home in a few hours. Made some lovely friends. Learned a bunch. Considering going to San Jose in 2018, because I can take a train down. Recovering tomorrow, and then back to work.

shade and sweet water,

bd

KCMO

So after a full day of programming and fun at Worldcon, some rather interesting impressions.

I went to Sasquan last year in Spokane, WA. It is a smaller city, well inland across the state from Seattle, but close enough to drive. It left me with concepts and concerns. This year has not addressed them in a positive manner.

I’m 47. And I’m in pretty good shape (size waist 32 jeans as the numbers escalate, but I still weigh right around 200 lbs, most of the time.)

This thing, this World Science Fiction Convention, looks to have around 5000 attendees. That sounds like a lot, until you realize that the San Diego Comic Con had over 160,000 attendees in 2015. It feels like a small, local con of the sort I started going to thirty-five years ago in Wichita.

Second, I’m in the bottom half of the attendees, by age grouping. Seriously, the average age of all the people I’ve seen the last two days has got to be mid-fifties. These are folks that have been going to Worldcons for decades, and they represent a significant chunk of Fandom, as it used to be known in the bad, old days when these people were pups.

The problem is, they aren’t pups anymore. They’ve grown old, and not brought along the next generation of readers and fans. I might have seen a handful of people too young to drink in the last two days. That’s it.

For comparison, this spring at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, the average age of attendees might (barely) have been old enough to drink. That crowd was teenagers, lots and lots of them. Better, young parents, in costume, with their four-year-old daughter dressed up as Rey from Star Wars 7, or Wonder Woman, or something. Deeply engaged and doing it as a family.

I barely saw adult children of attendees here in KC.

And the energy at ECCC was off the charts, compared to WC. Hyper. Excited. Engaged.

The entire dealer room at WC is less than an acre, compared to ECCC that felt 4-6 times as big, and a hundred times as crowded and vibrant.

So, yeah.

Next, let us talk about the fans, in as gentle a way as we can.

I weigh 200 lbs. I’m pretty sure that puts me in the bottom half weight category for people, as I look around. And that includes the girls.

I feel bad for the people in such bad shape. It’s not that hard to walk more and pay better attention to what you eat. When I stopped drinking soda pop, I lost 20 pounds pretty quickly. When my wife gave me her old fitbit, I started paying attention to the number of steps I took each day. It had been 3500-4500. Now it runs around 6000-7000 on a weekday, and 12000-15000 on the weekends in the summer. (Winter, I don’t have as much work to do out at the farm, so I tend to write more instead, but I’m standing at the counter when I do and moving around still.)

People, walk more. That’s all it takes. Stretch in the shower in the morning to keep the muscles loose. Eat less processed foods. My diet has shifted over largely to dead critter and fresh veggies these days, with an emphasis on burning fat. I’m in better shape than I’ve been since the days I used to go out dancing several nights each week.

Now, the good parts.

Went to several fun panels yesterday. Afrofuturism in SF was an exploration of black authors and publishers in the field, and what it was like for them to get where they are, and how the field can be more inclusive. Cerece Rennie Murphy was absolute hilarious to listen to, as she recounted the stories about how nobody told her a black woman wasn’t supposed to write SF so she drove up to NY Comic Con and rented a table to sell her books. Another was Bill Campbell, the publisher of Rosarium Publishing.

After that: Taboo Topics in SF&F, which turned into a serious (if silly) discussion on why bodily functions are never discussed in SF&F. Imagine Aragorn up at two in the morning trying to pee with orcs trying to beat the door down. Or how no woman ever has to worry about packing emergency tampons and pads in space. (Science is actually getting close, but let’s talk chain mail settings.) This is topical for me, because my novel coming out shortly, Fairchild, actually addresses some of these topics, and I had to ask very pointed questions and get a good walk through on things from my wife, to make sure I had it all right.

They also touched on the fact that Americans do not deal well with class topics. The best suggestion I saw was for a group of British writers to have a panel on class at an American con, sometime, for American writers to understand. Americans do not see themselves (or admit to themselves) through the lens of class. Everyone is a temporarily down-on-his-luck millionaire. That is helpful at times, but it leaves out other things.

Also met lots of neat people and made some more con buddies. This being so far from home, few of the usual suspects made it this far, but Fabulous Publisher Babe™ knows everybody, and I get to tag along. Had dinner last night with Lyda Morehouse and Naomi Kritzer. Scheduled to have lunch today with Mary Anne Mohanraj. All folks she has known from way back, mostly from Clarion things.

Am off now, Saturday morning, for breakfast and more fun. Probably almost as much programming, but hoping to catch up with a few folks that I have not seen yet. (Left messages.)

shade and sweet water

bd

KCMO

Have arrived in Kansas City, MO for MidAmeriCon II (commonly known as Worldcon 74).  Have a list of panels I want to see, from hard Science Fiction to publishing.  There are several people here I hope to catch up with.  Already met a few neat people I hope to keep in touch with in the future.

One thing stands out in my mind as I look around: this place is Trad-pub. All of the panels are centered around the concept of New York publishing, from getting an agent, to writing a winning elevator pitch, to how to handle rejection (really?). There is even a panel on “Small Press Publishing” where the moderator is the Head Editor of one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. Small press, right.

Since I don’t suspect I’ll ever belong to Trad-Pub-Land (the next Hive story going off to the New Yorker in October to be rejected so I can publish it in January notwithstanding), I don’t think there is much there for me.

But that’s not why I do these things. The world of publishing is going through the fourth complete sea-change in the last fifteen years right now. Technology has broken the power of the big houses to control what the public sees. You all are able to buy my books directly and recommend them to a friend, and you cannot purchase them off a book shelf anywhere except the Powell’s in Beaverton, OR, and a small mailbox store in Seattle (the owner is a friend of my wife and likes having books for sale on his counter, me and several other local authors he knows).

To be “Trad-Pubbed” is to have been an author who used to get big contracts through the NY houses, but who has either seen the advances drop to almost nothing, or who has simply been cut loose and abandoned. I feel sorry for those folks, because they have to re-invent themselves mid-career.

For some of them, it isn’t as painful, as they are usually able to get their rights back after thirty-five years if it has gone out of print. (New books, being electronic, will NEVER go out of print, according to how contract law is currently working.) If they signed “good” contracts, they might have term limits built in (“you give it back after ten years…” etc.) or sales thresholds (it must sell X copies in a year or the rights revert, etc.), but most writers did not sign good contracts. (I won’t go into THAT stupidity, other than to say that young authors are taught to not ask questions by people who absolutely know better.)

For me, I have the freedom that Jeff Bezos is going to enforce on the world. (And if you think Jeff’s going to lose, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you, cheap.) ANYONE can write a book, slap a cover on it, blurb the back, and put it up for sale. You might never sell a single copy of it, except to your mother, but you have published a book. Most authors will never, ever, make a dedicated living from their writing alone. I don’t. (Yet.)

But all I have to do is keep publishing, and relentlessly hustle. Our waitress this morning wanted to know if we were writers, because our hotel is two blocks from the Con and filled with us. I handed her a business card for Auberon, which gave her a tangible thing to have, to look at, maybe to buy later. The return on my business cards is lousy, in that I probably only get a handful of readers from a box, but the box costs me $10, so it actually pays for itself.

I don’t need many fans, if they are dedicated to my words. I net about $3 from each e-novel I sell (less for the novellas and almost nothing from the short stories) on Amazon. You can do the math pretty easily from there to determine how much money you would want to make in a year, and break that down into how many novels you sell on a daily basis, average, to be free. If I have more novels for folks, and keep writing more, then my chances of replacing the day job go up.

Trad pub does not offer that, any more. Once upon a time, you could make a comfortable career mid-listing and have a happy, middle-class lifestyle. If you hit big, the spouse could quit their job and you could enjoy things. Today, those numbers measure in the hundreds in Trad-Pub land, and thousands in the Indie Press (me and folks like me struggling to get to that point).

So I hustle, and I blog, and I write daily. I try to talk you into introducing me to one of your friends you think will enjoy my writing, because that word of mouth builds my fan base. If I had enough support to stop day-jobbing, I would at least double my daily word count, at a dead minimum. Probably triple it once I got the brain muscles built up to do that regularly. Did it for Fairchild, when I had to turn out a new novel, in a new universe, from scratch, in a very short period of time. It worked out to 3000 words per day, for 15 days. 47,000 words, which is 7000 more than the definition of a novel.

I can do it. Trad Pub would never stand for it. But they don’t get a vote. And they don’t get to stop me. I view them as the competition for your dollars, so I have to know what they are up to, and how to produce a better product.

So that’s Day One of WorldCon (Thursday). Let’s see how silly Day Two can be.

🙂

shade and sweet water

bd

KCMO

I have words, but she does it so much better than I do this morning:

http://rebeccasenese.com/out-of-this-world-bundle-lets-blast-off/

Bundle: to gather together a wide and interesting group of folks and put one of their books each into a product for people to read for a single, cheap price.

The goal: I have fans who have (hopefully) read everything I have ever written, and wait with baited breath for my next installment. To tide them over, and introduce them to their new, second-favorite author. 🙂

This is a big bundle. 16 stories available when you normally get ten to twelve. I only know about half of the authors present and have read about a third of the books on tap.

Come join us “Out Of This World” for some serious (and occasionally silly) fun.

Oh, and, I drew the short straw, so Rebecca put me up first. It would help me look good if you could go buy this and then send the link to everyone you know, so Rebecca launches this beast in style!

Cheers,

b

It’s true.  And I post things there on a quarterly basis that don’t necessarily make it into my semi-regular blog posts. The blog is where I talk about stuff, but not necessarily things of any great relevance, beyond my usual snark.

The newsletter, on the other hand, is about schedules and events. And occasionally giveaways and stuff. And I promise not to share your information with anyone. I try to send out one newsletter quarterly, and the reason I was thinking about it was because I should have sent it out August 1, but never got around to it as a result of some of the craziness going on in my life right now.

On the brighter side, I just sat down this morning and started organizing my thoughts, so I’ll be able to send it out in another week or so, depending on what I have to say.

This is your chance to sign up and get the latest news.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

bd