Monthly Archives: June 2014

The choice is to self-publish or submit to an agent

Hugh Howey makes another insightful set of comments on the state of self -publishing. If there is a self-publishing revolution, Howey is it’s Napoleon. Will end up being made mad by the wall paper on a small mediterranean island? Let us hope not. Centrally, Howey tackles the false equivalence made when critics of self publishingContinue reading “The choice is to self-publish or submit to an agent”

To be or not to be…pro-Amazon?

David Gaughran is proving himself to be one of the most intelligent independent commentators in contemporary publishing. In a razor sharp post on media bias in the coverage of Amazon, he dissects the overwhelmingly anti-Amazon stance reflected in the media. It’ s a post worth reading in full, including a very valuable summary of whyContinue reading “To be or not to be…pro-Amazon?”

France bails out its publishing monopoly

And thinking a little more about anti-Amazon bias in reporting. Here Melville House comments on the new French “anti-Amazon” law. * The new law forbids the combination of free shipping and a 5% discount on online book sales, meaning that sites like Amazon cannot offer consumers free delivery as a way to undercut independent bookshops,Continue reading “France bails out its publishing monopoly”

Women Are Destroying Science Fiction! (That’s OK; They Created It)

What what makes, one may also destroy. Women writers, having created science fiction in works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, are now destroying it. NPR books picks up this idea today. Of course, science fiction isn’t being destroyed. It’s changing, and the new space being claimed by diverse voices in the genre is the energy changingContinue reading “Women Are Destroying Science Fiction! (That’s OK; They Created It)”

‘Weird things customers say in bookshops’ by Jen Campbell

Originally posted on Reading The Universe:
Hello Everyone! It’s certainly been a while, and frankly there are no excuses. I do get the emails reminding me to post each week (which I set up myself!), but whenever I think ‘Oh thats what I need to do tonight’, it slips my mind again. Bad bad bad.…

Marion Zimmer Bradley : can we separate the artist from the art?

It’s a truism that the writer you read on the page is not the writer you meet in the flesh. It’s for exactly this reason that meeting our cultural heroes is so often a profound disappointment. The transcendent singer on the stage is a bawdy lech in the bar. The poet who expresses beauty inContinue reading “Marion Zimmer Bradley : can we separate the artist from the art?”

“I thought that my mothers fans would be angry with me”

It’s really impossible for any of us who haven’t experienced it to really comprehend abuse from a parent. But that experience becomes even more complicated when the abuser is famous. The Guardian today reports the abuse allegations against Marion Zimmer Bradley by her daughter Moira Greyland. In doing so it spoke directly to Greyland. ThisContinue reading ““I thought that my mothers fans would be angry with me””

Why writing workshops fail, and why you need one

Imagine a group of mechanics, faces grimed with sweat and dirt, hands grazed by friction burns, overalls grubby with grease. Imagine them standing around the carcass of a motor car, stripped down to its component parts, sucking their teeth about why it won’t run. “It needs more oomph.” Says one. “Oomph?” Says another. “Yeah, oomph.Continue reading “Why writing workshops fail, and why you need one”

Before Their Books Were Famous, These Authors Worked the Following Odd Jobs

Originally posted on Coffee and Bookaholics:
It may seem as though all the famous writers have full-time writing jobs to which boost their chances of their novels selling and hitting the bookshelves. However, by looking through the authors etched in literary history, this is far from the case. Many of our iconic authors worked odd-end…

Who is the most outrageous and imaginative scifi writer in the world?

Today’s best search term to reach my blog was “most outrageous and imaginative scifi writer in the world”. Which of course leads me to ask the question, who IS most outrageous and imaginative scifi writer in the world? Outrageous and Imaginative. That’s a killer duo of adjectives to combine. I’m going to put my thinking capContinue reading “Who is the most outrageous and imaginative scifi writer in the world?”

My nominations for Speculative Fiction 2014

Criticism and non-fiction writing seem to play an ever bigger part in science fiction and fantasy. Consider the issue of diversity in these genres, which has reached some kind of apogee in 2014. And a great deal of the energy driving that change has been generated online by non-fiction writing. Most of this writing isContinue reading “My nominations for Speculative Fiction 2014”