when a 20 pound cat sits on your chest at 4am -- might as well go to work

Have made an offer over on The Cosa Nostradamus on-line that might make your gift-giving a bit easier this season. Or not. Up to you to decide...

Did my bit for the publishing economy yesterday at B&N, including getting a membership card (I've already made back $5 of the $25 fee). Was somewhat dismayed to stand in front of the racks of books and realize that there were very few books I really wanted to buy... not because they weren't good, but because I'm burnt out on all my favorite genres. So I did what I always do in those situations -- I bought in different genres. In this case, hard SF and non-fiction.

If all goes well and chaos doesn't laugh, I'm going to use the last two weeks of the year to curl up and make a dent in my TBR cache. Mmmm. Pleasure-reading.

So, anyone want to suggest something Good that's not any flavor of fantasy? Just keep in mind that 'cozy' or 'cute' mysteries tend to make my teeth itch...


Cats have come out to join me at the desk, and the coffee's ready. Guess that means the day's begun.

(no subject)

and more to the publishing industry: this

At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.

No really, who cares if these groups are retaining editorial independence while combining strengths? Is that really going to change the business dynamic, or is it just focusing on the wrong problem?


Speaking as someone who still has a (thankfully fading) emotional attachement to the imprint she used to run, I understand the insider's view of imprints -- it's your baby, your identity, your chance to say "this is what I think is good." And in a perfect world it would be a useful and understood brand. But that's a lot easier to do in specialized genres (DAW, Baen, Nocturne, etc). For general fiction? Not so much. Not much at all, in fact.


Y'know, it's a very weird thing, being an insider-trained writer. I'm never quite sure if I'm a Christian or a Lion.

one last before I go...

Lots of discussion across the blogosphere about What's Wrong with Publishing, How Publishing Is/Isn't Dying, etc and What it All Means.

To that I can only say what I've been saying about the economy all along: it didn't get broken overnight, and if it were easy to fix -- a simple matter of changing A for B -- it would have been don already. Really. TBTB? They're not stupid, most of them. Venal, short-sighted, and stuck in a previous generation, maybe, but not stupid. And none of them want to lose their jobs (or answer to corporate head-choppers) for screwing the pooch if they can avoid it.

So what's the answer? Damned if I know. Got some ideas.

-Telling shareholders to take their narrow profit margin and be happy with it, damn it.
-Adapting faster to new technology.
-Bringing prices back into line with reality -- I love me some books, but even for my addicted-to authors, $25-30 is a lot to shell out. Give me a $12 trade paperback and I'll go away happy. A $6 mass market, likewise. Yes, I know what production costs are. See points 1 and 2.
-creating a single industry-wide format for e-books, by god, and telling manufacturers to create readers around that, rather than scattering their focus.
-Creating a new delivery system -- I used to think that direct-from-publisher sales were a bad idea, because it limited reader access. Now I'm not so sure -- if you can skip around from imprint to imprint via websites to look at what's available, is that any better/worse than a bookstore? And that way every title could be showcased, not just what a buyer thinks will sell. On the other hand, that puts a lot of people in the chain of events out of work, too. So...



Meanwhile, all I can do is keep on keeping on. 38 pages and one rather major comment to hammer into better shape, and HARD MAGIC is done. I've rescheduled my dinner plans [pity the person keeping company with a writer on deadline!] and plan to hit fini by the time I sleep. That may not be until dawn, but...