Tradpub vs libraries part 2

Macmillan's embargo on ebook library lending should serve as a warning to everyone, libraries included, that tradpub is entering its terminal stage. Only companies backed into a corner commit such bizarre acts of seeming pettiness and irrationality. The news today that the newly merged ViacomCBS is putting Simon & Schuster up for sale is another data point trending downward for tradpub.

As the LA Times notes, the likeliest buyer of S&S is another one of the Big 5 publishers, which would mean a further concentration of clout in the (albeit shrinking) publishing industry. This raises the risk that Macmillan's ebook dispute with libraries could grow in scope and affect a larger share of new published books than it does now.

It helps to look at this dispute in terms of a labor strike. Macmillan controls the books, or the labor force, and libraries control product distribution. Publishers can hold back their "labor" to negotiate better ebook licensing terms with libraries. Libraries, under pressure from customers--or their members--would be forced to negotiate or lose their members.

Most big publishers rely on a handful of writers and highly publicized releases each year to turn a profit. Some writers, household names like James Patterson or Stephen King, have as much, if not more, power as the imprints that publish them. One of them could opportunistically cross the picket line and negotiate ebook licensing on his own.

Or something else could happen. Libraries could read the tea leaves foretelling tradpub's doom and change their acquisition model. There are independent publishers and self-published writers who are dying to be read. They would love love love to sell ebook licenses to libraries. The conversion rate of freeloaders to paying customers is high owing to the higher premium readers put on their time, as opposed to their money.

The good news is most libraries are set up to directly serve their communities. They're naturally inclined to feature local authors and local presses. If they've been on the fence about pivoting to the indie book scene, this Macmillan embargo might be all the convincing they need.

It doesn't hurt to try. Macmillan's gambit presents an opportunity too good to pass up for agile, independent writers and publishers with high growth ceilings. Seize it.

Here's the American Library Association's FAQ on the embargo.

Speaking for myself, I give my book to anyone who asked if I knew they were going to read it. I do, in fact, give my debut book Tendrils to the Moon to anyone who signs up for my mailing list. You can sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

Also, you can read the first 4 chapters of my newest book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

So very ugly

"It was an aesthetic choice as much as a moral one. The West has grown so very ugly, don’t you think?" -The traitor in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

This post will be a change of pace. Bear with me.

Six years ago, on a mission trip to Danlí, Honduras, we were on our way from the church to the hotel. We passed a boy lying in the street, with what I think was club foot, his palms up in a pleading gesture. I didn't break my stride.

Such scenes aren't uncommon in the Third World, or in our densest cities in America. Such open display of suffering instills a certain kind of indifference. It doesn't mean you lack compassion, just that you adjust your sensibilities to the perceived normal.

Now and again I think about that boy with sadness and fury. How can anyone live like that? And what can be done? That's the worst part of it, that feeling of fecklessness and impotence.

Those feelings resurfaced when I saw this video making the rounds on the Internet. This perverted initiation ritual is made all the more disturbing by the enthusiasm of the adults in attendance. They take pleasure in destroying this child's innocence.

And we wonder why there are more sexually confused, gender dysphoric children than ever. Don’t tell me it’s “all nature” and they’ve been there all along. https://t.co/lYMP5VZ1qK

— Jared Monroe (@TheJaredMonroe) February 28, 2020

I fantasized about rescuing this child from these demented people. But, in truth, what could I do? This child, like the club-footed boy in Honduras, has little hope. This is her normal. Every adult in her life, even her parents, are grooming her for what Brian Neiemaier and others call the Death Cult.

Poverty conditions can be alleviated by material changes. This can only be fixed by spiritual warfare. There can be little doubt the evil one occupies the hearts of many Americans, and his displays are getting bolder.

But Jesus Christ our Savior is more powerful than him. By venerating His name and what He stands for, we can re-evangelize the culture so this doesn't have to be the norm.

This is the highest calling of art. It need not be cold or moralistic. It need only point at truth.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can. I invite you to read the first 4 chapters of my new sci-fi book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

Literary racketeering

As a follow-on to my post about the furor over American Dirt, there is something creepy about the sins tradpub imagines itself to have committed, and the self-effacing ways it elects to be cleansed of guilt. Read this, courtesy of Publishers Weekly:

"Roberto, David, and I came to New York on a restorative and reparative mission," Gurba said in her statement at the press conference. "We came not only to extend an olive branch to Flatiron. We came to offer our assistance in restoring the dignity of all parties harmed. We offered Flatiron a chance to wipe away the dirt."

In a statement sent to PW Wednesday evening, Gurba added: "Overall, the meeting went well. You could smell the discomfort of some folks in the room and that was important: meaningful change is typically accompanied by 'growing pains' and B.O. I was also able to express to [Macmillan executives] that while this experience has undoubtedly been difficult for them, having my life repeatedly threatened for engaging in literary criticism has not been fun."

This goes well beyond a shakedown. Gurba describes the meeting in messianic language. She arrived on a "mission" to ritually "wipe away the dirt." But not before she laid into them, condemning them for their supposed crimes. In one hand she held their guilt, which she offered freely. In the other she held absolution, which came at a cost.

(Note how Gurba justifies the executives' pain by citing the threats she has received, as if the executives are somehow responsible for the blowback against her race-based critiques. When your life is repeatedly threatened, I suspect you're doing more than just writing book reviews.)

The cost of absolution won't be limited to the reparations Macmillan promised the apostles of #DignidadLiteraria. Ostensibly every publisher's task is to sell books. That mission is now subverted by the new task of enforcing racial quotas in their workforce and book content. As a result, Macmillan's market share will decline. Remember, if what Gurba et al. are asking for sold books, Macmillan would have beeing doing it already.

Here's another publisher who kow-towed to a racially motivated mob:

Last season, we published a memoir by a white author writing about falling in love with China, and a Chinese man. The cover featured the author wearing a qipao. Despite all I’d experienced, I didn’t see the cultural appropriation. I thought she had a “pass” because she was married to a Chinese man, because this was her lived experience. But book influencers on Instagram squarely took us to task. We read their posts, listened to their objections, and changed the cover. The dialogue with our critics was not comfortable, but the outcome was satisfactory—for us and for them.

One side lobbing accusations at another isn't "dialogue." In the social media age, it's racketeering. Dialogue is something that happens between equals, not between those who wield the power to libel and their prospective victims.

The cover depicted the content of the book, a woman assimilating to her new country, and was entirely appropriate. The only satisfactory outcome in this case was for the mob to stick their objections where the sun don't shine, and for the publisher to leverage their outrage into free marketing.

Perhaps you think I'm being too crass about this. Let me know in the comments below. I'll respond as soon as I can.

My latest book, Seeds of Calamity, is now available at Barnes & Noble. You're welcome to read the first 4 chapters for free; if they pique your interest, get yourself a copy. I appreciate the support!

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

On the American Dirt frenzy

So Jeanine Cummins wrote a book called American Dirt about a Mexican woman and her son fleeing a drug cartel and making a run at the U.S. border, and literary critics of a certain bent are panning it—not because it's bad, although it might be—but because Cummins appropriated a culture that doesn't "belong" to her.

Appropriation is when you speak from another person's POV or temporarily adopt their traits as your own. In short, it's what writers do. You create a character; you build the setting around them; you give them traits, some of them personal, others cultural; and you drop them in a conflict that allows them to overcome and grow. It's a benign practice, and it's been done for hundreds if not thousands of years. It's especially common in fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction. Whether you're writing for an elf, a Klingon, or a Roman soldier, you're trying to show the reader something he hasn't seen, hopefully something magical.

The key word here is "try." Sometimes it's done well, like in a book I'm reading now, a Japanese historical fantasy by David V. Stewart called Muramasa. Sometimes it's not done well, like in a technothriller called Arctic Rising. The former succeeded because the Japanese characters fit the setting and the story DVS wanted to tell. The latter failed because the author, Tobias Buckell, was clearly using his Nigerian lesbian hero to check diversity boxes and further his sociopolitical agenda.

I don't know and don't really care if Cummins succeeded in portraying an authentic Mexican woman. What bothers me is other people telling her she can't because she's white. Mexican immigrant culture isn't "hers," so she should leave the story for someone else to tell. It's amazing this cretinous tripe still gets peddled in 2020 America after decades of mainstreaming racial egalitarianism through every cultural institution. If a Latino had written this book, seriously, what publisher wouldn't want to publish it?

Esmeralda Bermudez is at the forefront of the backlash. Check our her Twitter feed. She's particularly aggrieved there's not enough diversity in publishing. (Maybe the problem is there's not enough diversity among readers.) Conveniently you never hear what percentage of representation diversity activists want. Setting a hard quota would preface an eventual end to the grievance, thus an end to the movement. But the movement mustn't end. It's not about diversity. It's about leveraging racial grievance to exercise an insatiable will to power.

Book publicists put on a full-court press for American Dirt: securing Oprah's endorsement, printing blurbs from Stephen King and John Grisham, etc. I went to Costco last Friday and there must have been a hundred hardbacks for sale. Now, the publisher has canceled the rest of the book tour and replaced it with a shorter series of Maoist struggle sessions where Cummins will have to engage with critics telling her she can't write what she wants because of her skin color. There's a word for that: racism.

With that out of the way, I think Cummins is partly to blame for this. Whatever catharsis of racial attention she hoped to achieve with the subject matter will not come up pass. In fact, she's made it worse. Her appeasing attitude and willing acknowledgement of her "privilege" is all grifters need to delegitimize her success. As soon as you admit you profited unfairly from a supposedly racist system, you have no defense against that success being taken from you.

Courting this ugliness won't save tradpub. It will accelerate its ruin. Meanwhile, independent creators are putting out great books. They have one aim above all: entertainment.

You can judge for yourself whether I've done that in my own writing by taking a look at the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.

Judging a book by its cover

When you read a book, you make an economic decision about how to spend your time and money. Life is too short to waste on a book that may disappoint, so before the decision to read and/or buy, a book goes through your filter, which is informed by taste, experience, word of mouth, etc.

The cover is part of this evaluation. The cover conveys information about the book's genre, style, characters, and story. If the cover looks unprofessional, or if the copy on the back doesn't grab you, it's wise and necessary to give the book a pass and look for something more appealing to you.

This isn't "judging a book by its cover," as the oft-misused aphorism goes; that implies a book sucks because the cover sucks. You've simply chosen not to read it, just like you choose what movies to see, or what to eat, or what to wear, or who to ask out on a date. Discernment is an elemental part of life. If you don't filter books this way, you'll find yourself reading a lot of books you don't like.

Only someone who's read a book can judge it. That's why it's important to have an appealing cover, to get through readers' filters so they can be in a position to judge it, good or ill.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.

I designed the cover art of Seeds of Calamity in Inkscape. Does it pass your filter? If so, I invite you to read the first 4 chapters or get yourself a copy at Amazon.

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing the mobile site, click here.

A pedantic children's book review

I used to think children's books aren't serious art, but once I started reading books to my daughters I realized my mistake. There are good children's books and bad children's books. It doesn't take less effort to entertain a 3 year-old for 2 minutes as it takes to entertain a 30 year-old for 12 hours.

One of the best children's books I've read is Locomotive by Brian Floca. It's a sensory journey across the Old West via steam engine. It flows like poetry. The descriptions are accurate and fun. The artwork is detailed, immersive, and gorgeous. Best of all, Locomotive fires up the imagination of complex machinery and exploring new frontiers, worlds of technology and wonder.

But that's not good enough for some people.

Imagine being so "woke" that you find fault in children's books for not gutting the target audience's curiosity and sense of wonder. Misery loves company, I suppose, and the best way to make a person miserable is to teach them early.

There are too many people in the literary world who think like this, and I've come to accept the naiveté of ignoring clear ideological splits in the book market. I do not write for this kind of person. I want to take my readers on adventures, not jade their thinking with droll pedantry.

You can judge for yourself whether I've succeeded by reading the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.

On 3rd person limited

This is a continuation of a previous post on my writing goals for my newest book, Seeds of Calamity. One of those goals was to limit the POV to Felton, the protagonist. This was to simplify the storytelling and tell a compelling growth arc for a single character from start to finish. Aside from the prologue, which is told from a secondary character's POV, I succeeded. Along the way, I learned a few things about writing.

Limited perspective has mystery and surprises built in. Much of the tension is in not knowing what will happen next, or not knowing what is really happening beneath the surface of the other characters' actions. In my first book, Tendrils to the Moon, the tension came from the reader knowing more than the hero did. In Seeds, it comes from the reader knowing only as much as Felton.

A small effect of this was my decision to not title Seeds's chapters. I did this for Tendrils's 12 sprawling chapters, and it made sense in the context of that story, where process and detail were featured as much as the plot and characters. The chapter titles I used back then gave a sense of progress as well as foreboding. With Seeds, chapter titles would have taken away the story's unpredictability.

This style demanded more from me as a writer. I had to stage scenes "off screen" without the benefit of showing them, so they had to flow by a logic that I didn't entirely have control of. I was tempted to explain things long after they happened, and there wasn't a lot of room to work with in the moment.

Whereas I could get away with more telling in Felton's POV, I had to find more direct ways to show the other main characters' growth and conflicts. I was forced to be efficient in their presentation, for too much information would have muddied those characters to the point that they wouldn't be identifiable.

It was fun writing minor characters who served their purpose after a couple of chapters—or one scene, as they case may be. It feels true to life. I liked adding dashes and quirks that I didn't feel pressured to sustain over the whole book.

Finally, the limited perspective imposed plotting discipline on me. I didn't have the option of cutting to another POV when a scene ran its course. I had to either advance the plot or cut to a new scene that did. The result was a dense, meaty plot and no real second act doldrums to speak of.

To see what I mean, read the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.