Because what could be better than interesting links to other places? A lot of things, I’m sure, but that’s not the point. For now, enjoy these:
- Juno Books has an incredibly informative list of recent book sales figures that you all might be fascinated by. Really detailed stuff and rather telling of how the book industry is doing. The list makes some interesting points on the age of readers, which might be worth noting.
- Who Is Caleb G? discusses the marginalization of science fiction. Some basic, but exceptionally valid points are made. The genre really is as important as those of us who read it say.
- A bit of random trivia: ten fun facts about Kenya. Yup. Random, I know, but you might learn something useful.
- Bloggasm talks about basically one of the most useless studies on the effects of giving away electronic copies of books on book sales themselves. Basically the fellow wasted his time studying only to tell us that “oh, well, yeah, we see sales, but we don’t know if that’s because of other factors beyond giving them away as electronic copies.” So, essentially pointless. Any moron could have done this and come up with the same thing. *rant over*
- Mashable has 100+ of the best authors on Twitter, conveniently divided into genres.
- AME has a useful marketing roadmap form you can use to, well, develop a marketing roadmap. Pretty self-explanatory and particularly useful for future novelists who want to be published.
- As cool as it may sound that scientists are creating zombie fireants by introducing a species of fly that lays eggs in the ants, which grow and kill them, I can’t help thinking that this is going to bite us in the butt later. Anyone else think fiddling with introducing non-native zombie-fying species is a bad idea?
- The Book Publicity Blog has a whole series on sending and receiving review copies of books. Check the bottom of this post for the various other sections. Definitely worth reading.
- Follow the Reader has some great statistical information about book buyers that might be of interest. I’m particularly astonished at how the elderly are taking the whole eBook thing. Oh, and to all of you idiots who think reading is dying: you’re wrong and the stats on this page say so. Eat it.
- Best Fantasy Books asks if speculative fiction is at its zenith. I’m not so sure. I think the problem is that what tends to get attention is what sells, and that’s never necessarily been what is of high quality in the writing world. There’s good stuff out there, you just can’t always rely on the bestseller’s lists to find them.
- The Scattering makes an interesting argument about Neanderthals being like the Androids of Blade Runner (or other films, etc.). I don’t think it’s entirely accurate, but it still makes one think about what our role may have been in their extinction.
- The Litter Box has a hilarious list of five worthless droids. Cracked me up. Johnny Five!
- Flights of Fantasy lists five uses for dinosaurs in fantasy. I prefer using them as mounts–a Velociraptor specifically (names Bill).
And that’s it for this time around. A lot of links that hopefully will not bore. Anywho!
4 Responses
Ha, there are self-publishers on that Mashable Twitter list. Welcome to hell!
I don’t see how I would be in hell based on the fact that some self-pub authors are on that list. The Interwebs is a good place for them, so it’s only natural that they would have a presence on Twitter.
And again, the assumption is that I hate all self-pub books, which I clearly do not, because I know that there are good books out there, and have read some of them. So, if those authors happen to be good, then good for them.
Right, but self-publishers are lying and self-publishing services are evil. Wait, nevermind.
Nope, you misread again. SOME self-publishers are lying, and they are complete bastards for doing so. SOME self-publishing printers are evil, but ones that do not misrepresent what they do are not (Lulu would be a great example, because they do not pretend even for a second that your self-published book is going to sell, that you’ll be rich and famous, that you’ll turn into Stephen King or some other super author, yadda yadda; they simply provide you the options to self-publish).
The problem is that when someone like me points out the issue with self-publishing, I get attacked for it. These are not problems that aren’t realities. They actually happen and a lot. As I said in the other post, the problems with the industries should be ones folks like you should be harshly combating against, and in fact you should be even more critical than I am, because they are damaging the reputations of any of the good self-published authors out there.
And my whole point is that until quality can be assured, anyone who self-publishes needs to be fully aware of what they are getting themselves into: if you are good, you will have to fight your way, tooth and nail, to a point where you are recognized not for how you published, but for the quality of your work. Some have managed to do that, others have not, but it’s still something that has to be done. I have read some of these authors and support them and will continue to do so (I’ll probably be writing a post about self-pubbed book I’ve read that I thought were good soon, in fact).