G. Allen Cook's Blog, page 3

Cover To “Odd Men Out”

A week from today (Saturday) my anthology, “Odd Men Out”, will launch. It is dark fantasy/horror, and some of it is my first overtly adult writing. I’m anxious to see how it is received.

Till then, this is the cover of the Kindle edition, as created by photographer and graphic designer, Joy Robinson. There are several details from the various stories hidden in this cover–some of which I didn’t notice till she pointed them out.

I hope you’ll all find something in “Odd Men Out” to tickle your fancy. The great thing about anthologies: If you don’t like the story you’re on…skip to the next one, and perhaps you’ll love it.

For now–the eReader cover!

The Death of Publishing As We Know It!

I actually read a Twitter post that made that very case. Traditional publishing is imploding; self-publishing is a train wreck. There are too many books (by too many untalented authors, one assumes) to be noticed in either field, this blogger claimed, and only the Stephen Kings and J. K. Rowlings get exposure.

Well…yeah! I mean, they worked hard for it. Love em or hate em, the multi-million selling authors achieve such sales through talent, representation, and–most importantly–lots of luck. Their manuscripts landed on an editor’s desk just when a literary boom was about to happen. A boom that included the contents of their manuscripts.

Then low and behold! Amazon charged in, told the average schmuck with word processing software that he could make millions by self-publishing, and–yep–another boom, this one so loud it could be heard the world over. The unwashed masses crowded in, making it…and every other publishing website…obsolete for want of air. Dadnabbit, the Kings and Rowlings showed up, as well, and guess who started getting pride of place?

Where is one to turn?

Well, there are hundreds of online calls for submissions: anthologies, Internet magazines, flash fiction websites, you name it. Leave us not forget (or maybe we should!) where the dreaded 50 Shades started out–languishing on the bottom rung of the literary totem pole: fan-fic. The very name of that genre is unpleasant on the tongue.

There are the playwrights, the screenwriters, the procurers of non-fiction. Any town of moderate size boasts a newspaper, and with that comes journalists. Towns of larger scope might even have a homegrown magazine or two, offering those (he repeated himself) average schmucks with word processing software a chance to write personal columns about their kids and their cats.

I should know.

Look, is publishing dead? I dunno. For the past few years, I’ve gone around saying that traditional publishing has roughly two decades left before it dies. I still believe it. Those lucky enough to be languishing in it at present–and you can bet that same cat that King and Rowling aren’t among them–will, at best, earn enough to pay off the house before the death knell, and, at worst, fade away into schmuck-dom where they started. Self-publishing will grow larger and larger, and–much like a red dwarf–explode under its own weight.

Depressing.

I’m not here to dance on the grave of literature. (I did that back in the 90’s. God, the 90’s.) I’m just telling ya that it ain’t all beer and Skittles. But you probably know that…because you have twenty self-published books, and, at present, I have a single (longish) short story (with an anthology on the way). It seems absurd, however, to think that it’s all going down the toilet. Something’s gotta survive, even if it’s the cockroach of the literary empire.

Knowing my luck, it’ll be fan-fic.

G.