Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 344

no Reader Question Day this week…

…because I am almost done with the SOUL OF SORCERY rough draft, and all my mental energy is going toward that.

-JM

the five stages of traditionally-published author grief over ebooks

I was, once upon a time, a traditionally published author with a traditionally published book. I was not, however, a terribly successful traditionally published author, so I had no reservations about embracing self-epublishing.

But in the last two years, I have seen many successful traditionally published authors become gradually aware of self-epublishing. In fact, they frequently say the same things as they acclimate to the new paradigm. In fact, (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) it’s like they go through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief.

So, without further ado, I present the Five Stages Of Traditionally-Published Author Grief.

DENIAL

“Self-published ebooks are not on the same level of traditionally published books. They are terrible and filled with horrible typoes. Publishers are necessary, because they screen out the unskilled riffraff (like you) and only let in the truly talented (like myself). The public appreciates the necessary curating function of publishers, which helps ensure the future of quality American literature, such as my series HIRSUTE WEREWOLF LOVERS OF WASHINGTON. Self-publishing is for amateur writers, but you’ll find real writers at traditional publishers. Also, people love the smell and feel of real books and no ereader can ever replace that.”

ANGER

“This is ALL AMAZON’S FAULT!”

BARGAINING

“Maybe I’ll try dabbling in ebooks. Just as an experiment. To see what happens. A collection of short stories, completely unrelated to my other work. My real work, my real books, I’ll keep with traditional publishers, thanks.”

DEPRESSION

“American literature is doomed. We shall all drown beneath a sea of crappy ebooks, and no one will ever be able to find anything good to read ever again, anywhere, for any reason, for the remainder of the history of the universe. My publisher passed on my next series, and it’s all your fault for buying ebooks!”

ACCEPTANCE

“Good news, everyone! The first volume of my SF/paranormal romance series BUXOM VENUSIAN VAMPIRES IN VENICE, is now available for $3.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords! And in even better news, I’ve gotten the rights for HIRSUTE WEREWOLF LOVERS OF WASHINGTON  back, and the ebook editions will be coming shortly!”

(Note that some patients may experience the additional phases of Abject Horror, Existential Freakout, and Total Internet Meltdown.)

-JM

Amazon and crap ebooks

I liked this post by Walter Jon Williams. Key quote:

Even if Amazon is yet another megalomaniacal Internet company bent on annihilating all competition and achieving total world domination in its chosen field (250 points!), Amazon has still provided more options for writers than anyone since Gutenberg. The Kindle broke open the world market for ebooks, and created opportunities for people like me, with considerable backlist, to find new readers for their work.

This bit amused me, though:

It’s an enormous hassle to deal with the traditional publishing scene right now, but unless you get into the indie scene with a built-in audience— and preferably with a backlist—   your brand-new indie book is going to run the risk of being buried in an enormous electronic heap of millions of absolutely crap books. 

That bit amused me because almost every single traditionally published author who self-publishes an ebook worries about this. How to make their book stand out in the sea of crap ebooks? It’s like there’s five stages of traditionally published author grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) and the “but there are so many crap ebooks” worry usually hits around the bargaining stage or so.

But as I’ve argued before, it’s really not a problem. Ebooks are like YouTube videos – it doesn’t matter how many videos are on YouTube so long as you can get to the videos you like without hassle. Seriously – do people go on Amazon, buy ebooks at random, and act shocked if they don’t like them? Does anyone actually do that?

In the end, building an audience is hard, slow work, and there’s no magical bullet around it – not even traditional publication.

-JM

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four vs. DOCTOR WHO

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of DOCTOR WHO via Netflix streaming. DOCTOR WHO, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, is about the “Doctor”, a 900 year-old-alien who wanders all of space and time using his TARDIS, a combined time travel/spacecraft. Naturally, the Doctor gets into all kinds of adventures, and if there’s one thing he’s really good at, it’s blowing up dystopias. Like, the TARDIS lands in an alien dystopia or a parallel Earth ruled by the Daleks or something, and 60 to 120 minutes later, the Doctor has overthrown the dystopia.

So what would happen if the Doctor landed in the ultimate dystopia, the Oceania of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Obviously, Oceania is in a parallel universe from our own, so the Doctor’s TARDIS would malfunction, and deposit him in London, in Airstrip One, in what used to be called the United Kingdom. Upon emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor would quickly realize he is in a parallel universe, and that something is terribly wrong in this world – the telescreens, the drab clothes, the ruinous neglect of the city, and the posters of Big Brother everywhere.

Then the Doctor would see the parallel version of one of his companions – Rose Tyler, most likely. The Doctor, curious about his world (and missing his long-lost companion) would strike up a conversation with Rose, only to have her react in alarm, wonder if he is a thoughtcriminal, and quickly escape. Rose would retreat to her flat and try to purge her mind of thoughtcrime, but would find her thoughts moving more and more to the Doctor’s strange charisma.

Meanwhile, in the secret headquarters of the Inner Party, O’Brien (now the head of the Inner Party) receives a report of an anomaly – a strange blue box that appeared in downtown London. O’Brien quickly realizes that the box is of alien origin, and represents the Party’s potential destruction – or the key to its eternal triumph. He gives the order for the Thought Police to find the Doctor and bring him (and his box) to the Ministry of Love.

Meanwhile, the Doctor meets up with parallel-Rose again. She tells him about the omnipresent telescreens, and he realizes that the Party uses them to edit history. He tells her of some of his adventures, and Rose is intrigued, though she thinks he is a mad liar. Finally, the Doctor shows her the inside of the TARDIS, and Rose realizes he is telling the truth. Rose, now that she trusts him, shares a satirical cartoon making fun of Big Brother’s mustache. Rose offers to go with him, but after she makes sure her mom is okay.

But they emerge from the TARDIS to find the Thought Police surrounding them. The Doctor and Rose are taken into custody, and the TARDIS is taken to the Ministry of Love.

O’Brien himself meets with the Doctor. He explains that he knows perfectly well who the Doctor is, and what the TARDIS can do. Previously, the Party has relied on the telescreens and its control of the media to alter the past, to edit history to their liking. But now with the TARDIS, the Party can actually go back and erase people from history, perfecting the Party’s control over all of human history.

The Doctor responds that it’s a stupid plan, because he’s not going to tell them how to fly the TARDIS.

O’Brien, with a chilling smile, says that the Doctor will tell him everything, or else he’ll put Rose in Room 101 – where she will see her worst fears and go mad.

The Doctor, now growing angry, says that it’s still a stupid plan – even if the Party gets control of the TARDIS, they’ll use it to rip apart all of space and time, and they’ll wind up erasing themselves from existence all for the sake of their political program. O’Brien laughs, and says that the Party isn’t about a political program, it is about holding and maintaining perfect power, forever – and with the TARDIS, the Party can do that forever. And even if they cause paradoxes, the Inner Party’s skill with doublethink will allow them to thrive.

Rose, meanwhile, is led to Room 101, while O’Brien invites the Doctor to watch via telescreen.

The Doctor, now enraged, escapes from O’Brien and the Thought Police via cleverness. He races to Room 101, only to realize that he can’t get in once the program has started. But a burst of inspiration comes to him, and he instead makes for the nearest telescreen.

Rose, in Room 101, sees the day when he father dies (executed by the Thought Police, after being conditioned to love Big Brother) over and over again, and just as she is about to lose it, the image dissolves into static – and is replaced with the satirical cartoon mocking Big Brother’s mustache.

The same image appears on every single telescreen in Oceania. The Doctor, having realized that the Party in its arrogance never bothered to secure the telescreens with firewalls, uploaded the cartoon to the telescreens with his sonic screwdriver, and then encrypted the image so it can’t be taken off the telescreens.

Mass chaos erupts across Oceania as the population sees the cartoon and realizes that the telescreens and security cameras no longer function. O’Brien and the Inner Party watch with horror, and O’Brien announces that the solution is obvious – they take the TARDIS and use it to kill Rose Tyler as a child.

The Doctor busts Rose out of Room 101, and he races for the TARDIS with Rose in tow, fearful that if the Inner Party gets their hands on the TARDIS controls, they’ll do irreparable damage to space and time.

They arrive in the TARDIS control room to find the Thought Police and the Inner Party preparing to pry open the control panel and claim the TARDIS’s power source for their own. The Thought Police take the Doctor and Rose captive (again), and O’Brien demands the secret to operating the TARDIS.

The Doctor gives O’Brien one warning. O’Brien disregards it, and the Thought Police pry open the TARDIS’s control panel, and O’Brien and the Inner Party gaze into the Heart of the TARDIS – the power source that allows it to travel through space and time. As they look into the Heart of the TARDIS, O’Brien, the Inner Party, and the Thought Police see the totality of space and time and all its splendor and terror – a sight no human being was ever meant to see. Their doublethink-weakened minds utterly melt down beneath the strain, leaving them comatose vegetables.

With the telescreens defunct and the Inner Party brain dead, the government of Oceania collapses, and the resistance (led by the parallel-world versions of Mickey Smith and Amy Pond) takes over. The Doctor invites Rose to come with him, but she declines – she doesn’t want to leave her mom, and all his tales of wonderful places made her want to build something wonderful on Earth.

So the Doctor bids her adieu, and departs in the TARDIS – alone again, in the end, as always. And as the TARDIS dematerializes, we see a telescreen on the wall behind it – still displaying the cartoon mocking Big Brother’s mustache.

###

I suppose this would be unrealistic. After all, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman, DOCTOR WHO is about a space wizard with a magical box who solves problems. But Orwell’s tale of a perfect and eternal tyranny, while more frightening, is just as unrealistic. Every human system or institution, whether intended for good or evil, contains within itself the seeds of its own self-destruction. All it takes is a bit of water on the seeds – and one doesn’t even need to be a space wizard with a magic box to do that.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – progress update

34 chapters of the rough draft down, 2 to go, and 133,000 words written.

-JM

counter-cultural rebels

I liked this post by Sarah Hoyt. Key quote:

Rebellion has become conformism.  The pierced kids with multiple tattoos? They’re the ones doing what their boomer parents and teachers tell them.  “Rebel, stick it to the man.  Refuse to grow up.”

Also:

I say rebel for real.  Love your husband.  Don’t sleep around.  Grow up.  Think of your husband and family before you think of your own little psychodrama…

And maybe learn to enjoy hanging out with your family.  Maybe don’t do pot just to conform.  Maybe don’t get drunk and talk dirty just because it’s expected of you.  Maybe find out who you are for real and enjoy that.

It’s okay to enjoy being an adult.  A lot of us do.

Oh, I know, it’s not hip or cool and the entertainment establishment will think you’re hopeless.  Have you noticed those guys are not so important anymore?  In fact, you could say they were withering away, and old fashioned.

They are the man.  The man wants you to dope and fornicate and get drunk.

Don’t do it.  Stick it to the man.  Speak truth to power.

I got to thinking about this because you see this a lot in SF/F – a book that claims to be “subversive” and “groundbreaking” is in fact a same rehashing of the tired tropes from the sixties. God is dead, free love is awesome, we can build a perfect society, the ends justifies the means when the protagonist does it, there’s no such thing as heroism, blah, blah, blah.

A really counter-cultural book would be the opposite of all that.

The linked post above was a reaction to this article. All I can say about that article is that I was a history major in college, and while this did not enhance my employment prospects, it did leave me with a sense of perspective. It is hard to find a life with adequate food and housing a soul-crushing prison after reading about the Great Famine of the 14th century, the Holodomor, and any of the other myriad miseries humanity has inflicted on itself.

-JM

THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS – now free on Amazon

I am pleased to report that THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS is now free on Amazon.com. So if you have a Kindle, or you use the Kindle app on your mobile device, you can now read the book for free at the above link.

And if you’d prefer the book in a different format, you can also get it for free at Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Smashwords. (Kobo will be coming soon.)

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – 125,000 words

The rough draft of SOUL OF SORCERY, the 5th book in the DEMONSOULED series, passed 125,000 words today.

And good heavens is this a long book! I think it will be the longest DEMONSOULED book so far, and I’ve written an average of 2,976 words every day since June 3rd. Still, I’m almost done – I’m currently on Chapter 33 of 36. Odds are (if all goes well) that I’ll finish the rough draft in the next two weeks.

-JM

Reader Question Day #31 – Google Play and galactic conquest

JR asks:

I am hoping that you are considering also offering your books in the Google Play store.

I’d given it some thought, but hadn’t decided on anything just yet. The tricky part about Google Play for ebooks is that Google (or whatever algorithm powers the Google Play store) will randomly cut the price of a book. That means all the other sites – Amazon, B&N, and so forth – will then cut the price themselves. And since Amazon charges a low delivery cost based on the size of a book – I believe it is about $0.10 a megabyte – you could find yourself making zero money on a particular book.

That said, I might put my free books in the Google Play store, since they’re already free, and I would prefer that they remain free.

Martel asks:

You post about computer games sometimes. Are you playing anything now?

Not really. At the moment, I am focused on getting the rough draft of SOUL OF SORCERY done, so there hasn’t been much time for gameplay. But when I have a spare moment, I’ll sneak in a few rounds of Master of Orion II on my netbook. Master of Orion II is an excellent strategy game of galactic conquest, and it came out, if I remember correctly, in 1995. So my netbook has more than enough power to handle it. (You can get Master of Orion 1+2 for $9.99, with the soundtrack, here at GOG.com.)

Were there any games that stick in your head? That were influential to you?

Oh, man! Were there ever! Recently someone asked me to list five movies that I would bring with me to a deserted island, and I came up with only two – THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (though I suppose that would technically be four).

But ask me to choose a computer game to take with me to a desert island, and the list would go on and on – Quest for Glory IV, King’s Quest II, III, V, and VI, Master of Orion 1+2, Master of Magic, Lords of Magic, Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, Throne of Bhaal, Morrowind, Oblivion, Wing Commander, Dragon Age, Planescape: Torment…

Clearly, computer games have had more of an impact on me than movies. I think this is going to have to be it own post.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY chapters

29 chapters of the rough draft down, 7 to go.

-JM