Zachary Bonelli's Blog, page 89

Goods Versus Good

A constributor at Science Fiction Writers was kind enough to direct my attention to John Scalzi’s article “A Moment of Financial Clarification” the other day. “…I have been both shameless and unapologetic about the commercial aspects of my writing, whether it’s me working as a writing/editing consultant for business or writing accessible novels. … The money I ...

Convention Mentality

I’ve had enough convention experience now to know what a convention mentality is. When you’re a vendor at a table or booth, you need to be loud. You need shove any introversion or shyness aside and yell at people until they walk up to your table. Then you need to ask them about themselves, first ...

My Only Words on the Amazon/Hachette Fiasco

It’s like I’ve got a helicopter. I’m flying over a stadium, maybe something like a Roman arena. Below me, traditionally published lions claw at spearmen emblazoned with lowercase alphas upon their tunics. They circle one another, lunge, thrust, pawing, tearing flesh, piercing skin, skewering, blood and limbs and entrails everywhere. And I’ve got my little mini-hybrid ...

What Pride Means to Me

Yesterday was Pride Day in Seattle, the festival’s 40th anniversary in our city. George Takei was here, taking part as Grand Marshall. I watched pictures float in on Facebook. By all accounts, it looks like it was a great time. So, why didn’t I go? I’ve struggled to unpack this for a while. On one ...

Speculative Fiction Needs Less Toxicity

This popped up in my feed this weekend: an article by Damien Walter titled “Genre Needs a Lot More Cruel and Nasty Reviews.” We need writers and reviewers like Priest who have the expertise and willingness to reflect back the problems in modern genre fiction. Because the problems are very real. Violence of the flattened, meaningless ...

Publishing Values Part V: Community

And so we’ve come to the end of the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. I come to all marketing with a certain amount of hesitation, partly because of watching big businesses do it, mostly because I’m an introvert. But this has been genuinely a blast. I think ...

Publishing Values Part IV: LGBT Issues as Human Issues

What a week it’s been! We’ve covered a lot of ground. We started with an exploration of the importance of platform diversity. We continued on to diversity within the field of publishing and book distribution itself. Yesterday, we explored what it means to craft quality literature, and why that’s important. Today I’m going to tackle ...

Publishing Values Part III: Substance Over Form

It’s hump day (day three) of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press‘s Publishing Values series. So far, we’ve covered our commitment to wide availability and our commitment to being good citizens. Part of that “being a good citizen” value I discussed yesterday was a commitment to quality. That was number one on my list. Some may be wondering: What does ...

Publishing Values Part II: The Diverse Marketplace

Welcome to day two to Fuzzy Hedgehog Press‘s Publishing Values series. Yesterday, I talked about why it’s important to us to ensure that our books are available to our customer through as many platforms and in as many formats as we can reasonably make them. Today, I’m going to discuss the importance of the diverse marketplace, ...

Publishing Values Part I: Distribution

Fuzzy Hedgehog Press is currently one year and four books into its existence. Recently, I did a guest post over at Nerds of a Feather in which I touched upon my company’s business values and ethics. As part of a broader campaign to help commuicate our vision to potential customers, I’ve decided to write a series ...