David B. Ramirez's Blog: David Ramirez SFFWriter, page 4
March 25, 2014
Sales/Marketing Prodigy
...I wish I could hire this girl to help sell/publicize my book... She probably doesn't need to think about Facebook organic reach.
http://gawker.com/sixth-grader-sells-...
http://gawker.com/sixth-grader-sells-...
March 24, 2014
PW Starred Review!!!
Checked my e-mail: "The Forever Watch" got a starred review from Publisher's Weekly! Booyah!
"Superior, psychologically plausible characterizations are combined with sophisticated worldbuilding, clever trope inversion, and original plotting to create a powerful story that will amply reward rereading."
YES. Fist-pump! For great justice!
Now if I could just find a link to it off their website. I'm not sure if it's behind a paywall or if it's just not on the site yet.
So in the meantime: Spoonman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_zz...
"Superior, psychologically plausible characterizations are combined with sophisticated worldbuilding, clever trope inversion, and original plotting to create a powerful story that will amply reward rereading."
YES. Fist-pump! For great justice!
Now if I could just find a link to it off their website. I'm not sure if it's behind a paywall or if it's just not on the site yet.
So in the meantime: Spoonman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_zz...
March 23, 2014
How much would Mjolnir weigh if it were made from a dying star?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbdH2...
Given the disclaimer that it's not made from a dying star, well....
Physics is always fun when it smacks into the unreality of superheroes. I love superheroes. But it does amuse me, the disjunction.
Like when Superman or the Flash start to move at a significant fraction of the speed of light, the air compression should set off explosions of plasma, etc. Or when Iron Man gets smacked around by some super-strong person, Tony Stark should get turned into mush, because even if the suit is unharmed, when he is sent flying and crashes into something, the acceleration should pulp him inside the suit. Or when Batman saves himself out of a fall by using one of his grappling guns for a last second save, the gun should be ripped out of his hand, or if it's magnetically secured to his glove, his arm should be torn out of the socket. Or Captain America's shield--in the movie, it's explained that vibranium absorbs and nulllifies kinetic energy, which would explain how it's great for saving Cap from things like the explosive shockwave of that dying alien in the Avengers, but does not explain how the shield can still smack into anyone and hurt them, because the impact should be nulled.
Ah yes, it's always interesting imagining how they are incompatible, superhero physics and real physics, and trying to figure out how they could be made to converge without too much handwavium.
Given the disclaimer that it's not made from a dying star, well....
Physics is always fun when it smacks into the unreality of superheroes. I love superheroes. But it does amuse me, the disjunction.
Like when Superman or the Flash start to move at a significant fraction of the speed of light, the air compression should set off explosions of plasma, etc. Or when Iron Man gets smacked around by some super-strong person, Tony Stark should get turned into mush, because even if the suit is unharmed, when he is sent flying and crashes into something, the acceleration should pulp him inside the suit. Or when Batman saves himself out of a fall by using one of his grappling guns for a last second save, the gun should be ripped out of his hand, or if it's magnetically secured to his glove, his arm should be torn out of the socket. Or Captain America's shield--in the movie, it's explained that vibranium absorbs and nulllifies kinetic energy, which would explain how it's great for saving Cap from things like the explosive shockwave of that dying alien in the Avengers, but does not explain how the shield can still smack into anyone and hurt them, because the impact should be nulled.
Ah yes, it's always interesting imagining how they are incompatible, superhero physics and real physics, and trying to figure out how they could be made to converge without too much handwavium.
March 22, 2014
Fearing the Future of Publishing
Lately, I've been coming across more articles about how subscription music services are changing the face of income for music content creators again (it's the next major shift after i-tunes).
And it makes me think, on and off, about how that could happen to fiction writers too.
To me, self-publishing and e-books and Amazon create other channels for writers to make money. There is some drop in the perception of value of books, but the model still allows midlist writers to do well, and in some cases, they'll do far better self-publishing than with trad-publishing by supplying their regular following with a fast pace of titles written.
What I fear for the future of publishing is if subscription-based bundling for books becomes the next wave of change in publishing. People would pay a few dollars a month to get to 'borrow' a certain number of e-book titles a month, escalating, perhaps, if they borrow a larger number, but overall increasing value to readers by bundling some titles together. They'd pay $15 a month to have access to perhaps fifty titles a month, and authors would receive tiny slices based on how many times their e-book is borrowed.... How attractive will it be to be paying $9/month for perhaps unlimited titles once enough content gets on those services?
Something like this could demolish income for writers except for the few extreme most popular ones. Even for self-publishers. Writers who have small, regular followings would make almost nothing--you need a high-volume readership to succeed with such a model. And unlike musicians, we're not going to be supplementing our income with concerts.
At that point, writers who aren't in that uppermost bracket of sales would have to turn to kickstarter and superfans and special editions of books to make any money. Doable, but certainly far more work than they currently have to do.
Why would anyone sign their rights away to such a service? Well, people who aren't generating a lot of sales currently would have little to lose and could begin the shift. Perhaps writers with a long backlist might be inclined to turn older titles to new revenue streams. And then we might get more writers working with such a service if it began to take off in user-base, until it's taking up a larger and larger slice of the pie....
So, yeah. I don't worry much about how self-publishing affects writers. I'm worrying about what may come next. [I haven't looked much at the existing e-book subscription services; I'm not worried about the present of the business, but the future of it.]
http://www.slate.com/articles/busines...
And it makes me think, on and off, about how that could happen to fiction writers too.
To me, self-publishing and e-books and Amazon create other channels for writers to make money. There is some drop in the perception of value of books, but the model still allows midlist writers to do well, and in some cases, they'll do far better self-publishing than with trad-publishing by supplying their regular following with a fast pace of titles written.
What I fear for the future of publishing is if subscription-based bundling for books becomes the next wave of change in publishing. People would pay a few dollars a month to get to 'borrow' a certain number of e-book titles a month, escalating, perhaps, if they borrow a larger number, but overall increasing value to readers by bundling some titles together. They'd pay $15 a month to have access to perhaps fifty titles a month, and authors would receive tiny slices based on how many times their e-book is borrowed.... How attractive will it be to be paying $9/month for perhaps unlimited titles once enough content gets on those services?
Something like this could demolish income for writers except for the few extreme most popular ones. Even for self-publishers. Writers who have small, regular followings would make almost nothing--you need a high-volume readership to succeed with such a model. And unlike musicians, we're not going to be supplementing our income with concerts.
At that point, writers who aren't in that uppermost bracket of sales would have to turn to kickstarter and superfans and special editions of books to make any money. Doable, but certainly far more work than they currently have to do.
Why would anyone sign their rights away to such a service? Well, people who aren't generating a lot of sales currently would have little to lose and could begin the shift. Perhaps writers with a long backlist might be inclined to turn older titles to new revenue streams. And then we might get more writers working with such a service if it began to take off in user-base, until it's taking up a larger and larger slice of the pie....
So, yeah. I don't worry much about how self-publishing affects writers. I'm worrying about what may come next. [I haven't looked much at the existing e-book subscription services; I'm not worried about the present of the business, but the future of it.]
http://www.slate.com/articles/busines...
March 20, 2014
My Kirkus review is up!
"Intriguing and powerfully disruptive."
Hurray! I've been waiting on this to appear on their website =)
As usual, please like my public Facebook page for news about this and other upcoming projects or just random things I think about =)
I also post the occasional bit of raw short fiction =)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
Hurray! I've been waiting on this to appear on their website =)
As usual, please like my public Facebook page for news about this and other upcoming projects or just random things I think about =)
I also post the occasional bit of raw short fiction =)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
David Ramirez SFFWriter
As Facebook winds down its free organic reach, I'm exploring other places to begin posting regularly.
I've thought about messing with blogspot and tumblr, but I'd prefer something with a more naturall ...more
I've thought about messing with blogspot and tumblr, but I'd prefer something with a more naturall ...more
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