SF Publishing in 2019: more developments in short fiction

It can be an
ugly business, being proved right.

I was forcibly
reminded of this about three weeks ago, a week in which two things happened of
note in my journey through the world of SF publishing. (By which I mean science
fiction, not San Francisco publishing. Which is a thing).

Firstly, it was 2000AD’s 42nd birthday. Congratulations to the Mighty One and all those who have labored under his direction to deliver comic book thrills since Feb 26th 1977.

I was seven when my mum bought me prog one. Although I’ve often cited 2000AD as an influence, it was only while I was partway through writing the first season of Chimera Company that I realized that I wasn’t just writing an adventure for fans of classic Star Wars with a heavy dose of Traveller RPG, but in writing it episodically, I was also channeling the thrills that had captivating me all those years ago when I followed the adventures of Judge Dredd as he travelled the Cursed Earth in his quest to deliver the vaccine to Mega City 2, or the youthful Johnny Alpha’s struggle to find a place for mutant-kind in Strontium Dog.

I will be
writing more about Chimera Company and its influence soon, but for now, thanks
for all the thrills, 2000AD. Here’s to another 42 years of wonder.

2000AD wasn’t
the ugly matter, though.

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I suggested in
my last post that in the announcement of Nebula Award finalists we were seeing
a small milestone in the evolution of short SF in the English language. I saw
it as an interesting coming together of two sectors of science fiction that are
usually too far out of phase to perceive the other’s existence.

Within hours
of posting, the matter had blown up into an online spat, which cooled
surprisingly quickly after about a week. Let it remain that way.

I’ve made a
note at the end about the nature of the dispute for the curious. However, I’m
not taking sides, nor do I welcome comments about the rights and wrongs of the
matter, because what interests me here is the way it highlighted both the
distinctions that separate groups of science fiction writers, but also the commonality
that unites them, often to the surprise of the individuals involved.

I would say that
when people first encountered the dispute, there is some accuracy in the idea
that they learned of it in one of two distinct directions, depending on whether
they were newer SFWA members and their friends, or more established ones and
their supporters. (SFWA members nominate for the Nebula Awards). Having
discovered the issue, people then made up their own minds regarding what they
thought of the matter.

That didn’t
stop some commentators on both ‘sides’ tried to frame the disagreement in terms
of ‘indies’ versus ‘trad pub’. But as I’ve been suggesting for some years now,
even if you wanted to align the dispute along those lines, the distinction breaks
down when examined seriously. If there was ever a time when you could accurately
categorize most published science fiction writers as either ‘self-published’ or
‘traditionally published’, then that time passed away some years ago.

For example,
one of the most heated exchange of views was between a SFWA insider who is
primarily self-published, and an outsider who is primarily published by one of
the major publishers.

There were
notable calls to avoid the indie vs trad divide because to do so is poisonous
to SFWA. This is admirable and very true, but of more interest to me personally
(and I suspect of greater long-term significance) is the belated realization at
least a few that in 2019, it no longer makes sense to view English language SF publishing
in terms of self-published authors and traditionally published authors.

I’ve written
about this plenty, but let’s bring up an example. I used Yudhajaya Wijeratne as
an example in my last post, so let’s turn to another finalist this time, Richard
Fox.

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Mr. Fox came
to prominence a few years ago with the success of his self-published Ember War
novels, and very highly regarded they are too, not least by myself.

Since then, he’s
been published by other publishers with a variety of traditional and
non-traditional business models and brought in other authors as co-writers. I
don’t think he’s yet published independent work by other authors (i.e. books he
didn’t co-write), but there are plenty of authors in Mr. Fox’s position who
have. (Myself, for example. I publish my own work, I am published by a variety
of publishers, and I publish other authors, paying some of them enough to
themselves qualify as SFWA members.)

Now let’s add
in Podium Publishing.

Podium is a
highly successful audiobook publisher that is most noticeable for bringing Andy
Weir’s The Martian to American
national prominence almost a year before Random House launched the paperback
version.

Actually,
scratch that. Podium’s most significant work to date is producing some of my work as audiobooks, and the Sleeping
Legion books, which I published but were written by JR Handley