A Thought on the Failure of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
Well, anyone following the box office -- and really why should anyone follow the box office? -- has noticed by now that Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter went belly up, like John Carter before it, like Cowboys vs. Aliens before it, like Wild Wild West before it. And on the small screen, Firefly failed a decade after Brisco County Jr. failed.
How do I feel, having seen the evidence that moviegoers and TV watchers hate hate hate Western science fiction and space Westerns? (A clinical explanation of the difference between those two genres will have to await another day.) The very genre in which my novel, The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh, happens to fall. Well, I feel ... vindicated?
I got a couple of queries from genuine Hollywood moguls when my book first started getting a little press, and while I would have been happy with the money (to the extent that I'm ever happy with anything), I felt pretty sure that I wasn't what they were looking for. There is absolutely a place for weird stuff like this in today's popular culture, but weird stuff doesn't generally land at #1 on the box office charts.
Some of us continue, still, today, to cling to Westerns, to watch old Sergio Leone movies and even reruns of Maverick, and to insist that said Westerns are great -- as we also contend with respect to John Carter, Brisco County and Firefly -- and we are, you know, absolutely right. But we won't convince most of you. As I've written before, the only thing that most Americans know today about Westerns is that they don't like them, but aren't sure exactly why.
So this is where the Indie book industry comes in. Indie books are not for writers who cannot get published because they are bad, nor for writers who cannot get published because they don't know the right people. It's for good writers who take a step out of the mainstream, and who might inspire wild devotion among those who notice, but not the sort of universal wild devotion that will make them #1 at the box office.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Now would be the time for me to quote myself quoting critic and novelist Charles de Lint writing about Indie author Sara Kuhns’s novel, A Sigh for Life’s Completion, but, aware of Jonah Lehrer's problems with self-plagiarism, I'll just supply a link instead. Needless to say, he sees a place for Indie authors in today's publishing world and justifies it better than I ever could.
What do you think?
How do I feel, having seen the evidence that moviegoers and TV watchers hate hate hate Western science fiction and space Westerns? (A clinical explanation of the difference between those two genres will have to await another day.) The very genre in which my novel, The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh, happens to fall. Well, I feel ... vindicated?
I got a couple of queries from genuine Hollywood moguls when my book first started getting a little press, and while I would have been happy with the money (to the extent that I'm ever happy with anything), I felt pretty sure that I wasn't what they were looking for. There is absolutely a place for weird stuff like this in today's popular culture, but weird stuff doesn't generally land at #1 on the box office charts.
Some of us continue, still, today, to cling to Westerns, to watch old Sergio Leone movies and even reruns of Maverick, and to insist that said Westerns are great -- as we also contend with respect to John Carter, Brisco County and Firefly -- and we are, you know, absolutely right. But we won't convince most of you. As I've written before, the only thing that most Americans know today about Westerns is that they don't like them, but aren't sure exactly why.
So this is where the Indie book industry comes in. Indie books are not for writers who cannot get published because they are bad, nor for writers who cannot get published because they don't know the right people. It's for good writers who take a step out of the mainstream, and who might inspire wild devotion among those who notice, but not the sort of universal wild devotion that will make them #1 at the box office.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Now would be the time for me to quote myself quoting critic and novelist Charles de Lint writing about Indie author Sara Kuhns’s novel, A Sigh for Life’s Completion, but, aware of Jonah Lehrer's problems with self-plagiarism, I'll just supply a link instead. Needless to say, he sees a place for Indie authors in today's publishing world and justifies it better than I ever could.
What do you think?
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Right, he expresses this better than almost anyone. One interesting thing, which he doesn't say, is that many Indie books are not necessarily books that were deemed "unpublishable" in the "eyes" of some editor. In many cases, Indie writers want to write their books without even worrying about what that editor is going to think, and never even send it in to a traditional publisher. Now, it may do so well, review-wise or sales-wise, that the editor will come calling.
Very true. I think you and I both come from an iconoclastic place where were weren't concerned about sales or "audience." We weren't looking for a market. We were attempting to write a book that captures our own vision.
You're right. It was extremely liberating to know that when I was finished writing my book, I would just publish it. I didn't need to think about whether putting 1st century Chinese emperor Wang Mang and Oscar Wilde into a science fiction Western novel would make it seem less saleable to a guy in a midtown publishing house. I could do it just because I thought it would be good. This doesn't mean if an editor comes calling that I won't listen, just that the editor's approval is no longer something that I even needed to think about.
One of the biggest myths still prevalent in publishing is that if a book is self-published, it wasn’t good enough to be put out by a “real” publisher. Sometimes, that’s exactly the case. Sometimes the book in question is awkward, the prose is clumsy, the plot is convoluted or non-existent. But sometimes a book simply doesn’t fit into how the publisher perceives the marketplace. In their eyes, it’s unpublishable, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. If it’s ever going to reach readers, the writer has to publish it and promote it himself.
I'd like to get him a copy of my book now!