Ground Level

I have nothing to say about the Amazon-Hachette spat.

No, really, I don’t. Lots of other people do (my RSS feed is filled with spittle-flecked invective on both sides). But I don’t, because I don’t have any incentive to say anything.

I am a big fan of the novel READY PLAYER ONE, by Ernest Cline, which ends (spoiler alert) with a climactic battle between the forces of a powerful corporate entity against a vast army of, well, consumers, I guess you’d call them. Anyway, point is, the corporate guys have a bunch of giant robots, and the heroes have their own giant robots, and they have a giant robot battle. Except most of the consumers don’t have giant robots of their own; they’re just out on the battlefield, mostly for the hell of it. And a lot of them get stepped on by the giant robots.

And all of them, except for the principal heroes, get vaporized by the end of the book, which just goes to show what could happen to you if you don’t have a giant robot of your own.

I don’t have a giant robot. I am just one guy who’s written one book, which isn’t selling particularly well at the moment (even though I dropped the price down to 99 cents this week, which is my way of saying, oh, come on, just buy the thing already). I’ve written another book, and I’m querying agents right now, so there’s at least a tiny, small, outside chance that I might get an agent, and that agent might sell the book to Hachette, and that would put me in the middle of the fray, I guess, but (sigh) that is not happening today. Tomorrow is not looking good, either.

I don’t have any particular affection for the big publishers; why should I? There’s a very nice person at Harper Collins who sends me books to review occasionally, but that’s about it (and I’m way behind on reading any of them anyway). I am an Amazon Prime customer because I am fanatically lazy about shopping. They help me make money, and I help them make money, but neither of us is doing particularly well at the moment, and Amazon could crush me with its giant robot at any second and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

So don’t put me on Team Amazon or Team Hachette. I’m on Team Me, and we’re down by a few points at the moment and could use a breather at halftime.