It has taken the latest Kindle Unlimited Apocalypse (KUpocalypse 2? KUpocalypse Part Deux? KUpocalypse XXL?) to help me understand my visceral reaction to all of those writers who game the system. First, let me explain the reaction. It ain’t pretty. It comes from decades of watching young (meaning newer) writers try to game whatever system […]
Continue ReadingI had a shudder moment yesterday. While researching something else, I read a New York Times interview on leadership with Gina Centrello, president and publisher of Random House Publishing Group. (No, she’s not the head of Random House. Just a section of it.) She mentions the importance of teamwork in the publishing industry. She’s running […]
Continue ReadingWhoa, am I glad I waited a week to write this post. (Actually, I’m writing it in bits and pieces while trying to hit a novel deadline and an editing deadline. I love how busy I am in this new world even though I occasionally bitch about it.) When I wrote my “Mush Brain” post […]
Continue ReadingTwo weeks ago, I wrote what I thought would be a short post explaining a term I’d used, “the freelance scramble.” Only that post turned out longer than expected. In fact, I realized I had a short series here. The freelance scramble happens when the cash doesn’t flow the way that a writer expects it […]
Continue ReadingI initially promised you in last week’s post that we’d discuss the bleakest of the bleak moments in a freelancer’s career—when no one pays, for whatever reason—and we will, just not this week. Because I wrote the next blog post, and honestly, aside from depressing me, I kept alluding to other important things I would […]
Continue ReadingIn last week’s blog post, “The Hard Part,” I mentioned the freelance scramble in passing. I explained it in a parenthetical phrase thusly: The freelance scramble is, in short, pivoting to replace money lost with a new way of earning money. Tough, and not the way most people usually think. I knew that most people […]
Continue ReadingSome weeks I hate opening my e-mail. Most of March fell into that category. Throughout the entire month, I got e-mails from writers at the end of their ropes. Some were losing their traditional contracts; others had seen their indie sales fall through the floor; still others were thinking of declaring bankruptcy. A handful asked […]
Continue ReadingRight now, a visible group of people in the field of science fiction are engaged in a protracted battle about the genre’s future. Both sides are practicing a nasty, destructive campaign against the other, and not worrying about the collateral damage they’re causing on the sidelines. Those of us who’ve been in the field a […]
Continue ReadingOne of the most astonishing moments I had as the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction occurred at the Hugo award ceremony. A writer won a Hugo with a short story I had rejected. He got in my face—literally inches away from me—and said, “I bet you’re sorry you rejected me, aren’t […]
Continue ReadingIn the fall of 2014, before I started this blog back up again, I wrote a series of posts. You’ve seen several of them, particularly the “What I Learned” posts at the end of the year. This one dates from that period. I’d been sitting on it for a moment just like this. I’m in […]
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