Business Musings: Die Hard (Licensing)

In July of 2018, Bruce Willis emphatically stated (at his Comedy Central roast) that the 1988 movie Die Hard, which made him an action star, “is not a Christmas movie.” It is, he said, “a goddamn Bruce Willis movie!” Well, yeah, Die Hard is a Bruce Willis movie because it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role of John McClane. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned the […]

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Business Musings: Too Much Stuff (Estates Again)

Aretha Franklin died in August. She was 76, and her death is a great loss. I have loved her music for as long as I can remember, and I’m so saddened by her death. I’m also sad that she shows up in this blog. Aretha Franklin died of pancreatic cancer, after being diagnosed in 2010, eight years before her death. She also had diabetes, although […]

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Business Musings: Bestseller Lists Again (Or Chicken Little Is Wrong. Again.)

In the middle of February, I saw a tweet from Melville House, an independent publisher in Brooklyn, NY, linking to an article of theirs. I followed the link and saw this title: “Into the Bezosphere: The Washington Post will syndicate Amazon Charts.” I was surprised. I had heard nothing about the Post’s new bestseller list. Granted, I’ve been busy and preoccupied this year. Still coping […]

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The Business Rusch: Unintended Consequences

I am completely overwhelmed. Not because I just finished teaching a week-long workshop. Not because one of my novels decided to become triplets. Not because it’s about to become November. Because I have too much to read. Seriously. I preorder a lot of books, and pick up the rest from my favorite local bookseller. One week before the workshop, I put a spending freeze on […]

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The Business Rusch: Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts

The Business Rusch: Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts Kristine Kathryn Rusch On Tuesday, in my morning business reading, I came across a rather startling statistic: the claim that it only took 20,000 sales of paper books to hit the paper bestseller lists. I’m also assuming the statistic means paper; it might mean that it takes 20K to hit any bestseller list, which is still shockingly […]

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The Business Rusch: Why Not?

The Business Rusch: Why Not? Kristine Kathryn Rusch On TV’s most popular drama series, NCIS, the main character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, walks through the office, and if he hears a stupid statement, he slaps the speaker on the back of the head. Now, this is fiction, mind you. In any real office, military or not, he’d probably be fired, brought up on charges, or forced […]

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The Business Rusch: Beginning Writers Again–Sort Of (Changing Times Part 17)

The Business Rusch: Beginning Writers Again—Sort of (Changing Times Part Seventeen) Kristine Kathryn Rusch Wow. The changes keep coming, dozens in the space of a week.  I have watched this kind of change from the outside for years in other industries, studied it in my history classes, continue to read about it in my history books.  I know that paradigm shifts are hard on everyone […]

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The Business Rusch: Bestselling Writers (Changing Times Part Eight)

The Business Rusch: Bestselling Writers (Changing Times Part Eight) Kristine Kathryn Rusch Every single writer I’ve ever met wants to become a bestseller.  Writers want their work read by everyone from their teachers to the grade-school bully to some person in a small unsung island in the Pacific. The problem is that vision of a bestseller is incorrect.  There is no such thing as a […]

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