Business Musings: Facing The Future

To Get a Free AI Audio Version of this blog, click here. The initial title of this post was “Fighting The Future.” It came from a quote that I spent about a half an hour searching for. I had hastily scrawled the quote on a piece of paper while doing a dozen other things the past two weeks, but I didn’t cite the source. All […]

Read Me 8 Comments

Business Musings: Uncertain Times

My crystal ball is broken. When the world worked in a way that progressed, rather neatly, from one point to another, I could see as far as five years in the future. Sure, things would change. My health changed, for example, in the previous decade, and that caused personal changes. But the world I lived in here in the United States was relatively stable and […]

Read Me 3 Comments

Business Musings: Taste (or Blaming The Writer)

When I teach craft workshops, one of the things I work on the hardest is teaching writers the difference between taste and “good fiction.” I put “good fiction” in quotes, because there seems to be this belief among most writers and readers that “good fiction” is something quantifiable. Certain books are “good” because they have elements that professors approve of, or elements that the culture […]

Read Me 40 Comments

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 […]

Read Me 7 Comments

The Business Rusch: More Distribution Changes

This morning, my iPad Los Angeles Times app informed me that the creators of the TV show Veronica Mars had started a Kickstarter project. They wanted two million dollars to jump-start a movie, using the original cast. I clicked the link to Kickstarter and donated. At the time, the movie hadn’t yet reached its goal. As of Wednesday evening, it had. I have my browser […]

Read Me 28 Comments

Recommended Reading List: July 2012

As you can tell from the long list below, I read a lot of great stuff in July. What’s truly amazing to me is that much of what I read was merely good, not great, so I didn’t recommend it at all. I don’t think I read anything truly bad in July, which has to be another first. You’ll note as you read that I […]

Read Me 8 Comments

2010 Reading Stats

I love first day of the new year.  I open all of my calendars and I have a lot of calendars.  I have a wall calendar (Vintage SF magazine art), two day-to-day calendars—one for my office (Get Fuzzy) and one for the kitchen (Pearls Before Swine), a leather-bound desk calendar for my office (The New Yorker Calendar), two small desk calendars for my closet—one for […]

Read Me 9 Comments

July 2010 Recommended Reading

I’m sorry I’m so late in posting this.  August was a busy month, and this promises to be an active September.  But I thought I should keep you updated on the Recommended Reading…. My months seem to vacillate between great and crappy when it comes to reading.  I read a lot in July, including some wonderful student manuscripts (buy these, you editor types).  But when […]

Read Me 4 Comments

Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Risks (Part One)

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Risks (Part One) Kristine Kathryn Rusch I know, I know.  I had a plan and I’m not sticking to it. This is why I have become more and more unemployable as the years go by.  I can’t even stick to my own plans, let alone plans someone else imposes on me. Of course, I respect deadlines, which is why I’ve been […]

Read Me 15 Comments