#21:  There was an interesting frontpage article in Monday’s N.Y. Times about Amazon going into the legacy publishing business.  Well, not really.  What I gleaned from the article is that Amazon has a secret board of editors who cherry pick from all the self-published books, both trade paperbacks and eBooks, and offer some contracts.  The conditions of the contracts are also secret.  No agents are involved, but authors can get advances.  The slushpile here is all self-published material found on Amazon.  (See also #28.)

This is yet another nail in the coffin of the legacy paradigm and the legacy publishers are running scared.  They probably shouldn’t worry just yet, but it doesn’t help when they punish an author who has gone the legacy route for one book self-publishes another (the case is also mentioned in the same article).  The legacy publishers’ control of bookstores has already suffered—every bookstore that closes provides additional nails for their coffins.  Exciting times.  We authors are wondering how it will all shake out.  Readers can only expect to gain by the changing paradigm (more books to choose from).  The bottom line is that only authors and readers are needed in tomorrow’s publishing world.

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#15:  Joe Konrath has spoken about the gate-keeping mentality of agents.  It’s obvious, of course, why they don’t like eBook self-publishing.  Joining the ranks still propagating the myth of legacy publishers (this myth states that an author needs an agent, editor, publisher, and publicist, although the agent only gets you out of the slushpile and to the publisher, and the publisher rarely helps you with marketing, while all four reduce your royalties to nothing), the author will find many reviewers.  Among these, one will find those who concentrate on “literary fiction” (they generally also refuse to consider anything self-published—I refrain from giving examples, some of them very well known).

This sort of snobbishness is exactly what I was talking about in my blog post “Writing for Readers”—these reviewers comprise the old boys’ club of literature.  Of course, I’m biased too!  I think “literary fiction” is a genre name that is snobbish all by itself since it implies that all other fiction is not literary.

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I generally am happy to see a WD in my mailbox (that’s Writer’s Digest, in case you’re wondering if I’m missing an M).  Nevertheless, I’ve always thought the apostrophe is misplaced and lately there has been this nagging suspicion that their editorial board just doesn’t get it.  Joe Konrath has a better perspective on the industry (unfortunately, his participation in his blog is going on a hiatus).  However, he doesn’t get it completely either.

WD still propagates the myth of legacy publishing (this myth states that an author needs an agent, an editor, publisher, and publicist, with one of the Big Six providing the first two of the last three, the agent taking a hefty cut just for getting an MS , short for manuscript, beyond the slush pile where all unagented MSs go, and the author generally providing his or her own marketing–in other words, he or she can contract the publicist.  Joe and others like Barry Eisler have shown that the Big Six publishing houses are now built on sand and moreover have their heads buried in it.  Sure, they’re trying to invade and control the new digital paradigm, now revolutionized by eBooks, but they’re choking—they still live their myth and are making badly formatted eBooks at exorbitant prices (one that I will not name created a mini-scandal when people started complaining about formatting and price).

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#8:  Look for my short story “The Bridge” in the October edition of eFiction magazine.  I highly recommend this eZine to every reader…something for everyone!  It is available online for free and as an inexpensive Kindle subscription on Amazon (the latter has a free trial offer).

#9:  The Perseus Books Group has announced a new eBook formatting service.  As I understand it, this service will primarily be offered through agents to authors they are representing, but MAYBE to some indie authors.  Duh!  I’m sure indie authors will rush to use this service.  Whoops!  They still have to find an agent.  Since every agent is wondering what to do in this digital revolution when authors really don’t need them, I suppose this is a bow to that disappearing profession.  Don’t get me wrong—all that agent expertise is very valuable.  However, this is not the place for it!

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I never met the man, although I can say he was very much a part of my life—for most of my life as a scientist, at least.  He was the consummate snake-oil salesman, giving most people what they needed and convincing them they needed it whether they knew they needed it or not.  While that need was often a fix to satisfy an addiction to new technology—in other words, a perceived need, as a child needs new toys—there is no doubt that he was a genius in bringing to market many user-friendly devices that have changed how the world uses computers.

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On Tuesday, I received an “urgent alert to the APS membership:  funding cuts to NSF, NIST.”  Let me translate the acronymese.  APS is the American Physical Society.  I’m a member.  Although I am now a full-time writer, I used to be a physicist, among other things (people have called me many things, in fact).  NSF, of course, is the National Science Foundation.  NIST is the lesser known National Institute of Standards and Technology (the name is a late addition, probably to get more funding—it used to be called National Bureau of Standards).  The issue is that the Senate Appropriations Committee, that august body of mostly senile and small-minded thinkers who often sit in the Senate for a lifetime, has proposed cuts to both NSF and NIST in its FY 2012 budget for Commerce, Justice and Science agencies.  (Since NIH, the National Institutes of Health, does research for the drug companies, I’m not sure whether they’re a commerce or science agency, but they weren’t mentioned by APS.)

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To my readers,

This will appear as an occasional feature as part of my blog.  In lieu of a newsletter, I will post things here that are newsworthy, little bulletins about fellow authors or yours truly.  Some of these will be repeated on my Facebook Fan Page, but the FB programmers are really starting to get on my nerves, so this is the first place to check.

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To my readers,

My book reviews, especially those for Bookpleasures.com, are often long and more detailed than the average ones you’ll find on Amazon, for example.  Since I read many more books than those I review, I thought a few words and ranking about other books might help readers sift through the chaff to find the grain.  Information is useful, even in abbreviated form.

Another reason for adding this blog category is that I just don’t have time to weed through all the new features on Facebook and user-unfriendliness of Goodreads.  Since my blog is RSS’d to Goodreads anyway, this seems like an alternative that provides the same information to readers and is user friendly to me.

Finally, what I read and what I review is part of me, take it or leave it.  I’m often cynical about what’s going on in the publishing world and that cynicism creeps into my reviews (see my review of Deaver’s 007 entry, for example).  I expect that this will happen even in these mini-reviews.  Expect some politics sprinkled around too—when I can’t resist (I’m not as caustic as Stuart or Colbert).

Don’t look for these reviews on any regular basis.  My reading often goes in spurts, so reviews and mini-reviews will come in spurts too.  They will all be catalogued here, so, if you wonder about an old book a few years down the road, you might want to check here.  Most of these books will be eBooks.  These mini-reviews will not appear on Amazon, by the way.  I have no desire to compete with any Amazon reviewer who is out to win the “king of reviewers” title—I’d rather be writing!

With that wordy preamble, here are my first mini-reviews (be forewarned, some of these books are old; also, my stars are not given so freely as those you might find on Amazon):

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I don’t like to gloat, especially in these circumstances, but I told you so.  The U.S. government, through the loose lips of Mr. Mullins, has finally spoken the words—Pakistan is playing a duplicitous role in the war against terrorism.  This was no secret, at least not for me.  All the evidence was there.  Every sane person on the planet knew this was happening, but no one in officialdom would or could admit to it.  Why do you think we went after OBL without telling the Pakistanis?  Why do you think they shouted “foul” at not being told?  The claim that the spy agency is helping terrorists is no surprise.  What is a surprise is that the Afghan government is so weak that the spy agency’s bloody fist can strike all the way to Kabul and the U.S embassy.

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I’m referring to the Doomsday Clock, of course.  Last time I checked it read six minutes to midnight.  The case of the hikers in Iran and that country’s constant saber rattling might change the clock.  The instability in Pakistan and that country’s increasing animosity towards the West also might change the setting.  Al Qaeda threats, especially those related to revenging the death of OBL, are also a factor.  Add in then tensions between Pakistan and India and the posturing of North Korea, just to name a few hot spots in the world, and one can see that life was much better with the old U.S.S.R. and the Cold War, at least in some sense.  The West had thousands of warheads pointed in its direction, but only one enemy.  Now we’re not even sure who our enemies are!

The proliferation of nuclear arms is akin to a schoolyard of kids who each receive an automatic to play with.  Too many countries and citizens of those countries treat nuclear arms lightly now, like schoolchildren with their video-games education.  Even here in the U.S. (and we should know better), crazies that believe in Armageddon and Rapture have even infiltrated the U.S. Air Force, the very organization in charge of our atomic arsenal (see “The Theology of Armageddon” by Robert C. Koehler, 9/15/2011 CommonDreams.org).  It turns out that in a Vandenberg Air Force Base course titled “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare,” the organizers wanted to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a religious indoctrination in “Just War Theory,” often called “Jesus Loves Nukes” by its detractors.  Officers of numerous faiths complained and the course was canceled, one small victory for sanity.

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