Tryna launch a book on Al Gore's internet on this fucking day in this fucking year and my publisher got hacked and all their social media presence is locked down like Anyway I think it's a pretty good book and there's a blog post and links to where you can buy it over here:

whatever.scalzi.com/2022/06/28/the…

I bet you could use a kitty right now.

Here's a kitty. In case you need another kitty, here's another kitty.

I'm not gonna signal boost that person with the clickbaity question about publishing but yes, do it every chance I get, it's how I make my living, I get paid pretty well for it. Also if a professional editor thinks I need to cut ten thousand words then there's probably a really boring spot in there that needs to go to improve the reader experience.

There's no place for my ego about how perfect my work is when it comes to making that work better.

For Pride month, how about a big queer fantasy trilogy featuring multiple ace characters, multiple trans characters, and a sapphic romance I bet you won't see coming?

us.macmillan.com/author/elizabe… If you prefer a nice m/m pretend spy marriage with the twist that the pretendy spies are ex-lovers with a history of betrayal, have I got a science fiction novel for you.

(If you liked @ArkadyMartine's A Memory Called Empire, you might like this one.)

How retail markup works:

If the bookstore charges you $24, they paid $12 to the distributor, who paid $6 to the publisher, who pays $3 to me. (Actually, it's more like $2.50, but whatever.)

Everybody along that process has costs and adds some kind of value.

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1530534266257416194

What Jack says deeper in the thread about what publishers etc provide is absolutely true. My editor and copy editor and book designer and production manager and cover artist and cover designer and printer all get paid out of that $6.

You would think that if the gun lobby were arguing in good faith, the fact that recent mass shootings have resulted in the murder of one armed security guard and the injury of two officers in Texas, the "good man with a gun" talking point would be put to rest.

(thread) But they're not arguing in good faith. They're just willing to accept the deaths of children as the cost of doing business, and gaslight us about it.

Hi folks. I see a post dropped overnight.

Frankly, it's a tissue of lies, from somebody who tried very hard to break up my marriage while pretending to be my friend.

I've tried very hard to avoid Alex Rowland in professional settings since. They live fifteen miles from my house, indeed, because THEY decided to move there from Florida. They used my house as a base of operations while house-shopping, stayed here rent-free while we were away moving Scott and leaving me a fridge full of rotting food.

When you find writers on twitter suggesting that there's only one path to a successful career, what you're actually listening to is our anxiety talking, and it means one of two things: a) I am mythologizing what worked for me as the only path.

b) I am mythologizing what I think worked for other people as the only path, because I'm worried to death about my own career because it turns out making a living in the arts is pretty live-without-a-net time.

I'm going to talk about the "whisper network" for a minute here, because it's a term that's getting thrown around a lot and I suspect a little structural discussion would be useful. The whisper network isn't one thing. It's not a single secret slack or IRC channel or mailing list, anymore than the Silk Road was a single six lane highway.