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Another ‘interview’, this one is actually a podcast by the mighty Mur Lafferty. She had Lou Anders from Pyr Books and me on a panel at Dragon*Con, and has now posted the chat. Some good stuff in there, we talk about the state of the publishing industry, the state of the genre, big cons versus little cons, and much more. Go check it out.

I Should Be Writing #133

I’ve been interviewed by Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker. He asks some cool questions, which allowed me to go into quite some detail about my personal background, my role at Tor.com, and Tor.com’s plans for world domination the future. My favourite bit, where I rant a bit about publishing, is below:

In your opinion, how is Tor.com leveraging New Media and the genre? What are the things that you’re doing right?

One of the things we’re doing the best, I think, is engaging with our audience, and listening. Publishing is a very insular industry, where insiders are constantly talking to each other, but very rarely do they actually talk to or listen to the actual end customer: the reader. There have traditionally been some very valid arguments as for why this is the case, but as digital media democratizes the world more and more, those arguments become much less convincing or even relevant.

Tor.com is one way in which we’re talking directly with readers, listening to what they have to say, and we’re finding out a lot about them. And I do mean a whole hell of a lot—some of the very dearly-held assumptions of the publishing industry really don’t hold much water with the reading public, and it’s very sobering to compare and contrast what I see and read every day on Tor.com in particular and the internet in general with what I see and hear from within the walls of the Flatiron building.

Read the whole thing over on Bibliophile Stalker.

I just got back from Reykjavik, Iceland, where I attended EVE Online Fanfest 2009 thanks to the gracious folk at CCP Games, whose game tie-in books Tor Books is publishing. They wanted their editor, Eric Raab, and I to check out their fanbase and their headquarters, so they flew us out for the weekend. What an experience.

First things first: these guys are amazing. They put out a top-notch product, are incredibly passionate about their work, and to a person are fans of the franchise. I didn’t meet one single CCP employee who didn’t give off the vibe of being part of a big, extended family, where everyone watches out for each other. It was pretty amazing. Also, the level of outreach to their fandom was remarkable. I mean, I suppose that’s part of the nature of running an MMPORG, but still, coming from a culture (publishing) where the fans/readers/customers are barely an afterthought, it was eye-opening.

Additionally, as a casual gamer, I found their plans for expanding the scope of their intellectual property very compelling. I won’t go into detail here, since I’m unclear as to how much is public knowledge and how much isn’t, but suffice to say that their plan of attack for the next 18 months is formidable. Their keynote presentation, which was conducted by Hilmar Veigar Petursson, the CEO of CCP (and one of the chillest fuckers I’ve met), was a pitch perfect combination of new information, showcases for new tech and demo videos, self-deprecating fun, and liberal Kool-Aid dispensing. Additionally, the panels I attended—from the lectures and QA sessions about the in-game economy, featuirng CCP’s in-house PhD in economics, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson; to the panels featuring prominent members of the alliances that for the core of the player associations in game—were fascinating.

Aside from the EVE-related events, we were, of course, in Iceland, and at a con, so there was much partying. I’ve learned a few key facts about Islanders: they like to drink heavily, and have a penchant for staying out all night—I never made it to my hotel room earlier than 6am. They apparently like to break drinking glasses—it wasn’t unusual for the dude standing next to me to drain his glass and not-quite-nonchalantly fling it against a wall. The streets are literally covered in broken glass by 4am. And they make the best goddamned hot dogs known to man. For reals.

On the food tip, Eric, Shane (one of the marketing people for CCP), and I decided to embark upon a night of morally ambiguous dining: we had whale (both as sashimi and cooked), puffin, and horse all in one night. All were delicious. But nowhere near as amazing as those hot dogs. Hm.

I also discovered Skyr, which is similar but not quite the same as yogurt. It’s a bit more sour, and I absolutely loved it. Mary Robinette Kowal, who lived in Iceland for a year, tells me that it’s available here in NYC at Whole Foods, so I’m going to have to check it out. I hope it’s the regular, untreated kind, and not the more commercial stuff, which is infused with fruits or vanilla, or caramel. That stuff is all right, but the raw stuff is better.

Unfortunately, what with the Fanfest, and the drinking, and the meeting the EVE developers, and the drinking, and the panels, and the drinking, we didn’t really get to leave Reykjavik at all. Eric and I tried to find a way to see the fabled northern lights (or Aurora Borealis), but unfortunately, circumstances conspired against us: according to locals, it’s hard to catch the lights in the light-saturated city; it wasn’t cold enough for the lights to be visible (although this sounds like misinformation; I don’t understand how temperature can affect a magnetic event); or it wasn’t the right time of year. In any case, an excuse to go back.

Another excuse to go back are the geothermal seawater baths, specifically the Blue Lagoon. Our contact person for CCP, Yohei Ishii, took us to this world-famous spot on Sunday, right before we got on the plane back home. Wow, what a relaxing experience, and what a great preamble to the hassle of international flying. I’ve never slept better on a plane in my life.

In all, an amazing trip. More crappy iPhone pictures here. Eric and I will be getting together to hash out the thousand-and-one ideas we both jotted down with regards to working with CCP over the next week, and I’m looking forward to going back to Iceland someday on a personal vacation, to get to know this beautiful country better.

On a coffee run this afternoon, in the midsts of an utterly craptacular day at work, @chapmanchapman, @ami_with_an_i and I turned a corner off 5th Av and walked past a truck with a trickle of smoke coming out its corners. Not twenty paces later, it had turned into this:

The smoke actually got much worse; black and dense and inky (of course). The F.D.N.Y. showed up rather quickly and swiftly took care of it.

As publishing professionals, this implausible bit of synchronicity did not go unnoticed.

Here are some pictures. I do love the fact that my iPhone has a video and a still camera, although I need to remember to do video in landscape mode….

I’m pleased to report that last night’s Tor.com Rock Band party was a rousing success! We got off to a bit of a slow start, but once the indomitable Jeremy Lassen of Nightshade Books (who is nursing a rather severe sore throat this morning) got on the mic, the party got into full swing. His stock intro to each song will undoubtedly become a new SF catchphrase: “They say this song is about (insert subjet here), but it’s really a song about science fiction!” Yeah, man. Good times. There will be pictures, Tor Publicist and real-life rock star Patty García has assured me.

The big highlight of the evening (at least for me) was a totally rockin’ rendition of Journey’s Any Way You Want It, with yours truly on guitar, Annalee Newitz of io9 on bass, and John motherfucking Scalzi blasting out his falsetto on the mic. It was epic. Just plain epic.

The party ran until around 4:30 in the am, and, as happens at cons, I ducked into my hotel room at that ungodly hour to get some sleep, only to have to wake up in time to make a 10am panel I was ostensibly moderating: a printmaking workshop for kids.

What sounds great on paper turned out to be a bit on the underwhelming side–one child cutting out foam shapes, gluing them to the bottoms of plastic cups, and ‘inking’ them with magic markers. I was a bit dissappointed, since I was actually kind of looking forward to getting all nice and inky with some kids, but I suppose I can’t complain about being able to just sit there and look engaged while incredibly sleep-deprived.

Next up: I’m on a panel entitled “Author Reading: The Bloggers”. I’m not sure exactly how that’s gonna work out, since I can’t really see too many people being interested in a reading of blog posts, but the upshot is that I’m sharing the panel with, among others, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who is an Awesome Person of Note, and a fantastic conversationalist. If nothing else, I can totally see this evolving into some sort of fascinating discussion or another. We’ll see…

UPDATE: It actually worked out great! The highlight of the panel for me was Teresa reading her Slushkiller post; and there was also a great post-reading discussion among the audience. You know, like the comments section on a post. Or something… ;)

After that, I’m actually going to be able to attend some panels! There are quite a few things I want to check out, so I’ll hopefully be able to write up some panel reports for Tor.com.

Via the Book Oven Blog, an nifty little French video by Editis:

I mostly agree with what I’m seeing here, and it gets me excited. Except for two things:

1) When they get to the museum and scan the art book into their reader. I call bullshit. Art books are objects you own. They go on your coffee table, or on your bookshelf in a place of pride.

2) In the bookstore, again, replace all those trade paperbacks with really nice quality, upscale, finely printed and bound codices.

Quality, upscale, finely printed and bound codices will still have a place in our lives. Even more so than things like vinyl records. It’s the cheaply-made mass market (and to a lesser degree, trade paperback) editions whose days are numbered.

Last month I was bamboozled asked nicely by my colleagues at Macmillan, Ryan Chapman and Ami Greko, to participate in a group talk at BEA (Book Expo America). The participants, Debbie Stier (Harper Studio), Jeff Yamaguchi (Knopf Doubleday and 52 Projects), Matt Supko (ABA/Indiebound and creator of the Indiebound iPhone app), Chris Jackson (Spiegel and Grau), Richard Nash (formerly of Soft Skull Press), and Lauren Cerand (independent public relations representative), were an engaging and lively bunch, and the event was a success. BEA has finally posted the videos for each of our presentations here. Here’s mine:

It’s a damned shame that the camera had to focus on my ugly mug instead of the slides, which add information (and most of the punchlines) to my speech. Here‘s a PDF of the slides that accompany the talk, in case you’re inclined to follow along at home.

I usually go on and on about ebooks, and I do most of my reading on my iPhone these days, but I also love me some finely-crafted codices.

I learned of this British deluxe edition of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother by accident, almost—Voyager Books advertises on Tor.com, and I was mangling some newsletter copy related to a giveaway they’re having, which happened to mention the publication of this edition. Anyway, long story short: it looks beautiful, with a simple and elegant slipcase—I love the ‘security-cam-as-gun-to-the-head’ stamp—it features illustrations by Richard Wilkinson, and I want it very badly. Wilkinson’s modern linework combined with older-looking colours and textures echo the essence of the book: a modern take on Orwell.

From Publishers Weekly:

More than two days after it first began experiencing problems with the ranking feature on an array of titles–mostly books with gay and lesbian themes–Amazon said last night that the problem was due to an ”an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error.” The mistake involved 57,310 books in what Amazon said was a broad number of categories including health, mind & body, reproductive & sexual medicine, and erotica. The problem affected not just the sales rank but also removed books from Amazon’s main product search, the company acknowledged. The e-tailer said many books have now been fixed, adding that “we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.”

That’s really not good enough, I don’t think. That’s a statement that Drew Herdener gave to the Seattle Post-Examiner yesterday afternoon, when pressed by a reporter (at least that’s as far back as I’ve been able to track it—could be wrong). It’s since been elevated to the status of official communication, in the face of a lack of additional outreach from Amazon. What Amazon should have done, in my opinion, is issue a public, formal apology (ideally directly from Bezos) to the GLBT community. But apparently that’s not gonna happen.

Even if the cause for the delisting was an innocent mistake, much of the consumer frustration and misinformation going around is directly Amazon’s fault, for not reacting immediately in an open, transparent, and forthcoming way to this PR disaster. Corporatespeak and talking at your customers just doesn’t fly anymore, and companies that resort to it, without engaging directly with their customers in an open, human way pay a big price. If Amazon had posted something on its front page (say, where their big honkin’ Kindle2 ad is) as soon as they realized what was going on (Sunday afternoon, at least, or Monday morning), this would have barely been a blip on the radar. As it stands, their silence allowed people to speculate, circulate false info, come up with half-assed theories, and even take credit for hacking Amazon (which, in turn, fed the F.U.D.).

It’s not what happened (which, while still incredibly egregious—see last post—was apparently an honest mistake), so much as how it was handled, that has people in an uproar. It’s a classic case of how not to do PR, and everyone would be well served to take some lessons in how not to handle a situation like this.

Additionally, AmazonFail has brought into stark relief (at least in my mind) the fact that Amazon.com is the 800 lb. gorilla in publishing (even though selling books really isn’t even its main business anymore), and some of its practices run counter to the industry’s best interests. If you’re, say, a small press that specializes in erotic romance, and Amazon decides to de-list your books (or worse yet, decides that it won’t sell them anymore, period, as is their right), you’re well and truly fucked. Or, say, if you’re a large publisher, and Amazon decides to sell your ebooks at $9.99, thereby taking a loss on those in order to sell Kindles, the publisher gets the pushback from the consumer when they have no choice but to price their books regularly elsewhere in order to make a profit. Now, I work for a large publisher, so take all this with a grain of salt, if you so wish, but I’ve never been an apologist for big corporations—quite the opposite. Amazon is behaving in a very old-school, big-bad-corporation way. Considering the amount of power Amazon wields in the publishing industry, Amazon behaving like  WalMart is a very scary thought.

Well, it’s Monday morning, it’s around 10am on the left coast, and still nary a word from Amazon regarding AmazonFail. In the meantime, PNH has a characteristically evenhanded analisys of the situation on Making Light (which, while I’m inclined to agree with it, the situation still boils my blood), and Mur Lafferty explains why this is a really, really big deal.