Sunday Pancaking (July 21st, 2013)
So. Think we’ll get any big news at the Comic-Con panel today? Or, if that’s already happened, want to discuss said panel? Or any of the other big geek news coming out of Comic-Con?
So. Think we’ll get any big news at the Comic-Con panel today? Or, if that’s already happened, want to discuss said panel? Or any of the other big geek news coming out of Comic-Con?
Have still not quite finished the Tom Baker essays, mostly because I realized I’d forgotten to do the commissioned essays from the Kickstarter, so those ate some week. One more, I think. /checks the Kickstarter again. Ah. Bugger. Two more. Oh well.
TG, back on the self-publishing post, left a wonderfully helpful and interesting comment about self-publishing and libraries. It was a perspective I hadn’t really seen, so I’m reposting it here:
First, these can be taken to apply to larger public library systems. Some of this may not apply to smaller districts–especially those are severely underfunded.
Follow all of Phil’s advice above. Think of libraries like bookstores–you’re competing for space with the output of the established publishers. And despite the long-predicted death of print, there are a lot of great books coming out every year. Even in a library people aren’t going to pick up your book if it looks amateurish. Especially when it’s sitting on display next to the latest release from Harcourt or McSweeney’s. We are only going to buy what we think will check out.
For fiction writers, you’re best off sticking with your local/regional libraries. Despite what a publicist might tell you, there’s little point in mailing off copies of your book to libraries around the country. The only self-published novels I’m going to even look at are from local authors. Besides wanting to support our local writing community, it’s also an effective way of narrowing down what we consider.
For non-fiction–if it’s a memoir or very regionally-focused, the same as above. For niche subjects such as in-depth analysis of Doctor Who or MLP–those sorts of things we’re interested in. The best way to get it to our attention is get it into a trusted review source. Your best bet is Kirkus– they review indie/self-published books and are closely read by librarians. Publishers Weekly also has a “Select” program you can submit your books to for possible coverage and review.
You don’t need to give us a copy of your book. (And if you do, don’t expect it back.) If we want your book in our collection, we will buy it. Librarians support authors! Promotional materials are sufficient. Just do your research and try to send it to the right person or department. When in doubt, send it to “Acquisitions.” Also research the collection–are there other materials like or related to your book? For example– does the library have Doctor Who on DVD? Is it just the new series or do they have the old episodes, too?
Research suggests that libraries help drive book sales. Getting your book into a library exposes it to a large, diverse population of readers. It’s worth the extra trouble to try.
Finally, Last War in Albion. We’ve hit the end of the first chapter, and of the essays I’ve prepared. I’ve started work on Chapter 2, but it’s not quite ready to go up Thursday, though once it starts I intend to keep Last War in Albion as a weekly feature.…
“Hello faithful readers,” says the man who has listened to maybe a few too many Russell T Davies commentary tracks recently.
First off, I’ve fixed the poor quality image in Thursday’s installation of The Last War in Albion. This is in no way an excuse to link that entry because a lot of people missed it due to the whole US federal holiday thing. Two more installments of that are queued up before it takes a break for a bit. I continue to really enjoy it. Readership numbers suggest you may or may not be enjoying it. We may have to talk about that.
Second off, it’s really, horribly hot. Sufficiently so that we’re butting up against the operational capacity of the air conditioners I own. I do not want to write. I do not want to think, or move, or be alive. I want to find a nice chest freezer and curl up in it until October or so.
So this is our discussion topic for the weekend. July: why should I even bother?…
Hello all.
Jill and I just got back from Man of Steel, which we both enjoyed, making us seemingly the only people to have done so. That said, there was dinner, and there may have been some wine with dinner, and I may or may not be seeing more Blogger windows right now than is entirely appropriate for the number I have open on my screen. So let’s keep this brief.
I’ll probably write up some detailed thoughts on Man of Steel this weekend, and if it comes out at all well run it on Tuesday. In the meantime, what movies and television over the next few months are you looking forward to? Or art in general. Yes. Let’s go with that this week. What coming attractions in the world of art excite you, and why are you so eager for them?…
I’ve taken the Wonder Woman book back in house, and will be self publishing it. More news on that as it develops – I have to figure some things out there because I have too many books in too short a period and don’t want to flood the market.
Speaking of Flood, Bloomsbury Academic has an interview with me and my co-author Alex Reed on that book, which is out in November. Which is also the rough estimate for nearly everything else – Hartnell version two (no earlier, since I’ve got An Adventure in Time and Space and The Beginning to do for it, though those really can be dropped in a week before release – it’s what I did with Wheel of Ice), Baker Volume one (revised all the existing essays, still need to write new ones), and, as I said, Wonder Woman.
Last War in Albion will run on the next four Thursdays, then take a hiatus. I’m terribly proud of it, but also rather nervous – especially early on when the shape of the project isn’t clear yet.
I’ve got a pile of stuff I owe other people, most of it terribly interesting stuff that you’ll get to enjoy some day.
Tell me what the future will be like.…
Howdy all. I’m in New York this weekend visiting friends (Alex Reed, actually, and his equally fabulous wife Meredith), and also seeing Frankenstein Upstairs by Mac Rogers, the fine gentleman I did those Slate pieces with. So that will all be very fun.
Also, you may notice that there’s now a TARDIS Eruditorum page up top – that includes a live-updating table of contents, an explanation of the project, and a very half-assed stab at the oft-requested glossary of idiosyncratic terms. Thanks to Anna Wiggins, who is ostensibly hacked together in Perl, but is actually mostly written in Lisp.
Let’s chat.
Obviously there are rumors of a “massive” missing episode find. That’s interesting. But none of us know anything, and nobody who does know anything tells the likes of us anything, so there’s not much to talk about in terms of the mechanics of the missing episode hunt as a phenomenon.
Still, let’s think for a bit about the idea of the missing episodes. At this point we have audio releases and reconstructions of all of them. It is trivial to watch a missing story. No, you don’t get the original story, but you get something that tells you a lot about what happened in the original story and is perfectly fun to enjoy. It’s easy to have informed opinions about Enemy of the World without seeing more than the 25 minutes that exist. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe Power of the Daleks to be one of the great television stories of the 1960s, and deserves to be mentioned along with Cathy Come Home and The Prisoner.
It’s also possible to watch and enjoy them. My wife and I watched Power of the Daleks. She loved it. It was a fun way to spend a few evenings. The reconstructions are perfectly enjoyable things to watch. They are lacking, yes, but they are not inadequate. And this is an important thing to realize about the status of the missing episodes.
All of which is to say that just about the least interesting thing about the missing episodes is that we can finally watch the stories, as though that is some magic and enjoyable event. If you want to watch Evil of the Daleks, go do it. It’s easy. Don’t wait until November. Yes, the publicity of a big release would get more eyes to the stories, and that’s neat, but the interesting thing about a missing episode find is not the release of new fun into the world.
It is instead the addition of information to the history. The fact of the matter is that the people these are of interest to right now are knowledgeable fans with research interests, whether professional or hobbyist. What we’re interested in are things like what the Rills looked like and which delegate is which, or the subtleties of Hartnell’s acting in The Massacre. Or seeing that Zaroff/Troughton scene in The Underwater Menace Part Two.
Which is to say, quite separate from the question of what Hartnell and Troughton-era stories you like or don’t like, and without speculation of whether we’re ever going to see any more missing episodes, what are your thoughts about the idea of a massive episode find?…
So, first of all, I’m running a contest, because I’ve never run a contest before and it sounds fun. The prize will be Volumes 1-3 of TARDIS Eruditorum (Volume 1 in its first edition state, obviously, as that’s the one that exists) in ebook format.
Entering is simple – you just come up with the best possible title for a Doctor Who story in the format The _____ of the _____. Post in comments. You can go for funny or sincere, and any sort of story – judging criteria will strictly be what catches my fancy.
One interesting note, though – collaboration is encouraged; you can win just as well by tinkering with someone else’s suggestion. And if a tinkered version of your suggestion wins, both you and the tinkerer will win the prize. So if someone suggested the (actually quite rubbish) title The Terror of the Giraffes, and you came along and said, “actually, I think that would be much better as The Horror of the Giraffes” then, if I agreed, both you AND the person who came up with The Terror of the Giraffes would win a set of ebooks. You thus lose nothing at all by having people tinker with your titles. You may also tinker with other tinkerings as desired.
Limit of two initial entries. Entries based on tinkering other entries are currently unlimited, though if someone annoys me I’ll change that rule.
I’ll post the winners on Tuesday, along with other favorites. Second of all, then, I have an idea.
Virtually everyone writing with advice for writers these days makes much of the fact that the market is changing and blah blah blah. I imagine the same is true for other creative pursuits. But there’s very little information on the pragmatic reality of being a professional writer – what sort of markets and forms people’s “real money” comes from, and just, broadly speaking, information on the working conditions of writers. I can find a few individual discussions – authors here or there who go into detail on their royalty statements – but the market is so idiosyncratic that a few datapoints aren’t useful.
And what I really can’t find are questions like, for instance, do writers tend to make their money by getting small royalty checks off multiple books that add up, do they live entirely off new releases, do they get one hit that keeps them going for a long time, or what? And how does it work for other media?
So I wanted to just set up a nice, informal survey in the hopes that I can get a bunch of answers and compile them into something that paints a decent picture of how working creators make their money. To that end, if you are a professional creator and don’t mind shooting me an e-mail with the answers to a few questions, please do.
Let’s define professional creator subjectively – if a significant portion of your household income comes from your creative work, you qualify.…
Right. Another seven day week then, I suppose.
So, first of all, let’s all discuss and freak out over the regeneration news, shall we? Since everyone’s going to do fantasy casting, let’s go ahead and do the requisite open thread in which we all speculate over who they’ll cast. But why make this blog like every other speculation thread? So let’s put up a constraint: no white male choices. Women and minorities only.
Second, because everyone is going to ask, yes, this does change the plan for the blog’s endgame. There’s no point in getting four entries into the Twelfth Doctor before ending the blog – it’s just a rubbish endpoint. So instead, barring major plot twists, Matt Smith’s regeneration story will be the final post of TARDIS Eruditorum. Obviously there’s a high chance of me going back and doing the Twelfth Doctor at some point, but equally obvious, I’m not going to make any firm plans on that right now.…
Well, that’s another week over and done with, so it’s time for the open thread. It was a blog-writing week for me, which is always a busy one – at the moment I’m about a thousand words into The Christmas Invasion, which will post not this Monday but next, with one more post to do over the weekend. I’m also in the midst of some housekeeping on the blog, and failing spectacularly not to have large swaths of my time eaten by laying groundwork for the British Comics Project, which in no way needs to be done now, but which seems to want to be played with, so, you know, obey the muse.