Also just generally a weird choice for someone who got big from a fantasy series. But I guess she felt she "got that out of her system" and now can write capital I Important books that nobody wants to read. Are there any other such cases? RF Kuang did seem to low key resent her story which is why it got so boring by the third book as it abandoned all the fun stuff from book 1.
She did an interview with Daniel Greene where she explicitly said that her history "research" is more important to her the writing by a large margin. Her tone made it sound as though, as you suggest, that she just wanted to get the writing stuff out of the way. That basically sealed the deal on me not touching Poppy War. It's greatest merit, going by the praise for it, is attempted shock value.
RF Kuang and Fonda Lee are at best, midlist authors who saw the opportunity to boost themselves via SFWA all but gift-wrapping any non-white women authors the keys to the kingdom and rode that gift horse for all its worth... and I think they've both realized the gravy train is over.
In Kuang's case, she's looking for the lifeboats because she realizes there's more career potential to take that hype and platform elsewhere than there is to mine diminishing returns in the spec fiction "ghetto." I actually think a lot of those wokies in SFWA have that approach - get a few Hugo nods, then run off to academia for the next few decades. The genre is resume padding, nothing more.
Meanwhile, Fonda Lee, for all her viral tirades against Robert Jordan and Tolkien, as I've shown in sales numbers I've leaked to this forum, she's sold terribly enough she should be thanking her lucky stars her publisher keeps her around at all. She's not even midlist, for all the press and publicity she gets.
Mercedes Lackey makes me laugh so hard. That lady has pushed woke since before woke was woke.
SFWA is damned lucky Baen stuck their necks out for Lackey - apparently she was damned close to doing something nasty out of grief before several folks at Baen talked her down from the proverbial ledge. She took it REALLY hard... as someone who fed the beast for years only to have it turn on them should.
Then Delaney and Barnes and a few other black authors said Lackey hadn't done anything wrong, and it blew up in SFWA's face. Could have been worse for them though.
As much blowback as going after Lackey gave SFWA, can you imagine if their woke mean girls shtick had actually driven one of the biggest names in the genre to commit suicide?
Stocking must be absolutely eating them alive still sucks ass if youre a midlister.
@Boston Brand care to comment?
The question I'd pester him with are:
- Is B&N likely to float to the top of the fish tank any time soon?
- The waters are kind of muddied due to the whole being owned by a Russian hedge fund thing, but any information would be appreciated
- If B&N goes down, what happens to Ingram (if anything?)
- IIRC they're basically the last book distributor now that Baker & Taylor left the business
- Would independent bookstores be screwed if Ingram went under? Or can publishers now distribute directly?
- What's the relative market share for paper books in the USA. I have a vague sense it is:
- 50-60% Amazon (possibly approaching 70%)
- 20-30% B&N (probably closer to the 20% figure)
- 10-15% Big box stores (Wal-Mart/Target/Costco etc.)
- 5-10% Books-a-million (maybe less)
- 5-10% everything else (Independent bookstores, Christian bookstores, school book sales, etc.)
But that last is more guesswork than anything else. It is almost impossible to find information about relative market share. Weird how independent bookstores get so much media play when they're basically a rounding error at this point, or such is my take on their market share. Amazon has a code of silence the Mafia would envy, and I'm guessing anti-trust concerns keep them mum as well.
Not that I have any right or expectation to answers, of course. But I do wonder sometimes.
Okay, the Barnes and Noble cluster fuck.
To start with, you guys have no idea how close Barnes & Noble came to bankruptcy during the Covid-19 lockdowns - apparently they'd have been cooked if the shutdown had lasted one or two more weeks. They're still trying to make up for lost ground from the pandemic, only to get purchased by a hedge fund I put even odds to gut the retailer even further and sell it for parts.
To answer those other questions though, and bear in mind, different publishers can have different business models and approaches.
If B&N goes tits up, it will be a HUGE blow to publishing - consider periodicals alone, which would be wiped out en masse when the nation's largest chain with newsstands goes away. To say nothing of giant chunks of publishing that depend upon physical sales and advertising.
Barnes and Noble represents a little over half of all remaining chain bookstores in the United States - 600+ stores in all 50 states versus the second and third largest, Books-a-million and Half Price Books, having 260 retail book stores in 32 states and 127 stores in 18 states, plus dozens of miniature regional chains - Tattered Cover in Colorado comes to mind. Hundreds of millions of booksales... hell, the New York Times Bestseller list depends on those physical sales.
The impact of B&N closing would be a death knell to a good chunk of NYC publishing.
Independent bookstores usually order from the publisher or through Ingram or even Diamond.
B&N tightening its belt if nothing else will force publishers to either take massive losses (or in some cases, even MORE massive losses) or radically change how they do business.
To use an example - that Janelle Monae Afro-futurist scifi anthology, Memory Librarian. Walk into your nearest bookstores sometime and look for a copy - even odds there is a 50% sticker on it and a stack of 5 or 6 of them that haven't been touched since release. You know why? Because it was a Harper Collins tentpole for the year - ton of money on the advance and advertising, to say nothing of the media tour. They probably greenlit it after Black Panther, and the small forced "boom" in black genre fiction, and wanted to cash in... only one look at genre sales numbers could have told them it was a paper tiger - nothing that really sets sales numbers on fire, just a lot of genre publishing shoveling money into a fire. Hell, even the big "celebrity" name they slapped on it, Janelle Monae, is a failed musician and actress who never gains steam no matter where she's pushed.
All that for a book that came our six months ago and only now broke 10k in sales... which sounds impressive until you realize a half dozen copies are all marked half off in every bookstore in America right now. They printed hundreds of thousands of copies and they sold barely enough copies for a genre publisher to qualify as midlist. They won't admit it for months, if not years, but a MASSIVE loss for the company.
The only reason Harper could take such a stupid gamble is those books will be collecting dust in bookstores for years to come.
Needless to say, Barnes & Noble throwing down the gauntlet that they refuse to be the dumping ground for Manhattan publishing's social experiments could have an interesting impact on publishers.
Having your book in hardback used to be the end goal, not the debut goal. I don't know when it changed, but for years it was like this. I find it interesting that they stopped publishers paying for placement. I wonder if it's because they wanted individual stores to have more freedom promoting what sells in a certain store or region.
Don't discount Walmart being a key player, either. They've made buying adjustments in certain categories in their book sections, and for people who live in rural areas, WM is the only place to buy books, with the exception of online and maybe a tiny indie bookstore fifty something miles away.
Still slack jawed at these twenty-something debut writers getting bent because they're not getting hardcover or prime spots without a proven track record. It's not personal, it's business.
The publishing industry has had dire need of a wakeup call for ages.
As you pointed out, every diversity hire getting hardcover releases with big advances and nationwide pushes only to barely crack a thousand or so sales was utterly unsustainable, even with the tacit support of libraries, bookstores and the ability to burn through profitable authors earnings to subsidize them.
Toss in that, even before the pandemic kicked the shit out of them, Barnes and Noble was shrinking the amount of shelf space for books, especially spec fiction and YA novels. Why? Because too many of the new authors from the big five simply don't sell well enough to justify the shelf space, no matter how much attention and press the publishers get them.
Take my favorite whipping bitch, and the face of SFWA's all in push on diversity, N. K. Jemisin... all the ink and press and attention she has, and she lags behind a ton of midlist authors in terms of sales. But Orbit, her publisher, makes a point of forcing stores to stock more of her books to "fly the flag" for their poster child, otherwise they won't send more stuff that DOES sell from Orbit (The Witcher, for example). It's bad enough that vendors even have a Jemisin focused in-joke.
"How do you know a store got the new N. K. Jemisin book?"
"Because they 'd dusted off the tops of the old ones."
Some publishers have adjusted and seen this coming for a while - Baen Books for example, has been digital focused for years, were the last big six genre publisher to still put out trade paperbacks, and has been doing outreach to retailers like Walmart or the base exchanges in the military. But it's a major blow to some publishers business models... now the question will be if they correct course or double down and charge toward the iceberg thinking they can take them.
I'm guessing that goes back to the most recent deplatforming, the one where she did literally nothing and the weasels turned on her anyway. I'm not even sure what the slur was, Samuel R. Delany didn't give a shit -- he specifically said so --, but deplatformed she was. (I'd probably get deplatformed for calling Delany a degenerate pedo groomer and meaning it, but she said nothing of the sort.)
Besides in the 1990s she wrote stupid fun novels like this, which would doubtless give the SJWs of today an attack of the vapors.
Literally about street racing elves, happy that the rise of fiberglass was obviating their traditional issues with iron.
Honestly, for all her politics, Mercedes Lackey is a really fun author. Especially, as you pointed out, her Serrated Edge series.
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I’m liking Larry Correia’s snark at the left, but am wondering what you guys think of his books? Are they any good?
I’m thinking about picking up Monster Hunter.
Do it. He's outstanding.
I read his new Servants of War book. It's pretty decent. It does everything that a good military/adventure fiction book should do. It's close to the top of my list for fiction releases this year.
Edit: distracted typing.
They're not for everyone. I'm personally not much of a fan of what he is most known for, Monster Hunter International. A lot like the Dresden Files except with more guns and less magic. Urban fantasy gun porn. Okay, but not really my thing. FWIW, if you're the sort with scruples against sailing the high seas, you can legally read the first MHI book
for free, in EPUB or MOBI formats.
However, I quite liked the Grimnoir Chronicles, also Urban Fantasy, but set in an alternate 1930s/1940s.
I'm really enjoying the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, despite the silly name. Probably my second favorite epic fantasy series started this century, only beaten by Joe Abercrombie's First Law books.
I hated his most recent book, Servants of War, the first time I picked it up. Liked it the second time I tried it, though. Kind of an alternate world World War I with magic and golems. Personally would put it below the Grimnoir books but above MHI, but that's possibly more a matter of personal taste.
I haven't read any of his other stuff.
Forgotten Warrior is absolutely outstanding - my vote for best fantasy series this century, bar none.
Also, it's not piracy when Baen gives the book away for free. Gotta love the Baen free library.
Our resident
@Boston Brand really quite enjoys says theyre some of the best on the current market.
I power read the entire series in about 2 weeks(?) And then read Servants of War and my only 2 complaints is that two middle aged dudes cant write romance to save their souls and the horror elements really needed to be played up more but it was pretty good.
For romance, what do you expect from a couple of Mormons who've been married for decades like Larry and Steve?
As for horror, evidently, they toned this book down a lot. Talked to Steve Diamond at Gencon for a little, and asked about that too, you know what he said?
"We needed to save something for the sequels."
I'm happy to see Larry getting a fanbase here - not only is he openly combatively right wing, but he's damned good at writing hard-knuckle scifi and fantasy.
