YABookgate

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

Than why didn't you write the sequel a year after the first one came out?


What would this even do besides showing who sells and who doesn't?

 

[Quarterback Rex Grossman]

He's already said he won't let anyone else touch it if he dies before finishing. Of course, he also said that the show's ending would be the canonical one if that happened, so he may be rethinking that decision considering how badly Season 8 was received.

Is his ghost going to guard his porn-filled computer?

 

[Windows 10 Upgrade]

So somebody else can finish the series.

Ugh, quoting all in one post not working.

When GRRM finally takes the big leap into the next life, his wife Parris will be the literary estate holder. Now the thing is, neither have kids, so even if Parris uphold's George's wishes to abandon the series, she's deeply into her 70s as well, so whoever gets the estate afterwards will hardly be a "close" position of wanting to preserve the wishes of Great Uncle George vs a producer waving a $10 million dollar check.

Y'know, it's funny, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed this, but Asian-American/Canadian writers have become extremely uppity and lolcow worthy in recent years. (snip)

I've wondered about that and one could probably formulate a theory around the Asian writers being seen as almost white, but with just enough exotic flavor to them that the consumer base, who whether or not they like to admit it read books written mostly by the evil whiteys, can still feel comfortable

It's been pointed out that if you see an Asian writer - especially a young one in the YA sphere - you are looking at someone very wealthy and privileged, not a kid who in between homework is serving customers Banh Mi at their struggling, lower class parent's shop and has no time for frivolities like writing a book.

So they are basically "evil white" in every way except the micron-thin lacquer of "struggling minority" slapped on like a bad coat of paint. Some of them fully lean into pretending to be one of the poors, rather like Marie Antoinette had a pretend peasant farm out the back of the Palace of Versailles where her and her friends would pretend to be poor, while REAL poor people were starving twenty miles away (and plotting revolution)

This is pretty much across the board for all minority/POC writers, and not always because they want to. So you will have the cringeworthy situation of a tertiary educated upper middle-class woman having to write "gang shit" purely because they shared some ethnic points with gang members and that she had "driven past the aftermath of a shooting once."

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Pacific Rim Uprising - the comparison film - had just flopped massively at the box office.

I'm pretty sure (though with no hard proof) that the first Pacific Rim movie was originally written as the cancelled Neon Genesis Evangelion movie from the 2000s, then punched-up to make it less obvious...and after the film became a success the executives saw dollar signs in their eyes and hoped to bank off the "stupid action movies" that let Transformers and F&F be big money-makers, mostly through overseas audiences, only to get put in their place when it didn't work that way. (Putting John Boyega in as the main character probably poisoned the Chinese box office figures).

 

[Trianon]

Xiran continues Xiraning.

Link | Archive (not sure if this is working right)



The reddit thread. (archive) Full of reasonable comments about why she's responsible for her book's delay. So reasonable that people start turning on them for having functioning brains and eyes.



u/Aware_Apartment7832 (archive) only left two comments on the thread three days ago, same day Xiran made the thread. I can't tell exact timestamps. The account Xiran is bitching about is u/GwenAundomiel, which was deleted after she tweeted. u/GwenAundomiel accuses u/Aware_Apartment7832 of being a sock before deleting. u/Aware_Apartment7832 only has one other comment in r/TalesfromDF, a Final Fantasy subreddit, left 9 days ago.

Spoiler: Xiran's full thread text

Ok there's someone acting like they have confident knowledge of my private life so let me clear some things up. I'm not sure how they found out I live with my family, as many Asians do, but that doesn't mean I have no financial obligations or mortgage responsibilities?? 1/?

Spoiler

u/GwenAundomiel: Thank you! I'm not going to comment on the Palestine situation because no matter where your politics lie in that situation you should be able to call out bad behavior.
Xiran has acted like an asshole in a hundred different ways. They badmouthed the publisher a year ago claiming it's not their fault they, a debut author with mid-sales didn't work on their book because they didn't get a bigger advance (fun fact - they didn't have a day job occupying their time and still live with their parents). The reality is they just didn't feel like working on it and that was the second time it was delayed. Then with this they admit to not working on it for months because of their activism and being preoccupied, which is what it is but they didn't turn in this current draft until January.. all the while hurling accusations at the publisher, editor, and other writers they worked with, demanded special treatment and by the third week of January posted about the publisher holding their book hostage because of their politics.. what? They just turned it in and want the edits back while hurling accusations at them for .. reasons? Insane, unprofessional, and childish behavior on their part. They're still tweeting playing the victim and are likely going to get dropped (rightfully).

I did in fact have a day job - my YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Idk how they're acting as if I was just loafing around when you can easily find the long and dense videos I was putting out every month on average. Do they think I was doing these for fun?? For free??? Look at the views! 2/?



If I didn't have an unexpectedly successful YouTube channel, I would've had to get some other day job, bc I couldn't have lived off the ~14k USD advance I received for Iron Widow in 2020 and the ~4k in 2021. It's not "badmouthing" to be open about my book payments 3/?

I've emphasized many times that my payment talk is not a dig at my publishing team; it's industry critique. My situation would've been the same no matter where I'd gotten a deal of my size. It's industry standard that caused me to not receive any royalties until April 2022 4/?

The idea that I wasn't working on Heavenly Tyrant bc I "just didn't feel like it" is baffling bc...what do I gain from that? Wow, let me put off my guaranteed bestselling sequel on purpose! It's so much fun to kill my series' momentum! No stress and self-loathing involved! 5/?

I did finally finish HT at the start of the year but I wasn't expecting edits back for the whole thing within weeks. I'd handed in a 90k chunk in October and my editor had told me he was finishing up edits on those - THAT'S what I was asking for. Existing edits. 6/?

I was asking for 2 things: 1. A change in editor bc of irreconcilable political differences 2. The existing 90k of edits so I can get started on revisions while the first gets sorted out I still do not think that was too much to ask for. 7/?

Not going to speak anymore on the current situation bc it's still getting sorted out, but the point is that I wasn't asking for the impossible or for the team to work overtime. 8/?

Now, this idea that I should've written Heavenly Tyrant before Zachary Ying. Even if I did, I wouldn't have seen royalties for it for YEARS, bc no matter how fast I finished, it wouldn't have been released until Fall 2022 at the EARLIEST. I HAD to sell a 2nd series first 9/?

Spoiler

r/GwenAundomiel:
heir publisher might actually be in breach of contract for this

Looking at the situation it's much more likely Xiran is in breach of contract. The book has been delayed years because they've had numerous excuses to not work on it. This recent draft was late again, because they didn't feel like it over their advocacy work and then they only turned it in early January. They took to twitter on January 22nd to play the victim and act like it wasn't their fault and the book is being held. It has literally been in their hands two weeks and Xiran was late getting it to them while complaining about the current editor beforehand. There's a lot more evidence this situation is because of Xiran's unprofessional behavior and not because of politics.

Also the defense of the other book they had to write is not a defense for Xiran but another example for the lawyers of their unprofessional conduct. Xiran was a debut who signed a two-book deal and that was standard protocol for how initial payment is dealt out. Most authors keep day jobs for years if not forever. They didn't even have a day job. There's no reason they couldn't have written the anticipated book that would've sold well rather than writing and selling a new one to another publisher.

I graduated at the height of COVID. I could not physically go out to get a job in my field. I had to G0FundMe in Sept 2020 to pay my cat's vet bills bc my parents wanted to euthanize her to prevent me from emptying my bank account for her treatment - remember that?? 10/?



(It took 10k but Kokochin survived what would've been a very aggressive fatal disease. She's completely cured now. I sincerely thank everyone who donated to save her life back then because I could NOT have covered that on my own.)



Anyway. I also appreciate my publisher giving me an extension on Heavenly Tyrant every time I asked, but the fact is, even if they refused, if they yelled at me, it wouldn't have gotten the book written any faster. You can't squeeze a satisfactory sequel out of thin air. 11/?

I COULD'VE rushed out a half-assed sequel, but I don't think any of you would've enjoyed that! HT is an extremely complicated book that required me to do deep reading into revolutionary theory to answer the question "the rebel has taken over the government - now what?" 12/?

You can imagine that question does not have an easy answer!! This whole concept that I'm ~ making excuses for being lazy ~ is so illogical bc who does the delay of HT hurt most? Myself! I am missing out on so many sales, but I am not willing to sacrifice quality for $$$ 13/?

I'm a slow writer. I don't need to make excuses for that when it's just a fact, and it's the main reason for my delays. Letting you all know what else is going on behind the scenes is not ~ dodging responsibility ~ or whatever because my chief responsibility is to myself?? 14/?

Lastly, why are we shilling so hard for capitalism that talking about how much we're paid is considered a betrayal? Publishers do not take on authors out of generosity. They are out to profit off our books. Satisfying sequels profit more, so quality is worth it even from this POV

I speak up about my finances bc if I had known how publishing payments work when I was an aspiring author, I would've NEVER bet so much on getting a book deal. Now I'm in a rare position of being able to speak without fear, because I fear no publisher, so I want to be transparent

Anyway, it's not for a lack of effort, care, and intention that Heavenly Tyrant has come along so slowly. I would not be sabotaging my own momentum if I could do any better at a faster pace. Please preorder so it will actually come out one day

Also it's extremely creepy for someone to talk about my private life as if they know me. They're aware of a suspicious amount of detail, but clearly not the full picture. You can speculate, but don't speak with such authority as if you're in my house watching what I do.

Lol this person deleted their VERY active Reddit account real quick but if you're going to spend so much time judging people's private lives online, own up to your words

Completely self-aware very cool follow-up.




I'm talking out my ass here, but I'm pretty sure there would be a very good legal reason why the work of an editor who is being taken off the project would not even be allowed to be used. Similar to how movies that change directors mid-work have to negotiate who gets billing and sometimes they have to be careful to scrap work in order to keep crediting accurate. Does anyone have a better sense of how that would work?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Based Asian father.

 

[Mellorine]

Disclaimer: publishing is a deeply dysfunctional industry that regularly invents new ways to fuck shit up. How things worked in the corners I'm passingly familiar with are unlikely to be universal. But as far as I know, for an editor who is an employee of Whatever Big Name Publisher, the work done for the publisher on projects they've assigned would typically be the publisher's property. An independent editor hired on a one-off basis can specify if they want to retain certain rights or demand whatever credit when the contract is being hashed out, but even then editing is almost always treated as work-for-hire with no rights retained once the check clears. So an in-house editor could easily be reassigned to a different project and have their partially completed work still be used, but I could see the new editor preferring to start over rather than continue the work of someone with a different style or who the author was unhappy with.

Modern Hollywood is full of guilds and unions who represent what are essentially freelancers employed contract-to-contract by different studios while upholding certain standards for credit, compensation, etc. The power balance is very different in publishing and being credited isn't nearly as big a thing. Movies end up with the names of everybody who taped a cable down on set into the credits, because gaffers long ago established that as part of their deal and have a large union backing them. Books will often have no credit given for someone as crucial as the cover artist and whether the editor gets their name in the "Acknowledgements" is often left up to the author, who might choose to thank them alongside their favorite elementary school teacher and six cats as "people who helped this book come into being."

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

I COULD'VE rushed out a half-assed sequel, but I don't think any of you would've enjoyed that! HT is an extremely complicated book that required me to do deep reading into revolutionary theory to answer the question "the rebel has taken over the government - now what?" 12/?

You can imagine that question does not have an easy answer!!

Fuck me that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

 

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

"YOUTUBE WAS MY JOB!"

She (this is a she right? Looks like a dude) has thirty videos with an average length of half an hour. Like what the hell was she doing all this time?

 

[Rezza]

"YOUTUBE WAS MY JOB!"

She (this is a she right? Looks like a dude) has thirty videos with an average length of half an hour. Like what the hell was she doing all this time?

It's a she, yes

Also need to mention that the most recent video is a year and 8 months old. Looks to me she has a clear lack of commitment to finish something now that she feel she has a little bit of fame and validation in being a published author. Honestly not surprised since a lot of Asian women tend to fall into a problem like thay, especially Chinese

 

[Trianon]

Fuck me that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

I also guffawed at that. Like their brains really can't get past that part!

 

[Three Gorillion Dollars]

I'm talking out my ass here, but I'm pretty sure there would be a very good legal reason why the work of an editor who is being taken off the project would not even be allowed to be used. Similar to how movies that change directors mid-work have to negotiate who gets billing and sometimes they have to be careful to scrap work in order to keep crediting accurate. Does anyone have a better sense of how that would work?

Depends on the contract, but it's not unheard of for edits to remain specifically the creative/intellectual property of the editor and/or company they work for. I know of one other series that appears to have entered editing hell because they changed editors after a heavy rewrite and so they've needed to determine what is the author's work versus what is the editor's.

 

[Flexo]

I did in fact have a day job - my YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Idk how they're acting as if I was just loafing around when you can easily find the long and dense videos I was putting out every month on average. Do they think I was doing these for fun?? For free??? Look at the views! 2/?

That IS her! I get her videos in my feed at random times and kept wondering if she was the same person. Hah! I'm getting popcorn.

 

[A nameless trool]

Current YA drama incoming:

Xiran Jay Xhao continues her (initially legitimate then increasingly OTT) rampage against her publisher who is doing normal publisher things (being fucking slow, paying a pittance, not realising when they were sitting on a goldmine) , basically sobbing that the rose petals scattered before her were the wrong color, or whatever.

However she has been somewhat of an outspoken serial publishing-industry Karen since Iron Widow's surprise successful publication, with a name attached to calling out every injustice in YA publishing ever. One would think at this juncture PRH would be either giving her the Queen Treatment (ie: like RF Kuang for Harper Collins) but the silence and foot dragging suggests the old "no amount of money is gonna make me deal with this drama" refusal. Cue - angry social media rant!

View attachment 5681512View attachment 5681510

Even her loyal subjects and enablers are telling her to turn down the heat


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"I need to say this. This is NOT a time to be posting things so your followers tell you how right you are. It's the time when you realize it's Shut-The-F*-Up Friday, get legal counsel and *stop posting"

I'm actually surprised XJX lasted this long. She was constantly bagging out her publisher for not having seen her genius earlier, and be that as it might, a Sci Fi YA book was never a sure thing when SF has never had a YA success in over a decade. (It's all Fantasy these days, baby)


Anyway, this is a developing situation so we may need some weeks for the true final form to step out of this bubbling foment. DUN DUN DUN....

If someone like Clive Barker can be told to bugger off for being late so can a random youtuber that did better than Lindsey Ellis.

 

[Trianon]

Depends on the contract, but it's not unheard of for edits to remain specifically the creative/intellectual property of the editor and/or company they work for. I know of one other series that appears to have entered editing hell because they changed editors after a heavy rewrite and so they've needed to determine what is the author's work versus what is the editor's.

Hmm, that would definitely make sense if it was big structural edits, although she makes it sound like line edits.

Yeah, she says it here:


But she also says she wants edits on stuff she just handed in. Insane!


(I can't believe they're editing it in chunks, like wouldn't you want the whole manuscript before telling the writer they may need to rearrange or cut things? It's wild.)

(But even if they were doing that, I'm sure the new editor doesn't want to send edits that she may need to redo anyway, since the first editor was working with HALF A BOOK (probably more like 3/4) and thus couldn't possibly know what needed changing.)

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Is his ghost going to guard his porn-filled computer?

He left it to Linda and Elio. Two fans who are in fact genuinely insane with their takes and have been for several decades.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

Cait Corrain is back in the news to cry about how anti-autism drugs made her review bomb her peers. Also discusses being Jewish, getting drunk, and having an alternate personality who did all the review bombing. There are also mentions of Xiran Jay Zhao.

https://archive.is/2024.02.14-025849/https://www.thedailybeast.com/author-cait-corrain-who-review-bombed-writers-of-color-im-not-racist

 

[Second Missing Primarch]

Cait Corrain is back in the news to cry about how autism made her review bomb her peers:

https://archive.is/2024.02.14-025849/https://www.thedailybeast.com/author-cait-corrain-who-review-bombed-writers-of-color-im-not-racist

In November, Corrain said she switched medications again. At that point, she was prescribed a medical cocktail of Zoloft, BuSpar, Vyvanse, Lamictal, Ketamine and Trazodone—all of high doses. Independently, she was consuming cannabis, alcohol, and caffeine.

It's a wonder she didn't just keel over with all that shit in her system. Fucking A.

Corrain decided to come clean when she realized how much control she was losing with herself.

And yet she lied like a rug and invented a fake friend when people started calling her out and only admitted to it when it was clear she'd been caught. Yeah, it sounds like she's got a real screwed-up brain, but those are still the actions of someone who knows what they're doing is wrong and is trying to avoid accountability. And what's this nonsense here?

In June 2023, Corrain tried a new ADHD medication and said that was when she created her first Goodreads account and wrote negative reviews—against her will.
“I woke up the next morning, I had this awful, like, dread in my stomach,” she said. “And I couldn't tell anyone because I was absolutely convinced that if I told anyone about what had happened and the fact that I had done something that was so incredibly out of character for me, that I was going to be institutionalized.”
But she couldn’t go back and delete the Goodreads profiles because that meant she would have had to confront the truth about not having autonomy over her actions.

So she had a convenient drug-induced blackout in which she made a fake GR account and left all these reviews "against her will". What a magical ADHD drug that must be to cause such a specific reaction.

 

[Mellorine]

I guess Microsoft Words "Track Changes" feature is so powerful one glance at it can vaporize a sped's self-esteem.

 

[Flexo]

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I guess Microsoft Words "Track Changes" feature is so powerful one glance at it can vaporize a sped's self-esteem.

@WelperHelper99 get a load of this! (Corrain, not @Mellorine)

You must be made of solid steel, dude!