Writer's Grove
Orange blossoms are kinda special
While large swaths of the country are buried in snow, in Arizona the orange blossoms are filling the air with localized walls of fragrance; drive by a grove with the windows down and WHAM, you are punched in the nose with pollen. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of orange blossoms to share with you. Instead I will give you a kinda blurry picture of my Boston terrier, Sophie, who doesn’t smell or look like orange blossoms at all but is really cute and makes me happy like spring does.
I’m at 30K words on SHATTERED and really enjoying some new characters and their interactions with the old ones. One character who has been around since HOUNDED but hasn’t been developed very much will finally get a backstory and a more significant role going forward.
Much ink devoted recently to an ongoing snit between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster. B&N wants more pie and S&S says no, we can’t afford it. So Barnes & Noble has dramatically cut its orders of Simon & Schuster’s books as a negotiation tactic. AUUGH! Losers include: readers and writers.
I’m not a business guru by any means and I can’t speak to whether this is really awesome business kung fu on the part of B&N, but I am a dude who likes books and who likes to browse to discover new writers. For me, the appeal of a B&N is that I have a huge selection of authors in a wide range of genres to discover. I love walking into a B&N and wondering what cool little gem I will unearth on that visit. And I freakin’ LOVE the booksellers at the two B&Ns I visit most frequently out here, the Dana Park and SanTan locations. But recently, the B&N corporate heads have made some moves that appear to me to be damaging the basis of their appeal—which is browsing. They said they needed fewer books and more games and toys because…I don’t know. Are people really going to a bookseller to buy games instead of books? Again, their retail kung fu is probably much better than mine, but on its face a new and improved bookstore NOW WITH FEWER BOOKS doesn’t add up the way I do math. I am hoping they change their minds. And I certainly hope we see more S&S titles on their shelves soon.
But!! Maybe there’s a reason. I can conceive of a thought stream that would get us to the conclusion that maybe providing a huge selection to browse isn’t as important as it used to be. I’ve noticed it in my own behavior. I often hear about books now online through Twitter or Facebook—my readers are awesome about sharing what they’re digging (thanks you guys!) and I can go to a B&N or an indie store to get precisely what I want. If they don’t have it in stock they can usually get it in after a couple of days. (And of course people with e-readers can download anything they hear about instantly.) If that’s not just me shopping that way, maybe that justifies the shift; I don’t know. But in general I don’t think any of these adjustments means DOOM! NOBODY READS ANYMORE! Book sales overall are doing fine; it’s where people buy them and in what format that’s changing. The true danger of reducing selection and taking away our ability to browse expansively is that some authors are going to find it difficult to get discovered and develop a following (and thus a career), and many readers are going to have to choose from either carrots or celery when they’d really go for some kohlrabi if it was available.
Reminder: I’ll be heading to Madison, Wisconsin soon for Odyssey Con, April 12-14. It looks like it’s going to be fun and honestly I probably won’t make it to Wisconsin again for quite some time, so if you can come say hi, please do!
And I also hope to be able to give you some publishing dates soon besides the June 25 date for HUNTED and July 23 for CARNIEPUNK. I will have other stuff coming out. :)
