Jonathan's Scrivenings

Rod Walker had a good writeup  regarding the upcoming demise of traditional publishers and the continued irrelevance of the lone major bookstore still standing, Barnes & Noble. The problem that the big publishers and Barnes & Noble face is twofold. 1.) They can’t change. The amount of change required for them to survive in the new world is too painful to contemplate, so they’re not going to do it. 2.) They’re obsolete. The ebook has replaced the mass market paperback. Tradpub made most of its money off hardcovers, but now people only buy hardcovers of authors they really, really like, usually after they’ve read the author’s ebooks. Because of that, the future of publishing will probably look like a lot of indie authors and a lot of smaller, more agile publishers like Castalia House .So, if you’re a writer just starting out, Rod Walker thinks you should self-publish instead of attempting to go with a traditional publisher. From my perspective as a voracious reader (who is

Vox just posted a quick take on the British PM finally getting the last of the procedural roadblocks out of the way, allowing her to proceed in leading the people of Britain out of the grip of the unelected apparatchiks that run the EU. Nationalists around the world can only be pleased to see the British people regaining their sovereignty and independence. There can be no doubt that the 200-year trend towards globalization has been reversed. Yes. Britain has suffered for years under the little fascists that are headquartered over in Brussels. Time to boot them out of control and reassert the sovereignty of Britain.  And I do say Britain, not the United Kingdom, as I fully expect the Scots to be a little more successful this next time around. For some reason, the nation that produced John Locke and the intellectual flowering that undergirded much of the American Revolution and the creation of the United States...is now content to be subservient to the EU. With the liberal Scots ou

A basic canard of the writing craft (at least according to the indie author websites that I have been reading for years) is that you can only polish a turd for so long. A book can only be edited for so long before it becomes a waste of the time and energy that could be better spent writing the next book. Rise to Revolt is my first completed book, I have poured years of on-again, off again effort into building the universe and sketching out the narrative that I intend to tell. As a first book, it is going to be the weakest book that I produce, simply by virtue of being  the first book. Every author must start somewhere, and I strongly feel that Rise to Revolt is the very best work that I am capable of producing right now, and that it is a work that is worth reading. Ultimately however, you as the reader must be the judge of that, and I would be lying if I didn't admit to a certain amount of nervousness at the prospect. Rise to Revolt is the first in a trilogy of books that is