At a loss for words.

RE: Cat’s Cradle:

Omfg

Wow.

Add 'At a loss for words.' to Del.icio.us

Add 'At a loss for words.' to Stumble Upon

Add 'At a loss for words.' to Google Bookmarks

tags: "I'm a writter" ceiling cat evil felines public education

April 3, 2008 | Filed Under Blog | 4 Comments

Odds, ends, good news, bad news, and the longest title in the short history of this blog.

I’d like to thank Amazon for dominating the last five days of my life as I spent just about every free moment keeping tabs on this POD debacle. Yes, I could’ve been writing (and I did, but not as much I could have), but seeing as how the future of my novel’s distribution was hanging in the balance like so many other novels, I had to keep up with it.

So, the bad news: Most of the major POD companies, including Lulu, caved and signed Amazon’s contract. According to Angela Hoy, “the confidentiality in that contract is the tightest I’ve ever seen.” That removes the chance of learning what kind of negotiations these POD folks had to make. It also means that BookSurge will become the de facto printer for all of these books, including lots of back catalogue titles for the traditional publishers, too. Less choice is never good. You can read more current news about this here.

The good news: From where I am right now, I don’t think ALT’s distribution is going to be affected by this. In fact, as of right this moment, you can still buy the book on Amazon. You can still buy it from Barnes & Noble, too. And, since it’s registered with Ingram, you can buy it just about anywhere, really, provided you give the details (like the ISBN number). My only concern at this point is the quality of those copies printed by Amazon, as feedback about BookSurge has been less than favorable.

Bottom line: It’s still too early to tell. If things change, you’ll be the first to know (after I’ve done a good share of bitching and ranting out loud). For now, it’s business as usual.

Speaking of which, I’m about half way through my story that is being altogether agreeable and remaining a short story since I feared it would not be. I hope to finish it by this weekend. As of Sunday, I will begin writing the second draft of imagiNATION. I can’t wait, for several reasons: to tell the story as it’s meant to be told, to erase the abortion that is its first draft, and to finally be done with it. Just having something to send out to agents is vindicating enough. Never mind the whole acceptance/rejection thing.

The Stories section is finally updated and formatted properly (for the most part). From this point forward I will only be uploading stories that are published first elsewhere. And, to kick things off, you can read my story Down the Tubes which was published over at 365tomorrows a couple of weeks ago.

I happened upon FictionScribe, another writing blog that you should check. Also, if you happen to be working on a speculative fiction novella or piece of erotic fiction, they’ve got some info on two venues calling for submissions right now.

And finally, one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk, just announced the first string of tour dates in support of his forthcoming novel, Snuff: