About Writing by Samuel R. Delany is the best writing book most people shouldn't read

Yes, I'm in love with this book.

My writing is changing. Not that my writing ever stopped changing—hell, nothing in life is capable of not changing. But I'm contemplating a bigger change than normal. I've reached a point where the stories I've written until now will absolutely not be the stories I keep writing from here on out.

This explains why I've been obsessing lately on science fiction and worldviews, and asking people for their different SF worldviews. But it's also obvious that most people hate talking about theoretical constructs around literature. And I totally understand this hatred. The route by which literature reaches the mind and soul is through being read, not through being analyzed.

I say all this because I'm about to recommend a book which most people shouldn't read—Samuel R. Delany's About Writing. This is the best writing book I've ever read. I can't recommend it enough.

Except that most people probably shouldn't read it. If you're not a fiction writer, don't read it. If you're a new fiction writer needing to learn the basics, don't read it. If you're an established fiction writer who doesn't give a fictional crap about the theoretical side of what you're writing, don't read it.

But if you're a fiction writer who knows the basics, and who wants to discover what's holding your stories back from the ideal in your dreams, this is the book for you.

I am now rereading this book. I expect I will reread it on a regular basis. This is writing book I'd like to be buried with when I die so archaeologists of the future can see what I tried to do with my fiction.

About Writing by Samuel R. Delany is the best damn writing book around. But most people shouldn't read it.

Like any human creation, Amazon can do both good and bad

This morning I wrote about a desperate-sounding email Amazon sent to all their Kindle Direct Authors in response to Douglas Preston and other authors who are tired of being abused by the online giant.

I've now heard from a number of people who have defended Amazon, and others who wondered why I don't accept Amazon's belief that lower ebook prices will be a boon for all authors.

Understand this—Amazon was created by humans and, as with any of our creations, can be used for both good and evil. For example, I grew up in an area with a bad library system and very few booksellers, none of which carried an in-depth stock of the books I desperately wanted to read. Because of that I loved going to big cities like Atlanta or New York where I could find independent booksellers who actually carried, you know, a ton of books.

I know my experience mirrors that of many people both in the U.S. and around the world. And for people like us Amazon is a true gift from the literary gods, enabling readers to have at their fingertips a sizable portion of the world's books.

Because this I've been sympathetic to people who both complained that Amazon was driving their local booksellers out of business, and to people who said they loved Amazon. I've seen the world from both perspectives, so to speak. 

As an author, my Amazon viewpoint is similarly complex. I appreciate that Amazon has helped my fiction be read by people around the world. However, I wouldn't have found any readers without traditional magazine publishers like Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction, which took a chance on my short stories. But I also know that Asimov's has seen its circulation grow in recent years thanks in part to the exposure the magazine's electronic edition receives on the Kindle.

Despite all this, the reason I'm opposed to Amazon's current stance toward book publishers is because I don't see any good coming to authors if Amazon becomes the world's defacto publishing monopoly. Yes, Amazon has done a lot of good for authors and often pays authors higher percentages than traditional publishers. But Amazon is in this for Amazon's sake—as are almost all businesses—and I have no doubt that if Amazon is able dictate terms to traditional publishers they'll eventually dictate not-so-great terms to all authors.

There's no going back to how the publishing and bookselling world used to be, nor would I want that to happen. But that doesn't mean I want any one corporation to have ultimate power over which books are published, how they are priced, and how much authors are paid.

Amazon feels the fear

A new email from Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing sneaked into my inbox this morning. I say "sneaked" because who sends out a promotional or marketing email at 4 am on a Saturday morning.

The answer: A company beginning to panic.

The letter is obviously in response to the letter signed by Douglas Preston and more than 900 other authors who are tired of being abused by Amazon. In the letter Amazon compares ebooks to the creation of paperback books before World War II and how that invention shook up the publishing industry. They also beg their Kindle Direct authors to email Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch and demand Hachette remove authors from the middle of these negotiations.

You can read the letter here.

I'm not going to dissect the letter, which contains a rehashing of Amazon's standard talking points. Instead, consider the timing. Amazon releases this letter early on a Saturday morning when most of their customers are asleep.

My guess is the Preston letter, which will appear in the Sunday New York Times but has already gained massive amounts of publicity, has them in a panic.

Amazon is used to being the friends of both authors and readers and investors. Now two of those groups have partly turned against them.

So they strike back with a 4 am email.

Yeah, they're feeling the fear.

When failure is the only way forward

Recently I received the worst rejection of my writing career. But I'm good with it because, as I write over on my Sci-Fi Strange collection at Medium.com, I've found that failure is the only way to go forward in life.

Stop the literary vampires from sucking the lifeblood out of readers

I've been avoiding the Stop the Goodreads Bullies (STGRB) controversy for a while. Hell, I thought the whole thing would blow over. I mean, seriously — authors hunting down and exposing readers who dislike their books? How can any author see that as a good career move?

But I've been wrong before and I was wrong about this blowing over. In fact, now that Anne Rice has joined in the campaign there's a chance this could snowball into a larger "reader versus author" fight. Which would be a true shame because most authors are disgusted by the actions of Rice and her fellow STGRBers.

In case you haven't heard of STGRB, a few authors have long complained that receiving large numbers of bad reviews on literary social media sites like Goodreads is equivalent to being bullied. As a result they started a campaign to punish readers who post multiple "bad" reviews. For more on this, I suggest reading Foz Meadows' analysis from several years ago, or this Dear Author post. 

But since Anne Rice joined the campaign the controversy has dialed itself up to 11. For example, when author Jenny Trout recently protested the campaign on Rice's Facebook fan page, Trout and others were blocked, with Rice calling them "gangster bullies."

Really? Fellow authors disagreeing with how Rice and others are acting makes them gangsters and bullies? 

The only bullying going on here is how these supposedly aggrieved authors are bullying their readers. The truth about being an author is that not everyone will like your stories. It's that simple. If you can't handle that truth then don't write fiction.

What really disgusts me about STGRB is how these authors are using their power and large fanbases against individual readers. In this I'm in total agreement with what Cyndy Aleo said in her amazing post "When good authors go to the dark side": 

So there are a few things I can't deal with online. I can't tolerate people who go off half-cocked without doing research. I can't tolerate people who have a huge online following who pick on smaller people. And I especially lose it when I see a combination of the two.

Aleo is absolutely right.

There's also another problem — the STGRB campaign has the potential to hurt all authors. If readers are afraid to voice their opinion online, they'll eventually avoid making any online comments about fiction, no matter if those comments are positive or negative. There's already a trend of businesses suing people for negative reviews on Yelp. Do we really want to expand censorship tactics like these to Goodreads? 

So what's an author to do if they receive a bad Goodreads review? Well, in Cyndy Aleo's essay she gives a great hint on how to handle that very situation — by remembering that Goodreads isn't for authors! It's for readers. For reviewers.

But I suspect the authors behind the STGRB campaign don't want reviewers — they want cheerleaders. 

As an author, I won't lie and say I enjoy negative reviews. But I also like having readers. And you can't have readers without also having some people who don't like your fiction.

So to every reader who has commented about fiction on Goodreads or Amazon or anywhere else — thank you. Please also know that Anne Rice and the other bullies behind the STGRB campaign don't speak for all authors.