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Recent Writerly Stuff
Mar. 12th, 2018 09:20 pmTwitter is a fascinating world. I joined long ago so that I’d be able to find out about, say, author events at the Wheeler Centre. Then I stayed because a lot of fellow writers and librarians tweeted. It’s great to see drawings by Gabrielle Wang and Judy Horacek, and quotes by Michael Pryor(whom I also follow on Goodreads - he seems to have similar reading tastes to mine)
Lately, there has been news. People tweet links to articles or share news. Two writers have passed away in the last few days - US science fiction author Kate Wilhelm(Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang)and Peter Temple, Aussie crime writer(the Jack Irish series).
And the controversies! More controversies!
Terry Goodkind joked about the awfulness of his latest book’s cover. It was certainly rude and inappropriate of him to shame his cover artist in public. If he had a problem with it, he should have discussed it with his publishers. Most of us don’t get a say in our book covers - I was not crazy about my first two book covers, myself, one of them taken from an online photo library and later used for another book - by Anthony Horowitz, who is twenty times better known than me and clearly HE had no say in it either. But Goodkind is a big enough name to be able to at least discuss it with the publishers. Or not to have to worry about it because people will buy his books anyway. Now he has a lot of angry folk declaring on Twitter that they will not be reading his books again or that they didn’t like them anyway. It’s starting to look like that whole business on Goodreads I mentioned in a previous post, where an author acted outrageously but so did the Goodreads members who gave her one star ratings without having read her book.
Then there was Maggie Stiefvater, who wrote a polite open letter to her fans, asking them to please not take money for their fan fiction based on her books. Not to stop writing it - though I wouldn’t blame her if she did, as it’s her universe, after all - and I say this as a former fanwriter and one who enjoys reading it - but just to have some consideration and not take money for it, as her publishers would not like that very much. And THAT led to a long discussion and I’m fairly sure she copped some abuse. Honestly, people can have such a sense of entitlement! I bought one of her books in ebook immediately!
Lately, there has been news. People tweet links to articles or share news. Two writers have passed away in the last few days - US science fiction author Kate Wilhelm(Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang)and Peter Temple, Aussie crime writer(the Jack Irish series).
And the controversies! More controversies!
Terry Goodkind joked about the awfulness of his latest book’s cover. It was certainly rude and inappropriate of him to shame his cover artist in public. If he had a problem with it, he should have discussed it with his publishers. Most of us don’t get a say in our book covers - I was not crazy about my first two book covers, myself, one of them taken from an online photo library and later used for another book - by Anthony Horowitz, who is twenty times better known than me and clearly HE had no say in it either. But Goodkind is a big enough name to be able to at least discuss it with the publishers. Or not to have to worry about it because people will buy his books anyway. Now he has a lot of angry folk declaring on Twitter that they will not be reading his books again or that they didn’t like them anyway. It’s starting to look like that whole business on Goodreads I mentioned in a previous post, where an author acted outrageously but so did the Goodreads members who gave her one star ratings without having read her book.
Then there was Maggie Stiefvater, who wrote a polite open letter to her fans, asking them to please not take money for their fan fiction based on her books. Not to stop writing it - though I wouldn’t blame her if she did, as it’s her universe, after all - and I say this as a former fanwriter and one who enjoys reading it - but just to have some consideration and not take money for it, as her publishers would not like that very much. And THAT led to a long discussion and I’m fairly sure she copped some abuse. Honestly, people can have such a sense of entitlement! I bought one of her books in ebook immediately!
