Day: December 9, 2008

Tuesday various

  • Ken Jennings thinks about Tetris way more than I ever have.

  • Although I don’t see my own corner among them — did he bypass Madison Avenue altogether? — Richard Howe’s block-by-block photographs of Manhattan street corners are strangely fascinating. Thirty-ninth and 40th are my neck of the woods, if you’re curious. [via]

  • Some really terrific-looking 1930s pop-up books. [via]

  • A cute interactive YouTube adventure. [via]

  • Caitlin R. Kiernan writes of Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence that

    • …it appears as an sf story (and, I would say, works well as sf), it’s truly a fairy tale. Many things happen for fairy-tale reasons. Fairy-tale logic governs much of the film, and it strikes out, often, with all the cruelty and viciousness of the best fairy tales. I was very pleased that it’s aged so well. However, this is probably not a film for the sort of sf reader/audience who actually thinks that science fiction is (or, at least “should” be) concerned mainly with science and predictions of the future of man and technology.

    I may have to revisit the film in that context. But I don’t think the problems I had with it originally stemmed from a too-rigid definition of what science fiction is, or an idea in my head of how the film should or should not reflect that. I think it’s a very good movie and one of Spielberg’s most complex and mature. But I also think it’s deeply flawed on several levels. Fairy tales can be flawed just as easily as science fiction.

Kaleidotrope subscriptions

A reminder that now until December 31 is your last chance to subscribe to Kaleidotrope at the current rate of $16 ($25 int’l). That’s four issues of stories, poems and other various bits delivered straight to your mailbox twice a year. A terrific holiday gift for anyone eager to support an independent zine and its terrific writers!

Rates will be going up in 2009 ($18 US, $28 int’l), so subscribe now and save!

Buyin’ books

Gavin Grant explains why, if you can, it’s often better to buy your small-press books directly from the publisher:

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a company? Distribution? Promotion? Finances?Everything comes back to finances and sales. If we sell books through our website we get say 90% of the cost (we pay shipping and Paypal takes a percentage). If a book is sold through our distributor we can get as little as 35%. It’s a challenge to publish books on 35% of retail.

And yet he also says:

The one part of the internet that worries me in the great flattening-out-and-increase-of-accessibility is that when people go to what for them seems the easiest thing, it can be killing their local economy. Some online booksellers’ higher discounts mean that local businesses are losing business and in danger of closing. There is nothing like the human capital of a well-informed bookseller (or any other kind of store) and when buyers shop online they are taking the money from their local stores that would pay people to do the job in their town. So while your local bookshop may not carry everything, they can usually order what you want. And, again, since most people buy books in bookshops, getting them physical bookshop is important.

Publishing is a complicated business sometimes. But I don’t think he’s wrong: I still buy an awful lot of my books in brick-and-mortar stores. When it’s a smaller press that could really use the cash, though, it may be better to buy direct from them online.

I really can’t say enough good things about Small Beer Press, by the way. I’m delighted (albeit delightfully surprised) to hear they’ll be publishing a desktop calendar next year. And I just finished Geoff Ryman’s terrific The King’s Last Song, which they published in the US recently.

Updated to add… I think the calendar Grant refers to is the “Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010” available for pre-order here. It sounds very neat.