This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Author Topic: Mercedes Lackey Cancelled  (Read 3231 times)

Iron_Rain

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • I
  • Posts: 161
Re: Mercedes Lackey Cancelled
« Reply #15 on: July 20, 2022, 08:10:00 PM »
This is why I'm leery of trying to get published nowadays. Publishing houses have been taken over by identity politics. I feel like I'd have to write most of my cast as disabled transwomen of color to have any hope of getting published, even if identity is completely irrelevant to the content. But even if I did, I'm afraid that I'd be damned anyway by the #ownvoices crowd for not being a disabled transwoman of color myself or otherwise attacked for failing to meet arbitrary purity tests. I could try writing all my characters as hermaphroditic purple cat people, but I'm worried that will attract furries and get my work an undesirable reputation that way.

Blech!

Most of the imaginitive stuff is now self published for this reason. Get a Kindle Unlimited account and you'd be surprised what kind of cool stuff you can find. I'm going to be doing that with my own fic, which does have some discussion about race, but I have ZERO interest in going through the modern ethics Hunger Games experience in order to be published.

BoxCrayonTales

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • B
  • Posts: 3313
Re: Mercedes Lackey Cancelled
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2022, 10:22:22 AM »
I'm quite sure you're talking about Patricia Briggs "Mercedes Thompson" series.
Oh. My mistake.

Most of the imaginitive stuff is now self published for this reason. Get a Kindle Unlimited account and you'd be surprised what kind of cool stuff you can find. I'm going to be doing that with my own fic, which does have some discussion about race, but I have ZERO interest in going through the modern ethics Hunger Games experience in order to be published.
Yeah, I'm probably going to self-publish or something.

Reckall

  • Junghian alchemist
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2004
Re: Mercedes Lackey Cancelled
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2022, 03:50:13 PM »
I'm quite sure you're talking about Patricia Briggs "Mercedes Thompson" series.
Oh. My mistake.

Most of the imaginitive stuff is now self published for this reason. Get a Kindle Unlimited account and you'd be surprised what kind of cool stuff you can find. I'm going to be doing that with my own fic, which does have some discussion about race, but I have ZERO interest in going through the modern ethics Hunger Games experience in order to be published.
Yeah, I'm probably going to self-publish or something.

In my career I published for third party franchises, I put out original stories under existing publishing houses, I was tasked to judge others' creative works and I self-published. Don't think that the third job is evil or self-publishing easier. You must develop objective critical skills in your work or - better yet - pay a good editor out of your pocket. When I see a problem in someone else's work, among the first things I say is "You can hear about this problem from me and fix it or you can hear about it from the public, and by then it is too late."

Of course I also proceed to explain why I feel that it is a problem and I never fail to say "Anyway, this is your story. If you agree with my assessment, change it and the change is a disaster, that's still on you, not on me." And yet being a good editor is hard: you must understand the writer's poetic and try to understand why the story doesn't work according to his poetic, not your idea of a good story. It is this quality that allowed to Campbell to launch the careers of so many different SF writers (possibly renouncing to his own: he had pushed out "Who Goes There?" when he stopped).

Or, for a different example, one day Tom Clancy came to the decision that "he was too good for editors to tamper anymore with his writing". From that day on he had "veterans of the Falklands" in 1981, a chemical attack at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney that used a compound "especially adapted to the Summer climate" (I'll leave to you to edit this one), someone evaluating the attempt on the Pope by watching it live on TV when no such images ever existed, a "state-of-the-art computer with a 486 processor" in the early 2000s and more.

By all means, self-publish: just remember who kick in the behind when "The elf was moving silently, bow, arrow and sword in one hand..." remains in your book.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

Iron_Rain

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • I
  • Posts: 161
Re: Mercedes Lackey Cancelled
« Reply #18 on: September 04, 2022, 09:47:02 PM »
I'm quite sure you're talking about Patricia Briggs "Mercedes Thompson" series.
Oh. My mistake.

Most of the imaginitive stuff is now self published for this reason. Get a Kindle Unlimited account and you'd be surprised what kind of cool stuff you can find. I'm going to be doing that with my own fic, which does have some discussion about race, but I have ZERO interest in going through the modern ethics Hunger Games experience in order to be published.
Yeah, I'm probably going to self-publish or something.

In my career I published for third party franchises, I put out original stories under existing publishing houses, I was tasked to judge others' creative works and I self-published. Don't think that the third job is evil or self-publishing easier. You must develop objective critical skills in your work or - better yet - pay a good editor out of your pocket. When I see a problem in someone else's work, among the first things I say is "You can hear about this problem from me and fix it or you can hear about it from the public, and by then it is too late."

Of course I also proceed to explain why I feel that it is a problem and I never fail to say "Anyway, this is your story. If you agree with my assessment, change it and the change is a disaster, that's still on you, not on me." And yet being a good editor is hard: you must understand the writer's poetic and try to understand why the story doesn't work according to his poetic, not your idea of a good story. It is this quality that allowed to Campbell to launch the careers of so many different SF writers (possibly renouncing to his own: he had pushed out "Who Goes There?" when he stopped).

Or, for a different example, one day Tom Clancy came to the decision that "he was too good for editors to tamper anymore with his writing". From that day on he had "veterans of the Falklands" in 1981, a chemical attack at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney that used a compound "especially adapted to the Summer climate" (I'll leave to you to edit this one), someone evaluating the attempt on the Pope by watching it live on TV when no such images ever existed, a "state-of-the-art computer with a 486 processor" in the early 2000s and more.

By all means, self-publish: just remember who kick in the behind when "The elf was moving silently, bow, arrow and sword in one hand..." remains in your book.

Absolutely, and I have no illusions about being the next J.K. Rowling, or even making more than pocket change. Here's my rationale - I have been working on my novel since about early 2017. I am on my 3rd draft, and have no interest at all in doing a fourth. I'm fairly sure a publisher would require more work, and I sincerely don't want to do it. I'm just done. I just want to publish this story and be done. My goal is to sell one hundred copies, that's it. I have no pre-existing blog or platform to boost sales, I don't care about that stuff and my day job is "boring." (Though it pays the bills and gives a nice pension.)

As soon as I started really taking my writing seriously, reading books on how to write better, how to self-publish or get published... My ability and interest to write just imploded. My wife finally remarked that I was much happier when I was just writing fanfiction 2010-2015 and not taking what I was doing seriously as a potential means of income, which started around 2018 after finishing my first draft. I learned a lot about how to self evaluate, self edit, be a strong self critic... And somehow made my entertaining but flawed first draft into a dull lifeless over-edited second rewrite (according to beta readers). Maybe my 3rd draft will do better.

As for authors who listen to their editors, Louis McMaster Bujold apparently listens to hers, and frankly, it shows in that she self publishes and I find almost everything she writes at my local library.

When I read self published books on Kindle, the authors are much more microtargeting highly specific markets that can only be found via keyboard. They also tell non-traditional stories that don't follow hidden archtypes and formulas nearly as much as published books do. And yes, the quality is substantially lower on average as a result. It's unfortunate.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2022, 09:51:27 PM by Iron_Rain »