- Sat, 18:13: Boyfriend and I got shouted at at the bus stop for daring to hug in public!
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/s
This week's SBTB/DA bestsellers list is brought to you by the letter A (for Awesome), the letter B (for Books) and by the number 12 (just because).
- Untraceable by Laura Griffin | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- One Reckless Summer by Toni Blake | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- Hot Island Nights by Sarah Mayberry | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
- The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- A Different Kind of Forever by Dee Ernst | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo |
- Natural Law by Joey W. Hill | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
- The Heart of Devin MacKade by Nora Roberts | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
- Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE
Hope what you're enjoying this long weekend (if it is a long weekend for you like it is here in the US) is excellent!
Categories: General Bitching, SBTB/DA Bestsellers
The Tiptree auction is something I try never to miss; Ellen Klages, the auctioneer, is simply awesome. This year, she literally auctioned the shirt off her back: a t-shirt that said "Brontosaurus is still a planet," then stood around in a black long bra tucked into her jeans, looking rather elegant. "I could be embarrassed," she said, looking not embarrassed at all, "If I could, it would be around now." And she proceeded to auction the next two items before slipping on another t-shirt, this one saying "I'm not short, I'm fun size."
Yes.
She quite outdid the Space Babe, the mascot of the Tiptree Awards.So, to the panels.
MAGIC SYSTEMS
Having stayed up way too late - I always seem to forget I need a couple of hours to unwind *after* the parties - I made it down just in time to attend a panel on devising magic systems at 10 a.m. It was packed, and it was excellent.This panel turned into a far-ranging discussion of magic systems and their impact on technology; on social systems; and on economies. Some of the points:
- Magic as an eco-system. Damming a river to get water can give rise to silt build-ups and have far-reaching effects elsewhere in the eco-system. What if we considered magic in the same way?
- Common magic vs Deep magic. Simple magic with limited effects may or may not have a cost; but magic that could be world-changing *must* have an associated cost.
- Magic as a craft. One possible cost is the effort of acquiring the skill, and the opportunity cost as well - what are the kids at Hogwarts *not* learning while they spend so much time learning magic?
- Magic as a sacrifice. The cost may literally require a sacrifice. E.g. karmic sacrifices, where the devil keeps a tally and you sully your soul each time you use magic. Or Paolini's concept of magic tapping into the web of life-force, so for instance casting a spell kills a mouse - or worse.
- Magic and class. Who has the magic? Are they the rich and powerful? Would they share that, or keep control of it?
- Magic and technology. Would magic delay the introduction of technology? If you have mage-light, do you need an electric lamp? Or would it allow for leap-frogging technologies, like using "farsight" to study stars or microscopic creatures instead of telescopes or microscopes.
ASIAN ANCESTRESSES
The Asian Ancestresses panel was fun. The panelists were mostly second gen Asians; though the panel proposer, Jaymie Goh actually grew up in Malaysia as Malaysian Chinese, and now lives in Canada. Annie Chen is Chinese-American; Saira Ali Pakistani-American; Angeli Primlani is Indian-American; Emily Jiang's parents came from Taiwan and Mainland China. They all talked about *how* they accessed the stories that belonged to their cultures. It was generally mediated through English, because most of them did not read their parents' languages well. For many of them, they were stories they came to as young adults, rather than the actual stories they were told as children.
(Though I grew up in India, that was my experience too. The stories my parents told me weren't folk-tales or myths; they were made up and contemporary. In the Indian tradition, it's the grandmothers who tell the old stories, and my grandparents did not live near us. So the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharat, and the stories from the Panchatantra and folk-tales from various parts of India - I read those in English, in translations and re-tellings. They did make an impression; there was a book of Bengali stories given me by a favorite aunt and of course lost as childhood books often are. I recently re-found a copy on Amazon.)
The only bad thing was the panel ran out of time before it could be turned over to the audience. Still, hearing interesting re-told tales was worth it: Hang Lipo, the possibly mythic Chinese princess who married the Sultan of Malacca; the princess and rabbit on the moon; the story of Noor Jehan; the princess of Mt Ledang.
CROWD FUNDING AND SELF PUBLISHING
The next panel I went to was on crowd-funding and self-publishing. Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press talked about how she maintains a web presence and promotes her books. She has a long-running serial she offers free on her website; from time to time, she gathers a chunk of it into an e-book. She also spoke about Kickstarter, (a site that allows people to try to crowd-fund creative endeavors). Amanda Palmer (the musician who is married to Neil Gaiman) had a huge success when she tried to raise $100,000 and ended up raising $1 mn. Cecilia had success raising her targeted $2,750; but she pointed out that it needs constant promotion or people won't know (or remember) to make payments. It works best if you already have a platform: a well-frequented blog or website, a successful Twitter feed, a popular Facebook page. Some points:
- Effort is not enough. You need a plan that feeds your efforts into marketing either you as a person, or your project or both. Otherwise, you may use a lot of effort, but not actually build a buying audience.
- Know your audience. Octavia Butler said that her books had three audiences that didn't necessarily overlap: African-Americans, feminists, and spec-fic readers. Each needed to be marketed to separately.
- Leverage the internet. If you can find the right thing to say, you can get an audience of hundreds of thousands of people.
- Be creative. People on the internet are always looking for new things, so repeating old promotional methods won't necessarily work.
- Engage with your audience. This is part of building a platform.
- Offer prizes. Authors offer prizes for clicking on links, for comments on blog posts, for reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, and certainly for contributions on Kickstarter.
- Make loss leaders (stories or books) free on Amazon by making them free on Smashwords first.
- For paper copies of books, Createspace is the least-cost alternative now, and for a small extra fee will get you broader distribution via Bowker.
(Oops, didn't mean to shout. And there isn't yet a button to click on to sign up. But it's coming... be prepared!)
B: I completely missed the fuss in February.
C: I also missed the fatality in 2007.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
Soft-shell lobstermen listen
to the catch in the sea siren's
quick-pincered voice, puzzled
at her veiled cross-references to
post-Byzantine, haremless life
and orthodox triune espionage
conducted beneath Mediterranean
subfloors and among Phoenecian
ruins excavated for touristic use,
shrug and return to setting traps.
----
http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2012/0
This is how my desktop of the moment looks (click on all images for 1920×1080 versions):
This is a painting by Richard M. Powers for a 1974 paperback book, The Mountains of the Sun by Christian Leourier from Berkley Medallion Books. Powers’ art visually defined science fiction for many fans in the 1950s and 1960s because of his book covers for Ballantine Books.
Now I don’t know if this is legal by copyright standards, but I like to find images from science fiction book and magazine covers, and format them for my computer desktop background. I’m going to provide some basic instructions on how to do this, but they’re specific for Windows 7. Max OS X and Linux users can also have desktop backgrounds, but you’ll need to know your system to customize these instructions.
All computers, tablets and smartphones come with a method of changing the desktop background. Most devices have built-in programs for cycling these images. And you can install programs with various levels of sophistication that take folders of photos and cycle your desktop images and use the photos for a screensaver.
Finding the Photos
When I discover a book cover I like I go to Google and click Images and search on the book title. Usually somebody has already scanned it for the web. Google will show you an array of images. Here’s what a Google Images search looks like for “Richard Powers Art.”
Look for the highest resolution with the sharpest scan. I right-click on potential images and select “Open link in a new window” and then click on “Full-Size Image.” That gives me the image in a browser page by itself. You want the largest possible version you can get, because unless the image is the same size as your desktop it will be blown up to fit your screen and small images can become very blurry. When you find one you like, right click and select, “Save image as” and save it into a folder for collecting your desktop SF art.
[FYI, IE will shrink an image to fit within the browser window. If it does, you’ll see a little magnifier with a + in it. Click the image and you’ll see the full size version. It will be bigger than the browser window sometimes. Sometimes much bigger. Right click and save that version to get the absolute best results.]
Repeat this procedure until you have a little collection of art.
Formatting for the Desktop
Most pictures you collect won’t have the same aspect ratio as your screen. If you want to preserve the original image do nothing. This is especially true if you are collecting book and magazine covers. However, your screen will end up looking like this:
But sometimes it’s fun to crop part of the art to fit the screen to really show off the art. Like this:
If you click on this image to look at the full size image you’ll see that my blow-up looks a bit fuzzy. However, it’s within my acceptance range, but I’d prefer a sharper image. If I see a better scan someday I’ll grab it.
[FYI, I was inspired to grab this cover by Joachim Boaz’s Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Eye(s) in the Sky.]
Cropping for the exact desktop size is a bit tricky. It helps to have Photoshop or some other program that let’s you crop by pixel height and width. Luckily, there’s a free online Photoshop clone you can use at http://pixlr.com. Go to that link and click on –> Open photo editor <-. Then click on “Open image from computer.” Browse to your art folder and select an image to edit.
Then click on the crop tool, under Constraint at the top, a small pull-down menu, select “Output size” and in the Width and Height text boxes put in the dimensions of your monitor. Mine are 1920×1080. Then click on the upper-left corner of the area you want to crop and drag down the mouse to the bottom right. Let go. You’ll see a frame outline that you can reposition. Double click on the crop to finalize. Anything you crop will be in the exact dimensions of your monitor. Then in the Pixlr File menu, select Save and put the picture back on your computer. I usually renamed crops so they have the dimensions as part of the name. For example, eye-in-the-sky-1920×1080.png.
You can also use pixlr to punch up the color, brightness, contrast, and other image variables, and even fix bad spots.
Basic Manual Setup
Now that you have some images ready, we can turn them into backgrounds. If you aren’t running a background changer, meaning the image on your desktop never changes, we’ll install one of your new images manually. Go to your SF Cover Art folder and find an image you want to use. Right click on the image filename and select “Set as desktop background.” Your image should now be the desktop background. Minimize all windows and admire. [There is a button at the far right of the Windows 7 Taskbar that will close all windows on the desktop so you can see your art unhindered. Clicking it again brings back your windows as they were.]
Automatic Desktop Changer
If you right click on your desktop background and select “Personalize” you’ll see something like this:
At the bottom is a link to “Desktop Background” – select it. You’ll then see:
I normally use another program for switching backgrounds, but Windows 7, and most other OS systems, have a simple desktop changer built in. You can select the built-in program for Windows 7 up at the top of this screen, it’s called “Windows Desktop Backgrounds.” Then hit browse and find the folder with your art. Set the “Picture Position” to Fill, and “Change picture every” to 30 seconds. You can change this to a real time interval later, for now this will quickly show your images to you for testing.
For years I used a program called Webshots, and it’s wonderful, but it wants to show pictures in its file format. You can add your pictures to its format, but that’s extra work. Recently I’ve discovered John’s Background Switcher. Gizmo’s Freeware has a whole list of Wallpaper Changers. I like John’s Background Switcher because it can handle many sources for pictures, including online galleries, and even images from my Webshots folder.
Other Galleries
I have other galleries other than SF Cover Art, like astronomy photos and copies of famous paintings. If you search around for Desktop Art or Background Art, you’ll find a myriad of images to collect. Here’s an astronomy desktop.
I’m also fascinated by historical photographs, like this street scene.
Having photos, or copies of artwork blown up and randomly shown is very stimulating. Photos induce interesting contemplative states of mind for me. I’m very inspired by visuals. At my work office, visitors often sit across from me and stop talking because they get mesmerized by images on my computer screens. I have a dual monitor setup at work.
I’ve always loved book, magazine and album cover art. I’ve collected art books for decades. I hated when LP covers shrank to the size of CD covers. Paperbacks are naturally small to begin with. So putting this kind of artwork on a 23” 1080p screen really showcases the art. If you have a HTPC, you can also use the same techniques for putting art on your large high definition television screen.
My art books seldom get looked at, but stuff on my desktop gallery gets looked at every day. It’s a visual reminder of how big the universe is when I’m sitting in front of a 23” monitor all day long.
One reason I switched from Webshots to John’s Background Switcher is that program makes it easy to add new photos to my desktop galleries. Whenever I find something good on the net I just do a right click, save image as, and put it on of my desktop background folders. I also have a folder in Dropbox so I can save images from any computer I use.
Back in the early 1970s my roommate Greg and I would use macro lenses and photograph covers of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Astounding & Analog, Galaxy & If, as well as book covers and show them at our SF Book Club meetings. People loved seeing the SF/F art blown up big. Putting covers on your desktop is much easier and you get to see them everyday.
JWH 5/26/12
Two fascinating surveys appeared this week. They look at opposite ends of the writing business, but dovetail in interesting ways. (This is going to be a long post, so please bear with me.)The Writers' Workshop Survey of Professional Authors
In March, the Writers' Workshop, a UK-based writers' consultancy, launched a survey of traditionally published authors. The aim: to discover how authors feel about their publishers in a time of rapid change, where "it has become possible – arguably for the first time in history – for authors to detach themselves from publishers."
The survey results were posted this week, and they make for interesting reading. Authors are generally happy with a number of aspects of the traditional publishing process--notably, the editing they receive.
Around 75% of authors rated their editorial input as having been good or (more commonly) excellent. Just 14% disagreed...Marketing, however, was a different story. A majority of authors felt they weren't adequately consulted on their publishers' marketing plans, that their skills and strengths weren't adequately utilized, and that they had little input or control (ah yes--I know the feeling). About half the respondents felt that communication by the publisher was poor, and nearly half said that their publishers never sought feedback from them.
Similarly – and again contrary to many stories about declining standards – authors rate their publishers extremely highly on copy-editing, proof-reading, page design and so forth. More than 80% of authors regarded their publishers as being good-to-excellent in these areas...
On the matters of cover design and jacket copy, authors remained broadly positive. About three-fifths of authors were highly satisfied with the way these things turned out. The remainder were, on the whole, ‘somewhat’ satisfied.
And while there is much grumbling in the writing community about the lack of publisher loyalty, with publishers no longer willing to stick with writers over several books while they build an audience, authors are just as fickle. 40% of survey respondents said they'd move to another house if given the chance. 22% weren't sure.Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA
Should the OAS set upsomething similar for North and South America?
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
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