477 thoughts on “The Cold Nose Equations 6/6”

1. RE: “Wheel of Time series” Yeah. I could never get into the series, but a part of me goes 4.4 million words, over 23 years, the scope of effort is truly impressive. That deserves something, particularly considering that I either wasn’t interested or was unimpressed with the other works.

   Side note: When Laura Resnick talks about the business of publishing, listen. As much as I think that Torgersen is getting a bum rap, calling a potential business partner names is a rookie mistake.

2. Nick Mamatas: S&S distributes many publishers, including other SF publishers

   Just Games Workshop, if that counts. (I’m skipping Viz, Pikachu, & Boom).

   I also doubt the average bookstore owner or librarian is going to remember any particular Baen author and keep him or her off the shelves when it’s time to order books.

   All it takes is one. How do you think the main SF buyer at B&N feels about the Puppies and their rhetoric?

3. Christian K –

   RE: “Wheel of Time series” Yeah. I could never get into the series, but a part of me goes 4.4 million words, over 23 years, the scope of effort is truly impressive. That deserves something, particularly considering that I either wasn’t interested or was unimpressed with the other works

   True but it had an uphill battle, there were those who thought used a rule not meant for novels, not to mention it required reading 4.4 million words in between the nomination period and voting period for those who might not have been followers of that series, or those who might have but hadn’t read them in a while. Plus reviewing them as one work is more difficult because the middle books spend hundreds of thousands of words spinning its wheels and creating new plot threads without resolving prior ones. As a fan of the series and who thought Sanderson did an amazing job closing it out, I can see why you’d want it to win the award but I read a lot of the discussions going on at the time and could understand why others felt it did not.

4. I am the editor of VIZ’s SF imprint, Haikasoru. You can skip it if you like, but I see no reason to—the books I work on appear in the SF&F section in bookstores, are reviewed by the genre press, contain Hugo-winning fiction, and form the basis for Hugo-nominated films, which we co-produced. (Naturally, on here I speak for myself, not for my dayjob. Even I don’t work at 10:24PM on a Sunday night.)

   You also missed Rebellion (Solaris and Abaddon).

   I have no idea how Jim feels about the Baen author shenanigans—as he’s African-American I presume he isn’t a Rabid Puppy enthusiast—but I know he likes to fill those mid-store racks with mass market paperbacks, which Baen specializes in.

5. @Nick: “What the Baeners might be doing is making reviewers less likely to review them (though most Baen titles are review-proof anyway) and making anthologists unsympathetic to the Puppy slates less likely to solicit them”

   …and making non-Puppy readers less likely to read – or keep reading – them.

   I own and have read a lot of Baen books, with more on my shelves waiting for their turns. Over the past few years, I have become less and less enamored of them, and it’s really come down to one thing: Authors Behaving Badly. Throwing conservative red meat to your base is fine, right up to the point where your readers who aren’t in that base get disgusted and wander off.

   Now, it may well be that this is a first-order, short-term, net gain; if they attract more readers than they lose, the logical steps would seem to be not just to keep at it, but to ramp it up. The trouble is, I keep coming back to an old marketing maxim: one dissatisfied customer costs you ten more.

   If there’s one thing we fans do, it’s talk. No, let’s be honest: we gossip. This whole controversy is proof of that. If there’s a second thing, though… we remember. Several authors have lost my allegiance in this kerfuffle, and several more will lose the chance to gain it. Guilt by association may suck, but it exists. One publishing house in particular has plummeted in my estimation, and its name sure as heck doesn’t start with T. (Or C – that one was never on my radar to begin with.) I’m not boycotting them, or calling for one, but I’m damn sure taking a second (or third) look at their wares before buying them.

   And I talk to other fans. When they ask me what I like, certain names will no longer come up. Some may come up in a negative light: “Oh, him? Yeah, remember the 2015 Hugos? He was part of that fiasco.”

   Last brick in this wall o’text: Those cutesy “we didn’t quite say that exact thing” Puppy dodges don’t fool anyone. They damn sure don’t trick lost readers into giving them another chance. Nope, there’s a whole wide world of SFF that doesn’t have the slightest interest in punching people in the face as the price of admission. I’ll give them my loyalty and money instead. If the Puppies want to divide fandom into themselves and everyone else, I’ll be with everyone else. It’s a lot more fun here.

6. >> All it takes is one. How do you think the main SF buyer at B&N feels about the Puppies and their rhetoric?>>

   Utterly indifferent. Or, even if he or she has a reaction, it’s far less important than what books move numbers.

7. “If the Puppies want to divide fandom into themselves and everyone else, I’ll be with everyone else. It’s a lot more fun here.”

   Well said, Rev Bob.

8. Utterly indifferent. Or, even if he or she has a reaction, it’s far less important than what books move numbers.

   Exactly. A great way not to last as a national buyer for B&N for very long is to make decisions based on personal politics or pique.

9. Nick, I stand corrected– I’m so used to thinking of Viz as just manga, with my comic book publishing background. My apologies.

   And the last I talked to Jim, he was… let’s say underwhelmed by Puppy actions. I also know he’s much more professional than many Pups would give him credit for if the positions were reversed. How long that might hold as the Pups keep pressing their luck, however, is an interesting question.

10. No worries, and vote Edge of Tomorrow!

11. Rev. Bob,

    Certainly hardcore folks—anyone posting here!—is unlikely to be wowed by Puppy antics and may well stop buying Puppy books.

    One reason why the Puppies are going for a public spectacle is to activate their own right flank. If Notional Puppy loses you but gets three whelps who will now Buy Every Baen Title to stick it to the SJWs, then woohoo!

12. @Nick:

    Isn’t that what I said? Throwing red meat, activating the right flank… same thing.

13. I’m talking about going beyond their base—which I understood to be their present readers—to activate their further potential audience on the right.

14. RE: “Wheel of Time series”

    I treated it as if it had been a single volume novel. It might have been on the final ballot using a creative exploit, but there is no denying the impact the series has had on genre. Ultimately, what it came down to was that I stopped reading the series at Book 5, which is like abandoning a book about a third of the way in, and so it ended with a low position in my ballot.

    The Puppies nominees are also on the ballot thanks to an exploit, and based on quality, none of them are convincing me to vote for them so far.

15. It’s funny, I was originally thinking that the worst thing that could happen is that a buyer for Books-A-Million would be to shave the orders by 10% or so. I forgot we’re dealing with returnable books (comics background again).

    The mean thing to do would be to over-order by double and slam the publisher with returns.

16. @Nick:

    Yeah, still the same thing. US political parties do it all the time. Energize your base, so they’ll spread the good word and recruit others. That’s why I said:

    Now, it may well be that this is a first-order, short-term, net gain; if they attract more readers than they lose, the logical steps would seem to be not just to keep at it, but to ramp it up.

    Agitate the base to get them talking, and hope you win more than you drive off. Classic politics here.

17. @ Nick Mamatas: “There was a lot more churn when there were many more publishers. And of course, churning OUT of the field isn’t relevant to Torgersen sending his next ms in to Baen and, kaboom, it’s Moshe Feder who gets to champion it or not at the next meeting.”

    Although my intro to the business was VERY churning (upon making my first book sale, I went through 5 editors in 6 months at one house–and, I swear, it wasn’t because of ME!), and that IS unusual, I do not perceive less churn these days than there used to be. There are flurries and quiet periods, but churn is overall still the nature of the business.

    I also don’t agree that editors churning OUT is irrelevant to your example of Brad Torgersen, since when an editor churns out, the writers get reassigned. Sometimes that goes well, but often it does not. Whether a writer is reassigned to someone who can’t stand them or their work, or reassigned to someone who means well but can’t cope with the extra workload and leaves the writer’s delivered MS or option proposal at the bottom of a pile for 2 years, or reassigned to someone new who wants to build their own list… things often (not always; but often) go badly when your editor churns out–sometimes badly enough that it’s time to leave a house you previously thought you’d be at for many more years. It’s a pretty common problem for writers.

    Additionally, if any editors resign, get fired, get laid off, retire, or die at Baen, who knows who’d replace them? After all, Baen editor Jim Minz was a Tor editor. Why wouldn’t there would be other former Tor editors at Baen in future? It may well not be, but it doesn’t make much sense to assume it WON’T be, since it’s demonstrably among the possibilities.

    It’s just bad business for any writer to go around making enemies among editors or pissing off publishing houses. There’s not a teflon scenario for behavior like that–certainly not among midlist writers, anyhow.

18. “at this stage, how the slate was assembled, doesn’t really matter. The facts of the assembly have been out there since Day 1 and if you still have a problem with that . . . oh well.” –Brad Torgersen

    Fact: The posted slate does not match up well with the suggestions posted to Brad’s blog. Subfact: Two whole fiction categories of the slate don’t have any overlapping items with those suggestions.

    Fact: Larry Correia posted that “here is what the Evil League of Evil authors came up with in discussion [re: the contents of the slate]…. Everybody up there is someone who the ELoE talked about.” and “The ELoE talked about this a lot before putting together a slate.”. Collaborated by Brad posting “Gathered here is the best list (we think!)” in the slate announcement.

    Fact: Per blog posts about it, the self-named “Evil League of Evil” consists of Larry Correia, John C. Wright, Sarah Hoyt, Brad Torgersen, and, at least in the past, Vox Day. It is fuzzy whether Day was an active part of the Sad Puppies slate determination this year, was deliberately left some slots in some categories on the SP slate to fill in with his own Rabid Pups, or if he was not an active part of this year’s SP slate determination.

    At least Brad responded this time this was brought up; from every instance I’ve seen in the past, when people brought these facts up, he’d just disappear from the thread. So if the facts are meant to speak for themselves, what I’m hearing from them is that a clique of 4-5 people undemocratically selected the SP slate, possibly with a bit of input from the suggestions but by no means using the most suggested items or even any items in various categories. I’m pretty sure Sergeant Friday would agree that those are just the facts.

19. Gabriel F. on June 7, 2015 at 5:59 pm said:
    Completely off-topic, but I read a really good short story a while back on the recommendation of one of these threads and I can’t remember what it was called so I can link it to my husband 🙁 It had a playwright stuck in an apocalypse bunker with a genie and the world was covered with some sort of white creeping mold. I don’t want to give more detail because I’d hate to spoil it for those who haven’t read it… but can anyone name it and the author for me so I can find it again? It was posted in its entirety online.

    Tmv on June 7, 2015 at 6:04 pm said:
    @Gabriel f: As Good As New
    http://www.tor.com/2014/09/10/as-good-as-new-charlie-jane-anders/

    Thank you for that. That was an enjoyable read.

20. Whym on June 7, 2015 at 6:40 pm said:
    I just noticed that 4-time Hugo winner and feminist fan writer Susan Wood’s initials spell out SJW.

    Coincidence, or all part of the SJW clique’s eeeevil plan?

    On a serious note, Wood’s 1978 essay “People’s Programming”, which discussed her experiences with sexism in fandom, is an excellent read. I think someone on one of the threads last month directed me to it, so I’d like to repay the favor – here.
    http://efanzines.com/SusanWood/BestofSusanWood.pdf

    That’s an interesting essay — and sobering to realize it was written more than a generation ago and we can *still* get the token woman-pro-in-a-bikini in some ostensibly professional house publications.

21. Dela on June 7, 2015 at 7:42 pm said:

    So a Tor employee described the Sad Puppies as extreme right-wing, the Rabid Puppies as neo-Nazies, and the combined company as racist, homophobic, and misogynistic.

    Here’s how Brad talked about a couple of Tor employees on a Dave Freer post at MGC in April: “Nielsen-Haydens, your fellow travelers, and media goombahs . . . I MOCK YOU! I MOCK YOUR ASININE INCESTUOUS CLUSTERFUCKED LITTLE CULTURE OF DOCTRINAIRE PROGRESSOSEXUAL MEDIOCRITY MASKED AS SUPERIORITY! You are all dolts. You are moral and physical cowards. You are without ethics, without scruples, and if you weren’t so patently pathetic, I’d say you might be dangerous.
    Fuck you. Fuck you all.”

    Boy, I wish I had seen that back in April when I heard Torgersen was “the nice one.”

22. They like giving it, but they certainly don’t like taking it.

    It’s also quite tragic how easy it is for VD to press a few buttons and gain a reaction with a screencap that he’d been sitting on for a month.

23. Andy H: I am disappointed to realize that this is probably a hypothetical scenario, because I was really looking forward for a moment to reading that book.

    Hypothetical for now– Though, I had Nnedi Okorafor in mind when I wrote it. She’s American, but her family’s from Nigeria and the country is hugely present in her work.

24. Laura,

    Minz has been with Baen for seven years now. I’d call that an argument against the ubiquity of churn, not for it, especially as Baen has…what? Eight actual W2 employees, tops? How many people have left for another job, or come in since that time? A crucial question since the theory is that Brad is safe at Baen.

    Gallo has been at Tor since 1993, Feder has been kicking around there since 2000. Even if they leave Tor, the chances of them ending up in North Carolina are quite slim.

    My experience, as an editor, is that such jobs open infrequently enough that people who get them hang on to them tenaciously, and if they vanish from a chair it is because they moved internally or leave publishing entirely.

25. Nick: While your analysis certainly rings true to me, Brad has apparently been taking lessons from a man who is a world-class expert at burning bridges.

26. @ Nick: And yet I went through 4 editors at Tor, 3 of whom are no longer there. (There does seem to be something about working with ME that dooms an editor to leave a company…)

27. Wut-oh!

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