My Writerly Blog

If you're in the publishing industry at all, as an author, an editor, or even just an interested consumer, you've probably read about the controversy surrounding Amazon's new POD publishing plans, and the restrictions it's placing on book listings that don't conform to their demands. Self-published authors are angry at the fact that Amazon would remove one-click ordering for books that don't use their BookSurge publisher. Some industry experts, on the other hand, are touting it as a possible wake-up call to the antiquated book publishing industry. Whatever. They're a business, a gigantic fracking business. The only thing I can do about their practices (as a consumer and as-yet unpublished novelist) is to buy my stuff elsewhere. Which got me wondering: what else is out there? Sure, there's Barnes & Noble, another box giant whose sales contribute little to author's pockets. Six of one, half dozen of the other, if you ask me. So I ...

A couple of months ago, I broke my nose playing rugby. I mean smashed it all over my face. Took the surgeon two tries to get it mostly straight, which meant I was icing my face for about three solid weeks (as each time he fixed it, he broke it all over again). I couldn’t type. I couldn’t watch Buffy, or Stargate Atlantis. I couldn’t read. Not through the icepacks on my face. I. Was. Bored. I bummed around, and discovered what most net-savvy people discovered circa 2001: podcasts. It wasn’t long before I hit on what is now my newest obsession: sci-fi and fantasy short story podcasts via EscapePod and PodCastle . Every week or so, these lovely folks podcast a new story in doses varying from 5 minutes to an hour. Some of the stories are fantastic, some are all right, some just aren’t my style. The thing is, though, that these are stories I probably never would have come across without a ton of subscriptions or pestering my local library beyond their abilities (I’m in the boonies. ...