Month: February 2014

While Libraries Face Constant Cuts, They’ve Become More Popular

Anna Clark has a nice write-up on the increasing popularity of lbiraries across America, even as their budgets are constantly under assault:

Whether you chalk it up to the rise of the Digital Age or a diminished public commitment to shared services and a common wealth, a casual observer might think that American libraries are hopelessly old-fashioned—if not dying altogether.

Ironically, the best-kept secret about America’s libraries is that they are wildly, deeply, and incontrovertibly popular …

Read the rest at “Who Says Libraries Are Going Extinct?” at PSmag.com.

The Publishing Revolution Is Over: Indies Won

Bestselling author Hugh Howey and an anonymous “data guy” set off a bit of a bomb in the publishing industry last week when they released a report that used a sample of Amazon data collected from dozens of self-publishing authors and used some sophisticated sales rank extrapolations to paint a pretty interesting picture of where the money and sales are going.  If you aren’t up to date on the report and all the various reactions to it, Porter Anderson over at PublishingPerspectives.com has a nice summary on what many people are saying about it.  Read that, take a look at the report itself, and even download their extrapolations in Excel format.  I’ve been following the discussions pretty closely and I’m already exhausted by it.

Honestly, I didn’t find all that much surprising about the report, and regardless of any problem you might have with it (it is an extrapolation after all), it’s pretty hard to argue with the its bigger picture conclusions.  It confirms what most of us have believed for a few years at least, based on the anecdotal evidence we’ve been seeing all around us:  self-publishing, far from being a vanity fringe, is now a force to be reckoned with, and in fact, will only grow as the preferred option for writers over time.  This is why the insiders in the traditional publishing community are finally responding, some with near hysteria, which is how we know the revolution is over.

Writers have options now.  Real options.   Over time, those options should force traditional publishers to offer better royalties and contract terms, which have been abysmal lately and getting worse.  I say should, because the desire to publish is very personal and emotional for lots of writers, combining both the head and the heart, and most of the time that emotion overrides whatever a contract is saying in black in white.  Being able to say you were published by Simon and Schuster or Random House is always going to hold a lot of sway for a huge percentage of people.  I get that.  I feel it, too.  And under the right circumnstances, I’ll definitely work with traditional publishers again — but only under the right circumstances.

Which is the point.  The indie revolution was never really about self-publishing.  It was about being indie. Independent.  Having options, real options, not the store-boxes-of-books-in-your-garage-and-hope-for-a-miracle kind options, but options that allow you to make the same amount of money (or more) and reach the same amount of readers (or more) as if you went with a big traditional publisher, while still retaining control and copyright.  That revolution is over, and indies won.

Some Reminders for Folks Who Want to Argue on the Internet

Recently, when I inadvertently ended up reading a little dust-up between a couple of science fiction writers — boy, science fiction writers do like to argue, don’t they? — I went searching for a list of all the common logical fallacies and stumbled upon this (click to go to the site for a larger image):

It’s from yourlogicalfallacyis.com, which offers a great primer on the most common logical pitfalls that befall people when they argue.  Most people can’t help but use one or two — strawmen and appeal to authority, probably being the most common — but some folks manage to cover at least a dozen.  In fact, I’d say one of the immutable truths of arguing on the Internet is that the longer it goes on, the more of these fallacies will eventually be covered.

The Party’s Over for Higher Education

Clay Shirky, a leading thinker on the social and cultural effects of the internet, as well as a Professor of New Media at NYU, posted recently about “The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age.”  He provides a succinct history of how higher education got to its current troubles, then goes on to talk about possible solutions.  A key quote:

Many of my colleagues believe that if we just explain our plight clearly enough, legislators will come to their senses and give us enough money to save us from painful restructuring. I’ve never seen anyone explain why this argument will be persuasive, and we are nearing the 40th year in which similar pleas have failed, but “Someday the government will give us lots of money” remains in circulation, largely because contemplating our future without that faith is so bleak. If we can’t keep raising costs for students (we can’t) and if no one is coming to save us (they aren’t), then the only remaining way to help these students is to make a cheaper version of higher education for the new student majority.

If you have any interest in the future of higher education, I recommend reading the whole thing.