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It's Saturday morning and I'm blogging from the Safeway (Oh brave new world! that has such breakfast nooks in it.) Today the con begins in grim seriousness. I'll be pontificating about steampunk and sharing my thoughts on "fun reads" (I'm tempted to say something like, "Fun?! Reading is grim business, sirrah!" but shan't), reading Poe's "The Raven," arguing about Urban Fantasy, and doing who knows what else. It should be fun.
Yesterday, I saw Zoran Zivcovic meet Darrell Schweitzer for the first time ("Darrell! At last!"), was chatting with Lizzie Lynn when she asked, "Do you know Grania Davis?" and then, rather than tell me an interesting story, as I expected, revealed that Grania was sitting beside her, plotted future publicity with my editor, signed literally hundreds of books, heard lots of gossip, learned lots of news, and . . . well, I could go on like this for hours.
Nobody's commented on the Google settlement thing. But I talked with some industry insiders last night and learned that it's even worse than I made it sound. People Who Know were using phrases like "The total destruction of the publishing industry." And not rhetorically. Literally.
Anyway, that's where things stand right now. Right now, it's back into the fray. I just wanted to keep you guys posted.
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3 comments:
The Department of Justice filing on the proposed settlement makes interesting reading.
Well, if that is any indication, the US Dept. of Justice does not think the settlement really "settles" much of anything, so hopefully Google will not starting plundering and handing away your life's labors for free just yet.
Oh, the whole thing is illegal ten ways from Sunday. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to count for much. I was chatting with a lawyer and he said that while the deal was disastrous for writers and publishers, we're only a small fraction of the public. Meanwhile, everybody ELSE benefits from cheap and easy downloads of any books they want. So it may not qualify as a monopoly.
Meanwhile, briefs have been filed by not only writers' groups but also such entities as France and Germany, objecting to the deal. So, at the very worst, I should be able to get my next novel published before everything goes flatline.
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