I have long ago adopted as my first “hurdle” your recommendation to avoid the urban fantasy dreck that’s out there. If the cover features a woman holding a sword or gun, dressed in black leather or slinky dress, with either posterior or bussom prominent, I don’t even pick up the novel.

I’ve added a second hurdle, which is a male model looking protagnist on the front cover. I sometimes will violate this rule based on word of mouth. For example, Webmage by McCullough and Levitt’s New Trick were pleasant surprises.

As to the preachiness, I don’t mix apple and oranges. I my opinion the para romance problem (accounting for almost half the new F&SF in the shelves recently, if my informal eyeballing of the new releases is any indication) and the political/cultural subtext problems are different issues. For example, I can handle novels that are hard left, if they are subtle about it. For example, Morgan’s Altered Carbon was a good book. I was unsure if the political subtext Morgan was trying to support or preach was libertarian, anarchist or hard left. And I was happy with that uncertainty. By contrast, Morgan’s Market Forces was too blatantly anti-capitalist. I did not care for it. And I have not read the Steel Remains, largely as Morgan’s interviews seems to delight in insulting readers who wouldn’t normally care for reading a homosexual protaganist’s viewpoint. And despite my conservative-libertarian bent, I gave up in disgust Frankowski’s Two Space War as it was just too much.

Regardless, I appreciate good writing. I despise romance, no matter how well written. I despise pontificating authors, which Morgan is becoming. I react by not buying their novels. A simple solution.

You’d have to have them special order the books, but sure.

by the was – John – does your offer to personalize books at your local boookseller include Sub. Press editions of your books?

Matt @ 60 – I know that price increases are frustrating, but one thing to keep in mind is that publishers have to take rising costs into account themselves. Not in the sense of “Oh hey, the movie theatres are jacking up prices, so we’ll keep up with the Joneses.” I’m talking about production costs – the price of paper has gone up. When gas was at $4 a gallon, shipping prices went through the roof. Consider that a lot of the big publishers are free freight – booksellers meet a certain minimum, and they don’t have to pay to have the books delivered; the publisher eats that cost. It gets expensive. So while it would be nice to keep hardcovers in a certain price range, there’s going to be some unavoidable inflation there.

Also, most people don’t know about interlibrary loan. If you have a small local library, you are probably entitled to borrow books from all over the state through the ILL system.

But Steve Moss (21) I think is making the kind of unfortunate assumptions that, ironically, lead people to be reluctant to get out of their comfort zones. Sure, there’s loads of “urban fantasy” and para-romance dreck out there (don’t I know it, as I get deluged with the shit monthly). But that stuff’s easy to avoid. Just don’t buy anything that has a tatted goth chick holding a sword silhouetted against a full moon on the cover.

I simply don’t know why you assume everything else out there that you aren’t reading that isn’t urban-fantasy/pararomance is by default some preachy writer trying to shove a worldview down your throat. There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s just damn good entertainment that isn’t getting read, simply because the writer hasn’t achieved a high enough profile. Have you checked out Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, Kay Kenyon, Chris Roberson, Scott Lynch, David Gemmell, Toby Buckell? I think you’ll find there are more just plain good yarns lurking outside your comfort zone than you realize, far more than the crap that’s keeping you in it.