Cherie Priest on Authorial Control
Posted on January 20, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Want to know what aspects of the writing and publishing industry your average book author has control over? Sure you do. Well, Cherie Priest is here to tell you which they are in this useful and interesting essay (short answer: really very few). Click through to be enlightened, and then for f@#&’s sake stop e-mailing us to complain about the things we can’t do anything about. Because we can’t do anything about them, you see. Honest, we’re not lying.
Wow. I knew authors didn’t control everything, but I didn’t realize how little they control. Very informative article.
<pedant>She misused ‘beg the question’. Everybody does. *grumble*</pedant>
Great article; thanks for the link.
My favorite part?
the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”
loveitloveitloveit.
Haha! Thanks for the signal boost. I don’t delude myself into thinking it’ll actually make the emails go away, but at least I now have something to which I can link people …
Interestingly enough, I ran across this article moments before meandering over here.
http://jezebel.com/5451058/magic-under-glass-the-white+washing-of-young-adult-fiction-continues
The internets gang up on me sometimes, in bemusingly random fashions.
I’m glad that the Jezebel writers realized the author wasn’t at fault. For the whitewashing OR the obvious photoshopping of the corset length to a ridiculous degree.
I’m reading Boneshaker right now and am emjoying it very much. It is a GREAT book!!! I found the article by Ms. Priest very informative and intresting. I would like to recommed Boneshaker to everyone (as I have to the book club I belong to, and all of my friends).
So she’s not taking credit for Boneshaker having a kick-ass cover?
(And I agree…I really liked Boneshaker.)
Semantic shift, Xopher. Meaning is defined by the majority.
Of course, the phrase retains its original meaning in specialized fields, as well as living on in fossilized form through pedantry and stylistic authority, so the old meaning isn’t exactly incorrect either.
Thanks for the sigboo, John, and Cherie, thanks for this article, which I am going to link now and forever.
It’s so hard not to just howl when someone says “I hate your cover” as though you hadn’t been through endless pointless arguments with people who don’t listen to you about this very issue…
@10 Julia – I guess you could just say, “I know, me too.” (If you hate it, anyway.) That’s a real short and polite way of saying, “it’s not my fault!”