Catching Up on ConCarolinas and Final(ish) Notes on The Deal
Posted on June 1, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 71 Comments
Behold my latest “award”: A feather duster, provided to me by Wendy Delmater at ConCarolinas, when we were on a panel about awards in science fiction. This is “The Award For Most Awards, 2015,” jokingly given but in fact gratefully received, as the awards do get dusty and dusting them is kind of a pain in the ass. This is one award that has a practical component, which is not a usual thing. It’ll likely stay on or near the shelf with the rest of the awards.
This “award” was just one of the delightful things about ConCarolinas that I got to experience this last weekend as Krissy and I attended. The convention treated us very well, both the folks running the convention and those attending. And both of my panels went swimmingly indeed. The first was a Q&A moderated by John Hartness, which ended up as a combination of John and I cracking each other up, and talking seriously about the business of writing, framed, unsurprisingly, by the deal I just made with Tor. I thought it was pretty much the right combination of fun and informative.
The second panel, I’m not gonna lie, I was worried about: It was “What Good Are Awards Anyway?” and was, quite obviously, about awards in science fiction and fantasy. Clearly, at one point or another it was going to touch on the Hugo situation this year, and that could have gotten annoying, fast. I’m happy to say that in fact the panel turned out to be a truly excellent and wide-ranging discussion, thanks to everyone on the panel (Hartness, moderator Missy Massey, Wendy Delatmer, Edmund Schubert and Gray Rinehart) all deciding that we didn’t want to just dwell on the Hugos, and did want to talk about the larger topic. We did of course discuss the Hugos, but by the time we got to them, in the last few minutes of the panel, enough discussion and context had been laid down that it was just part of the natural flow of the conversation. It ended up being one of the best panels I’ve been on recently, and that was down to my co-panelists, who to a person were professional and personable. I’d share a panel with them any time.
While at the convention, Krissy and I also managed to sneak away in the evenings with friends to experience Charlotte, which is a fine town if you are with the right company who knows where to go, which we were. So convention in the day, Charlotte at night, and all around, simply a wonderful time. We’ll be back. And in the meantime: Thanks, ConCarolinas. It was a blast.
Now I’m back at home, which is nice after a week of being on the road for events at BEA and at the convention, and after a week of watching the world react to the book deal. While I’ve hit most of the points about the deal that I wanted to make in previous entries here and here, I do have a couple of final(ish) observations to make about it, mostly relating to personal things.
The first is — brace yourself for a total lack of sympathy here — announcing a deal this size is actually really stressful. Not because people have been generally snarky or cranky about it; in fact nearly everyone has been lovely. But even good, positive attention can be taxing over a long enough period of time, and the deal happened just before I headed to BEA — the biggest bookseller event of the year — and then to a convention.
It was a whirlwind. People often don’t believe me when I tell them that I’m an introvert, but I am, and this last week because of travel and everything else, I didn’t get a whole lot of downtime to recoup from being around a ton of people. So even in the middle of what was objectively really one of the best weeks of my career, I was stressed out. Happy! Excited! Thrilled! And stressed. Again, I totally get it if people are less than sympathetic to my plight — I’m less than sympathetic, and it happened to me — but there it is. If in the last week you met me and I had a “deer in the headlights” kind of look about me, now you know why.
The second is that the week has reminded me that the vast majority of people really are happy when good things happen to you. I can’t tell you how wonderful folks have been to me in this last week, online and off. It’s also been great to be (relatively) open about the experience of the deal to people — to answer questions about how it happened, what the details are and how it will work moving forward. People generally seem to be less interested in the money porn aspect of it than they are about the mechanics of how this deal will play out over a decade and a baker’s dozen of books.
This pleases me. The deal has a fair amount of money attached to it, but speaking personally, the thing about the deal that is important to me is that the deal requires work. I’m not getting millions to be a showy celebrity loss leader book for my publisher (and if I were, boy, did they make a mistake). This deal is about a career — reflecting both the work it took to get to this particular point, and the work both I and my publisher are planning to do to keep it all going and (hopefully) build from here. The dollar figure draws attention, but it seems that by and large the workaday aspects of the deal are what people eventually come away with. I can’t complain about that. It is a workaday deal. A very nice one, to be sure. But I am going to have to bust my ass for the next decade to earn it. I’m glad people see it.
The third thing is that the commentary has revealed to me both how little so many people understand about how publishing works — which is understandable, because it’s specialized knowledge you don’t need to know unless you’re in publishing — and how some people certainly don’t let their own personal ignorance about how publishing works stop them from trying to convince other people that this deal is somehow not a good one — which is, objectively, kind of stupid and makes them look stupid for suggesting it. Of the second sort, rather than me detailing the stupidity of it, allow me to link to this blog post by Jim Hines, who has already done the requisite work.
I will say that at least some of this nonsense clearly stems from a personal animus various people have against me, either personally (i.e., maybe I was once mean to them online and now they hates the Scalzis forever, precious), or because they identify with some person or group which has hating me as a membership requirement. Their narrative has as a given that I am forever failing or on the verge of doing so, and that when it comes to the business of publishing that I am, at the very least, a naif, whereas they are stuffed with certain knowledge of How Things Work.
As I’ve noted before, there’s nothing to be done about these folks — haters gonna hate, etc — but I’ll admit that I do receive a certain snarkalicious joy out of watching these folks be so wildly wrong about pretty much every single thing they assert about me and my career. A favorite recent moment for me was reading some of these fellows expound, in great detail, how the Bookscan numbers for Lock In proved that particular book was in fact a great failure, that both I and my editor were in a panic about this, how Tor was planning to drop me and how my career was almost certainly doomed — at the same time as I was actively negotiating a seven-figure deal with the aforementioned editor and publisher that would keep me in house through 2026 at least, and would include sequels to Lock In. I couldn’t wait for the news of the deal to come out to see how stupidly wrong they would be about that, too. Suffice to say, they have not disappointed. It must be a blessing to be so ignorant about how ignorant you are.
But, again, these folks are a tiny minority. Most people have been wonderful. To you, the wonderful majority, I say: Thank you, thank you, and thank you again. And now that the news and commentary of the deal is beginning to settle down, what is left to do is the actual hard part: Write the books. I’m looking forward to that more than I can tell you.
For those of you who need context for Bookscan: It’s a service (from Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings) that scans physical book sales at many stores, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon. But, significantly, not at many indie bookstores and other places, or electronic sales, or audiobook sales, so the reported numbers tend to be percentage of overall sales. How big that percentage is can vary. When I wrote this piece, Bookscan had captured just over 20% of the total sales of Redshirts, which is to say, not a lot.
This makes extrapolating total sales from Bookscan numbers somewhat unreliable; one might want to be careful about doing so. Especially if one is trying to confidently assert things about someone else’s career from them.
Totally understand the need to de-stress from too much social interaction. #sympathies
I was actually surprised at just *how* happy I was about your deal; it left me buzzed for most of a day. This is partially because I’m a fan of your work and very much look forward to reading a lot more of it, and partially because I feel like ANYONE getting a deal like that is good news for all of us writer people, even the indies (me) who are more likely to celebrate $3.4 hundred than $3.4 million. Either way, I feel like I win somehow, y’know?
I can’t imagine what announcing a deal like this would be like. If I think about it happening to me I get cold sweats. Also, once more: Your deal proves nice guys really do sometimes win and that is an awesome thing.
And the thing is, even people who are IN publishing don’t know all the ins and outs. Each house is different in how they’re organized, which departments have the most power, what their editorial or marketing specialties are, etc etc.
I worked for one big NY trade house that was bought by another, and while there were a lot of similarities, there were plenty of differences, too. And they were both different from the experience of people at the other big NY houses, never mind the difference from smaller houses or specialty publishers!
Agree with your comment, @Luther M. Siler – completely.
It was a significant enough deal to get an article in the NY Times, which not only makes it important for you and your future as an author, but also gives me personally the schadenfreude of knowing how much Right Wing Butthurt Theodore Beale, Brad Torgeson and Larry Correia must be feeling right about now.
I have some Ben-Ghazi Cream to smear all over the affected area, if they’re interested…. ::halo::
Scalzimasochist, n. (internet slang), one who enjoys looking a fool while trying to make John Scalzi feel pain.
1. I sympathize with the stress. I’m a highly functional introvert, so folks tend to think I’m an extrovert when I’m out and about. They don’t see me holed up in my house to recharge. Although I gave away the game at this job when I took a week’s vacation to live in a hut in the woods without plumbing or wifi. The reaction was almost universally, “That sounds amazing and wonderful, but I couldn’t do it.” For me, a week is the bare minimum to recharge. I could have stayed indefinitely.
2. I’ve worked in publishing and I don’t understand how it works.
3. People who can’t celebrate others’ joy, well, that says a lot about them, but not anything about their target. What’s the point of living other than to reduce the suffering in the world? To do less harm? I am saddened that some cannot appeal to the angels of their better natures, but I’m glad you haven’t let it get to you, and that the shared SQUEE drowns out the haterz.
4. Speaking of which, I’m really looking forward to Haterz by James Goss [http://www.amazon.com/Haterz-James-Goss/dp/1781083010]. I’ve got it on hold from the local library. I don’t see how the novel can possibly go wrong.
I must admit that one of the best bits of the deal announcement was the sudden deafening silence from a puppy trying to parse your sales numbers into failure over at File770.
Highly amusing!
Are you sure the new award isn’t some sort of voodoo fetish?
From the sidelines I will chime in. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with you for reasons you rightfully do not care. Having said that I would never wish harm or failure on you or the anti-scalzi types. I was intrigued and then happy for your deal and look forward to what gems it may produce. So great news for new and happy writing. I am hoping something comes along to tickle my fancy.
I am sympathetic, since I am an introvert myself. The truest thing I ever read (I’d give credit if I could remember where I read it) is that for introverts, we need to be with other people just as much as extroverts, and we may even enjoy it, but it’s HARD. I had a great time this weekend, and managed to get through you signing my brand new copy of Lock In without too much fangirl squee. Then I came home and slept for nearly 10 hours. I may do that again tonight, because I’m still tired.
If poor racist woman-fearing Teddy-Weddy “Vox Day” Beale wants some attention, here it is:
1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale
2. He’s a chip off his old man Robert (World Net Daily) Beale’s block — and heeeere’s Robert: http://archive.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=540300&catid=2
3. http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/category/vox-day/
Extending sympathy from a fellow high-functioning introvert. Yup, I can indeed act like a life-of-the-party fun-loving extrovert, but boy howdy, does it ever suck me dry. I wish you peaceful solitude for recharging, with fur therapy applied PRN. Be well, and take care of yourself.
Phoenix Woman:
Preeeeeeety sure most people here know who the fellow is.
I’ve found that kitty snuggles are a good way to de-stress from being around people for too long.
Introvert here as well (INTJ to be technical if you know your Myers Briggs).
I don’t know publishing and I am perfectly happy to take your word that it is a good deal. From what I know it sounds like a good deal simply because if give you security in an insecure field.
When I worked in DC there used to be rule (I hear it changed) that you were not allowed to talk politics in the Bars. The Bartenders would ask you to leave. Why? because nobody wants to talk or think about work when they are done with work. I loved that rule. Not sure how it could be modified to work for a writer, but it was nice.
“What good are awards” ;-p My award for not crying about being in last place made me happy for weeks.
Note to self: Must get this trophy.
I want to say I’m pretty thrilled about your deal. On one side it’s just cool to see people being successful, but on the other side of it I’m just shopping my first “real” book around and your deal says to me, “look at this. Once upon a time this guy was some dude with a first book.”
Work? Just because you have roughly a million words to produce for the deal? Pshaw. :)
I’ve never seen anyone quite so teased mercilessly for their success. Congrats! Keep up the good work.
As a fellow introvert, and one who is so often thrust into the spotlight on a regular basis, I know just what you are talking about. It’s pretty much the reason I’ve put 73,000 miles on a scooter… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pighz-UjRgQ
Aside from the obvious thing about the deal (it’s a lot of money), if it were me the coolest thing about it is that you get a decade that’s relatively free from worry about money. Deliver the books and, presuming they sell to projections or thereabout and you don’t have to fret about income. Sure, stuff can go wrong and I’m sure there’s other stuff that will come up (both other opportunities and distractions) but it’s got to feel good as a creative person to have a deal in place that more or less says “Hey, do what you’ve been doing and we’ll pay you at least THIS much.”
As a high school teacher who is outgoing and funny (usually) at school, I sympathize; people rarely believe I’m an introvert, but after a day of being “on” for 150 or more kids, I want to curl up in a ball and ignore the world for a while. So I get you.
A little late to the party, but I want to also heartily congratulate you on The Big Book Deal. As an artist (oil painter) It warms my heart to see anyone in any creative field get what they deserve. Looking forward to years of fun, interesting and entertaining reads. Just one question….is there any possible chance that “Agent to the Stars” will at some point be made into a movie? Because that would be awesome with a cherry on top.
As an introvert who does trade shows. You got to love and hate them. I love interacting with customers (readers, in your world) but it does tire me out.
Looking forward to paying for the results of you busting your ass over the next decade.
Michael Johnston: that is exactly my life. And the lives of at least a third of the teacher’s I’ve worked with in my career.
Here’s hoping you get a bit of decompression time to relax and be by yourself (well, as “by yourself” as can be managed with the various animals around the place, anyway). I’ve noticed this year you’re doing one heck of a lot of travelling, and I can’t even begin to imagine how tiring that could be.
(I’m the sort of shut-in who spent a couple of weeks avoiding the local supermarket because that was too many people for me, and I was “peopled out” from my partner being home sick for about three weeks straight with the flu. I should maybe get out a bit more often…)
I wish you much writing time, plenty of inspiration, and may your household appliances and vehicles remain deaf to the news there is money in the house (personal superstition: don’t talk about having money in front of the appliances or the car; it makes them think they can break down with impunity).
RE: book deal.
I don’t know if anyone’s said this specific point yet, but I think it needs to be said:
congratulfuckinglations!
@megpie71: Supermarkets are a special kind of hell. I order groceries in when my other is out of town, and I garden. There is no shame in despising the modern supermarket. It’s a hell hole.
Ahem. IMHO.
So bookscan isn’t a sum, it’s not even a predictable percentage, it’s a floor, right? If they report that Imaginary Title sold 327 copies in a time period, you know the total sales are ≥327, because the least it can have sold elsewhere is none.
Except that doesn’t allow for returns, which might make the number even less useful.
First, congratulations on the book deal. Looking forward to the fruits of your labor under the deal.
Second, as an introvert I understand how you feel about dealing with people. It can be very difficult to keep up the “game” face and interacting with people. It takes work and can be very tiring and stressful. Downtime is essential to recuperate after a period of “uptime”
Third, Thanks for the link to Jim Hines’ blog post. It is an excellent retort to the naysayers. I lol’ed at this line. “And if he wasn’t too busy swimming in his churro-shaped pool full of money.” Still laughing.
What if it’s a money-shaped pool full of churros?
Look, let’s be frank…you rock Scalzi! When I got the chance to meet you you seemed to be a genuine person and someone that would be wonderful to talk to. I’m sure that part of it was just you pushing yourself to be outgoing, but that’s okay. Do us all a favor…relax! Take a break from all the stress and come back strong. I’m just thrilled for your opportunity you’ve gotten.
Not sure if I said it or not yet so congratulations.
Some of my 1st thoughts on hearing about your deal:
1. Oh cool, Athena’s education should be covered even if she wants to go onto grad school.
2. Athena should be able to have a car and help with place to live when she graduates college.
3. I imagine Scalzi is doing some major retirement planning
4. When this contract is over maybe Krissy can retire & Scalzi can cut back to part-time writing (5-8 books over 10 years)
What great planning on Scalzi’s part. Brilliant even.
I thought about how well this lined up with Athena’s immediate future and “normal/slightly early” retirement for Krissy and semi-retirement for you remembering what you posted about your dream retirement.
Now you’re back I’ve been meaning to ask. Does this deal with Tor include UK rights as well. I do hope so. I like Tors anti-DRM stance
Seems good news all round. We get more books and you get some security.
As an aside there is a recognised reason for the people misunderstanding publishing which is the Dunning-Kruger effect or as it has also been called. ‘stupid but unaware of it’.
Glad you enjoyed Charlotte, even though it’s not my favorite part of NC :) Wish I could have been there – ConCarolinas is generally quite good.
Someday it will be general knowledge that introvert and misanthrope are not synonyms.
I like people just fine, hell, there are a few that I love so much that it scares me to think about it. But…well, the following verbatim conversation with one of the aforementioned loved ones should illustrate my sort of introversion.
[scene: A back bedroom at a large family gathering where my five year old daughter had been put once she’d crashed. sometime after midnight.]
Ms. Fishy: Oh, there you are! What are you doing back here?
FF: I needed a little time to myself.
Ms.F: Oh right. [sits on bed, begins to chat about some relative.]
FF: Look honey, you know I love you right? Good. So please don’t take this the wrong way: I came back here to get away from people. And last I checked you’re still a person….
Ms.F: Right, right, sorry. [exits]
This after being together for a decade or more, need I point out that she’s an extrovert? Sometimes I feel like I’m from a different species.
I have a question for you literary types: Is the ‘then’ I highlighted above an accepted usage? Lately I’ve been seeing it used a lot in sentences like this, places where I’d use ‘than’, and I’m wondering if it’s an artefact of autocorrection, or if it’s just my ignorance of grammar?
Fossilfishy:
Nah, it’s just a copy error. I’ll fix it.
Cheers John. I really wasn’t trying to nitpick, just curious.
No worries. I don’t mind copy errors being pointed out.
Snarkilicious! ROTFLMAO!!!! Of course I am happy for your book deal, but the way you deal with haters is the reason I run to your blog postings as soon as they pop up. That “Loving Mallet of Correction” makes me giggle.
Can’t wait to read your new books.
In my youth I attempted to write some science fiction. I worked very hard but the results were worse than unnecessary dental surgery. I decided it’s much more enjoyable to read someone else’s good sci fi so your deal is good news for me.
I know I love it when people who don’t know anything about what goes into designing a piece of equipment tell me how I need to do it and how easy it is and then argue with me when I tell them they’re mistaken.
I appreciate your willingness to be in the spotlight and your graciousness in dealing with the clueless and/or mean-spirited responses. As a fellow introvert, I definitely understand the stress of being “on” for extended periods of time and the joy of returning home to recharge.
Congrats on your deal, and I wish you all the best moving forward. I’m looking forward to having more of your books to read and to share with others.
There needs to be a snarky satire about the haters: “The Butthurt Brigades.”
Jim C Hines says “Scalzi has repeatedly hit the NYT Bestseller list”
but I thought you said you never make the NYT bestseller list? or did you write never make it in the top?
Icarus:
I never said I never make the list. That would be a lie. I haven’t had a #1 there.
Grats on the deal and the bucks involved but mostly I’m still just squeeing that now I can look forward to more great stories from you over the next decade!
Late to the party, but congratulations anyhow. As someone who came to whatever for the snark and then discovered some darned good science fiction – huge win for us readers!
Is it just me – when I saw
“would include sequels to Lock In.”
I squeed muchly! You have said before that there would be a sequel, but that suggests more than one, and I love the concept. Here’s hoping…
Second what eclipsse says about a sequels to Lock In ! I loved that book–and congratulations on the whole deal, whatever the thirteen books turn out to be.
Was out of town during the Big Announcement so hadn’t yet gotten to tendering my congratulations thereon. Please accept them. :) I’m truly happy for you (and for us, your readers). Better you than me!
And I totally understand about the stress too. Hope you get some recharge time soon.
Introvert here, a couple of days ago I was spending time with friends. We spent 3 hours throwing a ball for their dog and saying maybe 20 sentences each during that time. No TV, radio, electronics.Recharge, write, and have fun, please.
1. Congratulations! The business can be so up-and-down, having a stable situation is a rare gift.
2. Could I trouble you to share a few Charlotte recommendations from your whirlwind tour? I’m moving there next week and would hugely welcome your (second-hand) suggestions.
@FossilFishy
“I came back here to get away from people. And last I checked you’re still a person….”
I’m *SO* stealing that line.
As a fellow introvert who is also quite social, I completely understand how exhausting the experience you describe must have been.
My (also introvert) cousin and I discuss with some regularity the fact that people struggle with the idea that engaging, social people can also be introverts. That makes it even harder.
What an incredibly taxing week! I find North and South Carolina to be absolutely wonderful and I’m glad you had such a lovely trip there too.
Dear Folks,
Talking about the business of being an artist, ‘cuz John has opened the door to talking about money.
My biggest reaction on reading the announcement was, “How really, really nice! Job security for John.” It sounds like an amazing sum of money, but it ain’t like winning the Powerball. It’s a lot more like your 8-to-5 boss calling you in and saying “We’re very happy with your job performance, so we’re giving you a 10-year project and doubling your salary.”
That is cool. That is fabulously cool. I am Snoopy-dancing for John, because I love it when my friends do well; Hell, I love it when authors I don’t even like do well, because, you know, professional solidarity. This is a life-changing deal. But it is not life-changing money. It just gives you a lot more financial and personal security… which is a godsend for an artist.
Which was my second reaction––“That’s not a lot of money per book.” That does NOT make it a bad deal! There’s a lot more involved than just money in a decision like this. It’s only an observation that at John’s level of success, I’d be expecting to see million dollar advances. Which he very well would’ve gotten had he sold each book individually over time (and continued to be a success, of course). From that perspective, he left 75% of the money on the table.
But, from that purely mercenary perspective, this makes this a very good deal for Tor! Rather than indicating a financial failure on their part, they are on the hook for a lot less money over the next 10 years. In reality, both John and Tor are expecting far more money than that to change hands, because that’s the past track record. But what they are legally obligated to pay out? It’s good for Tor.
Also, for those who don’t understand how mass publishing works, the idea that this reduces Tor’s ability to publish other authors is completely bass-ackwards. The mainstream publishing model is a subsidy model. Even with first-time advances being as low as they are, not that many books sell out their advances. At the low-end of advances, if a book doesn’t sell out and go into royalties, that means that both the author and the publisher lost money (or at least failed to make a living wage). Best-selling authors keep the publishers afloat so that they can take risks on new authors while keeping the price of books (relatively) affordable.
You don’t buy that? Then look at publishers who follow the “carry your own weight” pricing model — most specialty and academic publishers — and look at what their books cost? When my first photography book finally went out of print a few years back, it was priced at over $50. It was only slightly more expensive to print and distribute than a mass-market hardback. But the quantities were relatively small, so the unit cost was very high. And the advance was truly miniscule, because there was no certainty it would sell (it sold out its advance manyfold, but nobody has a crystal ball).
That’s how books get priced when publishers don’t have authors like John to rake in the bucks that pay for publishing the authors nobody has ever heard of yet.
But, as I said, it’s not just about the money. John, indeed, *might* make as much or a lot more money self-publishing. Except, then he’s a publisher, not an author. How many of you aspiring authors actually WANT to be publishers? Understand that that means you’re responsible for design, layout, production, printing, scheduling, and worst of all marketing, publicity, and distribution. They are now all your responsibility. Either you do all that stuff yourself, which means doing a whole bunch of stuff you don’t want to be doing instead of doing the writing you do want to be doing, or you hire people to do it, in which case you’re running a multiperson business — if you think that doesn’t eat up the time and energy, you’ve never tried to run one.
Some people think this would be a dream. Most artists consider it a nightmare. People saying to John that he could make more money self-publishing makes about as much sense as saying he could make a lot more money being a plastic surgeon. True… But it gives no consideration as to whether he WANTS to be a plastic surgeon.
The last point I want to make is the security one. Don’t discount that. Frankly, I was surprised when John mentioned, a few columns back, that he pulls in mid-six figures a year. He doesn’t appear to live that way. Unless he really is blowing $100K a year on coke. One can support his visible lifestyle on a fraction of that. That says he’s very thoughtful about how he uses his money. There are many ways to be thoughtful–– sock it away in diverse long-term secure investments so that if, God forbid, he can’t write at some point he and his family will be okay, pay off the house quickly for the same reason (from a financial point of view a poor use of money but for an artist it often makes sense), ongoing support for any number of charities, personal or public… one could speculate. It doesn’t really matter. It’s about trying to secure your future and your lifestyle rather than gambling on big scores.
And finally, while I’m psycho-historying John, do remember that he has talked about growing up without much money. Those of us who have always been comfortably middle-class, we really can’t understand what that means. It’s outside our realm of experience. But, every person I’ve known who has grown up under those circumstances has a profound appreciation for the fact that a comfortable lifestyle is not a God-given right, even if you’re a straight white male. It can go away, or it can be forcibly taken away by things beyond your control. There is a lot of the world beyond your control. Every person I know who’s grown up that way would consider being able to make their life more robust against economic disaster a reasonable and highly sensible priority.
That doesn’t mean this deal would be right for everyone. It would terrify me–– being committed to turning out that much new work in that period of time? No way I’d want to do that. Plus I’ve got the whole middle-class entitlement thing going for me which makes me a lot less interested (or, you could say, less sensible) about securing my future.
Does that mean I’m going to go around mouthing off that John cut a bad deal, because it’s not a deal I would want to cut?
Not bloody likely.
pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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P.S. (Sorry, John!) Oh yeah, and none of this means that John doesn’t have to do the work. It is anything but a sinecure. If, for example, the fifth novel the John turns in is 350 doublespaced pages that repeats “All work and no play makes John a dull boy,” there will be Words. I am reasonably certain that I would be able to hear Patrick’s all the way in California.
ctein
You left out the money bit. This is not a criticism of you personally,. because most people haven’t a clue about money.
However, without me clogging up J’blog still further, I will simply direct you to my previous posts on this, rather than loading for bear and painting for war…
Hi, Stevie!
Ummm, you’ve lost me.
?????
pax / Ctein
Thirding the sequels to Lock In, plural, celebration!
I’m a natural extrovert, but these days I’m a sort of extrovert-introvert hybrid due to my disability – I survive just fine for exactly as long as I can get high off the crowd, and then I crash for a month. Sometimes literally!
PS. /waves to mintwitch
Sorry, Ctein; it was just that I had already commented about the money and I didn’t want to clog up the thread posting it again…
Delayed congratulations from me as well – what a well-deserved acknowledgment of your entertainment staying-power. Having acquired most of your backlist, I look forward to further filling my shelves with upcoming Scalzi work product. With respect to the introvert/extrovert discussion, it always amazes me that people don’t realize that a teacher or public figure can be an introvert; similarly, many people are surprised to find out that someone who can parry teasing with good grace really hates being teased.
Bricks hang in the sky in much the same way that you are an introvert.
ctein: $100K on coke? Coke Zero, maybe.
OT: Welcome, Meredith, it’s good to see you delurking, here!
“practical component”?
The Tiptree Award goodies include money, chocolate, and a tiara.
> I’m looking forward to that more than I can tell you.
And you call yourself a writer. ;)
Two incredibly common (and annoying) fallacies about introverts is that introversion is the same as “being shy” and that introverts don’t have as much social intelligence as extraverts. It is why people might be surprised that someone who is both comfortable with and good at working a convention floor can still be an extravert.
Gah, clearly self-publishing is not for me. That last word should of course me “introvert”.