John Scalzi is fed up with publishing veterans complaining about their so-called hard knock life:
“I swear to Holy Bleeding God that the next time I read a writer mewling out an ‘Oh noes!! The book market is changing! Weesa all gonna die!’ message somewhere on the Internet, I’m going to track that writer down and beat them square on the head with a goddamn lead pipe. Honestly. Die already, then, you whiny, puffed-up, hand-wringing, passive, self-privileging sack of complaint and vomit.”
In the comments section, Scalzi says that he’s not just thinking of Tina Brown‘s NYT remarks, although “she’s especially irritating.” And, from our perspective, dazzlingly wrong. When she says “giving an author’s book away for nothing on the Web as a way to market books seems a mirage to me,” it makes me think of successful authors from diverse fields like Cory Doctorow and Seth Godin who clearly have figured out how to make giving it away work in the real world. As for her suggestion that a free release “makes the reader feel there is nothing new to learn from the genuine article when it finally limps on its weary way to a book shop,” well, we don’t all have a fancy media pedigree that guarantees our publishers will actually haul ass to get the books out. Ask Peter Watts, for example, if he thinks Blindsight would have been made it onto the shortlist for this year’s “best novel” Hugo Award if he hadn’t posted the book on his website after a major chain refused to order any copies.