Your Long-Awaited Readercon Report

Okay, I can brain enough to actually write this now, I think. I bring you...the uber-detailed no-holds-barred Readercon report!

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

Overall? Readercon is a great and mighty con. I had a great and lovely time, and I will be back there next year if they will have me. I was somewhat miffed at a few things that went down: mostly the dinner debacle on Friday and the fact that Coyote would not acknowledge one single wireless network all weekend, which meant I'd hauled around a laptop of many pounds for really, nothing. I bought books, which never happens at cons for me (I work in a bookstore. I don't need con books). I missed Mafia, which was sad. There was overall too much travelling, although travelling is made easier and less hassle-prone by not checking bags. There was overall not enough sleep. By god, I am glad to be home and in private space again.

The people were, with few and rare exceptions, lovely, and this is still, I think, my favourite con on the calendar.

Thus endeth the con report.

Discussions of Business. Why We Should Have Them.

Author Michael Cisco discusses his experience of Prime Books's business practices.

ETA: And benpeek adds his own experiences, as do wirewalking here and eiriene here. zhai generally comments, as does matociquala.

I have two things to say about this. Okay, I have more than two things, but I have two things I will say in public at this juncture:

1) I admire Cisco's willingness to pay it forward to the rest of the community here. Yes, I view this as an act of pay-forward. By describing his experiences with a publisher that gears its acquisitions towards newer authors, he's giving the rest of the group useful datapoints upon which to draw if they ever have to decide about doing business with Prime Books.

And if someone else's experience was different than his, maybe they will come in and expound on their experience with that market. That way, we get a discourse and a sense of how various markets work and whether we want to work with them, or which markets go on our wishlist of definitely want to publish there. We can make informed decisions, and the more informed and transparent the decision-making of this industry is, the better and healthier it will be.


2) Pursuant to that, the response to Cisco's post seems to be composed mostly of Awkward Silence. People are uncomfortably looking elsewhere as an author talks about his relationship with his publisher in public. It's very Canadian, actually: maybe if we look away from the crazy man he will stop talking to the aliens.

Guys, this isn't a marriage. We don't sleep with our publishers; it isn't TMI, and nobody's pants are down in public while they're raving drunkenly at the fiftieth family reunion. What this is? An author talking about his business associate, and discussing his business associate's business activities with an eye to informing other people in his industry of their practices. Also, I think (although I might be reading in) with an eye to improving the practices of that industry. So it doesn't happen again.

There is nothing wrong with that.

If Cisco's experience is atypical, that will come out in the wash. If it is typical, that too will come out in the wash, and if that is so, then it's not because some bad author spoke up about things he wasn't supposed to, but because a publisher was doing it wrong. If the publisher is doing it wrong? You need to talk about that. Because that's your books, your money, and your work that will be put at risk when it's your turn in the barrel.

We need to get over this sense of social awkwardness, of secrecy. Pronto. We need to stop treating publishing relationships like they deserve the holy secrecy of 1950s marriages.

Take care of yourselves, and of each other.

Talk about your business.