Statistics -- wheeee!

How come most writers' royalty checks don't even come close to paying the bills?  Here's why.

Out of curiosity, I got online and tried to hunt down a publishing industry statistic -- namely, how many works of fiction are issued each year. This proved a very difficult number to find. Many record-keepers don't bother to mention what types of books, exactly, they're counting: paper and/or electronic; reissued as well as original titles; the output of all publishers or only larger publishers; POD and independently-published pieces or not. As you can see, there are many variables.

This article states "...There are around 100,000 new English-language works of long-form prose fiction published globally each year." That averages out to 274 a day. However, for 2009, R.R. Bowker tallied 48,738 works of fiction (a figure determined, apparently, through the number and types of ISBNs issued), which breaks down to 134 works a day. Could this be for US publishers alone? I'm not sure.

Click on the post title to read yet another confusing overview.

A while back (less than two years, I think), I saw a list of GLBT titles published over a thirty-day period. The list had been compiled by the diligent and tireless Elisa Rolle. I believe I stopped counting at 150 entries. That's a hefty number for a fairly small fiction niche for one month, and I'm willing to bet it's even bigger now. EDITED TO ADD: I just counted the titles on Elisa's current list. There are close to 300 of them! O_O

Lordie, why can't I be a video game developer!

Cover Art at Its Finest

Since I don't pay attention to the multitude of book competitions out there (the results of which usually leave me scratching my head -- to put it mildly), I haven't been following this year's Rainbow Awards run by Elisa Rolle. But she did contact me to let me know that Anne Cain's cover for Visible Friend is a finalist in both the Jury Poll and Popular Poll. (Christine Griffin's cover for Fugly placed third in last year's competition -- remember? -- and I was pleased as punch . . . even though I don't have a clue what that phrase means.)

I know I've said this before, but I respect and admire talented cover artists to the point of awe. Dreamspinner has some of the best, and my gratitude to them is boundless.

Click on the post title to see the other finalists. What an array of stunning work!

What's up?

Not much. Around here, anyway. I'm just about to wrap up A Hole in God's Pocket . . . and, frankly, am wondering why I persisted in finishing this book. Only super-popular authors can get away with writing religion-themed stories, especially ones that are essentially character studies short on action and sex. But I told myself, Screw it; faith and faith-related struggles are a significant part of many gay men's lives, so why do we keep sweeping this issue under the carpet? And I forged ahead. Besides, I became too invested in my promiscuous Amish rent-boy and virginal Catholic ex-monk to leave them dangling, so to speak. I hate approach/avoidance conflicts and have always sought to resolve them. :)

The Jackson and Adin "Scourge" trilogy has really been hammering at me, though. I'm eager to get started on it. I think POV will be first-person present in the first novella, and the narrator will not be Jackson or Adin, who'll get their turns in the next two books.

Still waiting on the cover art and exact publication date for The Zero Knot, a novel I feel all mushy about, kind of in the way I felt all mushy about Electric Melty Tingles. (It occurred to me just recently that I love my books in different ways, for different reasons -- just as I'm frustrated by them in different ways.) Autographed copies will be available to readers who buy the print edition. It's not that my autograph will ever be worth anything, but Dreamspinner likes to offer this option.

Phoenix

Fed up with Yahoo!

In what must be an attempt to coerce its users into switching from "Classic" mail to "Updated" mail, Yahell has been making access to my email a royal pain in the ass. Words cannot describe how much I despise this company! I tried, a while back, to take the path of least resistance and change over. After all, I was sick to death of their ad-crammed Mail page, glitchy service, and incompetence at catching spam. But . . . their "new" mail proved an even bigger clusterfuck than their old mail, with an even more junked-up page, so I went back.

I guess they didn't like that.

It's going to be another PITA to inform all the people and groups I need to inform that I've changed my primary email address -- I've had the Yahoo one practically since I started publishing -- but I know I'll take a grim satisfaction in doing it.