Loren Eaton links to some misconceptions often repeated to would-be writers or about writing, like the money people will throw at you, the public respect you will receive, and the ships that will come in for you. Let me have a fit of transparency here and tell you that I get most discouraged by advice that I need to read piles of work in a certain genre in order to write well or have the credentials to be considered for publication, but I'll never be able to read as much as I'd like to.

Never mind. I'm just complaining, and I have better things to do.

Joel Miller talks about what author Seth Godin gets wrong when he announced his rejection of traditional publishing:

"Trying to sell books to people who don’t like them is hopeless—it’s like hawking lentils the day after Easter. . . . Literature is like running. It’s not for everyone, but for people who love it stopping after four blocks fails to satisfy."

Another night of contending with my lawn mower. I suppose I should pity the thing. It's dying. The guy at the shop said fixing it isn't worth the price of replacing it. So I'm running it as long as I can, until its wife becomes a grass widow, or my fuel mixture runs out.

But it's a temperamental patient. It smokes as it runs, and when it gets tired it stops, refusing to start again until it's rested. Which makes mowing an indefinite operation.

Hence the lateness of this post.

And all I've got to share is this link from Dale Nelson, about the release of a new edition of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, translated by Christopher Tolkien.

Like my lawn mower, I can only do what I can.

Novelist Andrew Klavan, about whose work you may have read from time to time in this space, reports at City Journal that his French publisher has backed out of a deal to publish a translation of his novel Empire of Lies.

The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the Daily Caller website that left-wing journalists conspired to suppress scandals that might harm Barack Obama and to the brouhaha over Breitbart’s online release of a video that resulted in a government worker’s momentarily losing her job. In both stories, one thing leaps out at me: everywhere, the Left favors fewer voices and less information, and conservatives favor more. Everywhere, the Left seeks to disappear its opposition, whereas the Right is willing to meet them head-on.

Meanwhile a federal judge has ruled that Eastern Michigan University did not violate a student's freedom of religion when they required her to abandon her religious beliefs or be booted out of a graduate counseling program.

U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh dismissed Ward’s lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University. She was removed from the school’s counseling program last year because she refused to counsel homosexual clients.

Anybody else sense a trend?

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" Publishers Random House and Macmillan are criticizing an eBook deal by one of America's leading literary agents.

Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture.

Publishers are citing active contracts on these works and Amazon's dominance in the market as reasons against this deal. Agent Andrew Wylie doesn't know how to respond, according to the NY Times.

It's easier to publish a work or a video than ever, so here a few observations from Jane Friedman of Writer's Digest. A commenter points to this comedy sketch on choice for perspective.

A publishing executive trying to get ahead of the next big wave says minotaurs are the new vampires, according to this Onion News report. I'm thinking librarians are about ready for their due.

Be sure to scan this interview with a self-published author who has sold many books in the locale in which her novel is set.

As a self-publisher, you’ve sold 50,000 copies of your books. I’m sure every self-published author wants to know your secrets. So, let’s start from the beginning: When your first book was hot off the press, did you have a marketing plan? Did you have an existing platform or readership of any kind?

I had a very simple plan for my first novel. My husband and I were living in Nashville, Tenn., at the time, and when the novel released, we loaded our trunk with books and drove to Sanibel Island, the setting of my book. I sat out in the car with our baby as my husband went in and out of every book and gift shop on the island asking if they’d like to carry the book.

I remember letting out yelps of pure joy and shock every time he returned to the car to tell me, “Yes!” Of course the shops were cautious at first, taking only a couple copies at a time and most did want books on a consignment basis. If they sold, then they would pay us.

How do separate, completely different books have almost identical cover art? Is there a poverty of available photography?

I've got a meeting tonight, so I'm in haste, but here's a couple links worth reading.

An editorial in the Houston Chronicle examines how the Texas Education Agency could deem thousands of students to have passed a test on which they got not a single answer right. Strange times we live in. Tip: Grim's Hall.

The unspeakable Hunter Baker (don't buy his book) shares a puerile review of a biography of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce.

Have a good weekend! I'll be in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, on Sunday, doing the Viking thing at Norway Day.

I'm not a great one for end-of-the-world prognostications, but all my life I've heard of this (or something like it) as being a sign of the Last Days:

Protestant translators expect to have the Bible — or at least some of it — written in every one of the world's 6,909 spoken languages.

"We're in the greatest period of acceleration in 20 centuries of Bible translation," said Morrison resident Paul Edwards, who heads up Wycliffe Bible Translators' $1 billion Last Languages Campaign.

Portable computers and satellites get the credit for speeding things up by about 125 years.

Full story here, from the Denver Post.

Apocalyptic or not, it's good news.

Judicial nominee Elena Kagan, presently before the Senate in confirmation hearings, apparently has no problem banning books and other media when the right people want to. You can listen to the audio on the linked post.

The opposition clarifies the issue for us. "Right-wing media are distorting comments Elena Kagan made during arguments before the Supreme Court to falsely claim she said 'it's fine if the law bans books.' In fact, in the video the right is citing, Kagan never said 'it's fine if the law bans books'; she specifically argued that federal law had never banned books and likely could not do so."

That's so true. I did not hear her say, "It's fine if the law bans books." I heard her say that the statute has never been applied to books and no one ever wanted to apply it to books. The Supreme Court Justices make it clear that the law does apply to books, but Kagan argues no one will ever enforce that application.

In other news, Hon. Kagan claims to be an originalist in one sense.

Well, that's serendipity. Phil links to a source of good book illustration, and I just found a source of bad science fiction book covers. Of which there is apparently an inexhaustible supply. Thanks to Loren Eaton of I Saw Lightning Fall for the tip.

I haven't gone through the entire inventory, so I don't know if they've included a particular cover that even its publisher admitted, in the cold light of the morning after, was probably a mistake: Read the rest of this entry . . .

This book on leadership for pastors is described by the publisher as "Brief. Practical. Insightful. And conveniently sized to fit in any bathroom!"

Rev Magazine's Bathroom Guide to Leadership

Zero. They can't.

The Federal Trade Commission is talking about using the iron boot of government to "to support the reinvention of journalism," whatever the fruit that means. Jeff Jarvis writes, "Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?"

But don't worry much. They barely recommend anything, and I don't think they can write any laws. (via Books, Inq.)

I linked to Garrison Keillor's Death of Publishing article a while back and feel compelled to link to this collection of criticism. For example, Jason Boog of MediaBistro.com observes:

“‘In the New Era, writers will be self-anointed,’ [Keillor] writes in his op-ed, which is nonsense. In this new world, many more writers will self-publish, it’s true. But every one of them will have to build an audience just like he did. These new writers will use Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, blogs, book clubs, and all the 21st Century community-building tools at an author’s disposal, just like he used the radio.”

Mark Bertrand has an essay on the printed word.

When Ken Myers interviewed me for Mars Hill Audio Volume 90, for example, he kept asking about the decline of literacy, only to have me scoff at the pessimism. Little did I know that the flipside of Volume 90 would feature an extended chat with Dana Gioia about the NEA's depressing literacy study. Fortunately that part of my interview was excised from the final version, sparing me the indignity of appearing unsuitably optimistic and glib. Ever since, I've kept what little optimism I possess to myself.

(via S.D. Smith)

Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall links to an interesting piece by jazz musician Eric Felton over at the Wall Street Journal. I don't think Felton will make a whole lot of enemies with his complaint about the unnecessary length of much current entertainment, such as movies, music and books.

It will be objected that any number of canonic masterpieces are gargantuan. Yes, of course. But even many of those could stand a trim. Did "Moby Dick" really need the chapter called "Cetology," Melville's rambling effort to prove that whales weren't mammals?

One of the constant occasions for worry in my novel-writing career has been that, once I write the story I want to tell, I generally find it's only about 60- to 80,000 words long. Jim Baen liked novels to come in around 100,000 words. I believe he felt (and many publishers today are of the same view) that when a consumer plunks down $7.99 for a paperback novel, he wants to feel he can take a short vacation in that book's world.

The idea of publishing shorter books, and charging less, is not up for discussion, it would appear. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Cover of Conan the Phenomenon, by Sammon and Frazetta.

He was an artist, not an author, but I suspect he was responsible for more fantasy book sales than any single person except J.R.R. Tolkien.

Frank Frazetta died today, after an extended illness. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928, he attended the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts and went on to work in comics and commercial art. He was an assistant to Al Capp on the classic Li'l Abner comic strip for several years, specializing in voluptuous female figures. In the late '60s, he began doing the classic book covers for collections of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which is where guys like me first became wonderingly aware of him. He did lots of book covers, some for good books, some for garbage, but in my opinion there was a synergy between Howard's lean, evocative prose and Frazetta's original combination of textures and a limited palette that worked reading magic. Especially for adolescent boys, which was what I was at the time. Still am, for all practical purposes. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Joseph Bottum at First Things doesn't like the Kindle.

Why is the text on Kindle so awful—hundreds of years of lessons about typesetting, lost in an instant? Bad line breaks, bad hyphens, bad page composition, bad times.

Much of the column is devoted to his affection for Terry Pratchett.

I've never gotten Terry Pratchett. I suppose I didn't give him enough chance. People told me how great he was, so I picked up the first Discworld book, The Color of Magic, to start at the beginning. Didn't get very far. I couldn't see what everybody was so enthusiastic about.

I don't even get the point of most of the citations Bottum includes. I can only assume there's something very wrong with me.

Besides the passive-aggressive fishing for reassurance, I mean.

Photo credit: Getty Images.

I got word today that the first editor to buy one of my stories professionally, and my agent for many years, George H. Scithers, died yesterday at the age of 80.

He was editor of Amazing Stories Magazine back in 1984 when he bought my story, “One Final Dragon.” Several more stories followed, and he took the trouble to give me some good advice along the way.

After he left Amazing, George started Owlswick Literary Agency along with Darrell Schweitzer. They asked me to come on as a client. I remained in their stable until they dissolved a few years ago.

I never had the chance to meet George (came close once, when I had a flight layover in Philadelphia, but it didn't work out). We communicated by letter at first, then graduated to e-mail. Talked a few times on the phone. He was always gentlemanly, funny, and reassuring.

Beginning as a fan, he was one of the people responsible for the increasing popularity of heroic fantasy, being especially a champion of Robert E. Howard's work. I was proud to be associated with him.

We never discussed religion, but from some comments he dropped, I believe he was a Christian of some description.

An obituary by Tor editor David Hartwell is here.

His Wikipedia entry is here.

R.I.P.

Phil, were you aware of this blog, Bible Design Blog? It's from J. Mark Bertrand, and I'm amazed I never heard of it before (chances are, of course, you linked to it, and I just forgot.)

Anyway, it's a cool blog about Bible design, Bible binding, and even Bible rebinding. Very nice.

Thanks to Steve Bradford for bringing it to my attention.

Publishers Weekly has a panel discussion of editors from Christian publishers, talking about trends in Christian fiction. Issue-driven books are waning a little. Romance within closed communities is big now. Speculative fiction is still being read.

Barbara Scott of Abingdon said, "Calling a novel 'chick lit' seems to be the kiss of death these days in publishing, but if an author is interested in writing about younger characters, it can be done by deepening the story. Pure fluff is out; authenticity is in."

In this article on Russian censorship of independent publishers, the writer reports:

Two years later he found himself in much more trouble over Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, a heartwarming narrative in which clones of Khrushchev and Stalin enjoy some tender sexual moments together. In fact Blue Lard had been published in 1999 but it was not until 2002 that anybody took offense. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth movement flushed copies of Sorokin’s works down a giant toilet erected outside the Bolshoi Theater, apparently as part of a battle against "…immorality, cynicism, and the humiliation of our culture." Sales exploded, reaching a total of 100,000.

. . . [Ad Marginem’s publisher, Alexander Ivanov, said of their arrest over publishing this book,] "We felt danger, but our main sensation was… surprise at the idiocy of the situation, that we had to discuss literary issues with the police. It seemed to me that they themselves were a bit shocked by this investigation."

(via Books, Inq.)

Mr. Silva is blogging about seeing beauty in life.

The current state of publishing has me thinking about the future.

It’s hard not to these days. Everywhere you look there’s another announcement of the electronic squashing print. I imagine this big trash-can-head robot stomping books into the mud and I have to set down my quill and cry a little into my ink-stained tea mug.

(Imagine people wanting to move to the space station on Mars just to get away from the disturbing technological society we’ve created on Earth. It isn’t so far fetched to consider--the sci-fi writers are all wondering why I’d even bring it up.)

Susan Bauer talks about the trials of being a small press owner and a particular letter she received from an agent.

Film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet has written three fantasy novels in the last few years, two of which I've read. They are fantastic (perhaps that goes without saying). He writes this series, Auralia's Colors, not to depict any historic people or setting, but "to capture the questions that keep me up at night." The third one, Raven's Ladder, is shown on the left and is being released this month.

I have found that wonderfully hopeful, powerfully redemptive, and gorgeous. His new world has an appealing natural magic which is hard to describe, like the difficulty Tolkien's elves in Lothlórien describing their handiwork to the hobbits. It wasn't magic to them, but the hobbits it was.

I asked Jeffrey some questions about writing and publishing these books.

1. You’ve been a critical writer for many years now.  Do you think you’ve always had the writing spirit/muse/curse?

I’m hard-wired to tell stories. When I was five years old, I already felt compelled to make books. I’d take fairy-tale storybooks and painstakingly copy the text onto piles of scrap paper. Then I’d illustrate those pages with crayon or watercolors.

Soon after I read The Hobbit – around age seven – I stopped copying stories and started writing my own. And sure, those first stories sounded a lot like The Hobbit. But they became more unusual and distinct as the years went on. My first “series” was a four-story epic set in a world that resembles Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. In fact, when I saw that movie decades later, I laughed at the incredible similarities. (Where Pixar had nasty grasshoppers, I had wicked wasps.) Read the rest of this entry . . .

The storySouth Million Writers Award for good writing published online is now open for nominations.

About two years ago, author and critic Jeffrey Overstreet wrote about how his very good fantasy novel Auralia's Colors was accepted for publication. "In short: Somebody dropped out of the sky and gave me a golden ticket." It was an answer to prayer.

While opening a carton of books from Zondervan Publishing today in the bookstore, a question occurred to me:

"Who was this man Zonderv, and what were his teachings? And who are his followers, these Zondervans? What do they really believe?"

Inquiring minds want to know.