Howey’s argument is that the reason the formerly dominant players in publishing are in trouble is that they don’t provide service to authors or readers commensurate with their costs. He makes a strong case.
Originally shared by C. M. Skiera
Considering the recent “indie-shaming” tactics by the New York Times that were brought to light by author Autumn Kalquist, the latest blog post by Hugh Howey is timely and spot-on relevant, as well as a fascinating read.
1. Delivering Genes Across the Blood Brain Barrier
Using high-throughput screening techniques combined with methods of directed evolution, researchers screened millions of viral variants to create a novel, modified adeno-associated virus that is able to efficiently get past the blood-brain-barrier and deliver genes and genetic engineering tools to neurons and other cells of the brain http://www.caltech.edu/news/delivering-genes-across-blood-brain-barrier-49679. This obviates the need to drill a hole through the skull to inject these vectors and provides a far more elegant tool that can be used for CRISPR-powered modifications. In related news rats have been cured of a genetic liver disorder with a more effective CRISPR-delivery system involving a different adeno-associated virus carrying guide RNA and repaired-gene-insert and lipid nanoparticles carrying Cas9 mRNA instructions http://news.mit.edu/2016/crispr-curing-disease-repairing-faulty-genes-0201; 6% of liver cell transformations are sufficient for disease curing, which is 15 times more effective than other methods, but the group hope to boost this % in future.
2. Better DNA Aptamer Technology
DNA aptamers can be artificially engineered to target and bind any molecular target in the body – proteins, viruses, bacteria, cells, tumours – but are limited by poorer binding-efficiency and instability due to enzymatic digestion. These two limiting factors have now been addressed http://www.a-star.edu.sg/Media/News/Press-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4496.aspx with (i) the inclusion of an artificial base into the DNA that boosted binding ability by 100 times compared to existing aptamers, and (ii) the inclusion of a DNA-mini-hairpin structure that serves to restrict enzymatic digestion and boost lifetime in the body from hours to days. DNA aptamers like these could in theory be used instead of antibodies for therapeutic and diagnostic applications but are cheaper, quicker, and simpler to produce and obviate potential inflammatory side effects.
3. Developing a Light-Effect-Transistor
Prototype light effect transistors have been developed with the aim of replacing standard field effect transistors in future chip designs https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600702/the-nanodevice-aiming-to-replace-the-field-effect-transistor/. A light effect transistor comprises a wire that conducts electricity when exposed to light and insulates when it is dark; a light-controlled switch in which light functions like a gate and with benefits including no reliance on dopant atoms and the ability to achieve smaller size dimensions to continue Moore’s Law. The demonstrations include semiconducting nanowires whose conduction changes by six orders of magnitude when switched, and can also function as an optical amplifier that performs logic operations when two or more laser beams are used. But the biggest unsolved question is how a chip would accurately address more than a billion nanowires with light?
4. Rejuvenation via Senescent Cell & Amyloid Clearance
Structural DNA technology can self-assemble nanoparticles into diamond-shaped crystal lattices https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=11810. The DNA forms the rigid frame of the material, while complementary DNA binding ensures the nanoparticles bind in specific locations, leading to a diamond lattice about 100 times larger than conventional diamond; interesting platform for novel materials development. Bacteria produce self-assembled microcompartments to concentrate enzymatic production of certain molecules, and these compartments are being used as templates to engineer variants with novel functions and molecular production capabilities https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/02/04/toward-nanoscale-chemical-factories/, slowly building a platform of contained molecular production machinery that might one day be introduced inside human cells for exmample.
6. NASAs Integrated Photonics Modem
NASA is building the first fully integrated photonics modem, simplifying optical on-chip systems design, and reducing the size of the large prototype down to conventional system-on-chip scales http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-engineers-tapped-to-build-first-integrated-photonics-modem. The chip uses lasers to encode and transmit data at 10 – 100 times faster than equipment available today. While testing of the device in space won’t begin until 2020 we might see commercial applications of this earlier, particularly in data centers and Internet backbone lines.
7. Electronic Nematicity Key in Superconductivity
New studies indicate that the phenomenon of electronic nematicity, in which electron clouds in a material snap into an aligned and directional order, is a generic property common to high-temperature superconductors https://uwaterloo.ca/stories/waterloo-physicists-discover-new-properties. The electrons involved in superconductivity form patterns that exhibit different symmetries that preferentially align in one direction and which can compete with, co-exist, or enhance superconductivity. Hopefully this understanding allows for the future design of higher-temperature superconductors.
8. Dedicated Deep Learning Chips on Smartphones
Eyeriss is a newly designed and developed dedicated deep learning chip for use in smartphones and other low-power applications http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/a-deep-learning-ai-chip-for-your-phone. The chip is designed to allow these devices to run computationally demanding neural network algorithms quickly and efficiently on the device without offloading to the cloud, and using only one tenth of the energy of a typical mobile GPU. Agnostic to the type of neural network being run the chip can process image, sound, and other types of data as needed and might also find deployment in autonomous platforms such as cars and drones. In related news Google’s DeepMind game-playing AI can now also navigate environments in first-person-shooters https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076552-google-deepmind-ai-navigates-a-doom-like-3d-maze-just-by-looking/ and I wonder if this can be transferred to robots to help in realworld environments, perhaps by using these dedicated chips.
A new material dubbed flexiramics is being developed and commercialised by a company called Eurekite http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/dutch-researchers-have-created-flexiramics-flexible-ceramics-for-circuit-boards/. Flexiramics appear to be a new class of materials that possess the mechanical properties of paper or thin textiles in being thin, foldable, and flexible while also exhibiting the properties of ceramics in being fireproof and nonconducting. The fabrics withstand 1,200 degrees Celsius for 24 hours without burning or melting. Printed PCBs will be the first application apparently but the possibilities are endless.
I’ve just recorded my hundredth submission in The Submission Grinder (thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com). There were a few submissions I made prior to using it that I didn’t transfer across, so the real total is a little higher.
Out of those, I’ve so far made 12 sales. My sense is that I’m beating the industry average there.
If you’ve made two or three short story submissions and got form rejections, and are wondering if you should stop, think about these figures for a bit.
I have a long-term project, a single-author themed collection of magic-user stories. I call it Makers of Magic. The plan is to include 13 stories, each about a different kind of magic user.
I just checked and updated the spreadsheet that I use to track progress on this project. I’ve sold six out of the thirteen stories, and the latest that the rights revert is at the end of April next year (which means that the collection won’t come out before May 2017 at the earliest).
Two more are on submission currently, three are waiting for rewrites, one is in progress, and the final one is incomplete (meaning I’ve written up to the middle and haven’t thought of an ending yet).
I’m finding it motivational to work towards this collection. And since two of the stories have turned out a lot longer than I expected, it’ll be a decent length (in excess of 60,000 words). I’ll keep you posted.
I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that she points it out, I think KKR has a point here. There is a blanding of voice going on in today’s publishing landscape. You can pick up books by half a dozen different authors and have difficulty telling them apart. (Not only because of voice, either. A lot of people are trying to write the same books, because those books sell.)
She calls out the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in particular. I’ve heard from other sources that Clarion graduates do tend to write similar stories (which become part of the expectation of what a pro story is like, so even people who haven’t been to Clarion start writing that way).
I disagree with Rusch about head-hopping – I think it is a fault, and disorienting to the reader, unless you’re in omniscient POV (at which point it isn’t head-hopping) – but her main point is valid. I’ve experienced several critiques which seem to be aimed at flattening out my style and voice into the way the critiquer would express things, and generally that comes from a critiquer who is not as well-read as I am – who has mainly read recent books which are written in the bland, generic “Serious Writer Voice”.
Originally shared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Today’s Business Blog looks at a weird phenomenon I call “Serious Writer Voice.”
Lisa Cohen Mike Reeves-McMillan you guys might find this opinion piece interesting re: the article you shared earlier. An excerpt:
“Last year, I went to a writing conference in Boston. One of the first panel discussions was about how a writer claims authority, how it is that a writer asserts that he or she possesses the expertise to write about a topic, and how concomitantly the editor reading through the submission slush pile can determine whether the writer is someone who can claim authority as a writer.
One of the panelists, an editor, offered that the first thing he looked for when skimming through the cover letter was whether the writer possessed an MFA. He did this, he hastened to qualify, not because it guaranteed that the submitter would be a better writer, but because taking a year or two off out of one’s life to dedicate oneself to writing proved that one was serious as a writer. I came off my chair in anger—how could he assert such a thing? My friend pulled me back down, but I continued to fume. Who has more dedication: the person who has the financial wherewithal to spend time in a writing program, or the writer who writes despite having to work full-time, early in the morning, with absolutely no one but themselves for motivation? As another panel member offered their method for detecting “dedication,” I flashed back to sitting with Fred Busch as he recounted stories from his early days of working all day and spending time with his wife and son in the early evening and then taking the typewriter into the bathroom, so as not to wake his sleeping family, and writing as much as he could before fatigue demanded he go to bed. How much more dedication did one need to prove beyond that? But that’s not exactly something you can put on a resume. That panelist’s misguided assumption, that an MFA necessarily connotes greater dedication to writing, reveals an all too common blindness to the easy privilege of those with financial security.”
This is a thought-provoking article about the role of class in the writing and publishing world.
I come from a family which was working class further back (my father’s father drove a train; my mother’s father ran a bus company, but came from a long line of tradesmen). My parents, though, were both schoolteachers, and by the time I was born had achieved some degree of middle-class economic stability, in part because my father, as an ex-serviceman, had received subsidised university education and a cheap house loan. He also wrote (nonfiction) books in his spare time, and by my mid-teens was making good money from them.
My parents supported me through university, and when I got an in-house job with a publisher, it was with the publisher who put out my father’s books (I’d previously been freelance, which I could sustain because I was still living with my parents). One of my earlier freelance jobs I got in part because the editor concerned was married to one of my former professors. Personal connection plays a big role in the publishing industry, and if I’d been, say, a Samoan kid from South Auckland whose parents worked in a factory, my opportunities would have been a lot less. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done (though I never saw it done, so maybe it couldn’t); it would, at the least, have been a lot harder.
Even today, I’m able to take one day off every two weeks to write, sacrificing 10% of my income, because I’m in a job that pays enough for me to do that (and where my employer allows me to do it). If I was struggling to put food on the table, and having to write late at night or on the weekends while exhausted from a tough week of work, I wouldn’t be anything like as productive as I am.
Originally shared by Rick Wayne (Author)
Lisa Cohen Mike Reeves-McMillan you guys might find this opinion piece interesting re: the article you shared earlier. An excerpt:
“Last year, I went to a writing conference in Boston. One of the first panel discussions was about how a writer claims authority, how it is that a writer asserts that he or she possesses the expertise to write about a topic, and how concomitantly the editor reading through the submission slush pile can determine whether the writer is someone who can claim authority as a writer.
One of the panelists, an editor, offered that the first thing he looked for when skimming through the cover letter was whether the writer possessed an MFA. He did this, he hastened to qualify, not because it guaranteed that the submitter would be a better writer, but because taking a year or two off out of one’s life to dedicate oneself to writing proved that one was serious as a writer. I came off my chair in anger—how could he assert such a thing? My friend pulled me back down, but I continued to fume. Who has more dedication: the person who has the financial wherewithal to spend time in a writing program, or the writer who writes despite having to work full-time, early in the morning, with absolutely no one but themselves for motivation? As another panel member offered their method for detecting “dedication,” I flashed back to sitting with Fred Busch as he recounted stories from his early days of working all day and spending time with his wife and son in the early evening and then taking the typewriter into the bathroom, so as not to wake his sleeping family, and writing as much as he could before fatigue demanded he go to bed. How much more dedication did one need to prove beyond that? But that’s not exactly something you can put on a resume. That panelist’s misguided assumption, that an MFA necessarily connotes greater dedication to writing, reveals an all too common blindness to the easy privilege of those with financial security.”
The Toast usually does clever, sophisticated satire, but this isn’t that. Instead, it’s a heartfelt report from inside the traditional publishing industry about why it’s so lacking in diversity, and what needs to happen to change that.
Wow, this has been a good sales week for me, and it’s only Wednesday. Everyone must be clearing their backlog.
This morning’s email contains an acceptance from Farstrider magazine for my comedic story “Mail Order Witch”. They’re the twelfth market I’ve submitted that story to (a personal record). I’ve had four form rejections, six personalised rejections, and I think I withdrew it once because the market concerned had stopped responding to communication.
Now I have the Best Problem: I only have three stories still out on submission, because I keep selling them.
