Sufficient unto the day are the tasks therein

[rolanni]

...or something.

So far this day have identified various fora that need a course in the basics of genre fiction, if only they knew it. Including the local fine arts college. Is it a Bad Sign if I only recognize one of the "nationally known" authors who have recently graced the creative writing program? I have at least one application coming my way, and will shortly get back on the phone and see if I can't increase that number significantly.

Yesterday, I received the monthly newsletter from one of the writers' groups I belong to. The members of this particular writers' group have been caught up -- wrongly, so I think -- with the Evils of Used Bookstores, claiming that USBs take food out of their mouths, or at least $ignificant ca$h out of their pockets. I've signed off the listserv and am considering letting my membership lapse because of this -- and, frankly, because of the headbanging administered to those who try to say that USBs are not in all cases, to all writers, a Very, Very Bad Thing. So, I was not only extremely happy to see that a member of the group has firmly and rationally taken on the Group Wisdom, but that the article runs on the first page of the newsletter. Well done, author and newsletter editor.

And now -- back to the phones.

Comments

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I know that I, at least, would feel like ten different kinds of hypocrite if I complained in that fashion, because I remember how much I depended upon both used book stores and libraries when I was a teen-and-college-aged writer-in-embryo.

This was true in my case, as well. Also? During the decade we were out of print, we know of several used book sellers who hand sold the then-three Liaden books, building recognition and awareness of the series. In a very real way, used bookstore sales made it possible for us to come back from the dead.

Hard for me to see them as the Bad Guy, here...

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

During the decade we were out of print, we know of several used book sellers who hand sold the then-three Liaden books, building recognition and awareness of the series. In a very real way, used bookstore sales made it possible for us to come back from the dead.

I suspected that was the case, but didn't want to assert it as fact.

I think a very similar thing happened with the works of Barry Hughart, Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Hope Mirrlees, and probably a few others I'm not remembering off the top of my head. Word-of-mouth can only work when there are physical copies of the books to accompany it, and libraries generally don't acquire out-of-print books they don't already own.

I hope such a revival may be happening now for the out-of-print works of Walter Jon Williams, Alexei Panshin, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and others. And used books will be necessary for those, too.