Publishing

Inspirational hobologoist aphorisms & epigrams

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Insights into the hobologoist mindset.

Money corrupts.

Impecuniousness rools, OK!

 

 

 

Artists must suffer.

I have my principles.

Solipsism means never having to say you’re being corrupted by money and prizes.

I like semi-colons; commercial editors can go screw themselves.

I like [literary practice of your choice]; commercial editors can go screw themselves.

Hobologoists don’t write query letters.

Nobody ever read Antoine Blorschacterforth either.

Save the trees, save the bytes, save having to explain to critics why … Read more

Hobologoists International FAQs

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What is it? Hobologoism is the principled resolve to write and write in such a way as to never, ever produce anything remotely publishable or in any way profitable.

Who are we? Hobologoists International is a global association of writers who have written at least one book that fellow members agree is clinically unpublishable under any imaginable circumstances, even taking into account revolutionary changes in contemporary commercial publishing and popular reading habits.

Why does our logo incorporate a portrait of … Read more

Bookish enhancements vs. publishing gimcrackery

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Print books are still alive, despite continuing attempts to ruin them with digital enhancements. Digital bells and whistles are appropriate for textbooks, e.g., but, if anything, they’re destructive of works of fiction. According to this story in The Bookseller, early moves to klutzify fiction with such gimmicks as hyperlinks and video have not proven a commerical success, and are unlikely to.

In other developments, someone has found a wildly imaginative way to non-digitally enhance print reference books. Call … Read more

Rx for rejected writers

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Steve Van Beek, prominent local writer, film-maker and river specialist has just sent me the following encouragement to get off my lazy butt (interview with Philip K. Dick’s daughter) and do more to promote my series of darkly comic futuristic novels (underway) that will clarify most important features of reality in rippingly entertaining fashion. (Some opinion has it that I  write better novels than I do blurbs.) Certainly, Philip K. Dick is one of the most successful

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Spinning in our pre-graves rools, OK!

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* PRE-OBITS. P.J. O’Rourke has recently suggested a way to help draw readers back to newspapers.


“No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism,” he suggests. “You can still buy a buggy whip, which is more than can be said for a copy of the Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Post, or Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”

What’s needed, he suggests, is a new kind of feature: “What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certain … Read more

Blacksmiths & blockheads? “Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature”

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“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
  (reported by Boswell, in his Life of Johnson)

Attributed to Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the renowned author and lexicographer, that’s one of the most famous writerly aphorisms in the English language.

Others have seen things differently.

Arthur Schopenhauer, for one (1788-1860), had this to say about the matter:

“There are above all two kinds of writer: those who write for the sake of what they have to say and … Read more

Blacksmiths & novelists revisited: The Scott Adams Theory of Content Value

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Collin’s not the only one comparing professional writers to blacksmiths, these days. Scott Adams, e.g, of “Dilbert” fame, presents his Adams Theory of Content Value: “As our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.”

The fate of the author in the age of digital gizmodery (with apologies to Scott Adams):

Among other things, Adams predicts “that the profession known as ‘author’ will be retired to history in my lifetime, … Read more

Vanity, or Canny? Literary YouTube

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The issue du jour in publishing: What’s happening to traditional controls on the industry? Digital technology has plunged us into an era where not only can anyone be a writer, you can be a “published author.” What does this forebode? Check out this video on the Wall Street Journal site and, for any actual readers out there, the story.

The lemmingesque rush to write and publish could well herald further social and cultural change to come. Soon there’ll be … Read more

Unemployed Blacksmiths and Novelists Support Group

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It was all foretold in Finnegans Wake. It could have been, anyway.

There’s just no end to human ingenuity. Now you don’t even have to buy an e-book reader to suffer Internet interconnectivity. Ubimark has developed a way for readers to evoke Web connections from a print book by way of cellphone camera and browser. Have a look at the following item (short article & video), “Putting the Web inside the printed book.”

Ubimark, iPads and Vooks … Read more

Not phobic, not covered in oozing sores, but…

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I’ve been preparing to spend far too much time, I suspect, on my new blog/website. But more and more agents and publishing companies claim this is part of the self-promotional duties of the up-and-coming writer, in this new digital age. So it was nice to encounter a contrarian opinion (even if it was quoted on the blog—Shrinking Violet Promotions: Marketing for Introverts—of some writers who themselves tend towards novella-length posts): 
 

Just write your heart out. I promise you

… Read more