It’s suddenly occurred to me that, thanks to the recent change in title, an advance reader’s copy of my first YA novel really is going to be the ARC of the Covenant. 
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…in Search Engine Manipulation.
Ahem:
George R. R. Martin: A Dance With Dragons
Patrick Rothfuss: The Wise Man’s Fear
Jim Butcher: Changes (or, if you prefer, Ghost Story)
Scott Lynch: The Republic of Thieves
Ari Marmell (that’s me): Look to your left. Then give some thought to buying something, if you’d be so kind. (Or read some of my free stuff. See? I’m reasonable.)
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This concludes our experiment. Thank you for participating. 😎
What? 😉
Not a conclusion to the discussion, mind you. Just a conclusion I’ve come to.
For the first two months of this year, for the first time, e-book sales figures equaled or exceeded those of hardcopy books. And of course, since e-books often run cheaper than hardcopies, that suggests that the number of units sold was even higher.
And yet, every online poll I’ve seen–such as the one currently up on CNN.com, but which I can’t link to directly–shows that respondents to said polls prefer hardcopy books by a huge margin. (At the time of this writing, 80% of people responding to the CNN poll favor hardcopy books.) And that’s an online poll, where we can expect the numbers to be weighted in favor of e-books.
This means a lot of things. It suggests or implies a lot more. And lots of it can be argued. But what it says to me is this:
The people who prefer hardcopy books aren’t buying them.
If that’s you–if you prefer hardcopy books, but haven’t been buying books lately–you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. I don’t want to hear about having to decide where to spend your entertainment dollars, or how you feel about "modern fiction" (which is a ludicrously large brush to tar an entire medium with). The bottom line is, if you’re not buying books, then your book-buying preferences don’t matter. Book publishers have zero reason to care about the opinions of people who aren’t buying books; they’re going to tailor their products to the market that actually, y’know, earns a profit. You want your voice heard? You don’t want to see paper books replaced entirely by e-books? That’s a valid opinion to hold, and certainly worth real discussion on both sides.
But you only get to voice that opinion, in any way that matters, by putting your money where your mouth is. Answering polls? Ain’t gonna carry a single breath of weight with the publishers.
Want "real" books? Buy "real" books. Regularly. Period.
What is the single best zombie novel you’ve read, and why? (Comedies/parodies need not apply.)
…mostly for you other writers out there, but I’ll take help from anyone.
Do any of you know of any resources online that give suggestions on how to convey certain accents in written dialog? I can, if necessary, just search for specific examples in fiction of the accents in question, but it’d be a lot easier if there were a centralized source.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
