Posts Tagged Authors

I read a lot. At any given time, I might be reading several books at once, and I average finishing somewhere around three books a week.  And since it seems to be time for such things, I decided I’d give a little list of the favorite books I read this year.

These books may not have been published this year. They might’ve been republished in a new edition, or won some awards that brought them to my attention, or they might’ve just been sitting on my waiting-to-read stack for a while, but each of these I read for the first time this year, and would recommend to anyone.

1. Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
   Winner of the Newberry and countless other awards and medals this year, and of course written by my favorite contemporary author, this is one of the best examples of what makes Neil Gaiman so great. His books may exist in the realm of the fantastic, but they are a prime example of just how much truth can exist in fiction.
2. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
   This is available on Doctorow’s website as a CC licensed e-book, for those with empty pockets, and it’s definitely worth the read, and the purchase. Cory Doctorow is one of the best emerging authors in the sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction genres. There’s nothing pulp about any of his work, and Little Brother, written for an adolescent audience, is just as pointed in its commentary as any of his others.
3. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
   This is written by the same woman who wrote The Time Traveller’s Wife, which I have not read.  This book is about the “life” of a young woman buried in Highgate Cemetary in London during the Victorian Era. (There did seem to be a lot of good ghost books lately…) Obsession is the major theme of the book, with each character seeming to have his or her own version of it, from obsessive love to obsessive hate and everything in between.
4. Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman, art by Andy Kubert (Pencil), and Scott Williams (Ink)
   As usual, my favorite graphic novel of the year was written by Neil Gaiman,  though this is a departure from my usual Sandman love. I’m usually a Marvel fan, when it comes to comics, but this gorgeous hardcover edition of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? was too beautiful to bypass, and proved to have a wonderful tale within. It answers the question of  what happens to the world, when a bat dies.
5. Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, Art by Will Conrad, Ink by Jo Chen
   It’s unusual for me to have two graphic novels on my list, but these two were awesome enough for it. Of course, I’m a rather fervent Browncoat, but even putting fan-bias aside, this is an excellent comic.  Perhaps, with the television executives unwilling to give Joss Whedon the free reign he needs to produce truly great material, comics will provide a place for us to find the great writing that we all love him for.

There seems to be a good many self-publishing services cropping up over the web, but I have to take them with a grain of salt. Regardless of how you do it, self-publishing is rarely a good way to get your book seen if you want it to hit mainstream audiences.

There are, however, a few good things that you can do with self-publishing.  My grandfather has a book that he treasures which lists our family genealogy back 500 years, with a history of the family researched and written up by a cousin who is a genealogy hobbyist. He’s also the one who went to the trouble of having hardcover editions of this book printed.  The book can mean little to nothing to anyone outside our family, will never be sold at a bookstore, and will never have much more than a few dozen issues printed.

That is one of the areas where self-publishing is useful and works well.   In these days of the E-Book, it is entirely possible for an author to self-publish without much cost whatsoever (as I plan to do, publishing my first novel as an e-book under creative commons).  However, this is more of a good way to get exposure in the publishing community than to actually…make a living off of your writing.

Unfortunately, to do that, you’ve still got to do it the hard way.  There may be a lucky few who self-publish and make it to the big leagues . . . but they are just that, lucky.  Especially without the assistance of a professional, experienced editor,even if you self-publish through a service that places your book at Amazon, it is unlikely that it will sell more than a few copies, much less gain the notice of critics.

I tend to take the same tack as Stephen King when it comes to editing: “To write is human, to edit is divine.”  Many times, it is the editor who can take what might be a mediocre, or just moderately good, piece of work and turn it into a great piece of writing.  Authors, myself included, have a tendency to treat our work as a sacred child, and sometimes it is necessary to cut out even your best loved passages to make a story work.

For what they provide, these self-publishing services do what they do well and offer a convenience that was hard to come by before, however a writer should not go to them expecting to be the next New York Times bestseller or to make a million dollars off of it.

After all, if you’ve come to writing in the first place expecting to be a millionaire….you’re probably writing for the wrong reasons anyway.

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