Old Man and the Book

I've ended up at John Scazi's blog a couple of times in the past week. Megan just linked to his post on why it takes a long, long time to write a good novel. It takes a long, long time to write anything. [insert dissertation stories in here]. Good stuff at Scazi's blog. Note to self: Add to Google Reader.

Comments

[Doug]

Scalzi's good; won a Hugo basically for his blog. I'll have to go back and read the comments there; not many had accumulated when I read the post this morning.

He's right about the writing, but there are also features of the industry that extend the process unnecessarily, basically for the convenience of incumbent publishing companies. The custom of no simultaneous submissions (especially when a reply can take up to a year (a year? a year? wtf???)) is a crazy way to run a business, and is there strictly to keep the power imbalance in favor of the houses. When authors and/or agents have the power, they do auctions and make the publishers come to a decision in days or weeks. There are plenty of other imbalances that work to the detriment of both authors and culture as a whole, but this paragraph is already threatening to turn into a diatribe.