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Fun and games in sf
Mar. 24th, 2025 10:09 amCurrently hanging out in a hospital waiting room while a friend gets a routine procedure and contemplating how I’m feeling about sf and f prodom and fandom as a whole. Been a couple of things bringing this on, one of which happened a couple of years ago. An author who I used to publish sent me a lengthy email rant and announced they didn’t want to work with me anymore. I was (still am) pissed about it, but provided a date for their rights to be reverted to them, told them to expect their quarterly royalties on schedule and followed up on that. I assumed that we were done but they decided to try and weaponize SFWA’s Griefcom against me and shenanigans ensued. What became very clear was that a. SFWA didn’t distinguish well between multinational corporations and smaller publishers and b. any publisher was the enemy. So there was bullying and threats and it was all a highly unpleasant experience that took some months to wrap. Interestingly enough, no one ever claimed that I was defrauding the author either in terms of rights or money, which would have been the most logical reason for SFWA to be involved at all. What I got from it was that SFWA did not represent my current interests (I will not be renewing this year) and that it was remarkably easy to weaponize its processes, something they were utterly unprepared for.
Fast forward to the now. There is a collective Bluesky meltdown going on about another small press, its financing, biz practices and such. I’m not immersed in the detail level enough to comment very directly, but the most recent precipitating incident appears to have been one of the publishers posting that cash flow wasn’t good and they might have trouble paying royalties this month. I will note that I do not at this time know of any of the press’s authors who are claiming that they haven’t been paid, which strikes me as an important thing here.
At any rate, there are a number of posts in response and a great many people associated with the large press corporate system have many opinions about how small presses *should* function, a considerable number of which revolve around “be a multi-billion dollar corporation!” Only smaller. So I posted a thread about what I’d been doing for the past 8.3 years, cash flow, expenses, juggling and so forth. A number of other small press folks thanked me for my honesty and boosted it. A random literary agent popped up and with some virtual pearl-clutching, demanded to know if I had an entirely separate account for author royalties and if not, was I just paying authors on (horrified sniff!) “some sort of honor system.” This went over super well and I pointed that gosh, I did book keeping and provided royalty statements and everything and then suggested that since they were clearly looking for a fight, they should look elsewhere. And I blocked Agent Annie, as I will call her for my purposes here, and I went on with my life. The next day, a Tor author pops up on my feed and expresses her “great disappointment” in me based on our long professional association because Agent Annie is the Best of Us All, kindness and sweetness personified, never fights with anyone, etc., etc. Da fuck? First of all, I have never published this author, met them in person or been on a panel with them, or so I thought. I eventually recalled being a panelist on a virtual panel at a virtual con some 3 years ago that might have included them, but that’s it. We don’t even follow each other on Bluesky.
Viewed in a more benign way, she might have me confused with someone else. Or she might be someone who confuses liking a TikTok video with having an actual social connection. But I think and said in response that I didn’t know her and that this was clearly just part of the ongoing pile-on and suggested that she and Agent Annie could go look for blood in the water elsewhere. My sweet summer children, I was active on LJ when Requires Hate was most active. I know how pile-ons work. I also know that there are minor players looking to curry favor with whomever who go looking for auxiliary targets because that happens every time. So let’s just say that they succeed in driving this other small press under and perhaps they dent us too because I’m a “meanie” who doesn’t recognize that the Great and Popular and their hangers-on are so much smarter and better at this than I am, what next? It is very difficult to get a small press launched and keep it going, particularly under current circumstance, especially if they emphasize diverse authors and books for various values of “diversity.” And a press that is paying their artists and writers and so forth consistently is to be appreciated. Who’s going to replace that? Note that the same people never complain about established presses that owe their authors thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties, stolen rights, etc. At least not until someone Important does it first.
I will tell you another thing for free: those big corporations you love so much and are so convinced are the one true way to get published are going to start culling their lists soon. They will swing with the prevailing climate in the U.S. and that date is not that far away. What will you do then? Having seen this before, I’ll tell you: some of you will stop writing. Some of you will go indie or go to smaller presses. Some of you will make your characters a lot whiter and straighter. So what you’re doing right now is going to make things harder for you when things change. And they will. That Big Time Author you’re courting right now has their own issues and concerns and they are unlikely to concern themselves with yours based entirely on taking their side in an internet kerfuffle. I recommend sitting with that for a while, preferably offline.
As for fandom, that’s a murkier issue, but lordy, I am seeing a whole lot of “we have always done things this way” like lockdown didn’t happen and like the entire landscape hasn’t shifted. Sometimes, it’s inviting the same guests over and over again. Sometimes, it’s ignoring market conditions and insisting on lots of hoops for vendors or higher costs. On a not unrelated note, if you’ve got the resources, not including a virtual component is a Bad Idea (Wild West Con’s venue just shut them down on Day 2 for unspecified “health reasons,” for example). And so on. I admit to being very tired of getting passed over for guest lists, being an afterthought for Dealers Rooms and so forth and am more and more inclined to take my business elsewhere unless a con makes it worth my while and I’m hearing this from a lot of other folks too. Going to see a lot of cons give up the ghost soon, I expect, as con coms age out, finances become more untenable, etc. Tackling the “same old, same old” now makes it more unlikely that your event will survive, just saying.
