scribble, scribble, scribble…

Anyone who thinks the fight going on over ebooks right now between Amazon and publisher Macmillan isn’t a big deal might consider that books have been a literally fundamental technology for us Westerners for at least the past half-millennium or so, and that this current dispute is really about who controls the medium. Which is, of course, the message. Anyway, good thoughts and summary here (via bulicks).

My latest “Blogging the Hugos” post, on Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, is up. Relatedly:

This is good advice on healthy munching, from Deanna Hoak (a copy editor who specializes in science fiction and fantasy, which is a vocation I can totally get behind).

(via John Scalzi)

My review of the 1961 Hugo winner, A Canticle for Leibowitz, is up at io9. The thesis: If you wanna nitpick, it’s not science fiction at all!

Commenter Nadja passes along a link to this column in the L.A. Times about how both freelance pay rates and word counts have dropped, sharply, over the past few years. Here’s a more upbeat note from near the end:

The 34-year-old Villano — whose outlets include the San Francisco Chronicle, Fodor’s travel guides, Casino Player and Oceanus magazines — said some writers struggle because they have fuzzy, arty notions about their work. They need to act more like small business people, Villano said, diversifying their skills and the outlets they write for.

That would be my take too, based solely on my own limited experience. The demand for content grows every day, and there are still places out there that will pay you for it, and pay you well. Some are magazines and newspapers, but you gotta look other places, too.