FutureTense

Tiffany Jonas at Aio Publishing passes on the following statistics, courtesy of David Koehser:

Of the 1,200,000 titles tracked by Nielsen Bookscan in 2004, 950,000, or 79%, sold fewer than 99 copies. The next 200,000 titles sold fewer than 1,000 copies, meaning that only 50,000 titles sold more than 1,000 copies. In 2005, only 10 titles sold more than 1,000,000 copies, and fewer than 500 titles sold more than 100,000 copies.

With payout so unlikley, no wonder the standard advance for a first book is a meager $5,000.

Best regards,
Alan

This one is a bit old, but still worth passing along.

Being a numbers man, I can’t say that spending two years writing a book for a $5,000 advance sounds all that thrilling. Instead, we should all get degrees in computer game design, where the average computer game artist makes $42,500 3 years out, the average computer game programmer makes $54,300 3 years out and top artists will pull in over $200,000.

Still, the sad news is that long fiction _still_ pays better than the short fiction market, word for word, after you take into account acceptance rates.

Best regards,
Alan

Glorious names. Apatosaurus. Coelophysis. Parasaurolophus. What if they were all gone? The bones warehoused instead of out on display. Books that mention them quietly disappeared. No more mythic Tyranosaurus Rex in the movies or stories.

For those of you — and you know who you are — who missed the Earth shattering news, Pluto is no longer a planet.
The sky is falling! Quick. Let’s summon the mercenaries, gather the change from our change jars, pool our resources and start a “Save Pluto” foundation.

I guess this is an example of what passes for “excitement” and “controversy” within the SF field. (At least it managed to keep the various news groups i belong to buzzing for a week or so.)

For me, it was a painful measure of the relevance of the field of SF. I live in a state where all forms of intellectualism are under attack, including education. Science — thanks to its association with Darwin — is pariah even among college educated, advanced degreed, intelligent types who ought to know better.

This end of the country is on the blank part of the map, where scientific method is dismissed as nothing more than a belief system. Maybe I’m just oversensitive but when SF types dance the “Tempest in a Teapot” tango over whether Pluto is a planet while there is real — perhaps permanent — damage being done to the intellectual capital of this nation in the name of religion, I can’t help but think maybe we’re conspiring in our own extinction.

I can wish the problem would go away but wishing isn’t going to turn the tide. Effort is what is called for. Effort and leadership that should be — but is not — coming from us brainy think-tank types here in the SF world. We’re the ones who are supposed to forecasting the future and reporting back to the rest of the world on what we find. That’s our job. That’s why they pay us the big bucks.

Remember. There are NO stegosaurs in the Bible. Now! Think like a dinosaur!

Best regards,
Alan

After over a year, I think I’m back in action. Kids are doing the growing up thing and need less of my attention.

Somewhere along the way, I’d gotten tired of hearing myself shout the same thing over and over again. There’s only so many ways I found to say “Where’s the Future in Science Fiction gone?”

I’m still a rant-o-holic. That hasn’t changed.

I’ve surrendered on the multi-blogger approach. There are things I want to say about the current state of SF — particularly short SF — and I don’t want to drag anyone else through the mud. I will attempt to remain optimistic. I will attempt to remain respectful. I don’t expect the opinions I express here to exactly endear me to most of the publishers for which I am sorry but can’t apologize. I hope I don’t piss anyone off — especially when I start to name names and use published examples — for that’s not the point.

By the same token, I have been reluctant to engage on some fronts because I don’t want others who wrote for the old FutureTense blog to be tarred with the same brush that I intend to work hard for.

Ever yours, dear reader,
Alan