thoughts and opinions by author s. andrew swann
S Andrew Swann | December 24, 2008
One interpretation of the 2008 presidential election is that the US is way more sexist than racist. If the media coverage (and the result) doesn’t convince you of this, reflect on the fact that last March Charlotte Allen wrote a long rambling apologia for the idea that women are, well, not too bright. If she [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 23, 2008
Or more precisely, those who identify as conservative suffer from “a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.” At least it is if you’re Jonathan Haidt, who informed us last September, that in essence, those people who did not [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 22, 2008
Welcome to the final ten days of 2008. To ring in the New Year I am bringing to you a countdown of the greatest asshats of the year, roughly in order of increasing stupidity, amusement value, and pernicious effect on the world at large. To begin, to celebrate the end of the election, I present [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 20, 2008
The following showed up in the mail on Friday: The bound galleys for Prophets, way cool. Having been writing mass market paperbacks all my career, it’s neat to see the books in this faux trade paperback format.
S Andrew Swann | December 19, 2008
I’m again taking one of my periodic vacations from the day job to work full bore on the current work in progress. I’ll be busy until after the holidays. But stay tuned, I have a special feature all lined up for the last ten days of 2008, after which we’ll be back to our regularly [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 18, 2008
To be enshrined along with “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” George Bush, announcing that American Capitalism has jumped the shark.
S Andrew Swann | December 17, 2008
Someone, somewhere, in the 19th Century Ivory Tower that is the publishing industry has realized that allowing bookstores to strip unsold mass-market paperbacks and “return” them (i.e. tear the cover off for credit from the publisher and giving the naked book to cousin Billy.) is not a viable business model. According to Reuters, Borders is [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 16, 2008
Over at Juno Books they have some sales figures for October, and the news is somewhat depressing: Publishers’ net book sales fell 20.1% to $644.5 million in October, as reported by 80 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the year through October were down 3.4% to $8.362 billion However, if you’re a [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 15, 2008
This post shows up in my RSS feed, which takes me over here, where one of the first links leads me over to this thread of awesomness. Here’s the concept: Take random Wikipedia article, feed the subject into the LIFE photo archive and pick a picture, the article is your book title, the image is [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 12, 2008
On Dear Author we hear of a woman who’s held a funeral for her failed writing career. When I read the post my thoughts went something like this: Sixteen rejections is a low threshold for career failure. Can you base a career on the viability of a single novel (probably a first effort?) Hold on, [...]
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