Several of the comments in the blogsphere during the Macmillan-Amazon dust-up focused on the point I and others had raised about the fact that, depending on the publisher, from thirty to sixty percent of all books lost money and that those losses were made up by the better-selling books. A number of commenters to various blogs essentially protested that publishers shouldn’t be “subsidizing” books that couldn’t carry their own weight, so to speak. At the time, I didn’t clarify this misconception, but it nagged at me.

So… almost NO publishers print books that they know will lose money. The plain fact of the matter is that when a publisher prints a book, it is usually with the expectation that it will at least break even, or come close. At times, publishers know a book will be borderline, because the author is new, but they publish the book in the hopes of introducing an author whose later books, they believe, will sell more. While the statistics show that 30%-60% of books lose money, the key point is that the publishers don’t know in advance which books will lose money. Yes, they do know that it’s unlikely that, for example, a Wheel of Time or a Recluce book will lose money, but no publisher has enough guaranteed best-sellers to fill out their printing schedule. Likewise, they really don’t know who will become a guaranteed best-seller. Just look at how many publishers turned down Harry Potter. Certainly, no editors ever thought that the Recluce books would sell as well or for as long as they have. Not to mention the fact that there are authors whose books were at the top of The New York Times bestseller lists whose later books were anything but bestsellers. The bottom line is simple: Publishers do not generally choose to print books that they know will lose money just to subsidize a given book or author. They try to print good-selling books, and they aren’t always successful.

Last week, Bowker released sales figures for the book publishing industry that revealed that only two percent of all book sales in 2009 were of e-books, while 35% were of trade paperbacks, 35% were hardcovers, and 21% were mass market paperbacks. Interestingly enough, though, while chain bookstores sold 27% of all books, e-commerce sites, such as Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, sold 20% of all titles, including hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass market paperbacks. People talk about how fast matters can change, but even “fast” takes time. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994. Today, based on the Bowker figures, Amazon probably accounts for between nine and fourteen percent of all U.S. book sales, but that’s after sixteen years of high growth. A study by Nielsen [the BookScan folks] also revealed that forty percent of all readers would not consider e-books under any circumstances. To me, those figures suggest that, while e-books may indeed be the wave of the future, the industry isn’t going to be doing big-time surfing on it for many years to come.

Total book sales were down about three percent last year, but fiction sales were up seven percent. The overall decline was linked to a decrease in sales of adult nonfiction. That indicates there was definitely an increased market for escapism in 2009.

And one last thought… in 1996, Amazon was still struggling, and there was a question as to whether it would really pull through — and then Jeff Bezos introduced the reader reviews, and Amazon never looked back. Because readers could offer their own views… they bought more books from Amazon. Do so many people feel so marginalized that being able to post comments changes their entire buying habits? The other downside to reader reviews is that the increasingly wide usage of the practice — from student evaluations to Amazon reviews — reinforces the idea that all opinions are of equal value… and they’re not, except in the mind of the opinion-giver. Some reader reviews are good, thoughtful, and logical. Most are less than that.

So, in yet another area, good marketing has quietly undermined product excellence.

Actually, this blog deals with my reaction to the expressed thoughts of others about the Oscar ceremony. Before beginning, however, I will cheerfully admit that I watch almost all movies either on DVD or satellite, often years after they’re released.

Now…for those thoughts. By Monday morning, in all too many media outlets, so-called columnists and pundits were complaining about the ceremony being too long and that too much time was wasted on “minor” awards that no one cared about, such as make-up, costumes, sound mixing, and the like. I didn’t happen to see a complaint about special effects, but maybe I overlooked it.

There are two BIG things that bother me about all this Monday morning quarterbacking. First, the Oscars were designed to recognize all aspects of film-making, not just the six “biggies.” As a matter of fact, I could make the argument that those who have been nominated for those — best picture, best director, best leading actor and actress, best supporting actor and actress — need the recognition far less than all the others who enabled the “biggies” to shine. Without a good script, the best actor looks stupid, as some of the greatest names in film have proved a few times. With the wrong music, the right mood doesn’t get created, and Richard Nixon certainly proved that make-up makes a difference. How can you have a Jane Austen period piece, or a Young Victoria, without the right costuming? The entire success of Avatar depends not so much on the actors as on all the things that aren’t the actors. The actors and directors are always recognized. Why begrudge all the others a few hours once a year when a few of them actually get noticed?

In addition, the ceremony and the awards were originally developed to provide such recognition — not to provide prime-time, viewer-oriented “entertainment.” But, of course, because many people have become interested, the “Oscar ceremony” is now packaged as entertainment, and the vast majority of the more technical awards are presented at another ceremony — noted at the “real” Oscar ceremony with a quick picture and thirty seconds of explanation [out of three hours] and not even a listing of names, because, after all, why should one be obliged to read a long list at the “official” Oscar ceremony?

My second BIG objection is that movies, especially today, are a highly technical enterprise that requires great expertise, and yet these commentators seem to want to ignore the very expertise that makes such great films possible in favor of glitz and celebrity. In a way, it reminds me of the Roman Empire, where the great majority of the engineers who designed all those buildings, bridges, and aqueducts were slaves — more privileged slaves, to be sure — but slaves nonetheless. And what happened as even the minimal respect for those slaves vanished in the decadence of glitz and ancient celebrity?

What these commentaries about the dullness of recognizing expertise reveal, unfortunately, is a deploring culture shift away from appreciating the technology that underpins everything we do, including even one of the least substantive aspects of our society — cinema — toward even more superficiality. And even that superficiality that has to be so current. Last year is so passe. As for more than a year ago… forget it.

The polite and bored minimal applause that followed the heartfelt tribute to John Hughes was incredibly painful to hear. A man who gave his life to his art, and combined humor and insight, and the general reaction was, “We’re bored.” And then the “In Memoriam” section was so abbreviated and flashed over so quickly, with names even eliminated when the camera flashed to James Taylor singing, that it was almost a travesty.

Are we so into glitz that we can’t spare an hour or two once a year to allow a little recognition for those who went before and for a comparative handful of experts, who represent tens of thousands of technical specialists that we never otherwise acknowledge, yet whose contributions are absolutely vital to the film industry? Is that really too much to ask?

And, remember, I’m not even a film buff.

The other day I got an email from a male reader who “finally read” The Soprano Sorceress… and enjoyed it and says he’s looking forward to the others. What was interesting about the e-mail was that this reader — a careerist serving in the military — admitted he’d put off reading the book because the protagonist was female. After receiving that email and then getting the early sales reports on Arms-Commander, I got to thinking matters over. I’ve written a number of books with female protagonists, and frankly, while they’ve sold well, they haven’t sold as well as other comparable books of mine with male protagonists, even though, in general, they’ve gotten far better reviews.

Now… obviously, female protagonists don’t kill book sales in general, or Patty Briggs or Marjorie Liu or any number of other authors wouldn’t be on The New York Times bestseller lists. So, if my books with female protagonists, which get better reviews, don’t sell as well as those with male protagonists, why is that so? I’d certainly hope that it’s not that better written books don’t sell as well.

What I’ve tentatively concluded is that readers form expectations of writers, and when an author writes something that appears to go against those expectations in a negative way, sales suffer. I’d been writing professionally for 25 years when the first book I wrote from a female viewpoint — and, yes, it was The Soprano Sorceress — was published, and I had eighteen books in print by then, all of which featured strong male characters and many of which were military/action oriented. Although I have always written strong female characters, they were usually viewed from the male perspective.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I upset the expectations I’d inadvertently established over more than twenty years. In a way, perhaps I should have been grateful that the fall-off in sales was merely “noticeable,” rather than catastrophic. Part of the loss in readers was probably alleviated because I’d been publishing fantasy for some six years before I took on writing a fantasy with a female protagonist, so that the shift was likely not so wrenching as it might have been to some readers.

And yet, at the same time, why didn’t I pick up more readers from among those who like strong female protagonists? For exactly the same reason! Those readers had likely scanned earlier books of mine and decided they were not to their tastes, and having done so, were not likely to return to peruse later works of mine unless someone called one to their attention.

This sort of expectation-generation, unfortunately, is not helped by current publisher marketing strategies, where all too many authors are encouraged to use one pen name for one type of book, and another for a different type, and where an author’s name is a stringently and narrowly defined “brand.” That strategy is akin to applying fast-food marketing techniques to books, and while it might sell more books in the short run, it definitely has the downside of limiting publication of books and/or authors that don’t “brand” easily.

This”branding” also has the side-effect of effectively reducing reader exposure to a wider range of fiction. For example, I write, under my own name, straight SF, fantasy, alternate world SF, what might be called science fantasy, and I write from both male and female points-of-view, and I use different tenses in different books. Offhand, I don’t know of another author who does all that — not under the same name, although I do know some writers with multiple pen names for differing styles.

In the end, though, I have to ask, just what are readers losing by the creation of such rigid expectations of author names? What discoveries will they never make… what intellectual and mental challenges will they never encounter… what unexpected pleasures will they miss?

No, I’m not giving awards, but commenting on the social implications of the recent Winter Olympics. Put bluntly, there’s something really wrong with the world when a national psyche, such as Canada’s, rests on the outcome of a hockey game. Did this athletic contest produce a cure for cancer, a new space drive that will allow us access to the planets, or a way to effectively deal with terrorism? For that matter, did any of the Olympic contests really determine the best athletes in any given endeavor? No, they did not. They determined who was the best on a given day. One could even claim that the U.S.was the better hockey team since the two teams split contests and overall the USA scored more goals. But Canada’s national psyche was “saved” because one game was somehow more important than another game. A game! So be it… sadly.

And, by the way, when did games and viewing them become so important? Has it ever happened before in history? Several times, as a matter of fact — in ancient Greece, before its civilization collapsed, in Rome, after the fall of the Republic, and in Central America, before the Mayan civilization became too weak to survive environmental catastrophe. There might be other examples, as well, but those spring to mind immediately.

More to the immediate point, the Winter Games — and the television hoopla surrounding them — trivialized the lives of everyday people everywhere. A skater was praised for competing and winning a bronze medal in the days following her mother’s death. Yes, she was courageous, but how many people, every day, have to go with their lives after a loved one dies unexpectedly? Several other athletes were lauded for overcoming difficulties in order to triumph in their fields, and the media played it up as if they were the only ones who had ever done so. I don’t recall any media hoopla or medals for my wife when she had to sing a full concert while her mother was dying, in order to keep her job, nor do I recall any great praise for the student who had to do a singing competition after surviving a car crash and a broken shoulder and the death of a beloved aunt. And there seemed to be a great deal of concern over whether Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series would be finished, which concern and commentary lasted far longer than the brief praises of his career at the time of his unfortunate death.

There was a note that the coverage of the Winter Olympics actually outpolled American Idol in terms of viewers. Why should this have been any surprise? They’re different sides of the same coin. Both reward a performance of the moment, not necessarily sustained excellence, and both performances, frankly, have little to do with improving the human condition, except for momentarily making those watching feel better. I’m not taking anything away from the athletes; they’ve worked long and hard to achieve excellence in their fields. But to showcase such performances and to surround them with such hype… what does that say about our society?

Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions that I’m just a geeky science fiction and fantasy writer who has no understanding and appreciation of sports, I will point out that, for better or worse, I was one of those athletes. In addition of lettering in high school sports, I was a competitive swimmer for fifteen years, all the way through college, and although I was just a touch too slow to be Olympic caliber, I do know what it takes to succeed first hand. I’m not against sports; I’m against the glorification of the spectator side of sports, against glitz overwhelming true achievement, and against the creation of an image where sports achievement is blown totally out of proportion to solid values in life.

We live in a world where American Idol far outdraws opera, yet opera is far more demanding and technically superior. Where stock car drivers make thousands of times what those other drivers — such as truckers and highway patrol officers — do. Where graphic novels sell far more than books that actually make readers think in depth. Where the glitz and financial manipulations of Wall Street quants and financiers draw rewards hundreds of thousands of times greater than the salaries of those who police our streets, fight our fires, and educate our children.

History won’t remember American Idol, nor the winners of Olympic Games. If history is even read by the coming generations, it might list Shakespeare, Edison, Washington, Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Pasteur, and Einstein, among others who made real accomplishments.

What did the Winter Olympics say about us as a society? That the winner is… those with the greatest ability to entertain and dazzle, rather than those who provide us with solid achievements?

The other day, Jo Walton, another author, posted a commentary on Tor.com about the decline in “optimistic” science fiction books, claiming that she found few SF books that showed a “positive future” and asking “Why is nobody writing books like this now?”

I won’t quote extensively from her article, but she does make the point that optimistic science fiction was written in the depths of the Great Depression, through WWII, and through the 1950s, none of which were exactly the most cheerful of times, despite a certain later gloss of nostalgia, while noting that today most SF views of the future are rather grim.

What struck me about both her commentary and the initial responses posted was that both Jo and the commenters restricted their views to a comparatively few handfuls of writers, and those writers tend to be those who have high visibility in the F&SF fan community and press. Even some writers who have fairly high visibility and who show a certain optimism about the future — such as Joe Haldeman, Michael Flynn, David Drake, or Walter Jon Williams — aren’t mentioned. While my optimism is of the somewhat cynical variety, I do often write about futures with optimistic features and places, and I-m optimistic about solutions — just not about their costs… and needless to say, I’m not mentioned either.

So, as Jo herself asks, how much of this is merely seeing what one wants to, and how much is grounded in a fundamental change in what is being written? Another relevant question is: How does one define optimistic? From the viewpoint of the tens of thousands of American mothers who lost children to so-called “childhood diseases” every year prior to about 1940, the health situation we have today would look incredibly optimistic. The same would be true of all the slaves in the south in 1850. On the other hand, the Jeffersonians of 1800 would be appalled by the centralized banking and commercially dominated economy of the twenty-first century. For all the housewives of the years before 1950, modern conveniences would likely seem the ultimate optimistic convenience, and long-distance modern transport is definitely far better and more optimistic than sailing ships and horse-drawn wagons.

I’m a great believer in the fact that life comes in all shades, particularly of gray, and the events of the past half-century, in particular, have reinforced that feeling in millions of Americans. We have comparatively few Americans, in percentage terms, in grinding poverty, particularly compared to most of the world’s population, but we also have far higher taxation rates than we ever had when grinding poverty was the norm for twenty percent of our population. Despite the tabloid headlines, civic violence is far lower than it was a century ago, but there are far more restrictions on personal acts and behavior. And so it goes. In a way, one might even call these trade-offs the “loss of societal innocence.” This makes it difficult for an intelligent writer to present an unblemished and totally optimistic view of a future where technology will solve all the major problems facing society — or even one of them.

Yet, despite my quibbles with what Jo Walton has written, and despite those of us who struggle to show optimism in depicting the future, I think she touches a vital point. It is getting harder and harder to be both realistic and highly optimistic in writing about probable futures, although I do believe, as I think my writing shows, in qualified optimism.

In the end, the question becomes: Can any realistic future high-tech society present other than qualified optimism, given higher population levels, higher and often unrealistic societal expectations, and the need to maintain basic levels of order among society itself?