Whatever

Question from the peanut gallery:

Any predictions on tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses?

Predictions? No. What do I want to happen? I want Santorum to win and Ron Paul to come in second, because I think that would precipitate the maximum possible amount of panic within in GOP establishment brain trust — as it should — which would fill me with childlike glee.

Oh, don’t look at me like that, people. You know this isn’t my political race. The only fun I’m going to get out of it is if it’s a wacky chaotic mess, and the Republicans wait until the last possible minute to give the nomination to Romney, already. If the dude just waltzes out of the Iowa caucuses with a win, it’s going to be a boring primary season for everyone. But Santorum on top, so to speak? Oh boy. That’s going to be fun.

Could it happen? Hell, yeah: a Sunday poll has Romney, Paul and Santorum polling within the poll’s margin of error of each other, and Talking Points Memo notes that of the three, Santorum is the one whose numbers are significantly on the upswing in recent Iowa polls; i.e., the dude’s got momentum. He could totally take it, Paul could totally place, and Romney could totally have to spin a third place finish.

Please note that my prior assessment of Santorum as a querulous bigot still stands, and that despite how much fun I’ve been having over on Twitter making Santorum jokes, I think it’s appalling that the man is now suddenly a viable candidate out there in Iowa. Seriously, conservative Iowans: Santorum? Why not take a Sharpie to a posterboard, write “We Don’t Want That Lousy Presidency Anyway” and just stay home tomorrow? Isn’t it snowing? Don’t you have a cozy fire?

Oh, fine. Do what you want, then. You kids have fun. And if you do put Santorum on top, well. You’ll have put a smile on my face. How fun would Santorum be in the general race? More fun than Gingrich. Think about that, why don’t you.

The desktop suffered a meltdown in December, which will require at least an entirely new C: drive and all the attendant frippery that goes with resurrecting a desktop computer, and I have decided that for now the best course of action is blow off entirely doing a thing about it until I complete the current project. As a side “benefit” this will cut down on the number of distractions I have since the Mac Air is not exactly a primo gaming machine. That decided, I cleared off the desk of the massively large monitor which usually resides there and shoved it and the desktop into the closet for the time being. Don’t worry, they’ll be back at some point. But for now, this is what the desk looks like. It features the bare essentials, including (of course) Coke Zero.

I’ll note that having a laptop, I don’t actually have to be chained to my desk, and indeed for most of the last month (i.e., since the meltdown), I’ve been wandering about the house, trying out different places to see how I like them. It’s been fun but I think there is something to be said about having a place that really is meant for work, such as, you know, one’s home office. Anyway, we’ll see how long it stays this clean. I give it a couple of weeks.

Which is to say it’s the first work day of the new year and I have work to do, so the “no talking to the rest of the world until I meet the daily writing quota” thing is in effect, starting as soon as I post this (you see what I did there). For those who are going to ask, and who don’t remember from the last time I did this, the daily writing quota is 2,000 words or until noon, whichever comes first. This will continue until the project I’m working on is completed.

So: Catch up with you all a bit later.

What is it? Click here to find out.

Note: It’s even better when you hit the “random” link over there. Over and over and over.

And yes, it will be updated. Almost constantly.

Zeus is going to be mightily disappointed when we take down the Christmas tree.

Today is a day for general site maintenance and updatery. Because it’s a new year! Just in case you were wondering.

Also, uh, hello. Happy New Year.

Introduction

You are now visiting “Whatever.” It is a blog written by John Scalzi, who is a professional writer. It has been in existence since 1998. It is as a consequence one of the longest-running blogs on the Web. It is generally updated daily. It is about whatever John Scalzi feels like writing on.

A Brief History of Whatever

“Whatever” began on September 13, 1998, before the term “blog” had common currency. Scalzi, who had previously been a professional newspaper and online columnist, began the site to stay sharp in the column writing format, and took specific inspiration from columnist James Lileks’ Web site, The Bleat. Rather than to focus the writing on one specific topic, Scalzi chose to write on any subject that was of interest to him that day. Topics from the first week of Whatever included Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the death of CNN journalist John Holliman, invoicing clients, walking the dog, the Netscape Web browser and a sexual affair involving the politician Henry Hyde. Whatever has continued without permanent interruption since that date, with the format being primarily (but not always) daily updates from Scalzi.

Whatever is one of the most visited personal blogs on the Web, with 5.4 million visits to the blog recorded by WordPress’ statistics suite in 2011 (see here regarding tracking site visitorship). Writing from the site has been compiled into two books: You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop Into a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing (Subterranean Press), and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever 1998 – 2008 (Subterranean Press, Tor Books). Hate Mail earned the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Related Book. Individual blog entries are occasionally reprinted by newspapers, magazines and online sites, including the Chicago Tribune, the Dayton Daily News, CNN Money and 1Up.com.

In December 2002, Scalzi serialized his science fiction novel Old Man’s War on Whatever; it was subsequently published by Tor Books in 2005 and later nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In September 2006, Scalzi taped bacon to his cat and published the picture on Whatever, causing an Internet sensation; “Bacon Cat” has subsequently been featured in articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post and cited by Salon and Mental Floss as the genesis of the Internet’s obsession with bacon.

From September 1998 through February of 2003, Whatever was published via “hand-rolled” html templates. The majority of the writing from this time is no longer directly available on the site. In March 2003, Scalzi switched to the Movable Type blogging software, which allowed for archiving and commenting. In October 2007, Scalzi switched to the WordPress blogging software. Since October 2008, Whatever has been hosted by WordPress.com via its VIP service, which he recommends.

About John Scalzi

John Scalzi has been writing professionally since 1991, first as a film critic and general columnist for the Fresno Bee newspaper (where his reviews and columns were nationally syndicated), then as America Online’s in-house writer and editor, and since 1998 as a full-time freelance writer. Scalzi is best known as a writer of science fiction, with several novels in the genre published since 2005. He also frequently writes non-fiction. A full book-format bibliography is here. Scalzi’s novel Old Man’s War is being adapted into film by Paramount Pictures, with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct.

Scalzi is also a consultant on writing, editing and marketing. Clients (directly or in association with marketing companies) have included The Walt Disney Company, AOL, Oppenheimer Funds, US Trust, Zagat and Network Solutions. Scalzi also served as the Creative Consultant on the television show Stargate: Universe. He currently writes a column on science fiction film for the FilmCritic.com site.

A California native, Scalzi attended the Webb Schools of California and the University of Chicago, and lives in Ohio with his wife, daughter and an assortment of pets. A full biography is here.

Site Caveats

As John Scalzi writes about what he wants, when he wants, however he wants, there is a reasonably good chance that at some point what he writes on Whatever may upset, offend or annoy you. The longer you read the site, the more likely this becomes.

Additionally, Whatever allows readers to comment, but expects and requires a high level of intelligence and socialization from commenters.

For this reason, Scalzi has created a site disclaimer and comment policy. He encourages everyone to read it. Comment moderation here operates on its principles.

Ghlaghghee languidly fulfills her contractual obligations for the year and wishes you the best for the rest of 2011 and for all of 2012.

Now, scoot. She’s got napping to do.

It’s not precisely the very end of the year (we’ve still got several hours to go), but, inasmuch as holidays and weekends are slow around here anyway, and today is both, it’s close enough for me to wonk off about Whatever’s stats for the year. Here’s what I can report, with the usual caveats about the WordPress statistics package:

1. The WordPress stats package recorded almost exactly 5.4 million visits to Whatever this year, which is a new record, and up about 5% from last year’s 5.13 million. Considering people kept writing about how this was the year that blogging died, and considering how many people access Whatever via RSS and other means (which are not recorded in the daily stats) I’m pleased to continue to see actual growth in visitorship to the blog.

2. The biggest month for visitorship was November, which was in fact the month with the highest visitorship ever (replacing February 2010) and had the second highest single day visitorship (November 10, with 70,931 visits) in the blog’s history. For context, that was the day I posted “Omelas State University,” which was far and away the single most popular Whatever entry of the year. The lowest month for visitorship in 2011 was May, which makes sense because three weeks out of that month I was off on a book tour.

3. The most visited Whatever entries of 2011, in order: “Omelas,” “Being Poor,” “10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing,” “I See No Possible Way This Incredible Cover Letter Could Ever Fail,” “Strawberry Shortcake and Penny Arcade,” “The Sort of Crap I Don’t Get,” “How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie,” “And Now For No Particular Reason a Rant About Facebook” and “This is Useful to Remember.”

The list above is a mix of new entries and perennials, which to my mind shows both the value of having a massive amount of archives and also belies what I think is the general assumption that only new stuff is ever read online — that it’s the meme of the day and nothing else. Evidently not. That said, I’m happy it’s not all just “greatest hits” here either; I don’t think Whatever will remain successful if people aren’t reading the new stuff, too.

4. Leaving out search engines, people who clicked in from somewhere else came in most from (in order): Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Penny Arcade, Instapundit, Balloon Juice, Making Light, Boing Boing, Reddit and Google+. Hey, that social media thing? It works! But apparently so do old school blogs, even though they’re supposed to be dead. Go figure.

5. Despite still not quite being able to figure out its actual methodology (I know it relates to linking, but apparently in an abstruse sort of way), I do still check Technorati to see how it ranks Whatever. Right now, according to Technorati, Whatever is the 401st most popular blog in world (tied with Roger Ebert’s and five others in a seven way tie). This is as low as I’ve seen it recently — I’ve seen it as high as about 130 or so — but as linking comes and goes I don’t doubt there’s a lot of rank jumping going about once you get out of the solid top 40 or so (mostly tech and politics blogs). I’m also generally in the top ranks of Technorati’s “Books” category — currently number five and usually in a range between 1 and 25 — and often in the lower bounds of its top 100 in “Entertainment” (currently number 82). I was recently ranked in their Top 100 “comics” category, but I’m chalking that up as a fluke.

What does this all mean, other than that I’m nerding out on a Saturday morning? Mostly that Whatever just keeps chugging along. Thanks for being along for the ride.

Don’t worry. It’s lovely.

Objectively speaking about the world at large, 2011 was about as crappy a year as I can remember existing in my entire adult life; a genuine clusterbang of monumental proportions. But on a personal and professional level, it was really good: Fuzzy Nation popped onto the New York Times best seller list and received some of the best reviews I’ve gotten, I was able to announce my Old Man’s War movie deal, I did book tours on two separate continents, SFWA members not only did not burn me in effigy but actually elected me to a second term as president, I wrote and sold Redshirts, raised $10,000 for my local library and learned how to play the ukulele. Plus met some very cool new people, who I have added to my list of folks I am happy to call my friends. So, yeah. Dear world: I’m sorry 2011 was not as good for you in aggregate as it was for me personally.

2012 has a full plate for me as well. Here are the things I know I am doing:

1. Releasing two books: 24 Frames Into the Future: Scalzi on Science Fiction Film in February, and Redshirts in June.

2. Being a Guest of Honor at Boskone in February, Penguicon in April and Capclave in October.

3. Being the Toastmaster for Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon, in August.

4. Working on a new and very cool project about which I can give you no details now but which I think you will be pleased about when I can.

5. Wrapping up my tenure as SFWA president and handing over the reins to whomever will be the new president in July.

6. Voting for the US president (among others) in November.

7. Continuing to write my science fiction film column for FilmCritic.com

Plus a couple of other things I can’t announce yet, because they are secret and/or preliminary, but are cool nevertheless.

Last year I noted that while I was writing books I would stick to a schedule of writing fiction in the morning (when my brain is not yet cluttered with the real world) and then dealing with everything else, including e-mail and Whatever, after I’d reached my writing quota. Expect this to be in effect in 2012, particularly in the first half of the year, when most of the work of that Very Cool Project I hinted at will need to be done. On a practical basis I don’t know that you’ll notice this too much — in 2011 the “write in the morning” scheme didn’t seem to have a huge effect on how things worked around here, and even if it did I have to pay my mortgage, so, you know, it wouldn’t change things — but I figured I’d let you know. I don’t think any of you mind the idea I’m writing cool stuff when I’m not here.

First: Tonight’s sunset, with extra added American flag:

Second: A selection of sunsets from 2011. Enjoy.

Third, have a sunrise. Because you deserve it.

In all, another good year for that great big ball of plasma in the sky.

Because it means I get churro-derived breakfast cereal. Athena and I both spotted this box in the store, said “Dude! Churro cereal!” almost simultaneously, and lunged for the box. I got it first because I still have the slightly longer reach. But I will share it with her, I promise. Regardless, it is truly an age of miracles and wonders.

And for those of you asking whether it’s actually possible to get the sheer, unalloyed awesomeness of a churro into a breakfast cereal form, the answer is, of course not. Churros are perhaps nature’s most perfect hot fried pastry; Post Mini Cinnamon Churros™ can’t hope to replicate their native awesomeness. And as a breakfast cereal, the individual churro nuggets seem little unwieldy to me (I’m eating it as a snack, picking up each piece with my fingers, rather than trying to navigate the things unto a spoon through a bowl of milk). But this breakfast cereal version seems more like a churro than, say, a breakfast cereal version of a doughnut is like an actual donut, or a breakfast cereal version of a cookie is like one of them. The breakfast cereal churro is at least in the same actual family as the real thing, rather than being merely a sugared corn product extruded in the shape of something you’d rather be eating. So it gets a pass from me.

I could go on about how a churroesque breakfast cereal is a testimony to the growing cultural and financial power of the burgeoning Hispanic market in the US. But then I would need graphs and charts and an easel. What I can tell you is that churros are fantastic and that having them even in denatured breakfast cereal form makes me happy. So thank you, Hispanic America, for being enough of a purchasing force in the US that I got to eat these this morning. You rock.

It’s my last FilmCritic.com column of the year this week, and so perhaps predictably I’ve put together some final thoughts on 2011 and film, the state of the film industry, and some of the lesser-seen indie science fiction films which are worth the time for viewing. Read my thoughts, and comment on them if you like, by clicking this link. Enjoy! THAT’S AN ORDER.

A few days ago, Robin L., one of the bloggers of the Dear Author site, took exception, via Twitter, to my announcement that I would be deleting kvetching about eBook pricing on my Big Idea posts, that I consider such persistent ebook price kvetching as a symptom of a particular sort of entitlement, and that doing it at the author, who generally speaking has no control of the pricing and who is probably neurotic enough, is pretty mean. Robin L. believes differently, which is of course her right, just not here on my site, in a Big Idea comment thread. She does have further thoughts on the matter at Dear Author, here.

However — and here we leave this issue of reader entitlement behind entirely — during our Twitter conversation on the matter, Robin L. made an assertion (also present in the entry linked above) which I found frankly a bit silly, namely that publishers don’t consider readers to be customers. I consider this a bit silly because, having worked with a number of publishers in a professional capacity for a dozen years now, in both non-fiction and fiction, at no time was it suggested to me, either by words or by how my books were sold, that my publishers don’t consider readers to be their customers. To be certain, they are not the only customers; publishers work directly with retailers, who are often but not always the middlemen in the relationship with publishers and readers, and they also work with libraries and schools. But only a foolish publisher is not aware of and solicitous toward its relationship with the reader, who is, after all the ultimate consumer of the product. Indeed, many publishers, including ones I work with, like Subterranean Press, primarily sell via a direct relationship with readers, with mailing lists and other sales tools.

When I pointed this out, there was some backtracking, with the assertion that the publishers we’re really talking about here were “the Big Six” — i.e., the major publishers in New York. Well, okay, but the assertion that these publishers don’t have a direct relationship with readers isn’t true either, since at least some of these publishers do have direct sales — here, for example, is the direct sales link on the Penguin web site for The Dispatcher, today’s featured Big Idea book. For that matter, here’s a direct sales link on the Macmillan site for Fuzzy Nation, my latest (need to contact Macmillan, as a reader, about an issue? Here’s how to do that. Or if you want to contact Tor/Forge directly, here’s the page for that).

But even if it were true, it only points out a flawed assumption, which is that a direct sales relationship is the only “customer relationship” that counts, which is on its face a really interesting assertion. A similar argument could be made about any company whose products are primarily sold through a retail middle man, from soda to jeans, and in each case it would be equally untrue. I wouldn’t argue that Coca-Cola doesn’t see retailers as important customers, in a manner very much like publishers see bookstores as important customers (and in much the same way, as both Coca-Cola and publishers use their own versions of “co-op” for product placement and the like), but anyone who suggests Coca-Cola isn’t intensely aware of their ultimate consumers is being a bit foolish. In the same manner, publishers have their own marketing and publicity branches, whose entire purpose for existence is to address their customers: Retail, for one; libraries and schools, for another; and readers, for a third. In point of fact, publishers — even the big New York kinds (indeed, especially the big New York kinds) — spend a lot of time cultivating their relationships with readers to generate interest and enthusiasm for their products.

I said so; Robin L. responded with links to articles she felt bolstered her point (here’s one), to which I pointed out that I wasn’t entirely sure why she seemed to believe that article cites would be persuasive to me over my own personal experience. But, fair enough: Perhaps publishing seventeen books in a dozen years with six different US publishers ranging from Macmillan to NESFA Press and working intimately with each on matters of marketing and publicity — and, for that matter, dealing directly with editors, publishers and publicists for other authors on a nearly daily basis for four years now regarding the Big Idea feature — isn’t, in fact, as persuasive as something you read somewhere on the Internet that you feel confirms every bad thing you think about publishers.

So I decided to ask someone who I figure is in a position to know better than I; namely, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who in addition to being my editor at Tor, is also that publisher’s Manager of Science Fiction, which means he spends a lot of time talking to other people in Macmillan about various publishing issues, including reader relations. The question I asked him specifically was: “Based on your own personal experience as an editor and in your involvement with major league publishing over the years, do major publishers see readers as customers? Or is major publishing customer focus solely on retailers?”

His response:

I think the observation that New York City trade publishers need to cultivate more and better relationships with their readers, as opposed to merely their retailers, has a lot of truth to it. So much truth, in fact, that for the past ten years or so pretty much everyone in New York City trade publishing has been repeating it, elaborating on it, and being inspired by it to engage in all kinds of initiatives. Whether it’s major editors and publishers getting out into the net on blogs or Twitter or whatever, or Macmillan pouring immense amounts of staff time and money into stuff like Tor.com and Heroes & Heartbreakers, or similar projects like Del Rey’s Suvudu, a lot of the reason is that everybody knows perfectly well that the world is changing, and nobody has any intention of just sitting around and becoming superannuated.

Of course, there are thousands of people in New York trade publishing, and while some of them are brilliant, others are timeservers, and some of the brilliant people are brilliant-but-wrong, so lots of effort is wasted and we frequently manage to tie our own shoelaces together. This is how human enterprises work — lots of error. But you know something, the so-called Big Six didn’t get to be the Big Six because they’re run by nincompoops who pay no attention to the world.

Meanwhile, lots of self-publishers, small publishers, e-publishers, and so forth also repeat the observation to one another. For some (far from all!) of them, it seems to be something they tell each other to reinforce their shared belief that big publishers are Doomed Baby Doomed, that the dinosaurs will inevitably become extinct and leave the field to the small mammals, and therefore EVERYBODY WILL FINALLY WANT TO READ MY SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK.  Good luck with that.

Another truism you hear all the time in trade publishing is that the genre publishers and imprints are way ahead of the pack when it comes to engaging directly with their readers; that’s because so many of them have been going to SF cons and romance gatherings and Comic Con and so forth for years, decades. Some of us even came into trade publishing from SF fandom or the other-genre equivalents of SF fandom. We’ve been hanging out online, talking with and listening to our readers, since there was an “online,” and we have the old Compuserve and Fidonet addresses to prove it. The predecessor of the original Tor Books web page was the Tor Books gopher server. So this is another of those truisms that’s a truism because it’s, hey, true.

Basically, from where I sit, it looks like trade publishing contains a heck of a lot of smart, savvy people working very hard to roll with a changing world, while in a few corners of the online world there’s an odd subfandom of people devoted to the idea that we’re all complete morons who will be dying out shortly and good riddance because we have NO CLUE ABOUT THE INTERWEBS FWOAR LOL. Okay then.  Maybe it’s true. We’ll see.

(My prediction? Trade publishers will make some stoopid errors. Trade publishers will have some fabulous successes. A few small scrappy e-publishers and self-publishers will be wildly successful. Lots will sink without a trace. People will be loudly wrong at one another on the internet. Readers will lay out money for stuff that gets their attention and seems likely to be worth their time.)

Now, bear in mind I don’t expect either my points or Patrick’s observations to be at all persuasive to Robin L., roughly for the same reasons that someone who believes in astrology is going to be unconvinced by a planetary astronomer; i.e., what one believes one knows is often more persuasive than what those with direct knowledge  and experience might say — because, of course, why wouldn’t we say that. Our experience is a primary argument against believing what we say. If this is her worldview, then she’s welcome to it, although I would recommend against others signing onto it without a little more digging. There’s enough nonsense going around online about publishing these days.

Note well that this isn’t to excuse publishers from falling down on customer relations or to avoid listening to readers with an open mind. That’s something I highly encourage them to do, since it’s readers who buy the books, read them and (hopefully) love them. Please, publishers, give the readers your ear and make it easy for them to find that ear, since among other things, it’ll keep authors from having to deal with kvetches they can do nothing about.

But my own personal experience with publishers is that they are in fact rather very interested in what readers think, and think of them as their customers. I could be wrong. My experience says I’m not.

Update, 5:16pm: Teresa Nielsen Hayden has additional thoughts on the topic in the comments.

Christmas Eve, 2011.

Whoa, man. Just, like, wow.