Pre-convention update

In a couple of hours, I'll be departing with the family to Dallas to partake in ConDFW. There will be some advance copies of Voices of Vision available for sale. Yea! Which means I'll have something to do during the autograph sessions other than twiddle my thumbs. Double yea!

Here's my programming schedule for the weekend:

Saturday, 10 a.m. Magnolia Room
Online Publishing: World Wide Writing (Moderator)

Saturday, 11 a.m. Reading Room
I'll be reading a bit from Voices of Vision

Saturday, 1 p.m. Magnolia Room
The Editor’s Panel: The Red Pen Rises

Sunday, 11 a.m. Mesquite Room
The Reviewer’s Art

Sunday, 12 p.m. Autographing

Should be lots of fun. The ConDFW gang has a great lineup this year, with lots of editors, so no telling how wacky things will get. Plus, I have special Voices of Vision promotional materials which I'll unveil on Saturday. In just a few year, this stuff'll be going for the big bucks on eBay, so you know you don't want to miss out!

Now Playing: The Kinks Give the People What They Want

The curse of publishing economics hits home (sorta)

Geeze. I don't know how I missed this, but the Lincoln Journal Star reported two weeks back that the University of Nebraska Press (being my publisher) has cut six full time employees as part of a wider effort to trim half a million dollars from the publisher's budget:

They admitted Monday that the financial problems plaguing university presses across the country have reached Nebraska as well.

"There have been high-profile presses in more significant trouble," Perlman said. "This is not a crisis state … but we needed to do something now rather than get into real difficulty."

The decision to make the cuts is driven by the bottom line, both Perlman and Dunham said.

Less demand for the academic books and journals the press publishes has resulted in revenues that barely cover expenses, a trend that would've soon put the university publisher in the red, Dunham said.

The cuts also stem from a desire to protect the press's editorial and acquisitions departments from the sort of trimming that already has happened at the Stanford University and University of Wisconsin presses.

None of the current layoffs come from those departments, Dunham said, and no future layoffs are planned.

It's good to see that the press is protecting the editorial department. And it's also reassuring to know that the press, overall, is still operating in the black. The past 10 years or so have been vicious to university publishers. Those with strong journal lineups have continued to do well, but the ones that traditionally have concentrated on obscure fields, limited interest books and monographs have taken a beating. Nebraska is one of the largest university publishers in the country, and exceptionally diverse, but there's no way anyone could mistake them for one of the colossal multinational publishers that so dominate bookstores today.

That said, where the cuts did come from aren't reassuring:

It's the firing of six full-time business and marketing employees that comprise the lion's share of the more than $500,000 the press will cut from a $6.5 million operating budget in the coming fiscal year.

Dunham said $100,000 will be saved annually by an upcoming March move to 1111 Lincoln Mall, a new home with roughly half the space of its old headquarters at 247 N. 8th St.

Coming from a marketing and journalism background, I always cringe when a company's first reaction to declining sales is to reduce its marketing budget and staff. It just flies in the face of reason. I just hope this doesn't trickle down to the marketing plan they've outlined for Voices of Vision. It's a modest one, no doubt, but I believe it does a good job of targetting the ideal audience. I'd hate to lose that. Especially since I want VoV to do well enough to warrant a second volume.

One thing I find surprising, however, is the fact that the press isn't housed on campus. What's this rent stuff? The Texas A&M University Press has digs on campus in College Station, as do most other university presses I'm familiar with. Renting commercial space simply strikes me as odd, particularly considering how strong a reputation Nebraska has. Texas State University, unfortunately, has no press. There's been wishful thinking in that direction, but no real action. Our faculty produces some very strong work, but has to go through the UT Press for actual publication. Ah well. Whatcha gonna do?

Now Playing: Pink Floyd Staying Home to Watch the Rain

Stupid @#&%! IRS

So I busted my hump and filed my tax return back in January in order to get our tax return as soon as possible. We need that money to get a new car, as the wretched red Neon (please don't laugh) has three wheels in the grave and the fourth is flat. Today, instead of getting the refund check, we get a letter saying we need to file an EIC form before they can process our return (which means another 6-8 week delay in getting the refund).

This pisses me off mightily for two reasons: 1) the "do you need to file ECI form" worksheet in the instruction manual (or whatever the hell it's called) unambiguously said "No, you don't have to file that form"; and 2) The only requested information on the form they provided was for my daughers' names, social security numbers and whether they lived with us or not. Every single bit of that info was already included on the 1040 I filed. Then the letter had the nerve to imply I could've avoided all this if I'd just used TurboTax or any of the other commercially available software. Tell you what, IRS, I'll start using those programs (which you're oh so keen on driving everyone to) once you start offering a tax credit to compensate for the cost of buying them.

In the meantime, I'm still stuck with the dying car.

Now Playing: Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here

Stops aliens from abducting humans! Guaranteed!

Telepathic war! Alien telepathy! These are just some of the dangers facing the human race today. Overwhelming? Sure, but don't give up hope yet--now there's a way for you to fight back and protect yourself and your family. No, I'm not talking about aluminum foil hats. Modern science has advanced so much beyond those early, haphazard efforts, and you can learn all about it from Stop Alien Abductions

The thought screen helmet blocks telepathic communication between aliens and humans. Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can't communicate or control humans, they do not take them.

The thought screen helmet has effectively stopped several types of aliens from abducting or controlling humans. Only two failures were reported since 1998.

Adults and children all over America, all over Australia, in Canada, the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of South Africa are wearing thought screen helmets to stop alien abductions. Many former abudctees have been wearing thought screen helmets successfully since 1999.

Other shielding material was tried in previous models with less success. Only thought screen helmets using Velostat are effective.

You can make a thought screen helmet for $35 if you purchase Velostat by the yard.

I don't know about you, but I always buy my Velostat by the furlong.

Now Playing: Marty Robbins The Essential Marty Robbins

Miyazaki galore!

Remember those Studio Ghibli DVDs I insufferably taunted folks about having advanced copies of a week ago? Well, my reviews of Porco Rosso and The Cat Returns are now live for the world to see over at RevSF. My review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind will be following later this week.

Now Playing: Johnny Cash The Essential Johnny Cash

What book will you be?

I hang out at SFF.net quite a bit, and the other day Roby James posed an interesting question: If the world of the future suddenly became analogous to that of Ray Bradbury's classic Farenheit 451, what book would you choose to memorize in order to preserve it for future generations? For those of you who've never read the Bradbury novel, it's about a future society in which all books are burned in order to supress knowledge.

It's a difficult question. The easy responses are pithy--Farenheit 451 and Orwell's 1984 spring to mind. Then there's the obvious, factual ones, such as the entirety of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Others go for the Bible or the classics such as the works of Shakespeare or The Illiad, The Epic of Gilgamesh or perhaps Beowulf. From a practical, survivalist standpoint, the Official Boy Scout Handbook would be quite useful to have on instant recall.

Personally, I don't think I'd go for the obvious choices. After all, if they're so obvious, then quite a few other people would likely be hard at work, memorizing them. That's a built-in redundancy. I'd be more inclined to devote my feeble mental prowess to preserving books that are perhaps less "valuable" but no less important. Something like Nevil Schute's On the Beach, as powerful and disturbing cautionary tale about nuclear war as anything I've ever read. That kind of elegant hopelessness is something that needs to be passed along and preserved. Likewise, I'd be inclined to preserve Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, a landmark book--not only in genre, but in contemporary literature as well--that utterly floored me when I first read it. Ironically, I didn't want to read it at first. I'd ordered it by mistake from the Science Fiction Book Club, and was mighty pissed at the fact when I figured out what had happened. Oh, for happy accidents.

Clearly my tastes run towards the speculative end of the spectrum--no way I'd waste precious brain cells on something like Steinbeck--but what of everyone else? Given the urgency, given the need, what book would you become?

Now Playing: Counting Crows August & Everything After

Sowell redux

Remember how I got a bee in my bonnet a couple of weeks ago over Thomas Sowell's column based on the urban legend of the German waitress denied unemployment benefits because she refused to work in a brothel? Well, the San Antonio Express-News has finally published my letter. Not that it will have any further impact, but I'm happy there is at least one print record of the fact that Sowell screwed up because of sloppy journalism. It's no surprise that Creators Syndicate hasn't responded to my letter pointing out the error. The most popular way of dealing with mistakes, after all, is to ignore them...

Now Playing: Billy Joel An Innocent Man