Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. Please leave any comments there.

Another day, another article supposedly assessing the cutting edge of Science Fiction written over the decades. Citing twenty five authors. All men. No, I’m not going to link. You can find it for yourself at SF Signal if you really want to. Or whatever particular piece has ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can comment here or there.

Philip Pullman and those writers backing him (referenced in my previous post) seem to have prompted an important - and to my mind, long overdue - examination of exactly what’s gone wrong with the book trade in the past five or ten years.

From Nick Cohen, on his experience of ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can comment here or there.

With the holiday season looming, the promo emails are coming thick and fast from all sorts of retailers. I’ve had two from Waterstones this week.

Here, their best history books of 2015 promote thirteen men and three women. With all the women below the scroll line, let’s note ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. Please leave any comments there.

Just in case you’re wondering I am still keeping an eye on Waterstones and gender bias issues. At some point I will do another analysis of their monthly promotional emails.

The latest for June will certainly help those statistics - a quick and dirty count shows ten books by ( Read more... )

The ebook of The Assassin’s Edge sees The Tales of Einarinn series finally completed for e-readers. Preparing these editions has been interesting for many reasons. It’s been fascinating to revisit what I was writing a decade and more ago. I honestly had forgotten quite how gruesome, violent and downright spine-chilling some of the events in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. Please leave any comments there.

I have a lot on this week, so here’s a couple of things to muse on in the meantime.

Is Amazon a Hero or a Monster? This question was debated with strong feelings on both sides recently. It makes for interesting reading.

My answer? Amazon is neither - and casting the debate ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can comment here or there.

I don’t know anyone in the book trade who doesn’t want to see Amazon pay a fair rate of tax. Gaming the existing system is one reason why they’ve been able to wreak havoc across the industry with predatory pricing and other tactics. Making them pay fair taxes would go some way ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can comment here or there.

Ah, the law of unintended consequences. You really would have thought legislators would know about that one. Apparently not. New VAT legislation to stop the likes of Amazon sneaking round their tax liabilities has a massive flaw. The turnover threshold is set at £0 which means ( Read more... )

Back in July, with the help of generous folk willing to spare their time surveying display tables, and analysing the promotional emails to loyalty card holders, I looked at the gender balance in the books Waterstones was promoting. As the last national chain bookseller in the UK, the picture they present to readers of what’s available and who’s ( Read more... )

Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can comment here or there.

This is splendid! A loyalty cardholder’s email has landed in my inbox, centered on SF & Fantasy. It flags up Robin Hobb’s forthcoming appearance at Loncon3 and offers a chance to win a drink with Joe Abercrombie, as well as highlighting the upcoming Gollancz Festival at ( Read more... )