windupstories.com – fiction by paolo bacigalupi

A roundup of Amazon vs. Macmillan. And thank you for the lost weekend.

Tobias Buckell talks about the economics of ebooks in the post: Why my Books are no longer for sale via Amazon.

Charles Stross describes some strategic aspects in the fight. Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight

And Scott Westerfeld sums up the battle in clean clear prose, so anyone can understand how–if not exactly why–it came to this: Zinc blinked.

Update 11:26pm: Scalzi analyzes Amazon’s media strategy… and finds it hilariously wanting. All the many ways Amazon so very failed the weekend.

Lots and lots of other smarts and fun via the twitter trend #amazonfail

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Amazon, Kindle and Windup Girl in ebook

With Amazon blocking Kindle editions of all Macmillan books, particularly my friends who are Tor authors, I’d like to log a couple thoughts about ebooks.

First, some blatant pimpage: The Windup Girl is available for $6, DRM-free, at Webscriptions.net. http://www.webscription.net/p-1121-the-windup-girl.aspx. If you’re into ebooks, it’s pretty much the best deal going. It’s a fair price, and both I and my publisher make some money from it. We all win.

In the past, I’ve had differences with Night Shade over whether we should also sell ebooks directly through Amazon or not. I’ve always figured that consumers should have a choice of where they shop, and if they want to spend more for a DRM’d version of my book–while I wouldn’t do it–I argued that we should certainly be willing to accommodate.

That said, selling ebooks on Amazon looks less tasty these days. I sympathise with Amazon’s interest in keeping ebook prices relatively low so they can sell Kindles, but they also clearly want to dominate the ebook market, and every ebook sold through Amazon solidifies that monopoly. Long term, they’re not interested in serving consumers, or making books affordable, they’re interested in control. Monopolies, even if they’re nice in the short term, always turn predatory in the long term, and more and more Amazon seems intent on demonstrating that.

Maybe Macmillan can’t sell ebooks for $15. Personally, I think it’s high. But that shouldn’t be for Amazon to decide. That should be for readers to decide. Macmillan can figure it out on their own, with the help of market pressures that should push their prices downward over time. Instead, Amazon wants to use its market share and retail power to force Macmillan to price its product to Amazon’s specifications, and in the process it’s using a bunch of my friends’ books to make its point.

While I’d love to have an ebook sitting on Amazon’s shelves in front of all its traffic, I’m pretty certain that without competition, that Amazon will never learn to behave any better. So I’m happy to host The Windup Girl with webscriptions.net, and very happy to see new products rolling out from Apple. Maybe when there’s more competition in the ebook sphere, we’ll make The Windup Girl available on Amazon, too. But for the moment, webscriptions.net feels like the right place to be.

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Raves for The Windup Girl

The reviews on The Windup Girl have been astonishingly good. Here’s the roundup, with links to the originals:

Publishers Weekly: (Starred Review) “Complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best… clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.”

Library Journal: (Starred Review) East meets West in a clash of cultures brilliantly portrayed in razor-sharp images, tension-building pacing, and sharply etched characters.

SF Signal: (Five out of Five Stars) “Disturbing… beautiful, fast-paced, exciting…and also a novel of hope. Unlike many dystopian authors, Bacigalupi knows that at our core humans always struggle against any challenge. While we may not consistently do right, we consistently hope to do better.”

SciFi Wire: “[an] extraordinary, virtuoso, shock-immersion rendering of [a] transformed world.”

Nancy Kress: “The political maneuvering is constant, intricate, and all too believable. So is the inevitable violence. However, more interesting than either are the choices — moral, practical, philosophical, emotional — that the characters are driven to make.”

Io9: “The Windup Girl is obviously about the geopolitics of the present… and yet Bacigalupi never slides into moralism or judgment. All his characters have their flaws and heroic moments … Ultimately that’s what makes this debut novel so exciting. It’s rare to find a writer who can create such well-shaded characters while also building a weird new future world.”

BookPage: “The Windup Girl will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year.”

I’m honestly blown away at the response. I felt very unsure of this book as I was finishing it, so it’s a huge relief to hear from more and more readers that it works for them. I think this is the moment where I thank my wife and son again for putting up with me for the last three years while I was writing it.

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Kyoto Presentation

I’ve been invited to speak at a symposium on sustainability in Kyoto, Japan called “Towards the Future of Civilization,” so I’ll be out of the country for the next ten days. I’m planning on speaking about what inspires me to construct the dystopias that I do, the primary trends I’m seeing in the world, and then talking some about how I might imagine a world that breaks those trends. It will be almost Utopian. For me, at least.

I’ll also be riding at least one bullet train. Which pretty much makes me go, “Squeeeee!”

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Two Locus Award Wins for Pump Six and Other Stories

Meant to post this ages ago, but it’s been a crazy summer. Pump Six and Other Stories picked up a Locus Award for Best Collection, and its title story “Pump Six” won for best novelette. Here two are, flanking the book:

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Windup Girl has a cover

Here’s the cover, grabbed fresh and hot from Night Shade Books’ website:

Secret sources within the company hint that the book may even be available at Worldcon in Montreal less than a month from now.

Am I excited? Yes I am.

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Cover art for The Windup Girl

I’m blown away by the cover art that’s come in for The Windup Girl. Hats off to Night Shade Books, and Raphael Lacoste, the artist.

Can’t wait for the September release.

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EcoGeek Interview crops up on io9

I give an interview over at EcoGeek.org where I display all of my tact and verbal discipline (LOL) to talk about green technologies and my jaundiced views of the future. A sample bit:

As environmental ideas have entered the zeigeist, mostly thanks to global warming–and still mostly focused on that issue–plenty of technology companies are lining up to tell us how they’re helping green/save/clean the environment. Advertising agencies and PR firms are delighted to sell us any number of “green” gizmos and they’re throwing in some nice self-esteem blowjobs for all of us, using their persuasive talents to assure us that we’re enlightened and forward thinking because we just stuffed a green X into our Prius.

But green blowjobs aren’t really my gig…

There’s more in that line, so if you’re interested, check it out. But the other interesting thing to check out is that the interview got reposted over at io9, where it seems to have generated a roaring discussion.

I’m interested in the rage that the interview inspires in a lot of the readers. Big emotions around the ideas of population control, technology, and consumption. My personal favorite quote from a reader so far:

“Hey Paolo, Fuck you!”

Normally I have to write something like “Yellow Card Man” to get that response.

Posted in consumerism, green technology, interviews | 15 Comments »

Nominated for the Hugo

I’ve just been nominated for the Hugo Award for my novelette “The Gambler.”

I want to thank everyone who voted for the story, and also Lou Anders over at Pyr Books who leaned on me to sit down and write the thing when I wasn’t sure I had a story in me.

So again, thanks, and congratulations to all the other nominees. It’s an honor not only to be nominated, but to find myself in such good company.

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Reading Tonight in Minneapolis

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be reading and signing 6:30 tonight at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis. If you’re in the area, come on by. Should be fun.

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