“I don’t like sci-fi.”

One of the most interesting comments I’ve had since the release of “The Eye of the Beholder” is how many people I know that said they “wouldn’t usually read that kind of stuff” (that kind of stuff being sci-fi), then added on “but I really enjoyed it, and I’ve told such and such to read it too.”

You can probably guess that this is from people I know who wanted to support me, like aunts and uncles, who would not normally venture into the final frontier. 

It got me thinking.  Why do people say they don’t like sci-fi?

Sci-fi is a huge genre.  It covers everything from the past, present and future.  It can be as simple as a present-day world with one change, such as advancement in medical science or robotics, to the grand space operas which take place in galaxies far, far away.

I think a lot of people who “don’t like sci-fi” don’t actually realise that they have probably been watching or reading stories that are sci-fi.  They may actually mean to say “I don’t like stories about spaceships.”  (Which is weird anyway, I mean, who doesn’t like spaceships?!)

Perhaps they just got stung once.  After all, not all sci-fi is great - just as not all fantasy, romance, crime or general fiction is great.  However people are much more likely to have read a sci-fi book, and assume it represents the entire genre, than they are to read a general fiction book and say “Well that’s it.  I don’t like fiction.”

I think most people do like sci-fi; they just don’t realise that they do.

So why not give it a(nother) chance?  You might like it.

I know what I’m doing… honest.

I don’t think I have done as much handwriting as I have this week since I was at school!  I’m nicely filling up my notebooks with ideas, plot points, character bios and maps.  (You all knew I wouldn’t resist drawing maps for very long.)  It almost feels like I’m getting organised.  Almost.

If any of you lovely people are on Goodreads, please do leave a review for Eye of the Beholder, or why not recommend it to your friends?

In return, I’ll leave these inspirational pictures of some aircraft, which were taken at the NI International Airshow here:

 All photographs copyright © Sarah Cosgrove and Stephen Cosgrove 2012

I posted this myself!

I’ve managed to defeat the blank page of doom, and get the first few hundred words down for the fantasy novel.  I have my book of notes and sketches, and I’m fairly happy I know where I’m going with it for now.  One thing I have to concentrate on is not getting distracted by maps.  I love maps, and if I’m not careful, I’ll spend most of the day working out and drawing maps of the world, or just looking at places on Google maps. 

I’ve had more feedback for The Eye of the Beholder.  I’m very pleased to hear that so far people have been enjoying the stories. 

I’ve also had a couple of questions about publishing on the Kindle.  It’s an interesting debate that people are still arguing if being “indie published” is legitimate.  Here’s my two cents on it:

Publishing on the Kindle is fairly straightforward, if time-consuming.  The time-consuming bit is that you need to have edited your work and formatted it to display correctly on the Kindle.  

It is perfectly possible to do this to a professional standard.  After all, the people who do it professionally are people that are good at checking grammar, spelling and layouts.  Before they got that job, they were still probably good at checking grammar, spelling and layouts.  As long as you have someone like that checking your work, you’re good.

You will probably find some spelling errors or mistakes creep through anyway.  That is not uncommon – pretty much any professionally published book I’ve read has a typo in it somewhere that had been missed.  The beauty of the Kindle is that if you find out about these errors, you can update the file to correct them.

 Is it ok to indie publish?  Absolutely!  (Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it!)

There is still this strange taboo about putting your work out there for writers, which doesn’t exist in other formats.  Say for example; music.   Yes, there are some people that will be putting stories up because they got rejected from every publisher for being terrible.  Likewise, there are some that just didn’t get a chance because the publishers thought it was a good story, but wouldn’t make them any money.  And then there are those of us that decided to cut out the middle man entirely and just put our work out there.

 

Why did I do it?  Well, perhaps I am being unfair to publishers, but I couldn’t see anyone taking up a collection of short genre stories written by an as-yet-unknown author.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t think they were good enough; I would never publish something that I didn’t think was up to standard.  But I wanted to get those stories out and let the readers decide if they liked them for themselves, rather than have a third party decide that they won’t for them.

 

I have faith that with the preview system, readers can check out a book, and decide if they want to read it based on the writing.  If a book is good, you can leave a good review.  If it is bad, you can leave a critical one.  Or if you are feeling nice you could contact the author directly with some advice on how to tidy it up.  I don’t think most readers would dismiss a book just because it was indie published; it’s the writing that counts.

Will I go down the traditional publishing route in future?  Maybe.  The one advantage that the traditional route has is marketing.  It’s all very nice my book being up there for the readers to make their own choice, but if they never hear of it, they won’t get the chance.