Having fled the Dragon Awards after my readers and I crushed his SJW cheerleaders’ Narrative, midlist author John Scalzi returned to his fortified Twitter bubble to dispense some career advice.
[Insert obligatory “I don’t care, despite launching into an OCD tweetstorm” joke at Scalzi’s expense.]
The real lesson for authors here isn’t to be gleaned from Scalzi’s butthurt words. It’s in the attitude he displays toward readers, other authors, and the science fiction field as a whole.
Scalzi’s tweetstorm drips with the analog mindset that’s already killed Tor Books and all the Big Five publishers (they’re just not broke–yet). His biases were formed in the bygone day when authors had to kiss up to New York editors and impress an incestuous pack of CHORF bloggers to build and sustain their careers.
It’s understandable that these dinosaurs are slow to accept the new truth of publishing. I don’t need to impress editorial interns whose only qualifications are Gender Studies degrees. The petty crab bucket of the “SFF” trufandom Scalzi’s talking about is wholly irrelevant to me.
Today, most successful authors build relationships with fans on social media. They learn how to make Amazon’s algorithm bring new readers to them. A surprising number of them–far more than in tradpub–are quietly pulling down six or seven figures per year; all without the approval or knowledge of the old gatekeepers.
Nothing bad happens when you stand up to SJWs. Sure, they love to threaten dire recriminations, but if this is the kind of “career damage” they mean, sign me up!
Oh, and Scalzi: consider getting BTFO’d from the Dragons retroactive comeuppance for calling my readers “assholes”.