Today’s links Rosemary Kirstein’s “The Steerswoman”: An unexpected and delightful series that almost disappeared. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I’ve been. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. Rosemary Kirstein’s “The Steerswoman” (permalink) For decades, scammy “book doctors” and vanity presses spun a tale about how Big Publishing was too conservative and risk-averse for really really adventurous books, and the only way to get your visionary work published was to pay them to fill your garage with badly printed books that you’d spend the rest of your life trying to get other people to read: https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/ Like all successful grifts, this one worked because it wasn’t entirely untrue. No, mainstream publishing isn’t filled with corporate gatekeepers who relish the idea of keeping your brilliance from reaching its audience. But. But editors sometimes make bad calls. They reject books because of quirks of taste, or fleeting inattentiveness, or personal bias. In a healthy publishing industry – one with dozens of equal-sized presses, all commanding roughly comparable market-share, good books would never slip through the cracks. One publisher’s misstep would be another’s opportunity. But after decades of mergers, the population of major publishers has dwindled to a mere Big Five (it was almost four, but the DOJ blocked Penguin Random House’s…Pluralistic: Rosemary Kirstein's "The Steerswoman" (04 May 2024)