Baen's
Laugh Lines collection includes
Cyberbooks.
Quote:
Introduction to Cyberbooks
I've been writing science fiction long enough so that some of my fiction has become fact. Take Cyberbooks, for example. When I wrote this novel, in the late 1980s, electronic books were nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of a few engineers. Today they are being peddled in shopping malls and catalogues.
But predicting a technological innovation is easy. What makes Cyberbooks interesting, to me, is the way the novel depicts the book publishing industry's reaction to the technological innovation.
The truth is, you see, that Cyberbooks is a satire of the New York-based book publishing industry. The novel came about because Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor Books, enjoyed my earlier satirical novel, The Starcrossed. "You should do a novel about the publishing industry," he insisted. "I could tell you stories!"
Well,everybody in the business has hair-raising (or stomach-turning) stories to tell about the publishing industry. I have a few myself. Many of them have been woven into the warp an woof of Cyberbooks.
For Years, young wannabe writers who've read Cyberbooks would ask me tearfully, "The industry in New York isn't as bad as you paint it in your novel, is it?
"No of course not," I always assure them. "It's worse."
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P.S. shouldn't this be in Reading Recommendations?