Vox Day’s conservative publishing company Castalia House has book pulled from Amazon

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Oh, agreed. Tor is rightfully protecting its territory. (and sadly, giving the parody a lot of free publicity along the way).

Maybe they're taking the opportunity to get some free publicity themselves.

[E.M.DuBois]

I shared this on my twitter feed, though my following is negligible at this point. Anyway, here I was thinking only celebs had feuds this petty in nature. I mean, seriously, how low do you have to sink to have your readers go and give someone else’s hard work bad reviews just to outsell him? Your goals shouldn’t be to compete with other authors: we all do that enough as it is just by the nature of the business. Beale should be working with Scalzi, though I understand how hard that may be given their history. I wonder, do either of them even remember who threw the first punch, or what it was about in the first place?

While I understand what some posters are talking about when they dismiss the similarity between the covers, implying that there’s bound to be cross-overs with so much being published, I feel I must make a counterpoint: There are a million ways to skin a cat, the putty in this case a cover. Sci-fi alone offering and endless supply of concepts to mix and match with, limited only by the imagination. From a general gist of what the books about, or portraying a scene in the book, or a collage of the two, just to name a few. There’s just so much someone could think up to differentiate their cover from someone else’s. Then again, this point is mute because we’ve already been told in the article that Beale was out to rip-off Scalzi, so instead of making an original argument I’m just ending up beating a dead horse.

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Attachment 155800

Lets ban them both because Hamilton got there 20 years ago.

~~~

How similar do they have to be before you ban it?

For this, I think I’d have to say it’s a matter of reasonability and common sense. Is it close enough to a formerly publish work that the two could be confused by a reader of sound mind and average intellect? Then yes, it much be changed.

[Katsunami]

LOL... and they expect to get away with that?

John Scalzi - The Collapsing Empire
Johan Kalsi - The Corroding Empire

As the first seems to be a well known writer, and the second is not, the resemblance in cover/font, title, and even name, makes it very much look like as if an unknown writer is trying to capitalize on typing mistakes and/or ride the wave of a popular book or author.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

LOL... and they expect to get away with that?

John Scalzi - The Collapsing Empire
Johan Kalsi - The Corroding Empire

As the first seems to be a well known writer, and the second is not, the resemblance in cover/font, title, and even name, makes it very much look like as if an unknown writer is trying to capitalize on typing mistakes and/or ride the wave of a popular book or author.

You just hit the nail square on the head.

[BenG]

I think it's less about capitalizing and more about trying to poke Scalzi and Tor Books with a sharp stick.

He had this to say about Scalzi a few years ago:

The fact that a mediocre and derivative hack without any discernible talent beyond self-promotion and petty snark could turn 300k monthly page views and a color-by-numbers Heinlein ripoff into a near-guaranteed $250k per year is borderline astonishing.

There's been back and forth from both sides over the years.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by BenG

I think it's less about capitalizing and more about trying to poke Scalzi and Tor Books with a sharp stick.

He had this to say about Scalzi a few years ago:



There's been back and forth from both sides over the years.

He's got a point. I won't comment on the "mediocre", or "hack", or "no talent" claims, but as much as I enjoyed Old Man's War (and as much as I despise Beale and his cronies), it WAS a color-by-numbers Heinlein ripoff.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

He's got a point. I won't comment on the "mediocre", or "hack", or "no talent" claims, but as much as I enjoyed Old Man's War (and as much as I despise Beale and his cronies), it WAS a color-by-numbers Heinlein ripoff.

Many authors have of course enjoyed highly successful careers through "writing by the numbers" formulaic plots, particularly in the mystery and romance genres. Nothing inherently wrong with that. Writing doesn't always have to be great literature; sometimes it's just a way to pay the bills.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Many authors have of course enjoyed highly successful careers through "writing by the numbers" formulaic plots, particularly in the mystery and romance genres. Nothing inherently wrong with that. Writing doesn't always have to be great literature; sometimes it's just a way to pay the bills.

I don't disagree. As I said, I enjoyed Scalzi's Heinlein ripoff very much.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Many authors have of course enjoyed highly successful careers through "writing by the numbers" formulaic plots, particularly in the mystery and romance genres. Nothing inherently wrong with that. Writing doesn't always have to be great literature; sometimes it's just a way to pay the bills.

Scalzi's never made any bones of the fact that he does his job to make money. Kinda like how most of the rest of the world does.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/01/2...clarification/

Having said that, I haven't overall found his books to be especially formulaic compared to most others.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

Scalzi's never made any bones of the fact that he does his job to make money. Kinda like how most of the rest of the world does.

Oh, I agree - I've always been a little bemused by the idea that writing is somehow "special" and it's a little sordid to want to write simply to make money. I guess it goes back to the "you're obviously not a real artist unless you're starving in a cold damp attic" idea.

Look at the hack writers who've written purely to make money: Shakespeare, Dickens, etc...

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh, I agree - I've always been a little bemused by the idea that writing is somehow "special" and it's a little sordid to want to write simply to make money. I guess it goes back to the "you're obviously not a real artist unless you're starving in a cold damp attic" idea.

Look at the hack writers who've written purely to make money: Shakespeare, Dickens, etc...

I completely agree.
It seems to me many people think that writers should give their work freely and forever with no thought of making money themselves.

More recently on the paid hacks: the great western genre writers.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

More recently on the paid hacks: the great western genre writers.

OK, now you're just picking fights!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh, I agree - I've always been a little bemused by the idea that writing is somehow "special" and it's a little sordid to want to write simply to make money. I guess it goes back to the "you're obviously not a real artist unless you're starving in a cold damp attic" idea.

Look at the hack writers who've written purely to make money: Shakespeare, Dickens, etc...

If I could come up with plots and stories fast enough and good enough to make a decent living out of it, I probably would, even if it doesn't get me listed right alongside Dickens or Shakespeare....

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by meeera

Scalzi's never made any bones of the fact that he does his job to make money. Kinda like how most of the rest of the world does.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/01/2...clarification/

This post is pretty good.

Hey, I became a writer to get rich. I’ve always been in the writing business not just to write, and not just to make money, but also to make a lot of money — basically, to get rich at it.

As a final thought on the point, one of the reasons that “no one writes to get rich” and “no one writes to make money” bug the crap out of me is that this is the sort of thinking, intentional or otherwise, that gives bad people cover to screw writers with regard to money, and gives uncertain writers a reason to shrug off being screwed. If you as a writer buy into the idea you can’t/won’t make money and that you can’t/won’t get rich, then you are more than halfway to ensuring that you won’t, in fact, make money (much less get rich).

So don’t accept it. When someone says it, feel free to contradict them.

[Gladtobemom]

I find Vox Day/Theodore Robert Beale keeps popping up. His cranky petulant shenanigans just keep invading the places I enjoy finding things to read. As an author, he's yawn-worthy; as an agitator, he seems to be relentless. His ongoing "thing" about John Scalzi (quite a decent author, in my humble opinion) has become tiresome.

Vox Day (Theodore Beale) reminds me of a slow flying giant horse fly that keeps buzzing around outside the screen porch (my favorite reading spot). He keeps trying to invade my reading space. I can't squirt the bug killer through the screen because it would mess up my screen.

Think of all the trouble he went to in having this cover made, just as an annoyance. Does this mean that he wants the book to be confused with Scalzi's book? Scalzi's work stands on its own. Once again, Vox Day is buzzing around trying to get attention, yawn.