Elezea by Rian van der Merwe - RSS Feed https://elezea.com/2014/07/book-culture/ A personal blog about product, technology, and interesting things that are worth sharing. Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:43:52 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Book culture everywhere https://elezea.com/2014/07/book-culture/ Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:41:43 +0000 Rian van der Merwe https://elezea.com/?p=4926 Hugh Howey is the author of WOOL, one of my favorite sci fi series. His essay Your Fear is My Opportunity is a rant on Amazon and self-publishing, and I really appreciate his perspective as someone who has gone through the hard process of self-publishing:

The things I advocate for: Reasonably priced e-books, for publishers to take risks and do exciting things, for us to embrace the future of storytelling and allow it to coexist with the past, to release all editions of a work at once, to get rid of DRM, to mix up genres and do something fresh and new … these are all things I’ve wanted as a reader for longer than I’ve been writing.

And this:

I am a reader first. And I want more readers. Selfishly, as a reader, I want more readers. I want to see airports full of people staring at books, e-readers, and tablets laced with text. Not people staring at cell phones, Candy Crush, Facebook, or authors’ blogs. I want book culture everywhere. I want interactions with strangers to be about what they’ve read lately. I want my social media feed to be all about books. I’m an addict, and I want to get other people hooked. Maybe that’s a bad thing. I don’t care.

If you haven’t read WOOL you should give it a try. Great storytelling whether you’re a sci fi fan or not.



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