Project - Stuff I pull outta my Ass

Stuff I pull outta my Ass is a project and also an insight into my creative mind, this blog is about random shit I think about or talk about that so many people have told me that is just so wrong. Or what the fuck/how did you pull that outta my ass. Some people have even told me I should do standup, but IMHO I am funny but my comedy is so random and here and there I don’t think I could do a standard standup comic routine. Not to mention some of the things are so over the top, I think most people would be offended.

Basically its rude , crude, uncouth, politically incorrect, poking fun at everything and over the top at times.

To view it click here - http://stuffipullouttamyass.wordpress.com

 

What is self reliance, a case study - Jim

What is self reliance, a case study. Below is some samples of clients I have talked to and their first questions before understanding the reason why its critical for them to become self reliant.

 

Sample 1 - Jim

Jim works for a large mufti-national company in their R&D division.

Jim was referred to me by one of his family members that is well on their way to self-reliance. After talking with Jim for a few minutes, he asked "why do you said I am not self -reliant when I have a good job, good health care, got money in the bank, own a nice house and drive a good car".

I told him that he had the illusion of being self-reliant, because if for some reason he lost his car, house, health care, money and job could he survive? His answer was typical in that he could live and eat at one of the homeless shelters until he found another job. I asked him if he knew where one was. He replied he did not, but he could Google it.

I asked him, what if for some reason such as budget cuts the food shelters where full or even worse yet closed what would he do. He answered again a typical reply, well its a dog eat dog world I could rob someone or take money. Jim, I told him when was the last time you actually fired a gun, used a knife or even got into a serious fight. He silence was response enough.

But I don't have time to learn how to be self-reliant, I asked him did he have any hobbies or play sports on a regular basis. Found out he always loved to watch sports and most of Sunday afternoon was his sports time. I told him he found time to keep up and enjoy sports, couldn't he find the time to aleast sit down and listen to what I had to say. I told him we had been talking for almost 20 minutes already (thanks to Skype's ability to keep a running timer). I heard a heavy sigh, he said he would listen but if I could make it quick.

I proceeded to tell him that the first step was to make sure that he had enough water, food, and supplies for 3 days if he couldn't go anywhere and the electric/water where out. He told me he had a few microwave dinners and some cans. I quickly found out Jim had canned food but no manual can opener. I quickly told Jim a list of items he needed to be able to make it for 3 days without any outside help.

 

 

Gardening - Core skills of the Self Reliant

Gardening - Core skills of the Self Reliant

Gardening is a core skill for any person wishing to become more self-reliant. The others are Cooking and Re-Purposing. The ability to grow one's own crops is a rewarding experience. However there are a few common mis-steps that beginning gardeners tend to make.

First is you don't need alot of land or fancy planting pots/garden plots. Starting out go dirt cheap, get some cheap plastic pots or a flower bed. However also the key thing to remember is growing your crops is not an instant process and even if you do everything right you can still not have a good crop or something might happen like your pet may see your flower bed as a nice cool place to lay down.

Second growing plants is not hard for the most part, but the trick is routine and details. Watering is critical  know what are the water requirements of what you are growing and the drainage of the soil and container you have that plant in. The best way to check drainage is pour some water and see how fast the top of the soil dries out.

Third is understand the grow requirements of what you plant. You wouldn't plant a bell pepper in a solo cup. However a couple of basil plants will do wonderfully in one. With this is understanding how deep and how far apart to plant the crop in question.

Fourth is sunlight and your hardiness zone, especially if you are growing crops outdoors, you want to be sure and plant when they is little chance for a hard freeze if you do not have anything to cover your crops (greenhouse, pine straw, smoke pots). Best course of action for beginners is to buy plants. If you do seeds, then spout them inside and then slowly introduce them to the outside before planting them in your outside garden.

Fifth is fertilizer, a little bit goes a long way. Also if you are going to use organic fertilizer such as cow, chicken, rabbit or turkey poo. Be sure it's aged a bit, to age manure spread it out, let the sun and rain do the work and mix it every so often this process takes a couple of weeks.

Gardening can be rewarding and easy as long as you follow some simple rules and don't expect results in a couple of days. Most crops take 3-5 months to go from seed to mature crop producing plant.

Links of Interest for this Topic

National Gardening Association - http://www.garden.org/

Grow Spot 24 Tips for the Beginner - http://www.thegrowspot.com/index.php?pageid=tips

Old Farmer's Almanac - http://www.almanac.com/gardening

Crosspost - 11 IMPORTANT SKILLS FOR PREPPERS

Source - http://bit.ly/13MczCV

11 IMPORTANT SKILLS FOR PREPPERS

1.  Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are sometimes referred to as people skills, social skills or communication skills.  But regardless of what you call it, interpersonal skills will dictate your ability to work with others in a positive and productive manner.  By getting along with others, you will be able to build good community relationships and will become known as a responsible and honest person who can be trusted.

Having strong interpersonal or social skills will be invaluable when it comes to bartering for goods or services or for controlling a potentially deadly situation with reason instead of force.

2.  Problem Solving

The ability to think on your feet is going to be critical following a disaster or collapse.  In practical terms, this means that you will need to very quickly evaluate a situation and come up with the best possible coping strategy for surviving under dire if not incomprehensible circumstances.  You will need the ability to assess the risks you face and to act accordingly.

3.  Home Arts

Having the ability to cook from scratch, preserve your home-grown food, sew (or mend) your own clothing and maintain a clean and sanitary living environment will be critical to your health and well-being.

In modern times, we have become reliant on others to tend to our basic needs, whether from the supermarket, the mall or even the local power and water company.  Learning to get by on your own without modern conveniences will allow you to live more comfortably and to focus on the more important matter of staying safe.

4.  Perseverance

Perseverance is often described as having the steadfastness to do something despite the difficulty in achieving success.  Hard times or not, this is the skill that will give you the will to keep on going no matter what.  It will allow you to focus on the future – and hopefully better times – rather than staying stuck in the moment when all may not be perfect.

Perseverance is a choice and a habit that will allow you to set small goals that are attainable which will lead to optimism and ultimately a sense of accomplishment.

5.  Frugality

Being careful in the use of resources makes good sense.  This applies not only to consumables but also to the use of time.  Avoiding waste and eliminating costly habits will result in a simpler life, yes, but a life that is more likely to be filled with spiritual abundance.

6.  First Aid

It goes without saying that knowing how to administer first aid can save lives.  Basic wound care, suturing skills and even a knowledge of herbal home remedies can make a difference in whether your loved ones will make it through a crisis.

7.  Gardening

Whether your grow a simple plot of greens or maintain a mini-farm on an acre or two, knowing how to grow your own food will allow you to supplement any food supplies that you have in your pantry.  Learn to work and develop whatever land you have so that you can grow vegetables and fruits that will feed your family and possibly provide edible currency for barter in a SHTF situation.

 

8.  Basic Fix-It Skills

Knowing how to pound a nail and operate a hand saw are just two of the many fix-it skills that will help you make repairs once you begin the recovery process.  Plumbing, welding,  electrical and general carpentry skills will always be in demand and will give you a marketable skill that will make you valuable to the community.

9.  Defense

Whether you choose a stun gun, pepper spray, a knife or a firearm, get to know your defensive weapon well so that you can defend what is yours in a safe and sane manner.

10.  Compassion for Others

Caring for others when they cannot fend for themselves is the human thing to do.  Following a disaster or collapse, there are going to be people that are vulnerable.  They may be children, they may be elderly or they may simply be lost or separated from their loved ones.

Having the heart and compassion to deal with those that are physically or emotionally hurt is the right thing to do as long as you can do so without compromising your own safety.  Be prepared to deal with the frightened and to assist them in finding their way to safety.

11.  Know Yourself

Acknowledge your strengths and your weaknesses as well as your passions and your fears.   Be strong in your faith and in your willingness to fail as well you willingness and desire to succeed.

Carroll Quigley's Seven Stages of Civilization

Carroll Quigley's Seven Stages of Civilization - Many people ask me why I went into the Self Reliance or Prepper Consulting business. This is just one of many reason, I read this years ago and it set off a bell that nothing is forever, that one day the system in which we rely on for our basic needs can be gone.

 

C A R R O L L   Q U I G L E Y   3 The Seven Stages of Civilization Quigley's analysis (using his six features) led him to conclude that civilizations tend to emerge, grow, decline, and fall in a specific and observable sequence of stages: Mixture Gestation Expansion Age of Conflict Universal Empire Decay Invasion The Seven Stages in Detail 1. Mixture Civilizations are born at the intersections of societies. Where rules and customs are understood, as in the core of a social region, the members of that society have no incentive to change; in fact, social pressure tends to prevent change. Where differing cultures intersect at their peripheries, however, it is not so clear what rules should be followed. For example, when the marriage customs of two societies differ, and intermarriage begins to become widespread, how will it be decided which customs to respect and which to reject? In this case and others, it may be that new customs will be invented so as to satisfy that need without offending families. When this process has become broad enough and lasted long enough for those practicing these new customs to appear distinct from their original neighboring societies, we say that a new society has formed. Out of the mixture of cultures has come a new culture, with the opportunity to become a civilization. 2. Gestation The period of gestation (that is, a time of development in preparation for later independent growth) is defined not by what it is, but rather by what it isn't: it isn't mixture or expansion. Accordingly, this can be a relatively short period of time, or it may last for hundreds of years. It is a time of waiting for two conditions to come into being. First, the new society must mot be swallowed up by a neighboring society. Proximity to a stronger and expansionistic neighbor will prevent a new civilization from forming. Second, the incipient civilization must develop an instrument of expansion. Without such an instrument, a society cannot gain the critical mass required for its members to begin conceiving of themselves as having a unique identity--that is, as a civilization. This stage is the time during which various instruments may be developed and discarded until one gains wide acceptance. 3. Expansion Once a civilization has a functioning instrument of expansion, it will begin to grow. This growth may be identified in four particular areas: production of goods increase in population increase in geographic extent increase in knowledge This period of growth is often explosive, because each of these four kinds of growth both depends on and augments the others. An expanding civilization will begin to enjoy an increased standard of living as its level of knowledge and production of goods rise. That knowledge includes medical understanding and technology, so life expectancy increases. The growth in population increases production, while leaving more persons free to explore the periphery of the civilization, expanding its borders. This exploration adds not only to the size of the civilization, but also to its knowledge. Exploration also opens up access to additional and new natural resources, which in turn contribute to increased production of goods. An important feature of this period is the development of a core area within the civilization. As geographic expansion continues, the transmission of culture from the central area in which that culture is strongest to the expanding fringe areas becomes more difficult. This tends to split a civilization (particularly toward the end of the period of expansion) into what can be regarded as a core area and a periphery, usually defined by geography. 4. Age of Conflict As noted earlier, eventually all instruments become institutions. Once this process has occurred to a substantial degree to a civilization's instrument of expansion, the civilization enters an age of conflict. This period is marked by four trends: a decline in the rate of expansion an increase in class conflicts, especially in the core an increase in imperialistic wars an increase in irrationality and general pessimism As the instrument of expansion becomes an institution in order to preserve the privileges of the elite, the civilization--particularly in the core--becomes more static, bureaucratized and legalistic. This tends to punish innovation instead of rewarding it, and progress in the accumulation of surplus is slowed as a result of the decline in inventiveness. This does not go unnoticed by a civilization's members. Although it is a decline in the rate of expansion, not an actual decline in expansion (that is, a contraction), an advanced civilization is so accustomed to expansion that it cannot not expand. To put it another way, survival requires accelerating growth, and once such growth has begun, it must continue. (This is one of the primary criticisms against "progress" from both the environmentalist Left and the culturalist Right. Both have a point, but both also fail to realize that the only real-world alternative is no civilization at all.) The declining rate of expansion pits the entrenched elite against the great mass of the people. When resources are perceived as being limited, competition between classes ensues. "The rich" hang on to their wealth and prerogatives, but, realizing that they are in the minority, divert the attention of the increasingly resentful masses with entertainment, and appease them with token gestures of wealth redistribution. Meanwhile, resentment at not enjoying the same increase in the standard of living as their parents leads the masses to feel insecure, and this feeling manifests as social disruption and other irrational behavior. As Quigley describes it: "This is generally a period of gambling, use of narcotics or intoxicants, obsession with sex (frequently as perversion), increasing crime, growing numbers of neurotics and psychotics, growing obsession with death and with the Hereafter." Most prominently, wars of imperialism begin. These are attempts to impose a single political structure on the entire civilization, to achieve economic expansion by political means. These conflicts usually occur from the outside in. That is, wars of imperialism are generally waged by the political entities on the periphery of a civilization against the core. As the core succumbs first to a declining rate of expansion, and as unrest peaks there first, the more dynamic peripheral states conclude (not unreasonably, from their perspective) that "the center is hollow, it cannot stand." Rather than expanding outward, the smaller boundary states first consume each other, then they turn their attention inward, fighting over the remains of the core until one state (usually one of the most peripheral) has imposed its political structure over the entire civilization. 5. Universal Empire As previously noted, once an instrument of expansion has become an institution, one of three things will happen: it will be reformed back into a functioning instrument; it will be circumvented by the creation of a new instrument (which permits expansion while leaving the trappings of power to those who controlled the previous institution); or those with vested interests in preserving the institution of expansion will prevail, and it will become permanently entrenched. In the former two cases, in which there is a new instrument of expansion, the civilization returns to Stage 3, the age of Expansion. Otherwise, it proceeds to Stage 5: Universal Empire. A Special Note about Choice This, not incidentally, is the aspect of Quigley's concept of civilizational development that truly sets him apart from Spengler. In contrast to Spengler's deterministic view, in which a civilization is doomed from the moment it comes into being, Quigley asserts that any civilization can survive indefinitely, just as long as it keeps reforming or circumventing its institutionalized instruments of expansion. Members of civilizations, Quigley says, have a choice. If they act in one way, they return to expansion; if they voluntarily choose another way, they step onto the road that leads to empire and extinction. This non-deterministic "if-then-else" structure seems intuitive to, say, a computer programmer, but it is a remarkable insight for a historian, scientist or no, to perceive in a long-duration human organization such as a civilization. This process of reform, circumvention, or vested interest success takes place during the wars of imperialism in Stage 4, the Age of Conflict. Once a single peripheral state has imposed its political structure over the whole civilization, a universal empire has been achieved. With the cessation of hostilities, an apparent Golden Age ensues. This is later regarded as a time of peace and prosperity. There is peace because there are no more political opponents. And there is prosperity derived from relaxing internal trade barriers, instituting common systems of measurement and coinage, and increasing domestic government spending to maintain what is felt should be the proper appearance of a universal empire. But these things prove illusory. The peace is the calm of exhaustion, and the prosperity is the burning of internal resources to maintain a standard of living that cannot long be supported. Without an instrument of expansion, there is little if any innovation to replace the wealth being spent on unproductive consumption and gigantic monuments (such as the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Colosseum). In Quigley's memorable phrase: "The golden age is really the glow of overripeness, and soon decline begins." 6. Decay Once it becomes clear that the bulk of a civilization's wealth has been used up, the decline is usually mercifully swift. "Mercifully," because this is a period of great distress. During this time, as recognition of the civilization's poverty spreads, the standard of living falls quickly. Law and order break down. Civil unrest sparks protests, some of which turn violent. Taxes cannot be collected, and other forms of public service such as military service (and military actions themselves) are resisted. Property cannot be protected except (if at all) by force. Personal violence becomes a daily occurrence. Trade fails, as fraud can no longer be punished. Town life fails; basic survival needs force people into the country where they can grow food, and the "middle class" disappears. Religious revivals sweep the land. The medical technology that sustains life becomes difficult or impossible to obtain, resulting in high rates of infant mortality and shortened lifespans. Finally, literacy itself fails. 7. Invasion Although geographical or other features may allow a civilization to remain in a period of decay for many years, eventually it falls prey to forces of one or more external cultures. Whether by military occupation or political annexation, or simply by incorporation through settlement, invasion at some point destroys what was once a civilization. The mixture of old and new cultures may produce a new culture, forming Stage 1 of what will become a new civilization, or it may not. But the old civilization is gone. TABLE OF CIVILIZATIONS THROUGH STAGES We are now in a position to see a table showing the progress through the seven stages for five civilizations. Like the chart in the section on Oswald Spengler, this table identifies stages in a civilization's existence, and relates those stages to rough ranges of dates. But Quigley's theory of history differs from Spengler's in that the former is not deterministic (that is, that that civilizations emerge, grow, decline, and fall in that order and with no hope of variation). So Quigley's chart differs as well, demonstrating that there can be multiple periods of expansion, conflict and empire, just as long as instruments become institutions and then are reformed or circumvented. Thus, Quigley's chart of stages is slightly more complex than that for Spengler. Just remember to think of multiple dates in terms of the processes of institutionalization (moving downward in the table), and reform and circumvention of institutions (moving back upward in the table). Note: I have modified Quigley's table slightly to reflect the collapse of the Soviet Union (which I date in 1989) as indicative of the institutionalization of the Russian civilization's most recent instrument of expansion, socialism. This places that civilization in a new age of conflict, whose outcome is yet to be determined. MESOPO-TAMIAN MINOAN CLASSICAL WESTERN RUSSIAN 1. Mixture 6000-5000 B.C. 3500-3000 B.C. 1200-900 B.C. A.D. 300-700 A.D. 500-1300 2. Gestation 5000-4500 3000-2500 900-800 750-970 1300-1500 3. Expansion 4500-2500 2500-1700 800-450 in East 600-250 in West 970-1300 1500-1900 1420-1650 1917-1989 1770-1929 4. Conflict 2500-800 1700-1600 450-330 in East 250-146 in West 1300-1430 1900-1917 1650-1815 1989-? 1900- 5. Universal Empire a. Core 1700-1650 330-A.D.150 1420; 1810; 1942 b. Whole Civilization 725-450 1600-1450 146-A.D.150 6. Decay 450-350 1450-1250 A.D. 150-300 7. Invasion 350-200 by Greeks 1250-1100 by Greek tribes A.D. 300-600 by Germanic tribes

 

Guest Posters Wanted

Guest Posters Wanted

If you are a Writer, Business Owner (especially in NC), Visionary, in the movie business, in the self Reliance (Prepper/Surivalist/Farmer/Homesteader) business or a IT Consultant and want to write Guest Post to boost your profile or hype your business please contact crossedswordsus@gmail.com for more information.


 

 

Crosspost - Note to SF/F Writers: Random House’s Hydra Imprint Has Appallingly Bad Contract Terms

Source -  http://bit.ly/VHmKEQ

Random House recently started Hydra, an electronic-only imprint for science fiction stories and short novels. But, as noted by Writer Beware here, the terms in a Hydra deal sheet shown to them are pretty damn awful:

* No advance.

* The author is charged “set-up costs” for editing, artwork, sale, marketing, publicity — i.e., all the costs a publisher is has been expected to bear. The “good news” is that the author is not charged up front for these; they’re taken out of the backend. If the book is ever published in paper, costs are deducted for those, too.

* The contract asks for primary and subsidiary rights for the term of copyright.

Writer Beware notes, appropriately, that this information comes from only one deal sheet it’s seen from Hydra. But, you know what: One attempt at this sort of appalling, rapacious behavior on the part of Random House is bad enough.

Dear writers: This is a horrendously bad deal and if you are ever offered something like it, you should run away as fast as your legs or other conveyances will carry you.

Why?

1. NO ADVANCE. Dear Random House: Are you fucking kidding me? Random House had 1.7 billion euros in revenue in 2011 (Bertelsmann, the parent company, had fifteen billion euro in revenue in the same year, with over six hundred million euro in net income) and you somehow can’t afford advances all of a sudden? Color me skeptical.

Advances are typically all authors make from a book. It’s a competitive market and most books sell relatively small numbers. One reason to go with a publisher at all — especially these days — is because you get a concrete, definable amount of money fronted to you at the start; which is to say, you know you’ll get paid at least that much. The publisher is not doing you a favor by fronting you an advance; the publisher is making a hard-headed determination of how much money it will owe you (under terms of contract) and giving you that much up front so they don’t have to bother with royalties on the back end.

It’s also — importantly — an amount of money the publisher has invested in a book, which it will not get back if the book fails. It’s the publisher’s skin in the game, as it were. If there’s no advance, there’s no skin in the game for the publisher, and no real motivation for the publisher to bust its ass on behalf of the book.

Neither Random House nor Bertelsmann is some hard-scrabble, scrappy company trying to make it in this big world; please look again at their revenues and net income. However, even if they were hard-scrabble, scrappy companies it would still be wrong not to offer advances to authors.

Now, according to Writer Beware, Hydra is offering to split the net it makes from the books 50/50, which on the surface at least is a better cut than what authors currently get from traditional publishers (which is typically 25% of net). No doubt this 50/50 net split is being dangled as a fair trade for an advance. But remember that by avoiding paying any advance at all Random House has hugely mitigated its risk — which means that it has positioned itself to start making a profit from the writer’s work from day one without any substantial financial investment on its part.

Theoretically the author would be making a profit from day one, too, but wait:

2. The author is being charged costs previously borne by the publisher. That “one time” fee for editing/design plus a continual “sales, marketing and publicity fee” of 10% of the net revenue, plus additional continual printing and warehousing fees if the book ever goes to print.

What this means is that the author starts off his or her publishing journey in the hole to the publisher for an unspecified “one time” fee that publishers previously covered as part of their ordinary expenses, and see their income permanently diminished by other charges previously assumed by the publisher; the deal sheet in question states that the “50/50 split” is after these charges are accounted for, i.e., Random House has just made sure that the real world value of that “50/50 split” is substantially closer to the 25% of net that its traditionally-published authors are offered.

And how much will that “one time” fee for editing and design be? I don’t know, but I know that good editing, cover art, page and book design aren’t cheap; Donato Giancola, the artist who did the painting for the hardcover of Old Man’s War, got paid nearly as much for his work as I got paid to write the book. It’s not in the least unreasonable to assume that “startup costs” for a book can cost thousands of dollars. So that’s thousands of dollars that are going to be applied against the income of the writer before he or she makes dollar one — but not before Random House starts making money. Remember again that Random House is shunting some (and, well, possibly all) of its editorial costs over to the writer’s ledger; it’s once again actively minimizing its own costs — and investment — by maximizing the costs to the writer.

All of which is to say that it wouldn’t surprise me if Random House’s charges and fees just somehow manage to zero out an author’s earnings for a year or two and possibly even longer. It should be noted that most books sell nearly all they are going to sell within the first couple of years; after that they get lost in the pile of newer releases, including from the author. Hydra’s deal model has the marvelous potential of cutting out the economic heart of the book for the writer — but not, it should be noted, for the publisher, who will do just fine because its costs have been mitigated up front.

Musicians out there reading this may be smiling ruefully at this point, because they will recognize this sort of accounting; it’s how the music labels worked their accounting for years, carefully calibrating their fees and costs to make sure their musicians made as close to zero as possible while the labels kept all the money. But at least the musical labels paid their musicians an advance; Random House’s innovation here is that they aren’t even doing that.

Note to Random House: You’re aware what the typical consumer thinks of music labels at this point, right? You’re aware that one of the reasons that people don’t feel bad about pirating music is because they believe strongly that the music labels screwed the musicians anyway, so why bother? So, if your contracts are even less fair to authors than musical label contracts are to musicians, what are they going to think about you? And how does it look for the industry as a whole? You’re not making it easier for anyone.

All of this is terrible, but if you’re the writer and you sign on to this, there’s not much you can do about it because:

3. The contract is for the length of copyright. Which means you will never get the property back to sell it to someone who will offer better terms, and apparently even subsidiary rights are covered in the deal. To use the music label metaphor once more, this is like the music label owning the master tapes of an album. And again one is left to wonder what in the last twenty years of the economic history of the music industry suggested to Random House that this would be a fine model for them to follow.

Again: This is on the basis of one Hydra deal sheet that Writer Beware has seen. But again:Even one deal sheet of such appalling excrescence is one too many.  If this is the economic model Random House genuinely plans to follow for the future of electronic publishing, it deserves to die. It’s horrible for authors, which is bad enough, but it’s also horribly bad for the industry, both in terms of optics (do consumers really need another reason to hate large publishing companies?) and in chaining publishers to a cycle of diminishing returns.

It’s also bad because, frankly, it’s delusional. Dear Random House: It’s clear you’re targeting new, unagented authors here because no agent who is not manifestly incompetent would allow his or her client to sign such a terrible contract. But here’s the thing: New authorsdon’t actually need you to sell their work online. They can do it themselves — and are, and some of them are doing quite well at it. You are working under the assumption that these newer authors are so eager to be with a “real” publisher that they will suddenly forget that publishers are no longer a bottleneck to being published, or that you are offering nothing they can’t do themselves (or have done for them) and offering them nothing for the service — indeed your business model appears predicated on sucking as much as possible from them in fees and charges while offering as little as possible in way of compensation. Hydra is a vanity publisher, in sum.

Do you genuinely believe these new authors are that stupid? And if so, do you genuinely want an entire imprint of your publishing empire populated by such people?

Let’s talk about me for a moment. Anyone who knows me knows I feel pretty positively about the traditional publishing model; I work with Tor (part of Macmillan, one of publishing’s “Big Six”) because I get excellent service from it, including brilliant editing, fantastic art and design and top-flight marketing and publicity. Tor and its people earn every penny they make from my books, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m happy to partner with them and hope to do so far into the future; I am happy to defend Tor whenever someone blithely and stupidly suggests that my publisher is “just a middleman” sucking money from me. They aren’t and they don’t.

But make no mistake that my admiration for Tor — or any of my publishers, large or small — is grounded in the fact that ours is an equitable relationship. The minute the relationship stops being equitable is the moment when the relationship is done. Because the fact of the matter is that, if it came to it, I could put out my own work; pay for the editing and art and everything else and then put all the profit into my pocket. Because this is the world we live in now. I don’t usually want to, for all sorts of reasons. But I could. And at this point, so can anyone.

And this is ultimately what I would say to any author who is considering Hydra or any publisher (large or small) who would offer a deal as fundamentally awful as what Hydra seems to be offering: Why partner with someone who doesn’t see you as a partner? The Hydra deal sheet is pretty clear about this — it’s not a contract of partners, it’s a contract a parasite offers to a host. But the fact is that if Hydra likes your stuff enough to want it, then you can probably find a real publisher, who offers a real partnership, including the payment of advances and the assumption of risk. Or you can publish it yourself, pay your costs up front (hey, they’re business expenses!) and keep everything you make.

In short: You can do better than Hydra. So do better.

P.S.: As a note to any publishing house checking to see if authors will kick if you try to slide this shit past us and say it’s “the new reality of publishing” — this is us kicking. We will kick you plenty hard. Yes we will.