What was that about Jack-of-all-trades…? Well, of course in these rather indifferent times, authors mostly end up holding down a job, writing, and doing a fair amount of the publicity and promo too. Well, let’s be straight here, as often as not, doing ALL of it, that does not include selling to a tiny handful of distributors and large retailers. The leg-work, the part that authors being the loud, extroverted, heart-and-soul of the party sort people they aren’t, are just your natural best and most effective choice for. Only they have as far as publishing is concerned one huge positive factor: They’re free. And as far as authors are concerned they have one even bigger factor: they really are motivated. They might lack the skills, tools, money and personality for it, but by heaven the silly beggars do try their guts out.

Hence author blogs and interviews and blog tours and facebook and twa… twitter. Some of which succeeds, and may pay the author a handsome 8% of that book sale while the generous distributors and publishers who contribute nothing to this, trouser the other 62% — which they would have had none of without the author’s extra unpaid work. To give credit where it is due, Amazon if you’ve promoted it on your site with a link will pay you a percentage of that sale. Perhaps instead of moaning about how Amazon is cutting their throats, publishers, and maybe even the distributor who would profit from that extra (that they would have 100%… of zero without that promotion by the author) could chip in a few percent to send those sales to their chosen retailer – who would have to match Amazon in paying the author. The publishers and distributors would then be in a much better negotiating position, would have lost not one red cent — and made quite a lot they wouldn’t have… and authors would have the money to work on promoting their work instead of trying do it in the gaps between the day job, and writing, without being able to afford the tools or help they need. Oh, wait. That would be sensible, might work, but would involve paying authors, who do a makeshift job of the same thing… for nothing. So they’d lose on the makeshift job and the cross-subsidizing of publishing and distribution by authors second jobs and working spouses. Can’t have that!

So: As a result more authors go indy and leave them 100% of nothing. Which ends up with you being Houghton Mifflin… In the meanwhile authors – including yours truly, the monkey here (the organ grinder is away, grinding organs) dancing and saying ‘lookit my shiny book, when you click on the pretty picture I get some money.

or this one which I admit is largely an in-joke for writers.

And while this works it also means you will have to deal with what I wanted to write about today: the troll.

You will get them. We had a minor one here the other day, although they generally prefer soft targets. At best you will end up with a flame war and everybody wasting lots of electrons and time on some ass who has more money (because to the working author, time is money) and time (because trolls seem to have no lives other than wondering from site-to-site, seeking grievance and raising their pet agenda). At worst these scum can cost you your health, career, and if you let them get under your skin enough, your life. They’re like rats in the working farm. There is no good rat on a farm, and there is no good troll. Farms will always suffer rats, and web-pages and blogs will always suffer trolls. Allow them zero tolerance, and get rid of them in any way possible.

To get rid of them you have to understand them. Firstly, they have no interest in debate. They get a charge out of being noticed and making their agenda noticed. So no matter how reasonable you try to be, or try to steer the matter back to say… books, they will want to rant about abortion. If you kowtow to their point of view they may let you be a camp-follower for a while and enjoy picking on someone else. Or they’ll just kick the shit out of you because they enjoy it. And sooner or later, when they run out of victims, they’ll take you too. They love the power and they love the bullying. These are the people at the heart of things like racefail (which attacked a fair number of authors who are, trust me on this, desperately eager to try and give racial minorities far more than their fair shake.) It’s been one of those own-goal ‘victories’ which made the architects feel powerful, made authors wary… and made books far _less_ likely to change perceptions. I’m sorry, the value of fiction as a vehicle for social change lies in it being plausible. Which, duh, means all villains are not just 40 year old white heterosexual males.

The point here is there is no such thing as a good troll. I had one of the so PC that she gleams new literary sf/fantasy dahlings claim a particularly noxious troll ‘raised awareness’ of her racial-gender-orientation issues ‘which we ought to be talking about’. Said individual was posting pirate copies of authors books and then twittering to encourage her camp-followers to and their friends to go and badmouth them. And in their defense the dahling claimed that sometimes a vinegar bomb was necessary to get people to notice. Well… I had noticed that every time this crops up… it’s a variant of ‘She’s a son-of-a-bitch, but she’s our son-of-a-bitch.’ Maybe someone should have a long hard look at how well that worked out for America, before applying it to their pet cause or outlook. In the end you might get noticed. You might also be permanently stuck with the reputation of people with your problem being complete septic a$$holes, to be noticed but outside of lip-service to acceptance (which is worth nothing) to be avoided like a rabid drunk with the clap. Personally, I would rather do the hard yards and have people (like myself) with varying degrees of dyslexia respected for their efforts and achievement, than have people afraid to hurt my feelings in case we throw a snit and get their books not to sell and achieve hatemail for them (wow. Achievement!). It’s a problem. I can work around it.

Look, there is no such thing as not being able to get heard. Not now, not with the Internet. You might not get people to listen, and maybe they just don’t have any interest in being aware of your particular problem, real or imagined (and to you that can be real. Ask all my imaginary friends). It’s no excuse. And using your ‘problem’ to oppress others, just makes you (instead of them) an oppressor. A bully. One of the reasons the troll problem has proliferated so well, is that we’ve labored under the new apartheid system, otherwise known as ‘Political correctness’ – which means if you can claim ‘victim status’ (in the old apartheid system that would have been skin color) or ‘historical victim status’ (like my great great great great great grandmother was a victim, so all of us have been, no matter what happened since) for what the supporters consider good reason (just as the supporters of apartheid considered theirs ‘good reason’ – perceptions change, thank goodness) the designated ‘victim’ (or multiple great grand child of) can claim to deserve (just as in apartheid) a set of conditions not granted to others who don’t enjoy their status. So just as black South Africans could not criticize white ones… but white ones could badmouth black ones and kick them off seats on the bus, and be backed up by a thuggish police, non-victims can’t criticize ‘victims’ and ‘victims’ can say what they please and if non-victims dare sit at the wrong end of the bus, the PC-police will hound them.

If we’re all just humans… well I expect you to behave as well the next man, woman, transgender or small hippopotamus passing for human. And I believe, slowly, the worm is turning. Another commentator replying to the thread the PC-dahling had just defended the troll on… said that minorities and victims were much worse jumped on for bullying than others. Well, yes. When you’ve got away with it for years the pendulum will swing back harder. But the crucial point is that patience is slowly running out. They’re getting jumped on for bullying, which even 5 years back would not have happened, and 10 years would have had the jumper attacked. The Zeitgeist out there is changing and PC-crew don’t realize they’ve fouled their own nest so badly as lose much of the sympathy natural in humans for underdogs. When you’re allowed license that others are not, it’s hard for them to believe that you are the underdog. When you’re a nice guy and a reasonable individual that I can differ with who behaves as well as anyone else… then it’s really easy to sympathize. “Oh. You’re Chinese and gay… but I like you, find you pleasant, easy to talk to, sensible… a person just like me who happens to have a different skin color, cultural background and orientation. You have had a bad press!” That’s winning the war against irrational discrimination. Beating up on people until they fear you… is not.

Which brings us back to being an author, and having to cope with blogging and trolls. My advice – which you’re welcome to take or leave: if anyone even starts this, insist on real names, no anon or pseudonyms permitted. Delete abusive or threatening stuff. And if you have the skill (because they’ll call all their camp-followers to come and see the abuse) make an idiot of them. Don’t play to them – play to the peanut gallery. Leave the abuse and foulmouthed stuff to them, but if you can make the readers laugh… they’ve lost.

So any other suggestions on dealing with that lower life form crawling the internet, Trollus trollus var parasiticuscumbagus?