The Non-Trad Christmas Gift Suggestion List (With Optional Trad) · 7:49pm Dec 4th, 2018
Right, so this is pretty spontaneous. This morning, I woke to news on my feed of John Scalzi putting up a “Non-Trad Published Gift List” on his website. Curious, I clicked over.
Unfortunately, it was a little disappointing. It wasn’t actually a Gift List. What I had expected, especially titled such, was that Scalzi had actually read some Non-Trad books and was promoting a few of his favorites. But it wasn’t. Instead what the post turned out to be was Scalzi saying “Hey, non-trad writers, please use my comments to plug your books today.”
Predictably, the result is basically a lot like the “Self-Published Satuday” grab-bags on Reddit. Hordes of books from all over the spectrum, presented with no rhyme or reason.
So I immediately thought “Why not try that for real? Rather than create a self-advertising space, why not throw out one of my favorite non-trad pub books I read this year, and encourage others to do the same? Something not by me, but by someone else? And then encourage my readers to do the same?”
Which, in turn, is where this post popped up from. Why not? After all, it’s my site. Why not use it for some real Christmas promotion?
So here’s the challenge. Look back on books you’ve read in the last, oh, two years. Pick out at least one that must be non-trad pub. An indie of some kind. If you’ve got a second that’s a lesser-known trad, then it can go up second, but the first must be indie.
Then post about it! Tell us why you liked it, who you think the book might be a good gift for, and where we can find it! Then, if you’ve got a lesser-known trad-pub book you’d like to talk about, throw that one up too!
I’ll start us off! Here’s my two picks!
The only modern pure-indie paper book I have is Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson (Castalia House), which goes through the suggested reading list (appendix N) included with the early Dungeons & Dragons games. It reviews a whole bunch of classic SF&F, and analyzes the influences it had on culture in general and D&D in particular. Enjoyable on its own if you're a geeky sort, and also very nice for picking out old stories, series, and authors you're likely to enjoy.
Does Black Library count as lesser trad (they sell in major bookshops) or indie (they spun up their own publisher to print a magazine and grew from there)? Because the third Ciaphas Cain omnibus just came out, and that series is some good shit. All the goodness of the WH40k setting, but refusing to take itself too seriously. It throws out most of the GrimDark and replaces it with comedy, while keeping some good science-fantasy/military adventure stories. It was my intro to the setting, and you do not need to know about 40k to enjoy it. You'll pick up everything you need to know from context.
(Aside: don't buy stand-alone books from BL if you can help it. Holy shit they're expensive for the page count and format. The anthologies and omnibus editions, on the other hand, are a relative steal, running around $20 for a ~1000-page good quality trade paperback.)