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Bakker XLIX - From Bashrags to Riches (No TUC Spoilers!)


.H.

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5 hours ago, YoungBoulheim said:

I'm in the middle of The White-Luck Warrior, and there's a scene that is completely baffling me. Like, I have not the first inkling whatsoever of what is going on. I might as well have skipped the exchange for how little clarity there is.

It's right after Maithanet kills Inrilatas, and Esmenet is sitting over his body, talking to Maithanet. She starts by saying "Before, I knew I could defeat you." This is the start of me being totally lost, and not a single word for the rest of the scene makes anything any clearer for me. The part that loses the most by far, though, is:

"I was so willing, Maitha. And I knew you would see...see this in me, realize that I would let all Empire burn to war against you, and that you would capitulate the way all the others have capitulated to my sovereign will."

Could someone explain to me what Esmenet is saying to Maithanet here in this scene, including the "vulnerability of the Dunyain thing"? And the "you need only be willing to sacrifice yourself"? Seriously, the only meaning I am getting out of this exchange is "I am angry that you killed my son." Nothing more.

I have only read to the end of the chapter, where she asks Sankas for an assassin. Nothing past that, so I would appreciate no spoilers past this chapter. Thanks...

EDIT: I can only read posts that quote my own. I get notifications that link me directly to posts that quote me, and in that way I can avoid reading posts that are discussing other parts of the series, therefore avoiding spoilers.

I'll take a stab at it.

Essentially what she is saying is that before Inri dies there, she believes she would give up anything, her own life, her own power, her own possessions to best him.  He, being Dûnyain, would not be so willing to give up his own life, nor his holding of power and so she felt this was an advantage she could leverage against him.  It wouldn't be necessary to kill him, rather, demonstrate he could not win and so he would look to preserve his own life and would then capitulate.

However, there, over her son's dead body, she realized that while she would give her own life and 'her' Empire, she was not willing to sacrifice her children and she imagines that this was Maith's plan, to demonstrate to her this area of weakness.  "I was so willing" is her telling him that she was willing to sacrifice herself and her power, the point of that parable.

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I've yet to read the last two books but I was wondering how sales have gone on these two? I think I read somewhere more books are on the cards so I'm guessing they've sold well enough to justify more. Which is good news as it sounds like it'd been a struggle with his american publishers at least.

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10 minutes ago, red snow said:

I've yet to read the last two books but I was wondering how sales have gone on these two? I think I read somewhere more books are on the cards so I'm guessing they've sold well enough to justify more. Which is good news as it sounds like it'd been a struggle with his american publishers at least.

There are no concrete numbers, but all anecdotes are that it is not selling particularly well, and the last two books have especially not done all that well. 

There is no announced publishing deal for any future books so far. Bakker has stated that self-publishing may be the most logical choice at this point. 

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41 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There are no concrete numbers, but all anecdotes are that it is not selling particularly well, and the last two books have especially not done all that well. 

There is no announced publishing deal for any future books so far. Bakker has stated that self-publishing may be the most logical choice at this point. 

 

28 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

The reaction to the last book has been, uh, interesting. I do not believe it is selling well. There are certainly no contracts for any future books at the moment.

That makes it sound more intriguing for when I finally get around to it. Sounds like I shouldn't ask more because of spoilers!

I've bought both books but haven't read them. Guess there may be others not bothering at all. I guess the curse of dense series with a large gap is that many feel the need to do a re-read and as much as I enjoy the series a re-read is always hard for me when there are so many other books I've yet to read for the first time. I think I'll try diving straight in and hope the "what came before" helps out. If not I may read the aspect emperor again as they are at least faster reads than the prince of nothing.

I guess Bakker has enough of a fanbase to do self-published. Him getting 100% of the sale price probably makes up for the reduced sales. I can imagine he could almost do a kickstarter style approach and name a price.

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Yeah...yeah...I uh, don't think Bakker's fan base is particular large, I think it's he's pissed off most of the publishing industry. And given his online persona I don't see a kick starter being successful. This is all my opinion of course, but uh, fans are not happy with, things, because of spoilers and things and I dunno. Maybe @Kalbear can explain it better.

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23 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah...yeah...I uh, don't think Bakker's fan base is particular large, I think it's he's pissed off most of the publishing industry. And given his online persona I don't see a kick starter being successful. This is all my opinion of course, but uh, fans are not happy with, things, because of spoilers and things and I dunno. Maybe @Kalbear can explain it better.

Any word on what happened with his publishers? I think I read somewhere in the Spoiler thread that TGO and TUC both didn't have an editor, which explains a lot, but seems really weird given that the books are published by Overlook and Orbit.

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5 hours ago, .H. said:

I'll take a stab at it.

Essentially what she is saying is that before Inri dies there, she believes she would give up anything, her own life, her own power, her own possessions to best him.  He, being Dûnyain, would not be so willing to give up his own life, nor his holding of power and so she felt this was an advantage she could leverage against him.  It wouldn't be necessary to kill him, rather, demonstrate he could not win and so he would look to preserve his own life and would then capitulate.

However, there, over her son's dead body, she realized that while she would give her own life and 'her' Empire, she was not willing to sacrifice her children and she imagines that this was Maith's plan, to demonstrate to her this area of weakness.  "I was so willing" is her telling him that she was willing to sacrifice herself and her power, the point of that parable.

Thank you. This makes much more sense. I just couldn't figure this exchange out, so now I can continue without being lost.

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14 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Any word on what happened with his publishers? I think I read somewhere in the Spoiler thread that TGO and TUC both didn't have an editor, which explains a lot, but seems really weird given that the books are published by Overlook and Orbit.

Eh, just rumors of things that probably don't bear repeating. Ignore me!

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1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, just rumors of things that probably don't bear repeating. Ignore me!

This isn't quite accurate - we know, for instance, that he lost his long-time editor from Overlook and it took a while to be assigned a new one. We also know Overlook was not particularly caring about sci-fi/fantasy stories, and that's not what they specialized in. 

The editing for the new books was not particularly good. 

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I don't know about Kickstarter, but I could see Bakker doing a Patreon. He has a very small but devoted fanbase, and all he really needs is for, say, 1000 of them to kick in a couple bucks a month. Or an even smaller number to pay $10-20/month.

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5 hours ago, Summer Bass said:

I don't know about Kickstarter, but I could see Bakker doing a Patreon. He has a very small but devoted fanbase, and all he really needs is for, say, 1000 of them to kick in a couple bucks a month. Or an even smaller number to pay $10-20/month.

I could see that working if one of the major fans ran it and passed the funds through, so they'd be rather like Scott's agent. Scott, indirectly, does too much parodying and satire of things like patreon and other war of all against all fiscal systems it's not like he could run one himself. He'll take scraps from a masters table while carving that master up with a literary knife - but once you've done that, you can't become the master without throwing yourself on the same blade.

But it'd also have to take into account he wants to reach a wide audience, not an echo chamber. So he'd have to be able to take the money but still potentially devote significant time to general publishing since it reaches a general audience.

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18 hours ago, YoungBoulheim said:

 

Quote from H:

Quote

 

I'll take a stab at it.

Essentially what she is saying is that before Inri dies there, she believes she would give up anything, her own life, her own power, her own possessions to best him.  He, being Dûnyain, would not be so willing to give up his own life, nor his holding of power and so she felt this was an advantage she could leverage against him.  It wouldn't be necessary to kill him, rather, demonstrate he could not win and so he would look to preserve his own life and would then capitulate.

However, there, over her son's dead body, she realized that while she would give her own life and 'her' Empire, she was notwilling to sacrifice her children and she imagines that this was Maith's plan, to demonstrate to her this area of weakness.  "I was so willing" is her telling him that she was willing to sacrifice herself and her power, the point of that parable.

 

Ouch! So she rationalises as part of a learned helplessness. Everything the Dunyain do is some cunning manipulation, rather than dumb chamce.

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32 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

I could see that working if one of the major fans ran it and passed the funds through, so they'd be rather like Scott's agent. Scott, indirectly, does too much parodying and satire of things like patreon and other war of all against all fiscal systems it's not like he could run one himself. He'll take scraps from a masters table while carving that master up with a literary knife - but once you've done that, you can't become the master without throwing yourself on the same blade.

But it'd also have to take into account he wants to reach a wide audience, not an echo chamber. So he'd have to be able to take the money but still potentially devote significant time to general publishing since it reaches a general audience.

He wants to reach a wide audience? o.O

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1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

He wants to reach a wide audience? o.O

Well, he could write really clever academic papers that'd appeal to some academic in groups. Even just the genre of grim dark or the wider genre of fantasy reach more people than that - people who actually matter (ie, the ones not living in tenured ivory towers). Or so I estimate things. You're not tenured, r u?

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