Kairos: “Tor Books knows that The Corroding Empire isn’t a counterfeit meant to ride on the coattails of their success. It’s a parody in the venerable literary tradition of calling out emperors with no clothes. It also stands as a solid sci-fi novel in its own right, and even surpasses the subject of its lampooning, as these excerpts show. The fact is that The Corroding Empire has been outselling Tor’s offering since the former became available for preorder. Since they can’t compete in the open market, Tor Books has appealed to Amazon to hobble the competition.”

SuperversiveSF: “The new name is almost funnier than the first, referencing the Asimov character, Hari Seldon from Asimov’s Foundation series. Not to mention this is an absolutely gorgeous new cover. Well played, Castalia House. It goes to show that a modern press run by competent people can be much more nimble and adaptive than the giants of the past. The establishment won’t be able to keep up with this sort of thing, and that means in the short term that you can expect lashing out both more often, and more severely. In the long term, they won’t be around.”

Kairos again: “The publisher insists that the issue is with rogue elements within KDP quality control and not with Amazon itself. If so, we could be witnessing a civil war within the world’s largest book distributor. However the situation gets sorted out, the resolution should be informative for publishers, authors, and readers alike.”

IO9: “When Beale announced pre-orders for The Corroding Empire, he made his mission very clear: He wanted his publishing house to do better than Tor Books and thought outperforming Scalzi with a near-identical book cover would twist the knife, adding ‘What would be more amusing than for The Corroding Empire to outsell and outrank The Collapsing Empire?'”

The Jesse Lucas Saga: ” I was looking forward to seeing the Foundation set up, crises averted not through prediction but through intuitive, virile, clutch solutions, and the style of Asimov continued with this affectionate, playful hand (someone bonks their head on a slow-opening door iris). Not to be. This fascinating setup leads into a series of disjointed shorts about the future of the empire. It never comes together…. I was hoping the author of the first section would return to wrap everything up, but it ends with more chaos. Not superversive at all.”

Kairos again: “Despite having an unfair two day head start thanks to the Amazon SJW’s interference, The Collapsing Empire is already losing ground to Corrosion. Their respective ranks are currently: Collapsing 174, Corroding 918 That’s a difference of only a few hundred books. Considering that Corrosion only costs five bucks, it shouldn’t be hard to overtake its ridiculously overpriced competitor. But Serving the CHORFs at Amazon and Tor a big helping of crow isn’t the only reason to support Johan Kalsi’s launch. Judging by the reviews, Corrosion is solid science fiction and the superior novel of the two.”

Black Gate:  “I assumed the Castalia House release was a parody of Scalzi’s new book, but that doesn’t appear to be the case — it’s a straight up collection of SF stories, packaged to look virtually identical to The Collapsing Empire. I’m not sure of the exact point, but Theo is obsessively tracking the comparative sales of the two books on his blog.”

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