On the Kindle, anyway. The Nook version always takes a little longer. That’s not my fault, I promise.
Category Archives: Writing
On Being Decisively Indecisive
I once read an interview with a well known author in our field. She was explaining her career choices in the context of some seasoned advice from her agent, who was explaining what she was doing wrong. To this day I consider it one of the most depressing writer interviews I’ve ever read. Not because of the author, who is obviously doing well and is comfortable with who she is and what she’s doing.
No, it was because of the agent’s advice. The author had written a fairly well-reviewed first novel that had sold okay but not great. Then she wrote another fantasy novel, but not much like the first one. And then she did something else for her third. See the trend? So her agent sat her down and said something to the effect that “When you write books that have no relation to each other, each one is like a first novel and you’re starting from scratch every time. It doesn’t work.” The point being that the author was doing many different kinds of books and this was a bad thing. Readers who liked her first book wouldn’t necessarily like her second, because it might not be about what interested them as a reader. This approach was preventing the author from building a readership, and if she wanted a readership (and thus a career) she was going to have to pick one kind of novel and stick to it. And one kind doesn’t mean “fantasy” as opposed to sf or horror; all her novels up until then were fantasy. Just not consistently the same sort of fantasy. That was what had to change, and a consistent approach (traditional fantasy adventure, urban fantasy, steampunk, whatever) chosen. Otherwise she would never be able to establish her “brand” as a writer. The author took her agent’s advice and she did change her approach and it worked wonders for her career.
In other words, in terms of branding, career and audience building, the agent was exactly right.
For those of us who still cling to the idea of being able to write one-off, quirky individual books and still have a career, that is depressing. Though I guess the fact is that one can very easily have a career that way. Just so long as you don’t expect to make a living.
On the SFnal Side
Most people who know my work at all know me as a fantasist, but now and then over the years I’ve published pure quill science fiction stories as well. Excluding the Eli Mothersbaugh ghost hunter series (which, yes, I do consider sf), there are actually more than I realized, and most have never been collected. I now resolve to correct this oversight.
Our Lady of 47 Ursae Majoris and Other Stories (tentative title)
(Tentative ToC:)
- Our Lady of 47 Ursae Majoris
- Crows
- Signs Along the Road
- Keeping Lalande Station
- Some Archival Material on the 2198 Stellar Expedition
- Directional Drift
- Passing Zero Point
- Poppa’s Children
- Punishment
- Eucharist
- The Great Big Out
Everything on the list has been previously published except for “Passing Zero Point,” which will be original to the collection. You heard it here first. More specifics to follow, when I have some.
Interesting Times
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast where the guest was a well-known critic/reviewer in the sf and fantasy field. I was especially struck by an exchange during the interview where the reviewer mentioned owning a Kindle and how much he was enjoying it. So the host asked him how owning the ebook reader had affected his reviewing habits. To which the reviewer replied that it hadn’t affected them at all, because he never reviewed books on the Kindle. There’s a reason for that, of course, and it—at least not yet—has nothing to do with being prejudiced against ebooks. The way reviewing has almost always worked where print books are concerned is that the publisher sends out ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) about six months before a book is due to be released. This is because of the lead times necessary to get the review into print at or before the release date of the book. This is considered especially important because reviews, in theory, boost an author’s sales, but not if the book isn’t immediately available to take advantage of the good press. And before you saying anything, yes, I know that a lot of ARCs these days are in pdf or another electronic format that can be read on ebook readers. That’s not the point. The point is that this lead time is considered necessary, because if a print book doesn’t sell well after its initial release, it’s a dud. Failure. New print releases have a very limited shelf life in this publishing model and if they aren’t moving enough copies they’ll be shoved aside to make room for the next (they hope) hot release.
You’re probably way ahead of me at this point. Yes, there is a problem, implied but not stated above. This is the way traditional publishers, reviewers, and booksellers think, but ebooks simply do not fit this model. As Dean Wesley Smith has pointed out, ebooks “are not produce.” Unlike produce and print books, they do not have a shelf life. Period. If I put out an ebook release tomorrow, no reviewer for any of the magazines will look at it, even if they knew about it and wanted to, because under the current mindset it is already published, and thus it is already too late to review it. To which the only reasonable response is—Why? The book will still be there in three months, six months, six years even. Quite often there would be time to get a review out during the year of publication if they were worried about timeliness, but so what? A print book edition will have maxed out its audience in a year or two from release. An ebook, if it’s any good, can keep finding new readers for generations, even if it sold poorly in the early days of its release. Or to put it another way, for an ebook the past is not destiny.
The old way of thinking about a book release simply doesn’t apply any more, but that doesn’t mean there’s a chance of that paradigm shifting any time soon. Right now the ebook edition of a print book is published after the “real” publication, so they don’t count for reviewing. Once traditional publishers switch to the ebook paradigm for their main lines, then there will still be scheduling, and lead times, and arcs, even if the original rationale for the reviewing schedule no longer holds. Only ebooks from mainline publishers will be reviewed, or in contention for awards or critical discussion. I wonder how long this attitude will be able to hold out, as more and more authors who write well by any standard but don’t sell well enough to be commercial find a new life by publishing their own books. Or best sellers like J.K. Rowling realize that all they need to sell books is a working web site.
No, I am not overlooking the fact that 90% of Indie and self-published ebooks are crap, but neither am I overlooking Sturgeon’s Law—“90% of everything is crap.” The cream will rise, and in the ebook model, it has the luxury of time, which print books simply do not have. Your guess is as good as mine as to how this is going to play out, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now—interesting times.
The Things That Go Bump in the Night Celebration
In case anyone’s in the area and would like to stop by, I’ll be at The Things That Go Bump in the Night Celebration at the Vicksburg Public Library in Vicksburg, MS, on Saturday, September 17th. Hope to see some of you there!
