Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Three Unbroken: Free Fiction Online
Today, Chris Roberson begins serializing his forthcoming novel, Three Unbroken, on the Solaris Books website. Three Unbroken is a tale from his Celestial Empire sequence, an alternate history where a Chinese empire dominates the earth, beginning sometime in our shared past and continuing into their space-fairing age. In Three Unbroken, we see the Chinese at war with an Aztec empire for control of the planet Mars, as presented through the eyes of three members of the Dragon Throne's armed services. The first story just went up, "Hexagram 1 - Pure Yang: Below Heaven Above Heaven."The Celestial Empire sequence began way back when with the short "O One" in my own anthology Live Without a Net,
and continued in a series of stories published in various venues (Chris aggregates their appearances here on a checklist). They include the PS Publishing novella, The Voyage of Night Shining White and the forthcoming Firebird young adult work, Iron Jaw & Hummingbird. In February, Solaris will publish The Dragon's Nine Sons
in mass-market. Me, I can't wait.Friday, November 23, 2007
Getting It Off My Chest
This weekend, I heard from one of my authors that someone had said to them that their sale of an original novel to Pyr was doubly-impressive because, "Lou Anders pretty much only buys stuff that's been previously published in England and Australia." And then, a day later, a friend of mine asked me a question about editing that began, "[since] it seems like the majority of books Pyr prints are US releases of previously published books in the UK and Australia..."
The proximity of these two conversations got me thinking. So I pulled out our catalog, and I counted. We launched Pyr in March, 2005, and we have officially confirmed and announced our publication schedule through August 2008. So looking at those 52 titles:
Ian McDonald? you say. But isn't he British, living in Britain and publishing in Britain first? Here it should be pointed out that while we followed the initial UK publication of River of Gods by some time, his latest novel, Brasyl, is a first edition original. We bought directly from McDonald, he delivered to us, we published 1.5 months before the UK edition, and the UK edition was set from our copy edits, which we provided as a courtesy to the UK publisher. So I'm counting that one as original to Pyr.
Which is not to say that I don't love me my UK and Australian speculative fiction novels, or that I won't continue to bring the best of it across to a deserving American readership, because, well, this stuff is good and it should be published over here. I strongly believe doing so has real value. But I'm a little rankled that there is a perception that that's all we do, as it gives short shrift to our equally great original talents. David Louis Edelman's Infoquake was nominated for the Campbell Memorial Award. Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky was chosen by PW as one of the Best SF&F Books published in 2007. Alan Dean Foster's Sagramanda was proclaimed by Asimov's the best novel he has yet written in all his long career. Statements like the ones above don't do them justice.
'sall I'm saying.
The proximity of these two conversations got me thinking. So I pulled out our catalog, and I counted. We launched Pyr in March, 2005, and we have officially confirmed and announced our publication schedule through August 2008. So looking at those 52 titles:
- 23 are original works, never published anywhere before the Pyr editions.
- 23 titles debuted in the UK or Australia first.
- 6 titles are reprints (of US originals)
Ian McDonald? you say. But isn't he British, living in Britain and publishing in Britain first? Here it should be pointed out that while we followed the initial UK publication of River of Gods by some time, his latest novel, Brasyl, is a first edition original. We bought directly from McDonald, he delivered to us, we published 1.5 months before the UK edition, and the UK edition was set from our copy edits, which we provided as a courtesy to the UK publisher. So I'm counting that one as original to Pyr.
Which is not to say that I don't love me my UK and Australian speculative fiction novels, or that I won't continue to bring the best of it across to a deserving American readership, because, well, this stuff is good and it should be published over here. I strongly believe doing so has real value. But I'm a little rankled that there is a perception that that's all we do, as it gives short shrift to our equally great original talents. David Louis Edelman's Infoquake was nominated for the Campbell Memorial Award. Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky was chosen by PW as one of the Best SF&F Books published in 2007. Alan Dean Foster's Sagramanda was proclaimed by Asimov's the best novel he has yet written in all his long career. Statements like the ones above don't do them justice.
'sall I'm saying.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Marketing the Big Three, Part 2
So, to recap: Warren Ellis posts the SF Magazine Sales for 2006, asking how (and if) the speculative fiction magazines can be saved. "Someone recently said to me, 'Well, what could you do to save them?' And I said, well, no-one’s asking, but there’s probably about twelve things that could be done. And they said, 'Well, maybe, but what I really meant was — why try? Why not just bury them and start anew?'
Cory Doctorow responds with SF magazines' circulation numbers in sad decline, in which he says: "If I were running the mags, I'd pick a bunch of sfnal bloggers and offer them advance looks at the mag, get them to vote on a favorite story to blog and put it online the week before the issue hits the stands. I'd podcast a second story, and run excerpts from the remaining stories in podcast. I'd get Evo Terra to interview the author of a third story for The Dragon Page. I'd make every issue of every magazine into an event that thousands of people talked about, sending them to the bookstores to demand copies -- and I'd offer commissions, bonuses, and recognition to bloggers who sold super-cheap-ass subscriptions to the print editions."
Then John Scalzi's "The Big Three" comes along to suggest it may not matter. "The big three can still be relevant, mind you; I suspect Asimov’s was essential in bootstrapping Charles Stross into being the decade’s pre-eminent SF writer when it published the short stories that would eventually become the Hugo-nominated novel Accelerando. Likewise, Tim Pratt’s Hugo win this year is going to do great things for him moving forward. That said, I can think of more prominent SF writers published since 2000 who have gotten along without the benefit of exposure in the 'Big Three' than who have been helped by them."
All of which prompts Paolo Bacigalupi to weigh in with five posts:
Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?
Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace
Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing
Science Fiction Magazines Part IV - Starting from Scratch
SF Mags V - An SF Magazine for Girls?
Along the way, Paolo proclaims, "It says something about the state of the written sf market when we sf writers have a hard time connecting with the users of something as wildly popular as Halo. Technically, these users should be our bread and butter — and don’t tell me they don’t read. YA is doing just fine, and manga, too." Which leads him to propose a new magazine aimed at young male readers.
Then Homeless Moon offers "An Open-Source Speculative Fiction Magazine Model," which shifts the focus from marketing alone to online marketing which builds community. "What the Big Three have done effectively, and what constitutes a tribute to their longevity (which, in the big scope, is noteworthy), is build community. That is ultimately what online marketing exists to do, and represents a shift in the technology and approach to marketing as a whole. Saturation advertising has a provable low turnaround; high precision viral marketing is exponentially more effective (and I strongly believe that anyone running a small business today really needs to read that book I just linked). Get the viral going and use it to carefully cultivate a sustainable growing community and you generate an engine that feeds itself, markets for you, and brings in both business and revenue. The Big Three have lasted this long because of that construction of brand identity and community, to which subscribers develop loyalty and emotional attachment."
And then Homeless Moon lays out a very interesting plan for building a magazine from scratch, several excellent suggestions of which I'll consider further to see if they have any relevant applications for me and mine.
Meanwhile SpecLit weighs in with "Digest Blues: The Lament of the Big Three," which takes us back to the start a little bit when they argue that the digests have lost their relevance and make a case for a need to update their design. "What were once vital and important arbiters of taste in speculative fiction have descended into myopia. They are no longer the touchstones of the genre community. Instead, they are read by a decreasing number of entrenched fans."
While not as indepth as the discussions on Windupstories.com and Homeless Moon, the follow up post, Digest Blues, Part Two," is very interesting, in that SpecLit has done actual mock-ups of three alternatives to current Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF covers. The results, though hastily done and not meant as anything but examples, certainly demonstrate how effortlessly the look and feel of the Big Three could be brought forward without sacrificing their sfnal elements or going to great expense.
Of course, as all of this discussion is raging across the blogosphere the way things do, I can't help but feeling a little bit like everyone at the party is talking about someone who is standing right there in the middle of the room and didn't ask for the advice, thank you very much. Maybe the Big Three are fine with the way they are running things. (In fairness, two of the above discussions, again Windupstories and Homeless Moon, either shift focus to or focus exclusively on new models for new magazines, rather than strategies for the Big Three.) And F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder does pop up in Paolo's comment sections to make these points: "1) As far as I can tell, in all the discussions predicated upon the assumption that the SF digests are doomed, no one has actually addressed the question of whether the magazines are profitable. Everyone simply seems to have assumed that if circulation decreases, profits decrease. Not necessarily so. 2) I note also that everyone has lumped all three digests together, even though all three of us have differing markets and differing approaches. Some of the problems facing F&SF are different from the problems facing Analog. Naturally, the marketing approach for one digest might not work for another."
Which, interestingly, makes me think of this Newsweek article on Amazon's newly-unveiled Kindle, "The Future of Reading," in which Steven Levy makes the following point:
"Talk to people who have thought about the future of books and there's a phrase you hear again and again. Readers will read in public. Writers will write in public. Readers, of course, are already enjoying a more prominent role in the literary community, taking star turns in blogs, online forums and Amazon reviews. This will only increase in the era of connected reading devices. 'Book clubs could meet inside of a book,' says Bob Stein, a pioneer of digital media who now heads the Institute for the Future of the Book... Eventually, the idea goes, the community becomes part of the process itself."
Cory Doctorow responds with SF magazines' circulation numbers in sad decline, in which he says: "If I were running the mags, I'd pick a bunch of sfnal bloggers and offer them advance looks at the mag, get them to vote on a favorite story to blog and put it online the week before the issue hits the stands. I'd podcast a second story, and run excerpts from the remaining stories in podcast. I'd get Evo Terra to interview the author of a third story for The Dragon Page. I'd make every issue of every magazine into an event that thousands of people talked about, sending them to the bookstores to demand copies -- and I'd offer commissions, bonuses, and recognition to bloggers who sold super-cheap-ass subscriptions to the print editions."
Then John Scalzi's "The Big Three" comes along to suggest it may not matter. "The big three can still be relevant, mind you; I suspect Asimov’s was essential in bootstrapping Charles Stross into being the decade’s pre-eminent SF writer when it published the short stories that would eventually become the Hugo-nominated novel Accelerando. Likewise, Tim Pratt’s Hugo win this year is going to do great things for him moving forward. That said, I can think of more prominent SF writers published since 2000 who have gotten along without the benefit of exposure in the 'Big Three' than who have been helped by them."
All of which prompts Paolo Bacigalupi to weigh in with five posts:
Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?
Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace
Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing
Science Fiction Magazines Part IV - Starting from Scratch
SF Mags V - An SF Magazine for Girls?
Along the way, Paolo proclaims, "It says something about the state of the written sf market when we sf writers have a hard time connecting with the users of something as wildly popular as Halo. Technically, these users should be our bread and butter — and don’t tell me they don’t read. YA is doing just fine, and manga, too." Which leads him to propose a new magazine aimed at young male readers.
Then Homeless Moon offers "An Open-Source Speculative Fiction Magazine Model," which shifts the focus from marketing alone to online marketing which builds community. "What the Big Three have done effectively, and what constitutes a tribute to their longevity (which, in the big scope, is noteworthy), is build community. That is ultimately what online marketing exists to do, and represents a shift in the technology and approach to marketing as a whole. Saturation advertising has a provable low turnaround; high precision viral marketing is exponentially more effective (and I strongly believe that anyone running a small business today really needs to read that book I just linked). Get the viral going and use it to carefully cultivate a sustainable growing community and you generate an engine that feeds itself, markets for you, and brings in both business and revenue. The Big Three have lasted this long because of that construction of brand identity and community, to which subscribers develop loyalty and emotional attachment."
And then Homeless Moon lays out a very interesting plan for building a magazine from scratch, several excellent suggestions of which I'll consider further to see if they have any relevant applications for me and mine.Meanwhile SpecLit weighs in with "Digest Blues: The Lament of the Big Three," which takes us back to the start a little bit when they argue that the digests have lost their relevance and make a case for a need to update their design. "What were once vital and important arbiters of taste in speculative fiction have descended into myopia. They are no longer the touchstones of the genre community. Instead, they are read by a decreasing number of entrenched fans."
While not as indepth as the discussions on Windupstories.com and Homeless Moon, the follow up post, Digest Blues, Part Two," is very interesting, in that SpecLit has done actual mock-ups of three alternatives to current Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF covers. The results, though hastily done and not meant as anything but examples, certainly demonstrate how effortlessly the look and feel of the Big Three could be brought forward without sacrificing their sfnal elements or going to great expense.Of course, as all of this discussion is raging across the blogosphere the way things do, I can't help but feeling a little bit like everyone at the party is talking about someone who is standing right there in the middle of the room and didn't ask for the advice, thank you very much. Maybe the Big Three are fine with the way they are running things. (In fairness, two of the above discussions, again Windupstories and Homeless Moon, either shift focus to or focus exclusively on new models for new magazines, rather than strategies for the Big Three.) And F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder does pop up in Paolo's comment sections to make these points: "1) As far as I can tell, in all the discussions predicated upon the assumption that the SF digests are doomed, no one has actually addressed the question of whether the magazines are profitable. Everyone simply seems to have assumed that if circulation decreases, profits decrease. Not necessarily so. 2) I note also that everyone has lumped all three digests together, even though all three of us have differing markets and differing approaches. Some of the problems facing F&SF are different from the problems facing Analog. Naturally, the marketing approach for one digest might not work for another."
Which, interestingly, makes me think of this Newsweek article on Amazon's newly-unveiled Kindle, "The Future of Reading," in which Steven Levy makes the following point:
"Talk to people who have thought about the future of books and there's a phrase you hear again and again. Readers will read in public. Writers will write in public. Readers, of course, are already enjoying a more prominent role in the literary community, taking star turns in blogs, online forums and Amazon reviews. This will only increase in the era of connected reading devices. 'Book clubs could meet inside of a book,' says Bob Stein, a pioneer of digital media who now heads the Institute for the Future of the Book... Eventually, the idea goes, the community becomes part of the process itself."
Which, at the very least, means the party is going to go on talking. If Homeless Moon is correct, the Big Three are even enjoying a great deal of Viral Marketing right now, just by standing there amidst all this discussion pointed back at them. After all, as Mae West says, “It is better to be looked over than overlooked.”
Friday, November 16, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Just for the Record: Ian McDonald's Brasyl
I updated my files on all the good words re: Ian McDonald’s Brasyl
and just had to share:Quill nominee, Amazon’s Best Books of the Year So Far: Hidden Gems, # 2 in Amazon’s Best Books of 2007 - Top 10 Editors’ Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Salon.com’s Summer Reading Recommendation, Starred Review in PW, Starred Review in Booklist, A grade in SciFi Weekly, B+ in Entertainment Weekly.
- Boing Boing: “...his finest novel to date.”
- Salon.com: “...you will delight in Brasyl.”
- Amazon’s Bookstore Blog: “McDonald deserves to be going up against most of the world’s top fiction writers, period.”
- Ain’t It Cool News: “...you just end up hating this guy for being so damn clever.”
- Sci Fi Weekly: “...hot and tropical and full of music.”
- Publishers Weekly: “Chaotic, heartbreaking and joyous, ... must-read.”
- Locus: “...without doubt one of the major SF books of 2007.”
- Analog: “an impressively energetic novel…well worth your attention.”
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Fast Forward 1: An Encouraging Glimpse of the Future
Aaron Hughes, over on Fantastic Reviews, has some thoughts on my anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge.
Aaron begins by rounding up some recent notable anthologies, and then says that Fast Forward 1, "...may prove more important than any of these, because it is the first in a planned series of unthemed original anthologies - something that has not been done effectively since Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Starlight series from 1996 to 2001. It is nice to see Pyr, a relatively new SF publisher, using the original anthology format to showcase its brand of literary yet entertaining SF."Aaron particularly likes the book's novella, as he writes, "For my money, the single best story in Fast Forward 1 is 'Sideways from Now' by John Meaney, a British author who is fast becoming one of my favorites. 'Sideways from Now' combines familiar SF tropes such as telepathy and alternate universes, but weaves them together in very original ways, blending two disparate styles." Aaron goes on to make comparisons to Meaney's story-within-a-story to the New Weird, then adds, "At 69 pages, 'Sideways from Now' is the longest story in the book, but so richly layered that it is difficult to believe Meaney was able to contain the tale in as few pages. I will certainly be nominating this story for a Hugo Award, for it is inconceivable that there could be five better novellas published this year."
Aaron also likes stories by Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Di Filippo and others, and concludes, "this book demonstrates what a variety of authors and stories science fiction can encompass. By its wide array of different approaches to the future, Fast Forward 1 gives us an encouraging glimpse into the future of science fiction."
He also made an interesting observation, which may be relevant to recent discussions of the decline of digest magazines and the rise of several new annual, unthemed SF volumes in Fast Forward's wake: "There is precedent for original anthologies filling the void when print magazines suffer a period of decline. When multiple digests folded in the late 1960's and early 70's, anthologies such as Orbit, Universe, New Dimensions, and Dangerous Visions picked up the slack. (Notably, stories from original anthologies received over 40 Hugo nominations in the 1970's, after print magazines had accounted for all but one of the short fiction nominations before 1968.)"
Friday, November 09, 2007
Bless This Man !!
From the WashingtonPost.com, IN CONVERSATION . . . With Michael Chabon, an interview conducted by Julie Phillips (NBCC and Hugo Award winning author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.)Phillips: Gentlemen of the Road
gives me the impression that you had a lot of fun writing it but aren't entirely convinced by the world you've created. Do you think you will ever really break into science fiction? Or are you doomed to keep coming back to literature?Chabon: I believed every single word of it with every fiber of my being, actually! Writing it wasn't just fun, it was deep and magical -- I traveled. As for science fiction, it is literature, as you very well know, my dear. The gates between the kingdoms are infinitely wide and always open!
Thursday, November 08, 2007
World Fantasy Convention 2007
I'm back from the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY, which was held Nov 1 to 5th, and was, due to World Con being overseas this year and the proximity of NYC, the largest World Fantasy ever at membership capped at over 1,140 people. As always, this - my favorite convention every year - was a truly fantastic experience.
The core of my time was hanging with old friends Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, John Picacio, Karen Jones, Jennifer Heddle, Paul Cornell, Deanna Hoak, David Louis Edelman, Paul Cornell, George Mann and with him, new friend Marc Gascoigne (both of Solaris books and pictured here with Justin Gustainis, author of the their forthcoming title, Black Magic Woman). Also was ecstatic to get some real time with Pyr authors Charles Coleman Finlay, there with his lovely new wife, and Alan Dean Foster, who I don't see enough of but relish our talks when I do. And Acacia author David Anthony
Durham and I had enough interrupted conversations to aggregate them into one real one. Scott Lynch was very nice, if very much in demand. Hal Duncan was his wonderful self. Many thanks to my friends Paul Barnett (aka John Grant) and Pamela D. Scoville for batteries when my camera died with its lens extended. (There they are on the right. Aren't they cute?)
I love Irene Gallo, so it's a shame this time we didn't get much time together apart from our panel on cover art Saturday, where we were joined by Tom Kidd, John Picacio, and Jacob Weisman. The room was packed and it was a large room. Irene usually sits in the audience in these panels, when she should be leading them. She moderated this one and did a fantastic job. Meanwhile, I am increasingly confident about my ability to say something meaningful on the top
ic as I get asked to speak about it more and more these days. Oddly, even though that's about all I saw of Irene, I feel like I did get time with her; I just got it in front of a packed house is all! (Pictured left is C.E. Murphy and Paul Cornell.)
Saturday night was the Third and Final Orbit Launch Party, a private function held in a restaurant offsite called Tiznow, with about 100 industry professionals in attendance. Quite a shindig. Good talk with Night Shade's Jeremy Lassen. And it was there I got to finally catch up with their author, Jon Armstrong, whose Grey
really made an impression on me. I'm still trying to get him to read David Louis Edelman and both of them to read Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron.
I'm getting closer to this goal, though, as Edelman has read Grey and Armstrong emailed me to ask about Spinrad. I followed Orbit with drinks with Rome Quezada, the new head of the Science Fiction Book Club, back at the hotel, who I have never met before and is a very nice guy.
Stayed up till 5:60am (I swear that's what the clock said)
Saturday night. Was talking around 3ish with David Palumbo, also a very nice guy, a promising illustrator, and the son of Julie Bell and step-son of my childhood hero Boris Vallejo (who I also got to meet in the art show earlier). A bit of synchronicity. Dan Dos Santos did the cover for our forthcoming reissue of Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn.
Palumbo modeled for him as the detective in the trench coat without knowing his dad did the original 1980s painting! How cool is that?
Then Todd Lockwood, who I didn't yet know and had been trying to meet all weekend, joined us, and we ended up discussing SF till very, very late. Then I got dragged out to breakfast by Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, Hal Duncan, Jim Minz, Liz Gorinsky, Jetse de Vries. (Klima, were you there too?) This morphed into a room party in Minz and Klima's, which is why the clock said 5:60. Then up two hours later to prepare for (a second) breakfast with Locus at 10 am. It took me a bit to get started, but Liza Trombi and I ended up talking for several very enjoyable hours. Right up till time to get ready for the awards banquet, about which I remember next to nothing. (Pictured upper right: Paul Cornell, David Louis Edelman, Garth Nix & John Picacio. Pictured left: Deanna Hoak, nominated in the category of Special Award Professional and Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell, who lead the Deanna Hoak World Fantasy Awards Campaign.)
The rest of the day was spent on empty, though I managed to rouse myself for a final dinner with editor George Mann and publisher Marc Gascoigne of Solaris Books. Solaris are releasing my next anthology, Sideways in Crime, June '08. We're also entering into a very exciting venture with them around the same time, with the simultaneous publication of David Louis Edelman's Infoquake
in mass market from Solaris and sequel MultiReal
in trade paperback from Pyr. (Here is David between his two editors.)
And that wraps up the convention. Special thanks to Joe McCabe for keeping Picacio awake Sunday night, and hence, me as well. We got up at 5:45am to head to the airport. Felt great. I owe you one, buddy.
Now here's the Google Alert shout out to all the wonderful people I hung with over the weekend: Kim Newman, Karen Jones, Jennifer Heddle, Deanna Hoak, Sophia Quach (is it Quach-McCabe now?), Cheryl Morgan, Jeremy Lassen, Jess Nevins, Rani Graff, Liz Scheier, Liza Trombi, Jim Minz, John Klima, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Ted Chiang, Jae Brim, Scott Cupp, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, Steve Erickson, Jo Fletcher, and whatever wonderful person or persons I've omitted. Folks I missed seeing and really wanted to include Don Maass, Nancy Kress, Patrick Rothfuss.
Finally, John Picacio has a convention report on his blog, David Anthony Durham here, and David Louis Edelman has one in three parts.
And that's it for me. After resisting it all weekend, I have brought the con bug back with me, where it is making itself at home amid the entire Anders household.
The core of my time was hanging with old friends Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, John Picacio, Karen Jones, Jennifer Heddle, Paul Cornell, Deanna Hoak, David Louis Edelman, Paul Cornell, George Mann and with him, new friend Marc Gascoigne (both of Solaris books and pictured here with Justin Gustainis, author of the their forthcoming title, Black Magic Woman). Also was ecstatic to get some real time with Pyr authors Charles Coleman Finlay, there with his lovely new wife, and Alan Dean Foster, who I don't see enough of but relish our talks when I do. And Acacia author David Anthony Durham and I had enough interrupted conversations to aggregate them into one real one. Scott Lynch was very nice, if very much in demand. Hal Duncan was his wonderful self. Many thanks to my friends Paul Barnett (aka John Grant) and Pamela D. Scoville for batteries when my camera died with its lens extended. (There they are on the right. Aren't they cute?)I love Irene Gallo, so it's a shame this time we didn't get much time together apart from our panel on cover art Saturday, where we were joined by Tom Kidd, John Picacio, and Jacob Weisman. The room was packed and it was a large room. Irene usually sits in the audience in these panels, when she should be leading them. She moderated this one and did a fantastic job. Meanwhile, I am increasingly confident about my ability to say something meaningful on the top
ic as I get asked to speak about it more and more these days. Oddly, even though that's about all I saw of Irene, I feel like I did get time with her; I just got it in front of a packed house is all! (Pictured left is C.E. Murphy and Paul Cornell.)Saturday night was the Third and Final Orbit Launch Party, a private function held in a restaurant offsite called Tiznow, with about 100 industry professionals in attendance. Quite a shindig. Good talk with Night Shade's Jeremy Lassen. And it was there I got to finally catch up with their author, Jon Armstrong, whose Grey
really made an impression on me. I'm still trying to get him to read David Louis Edelman and both of them to read Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron. I'm getting closer to this goal, though, as Edelman has read Grey and Armstrong emailed me to ask about Spinrad. I followed Orbit with drinks with Rome Quezada, the new head of the Science Fiction Book Club, back at the hotel, who I have never met before and is a very nice guy.Stayed up till 5:60am (I swear that's what the clock said)
Saturday night. Was talking around 3ish with David Palumbo, also a very nice guy, a promising illustrator, and the son of Julie Bell and step-son of my childhood hero Boris Vallejo (who I also got to meet in the art show earlier). A bit of synchronicity. Dan Dos Santos did the cover for our forthcoming reissue of Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn. Palumbo modeled for him as the detective in the trench coat without knowing his dad did the original 1980s painting! How cool is that?
Then Todd Lockwood, who I didn't yet know and had been trying to meet all weekend, joined us, and we ended up discussing SF till very, very late. Then I got dragged out to breakfast by Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, Hal Duncan, Jim Minz, Liz Gorinsky, Jetse de Vries. (Klima, were you there too?) This morphed into a room party in Minz and Klima's, which is why the clock said 5:60. Then up two hours later to prepare for (a second) breakfast with Locus at 10 am. It took me a bit to get started, but Liza Trombi and I ended up talking for several very enjoyable hours. Right up till time to get ready for the awards banquet, about which I remember next to nothing. (Pictured upper right: Paul Cornell, David Louis Edelman, Garth Nix & John Picacio. Pictured left: Deanna Hoak, nominated in the category of Special Award Professional and Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell, who lead the Deanna Hoak World Fantasy Awards Campaign.)
The rest of the day was spent on empty, though I managed to rouse myself for a final dinner with editor George Mann and publisher Marc Gascoigne of Solaris Books. Solaris are releasing my next anthology, Sideways in Crime, June '08. We're also entering into a very exciting venture with them around the same time, with the simultaneous publication of David Louis Edelman's Infoquake in mass market from Solaris and sequel MultiReal in trade paperback from Pyr. (Here is David between his two editors.)
And that wraps up the convention. Special thanks to Joe McCabe for keeping Picacio awake Sunday night, and hence, me as well. We got up at 5:45am to head to the airport. Felt great. I owe you one, buddy.Now here's the Google Alert shout out to all the wonderful people I hung with over the weekend: Kim Newman, Karen Jones, Jennifer Heddle, Deanna Hoak, Sophia Quach (is it Quach-McCabe now?), Cheryl Morgan, Jeremy Lassen, Jess Nevins, Rani Graff, Liz Scheier, Liza Trombi, Jim Minz, John Klima, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Ted Chiang, Jae Brim, Scott Cupp, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, Steve Erickson, Jo Fletcher, and whatever wonderful person or persons I've omitted. Folks I missed seeing and really wanted to include Don Maass, Nancy Kress, Patrick Rothfuss.
Finally, John Picacio has a convention report on his blog, David Anthony Durham here, and David Louis Edelman has one in three parts.
And that's it for me. After resisting it all weekend, I have brought the con bug back with me, where it is making itself at home amid the entire Anders household.
Brasyl in USA Today
Ian McDonald finds himself part of a SF Book Feature in today's issue of USA Today (circulation 1,618, 000). I haven't seen the paper yet myself, so all I've seen is this quote, which heaps more praise on his latest novel, Brasyl:"...The overall result is the most rewarding science fiction in recent memory." USA Today
Update: The entire USA Today article is online here.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Brasyl: Amazon's Best Books of 2007
.jpg)
Amazon has posted their Best Books of 2007 - Top 10 Editors' Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy list. And Ian McDonald's Brasylis NUMBER TWO on the list. Why tremendously welcome news, this is perhaps not surprising given that Brasyl previously appeared in their Best Books of the Year So Far: Hidden Gems list, though that list was not restricted to genre (or even to fiction), whereas this one is for SF&F titles.Why, one might be forced to conclude that Brasyl is one of the best books of the year period, in and out of genre, wouldn't one? Certainly Amazon agrees, as they wrote that "with Brasyl he has proven once again that he should be reckoned as one of the finest of all our novelists." Whereas the Washington Post said, "Ian McDonald's Brasyl, with its three storylines, is as close to perfect as any novel in recent memory." Then there's the Quill Award nomination, and, of course, Salon.com's Recommended Summer Reading List. And, at this point, I would be remiss not to mention the sample chapters online, wouldn't I?
A very big congratulations to Ian from everyone at Pyr/Prometheus!
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Marketing the Big Three
My friend and exceptional writer Paolo Bacigalupi has posted three linked articles on the state of the "big three" science fiction digests and what can be done to boost their circulation numbers. I rarely just point and say "go," but in this instance, I will:
Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?
Paolo says: "There’s been a fair amount of talk about the die-off in the short fiction magazine markets. Interestingly, this is often played as indicating their loss of relevance either generationally (sf market is aging) or else technologically (The internet is where it’s at! All else will crumble and fall before it!) or else in the business model - (free content will triumph over paid content). My perception however is that there are some specific things going on with the major sf magazines that heavily affect their success, and it doesn’t have much to do with the themes above. "
Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace
Paolo says: "More than anything - more than changing demographics, or the advent of new technologies, or the rise of free content - I have a sense that the loss of sf readers for the 'big three' markets is actually a failure of marketing and core circulation management practices, not of the sf market as a whole. I just don’t see the big three doing a lot with their current subscriber base and I don't see them actively reaching out much. On one level this has to do with things like the appearance of their websites, whether they offer exciting subscription enticements, etc (which I'll go into later). But even more, it relates to how they use something decidedly unsexy: direct mail. ....Overall, I think the institutional barriers in the magazines may be significantly more problematic for them than the actual state of the SF market."
Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing
Paolo says: "My sense of the online sphere is that it remains a place of opportunity rather than threat for a print magazine. Over time, this may change, but the internet provides the best place to attract pre-qualified subscribers, to build a relationship with them, and then to convert them to paying subscribers. Unlike direct mail, this is an area where initial sunk costs continue to pay off over time, and where simple changes can have positive ripple effects far down the line. It also seems like the barriers to change are fewer than in completely revamping the way they do direct mail."
Science Fiction Magazines Part I - Why are the "Big Three" Dying?
Paolo says: "There’s been a fair amount of talk about the die-off in the short fiction magazine markets. Interestingly, this is often played as indicating their loss of relevance either generationally (sf market is aging) or else technologically (The internet is where it’s at! All else will crumble and fall before it!) or else in the business model - (free content will triumph over paid content). My perception however is that there are some specific things going on with the major sf magazines that heavily affect their success, and it doesn’t have much to do with the themes above. "
Science Fiction Magazines Part II - Marketing in Meatspace
Paolo says: "More than anything - more than changing demographics, or the advent of new technologies, or the rise of free content - I have a sense that the loss of sf readers for the 'big three' markets is actually a failure of marketing and core circulation management practices, not of the sf market as a whole. I just don’t see the big three doing a lot with their current subscriber base and I don't see them actively reaching out much. On one level this has to do with things like the appearance of their websites, whether they offer exciting subscription enticements, etc (which I'll go into later). But even more, it relates to how they use something decidedly unsexy: direct mail. ....Overall, I think the institutional barriers in the magazines may be significantly more problematic for them than the actual state of the SF market."
Science Fiction Magazines Part III - Online Marketing
Paolo says: "My sense of the online sphere is that it remains a place of opportunity rather than threat for a print magazine. Over time, this may change, but the internet provides the best place to attract pre-qualified subscribers, to build a relationship with them, and then to convert them to paying subscribers. Unlike direct mail, this is an area where initial sunk costs continue to pay off over time, and where simple changes can have positive ripple effects far down the line. It also seems like the barriers to change are fewer than in completely revamping the way they do direct mail."
Bright of the Sky: PW's Best Books of the Year 2007
This week's Publishers Weekly Cover Story is their Editor Picks for PW's Best Books of the Year 2007.According to PW, three thousand books are published daily in the U.S., and PW reviewed more than 6,000 of them in 2007, in print and online. From that astounding number, they've culled a best books list covering their favorites in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, comics, religion, lifestyle and children's—150 in all. (That's right, only 150 total books from 6,000 reviewed titles.) And in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category PW selected only seven titles, one of which, we are very pleased to say, is our very own Bright of the Sky: Book One of The Entire and the Rose!
Congratulations to Kay Kenyon from everyone at Pyr/Prometheus! We couldn't be happier!
PW says, "Deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building lift this first in a new far-future SF series involving a mishap in interstellar space that sends a family into a parallel universe." Remember, you can read an excerpt from Bright of the Sky here. And feel free to drop by Kay's Journal and congratulate her here.
Monday, October 29, 2007
News Worth Repeating: Chris Roberson Serialized Online
Given my personal history with the Celestial Empire stories, this is very exciting:
SOLARIS TO PUBLISH NEW CHRIS ROBERSON NOVEL ONLINE FOR FREE
THREE UNBROKEN
Based on the sixty-four elements of the I-Ching, Three Unbroken follows the lives of three soldiers from their induction into the armed forces to their eventual fight for survival on the frontline. The events of the novel are contemporaneous with those of The Dragon’s Nine Sons, the first novel in the sequence, set to be published by Solaris in February 2008.
In a bold move, Solaris Books plans to serialise the entirety of Three Unbroken on their website for free, at a rate of two chapters per week.
The project will start in late November 2007, with details to be confirmed on the Solaris website nearer the time.
The novel will then be published in book form in 2009.
Watch the Solaris website at www.solarisbooks.com for more information.
Consultant Editor George Mann said of the deal “I’m delighted to be working with Chris again and this is a truly exciting project, not least because it’s our first online publication. Chris is exactly the right person to do this, and Three Unbroken will be an excellent introduction to the Celestial Empire for those who have yet to discover its delights.”
are taking the stuff of genre fiction and turning it into a whole
new literary form - a form for the 21st century. A talented
storyteller, he has a unique ear, a clever eye, an eloquence all
too rare in modern fiction.”
Michael Moorcock
a refreshing originality...”
SciFi Now
Sidewise Award for his story ‘O One’, continues that tale’s vein
– in this alternate timeline, Imperial China dominates the world
in place of
setting by transferring it to a partly terraformed Mars ruled by
the Mandarins. The atmosphere is sumptuous, the invention
lavish; the experience of reading the story is mind-expanding.”
Locus
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The Big Book Cover Post: Part II
I love talking about book covers, and I particularly like it when the blogosphere takes up the discussion in force, since more discussion of the wonderful art and artists who are such an integral part of our field is always a good thing. Since George Mann kicked it off with Marrying Authors to their Market and my response, The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards & Spaceships, there's been a flurry of book design-related activity online.First, our mutual author David Louis Edelman displays the matching covers for the forthcoming Solaris Books mass market edition of Infoquake and the forthcoming Pyr trade paperback edition of the 2nd book in the series, MultiReal. (Follow the links to David's blog, both to see larger versions of both covers, and to join in the wealth of comments the covers are engendering.)
Then Torque Control chimed in with Cover Art. The post is mostly a pointer to other discussions, but with some very interesting comments in the thread. Most interesting to me is this comment from Gollancz editor Simon Spanton: "Are our SF covers going more abstract? Quite possibly. Are they doing this in order to reach the ‘wider readership’? Well if they are it isn’t going to work as, 99 times out of 100, the books, whatever their cover, are still going to be stocked in the SF section. Are they, instead, merely reflecting a wider trend away from strictly illustrative covers that the rest of the industry has been following of late? Much more likely. I have no illusions about our ability to transform the way that SF books are seen. What I am hoping is that we can alert one-time readers, and occasional readers and regular readers to the fact that SF is not stuck in some sort of time warp. I’m coming to think that the only jobs a genre cover has to (and can) do are to alert the reader to whether it is SF/fantasy/other (that other still retaining elements of the fantastic because, remember, it’s in a genre section) and try and convey some sense of the books quality by, itself, being a high quality design (not necessarily incorporating a high quality traditional illustration)... 
I think to assume that the traditional fantasy and SF readership are in some way not being catered for within the current movement towards some covers being more ‘designed’ or more ‘abstract’ is danger of assuming that said readers aren’t aware of and comfortable with how design moves on. SF and fantasy fans don’t dress like they did in 1985, the music they listen to isn’t packaged as it was in 1985, the cars they drive don’t look like they did in 1985 (I could go on), so why should their books? And I’m also suspicious that this move towards design and abstraction is something new, something that is leaving the more traditional fans, floundering in its sleek wake. Take a look at SF and Fantasy covers from the late 60s and early 70s and there is plenty of abstraction, modish design and garish colour. Just like there was in every other area of design of the period."
Meanwhile, author Mark Chadbourn has some very long, very interesting responses to George and my posts. In Selling Fantasy by the Pound he draws comparisons to other industries, cautioning that "In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern). The comics industry in particular has faced a great many problems because of the loss of its mainstream audience. That was caused by the collapse of its distribution network in the late seventies and early eighties and the shift to specialist comics shops. But the comics producers then found that to maintain sales in this rarefied atmosphere required stories that excited the jaded palates of the core fan - and were nigh-on incomprehensible to the casual reader. Sales fell further, the core fan market had to be shored up to a greater extent, and a desperate retreat from the centre ground took place, that is still damaging the industry."
I think Mark is confusing my use of the term "core science fiction and fantasy" with the core of the readership when he talks about catering to jaded palates (though, admittedly, he's also drawing from George's essay and George and I, though we share certain views in common, are not saying exactly the same thing.) I would cite something like John Scalzi's trilogy, Old Man's War,The Ghost Brigades,
and (my personal favorite) The Last Colony,
works which deal brilliantly with all the "core" iconography of science fiction - planetary colonization, galactic federations, cloning, aliens, mind transference, supersoldiers, FTL - and yet are utterly, totally accessible to brand new SF readers. Scalzi's trilogy is absolutely quintessential SF&F, but it by no means is catering to a small, jaded elite. The books are HUGELY successful, with readers young and old (and from what I understand from Adventures in SciFi Publishing, they are even being passed around the Stargate cast and crew.) What's more, their covers, by John Harris, are a perfect example of presenting SF iconography in a mature light. As is, by the way, the cover for Scalzi's novel The Android's Dream,
a beautiful cover (and title) which is hardly hiding its genre affiliations.
Mark's post sparked Darren of the Genre Files to return to the topic with with Genre fiction marketing follow-up - Lou Anders and Mark Chadbourn, where he asks, "Can you achieve all those aims at once? Can you write high-quality, literary genre fiction that's successfully marketed to a core audience of fans, yet still has enough break-out potential to escape the genre-ghetto and achieve mass-market sales?" Darren then makes an impassioned plea for "helping the readership to raise its standards; to expect, to want, to demand much more from their genre fiction, and thereby move the mainstream audience closer to the credible, literary end of the spectrum. In other words, expanding the middle ground between 'long tail' and 'short head' (it would help if I had time to draw the graph, I'll try to add one at a later date) and creating greater potential for higher quality fiction to thrive. If the readership demands richer, better quality genre fiction, and the readership then votes with its credit cards and buys more of it, then the publishers of the world will respond by publishing more of it. And I know for a fact that this would make a lot of genre fiction publishers immensely happy. "
In the comments section, the always interesting Andrew Wheeler pops up with this bit of wisdom: "It's a beautiful vision, but...the world of 'literary' fiction is not the mainstream at all. It's a small backwater, which moves fewer units annually in aggregate than the SFF genre (though the big hits are much bigger -- which of course means that the average sales are notably smaller). Trying to 'break out' into literary fiction is an attempt to jump into a smaller pond, merely because they have better press. (Which is reasonable, if what you really want is good press.) The real mainstream in fiction consists of two genres that are so large and important that they're not consistently called genres: romance/women's fiction and the thriller. If writers primarily want to reach very large audiences, they need to find ways to write in those genres. (Which doesn't necessarily mean abandoning SFF: the former has been combined with Fantasy very successfully over the past decade, and technothrillers are the merger of the latter with elements of SF.)"
Blogger S. M. Duke joins in with Cover Designs: Yet Another Take, and this valid reminder: "The sad thing is, I don't generally buy books by the title or the author. In fact, unless a book comes off to me as genre, I probably won't even look at it. That's just the way it is and the way it is for a lot of people. For me, the trend of making books look more mainstream isn't working. I've never read a Neil Gaimen book because of the way they are packaged, and as I'm learning, that is a very horrible thing. I saw the Stardust movie and it was one of the best films of the year--yes, it was that good despite what the stupid box office reported for sales. I should have read the book, and his other novels too, but I never have because the covers never strike me as fantasy. If Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card had not had this cover, I would have ignored it entirely."Which is a perfectly accurate representation of a portion of the SF&F readership, as well as being reflective of a lot of comments I frequently hear from fans around these parts.
Elsewhere, Design Unit 38 doesn't like three of our titles' illustrations, (including one that has been a major success with the all important chain buyers) as pointed out in "Cover design and science fiction." At least they offer the concession that "Lou Anders at Pyr has shepherded many good novels onto the racks at Barnes and Noble." I take that and move on.
To where Calico Reaction admits that Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective
isn't targeted at her, and adds that "that damn cover kept glaring at me, and I must say, kudos to the artist: he captured Elric (aka Zenith) so perfectly that I could not HELP but visualize that illustration every time I saw the character described in the book."In the comments thread, Dawtheminstreal adds: "I recently heard TNH and PNH of Tor talking about what leads people to buy books and they both thought the cover art had a big influence. They said the cover sent out mating signals, and the reader responded or not."
Finally, SFFWorld has a very interesting discussion thread going titled "Embarrasssing/Awful cover art." Well worth reading, if for nothing else, the range of opinions expressed. You see some readers coming down in favor of the purely designed covers as typified by something like George R R Martin's fantasies and you see other readers proudly embracing the covers on R A Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels - which always catch my eye, personally - but which must represent the other end of the spectrum from GRRM.Which has to be the final word - that, as illustrator John Picacio recently reminded me, no book can be all things to all people. Responding to the "mating signals" comment, John says, "I see that analogy, but that metaphor triggers a deeper thought to me. I see this tendency from book publishers to more and more want covers that send disingenuous mating signals, or more specifically, mating signals that say 'hey, I want everyone to like me' and so you fall in love with the cover, but then you buy the book and read it, and you hate it and you tell your friends because you feel deceived. Haven’t we both bought CDs (pre-Itunes) because we heard a single that was kick-ass and then the rest of the album wasn’t anything like it and sucked? ...Point being, I tend to think that it’s the same with books, and I wonder if the notion that 'as long as the cover sells the book, it’s done it’s job' isn’t a flawed statement. Seems like a very short-view approach, if the mating signal of a cover is viewed as being JUST about selling the book, as opposed to
connecting it with its rightful readership. Bottom line: I think the 'mating signal' thing doesn’t replace selling with integrity, and in the end, if you can create a cover with integrity (true to the spirit of the book, etc.) and that can connect it with its rightful audience, then that two-pronged goal is the one to shoot for, in equal harmony, rather than one without the other. Seems to me the publisher builds a better relationship with their audience over the long haul that way. ...Sometimes the real truth is that a book is only going to sell to 'x' number of people, and I think the troubles arise when the sales department says, ‘yeah, but if we put a non-illustrative/more generic cover on this, maybe we can FOOL other readers into buying it.’ I think the audience remembers when it’s deceived and I think the industry serves itself poorly when we do that." Friday, October 19, 2007
The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards & Spaceships
My good buddy George Mann, consultant editor of newish imprint Solaris Books, recently wrote an article for UK book trade magazine Publishing News on the packaging and branding of SF&F novels. Now, George has put the entire article, "Marrying Authors to their Market: A Genre Perspective," up on the Solaris website. The article is well-worth reading.
Therein, George makes the distinction between two schools of thought in cover design, namely "to package your SF/F novel to appeal to as wide a readership as possible, in the hope of enticing readers from other areas of the bookstore to pick it up on a whim; or to package your SF/F novel to appeal to the perceived core readership of the genre, or indeed, fans of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, people who want a book with a spaceship or a wizard on the front of it."
George goes on to discuss the risks associated with both camps. In trying for the broader market, one risks missing the mark, ending up with a book still shelved in the SF&F section, failing to hit the elusive "mainstream" reader AND failing to appeal to the core as well. In marketing for the core, the novel "is appealing to a much more limited readership and has little or no chance of transcending the genre and breaking out into the bestseller lists."
He states that from its inception Solaris decided "for better or for worse – to place ourselves directly in that second camp." This was done both because their parent company - Games Workshop - had eight years experience marketing directly to a niche audience with their Black Library imprint of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 titles. But also because of a perceived market niche not being serviced: "Essentially, at the heart of the genre, the midlist was disappearing. The result of this was that the core SF/F readership was not being as well served as it had been in the past; people who went into a high street bookshop to browse the SF/F section were not necessarily seeing those aforementioned books with wizards and spaceships on the front."
George's sentiments are very close to my own thoughts and ongoing decisions for the Pyr imprint. In setting up the imprint to begin with, we made the decision to go for books which Norman Spinrad, writing in the pages of Asimov's, once described as "science fiction written specifically for experienced and intelligent readers of science fiction, with a bit of fantasy more or less in the same mode thrown in." Although there are exceptions to the rule, we have largely forgone literary experimentation or watered-down "mainstreamed" SF&F for (to quote Norman again) "actual science fiction...and fantasy...of an overall higher literary quality."
And this is reflected in how we've chosen to package it.
Personally, I do not not not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points. I do, however, think you can have cake and eat too. There is a world of difference between what Tor art director Irene Gallo has done with John Scalzi's Old Man's War
covers - which do indeed feature spaceships and planets, albeit beautifully rendered in John Harris' very "painterly" style - and the sort of archetypal cheesy metal bikini and Bug Eyed Monster cover that is sometimes associated with the worst of genre illustration. Both styles of cover prominently feature the central SF&F imagery, but one does so with taste and the other, not so much. What's more - I'm not married to the core imagery so much as I am to the idea of provocative illustration. I also really like the way Bantam here has packaged Light
and Nova Swing
- cats and dice, cats and cards - doesn't necessarily say SF to me at, but they do say cool. I'm intrigued by the image. Those are nice looking books and I enjoy looking at them. And, hey, if I'm going to shell out $25 for a hardcover, I want more than the author's name in enormous type with a stylized sword or an embossed fleur-de-lis or some other squiggle of design.
I am not talking about creating a book that appeals to both genre and mainstream people in the crossover way George suggest. I am talking about creating a book cover that appeals to genre fans, fully celebrates genre elements, but does so with some artistic merit to it. I think both John Picacio and Stephan Martiniere (to name two of my favorite artists) fully embrace those aspects of genre fiction that embody sense of wonder, yet present them in a way that also qualified as art. (As does the latest illustrator to work with Pyr, Sparth, pictured right.) Which is how I think you reach, not the never-read it, never-will uninitiated, but what Gollancz editor Simon Spanton once defined as the "lapsed catholics" of science fiction - those who read more as children and now read maybe one book a year, generally by an author they know. These readers have grown up - show them their fiction has grown up with them. I think what makes a success like John Scalzi or Richard Morgan is not going after mainstream readers, but going after the whole field, from the core to the fringes, and that you do so, neither by hiding/omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light.
George and I were talking all this over with the aforementioned John Picacio, and this is what he had to say (and kindly consented to allow me to republish here): "The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself. Couldn’t agree with you [George] more. And I realize the context in which you’re saying this, regarding the midlist specifically. When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that. How often do we hear sf/fantasy film actors make apologies for the 'sf-ness' of a film or TV show, or say that 'if it didn’t label itself as sf, more people would check it out'? Complete bullshit. But when I hear comments like that, I think that attitude reflects two important things. It’s bad because those comments get doled out via the larger media and that attitude gets disseminated to the larger populace as a popular opinion, which is damaging, but more importantly I think it reflects how poorly the field sees itself at times, and by 'the field' I mean us over here in publishing as the root of that problem. My point is, the field can’t expect larger audiences and bigger sales numbers, unless it stops being insecure about itself and stops projecting visual insecurity via cliched design decisions that hide the gusto, spirit, invention and provocativeness of a book. I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s real simple — the book is God. It’ll tell you what it wants to be every single time."
Well said. Meanwhile, I'm delighted to see that over at The Genre Files, "Ariel" has managed to tie George's philosophy in with Wired-magazine main man Chris Anderson's brilliant The Long Tail,
when he writes (emphasis mine): "In this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free. From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer."
To make your product stand out and be noticed. Get above the signal-to-noise ration. That means let your SF&F light shine - not hide it under a bushel! Hey, what's a bushel anyway?
Therein, George makes the distinction between two schools of thought in cover design, namely "to package your SF/F novel to appeal to as wide a readership as possible, in the hope of enticing readers from other areas of the bookstore to pick it up on a whim; or to package your SF/F novel to appeal to the perceived core readership of the genre, or indeed, fans of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, people who want a book with a spaceship or a wizard on the front of it."
George goes on to discuss the risks associated with both camps. In trying for the broader market, one risks missing the mark, ending up with a book still shelved in the SF&F section, failing to hit the elusive "mainstream" reader AND failing to appeal to the core as well. In marketing for the core, the novel "is appealing to a much more limited readership and has little or no chance of transcending the genre and breaking out into the bestseller lists."
He states that from its inception Solaris decided "for better or for worse – to place ourselves directly in that second camp." This was done both because their parent company - Games Workshop - had eight years experience marketing directly to a niche audience with their Black Library imprint of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 titles. But also because of a perceived market niche not being serviced: "Essentially, at the heart of the genre, the midlist was disappearing. The result of this was that the core SF/F readership was not being as well served as it had been in the past; people who went into a high street bookshop to browse the SF/F section were not necessarily seeing those aforementioned books with wizards and spaceships on the front."
George's sentiments are very close to my own thoughts and ongoing decisions for the Pyr imprint. In setting up the imprint to begin with, we made the decision to go for books which Norman Spinrad, writing in the pages of Asimov's, once described as "science fiction written specifically for experienced and intelligent readers of science fiction, with a bit of fantasy more or less in the same mode thrown in." Although there are exceptions to the rule, we have largely forgone literary experimentation or watered-down "mainstreamed" SF&F for (to quote Norman again) "actual science fiction...and fantasy...of an overall higher literary quality."And this is reflected in how we've chosen to package it.
Personally, I do not not not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points. I do, however, think you can have cake and eat too. There is a world of difference between what Tor art director Irene Gallo has done with John Scalzi's Old Man's Warcovers - which do indeed feature spaceships and planets, albeit beautifully rendered in John Harris' very "painterly" style - and the sort of archetypal cheesy metal bikini and Bug Eyed Monster cover that is sometimes associated with the worst of genre illustration. Both styles of cover prominently feature the central SF&F imagery, but one does so with taste and the other, not so much. What's more - I'm not married to the core imagery so much as I am to the idea of provocative illustration. I also really like the way Bantam here has packaged Lightand Nova Swing- cats and dice, cats and cards - doesn't necessarily say SF to me at, but they do say cool. I'm intrigued by the image. Those are nice looking books and I enjoy looking at them. And, hey, if I'm going to shell out $25 for a hardcover, I want more than the author's name in enormous type with a stylized sword or an embossed fleur-de-lis or some other squiggle of design.
I am not talking about creating a book that appeals to both genre and mainstream people in the crossover way George suggest. I am talking about creating a book cover that appeals to genre fans, fully celebrates genre elements, but does so with some artistic merit to it. I think both John Picacio and Stephan Martiniere (to name two of my favorite artists) fully embrace those aspects of genre fiction that embody sense of wonder, yet present them in a way that also qualified as art. (As does the latest illustrator to work with Pyr, Sparth, pictured right.) Which is how I think you reach, not the never-read it, never-will uninitiated, but what Gollancz editor Simon Spanton once defined as the "lapsed catholics" of science fiction - those who read more as children and now read maybe one book a year, generally by an author they know. These readers have grown up - show them their fiction has grown up with them. I think what makes a success like John Scalzi or Richard Morgan is not going after mainstream readers, but going after the whole field, from the core to the fringes, and that you do so, neither by hiding/omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light.
George and I were talking all this over with the aforementioned John Picacio, and this is what he had to say (and kindly consented to allow me to republish here): "The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself. Couldn’t agree with you [George] more. And I realize the context in which you’re saying this, regarding the midlist specifically. When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that. How often do we hear sf/fantasy film actors make apologies for the 'sf-ness' of a film or TV show, or say that 'if it didn’t label itself as sf, more people would check it out'? Complete bullshit. But when I hear comments like that, I think that attitude reflects two important things. It’s bad because those comments get doled out via the larger media and that attitude gets disseminated to the larger populace as a popular opinion, which is damaging, but more importantly I think it reflects how poorly the field sees itself at times, and by 'the field' I mean us over here in publishing as the root of that problem. My point is, the field can’t expect larger audiences and bigger sales numbers, unless it stops being insecure about itself and stops projecting visual insecurity via cliched design decisions that hide the gusto, spirit, invention and provocativeness of a book. I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s real simple — the book is God. It’ll tell you what it wants to be every single time."
Well said. Meanwhile, I'm delighted to see that over at The Genre Files, "Ariel" has managed to tie George's philosophy in with Wired-magazine main man Chris Anderson's brilliant The Long Tail, when he writes (emphasis mine): "In this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free. From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer."To make your product stand out and be noticed. Get above the signal-to-noise ration. That means let your SF&F light shine - not hide it under a bushel! Hey, what's a bushel anyway?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)