Press release I received in my inbox:
New York, NY – Monday, April 19, 2010 – Tor Books is proud to announce the return of New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind to their list. The first book in the 3-book deal will be a new Richard and Kahlan novel, due in early 2011. Richard and Kahlan are the principle characters from his previous New York Times bestselling books.
“We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again,” says Tom Doherty, President and Publisher of Tor Books. “Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story.”
Twenty five million copies of Goodkind’s 12-book series have been sold worldwide and have been translated into more than 20 languages. A television series adaptation of the novels, titled Legend of the Seeker, produced by ABC Studios and broadcast via syndication, first aired on November 1, 2008 and is now in its second season. The Sword of Truth is one of the most successful series ever published in the fantasy field.
Said Goodkind, “I’m thrilled to be back with Tor to tell more stories of Richard and Kahlan.
I had to laugh when Tor mistook The Sword of Truth as a Fantasy series. Clearly they’re erroneous in their categorization, despite being one of the biggest and most powerful publishers in the genre. Something tells me that The Law of Nines (Goodkind’s first foray into Urban Fantasy the realm of Thriller novels) didn’t sell as well as expected. Maybe Goodkind wasn’t objective enough in his assessment of his fan base?
I’m sure they are excited… by the prospect of making large amounts of money. :) I couldn’t finish “Wizards First Rule.” *shrug* (Too much weird sex, and I seem to recall at one point the ancient wizardly sage sort explaining that he’d been lying to the hero for the first half of the book.) I’m sure his many fans will be pleased, however.
I’m still bemused by what’s going on with the second and third books in his three-volume deal with Putnam. Is he still doing those or has he been released from his contract? Or is he doing these new SoT books and then going back to Putnam for the LAW OF NINES sequels?
Very odd.
If Law of Nine gave a bath to Putnam and a big pay cut to the author – after all even if you get a big not-to-be-earned advance, if earlier books made you way more money in royalties you still take a pay cut – the above makes a lot of sense.
Let’s remember that for ultra ($$$$$$$$) successful authors, making what would be big riches for the average author can still be a big pay cut…
I haven’t paid attention to Goodkind in years. I’m guess the Law of Nine didn’t have source material as good as The Wheel of Time to borrow from.
“Maybe Goodkind wasn’t objective enough in his assessment of his fan base?”
I’ll say. According to Tairy, his fanbase don’t read fantasy. On this evidence, they don’t read mainstream thrillers either.
Or maybe he just wanted to write more SoT novels as the limitations of writing for the mainstream meant he couldn’t fully indulge in his penchant for rape, evil chickens and yawn-tastic ‘philosophy.’
After some digging by the Westeros board collective posse, it looks like Goodkind’s deal with Putnam is still going, with two more books called THE HINGES OF HELL and A DIFFERENT KIND OF HUMAN supposed to be following up LAW OF NINES at some point. So I assume he’s going to alternate between the two deals.
LAW OF NINES did hit #10 on the NYT bestseller list which may have been disappointing compared to his former performance (PHANTOM was #1 and CONFESSOR #2 IIRC), but still nothing to be sneezed at, certainly not a disaster to send him fleeing back to Tor, as far as I can tell.
The tidbits around say that Law of Nines sold less than 1/4 hardcovers compared to The Confessor hc sales (from A. Wheeler who has Nielsen access)and unconfirmed that Putnam is indeed taking a big red ink bath on it; again it’s a matter of scale – if you sell 1M copies of a book and 250k of the next is different than if you sell 10k and then 100k…
Kahlan and Richard sounds less fantasy than SWORD OF TRUTH, so maybe he really isn’t writing Fantasy.
Asshat.
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