Via the New York Times, John Scalzi and Tor Books announced a new deal for thirteen novels worth a whopping $3.4 million. “Mr. Scalzi approached Tor Books, his longtime publisher, with proposals for 10 adult novels and three young adult novels over 10 years,” revealed John Schwartz of the New York Times.
Some of the included novels will be set in the same universe as Old Man’s War, and at least one will be a sequel to his most recent novel, Lock In. Scalzi’s editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, says that though Scalzi has never had a No. 1 bestseller, he “backlists like crazy.” Nielsen Hayden then revealed that Scalzi sells over 10,000 books a month, which is a very respectable number. “One of the reactions of people reading a John Scalzi novel is that people go out and buy all the other Scalzi novels,” Hayden said.
Scalzi’s Red Shirts, a satirical science fiction, won the Hugo Award for “Best Novel” in 2013.
“My celebration, personally, has just been standing around,” Scalzi told the New York Times. “And my wife saying, ‘Yes, now go take out the trash.’” It seems Scalzi’s trademark dry humour will remain intact, even under the weight of this mega deal.
Larry Correia probably spat all over his monitor when he read this news!
Scalzi is fine but to me the quality of his books is hit or miss. Redshirts was a lot of fun but I became uninterested in Lock in midway through the third chapter and did not finish it. His best book is probably Old Man’s War, IMHO. Hopefully it translates to the TV screen well.
That being said, I’m happy that Scalzi has made the deal, since I think he is an excellent ambassador for SF.
It doesn’t hurt that the Puppies are probably peeing themselves with frustration at the news :)