Posts Tagged: Publishing

RocketRings

Today, Tor.com announced the launch of a new imprint, called, appropriately, The Imprint, dedicated to publishing “novellas, shorter novels, serializations, and any other pieces of fiction that exceed the traditional novelette length (17,499 words).” This is in addition to their award-winning library of short stories, and aims to further identify Tor.com as one of the leading short fiction (and, now, mid-range fiction) venues in SFF publishing. This is exciting and encouraging for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, more short fiction from a pro-paying market. Second, a glimpse at what the future of “traditional” publishing might hold.

Fritz Foy and Irene Gallo, will continue in their positions of Publisher and Associate Publisher of Tor.com, while Carl Engle-Laird is moving into the role of editorial assistant. Tor.com is also in the hunt for a senior editor, publicity manager, marketing manager, and designer. (Worry not, faithful readers! I’m starting my campaign trail right now.)

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"Unconventional Publishing"

If it wasn’t for unconventional publishing, that would have been the end of the road for Hollow World.

Publishing today is a complicated business full of many options and proponents on different sides vocalizing their path is “the right one” with full-throated conviction. For the record, I see the advantages (and disadvantages) of each. I also don’t think there is a “universal right choice,” just a choice that is going to best fit on an author by author basis.

Currently I’m a ‘hybrid author‘ because I have works available both through self-publishing and traditional routes. What’s more, my traditional routes include both big-five and small presses and there is a world of difference between them.

I think Hollow World, my latest novel, was probably produced in one of the most unconventional ways possible. First it was submitted to my publisher, Orbit. My editor loved the book, but the marketing department didn’t. They need to focus on what sells (and I don’t begrudge this mindset) and currently they think that means military science-fiction and space operas. A classic-style, social science fiction novel such as those written by Asimov or Wells just didn’t fit the bill.

If it wasn’t for unconventional publishing, that would have been the end of the road for Hollow World, and I know far too many authors who have shelved books because they couldn’t get them picked up (or were offered too little). But from past experience, I knew a closed door just means I should look around for an open window. Read More »

The Unrecognized Trajectory of Slow Burn Success

Bring on the controversy, and strap in for a devil’s advocate view through some eye-opening history, because certain game-changing books were never ‘discovered spontaneously.’ Notably, the profile of these landmark fantasy authors share a profile of mature scope and depth, and stories that open with adult protagonists.

First, busting the myth that Tolkien was ‘discovered’ and broke out by readership word of mouth is not true: Betty Ballantine’s actual account relates how Tolkien’s career blossomed through a publishing scandal.

Allen Unwin first published Professor Tolkien in Great Britain in hardbound. At the time, copyright law in the USA protected up to 2000 unbound copies of a book to be imported as loose pages, to be bound and sold by a US firm. Houghton Mifflin handled Tolkien this way, in routine partnership with Allen Unwin. Nobody paid much attention, though Ian and Betty Ballantine loved the story and offered for paperback rights. Professor Tolkien declined, avoiding what he considered a tacky American edition. Over a period of ten years, when the British edition underwent reprint, repeated lots of unbound sheets of were brought in and sold by Houghton Mifflin in quiet obscurity. Enter a certain paperback publisher’s back room lawyers, who tracked publication records, trolling for the loophole that titles compiling more than the allotted 2,000 loose sheets slid into the public domain. On that legal technicality, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was reprinted as the very lurid paperback professor Tolkien had wished to avoid, and worse, with no royalties owed to the author. Read More »

How Kickstarter is replacing traditional publishers by Michael J. Sullivan

Editor’s Note — In late March, I published an essay by Bradley P. Beaulieu about the changing landscape of publishing and why he decided to leave his publisher, Night Shade Books, and relaunch his Epic Fantasy trilogy, The Lays of Anuskaya as a self-published series of eBooks. Seeing this, Michael J. Sullivan, author of The Riyira Chronicles, one of Fantasy’s early self-published success stories, wrote to me with his own valuable take on the world of ‘hybrid publishing.’ You can find more information about Sullivan’s upcoming novel, Hollow World, on the official Kickstarter page.

I first met Brad Beaulieu at ConFusion this January. We were having lunch and after telling me about what was going on at Night Shade we tossed around the various options. I encouraged him to retrieve his rights, do another Kickstarter, and take control of what I saw as a valuable franchise. He was probably already leaning that way. Hopefully I gave him the last nudge to take the leap. I will be taking the hybrid route myself with one of my upcoming novels, Hollow World, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with his decision, and I think it will work out very well for him.

I’m a huge supporter of the hybrid model. Traditional publishing opened doors for me that I couldn’t get when I was self-published. Now that my books are in libraries and bookstore, my audience broadened. I received more foreign deals, and the advances on those were probably larger than they would have been without Orbit. There was even book club and audio versions produced, which paved the way so to Theft of Swords being named a finalist for an Audie (the audio book equivalent of the Grammy). These are all good things, but there are also aspects that I miss from my self-publishing days. Read More »

God's War by Kameron Hurley

In 2011, after much angst and delay, my first novel, God’s War, came out from Night Shade Books. It went on to win the Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel and was nominated for a Nebula Award as well as a Locus Award for Best First Novel. I earned out my advance in about six months and sealed the deal for the third book in the series not long after that. I’ve also just sold UK and audio rights for all three novels in the series.

Looks like a smashing good success all around when you string it all together like that, doesn’t it? In fact, it looks almost miraculously easy, as if I must have written some kind of exceptional book or something. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my books. But I also read a lot of other books in 2011 that I thought were a lot better, some of which didn’t make any awards list and many of which are still earning out their (probably substantially larger) advances.

So how did this happen? How does a little book that was rejected at nearly every other publisher as being “unmarketable” and had its first contract cancelled for similar concerns get so much… well – as people kept putting it online – “buzz”?

The real answer is, nobody really knows exactly why some books get talked about and some books don’t. A lot of people will tell you that who you know is what gets you published. And until I went through this process, I’d be the first to tell you that that’s bunk.

What I didn’t realize was that I was about to become one of those “silly punks” myself.

But turns out that once you can actually write a good book, that it does actually matter a good deal who you know and who’s heard of you. Recently, in this post over at Staffer’s Musings regarding the relationship of book bloggers and publishers, God’s War and its marketing came up again in conversation, with an assertion that, hey, you know, it must have been because it was such a good book that it made all these lists.

But there were a LOT of good books that didn’t make these lists. What helped God’s War get noticed? There’s a lot of mysterious stuff that happens among readers with particular books, and I can’t pretend to get that, but what I can do is tell you how I went about trying to get this book noticed, and how a small but passionate bunch of book bloggers, colleagues, and friends helped get this book’s name out in 2011. Is this approach applicable to other books? Sure. If you’re willing to play the game. And accept the fact that what you’re about to launch yourself into is a casino, not a meritocracy. Read More »