Results tagged “what i learned this week”

Probably my last entry of the year as I head off for ten days in Florida. (Ten well-deserved days, if you ask me.) I will be reading only for pleasure—how rare, how wonderful! What’s going into my suitcase?

Passage by Connie Willis. I’ve read everything else by Connie, who is one of science fiction’s most delightful and intelligent voices. I’ve been meaning to read this one ever since 2001, when I’d set it aside to enjoy in a picturesque B&B; located in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, as soon as I’d fulfilled my obligations at a writers conference in Albuquerque. I never got to go…the trip was scheduled to begin on September 14, 2001.

Foucault’s Pendulum, by Unberto Eco. Eco is a philosopher and historian whose most famous novel is The Name of the Rose—my favorite of his works so far. He writes what might be called “intellectual adventure” stories, intricate and challenging. I admit to skipping through paragraphs, if not full pages, of esoteric asides on such topics as medieval politics, but he’s well worth the effort. Try also Baudolino, a Crusaders-era tall tale.

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell, who also wrote the SF classic The Sparrow. (Yes, I know The Sparrow was published as a mainstream novel—don’t be fooled, it’s SF all the way!) Dreamers of the Day is her newest and does not appear to contain any SF/fantasy elements; its main character is a young woman who takes a dream trip to Egypt on the eve of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, whose attendees will redraw the world map to create the modern Middle East. (Pretty book cover, but there’s no way that young woman could have climbed a pyramid in those heels.)

Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George. Thank you, Ms. George, for so many excellent mysteries starring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. I look forward to this one!

To all of you Suvudu readers, Happy Holidays and a terrific 2009!

I spent far, far too many hours this week writing catalog copy for my fall ‘09 Del Rey titles. Yes, I know that the catalog is our reps’ most important selling tool. Yes, I realize that booksellers refer to it for vital publication info. Yes, I should be happy that so many good books will reach the reading public next fall. I merely comment on how much time out of my day (days plural, in this case) writing good catalog copy seems to take.

Maybe it would be easier if I pretended to be selling women’s clothing. “New hardcover with alluring blue jacket spectacularly emblazoned with gold foil, just the right length, accessorizes with every outfit to take you from morning into night.”

Or kitchen appliances. I’ve read enough copy about appliances to think I could make that work: “This original trade paperback adapts to every kitchen situation. Can be read while waiting for water to boil, snapping green beans, stirring sauces, even peeling potatoes. Mixes one saucy heroine and one hunk of beefcake into a spicy casserole of love.”

Oog, that’s terrible. I like to think I did a better job on the copy for my upcoming books, which include A Princess of Landover, the first new novel in Terry Brooks’s Magic Kingdom of Landover series in almost 15 years; In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield, whose debut novel Benighted cast a whole new light on the werewolf mythos; the first issues of a four-color graphic novel adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s gripping novel The Talisman, and many more.

For another fun take on writing catalog copy, try “Selections from H.P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter,” courtesy of McSweeney’s. “Few men dare ask the question ‘What is toffee, exactly?’ All those who have investigated this subtance are now either dead or insane….”

Several writers I’ve worked with in past and present, plus a number of others I haven’t but have read and admired, have formed an author co-op to provide fiction for free via the website Book View Cafe. One of the instigators is Sarah Zettel, whose novels I had the honor of publishing back at Warner Aspect. Here’s how she describes the new site: “The Cafe serves up fiction for free from published authors in a number of genres such as romance, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”

In addition to Sarah, the 20 authors involved include Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Kate Daniel, Laura Anne Gilman, Christie Golden, Anne Harris, Sylvia Kelso, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Sue Lange, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rebecca Lickiss, Vonda N. McIntyre, Nancy Jane Moore, Pati Nagle (Del Rey author whose sexy vampire-elf fantasy The Betrayal comes out 3/24/09), Darcy Pattison, Phyllis Irene Radford, Madeleine Robins, Amy Sterling, Jennifer Stevenson (whose novels The Brass Bed, The Velvet Chair, and The Bearskin Rug I edited and Ballantine brought out just this last summer), and Susan Wright.

[more after the jump]

One of our number here at Del Rey was incensed this week at being inflicted with the aptly named Annoy-a-tron, a nifty little electronic device that beeps intermittently, sounding like some kind of message alert or dead-battery warning. It’s practically impossible to pin down its location, as the sound seems omnidirectional and the time lag between beeps varies unpredictably; it’s also magnetized so that it can be hidden practically anywhere in a loved one’s vicinity.

My colleague was so annoyed by the noise that he unplugged every electronic device in his office, and when the beeps continued started complaining to everybody in sight, finally arousing the pity of another colleague who let him in on the joke.

The rest of us considered this episode the height of hilarity. I am not quite certain what this says about us, except that we all needed a good laugh and could actually fit in a few moments to enjoy one. Next week will be all business, as the Del Rey editors present their Fall ‘09 titles in what we call the launch meeting. [more after the jump]

I was startled, Thursday morning, to discover this in my in-box:

It was dropped there by our subsidiary rights department, which passes along to editors the translated editions of our titles that come in from foreign publishers. Thing was, I couldn’t recall any recent title (heck, any title) that featured gun-wielding, bikini-clad babes. And I don’t read Cyrillic. The title page clued me in. Can you guess? If not, here’s a link to the original Del Rey version:

The Russian publisher apparently feels that this look will bring in new readers to our author’s latest series. I’m all for bringing in new readers—hope it works out for them.

But it gave me cause to look over the other foreign editions I have sitting around. Random House’s foreign rights department does a terrific job of licensing translation rights on behalf of our authors. (Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, for example, has been sold into 28 territories, from Israel to Iceland.) Random House employs a network of subagents on different continents whose job it is to know all the potential publishing houses in odd corners of the world. If a book doesn’t sell immediately, our rights people keep it on their lists and continue to offer it year after year. The popularity of different types of stories rises and falls at different times in different countries, so we never know what might become in demand years after its initial pub in the U.S. As an example, paranormal fantasy/romance, which has been such a white-hot subgenre here in the U.S. for the last couple of years, is only now beginning to be picked up in Europe.

And every foreign publisher has a different idea for how a cover should look. Once in a while our cover art will be reused by a foreign publisher, but quite often they will execute their own look. Just for fun, here are some comparisons of recent Del Rey titles.

More covers after the jump…

The week started out so well. Sales figures were coming in very strongly on the first book in Del Rey’s collaboration with the Dabel Brothers comic book publishers: The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, an original story by Jim Butcher set in his fan-favorite universe starring Harry Dresden. The individual comics sold very well through spring and early summer. When our Del Rey hardcover, which collects the four individual issues into gorgeous four-color hardcover and adds lots of interesting background material on how the story was created, went on sale 10/14 it immediately starting flying out of the stores.

On Wednesday Bookscan released its sales figures, and Welcome to the Jungle appeared at #17 on the hardcover fiction list. (Bookscan is a database that tallies actual sales from bookstores and other outlets nationwide. It doesn’t cover 100% of the marketplace, but it’s the most accurate reference publishers have as to how our books are doing week by week.) My pulse rate went up. Bookscan doesn’t predict the New York Times bestseller list slot by slot, but it’s a very strong indicator for where, in general, a book will land. Welcome to the Jungle seemed a real possibility for the top 15, which is the part of the list that actually appears in print in the Times Sunday book section.

Wednesday evening came around, the Times list was released electronically to publishers, I fell upon it with glad cries … and was dashed to the rocks below. No Jim Butcher, anywhere. Not only was it missing from the top 15, it appeared nowhere in the Extended List. Nada. Zip. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued.

So what did I learn this week? [more after the jump]

I spent the week going over the second drafts of upcoming novels by two authors whose books are on the 2009 Del Rey schedule. Note I said second drafts. These came in in response to long letters requesting changes to the novels’ first drafts. And in response to each of these second drafts, I wrote up still further notes requesting a third and final draft.

These are not baby authors I’m talking about. Each has numerous books to his/her credit. Even so, these authors understand that each new book is a fresh chance to win new readers—or alienate old ones. A smart author will accept valid criticism no matter what the cost in rewrite time.

My thanks to this week’s writers—and you know who you are—for going to the trouble of responding both carefully and cheerfully to my editorial notes. One of my personal maxims is that the manuscript doesn’t exist which does not need editing. Yet we’ve all read published books that could have been so much better with certain changes made. Reviewers and online commentators often say, “Where was the editor?” And it’s true, sometimes the editor hasn’t done a serious job on the book, or hasn’t pushed the author hard enough to make necessary changes.

Other times, though, it’s an author’s stubbornness that results in a less-than-satisfactory finished product. [more after the jump]

Perhaps I should qualify that statement before a vast moan arises from the ranks of aspiring Del Rey authors. To be precise, it’s not that we’re publishing too many books; if pressed to delete some from the 2009 list I’d have a very hard time complying. But I’ve just spent all week writing what seemed like eight hundred and ninety-seven TIs for the fall ‘09 titles and am utterly exhausted.

What’s a TI? It stands for Title Information sheet, and it is the most important document an editor will ever create for his or her book—yea, even more important than the contract request or the editorial revision letter.

Its primary users are the sales force. The TIs provide our reps core information on each title in one succinct document, which they will refer to again and again as they make sales calls on booksellers and other accounts. Under the heading Keynote, for example, we give them a one-line description of the book. Under Positioning Statement we tell them how the book fits into the Del Rey list and try to give a sense of its relative importance within the season. And under Key Selling Points we give them reasons that they can pass along to their customers as to why this book will sell.

Aspiring authors can catch an editor’s eye by thinking in these terms.

[more after the jump]

In conjunction with next week’s trade paperback publication of Gentlemen of the Road, the swashbuckling tale of adventure by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I asked Michael Chabon to provide a list of his all-time favorite adventure stories. He didn’t confine himself to ten; instead, here is

THE DASHING DOZEN: CHABON’S FAVORITE WORKS OF ADVENTURE FICTION

CAPTAIN BLOOD, Rafael Sabatini
The “Kull” stories, Robert E. Howard
The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, Fritz Leiber
AGAINST THE DAY, Thomas Pynchon
The Brigadier Gerard stories, Arthur Conan Doyle
THE CHINESE BANDIT, Stephen Becker
THE ICE SCHOONER, Michael Moorcock
THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Michael Ondaatje
THE THREE MUSKETEERS, Alexandre Dumas
FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE, George MacDonald Fraser
KING SOLOMON’S MINES, H. Ryder Haggard
The “Jirel of Joiry” stories, C.L. Moore

Michael’s list got me thinking of my own favorite novels from over the years. It’s my opinion that one can glean insight into another’s personality by knowing their favorite books. See what you can make of these.

Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Land of Laughs, Jonathan Carroll
The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
The Reality Dysfunction, Peter F. Hamilton
Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, Suzy McKee Charnas
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
Anything at all by Terry Pratchett