Constance Ash September 14th, 2006
British author J.K. Rowling says she won an argument with airport security officials in New York to carry the manuscript of the final ”Harry Potter” book as carryon baggage.
 Love, C.
Katharine Kerr August 31st, 2006
Yet another voice from the grave — someone found the outline and some notes for a novel Heinlein never wrote, and now Spider Robinson has written it.  For all I know, VARIABLE STAR might be a really good book, but I’ll wager that the publisher wasn’t thinking about its quality when they set the project in motion.  Lately there have been a number of these “dead writer speaks” projects, such as the new “Sanditon” and the pseudo-Sayers THRONES, POWERS, AND DOMINATIONS. Â
 To me, these are different from the continuations of classic series, such as Sherwood’s Oz books, which are going to be much much better than the originals, or the “Endless Dune” series, which at least aren’t any worse than the orginal sequels were. When someone creates a world, like Oz or Dune, one can make a case for setting new stories within it, assuming the author agrees — or his/her heirs do.  I have no doubt that Baum would agree, because he was a deeply commercial writer who wrote Oz to entertain others and make himself money.   Herbert — I dunno.
But this “new” Heinlein was meant to be a stand-alone, as was SANDITON. Austen had ambitions for her work well beyond the entertainment level. Sayers’ work deepened with every Peter Wimsey she wrote, but TPD is not a deep book.  I see these as a different kind of publisher-driven projects. I don’t like them, for reasons that might be irrational.  I do know that I’m going to leave instructions to my literary executor to burn all my papers and wipe my hard disk when I die.  (Kevin, take note!)  I don’t want my name on any book that I haven’t had the chance to edit, revise, and polish to my (probably low anyway) standards.
How do others feel about this?
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 30th, 2006
WorldCon 2006 (I forget the proper number)/LAConIV (in Anaheim) is now wrapped and the last of the stragglers have I think now left. I left my sunglasses in the green room at the Hilton.
In attendance from Deep Genre were myself, Sherwood Smith, David Edelman, Kate Elliot and Madeleine Robins. Except Sherwood, we ended up meeting at Madeleine’s reading on Sunday and hit Starbucks for coffee afterwards.
As David E. mentioned back during my Comicon post, too many con reports read like exercises in name dropping (which that post avoided), so I’ll try to avoid that here too, except to say that it was fun to put faces to people I’d before only known as names. For example, David Keck, who I’d before only known as a sometime poster here on the blog, was suddenly there to talk to in person and everything at the Wild Cards reception and then on Sunday, we got to talk more after sharing a panel.
Rather than go for the gossip columnist approach, which is tacky when you’re one of the ones going to the parties and dinners, I’ll simply describe it as a novelist: There were swanky parties and simple parties, both on and off site. There were fabulous dinners worthy of hobbit salivation and there were dinners that made me feel like I was stuck in a not terribly original comedy sketch. (How many times can the Hilton’s kitchen’s screw up a burger?) Terribly famous people were revealed as nice folks you hang out with in the bar.
In short, it was a con. Panels went well from what I saw, and I saw a lot of it because I was on a lot of panels. Apart from the usual scheduling snafus, bad mics, a spilled water pitcher and occasional overenthusiasm, things appeared to go to plan. Name tags were ready and waiting on every panel. Room temperatures were perfect, water was ready. A few authors brought enough books to use for a gamemaster’s screen, but given the trouble with psuedonyms and publishing logjams, I’ll look less askance at that than I might. Ideally you should pimp only one book at a time, but publishing doesn’t always cooperate.
The Dealers Room floor was pretty amazing even for a WorldCon, and with panels and parties, I did not manage to see all of it, but I did see a lot. The Masquerade was also nice, with the standout being costumes for “Dancing with the Intergalactic Stars.” I don’t know if they won, but I expect they did, since I did the same as many and left for the parties after the last entrant but before the judging.
What else should be said of the parties? Well, I have to admit I really liked the Wild Cards reception, not because it was swanky (though that was still incredibly cool), but because it let everyone have fun and talk in a nice relaxed atmosphere and let me meet folk I haven’t seen for years or have only talked to on the phone. Other parties? Well, of the author’s parties, some you pretty much needed a shoehorn to get people in the door.
The fan and bid parties were vastly entertaining as well, and not as insanely crowded. Kansas City had a “ribs tasting” which ended up being a case of too much sauce and not enough ribs, since I got to the part in time to see a table covered with bowls of various barbecue sauces. However, that meant that the next day at their fan table, they were selling the excess bottles of barbecue sauce for $2 each. So I grabbed four so I can do my own ribs tasting at home.
I missed the Hugo awards, but was told they went well with Connie Willis doing a great job as presenter. The buzz about the Hugo slate was also good, with the phrase I heard more than once being “remarkably sane,” meaning that the nominees and the winners were all there as a matter of popular choice of good art, as opposed to something being pumped by media frenzy rather than quality.
Small disappointment in that WorldCon did not apparently have any swag bags of books or even cloth souvenir totes. Maybe for sale at the T-shirt booth, but no “Welcome to the con, this if for you” like you get at World Horror, World Fantasy or some past WorldCons (including LAConIII). However, it’s not mandatory, and my bag from WorldHorror is still sitting on my floor (though emptied of books).
And that was WorldCon, or at least what I’m conscious enought talk about after driving back last night.
Madeleine Robins August 17th, 2006
I have lately overheard questions about publishing and “selling” your work to publishers that made my hair stand on end. The scary thing isn’t the folks asking the questions (no one is born with an instinctive understanding of subrights sales and escalator clauses), it’s the people giving authoritative wrong answers. Some of these people have clearly been misinformed, others may be giving their best guess as if it were Holy Writ, and some, I fear, are deliberately misleading.
For example, I recently heard a guy on the radio insisting that it was “publishing practice” to buy your copyright at the time of a book sale–PublishAmerica, he said, was unusual in that the author retained copyright. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And there’s more of this sort of disinformation out there. It makes my teeth hurt. So, in my person as former-assistant-to-the-publisher of a midsize national publisher with a significant SF and Fantasy line, as well as writer, I’m going to attempt, now and then, to offer some true gen.
Like, for instance, what are you selling when you sell a book or story? Outside of Work-for-Hire (which I will explain at another time, if anyone is interested) you’re not really selling, you’re leasing the right of publication to a publisher. In most cases the rights you’re leasing are pretty clearly defined. Thus, paragraph 1 of my most recent book contract says:
Grant of Rights
The author hereby grants exclusively to the Publisher the following rights in and to the work of fiction tentatively entitled Petty Treason (the “Work”) during the full term of copyright (and all renewals and extensions thereof) throughout the world; the sole and exclusive right to print or otherwise reproduce, publish, distribute and sell the Work in the English language in book form and the sole and exclusive subsidiary rights specified in paragraph X, with the exclusive right to license any or all of such rights.
There’s a mouthful. And it’s the heart of the contract. Essentially, it says that the Publisher is leasing the right to publish and distribute my book in English anywhere in the world. It means that as long as the book stays in print they retain that right through the life of the copyright (there’s a later paragraph that states that if the book ceases to be in print after X number of years, I can ask them to reprint or revert–that is, put it back into print or return the rights to you to sell elsewhere). It also means that the publisher has whatever subrights I’ve specified in paragraph X–microfilm rights, the right to the right to publish in translation (Cuban rights! Transylvanian rights!) or make a movie or a video game.
The rest of the contract (13 pages of it) is spent defining and expanding on that first paragraph: what am I physically delivering to the Publisher? When should I deliver it? How much, and when, am I going to be paid? What subrights are included in that first paragraph? What happens if I default in some way? What happens if the Publisher defaults in some way? How many free author’s copies do I get (yes, it gets that specific). But the grant of rights is the part people talk about when they say they’ve “sold” a book.
And for what it’s worth–and I’ve worked in publishing off and on for 15 years, and been a writer for (ulp) 25 years–having the book copyrighted in your name is not (as the guy on the radio implied) a publishing rarity. It’s SOP unless there’s some other factor involved (you’re writing a media tie in novel, or the copyright is being held by your off-shore tax shelter, or some other exotic condition).
I can continue my contract exigesis, if anyone’s interested.
David Louis Edelman August 14th, 2006
This weekend, I did something that’s guaranteed to strike fear in the heart of even the most accomplished writer: I looked back through the old drafts of my novel.
Every writer has a different method of rewriting, and there’s no one method that fits everybody. Some bang out their magnum opus in one draft, more or less; some take five or ten drafts. I tend towards the latter end of the scale. My book Infoquake took no less than five drafts to complete — and some chapters went through ten or fifteen revisions.
So today I decided to do something that sets my knees a-knockin’ even thinking about it. I posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of Infoquake online at my book website.
You can now see every revision Chapter 1 went through from its original incarnation as something I jotted down on a laptop in 1997 or 1998, to its final polished form released by Pyr to the public just last month (July, 2006).
And to those of you smarting from the occasionally stern paddle of Kevin, Kit, and Sherwood’s 13-Line Critiques, let me offer you this consolation: the first drafts of Infoquake royally sucked. You could power a small city with the writers spinning in their graves at some of that sucktastic, sucky, sucktious prose.
Constance Ash July 29th, 2006
In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Backlist to the Future,” the publishing industry considers the long tail concept.
Kinda boils down to, ”too much trouble and too expensive.” In the meantime — I pull this from the article:
Paradoxically, the online sales technologies on which the long tail depends may actually be undercutting backlist sales by squeezing them between the two poles of the market: new frontlist titles and used books, which are easier to find than ever thanks to the rise of online booksellers and search engines like BookFinder.com. This is a potential problem for most publishers, who rely on backlist sales for a significant part of their business. Titles more than one year old — including best sellers with staying power like “The Da Vinci Codeâ€? — account for 62 to 68 percent of annual sales at Barnes & Noble, said Robert Wietrak, the company’s vice president for merchandising. “It’s what the business is built on,â€? he said.Â
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 27th, 2006
Last year, just in time for Comicon, my sister scheduled her wedding opposite the Masquerade, which I consequently missed. This year? Well, I missed the Masquerade again, but only because of other complications.
Where to start? Where to end? Egads, I’ve been going to this thing for twenty years now, saw it when it was small, saw it when it was dying, then saw it when it moved to the new convention center and doubled in size every year, even as they continued to enlarge the convention center. I remember a couple years ago when I made the mistake of being on the main floor when the crowd capacity overtaxed the air conditioning and I nearly fainted on top of Guillermo Del Toro as he was slipping out the back of the Marvel booth and under my arm as I supported myself on a pillar.
Constance Ash July 24th, 2006
I wasn’t there, for obvious reasons.
However, reports are floating in from a number of directions: friends, radio, lists, newspapers.
In the last few years, and even more so this year, this enormous comix convention is where Sf/F writers (and others too — the graphic novel isn’t restricted to sf/f/superheroes, etc.) who want to sell to the movies are finding their luck.
Hollywood’s scouting has come up gold — and they don’t need to worry about original scripts. Or as one writer remarked with a mixture of bitterness, scorn and cynicism, as well as delight, since he and his co-writer scored a deal: ”O look, pictures! All story-boarded out and lots of good ideas for shots already! No pesky writers to hire for a script!”
The trade publishers have reps there too.
The drawbacks, if you aren’t a deep fan or already deeply connected, one would think, are many, starting with the cost. The convention is enormous and getting exhibit space is competitive, i.e. expensive. Getting face time with anyone is really competitive, unless you are already a quantity that is known.
OTOH, one needs to begin somewhere to cultivate friends and acquaintances.
It might be the right thing for you and your goals.
Constance Ash July 16th, 2006
“The days of judging a book by its cover are drawing to a close. Publishers have finally tapped into the MTV generation, and now it is possible to make your literary choices in advance online by watching a sequence of rapid-fire images accompanied by a thumping score, big flashing words and, if you’re lucky, a deep-voiced American talking about ‘one man’ and ‘his quest to find meaning in a world gone mad’. Yes: there are now trailers for books and soon, according to Steve Osgoode, director of online marketing at HarperCollins Canada, they will be everywhere.”
Constance Ash July 13th, 2006
 Deep Genre; Introduction; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5;
Part 6
“Vampires” is a populous subgenre. Perhaps you would like to create a work featuring a vampire or vampires, but, you wonder, being the professional genre writer that you are, “Will anybody be interested in another novel, another movie, another television program or a non-fiction study dealing with vampires? There have been so many since Stoker’s classic Dracula.“Â
