2010 Hugo Award winners announced

[Fbone]

If Amazon doesnt offer a Kindle version, then there must be an exclusivity agreement with the publisher and Baen.

[ChristopherTD]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

So do I.

Phil is a long time SF fan, attends SF conventions, and has been a GoH at several. This is a repeat for him: the previous Girl Genius collection won the Best Graphic Novel award last year.

Tor books has a graphic novel line in the works, and an omnibus of the first three Girl Genius collections will be the lead title.
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Dennis

I bought the first 2 Girl Genius in PDF from DriveThruComics a few weeks ago, and promptly got the remaining 7 and my son and I now fight over the iPad to read them! They were priced reasonably at $6 each, and are watermarked only, no DRM. Reading them on the iPad works pretty well, though not as slick as the ComiXology viewer which can display a comic panel by panel.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

the Hugos -- outside of the Nebulas the most prestigious awards for sci-fi -- ought to be a huge driver of sales in e-books and p-books. But if leading e-book vendors don't have them ... what's the value in winning the award?

The "sell from the publisher's web site" model has worked for Baen well enough that small publishers like NightShade have joined up. However, I agree that ignoring the Kindle store will loose at least some sales (and perhaps a lot of sales over time for Hugo winners). If NightShade authors have the same deal as at Baen, they could still publish themselves on the Kindle (webscriptions have a world-wide non-exclusive distribution licence). This now makes a lot of sense with Amazon's "70% of selling price royalty" deal.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

The "sell from the publisher's web site" model has worked for Baen well enough that small publishers like NightShade have joined up.

Not just Nightshade. Tor distributes ebook versions through Webscriptions. (Tor CEO Tom Doherty was Jim Baen's boss when Tom was Publisher and Jim was editor at Ace Books, and was an investor when Jim set up his own imprint. Distributing Tor ebooks through Baen's established infrastructure was a logical move from his perspective.)

However, I agree that ignoring the Kindle store will loose at least some sales (and perhaps a lot of sales over time for Hugo winners). If NightShade authors have the same deal as at Baen, they could still publish themselves on the Kindle (webscriptions have a world-wide non-exclusive distribution licence).

Assuming they have the ability and desire to do so. While the tools are there, self-publishing requires skills to use the tools that many authors don't have and don't especially want to acquire. They just want to write.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

I bought the first 2 Girl Genius in PDF from DriveThruComics a few weeks ago, and promptly got the remaining 7 and my son and I now fight over the iPad to read them! They were priced reasonably at $6 each, and are watermarked only, no DRM. Reading them on the iPad works pretty well, though not as slick as the ComiXology viewer which can display a comic panel by panel.

Some friends have the complete set of Girl Genius books. Reading them straight through was a different experience than the "updated three times a week" web version.

It reminded me a bit of J. Michael Straczynski's "Babylon 5" TV show. When it hit syndicated reruns, and you could watch an episode every night instead of a week between them, the series gained force, and Straczynski's story arcs and "holographic" writing methods became more effective.
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Dennis

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Tor distributes ebook versions through Webscriptions.

Not anymore. For a while now, the (few) Tor books on Webscriptions have still been listed, but unavailable to buy, and no sign that they'll ever be coming back.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Not anymore. For a while now, the (few) Tor books on Webscriptions have still been listed, but unavailable to buy, and no sign that they'll ever be coming back.

They supposedly were.

The original arrangement was between Tom Doherty at Tor and Jim Baen at Baen. It got to the point of being duly announced by both sides. But while Baen Books is an independent publisher, Tor isn't. Tom foresaw issues in publishing that would make it advantageous to Tor to be part of a larger company, and sold Tor to St. Martins Press in 1986. It's a unit of Holtzbrinck, who also own St. Martins Press, Farrar, Stroux and Giroux, and Henry Holt, and is under the Macmillan umbrella in the US.

Holtzbrinck nixed the deal because Baen did not apply DRM to Webscriptions offerings. Holtzbrinck subsequently got a new CEO that did not believe in DRM, and the deal was supposedly on again.

According to Tor Senior Editor Patrick Neilsen Hayden, it was a matter of dotting Is and crossing Ts and was in the hands of respective legal departments, but that was a while back. I have no idea what the hold up is. (I suspect Holtzbrinck is trying to establish a coherent digital policy that will extend to all of their imprints. Former Tor.com producer Pablo Defendi freely admitted that what he was doing had visibility well beyond Tor Books, and was being watched carefully by others in the Holtzbrinck corporate structure. The holdup may be Holtzbrinck making up it's mind which way to jump, with a possible feeling of "We're a major worldwide publisher. If we're going to sell ebooks, we should create our own channels to do it, and not use Baen's.")

The interesting thing for me is that Baen is quite happy to offer titles by other houses through Webscriptions, including places like Tor that are rather larger than Baen.

That sort of cooperation is sensible and refreshing. On a similar line, Pablo was adamant that Tor.com needed to be publisher agnostic. The intent was to build a community of readers interested in SF/fantasy, and any sort of SF and fantasy was grist for their mill, whether or not Tor published it.
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Dennis

[ATDrake]

Well, hopefully it works out. Much as I like Baen, I actually prefer the flavour of Tor's back catalogue, and there is so much that I would (re-)buy if it were offered at the same terms (and hopefully the same prices, with bundling options) as Baen's own books and those from Night Shade and e-Reads, etc.

Also, I think I've seen an upswing in authors bringing their backlist to Webscriptions directly. It looks like there's been an increase in the Mike Resnick offerings, and there's always been that stuff from P.C. Hodgell and that duo who does the Liaden series.

I hope that trend continues, too.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Well, hopefully it works out. Much as I like Baen, I actually prefer the flavour of Tor's back catalogue, and there is so much that I would (re-)buy if it were offered at the same terms (and hopefully the same prices, with bundling options) as Baen's own books and those from Night Shade and e-Reads, etc.

I largely concur. Baen is a specialty publisher doing mid-level action/adventure SF/fantasy. Tor's offerings are broader based, and Tor publishes stuff Baen would p[ass on.

Also, I think I've seen an upswing in authors bringing their backlist to Webscriptions directly. It looks like there's been an increase in the Mike Resnick offerings, and there's always been that stuff from P.C. Hodgell and that duo who does the Liaden series.

Miller and Lee.

I hope that trend continues, too.

I see no reason why it shouldn't. Webscriptions is a good channel for authors who have the electronic rights to their books and want to "deal direct". The popularity of Webscriptions means they get exposed to people who might not have otherwise heard of them.

The problem for any author is "How do you let the audience know you exist?", and Webscriptions is a good way.
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Dennis

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

When was the last time even award-winning sf/fantasy managed to crawl out of the sci-fi ghetto and into the mainstream consciousness anyway?

You don't think that Harry Potter is fantasy? I'd regard it as classic fantasy and, let's not forget, a Hugo winner too (in 2001, for "HP and the Goblet of Fire").

[ATDrake]

Well, like I said, the causality for that one runs the other way. HP got the Hugo after the earlier books had already become very popular with the general public, rather than getting a higher profile because of the award. I think I recall reading some sort of retroactive commentary that back then, there was some argument as to whether it should have qualified for the Hugo, being "mainstream" and all and not marketed through the usual imprints/outlets.

Not to mention, at one point J.K. Rowling actually was quoted as saying something along the lines of "I didn't think I was writing fantasy at all; just ordinary children's tales", to which Terry Pratchett retorted something along the lines of "wizards, dragons, elves, and a magical school; what part of these things did you not think of as fantasy?"

Reminds me of Margaret Atwood trying to live down her Arthur C. Clarke award for The Handmaid's Tale by claiming that since Oryx and Crake didn't involve rocketships but instead portrayed a speculative post-apocalyptic near-future scenario based on genetic engineering technology we don't have yet going horribly, terribly wrong, it couldn't possibly be that nasty old *science fiction*.

[HarryT]

OK, yes, I see what you mean, but I have to agree with Terry Pratchett's comment that I really don't see how it could be categorised as anything other than fantasy.

Another potential candidate might be Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell". Certainly here in the UK that made "mainstream" best-seller status, and again, a classic fantasy novel.

[ATDrake]

Writers who strike it rich/get literary acclaim by writing what's essentially a genre fiction book and then promptly try to deny that no-no-no-no *their* work was *never* meant to be part of said genre and they're shocked, *shocked!* that you could even *think* that make me laugh (and lose respect, but mostly laugh).

I don't know if Susanna Clarke ever made it to the bestseller lists in Canada, but she does get mostly filed in Fantasy in the libraries around here (those large enough to have separate genre sections for the hardcovers, that is).

I do think that fantasy is becoming more mainstreamed overall, what with all the popular movies based upon fantasy classics (Lord of the Rings) and the books becoming movies and TV (HP, Twilight, Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, and apparently a series based on Terry Goodkind's books) and thus perhaps becoming perceived as more socially admittable for public reading outside the teen years, one hopes.

The public perception of SF, on the other hand, seems to still be stuck in a kind of Star Wars-y space ship battles and laser blasters and aliens with funny prosthetics mode. And I don't think the rename of the "SyFy" Channel helps make it look like anything other than for illiterates, sad to say.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Writers who strike it rich/get literary acclaim by writing what's essentially a genre fiction book and then promptly try to deny that no-no-no-no *their* work was *never* meant to be part of said genre and they're shocked, *shocked!* that you could even *think* that make me laugh (and lose respect, but mostly laugh).

(cough)Harlan Ellison(cough)

(cough)Ray Bradbury(cough)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

(cough)Harlan Ellison(cough)

(cough)Ray Bradbury(cough)

(cough)Kurt Vonnegut(cough)

(cough)Margaret Atwood(cough)

Though I don't recall Ray ever claiming that what he wrote wasn't SF, and he's been a GoH at various SF conventions.

Ellison is more amusing, as back before he became a selling pro he was an active SF fan, and a member of what was referred to as "Seventh Fandom" at the time (early 60's). He's been doing his best to distance himself from those humble origins.

An old friend and SF writer once commented "I know Harlan a bit, and we get along, but people who are meeting him for the first time don't understand why folks like us who've known him for decades think he's mellowed."
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Dennis