09-16-2008, 06:32 PM | #16 |
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Don't know if you saw the discussion of Lest Darkness Fall on the Tor site last week?
http://tor.com/index.php?option=com_...w=blog&id=3543 |
09-16-2008, 06:56 PM | #17 | |
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"Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny is soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidding Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life...and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives." |
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09-17-2008, 01:16 AM | #18 | |
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09-17-2008, 01:24 AM | #19 | |
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09-17-2008, 05:36 PM | #20 | |
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Every time I buy an old paperback copy from AbeBooks or some tiny used bookshop on Amazon, it lasts only long enough to read once, then disappears into the cloud of books "lent out." Thanks in advance for the info, Chris |
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09-17-2008, 07:17 PM | #21 | ||
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Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be. Amazon lists an assortment of paper copies.
I have it in an old Ace SF Special PB edition, and as an SF Book club hardcover. One correction on my metion, incidentally, the turning point in history is the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I. Quote:
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______ Dennis |
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09-17-2008, 07:22 PM | #22 |
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I bought a couple of the Garabaldon books after a panel at a Worldcon (ConJose I think) were people mentioned that these were books that people that did not read romances still liked a lot. My mistake was not checking how thick (1000 pages) the books were before I bought them so I have still not read them.
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09-26-2008, 02:49 PM | #23 | |
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I think the big problem these days is that Publishers would prefer sell a few big books than a lot of small books. The pre-production costs (i.e. designing the cover, editing, etc,) are probably not that much more for a 400 page book than for a 200 page book, and then of course regardless of size, marketing costs are the same. And naturally, its hard to sell a 200 page book for the same price as a 500 page book. Add to the fact that they can probably fairly reliably predict how well the sequels of a book will perform based off of the sales of the first book... and I think it is easy to see that the publishing houses are encouraging the longer and longer books. Actually, ebooks, with the potential of self publishing, or at least lower production costs could bring back the relatively short stand alone novel.. as well as the Novella and the short story.... after all, they can all have the same web presence as the 1000 page book. -- Bill |
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09-26-2008, 03:53 PM | #24 | |||
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As time passed and the book industry evolved, those considerations changed and books started getting longer. You did still see pressure to cut to fit, and some large books got issued as two paperbacks due to technical limitations on how big a PB could be. (I recommended Dan Simmon's _Hyperion_ to a friend. Bantam produced as two PB volumes, but didn't indicates on the first one it was part one of two. A friend read the first one, ran into the metaphorical brick wall of the cliffhanger ending, and was so incensed he refused to read anything else by Simmons. My comments that it wasn't Simmons' fault if his publisher was an idiot were to no avail.) Quote:
But in general, the market seems to prefer longer books, and wants a series rather than a stand-alone. Authors doing stand-alones tend to see lower sales for those titles than for books in a series. Quote:
Self-published ebook authors are discovering what pbook authors have long known: writing it is the easy part. Selling it is another matter. You must devote far more time and effort to promoting yourself and your work, and letting your intended audience know you exist, than you do to actually write the book and produce the electronic edition. I had dinner last night with a friend who is a published author, with ten books (a couple under pseudonyms) in print, and several more under contract and in progress. She devotes time and effort to figuring out which conventions and other functions to attend, based on whether she can reach new groups of readers not familiar with her or her work. While her publishers are happy with her sales, she's not at the point where they'll spring for kiosk ads and send her around on signing tours. Unless you are a bestselling author, promotion is on you. ______ Dennis |
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09-29-2008, 10:40 AM | #25 |
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I see some of your point.. though I think the series issue might be part public preference and part that there is a known audience for the works. If book 1 sells X, its probably a safe bet that book2 might well sell at least .8 or .9 X.
That being said, there are still authors who haven't gotten too much sequelitis. I mean almost any author, particularly a science fiction author can be tempted by following up ideas and plot lines that were undeveloped in the original story, but some authors seem pretty good about limiting themselves to no sequels or just a few. Another thought... another problem with ereading from a publisher perspective is that its much harder to do book signings... you probably are not going to try and get your Kindle or Ipod Touch signed like you would a hardback . So some sorts of promotion are going to have to change. I think Baen's web subscriptions might be an idea for a lot of publishers. A return of literary magazines perhaps? They can concentrate on newer authors, and pay them to write short stories and longer works with the longer works being broken up serial style and released over a certain number of issues (The way some of the sci-fi Magazines still do it). It will allow a way for newer authors to develop a market before they try to sell novels as stand alones. -- Bill Last edited by bill_mchale; 09-29-2008 at 12:55 PM. |
09-29-2008, 11:28 AM | #26 | |||
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But meanwhile, book signings won't be a major factor in deciding to publish ebooks. As mentioned, most authors don't get publisher arranged signing tours. The publisher's promotional dollars get reserved for stuff they hope will be best sellers. If the average new or midlist author is doing signings, they arranged them themselves. Agreed, though: publishers must grapple with how to do publicity for ebooks. Baen's Webscriptions are the evolution of the Baen Free Library. As originally conceived, that was promotion for the paper books. and instead of promoting individual books, it promoted authors. You could download one or more complete novels by an author, decide you liked their work, and buy the next in hardcover when it was released. It worked, too, as Baen credited the Library with driving their transistion from struggling mass market PB house to thriving hardcover publisher. Jim Baen stated in an email back then that he didn't see pure electronic publishing as a source of profit at that time. The Webscriptions program has proven that ebooks can be published profitably, and I've no doubt Jim would be pleased to be proven wrong in his earlier assumption. Literary magazines aren't all that likely. Publishers do issue "samplers" in paper form, containing excerpts of upcoming books designed to pique the reader's interest. But the pure literary magazine suffers from the "Who will buy it?" question. The SF magazines still do serialized novels, but they are foundering, too. Analog and Asimovs still exist, but are changing format and frequency. F&SF still exists. Other entrants, like Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, and Worlds of If are long gone. Literary reviews, like the Paris Review, Hudson Review and the like are still with us, but they are a specialized niche market, reaching a small fraction of the book buying public. ______ Dennis |
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