Thurb
mimus
comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
_The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
Thought not. Losers.
----
[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
PUBLISHERS.) [3]
[3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
smeeter 11 or maybe 12
mp 10
mhm 29x13
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall
Universe And Reboot. +++
< Hex
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----
Dave Hillstrom
alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, i tickled mimus
<tinmi...@hotmail.com> till they squealed:
>Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
>comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
>_The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>
>Thought not. Losers.
>
>----
>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>
>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>
>[3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
when they publish the last one, ill go check out the first.
--
dave hillstrom mhm15x4 icq#1598403
"ISLAM: Winning the hearts and minds of the world, one bomb at a time."
- Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net>
mimus
wrote:
>on Fri, 09 Jan 2004 19:13:48 -0500, in
>alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, i tickled mimus
><tinmi...@hotmail.com> till they squealed:
>
>>Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
>>comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
>>_The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>>
>>Thought not. Losers.
>>
>>----
>>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>>
>>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>>
>>[3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
>
>when they publish the last one, ill go check out the first.
Mark the Greek Kalends on yer kalendar, then.
Adie
>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
So bypass em, publish to the web. Who the hell needs a 96ft yacht
anyway.
Ross TenEyck
>on Fri, 09 Jan 2004 19:13:48 -0500, in
>alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, i tickled mimus
><tinmi...@hotmail.com> till they squealed:
>>Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
>>comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
>>_The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>>
>>Thought not. Losers.
>>
>>----
>>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>>
>>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>>
>>[3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
>when they publish the last one, ill go check out the first.
The first three are well worth checking out, even absent the
promised fourth. It's not really a series in the Robert Jordan
sense, so you're not particularly left hanging at the end of the
third book (other than the tantalizing promises of what will be
in _The Universal Pantograph._)
Panshin posts every once in a while to this group. IIRC, he's
stated that he would happily write TUP, if anyone seemed likely
to pay him to do so.
Unfortunately, I suspect it's been too long since he wrote the
first three. When authors go back to their long-ago series, the
results are often disappointing. See, for example, _Tehanu._
At this point, it's probably just as well if he doesn't write
it, and we're left to imagine what might have been.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
BPRAL22169
>The first three are well worth checking out, even absent the
>promised fourth.
I second that sentiment. I read them as a young teenager (i.e., shortly after
they came out) and remember them as being about comparable to Laumer's Retief
series.
Bill
Dave Hillstrom
alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, i tickled Adie
<arse...@h-o-t-m-a-i-l.com> till they squealed:
<points at self>
Starshine Moonbeam
"mimus"(tinmi...@hotmail.com) dropped a +5 bundle of words...
> Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
> comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
> _The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>
> Thought not. Losers.
>
> ----
> [1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
> didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>
> [2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
> PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>
> [3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
I DID I DID!!
Okay, I didn't.
<Hangs head in shame>
--
mhm 31x9
Smeeter #28, 29, or 30
WSD #30
Skep-ti-cult ID# 365-12149-907
Alcatroll Labs Inc. (Division of Incendiary Devices)
StArSHiNe_MoOnbEAm aT HoTMaIL DoT cOM
http://www.geocities.com/tobydog9
"My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, it gives a lovely light."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dorothy J Heydt
mimus <tinmi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
>comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
>_The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
I've read the first three; in fact, I still have copies of all
three; and I've got on disk somewhere a nice review, dated April
1 of some year or other, of the fourth. Nice stuff. The
works to which Williams' Drake Maijstral stories are always
compared.
There are three Maijstral novels too. Why, we may ask, doesn't
he do more of them and fewer of those other things he writes?
The answer, apparently, is that they are much harder to do.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
mimus
Didn't he at least rough the dam' thing out at the time?
I mean, we were given strong intimations in _MW_ of several probable
plot details of _TUP_, such as two marriages, and probably a betrothal
if not marriage of Villiers and Louisa, if the series was to be
wrapped up at four novels, on Nashua, and Torve's return to Trogholm.
Although I think Villiers' and Louisa's marriage, and Torve's
homegoing, might well've been put off to a fifth novel, with Villiers
and Louisa taking their honeymoon on Trogholm <snort>.
smeeter 11 or maybe 12
mp 10
mhm 29x13
We'd be better off in a mental home than we are here:
a quiet garden, little white cells, nurses, supervised walks.
< _Solaris_
Richard Horton
(Ross TenEyck) wrote:
>The first three are well worth checking out, even absent the
>promised fourth. It's not really a series in the Robert Jordan
>sense, so you're not particularly left hanging at the end of the
>third book (other than the tantalizing promises of what will be
>in _The Universal Pantograph._)
>
I believe the series was originally projected to last 7 volumes.
>Panshin posts every once in a while to this group. IIRC, he's
>stated that he would happily write TUP, if anyone seemed likely
>to pay him to do so.
>
>Unfortunately, I suspect it's been too long since he wrote the
>first three. When authors go back to their long-ago series, the
>results are often disappointing. See, for example, _Tehanu._
>At this point, it's probably just as well if he doesn't write
>it, and we're left to imagine what might have been.
Yes.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Michael S. Schiffer
news:Hr95C...@kithrup.com:
>...
> There are three Maijstral novels too. Why, we may ask, doesn't
> he do more of them and fewer of those other things he writes?
> The answer, apparently, is that they are much harder to do.
WJW posted about a month ago on the subject to say that
"The problem with the Maijstral books wasn't that they were hard
to write (they weren't), but that, as indicated above, nobody
bought them."
<http://groups.google.com/groups?
selm=Xns9444B4440370FWalterJonWilliams%40198.59.136.3>
So the trick is to convince a publisher that they'll sell better,
next time around. Anyone have any ideas?
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Walter Jon Williams
@4ax.com:
>>----
>>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>>
>>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
The Universal Pantograph was never written, alas. It may in fact have been
contracted for but never delivered, though I won't swear to that.
I once had a conversation with an editor who would have been delighted to
publish the book if the author had actually handed it in.
Panshin seems to have problems finishing projects. I believe he's finished
only one book in the last thirty years.
BPRAL22169
books for years and years.
>Panshin seems to have problems finishing projects. I believe he's finished
>only one book in the last thirty years.
>
You must be thinking of SF in Dimension, which is right around the thirty year
mark -- but didn't he and Cory do a heroic fantasy book -- I can't recall the
title, but I wasn't enchanted with it. And I think The World Beyond the Hill
was 1979 or 1980 -- so he has finished something in the last 30 years.
Bill
Andrew Wheeler
Publishers aren't dumb, though (he said, setting up a myriad punch lines).
They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
By the light of the moon, by the light of a star,
They walked all night from near to far.
I would never walk. I would take a car.
Richard Horton
The Heroic Fantasy book, _Earth Magic_ I believe, appeared almost
exactly 30 years ago.
Leaving, I think, one book: _The World Beyond the Hill_, finished in
the last 30 years. (Unless _SF in Dimension_ also appeared in the
last 30 years, which I suppose is possible.)
Peter D. Tillman
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
> >
> > djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote in
> > news:Hr95C...@kithrup.com:
> > >...
> > > There are three Maijstral novels too. Why, we may ask, doesn't
> > > he do more of them and fewer of those other things he writes?
> > > The answer, apparently, is that they are much harder to do.
> >
> > WJW posted about a month ago on the subject to say that
> > "The problem with the Maijstral books wasn't that they were hard
> > to write (they weren't), but that, as indicated above, nobody
> > bought them."
> >
> > <http://groups.google.com/groups?
> > selm=Xns9444B4440370FWalterJonWilliams%40198.59.136.3>
> >
> > So the trick is to convince a publisher that they'll sell better,
> > next time around. Anyone have any ideas?
>
> Publishers aren't dumb, though (he said, setting up a myriad punch lines).
>
> They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
> something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
> well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
> if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
Well, *I* certainly buy them. Extra copies, too, to give away, in the
case of the Maijstrals.
Pretty damned annoying, that the rest of y'all aren't pitching in,
dammit. My favorite kind of book, when I want that kind of book <G>
I wonder why they don't sell? Comedy in general does well. Dave Barry
sells well, as does Carl Hiaasen, and (to a lesser degree) PJ O'Rourke.
Heck, Christopher Buckley seems to make a decent living as a comic
novelist, some even sfnal (Little Green Men). As does Donald Westlake.
A Civil Campaign did well for Bujold, I think...
Cheers -- Pete Tillman, puzzled but easily amused. And hopeful for a
Maijstral omnibus, some day...
--
"What I look forward to, is continued immaturity, followed by death."
--Dave Barry
Smee
"mimus" <tinmi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ktguvvomj0dj80o0b...@4ax.com...
> Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
> comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
> _The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>
> Thought not. Losers.
I read one of his and can't remember the name of it. It was about a young
(prepubescent) girl living on a starship and her experiences on said ship
and dirtside during...........
OH YES, THAT'S IT!!
Rite of Passage.
Does that make me less a loser??
Smee
Smee
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:Hr95C...@kithrup.com...
Another author who promised but never delivered is David Palmer, author of
Emergence. His style is much like Father Heinlein's. I'd love to read more
of him.
Smee
Mike Van Pelt
Smee <psci...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Another author who promised but never delivered is David Palmer,
> author of Emergence. His style is much like Father Heinlein's. I'd
> love to read more of him.
It seems to me that David Palmer is a guy who had one
good book in him. Just one.
"Emergence" was wonderful.
"Threshold" was pretty wretched. I strugged through the whole
thing, every marvelous un-dreamed-of superpower that Our Hero
just happens to develop at every moment he needs it, every
oh-too-cutesy-poo-for-words name for the various powers and
power wielders.
The only thing that got me to the end was that "Emergence" was
*so* good, I figured "Threshold" *had* to get better at some
point.
I was terribly wrong. As wrong as I was when I watched "The
Star Wars Christmas Special" all the way to the end back in
1979. *shudder*
About ten pages from the end, I was thinking "Gee, how's he
going to wrap this damned thing up?" and finding, no, he did
*not* wrap it up, it was only a fraction of the story, which
was just chopped off...
Every now and then this comes up on rasfw. Once, someone
claiming inside knowledge said the sequel to "Threshold"
had been turned in, but it was even worse.
--
The more things change, | Mike Van Pelt
the more they stay insane. | mvp at calweb.com
-- Mike Jittlov | KE6BVH
BPRAL22169
Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r emuch more
interested in what the big chain bookstores buy. It's one of the gaping
ironies of our age that all book publishing decisions are made by non-readers
using criteria that have nothing to do with the reading qualities of the books.
Bill
mimus
<donttr...@phonyaddress.net> wrote:
>Dave Hillstrom <HUMP...@meow.org> wrote in news:XEP=P1yW8YdF4lOOsd2lKAL0qft1
>@4ax.com:
>
>>>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>>>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>>>
>>>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>>>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>
>The Universal Pantograph was never written, alas. It may in fact have been
>contracted for but never delivered, though I won't swear to that.
>
>I once had a conversation with an editor who would have been delighted to
>publish the book if the author had actually handed it in.
Hmm . . . .
>Panshin seems to have problems finishing projects. I believe he's finished
>only one book in the last thirty years.
Too bad. The Villiers series as it is is brilliant, quirky, warm,
charming. A classic.
Did you ever catch the idiot review that said it was based on James
Bond, rather than (rather obviously) very loosely connected with _The
Saint_? (I mean, Villiers is Viscount _Charteris_, which should be
ample clue even for a reviewer.)
smeeter 11 or maybe 12
mp 10
mhm 29x13
My friends, I have come to you from a faraway land
of sand and palm upon a voyage of discovery,
and I count myself fortunate above all men,
for upon this my first night in your land
I have been taken to your leader, King Peyote,
and have been raised up instead of put down,
and have been shown the wonders of the world
which are presently turning red before me
and falling like a waterfall.
< _The Journey of Joenes_
mimus
wrote:
>"mimus" <tinmi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:ktguvvomj0dj80o0b...@4ax.com...
>
>> Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
>> comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
>> _The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>>
>> Thought not. Losers.
>
>I read one of his and can't remember the name of it. It was about a young
>(prepubescent) girl living on a starship and her experiences on said ship
>and dirtside during...........
>
>OH YES, THAT'S IT!!
>
>Rite of Passage.
>
>Does that make me less a loser??
>
>Smee
Indeed it does.
Although _RoP_ is lightyears away different from the Villiers novels,
which are bonkers.
David Cowie
>
> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r emuch more
> interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
customers are buying?
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Containment Failure + 1393:01
James Nicoll
David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>
>>
>> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r emuch more
>> interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>
>How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
>customers are buying?
>
--
"Precepts of religion. Every victory is a defeat. Every cut made is a wound
received. Every strength is a weakness. Every time you kill, you die."
In which case, he thought, clawing briars from in front of his face, the
enemy must be taking a right pounding, the poor buggers. [Memory, K.J. Parker]
Robert A. Woodward
m...@web1.calweb.com (Mike Van Pelt) wrote:
(cross-post deleted)
> In article <Po6Mb.4042$zj7....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Smee <psci...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > Another author who promised but never delivered is David Palmer,
> > author of Emergence. His style is much like Father Heinlein's. I'd
> > love to read more of him.
>
> It seems to me that David Palmer is a guy who had one
> good book in him. Just one.
>
> "Emergence" was wonderful.
>
I thought that _Emergence_ faded at the end, so perhaps he had less than
one good book in him.
<snip discussion of _Threshold_>
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw
Mike Schilling
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:bts2ob$c59$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> In article <pan.2004.01.11...@privacy.net>,
> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
emuch more
> >> interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
> >
> >How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what
their
> >customers are buying?
> >
> Evil conspiracies.
The point, I think, is that big chain bookstores respond most to
mega-sellers, which tend to be books that were heavily promoted and
marketed. Similar books are then published, promoted, and marketed, until
dimishining returns set in. When a non-hyped book becomes a success, its
imitators starts a new cycle. It's the same pattern as the other
mass-marketed media: movies, TV, music, etc.
BPRAL22169
>How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
>customers are buying?
They do decide on the basis of what the customers bought -- the last quarter.
It's a buying system that favors high-volume popcorn books and the franchises
and discriminates against the long-term or perennial sellers.
You may have heard about the "death of the midlist"? Caused by the same
effect: That happens because any time a book's sales slumps, the bookstore
assumes its commercial life is over and cuts it off the bottom of its purchase
list.
Bill
Michael Grosberg
> In article <4000B00F...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> > "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
> >
> > Publishers aren't dumb, though (he said, setting up a myriad punch lines).
> > They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
> > something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
> > well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
> > if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
>
> Well, *I* certainly buy them. Extra copies, too, to give away, in the
> case of the Maijstrals.
>
> Pretty damned annoying, that the rest of y'all aren't pitching in,
> dammit. My favorite kind of book, when I want that kind of book <G>
Well, I'm ready to pitch in - it's time I read them.
But they seem to be out of print, sadly. I guess I'll have to settle
for used copies.
And while I was finding that out on Amazon.com I ran into this:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/2290320471/qid=1073848316/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/104-4689571-6951968?v=glance&s=books
What are these? french translations of metropolitan & City on fire?
Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>
> >
> > Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r emuch more
> > interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>
> How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
> customers are buying?
The Grays whisper in their ears, a la _Brother Termite_.
--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com> DC8s in Spaace: <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above They're coming to
because my cats have apparently learned to type. take me away, ha ha!
Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster
OK, so how do the chains decide what to buy so as to stay in business?
Duke of URL
Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster <j...@bftsi0.UUCP> radiated into the
WorldWideWait:
> "David Cowie" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> <news:pan.2004.01.11...@privacy.net>...
>> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>>
>>> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy --
>>> they'r emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>>
>> How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't
>> what their customers are buying?
>
> The Grays whisper in their ears, a la _Brother Termite_.
Ekshully the RIAA tells the chains what to ... What? They are? The
Grays *are* the RIAA? Oh. Nevermind...
Andrew Wheeler
You think people go into bookselling because they don't read? Must be
because of the huge money, then...
(Seriously, you need to adjust your prejudices a bit. The chain
bookstores have massive computerized systems that tell them *exactly*
what is selling and where. And, with the rise of the superstore, they
carry practically every book in print. Therefore, the market is awfully
transparent, and so mostly is what it appears to be.)
Andrew Wheeler
>
> "James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:bts2ob$c59$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> > In article <pan.2004.01.11...@privacy.net>,
> > David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> > >On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they're
> > >
> > >How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what
> > >their customers are buying?
> > >
> > Evil conspiracies.
>
> The point, I think, is that big chain bookstores respond most to
> mega-sellers, which tend to be books that were heavily promoted and
> marketed. Similar books are then published, promoted, and marketed, until
> dimishining returns set in. When a non-hyped book becomes a success, its
> imitators starts a new cycle. It's the same pattern as the other
> mass-marketed media: movies, TV, music, etc.
Books, unlike those other forms, are sold *returnable*. Which makes a
big difference.
Hugely hyped Novel A by new name Author B goes out, in a
hundred-thousand copy printing. Ninety-thousand copies come back, three
months later. Author B's next novel will *not* get a hundred thousand
orders (though it will probably get somewhere above ten thousand, since
the chains seem to have realized it takes more than one book to sell one
book). More to the point, new name Author C's novel of the same type
will *also* not go out at a hundred thousand, without heroic efforts
from the sales force to position it as something else.
This is somewhat simplified (big names can coast through a failure or
two, for one thing, among other effects), but it's the way it happens.
If you mean that chain stores buy the new books from popular authors in
large quantities -- and then sell those books, in large quantities, to
readers -- I hardly see what your point is.
Success goes breed success, but failure makes a thousand orphans. And
publishing is a business of failures, most of the time. (We usually try
to spin it as "publishing runs on enthusiasm," but it means basically
the same thing. Or maybe I'm just grumpy as usual.)
Andrew Wheeler
You may possibly be right about the (dying) small mall stores, like
Dalton and Waldens. But that is not how the superstores (Barnes & Noble
and Borders) operate, since they have thousands of shelf-feet to fill.
They *want* more books, and only a very small percentage of their space
is devoted to bestsellers.
Superstores tend to reorder a book when they sell their last copy (or
nearly so) of it; if it's still in print. If it's selling relatively
quickly, their computers may suggest reordering *more* copies than
they've sold. The models, for obvious reasons, work *better* for
backlist than for frontlist.
The "death of the midlist" happens every five to seven years or so, and
has for the past two decades or more. Midlist writers tend to either
advance or decline -- they either move to the top of the list or fall
off of it entirely. (The latter are the ones who complain, of course.)
Books stay in print *much longer* now than they did a decade ago, in the
days of the ascendancy of the mall stores. Those days, you had to buy a
mass-market paperback (unless it was a really big seller) in the month
of publication or you were out of luck.
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
>> emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
> How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
> customers are buying?
It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
what they *think* their customers will buy.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Mike Schilling
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:4001F01C...@optonline.com...
I don't see how this differs from, e.g. movies. Big budget film A starring
big name B goes out on 2000 screens. If the theatres are empty due to bad
reviews/word of mouth, many of the screens start showing something else, and
after a few of these big name B becomes small name b. (Though if b is a man,
he has a chance to become B again until he's 50 or so.)
> This is somewhat simplified (big names can coast through a failure or
> two, for one thing, among other effects), but it's the way it happens.
> If you mean that chain stores buy the new books from popular authors in
> large quantities -- and then sell those books, in large quantities, to
> readers -- I hardly see what your point is.
My point is that there are preconceived ideas of what could be a big
success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
succeeding.
Christopher J. Henrich
Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
> > They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
> > something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
> > well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
> > if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
>
> Well, *I* certainly buy them. Extra copies, too, to give away, in the
> case of the Maijstrals.
>
> Pretty damned annoying, that the rest of y'all aren't pitching in,
> dammit. My favorite kind of book, when I want that kind of book <G>
>
> I wonder why they don't sell? Comedy in general does well. Dave Barry
> sells well, as does Carl Hiaasen, and (to a lesser degree) PJ O'Rourke.
> Heck, Christopher Buckley seems to make a decent living as a comic
> novelist, some even sfnal (Little Green Men). As does Donald Westlake.
> A Civil Campaign did well for Bujold, I think...
>
> Cheers -- Pete Tillman, puzzled but easily amused. And hopeful for a
> Maijstral omnibus, some day...
The Villiers books have a marked, individual flavor that is quite
different from the humorists you mention. It is, at first glance, just
as fluffy as Wodehouse, in a universe as free of menace as Sesame
Street (well, almost). But I seem to recall having a sense that
Villiers was on a deadly serious mission, in which the stakes were high
enough to make Dominic Flandry blanch; and pretty soon the true nature
of the situation would be revealed.
I think it may be very difficult to get that tone just right. "Tragedy
is easy; comedy is hard."
--
Chris Henrich
God just doesn't fit inside a single religion.
BPRAL22169
>The "death of the midlist" happens every five to seven years or so, and
>has for the past two decades or more. Midlist writers tend to either
>advance or decline -- they either move to the top of the list or fall
>off of it entirely. (The latter are the ones who complain, of course.)
We appear to be living in realities with entirely different histories.
Bill
Smee
"Mike Van Pelt" <m...@web1.calweb.com> wrote in message
news:40011481$0$99234$d36...@news.calweb.com...
Eeewwww!
Smee
Mike Van Pelt
Robert A. Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>In article <40011481$0$99234$d36...@news.calweb.com>,
> m...@web1.calweb.com (Mike Van Pelt) wrote:
>> It seems to me that David Palmer is a guy who had one
>> good book in him. Just one.
>>
>> "Emergence" was wonderful.
>
>I thought that _Emergence_ faded at the end, so perhaps he had
>less than one good book in him.
You're right... After I wrote that, I got to thinking about some
of the silliness in the last part. For me, it wasn't bad enough
to wreck the book, but it was beginning to show signs of the rot
which hit in full force in "Threshold." (The parrot suddenly
turning out to be telepathic, forsooth.)
The "Emergence" short story (Novella? Novelette?) that appeared
in Analog ended before the rot began to set in.
("Egad, that's the fastest and most virulent attack of the
Brain Eater I've ever seen!")
Gary R. Schmidt
> On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 20:45:20 +0000 (UTC), Walter Jon Williams
> <donttr...@phonyaddress.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Dave Hillstrom <HUMP...@meow.org> wrote in news:XEP=P1yW8YdF4lOOsd2lKAL0qft1
>>@4ax.com:
>>
>>
>>>>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
>>>>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>>>>
>>>>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
>>>>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>>
>>The Universal Pantograph was never written, alas. It may in fact have been
>>contracted for but never delivered, though I won't swear to that.
>>
>>I once had a conversation with an editor who would have been delighted to
>>publish the book if the author had actually handed it in.
>
>
> Hmm . . . .
>
>
>>Panshin seems to have problems finishing projects. I believe he's finished
>>only one book in the last thirty years.
>
>
> Too bad. The Villiers series as it is is brilliant, quirky, warm,
> charming. A classic.
>
> Did you ever catch the idiot review that said it was based on James
> Bond, rather than (rather obviously) very loosely connected with _The
> Saint_? (I mean, Villiers is Viscount _Charteris_, which should be
> ample clue even for a reviewer.)
>
I'm sure that on the Panshin site http://www.enter.net/~torve I saw
somewhere that Universal Pantograph is "unpublished," but I can't find
it. (Perhaps it was somewhere else, the web is so big :-))
Now, I don't know a thing about the publishing business in the USA, but
here in Oz "unpublished" means that the manuscript is complete, just
needing an editors eye and perhaps some proffredding before it is set
and printed, so, what's the problem?
Cheers,
Gary B-)
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
- Barry Humphries
John Lawler
>Cheers -- Pete Tillman, puzzled but easily amused. And hopeful for a
>Maijstral omnibus, some day...
There is one, though (naturally) it's out of print.
Ten Points for Style: The Crown Jewels; House of Shards; Rock of Ages.
Walter Jon Williams. New York[?]: Guild America Books
(though Amazon says Doubleday). 1995. ISBN: 156865166X
Still, SFBC might still have some copies around somewhere, and Amazon lists
"4 used & new from $4.50
Usually ships within 1-2 business days"
Look around in public libraries, though.
I found it in Bellingham, WA.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler Michigan Linguistics Dept
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental and should not
be construed." -- Kurt Vonnegut, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater"
Stewart Robert Hinsley
>
>They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
>something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
>well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
>if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
>
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
James Nicoll
I am just guessing but because Pratchett's sales do not confer
any benefit to other writers of comic F&SF.
Harry Erwin
> Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
> comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
> _The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
>
> Thought not. Losers.
>
> ----
> [1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
> didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
>
> [2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
> PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>
> [3] ((NOT TO MENTION POLITICIANS.))
>
Long story--you can ask Alexei about it. He has three unpublished novels
in the series plotted out.
--
Harry Erwin <http://www.theworld.com/~herwin/>
Harry Erwin
Walter Jon Williams <donttr...@phonyaddress.net> wrote:
> Dave Hillstrom <HUMP...@meow.org> wrote in news:XEP=P1yW8YdF4lOOsd2lKAL0qft1
> @4ax.com:
>
>
> >>----
> >>[1] OK, so he promised us this one at the end of _MW_, and somehow it
> >>didn't get published. It should've been. It still should be. [2]
> >>
> >>[2] (LITERATURE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF
> >>PUBLISHERS.) [3]
>
> The Universal Pantograph was never written, alas. It may in fact have been
> contracted for but never delivered, though I won't swear to that.
>
> I once had a conversation with an editor who would have been delighted to
> publish the book if the author had actually handed it in.
>
> Panshin seems to have problems finishing projects. I believe he's finished
> only one book in the last thirty years.
Harry Erwin
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:52:30 GMT, "Smee" <psci...@ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
>
> >"mimus" <tinmi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:ktguvvomj0dj80o0b...@4ax.com...
> >
> >> Has anyone here ever read Alexei Panshin's delightful tetralogy
> >> comprised of _Star Well_, _The Thurb Revolution_, _Masque World_ and
> >> _The Universal Pantograph_ [1]?
> >>
> >> Thought not. Losers.
> >
> >I read one of his and can't remember the name of it. It was about a young
> >(prepubescent) girl living on a starship and her experiences on said ship
> >and dirtside during...........
> >
> >OH YES, THAT'S IT!!
> >
> >Rite of Passage.
> >
> >Does that make me less a loser??
> >
> >Smee
>
> Indeed it does.
>
> Although _RoP_ is lightyears away different from the Villiers novels,
> which are bonkers.
>
Same universe. You didn't know that?
Matt Hughes
My two 2001 comic fantasies, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, got rave
reviews in all the right places (Asimov, Analog, F&SF, NYRSF, etc.)
but still barely broke even. I put it down to short print runs --
only about 12,000 copies each in mmpbk format.
I've been told that most readers don't buy a book by someone they've
never heard of the first time they see it. It's often only after the
third or fourth sighting that they plunk down the money. A small
print run means that the book is just not in enough places to be seen
three or four times.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Matt Hughes
http://mars.ark.com/~mhughes/
Next novel, Black Brillion (Tor, November)
Next story, Mastermindless (F&SF, March)
Current story, A Little Learning in Fantasy Readers Wanted--Apply
Within (Silver Lake Publishing, 2003)
David Tate
>
> (Seriously, you need to adjust your prejudices a bit. The chain
> bookstores have massive computerized systems that tell them *exactly*
> what is selling and where.
Sure, but this doesn't address the original complaint. That software
doesn't tell them how it *would* be selling if it had been promoted or
formatted differently, and it certainly doesn't tell them how the
things they never bothered to stock at all would have sold.
Similarly, publishers have great data on how the things they published
have sold[1], but not much of a predictive model for how content,
marketing, and distribution turn into sales.
David Tate
[1] Both original 'sales' to distributors, and sell-through. I yearn
for the day when that distinction will vanish.
Peter D. Tillman
jla...@timepilot.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (John Lawler) wrote:
> Peter D. Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> writes:
>
> >Cheers -- Pete Tillman, puzzled but easily amused. And hopeful for a
> >Maijstral omnibus, some day...
>
> There is one, though (naturally) it's out of print.
>
> Ten Points for Style: The Crown Jewels; House of Shards; Rock of Ages.
> Walter Jon Williams. New York[?]: Guild America Books
> (though Amazon says Doubleday). 1995. ISBN: 156865166X
>
> Still, SFBC might still have some copies around somewhere, and Amazon lists
> "4 used & new from $4.50
> Usually ships within 1-2 business days"
> Look around in public libraries, though.
> I found it in Bellingham, WA.
>
[adds to used-bookshop to-buy list]
Thanks!
John F. Carr
Robert A. Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>In article <40011481$0$99234$d36...@news.calweb.com>,
> m...@web1.calweb.com (Mike Van Pelt) wrote:
>
>
>> In article <Po6Mb.4042$zj7....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
>> Smee <psci...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> > Another author who promised but never delivered is David Palmer,
>> > author of Emergence. His style is much like Father Heinlein's. I'd
>> > love to read more of him.
>>
>> good book in him. Just one.
>>
>> "Emergence" was wonderful.
>>
>
>I thought that _Emergence_ faded at the end, so perhaps he had less than
>one good book in him.
He had one excellent novella and one good novella in him.
"Emergence" made a lasting impression on me when it was
published in Analog. It was a worthy winner of the 1981
Analog award for best novella in that magazine. "Seeking"
was good, but not as good. It won the 1983 Analog award
but I'd probably pick a Zahn story instead.
The two novellas are the first part of the novel. Though
I was very excited to learn that there was a whole book,
the experience of reading it was disappointing. Each section
was weaker than the one before and I couldn't believe in the
new stuff he added in the second half.
An apt quote about Palmer from the days of usenet past:
"My theory was that after trying to out-Heinlein Heinlein,
then trying to out-Doc-Smith Doc Smith, there wasn't a lot
of room left in the Macrocosmic All."
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3ajnmc%24h3f%40hustle.rahul.net>
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Walter Jon Williams
>
> And while I was finding that out on Amazon.com I ran into this:
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/2290320471/qid=1073848316/
> sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/104-4689571-6951968?v=glance&s=books
>
> and this:
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/3453196686/qid=1073848347/
> sr=1-13/ref=sr_1_13/104-4689571-6951968?v=glance&s=books
>
One French, one German.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> "Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
> news:4001F01C...@optonline.com...
>
> > big difference.
> >
> > Hugely hyped Novel A by new name Author B goes out, in a
> > hundred-thousand copy printing. Ninety-thousand copies come back, three
> > months later. Author B's next novel will *not* get a hundred thousand
> > orders (though it will probably get somewhere above ten thousand, since
> > the chains seem to have realized it takes more than one book to sell one
> > book). More to the point, new name Author C's novel of the same type
> > will *also* not go out at a hundred thousand, without heroic efforts
> > from the sales force to position it as something else.
>
> I don't see how this differs from, e.g. movies. Big budget film A starring
> big name B goes out on 2000 screens. If the theatres are empty due to bad
> reviews/word of mouth, many of the screens start showing something else, and
> after a few of these big name B becomes small name b. (Though if b is a man,
> he has a chance to become B again until he's 50 or so.)
The difference is the cost -- a failure doesn't just mean that you can't
make back money you've already spent -- it means that you have
immediate, *additional* costs dealing with the consequences off the failure.
Also, since the money is lower, there isn't the insane spending =
steamroller hype equation that can work in music or movies.
> > This is somewhat simplified (big names can coast through a failure or
> > two, for one thing, among other effects), but it's the way it happens.
> > If you mean that chain stores buy the new books from popular authors in
> > large quantities -- and then sell those books, in large quantities, to
> > readers -- I hardly see what your point is.
>
> My point is that there are preconceived ideas of what could be a big
> success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
> succeeding.
Yes, that's true. Books that don't fit those preconceived ideas never
succeed. There never was a _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_.
Or a _Cold Mountain_. Or an _Tuesdays With Morrie_. Or _The Firm_. Or
_Everything Is Illuminated_. Or _Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil._
As a matter of fact, there's at least one every season. They're very
rarely SF/Fantasy, since our genre is a minority taste, but that's a
different question.
Andrew Wheeler
Go back a decade ago, and writers were complaining about the death of
the midlist, and how their books only lasted a few weeks in Walden's.
That happened in your history as well, I suspect.
BPRAL22169
>the midlist
Yes -- but go back two decades ago and the midlist was doing fine -- never had
a problem.
There was a wave of consolidations and mergers in the early 1980's that was a
cause for lamentations and concern in the national papers. The economics of
the publishing industry changed very dramatically because of the old houses
being taken over by conglomerates and "programmed buying" (by analogy to
programmed trading) being instituted.
Bill
Andrew Wheeler
>
> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>
> > On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>
> >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
> >> emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>
> > How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
> > customers are buying?
>
> It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
> customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
> what they *think* their customers will buy.
But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
It's disingenuous to claim that the mall store of a decade ago, with a
tenth of the books of today's standard, was a golden age compared to
today's stores.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message news:<4001EE6E...@optonline.com>...
> >
> > (Seriously, you need to adjust your prejudices a bit. The chain
> > bookstores have massive computerized systems that tell them *exactly*
> > what is selling and where.
>
> Sure, but this doesn't address the original complaint. That software
> doesn't tell them how it *would* be selling if it had been promoted or
> formatted differently, and it certainly doesn't tell them how the
> things they never bothered to stock at all would have sold.
No, and until we have a quantum computer with access to all of the
parallel universes, we never will. You're asking for something impossible.
What we *do* have (well, not us, exactly -- Len Riggio and his ilk) is a
massive database, of a very large number of books, by a very large
number of authors, sold in a very large number of ways, with a very
large number of different promotional levels. That may not be the
Platonic ideal you describe, but it's quite close.
> Similarly, publishers have great data on how the things they published
> have sold[1], but not much of a predictive model for how content,
> marketing, and distribution turn into sales.
Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic. If authors
would just buckle down and write *exactly* the same kind of book all the
time (and deliver it at exactly the same time each year), we might be
able to finally get clean data. (Who wants to go first?)
Andrew Wheeler
>
> In article <XI8QOCAo...@meden.demon.co.uk>,
> Stewart Robert Hinsley <{$news$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In article <4000B00F...@optonline.com>, Andrew Wheeler
> ><acwh...@optonline.com> writes
> >>
> >>They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
> >>something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
> >>well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
> >>if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
> >>
> >Doesn't Pratchett count?
>
> I am just guessing but because Pratchett's sales do not confer
> any benefit to other writers of comic F&SF.
He also is still climbing the hill in the USA. We (and I include me in
that we, since I was hoping and pushing as hard as anyone) thought
_Monstrous Regiment_ might be the book to kick him onto US bestseller
lists, but it didn't. (However, I'm an old Mets fan, so I'm perfectly
willing to "wait 'till next year.")
Mike Schilling
> >
> > My point is that there are preconceived ideas of what could be a big
> > success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
> > succeeding.
>
> Yes, that's true. Books that don't fit those preconceived ideas never
> succeed. There never was a _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_.
> Or a _Cold Mountain_. Or an _Tuesdays With Morrie_. Or _The Firm_. Or
> _Everything Is Illuminated_. Or _Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil._
>
> As a matter of fact, there's at least one every season.
John F. Carr
David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>
>[1] Both original 'sales' to distributors, and sell-through. I yearn
>for the day when that distinction will vanish.
If you find and read a copy of the small press title _Fool For an
Agent_ by Richard Curtis, you might feel better. Curtis likes to
write about how the returns system is hurting the business.
The book business will still have all the same problems after you
read the book, of course, but you might feel less alone in your
opinion.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Bill Snyder
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
>different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic. If authors
>would just buckle down and write *exactly* the same kind of book all the
>time (and deliver it at exactly the same time each year), we might be
>able to finally get clean data. (Who wants to go first?)
At last report, it's a dead heat between Robert Jordan, John Ringo,
Piers Anthony, and Harry Turtledove.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
David Dyer-Bennet
> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>>
>> > On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>>
>> >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
>> >> emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>>
>> > How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
>> > customers are buying?
>>
>> It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
>> customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
>> what they *think* their customers will buy.
>
> But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
> as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
> stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
But their SF section is a very small fraction of what I routinely
browse at Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books. And the customers of the
superstores cannot, of course, buy what's not on the shelves.
> It's disingenuous to claim that the mall store of a decade ago, with a
> tenth of the books of today's standard, was a golden age compared to
> today's stores.
I would certainly never try to claim that. While they were a big
improvement for many smaller towns when they first appeared, they were
never very good, and I've lived in big urban areas, where they were
never the first choice.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Jeffrey C. Dege
>Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> writes:
>
>> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
>> as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
>> stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
>
>But their SF section is a very small fraction of what I routinely
>browse at Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books. And the customers of the
>superstores cannot, of course, buy what's not on the shelves.
Nobody stocks what Uncle Hugo stocks.
--
From briefcase then there comes a list of things we must revise.
And all but four within the room are taken by surprise.
And all but four are thinking of their last job with remorse:
The customer, the manager, the doggy and the horse.
Christopher J. Henrich
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
> different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic. If authors
> would just buckle down and write *exactly* the same kind of book all the
> time (and deliver it at exactly the same time each year), we might be
> able to finally get clean data. (Who wants to go first?)
Calling David Eddings; call for David Eddings...
Come to think of it, there are lots of mystery novelists who seem to do
pretty much what you say, with reasonable success. The seventeenth
Inspector Whoozits novel will almost certainly not blow the roof off
after the manner of Terry Potter (honestly, that's what I subvocalized
as I was typing it. I decided to let the typo stand) . But it will,
very probably, have a decent, predictable, success. It works in that
genre, not in this. Not sure why.
--
Chris Henrich
The wonderful thing about not planning, is that failure comes as a complete
surprise, and is not preceded by a period of worry or depression.
-- "Kiltannen"
Jeffrey C. Dege
>In article <40034A1E...@optonline.com>, Andrew Wheeler
><acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>> Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
>> different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic. If authors
>> would just buckle down and write *exactly* the same kind of book all the
>> time (and deliver it at exactly the same time each year), we might be
>> able to finally get clean data. (Who wants to go first?)
>
>Calling David Eddings; call for David Eddings...
>
>Come to think of it, there are lots of mystery novelists who seem to do
>pretty much what you say, with reasonable success. The seventeenth
>Inspector Whoozits novel will almost certainly not blow the roof off
>after the manner of Terry Potter (honestly, that's what I subvocalized
>as I was typing it. I decided to let the typo stand) . But it will,
>very probably, have a decent, predictable, success. It works in that
>genre, not in this. Not sure why.
Because F&SF isn't a formulaic genre, the way Mystery is. Pratchett's
made it work, but I can't think of many others.
--
The customer proceeds to go through each change line-by-line.
Excruciating detail, which no logic can divine.
And when it ends there's only four not sitting there agog:
The customer, the manager, the pony and the dog.
Andrew Plotkin
> >Go back a decade ago, and writers were complaining about the death of
> >the midlist
>
> Yes -- but go back two decades ago and the midlist was doing fine --
> never had a problem.
Two decades ago there weren't any damn books to buy. The midlist had
five names on it.
I exaggerate, but only some.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David Allsopp
<jdni...@panix.com> writes
>In article <XI8QOCAo...@meden.demon.co.uk>,
>Stewart Robert Hinsley <{$news$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In article <4000B00F...@optonline.com>, Andrew Wheeler
>><acwh...@optonline.com> writes
>>>
>>>They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
>>>something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
>>>well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice. Heck,
>>>if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
>>>
>>Doesn't Pratchett count?
>
> I am just guessing but because Pratchett's sales do not confer
>any benefit to other writers of comic F&SF.
I would guess that Tom Holt and Robert Rankin both found it easier to
get published because of Pratchett's success. There may be others.
I may be talking complete drivel...
(Does "Red Dwarf" post-date playful Pterry's popularity, particularly?)
--
David Allsopp Houston, this is Tranquillity Base.
Remove SPAM to email me The Eagle has landed.
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:19:36 -0600, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> writes:
>>
>>> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>>
>>> But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
>>> as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
>>> stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
>>
>>But their SF section is a very small fraction of what I routinely
>>browse at Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books. And the customers of the
>>superstores cannot, of course, buy what's not on the shelves.
>
> Nobody stocks what Uncle Hugo stocks.
Well, Dreamhaven has been known to do better than they do in some
areas of hardcovers.
I know that some of the stuff on the "new" shelves is out of print,
but I haven't ever asked for a percentage of it. I wonder if they
even know? With the new computer inventory system they actually
might. I don't think it's that huge.
It's truly *amazing* that in a big but not gigantic metro area like
this (Minneapolis, for those trying to follow the discussion without
the program book), we've been successfully supporting *two* SF
specialty stores for this long. I watched Spike's store in Boston
pretty much go under, and Alice's in Chicago fall back to mailorder
and hucksters room only (and it was partly a spinoff from Dreamhaven
to begin with), and I remember hearing of one of the California stores
and one of the London stores going under. And very little about *new*
stores of equal interest opening anywhere.
Steve Simmons
> "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>> So the trick is to convince a publisher that they'll sell better,
>> next time around. Anyone have any ideas?
> Publishers aren't dumb, though (he said, setting up a myriad punch lines).
> They won't believe something just because you tell them; they'll believe
> something if they see it. So if light, funny adventure SF starts selling
> well (or, let's be honest, selling *at all*), they'll take notice.
You mean the way publishers are scrambling to find the next
Christopher Moore (who's fantasy, but doesn't get listed as it),
or Terry Pratchett, or Tom Holt, or Charlaine Harris?
> Heck,
> if light funny *non-SF* adventure starts selling well, that would help.
You've got the wildly insane literary light humor like Jasper Fforde
("The Eyre Affair", "Lost In A Good Book", "Well of Lost Plots"), or
in mystery we have Kinky Friedman's Kinky Friedman novels, Joan Hess's
Arly Hanks novels, Laurence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, etc, etc.
They sell. Which makes me think that 'light humor' isn't the issue.
--
"I try not to sound old and cynical, but it's hard to do that when
you're old and cynical."
-me
Steve Simmons
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they're
>> much more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
> How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
> customers are buying?
The big chain bookstores buy based on what sold in the past. If you're
a bestselling author or topic or can be cover-blurbed to look like some
other other bestselling author, they'll buy.
This opinion is based on talking to several mid-to-near-top-list writers
who write genre novels (Star Trek, etc) because publishers will then buy
their more personal work 'cause they're bestselling authors, dammit.
Steve Simmons
Gawd, that's sad. Turtledove bats less than .250, and the other three
are all zeros in my book. That, er, well, that's a really bad team
batting average.
Steve Simmons
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> writes
> > Stewart Robert Hinsley <{$news$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > Doesn't Pratchett count?
> > I am just guessing but because Pratchett's sales do not confer
> > any benefit to other writers of comic F&SF.
Given that some other light sf was published with large blurbs which
essentially read "Just Like Pratchett!!!!!", one would think so. The
real problem was that most of those so-blurbed books weren't very good.
> I would guess that Tom Holt and Robert Rankin both found it easier to
> get published because of Pratchett's success. There may be others.
> I may be talking complete drivel...
Can't speak to Rankin, but I'm pretty sure you're right about Holt.
He published several mainstreamish novels set in ancient Greece which
apparently went no-where; then did "Expecting Someone Taller." It's
also worth noting over time his humor has become broader. That's probably
good for his sales, but means a diminuition of fun for those who were
familiar with his source material. Not that I'm complaining; he's another
of my "buy on first sighting" authors.
And if I didn't recommend him before, get and read Jasper Fforde's "The
Eyre Affair" and the other two Thurday Next books. They're not in SF
or fantasy sections, tho.
steve miller
wrotD:
>My two 2001 comic fantasies, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, got rave
>reviews in all the right places (Asimov, Analog, F&SF, NYRSF, etc.)
>but still barely broke even. I put it down to short print runs --
>only about 12,000 copies each in mmpbk format.
Where you need the good review is LJ and PW -- that's what helps get
books into the bookstores and libraries in the first place.
The good review in Analog "might" result in a few sales, directly,
surely less than 100 -- and that if the luck is good and the stores
people walk into have the book in stock. Now if the review managed to
get quoted on the cover -- it'll add up to more -- but the books have
to get into the store or library in the first place so people can read
that quote.
Steve
Visiting Conduit and TriNoc*Con in 2004
Balance of Trade: order from Pandemonium or BN.com
Low Port -- "unexpectedly rewarding" says PW
David Tate
> David Tate wrote:
> >
> > Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message news:<4001EE6E...@optonline.com>...
> > >
> > > (Seriously, you need to adjust your prejudices a bit. The chain
> > > bookstores have massive computerized systems that tell them *exactly*
> > > what is selling and where.
> >
> > Sure, but this doesn't address the original complaint. That software
> > doesn't tell them how it *would* be selling if it had been promoted or
> > formatted differently, and it certainly doesn't tell them how the
> > things they never bothered to stock at all would have sold.
>
> No, and until we have a quantum computer with access to all of the
> parallel universes, we never will. You're asking for something impossible.
Well, I'm not really asking for anything, per se. I'm just pointing
out that you responded with the right answer to the wrong question.
Publishers (as they must) make guesses every day about what is
sellable, and what the best way to sell it might be. We can't, as you
point out, gather data on how often they incorrectly discard something
that could have sold well, or incorrectly market something that could
have sold well.
(Well, except for those cases where a repeatedly-rejected work
eventually does sell. Like, say, HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S
STONE...)
> What we *do* have (well, not us, exactly -- Len Riggio and his ilk) is a
> massive database, of a very large number of books, by a very large
> number of authors, sold in a very large number of ways, with a very
> large number of different promotional levels. That may not be the
> Platonic ideal you describe, but it's quite close.
The other kind of information that's hard to get, besides how rejected
works would have sold, is information on what kind of marketing would
have worked better. There's generally no opportunity to go back and
try a different way.
For Riggio's data to be useful, they would have to result in SOME sort
of predictive model -- be it statistical, or neural networks, or what
have you -- that says things like "for a book like this here
manuscript, if you do X, then I predict costs of C and revenues of R".
If the model is good enough, you might even be able to embed that in
an optimization, and have it tell you what choice of X it thinks will
make R-C as big as possible. Developing such a model, if the data are
as complete as you say, might be a lot of fun.
But if you can't even roughly predict costs and revenues as a function
of marketing approach, then you're left in the realm of hunch and WAG.
When dollars and jobs are on the line, hunch and WAG tend to be
exceptionally conservative, focusing on minimizing risk and maximizing
defensibility.
> > Similarly, publishers have great data on how the things they published
> > have sold[1], but not much of a predictive model for how content,
> > marketing, and distribution turn into sales.
>
> Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
> different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic.
Of course. And yet, this is exactly what publishers do for a living.
When they can't do it quantitatively, they do it qualitatively. When
they can't do it qualitatively, they guess. I find it unlikely that
this process is currently being implemented as well as it can be,
given the information available.
None of this is intended as a slam at you personally, Andrew, or at
publishers in general. Most other industries don't make important
decisions as well as they could, either. But I am tired of hearing
certain other publishers invoke the horrors of the slush pile and the
realities of what has sold in the past to 'prove' that everything that
could be profitably sold is already being published and marketed to
best advantage.
David Tate
David Tate
> Mike Schilling wrote:
> >
> > My point is that there are preconceived ideas of what could be a big
> > success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
> > succeeding.
>
> Yes, that's true. Books that don't fit those preconceived ideas never
> succeed. There never was a _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_.
Very nearly. How many times was the manuscript rejected? 'Several',
is all I can find.
All of the following were rejected at least a dozen times before
finally being sold:
M*A*S*H, by Richard Hooker
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach
The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain
The Peter Principle, by Laurence Peter
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Dubliners, by James Joyce
Lust for Life, by Irving Stone
Is it so unreasonable to believe that, for each of these, there are a
few with equal or greater commercial possibility that never did manage
to get sold? I'm avoiding entirely the issue of 'quality' or of being
"what I want to read" -- these were all eventually huge moneymakers.
David Tate
John Schilling
>Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message news:<4003477D...@optonline.com>...
>> Mike Schilling wrote:
>> > My point is that there are preconceived ideas of what could be a big
>> > success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
>> > succeeding.
>> Yes, that's true. Books that don't fit those preconceived ideas never
>> succeed. There never was a _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_.
>Very nearly. How many times was the manuscript rejected? 'Several',
>is all I can find.
Isn't it *supposed* to be rejected several times before it is chosen
for publication?
The only way to reasonably expect that a book will be accepted by the
first publisher that sees it is to wholeheartedly *embrace* the "books
must fit the preconcieved ideas of the publishing industry" model, so
that we may send every wannabe author a memo listing these preconcieved
ideas and they can get on with writing books that everybody agrees are
worth publishing.
We get a huge and diverse range of work published because we use, not
a single list of preconcieved ideas, but the diverse judgement of many
publishers, to do the selection. A necessary corrolary of this is that
any given work will recieve a diverse range of editorial judgements,
including bad and mediocre ones.
By dumb luck, yes, the first publisher the author submits to might be
one of the ones who loves the book. But I'm not sure I want to read
stuff written by an author who thinks he or she is *entitled* to a
favorable decision up front.
Which obviously J.K. Rowling is not, and I'd just as soon leave the
field to authors who differ with her in almost every respect save
their common understanding of the fact that you have to make the
rounds of the publishing industry, not send one manuscript to one
editor and wait for the money and acclaim.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
BPRAL22169
Re Tom Holt: He also did two delightful (though small) continuations of E.F.
Benson's Lucia series, taking Lucia and Georgie up to and through World War II.
Luciaphils debate whether they can be considered canonical, but everybody
agrees they're a good read.
Bill
Andrew Wheeler
Something that happens regularly, is, by definition, not that hard to
do. It may be hard to *predict*, but that's a different question.
Interestingly, there was a column on this exact subject in the UK paper
_The Guardian_ very recently -- you could read it at http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0%2C6109%2C1119717%2C00.html.
Andrew Wheeler
So, in other words, there's *always* been something to complain about?
(That was my point.)
Actually, a number of '70s writers were complaining in the early '80s
about the deaths of their careers -- I know Barry Malzberg was one.
(Read his essay collection _The Engines of the Night_ for details.)
Those were midlist writers complaining that there was no longer a place
for them, which is the same thing that keeps happening.
There are *always* writers whose careers aren't doing well, and for
them, the midlist is always dying. Many of them manage to keep going, or
reinvent themselves, but a lot of them just walk away.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> writes:
>
> > David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> >>
> >> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> writes:
> >>
> >> > On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
> >>
> >> >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
> >> >> emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
> >>
> >> > How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
> >> > customers are buying?
> >>
> >> It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
> >> customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
> >> what they *think* their customers will buy.
> >
> > But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
> > as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
> > stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
>
> But their SF section is a very small fraction of what I routinely
> browse at Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books. And the customers of the
> superstores cannot, of course, buy what's not on the shelves.
And how many SF specialty stores were there, ever? Two or three dozen,
across North America? One or two for each reasonably big city? That
means very little to most of the population, who can only reach the
stores near them.
(I'm personally more worried about the death of the mall stores, which
means that we have fewer -- though larger -- stores in the US than we
ddid ten years ago. That means a sizable fraction of the country is
physically further away from a bookstore than they used to be --
possibly hundreds of miles. Sure they can order online, but online still
isn't a good place to *browse* books, and possibly never will be.)
Bradford Holden
> The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain
Because of how my brain is wired, I always read that as
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mr. Bond.
--
Bradford Holden
"I think the key here is not to name space probes after
cute-but-kind-of-annoying-small-dogs. I fully expect the Belgian
Space Program's moon lander 'Bichon Frise' to crash and burn."
Andrew Wheeler
If you think Jordan delivers his books consistently at one-year
intervals, I have a hollow laugh for you.
I haven't tracked Ringo, so I'll have to give you that one.
I can say nothing about Anthony.
But Turtledove (possibly because he has three daughters that he needs to
put through college any second now), publishes something like four
novels a year, and has probably five very different series going at the
same time (including one under a pretty transparent pseudonym). They're
not all to my taste, b ut some of them are very good, and -- besides all
being roughly within the "alternate history" genre -- have very little
in common with each other.
David Dyer-Bennet
> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> writes:
>>
>> > David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>> >>
>> >> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>> >>
>> >> > On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:18:48 +0000, BPRAL22169 wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> Publishers don't pay any attention at all to what you buy -- they'r
>> >> >> emuch more interested in what the big chain bookstores buy.
>> >>
>> >> > How do the big chain bookstores decide what to buy, if it isn't what their
>> >> > customers are buying?
>> >>
>> >> It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
>> >> customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
>> >> what they *think* their customers will buy.
>> >
>> > But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
>> > as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
>> > stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
>>
>> But their SF section is a very small fraction of what I routinely
>> browse at Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven Books. And the customers of the
>> superstores cannot, of course, buy what's not on the shelves.
>
> And how many SF specialty stores were there, ever? Two or three dozen,
> across North America? One or two for each reasonably big city? That
> means very little to most of the population, who can only reach the
> stores near them.
I've certainly never heard of that many, even.
However, the question wasn't whether people had access to a store that
good; the question was whether the superstores stocked pretty much
everything in print. If the specialty stores have *significantly*
more different SF books than the superstores, that looks like evidence
that the superstores do NOT, in fact, stock pretty much everything in
print, at least in SF/Fantasy.
> (I'm personally more worried about the death of the mall stores, which
> means that we have fewer -- though larger -- stores in the US than we
> ddid ten years ago. That means a sizable fraction of the country is
> physically further away from a bookstore than they used to be --
> possibly hundreds of miles. Sure they can order online, but online still
> isn't a good place to *browse* books, and possibly never will be.)
Seems weird that the mall stores are dieing in locations where there's
no competition. And, as you say, bad both for the people and the
industry. Those were the mall stores that made people *happy* when
they appeared. (As opposed to the B.Dalton's that forced Books Galore
out of their lease in the funny little mall over on Minnehaha Ave.,
and then closed after a few yeras. Books Galore was another Don Blyly
store, along with Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's.)
Matt Hughes
> Where you need the good review is LJ and PW -- that's what helps get
> books into the bookstores and libraries in the first place.
The books went out. Every copy of the first print run was shipped,
but 12,000 copies add up to a pretty small blip. The first book got a
good review in PW, not starred but positive. Plus Interzone, Locus,
Science Fiction Chronicle, yadda yadda.
I still think visibility was the missing factor. So, in anticipation
of the hardcover coming out from Tor in November, I've been beavering
away writing short stuff. So far, I've sold four stories to F&SF and
one to Asimov's, most of which ought to see print before the book
comes out. If that doesn't work, I may take myself hostage and issue
demands.
Matt Hughes
http://mars.ark.com/~mhughes/
Next novel, Black Brillion (Tor, November)
Next story, Mastermindless (F&SF, March)
BPRAL22169
>So, in other words, there's *always* been something to complain about?
>(That was my point.)
No, you miss the point of the observation entirely: In 1980 there never had
been a dying off of the midlist in publishing history. The midlist could, by
and large, not make a living from book sales, but that was acepted as "just the
way it was," and it was a feature of the economics of publising that evolved
over the past century and a half.
The conglomeratization of the publishing industry brought new economic features
to the industry, among them the "death of the midlist."
Bill
Peter D. Tillman
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> Mike Schilling wrote:
> >
> > "Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
> > > >
> > > > success, and books that don't meet those criteria have a hard time
> > > > succeeding.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's true. Books that don't fit those preconceived ideas never
> > > succeed. There never was a _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_.
> > > Or a _Cold Mountain_. Or an _Tuesdays With Morrie_. Or _The Firm_. Or
> > > _Everything Is Illuminated_. Or _Midnight In the Garden of Good and
> > > Evil._
> > >
> > > As a matter of fact, there's at least one every season.
> > One out of how many books published? I did say "hard", not "impossible".
>
> Something that happens regularly, is, by definition, not that hard to
> do. It may be hard to *predict*, but that's a different question.
>
> Interestingly, there was a column on this exact subject in the UK paper
> _The Guardian_ very recently -- you could read it at
> http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0%2C6109%2C1119717%2C00.html.
Thanks, Andrew. Those darn readers!
Obviously, there are aquiring editors who run a hot hand for awhile, but
my impression is, few can maintain a long streak.
I would think that "buy what you like" is a good rule. Then, when you've
bought 3 or 4 expensive clunkers, change jobs.... <G>
Incidentally, this is a good place to plug Donald Westlake's _A Likely
Story_, his "how not to publish a bestseller" guide. It's *wonderful*,
Westlake at his comedic best. The writer-protag's um, unusual love-life
makes for wonderfully silly bedroom-farce, and his troubles in the book
biz sound like Westlake rounded up every bad thing that ever happened to
him, or that he'd ever heard of. All this plus an unexpectedly sweet
ending. If you like Westlake, books, or bedroom farce, this one's for
you. "A", maybe "A+".
And thanks again to James Nicoll for recommending this -- I'd somehow
overlooked it. OOP, of course, like all good, funny books....
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
And how is Martha Grimes' new book-biz bash?
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Peter D. Tillman
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> > It sounds like you're missing something very basic about retail -- the
> > customers *cannot* buy something the store *does not* buy. Stores buy
> > what they *think* their customers will buy.
>
> But superstores carry, roughly, *everything*. They don't have POD books
> as a rule, true. And they scant some tiny presses. But those big box
> stores have on the order of a hundred thousand *titles* in stock.
>
Hmm. I can only speak to my personal experience, but the big bookstore
here (Tucson), prior to Borders/B&N, carried on the order of 150,000
titles. This was the Bookmark, and it wasn't a posh store(!), but boy
did they have the books, including an excellent SF section, whose buyer
had tastes much like mine. Heaven. Barbara Kingsolver has a paen to the
Bookmark in one of her essay collxns.
So, the 100,000 title stocks in the big-box stores (which drove the
Bookmark out of business, sigh) were a big step BACK in this market.
Even though the new stores are more pleasant, and more comfortable, and
clearly are more to the average customer's taste.
How many books are there in print, on average, now?
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
I want to live in Theory. Everything works in Theory....
Andrew Wheeler
It was in the late '70s and early '80s that a midlist writer (at least
some of them) became to *be* able to make a living at writing. If that's
the immediate effect of corporatization, I don't see how that is bad for
the writer now making a semi-living wage from his writing.
And there probably *had* been major dyings-off before 1980, but (since I
was only 11 then) I don't know much about them. Certainly westerns had
crashed at least once before that, and mysteries were on a boom-bust
cycle before the '80s as well. I'll also mention the late '50s magazine
crash which drove many writers from the field -- some for years, some
for good.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> writes:
>
> > (I'm personally more worried about the death of the mall stores, which
> > means that we have fewer -- though larger -- stores in the US than we
> > ddid ten years ago. That means a sizable fraction of the country is
> > physically further away from a bookstore than they used to be --
> > possibly hundreds of miles. Sure they can order online, but online still
> > isn't a good place to *browse* books, and possibly never will be.)
>
> Seems weird that the mall stores are dieing in locations where there's
> no competition. And, as you say, bad both for the people and the
> industry. Those were the mall stores that made people *happy* when
> they appeared. (As opposed to the B.Dalton's that forced Books Galore
> out of their lease in the funny little mall over on Minnehaha Ave.,
> and then closed after a few yeras. Books Galore was another Don Blyly
> store, along with Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's.)
The mall stores aren't growing in sales, generally; they don't have room
for author events; they're often stuck in the big shopping district of
fifteen years ago; they have been in place long enough to see their
rents go up -- there are all sorts of reasons that they're being closed.
I think they all boil down to "this is considered a declining market,
and we're closing X number of stores a year" -- the number is then
filled up with marginal stores whose leases are up and stores whose
sales are at the bottom of the charts.
And the chains aren't *opening* new mall stores, just superstores. So a
market too small to support a superstore is likely to end up without any
store at all.
Bill Snyder
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>Bill Snyder wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 01:29:47 GMT, Andrew Wheeler
>> <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Prediction works best with predictable things. Every new book is
>> >different, which makes all kinds of projections problematic. If authors
>> >would just buckle down and write *exactly* the same kind of book all the
>> >time (and deliver it at exactly the same time each year), we might be
>> >able to finally get clean data. (Who wants to go first?)
>>
>> At last report, it's a dead heat between Robert Jordan, John Ringo,
>> Piers Anthony, and Harry Turtledove.
>
>If you think Jordan delivers his books consistently at one-year
>intervals, I have a hollow laugh for you.
I was so strongly struck by the "*exactly* the same kind of book" part
when writing that, that I'm afraid I rather ignored the parenthetical
qualifier.
>
>I haven't tracked Ringo, so I'll have to give you that one.
>
>I can say nothing about Anthony.
>
>But Turtledove (possibly because he has three daughters that he needs to
>put through college any second now), publishes something like four
>novels a year, and has probably five very different series going at the
>same time (including one under a pretty transparent pseudonym). They're
>not all to my taste, b ut some of them are very good, and -- besides all
>being roughly within the "alternate history" genre -- have very little
>in common with each other.
Could you name two or three of his recent books that you consider
good? I promise to at least thumb through them at the bookstore. Me,
I gave up on him partway through his Nth rehash of WWII, the one in
the magickal world that begins with the Not-Germans marching into what
I think was the Not-Sudetenland.
I enjoyed his early short stories and most of the Videssos stuff; but
his insistence in later works on having a Cast of Thousands and
intercutting madly between them prevents me from developing any
empathy with his characters. They don't strike me even as cardboard;
tissue paper maybe.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Louann Miller
wrote:
>>But Turtledove (possibly because he has three daughters that he needs to
>>put through college any second now), publishes something like four
>>novels a year, and has probably five very different series going at the
>>same time (including one under a pretty transparent pseudonym). They're
>>not all to my taste, b ut some of them are very good, and -- besides all
>>being roughly within the "alternate history" genre -- have very little
>>in common with each other.
>
>Could you name two or three of his recent books that you consider
>good? I promise to at least thumb through them at the bookstore. Me,
>I gave up on him partway through his Nth rehash of WWII
"Ruled Britannia" is very good. The more you know about Shakespeare
and the Elizabethans, the funnier it is. Particularly good if you
happen to know any Marlovians* whom you want to torment.
Louann
* People who hold that Shakespeare didn't write the plays of William
Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
--
The full text of the 2003 evolution debate between Nowhere Man and Lilith
can be found at http://www.geocities.com/chastity403/debate/nm-lilith-1/
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 22:59:12 -0600, Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net>
>wrote:
>
>>>But Turtledove (possibly because he has three daughters that he needs to
>>>put through college any second now), publishes something like four
>>>novels a year, and has probably five very different series going at the
>>>same time (including one under a pretty transparent pseudonym). They're
>>>not all to my taste, b ut some of them are very good, and -- besides all
>>>being roughly within the "alternate history" genre -- have very little
>>>in common with each other.
>>
>>Could you name two or three of his recent books that you consider
>>good? I promise to at least thumb through them at the bookstore. Me,
>>I gave up on him partway through his Nth rehash of WWII
>
>"Ruled Britannia" is very good. The more you know about Shakespeare
>and the Elizabethans, the funnier it is. Particularly good if you
>happen to know any Marlovians* whom you want to torment.
I did in fact glance through the first few pages of that one; it
seemed decent, but I couldn't bring myself to give him another chance
at hardback prices. Is it out in PB yet?
>* People who hold that Shakespeare didn't write the plays of William
>Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
>by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
Isn't there at least one conspiracy theory, or maybe I should say one
_other_ conspiracy theory, to go with that? I dl'd _The Jew of Malta_
from Gutenberg some months ago, keep meaning to read it, keep putting
it off.
Louann Miller
wrote:
>>"Ruled Britannia" is very good. The more you know about Shakespeare
>>and the Elizabethans, the funnier it is. Particularly good if you
>>happen to know any Marlovians* whom you want to torment.
>
>I did in fact glance through the first few pages of that one; it
>seemed decent, but I couldn't bring myself to give him another chance
>at hardback prices. Is it out in PB yet?
I think it is, yes.
>>* People who hold that Shakespeare didn't write the plays of William
>>Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
>>by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
>
>Isn't there at least one conspiracy theory, or maybe I should say one
>_other_ conspiracy theory, to go with that? I dl'd _The Jew of Malta_
>from Gutenberg some months ago, keep meaning to read it, keep putting
>it off.
There's a newsgroup of those guys around here someplace. I went and
poked them with sticks once for a few weeks, but it got old fast.
Mike Schilling
"Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote in message
news:nb9c0054fpnnfj38p...@4ax.com...
> * People who hold that Shakespeare didn't write the plays of William
> Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
> by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
obSF: "He's spending the year dead, for tax purposes."
Dorothy J Heydt
Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:32:35 -0600, Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
>wrote:
>
>>and the Elizabethans, the funnier it is. Particularly good if you
>>happen to know any Marlovians* whom you want to torment.
>
>>Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
>>by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
>
>Isn't there at least one conspiracy theory, or maybe I should say one
>_other_ conspiracy theory, to go with that?
There are lots. The other fairly-famous one is that
Shakespeare's plays were really all written by Francis Bacon.
ObSF: in one of de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias stories (I
think it's the Inspector's False Teeth) a chase scene runs by a
meeting of a society devoted to proving that George Bernard Shaw
did not write *his* plays, they were really written by Winston
Churchill.
Churchill did write one piece of sf--well, alt-history anyway.
It's called "If Lee Had Lost at Gettysburg."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
J.B. Moreno
> obSF: "He's spending the year dead, for tax purposes."
OK, I know that one. Who said it?
(I know it, but can't get it to bubble to the top where I /know/ it know
it).
--
JBM
"Everything is futile." -- Marvin of Borg
David Silberstein
J.B. Moreno <pl...@newsreaders.com> wrote:
>Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> obSF: "He's spending the year dead, for tax purposes."
>
>OK, I know that one. Who said it?
>
Ford Prefect, reporting what Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard
told him about Hotblack Desiato.
Or, if you prefer, David Dixon.
Or, if you prefer, Douglas Adams.
David Silberstein
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <p5cc005j2h99t68ci...@4ax.com>,
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:32:35 -0600, Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Shakespeare but that Marlowe did instead. He was supposed to be dead
>>>by then, but they insist that was a fake to dodge some legal troubles.
>>
>>Isn't there at least one conspiracy theory, or maybe I should say one
>>_other_ conspiracy theory, to go with that?
>
>
>There are lots. The other fairly-famous one is that
>Shakespeare's plays were really all written by Francis Bacon.
The one I've heard about recently is that the real author was
Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
Now where did I put that link... Ah, found it:
http://www.adonis-editions.com/fingerprints.html
Lloyd Gilbert
Moreno) wrote:
>Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> obSF: "He's spending the year dead, for tax purposes."
>
>OK, I know that one. Who said it?
Ford Prefect, whilst relating to Zaphod, Arthur, and Trillian why his
old friend Hotblack Desiato didn't look too well at Milliways The
Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
>(I know it, but can't get it to bubble to the top where I /know/ it know
>it).
Happy to help.
Lloyd