To Close
Michon loses to Ram in a tight first set and a not so tight second. Not many weapons. Piña colada ice, Thai dinner.
8:50
Michon is sinister! I mean, a lefty!! Playing a lot to Ram's backhand and trying to construct points. On serve 4-3 in first set.
7:30 PM
Settling in for last full match of day. Could have watched Ricardo Hocevar and Carsten Ball on Court 6, but just didn't find either player all that exciting. So Court 13 has whenever seats, and I know nothing about the French player Axel Michon, who contends against American Rajeev Ram. So the match might be awful, but will have thrill of the new. Did watch a couple games of the Ashleigh Bart match whole waiting for this one to start.
6:50 PM
Shocker! Guccione is up 40-0 serving for a tiebreak at 5-6. And he loses. Five straight points to Pospisil. One is a winning lob off of a net cord, the kind of thing you can't teach that's about instinct and reaction and quick hands. The final point of the match is a double fault by Guccione, which is the srangest of ways to end a match that's been almost all about big booming serves.
6:40 PM
Gootch Guile. Serving at 4-5 Guccione starts to come to the net as often as he cans. This earns him two break points in the 5-5 service game, but Pospisil shows some poise and serves his way out. Another tiebreak moments away...
6:15 PM
Second game second set, Guccione faced two break points and four deuces, but Pospisil couldn't convert. On serve 2-1, but these three games have taken an entire 15 minutes!
6:00 PM
Pospisil wins in a tiebreak 7-5 to take the set 7-6. The latter half of the set had a little more danger with 40-30 games but no deuces or break points. Pospisil clearly has the better ground strokes than Guccione and with his own potent serve is a definite threat and likely to move up quickly. That said, lots of people in the men's game have really strong serves, he hasn't made much of a dent on Guccione's and may be up a set but hardly has this match in hand. The first set flew by in under 45 minutes, a set that goes to a tiebreak will often be an hour long affair, sometimes more, 45 minutes shows how quick these points and games have been.
5:35 PM
different kind of dull, both players have great serves, would be great if there was a radar gun here, neither doing much on the return games, so holding serve 4-3 no break points hardly any rallies.
5:15 PM
So I have no interest in seeing Australian Chris Guccione who has been around a bit without making an impression, but his young Cacadian opponent Vasek Pospisil is supposed to be an up and comer. He had some wins over the summer in main draw, and is the #20 seed in the qualifying.
5:00 PM
Match on Court 10 dull, watching a bit on Court 5 while I wait for things to get underway on Court 6. This is Ireland's Lpuk Sorensen against Spain's Arnau Brugues- Davi. Sorensen won first set in tiebreak. On serve early in 2nd.
4:55
big wooden boxes containing the ESPN "Steve Set," which has magically appeared since yesterday on a platform next to Arthur Ashe stadium entrance.
4:10
what a letdown, the third set went down 6-1 in about as much time as doing my post about the match.
Hard to know when Canadian up and comer Vasek Pospisil will start on Court 6, so I am on Court 10 for the start of Charles-Antoine Brezac (France) vs Daniel Kosakowski (US). If good watch all of it then Australian 15-year old Ashleigh Barty, who is recommended to me by Australian writer Joel Shepherd, will follow. If I don't like this match, will check Court 6 after first set.
3:55 PM
Capdeville now up two breaks. Epic is fizzling in its third act.
Thing I hate most about iPad is that it wants to turn every its into an it's.
3:40 PM
Finally have my epic!
Naso wonmy second match pretty handily, but in a high quality way. In the key games in the second set, both players were winning points with good clean winners.
There was only one choice of match after, which wad the Chilean journeyman Paul Capdeville in warmups on Court 13. Capdeville has been around forever and rarely above the ranks of qualifiers. But at least it was Court 13 with the nice endzone seating, and playing an Israeli, Amir Weintraub, so an opportunity to exorcise Jewish guilt.
It's been a lot of good tennis from both sides. Weintraub went upan early break, frustrating Capdeville, who is the #2 seed and expects to advance But Weintraub couldn't hold on and then played an amazingly sloppy game to cough up the set 6-4 to Capdeville.
At 2-2 in the second set it was Capdeville who got sloppy, but Weintraub then wnetdown 0-40 on his own serve game, came back to deuce, but ultimately lost the game and we stayed even into a tiebreak. Weintraub there had at least three match points at 6-2 orr 6-3, lost them all, but this time recovered to take the breaker 9-7.
So now we are in a third set, but Weintraub again lost focus getting instantly broken in the first game of the final set. Ultimately focus or lack thereof is the difference in the match. Multiple long rallies have ended with a complete mishit by Weintraub, ten or twelve at least. He has had consistent trouble allowing himself to hold an advantage. I do not know if Capdeville is actually better, but he has vast reservoirs of match experience and can take this when its being offered.
1PM
First match ended with a 6-0 second set, ended so early the only choice of next match was next door on Court 5 where another match went by real quick. So I am watching two Italians, Gianluca Naso and Thomas Fabbiano, in a match that looks like an instant replay. Naso had two breaks to take first set 6-2 though it seems it should be closer. Lots of long rallies and good tennis, just that one player is ending up on the winning side way more consistently. One thing for sure, I haven't chosen any great epic matches so far!
11:47 AM
Ilhan has just taken first set 6-2. High quality, both players look good, Ilhan does look 6-2 better.
11:45 AM
is the man two rows back helping, raring or evaluating the ballpersons?
11:25 AM
I got a watermelon ice from the Lemon Ice King onmy way out. Nothing exciting at the Barnes & Noble. Typically mediocre service at Unos, adding ten to twenty minutes to the meal, but the food was what I wanted.
The weather yesterday was about as perfect as you could want for tennis. Around 78, low humidity, gorgeous. Can't remember when I have visited a water fountain less. Today is a few degrees higher and definitely more humid but still comfy, tomorrow more heat and humidity and a chance of a thunderstorm.
Rarely are the first round qualifying matches great tennis, and yestefay was no exception. But none of the matches were actually dull.
Today was a mint chip morning.
I am settled in on Court 4 watching #3 seed Marsel Ilhan from Turkey against Poland's Marcin Gawron. Looks like some high quality tennis, albeit with a strong chance for trading breaks of serve in the opening games... Yep, traded as I post.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tennis, Anyone, Day 1
& to close...
Romboli lost the second set 6-1 as well. Odd thing is, I think the match was closer than the score line in this case. It's just that Romboli was making a lot of errors, some inexplicable and some because Jaziri was hitting a very low ball a lot of times that wasn't easy to pick up and get back over net going the other way, but fewer errors it at least would have been a much tighter match.
After that, I watched another American who, Blake Strode, playing against a Serb, Nikola Ciric, in the last act of the second set. I chose this match over another men's match that was midway through because Court 13 has elevated endzone seating that gives a great view of the match, and I'd gone through the day without seeing anything on one of those three courts. Strode won, 6-3 and then in a tiebreak. I'm not surprised Stode is still struggling through the qualies in his mid-20s, however.
Looking at the far court, he seemed awfully spindly for a tennis player. When he came to the near court, I could see that the thigh muscles weren't that much smaller if any than everyone else you see with pro tennis player physique, but the ankles are like toothpicks. One of them was taped up. I doubt he can hold up to the rigors of the tour without really strengthening the ankles quite a bit.
No more men's matches, I watched half a set of one women's match, could have watched more of another final match still going at 8:55, but decided I'd push off. Once upon a time bookstores were open to 11PM, now the B&N in Forest Hills is one of many that don't stay open that late, and if I was going to get over to it and then enjoy an Unos dinner in Forest Hills, couldn't stay. This was probably a good call. Checking the score now I see that the match which hadn't yet finished set #2 went into a 3rd set, which went 72 minutes. So, yes, I would have been at the tennis center til after 10pm and gotten a medal for staying the entire day, but I think the viewing experience would have been torturous.
7:38 PM
Next door on court 6 we had just in its first game Fernando Romboli of Brazil against Tunisian Malik Jaziri, so that's where I am now. Both players seem solid and energetic, but after losing the first set 6-1 Romboli has gone to regroup on a bathroom break.
7:35 PM
The match of the day for me was 4th up on Court 8, featuring Jerzy Janowicz from Poland, the #18 seed and a player I'd watched and enjoyed last year. Very young, good serve, decent ground strokes, not yet fully formed but you think can grow into a better game. He didn't qualify last year but came close, he's had a few main draw matches over the year since. I roamed the grounds and kept an eye on the women's match preceding on the court, glad it didn't go to a third set.
Well, his opponent was a Dutchman, Matwe Middelkoop, and by the end of the match my allegiances had shifted.
Janowicz played one abysmal game in the first set, double faulting at least twice, and lost the set 6-3.
The second set was hard fought, tight, went to a close tiebreak that Janowicz pulled out 7-5.
But over the two sets I wasn't seeing any spark, any sign he was doing anything better this year than last. Which isn't what you want to see in a player this young. Middelkoop wasn't playing great, but he was playing a solid, calm, controlled game, good and relaxed court presence and no mistakes.
Janowicz went down a break early in the third set and the outcome seemed clear. Hadn't had even a break point against Middelkoop that I could recall. Janowicz knew it. He started gently dropping his racket three times on a trip down the baseline.
Final score 6-3 7-6 (5) 6-2 Middelkoop.
Maybe just a bad day at the office for Janowicz, tennis players can have the match of their lives and they can have the anti-match. But I have to entertain the prospect that Janowicz may be a journeyman in training instead of a rising young star. Neither player, I think, does well against a Richard Berankis or an Evgeny Donskoy no matter how close the rankings of the day might look.
5:48 PM
Chair umpire Carlos Ramos has just taken the next seat over from me watching on Court 8!
4:45 PM
Gael Monfils doing pushups after a practice session on Grandstand.
4:20 PM
2nd set was a tad more competitive than the first, Ebden won 6-3 with ine break, but not as competitive seeming as that score might suggest. Hanging out at Court 6now, watching the highly regarded Lithuanian and #12 seed Richard Berankis closing out Spaniard Guillermo Alcaide. I came in start of second set, first went to Berankis 6-2, and the 2nd set may be the same. I was right on the Fratangelo match, 2nd set was also a 6-2 win for Wolmarans.
3:35 PM
Ebden match is a demolition derby, he gave Lemke a bagel (6-0) in the first set. Not much fun to watch, thou you can tell Ebden is good hard to tell how good when so little opposition on offer.
3:30 PM
So it wasn't kids shaking the stands. I didn't notice so much but the Richmond earthquake was felt at the tennis center. Begemann won a pointing to the Ebden match, Ebden up a break in first set.
3:10 PM
Wolmarans won first set 6-2, up a break in second. As a rule I watch full matches but have left that behind to see #14 seed from Australia, Matthew Ebden, playing James Lemke, another Aussie. While I wait for that on Court 15 taking a quick look in on Court 14 where Michael Venus from New Zealand is probably about to lose to Andre Begemann from Germany. Did I watch Begemann last year? As to Fratangelo, he isn't bad but Wolmarans is simply better, at net and on serve and I felt pretty safe leaving Court 7 that no miracles were in store.
2:15 PM
The match on Court 12 ended 6-2 Jouan in a game where all the points were decided on unforced errors, I.e., people making mistakes instead of great shots. Matsukevich had four of those errors to get broken. Basically, not very good tennis. Match time around an hour or so, Da Silva would beat either. Delic on Court 7 is around 30, now plays as a Bosnian instead of an American. His opponent from Russia is the 24th seed and in his very early 20s. Final set was a bust, Delic's game collapsed leading him to a ball abuse warning and I believe a point penalty for racket abuse. I was rooting for Donskoy, shall we say, hard to judge his game when his opponent's was going so far south. The first set was won by Delic in a tiebreak with at least four breaks of serve along the way. Final score 6-7 6-4 6-2. I am staying at court 7 to watch another young American, Bjorn Fratangelo, against Fritz Wolmarans from South Africa.
1:45 pm
settling in for final set of Amer Delic (US) and Evgeny Donskoy (Russia).
1:10 Matsukevich complaining to chair ump, likely since there is now even louder work being done by the "Chase Center" sign atop the nearby indoor tennis center.
12:55 PM
Jouan has the first set 6-2, but in a way I feel Matsukevich has been dictating the play with his errors, and that if he plays tighter it is still anyone's match. Court 12 is adjacent to the new small show court and there is a man two feet away drilling in concrete to make for a convivial tennis playing atmosphere. When I arrived at this court I was next to Jack Sock, an up and coming US player with a wild card into the main draw.
12:40 PM
I am on Cort 12 now, watching Russian Denis Matsukevich against Romain Jouan from France. Chose this because it was still in the first game when I was looking for a new match, so counts as a full. Jouan is up an early break 3-0 in first set.
12:35
Da Silva won in a tight 8-6 2nd set tiebreak. Good match.
11:50
Next page in the paper of man next to me is a USTASHI Line Evaluation Form. Isn't "evaluate" more a synonym for "rate" than for "help?". First set tonDa Silva 6-4. On serve in second, Da Silva just came to net, now 2-2 in 2nd set.
11:36 AM
Da Silva to serve for set. Man next to me in stands making notes tells me he isn't rating the lines people, he is "helping" them. I must remember that nice euphemism.
11:25 AM
The US Open is allowing iPads, so I can blog during the tennis day!
Though I niw live a mile further from the Tennis Center, Google Maps found me the quickest route to the Lemon Ice King of Corona, which makes up for it. Large vanilla chip.
On the grounds, a small new show court is now where courts 17 and 18 once were. The video boards on the grounds are working from day one instead of being tested, which will make it easier to check matches in progress as the day progresses. Armstrong and the Grandstand are open for people to watch practices from day one as wel.
I am on Court 6, watching the #5 men's seed Rogerio Dutra Da Silva from Brazil against Clement Raix, from France. Raix just double faulted to go down a break on the first set. I like that he is coming into net now and again However, in the early going Da Silva is clearly the better player and serving quite quite well, maybe even half a dozen aces in the first six games.
Romboli lost the second set 6-1 as well. Odd thing is, I think the match was closer than the score line in this case. It's just that Romboli was making a lot of errors, some inexplicable and some because Jaziri was hitting a very low ball a lot of times that wasn't easy to pick up and get back over net going the other way, but fewer errors it at least would have been a much tighter match.
After that, I watched another American who, Blake Strode, playing against a Serb, Nikola Ciric, in the last act of the second set. I chose this match over another men's match that was midway through because Court 13 has elevated endzone seating that gives a great view of the match, and I'd gone through the day without seeing anything on one of those three courts. Strode won, 6-3 and then in a tiebreak. I'm not surprised Stode is still struggling through the qualies in his mid-20s, however.
Looking at the far court, he seemed awfully spindly for a tennis player. When he came to the near court, I could see that the thigh muscles weren't that much smaller if any than everyone else you see with pro tennis player physique, but the ankles are like toothpicks. One of them was taped up. I doubt he can hold up to the rigors of the tour without really strengthening the ankles quite a bit.
No more men's matches, I watched half a set of one women's match, could have watched more of another final match still going at 8:55, but decided I'd push off. Once upon a time bookstores were open to 11PM, now the B&N in Forest Hills is one of many that don't stay open that late, and if I was going to get over to it and then enjoy an Unos dinner in Forest Hills, couldn't stay. This was probably a good call. Checking the score now I see that the match which hadn't yet finished set #2 went into a 3rd set, which went 72 minutes. So, yes, I would have been at the tennis center til after 10pm and gotten a medal for staying the entire day, but I think the viewing experience would have been torturous.
7:38 PM
Next door on court 6 we had just in its first game Fernando Romboli of Brazil against Tunisian Malik Jaziri, so that's where I am now. Both players seem solid and energetic, but after losing the first set 6-1 Romboli has gone to regroup on a bathroom break.
7:35 PM
The match of the day for me was 4th up on Court 8, featuring Jerzy Janowicz from Poland, the #18 seed and a player I'd watched and enjoyed last year. Very young, good serve, decent ground strokes, not yet fully formed but you think can grow into a better game. He didn't qualify last year but came close, he's had a few main draw matches over the year since. I roamed the grounds and kept an eye on the women's match preceding on the court, glad it didn't go to a third set.
Well, his opponent was a Dutchman, Matwe Middelkoop, and by the end of the match my allegiances had shifted.
Janowicz played one abysmal game in the first set, double faulting at least twice, and lost the set 6-3.
The second set was hard fought, tight, went to a close tiebreak that Janowicz pulled out 7-5.
But over the two sets I wasn't seeing any spark, any sign he was doing anything better this year than last. Which isn't what you want to see in a player this young. Middelkoop wasn't playing great, but he was playing a solid, calm, controlled game, good and relaxed court presence and no mistakes.
Janowicz went down a break early in the third set and the outcome seemed clear. Hadn't had even a break point against Middelkoop that I could recall. Janowicz knew it. He started gently dropping his racket three times on a trip down the baseline.
Final score 6-3 7-6 (5) 6-2 Middelkoop.
Maybe just a bad day at the office for Janowicz, tennis players can have the match of their lives and they can have the anti-match. But I have to entertain the prospect that Janowicz may be a journeyman in training instead of a rising young star. Neither player, I think, does well against a Richard Berankis or an Evgeny Donskoy no matter how close the rankings of the day might look.
5:48 PM
Chair umpire Carlos Ramos has just taken the next seat over from me watching on Court 8!
4:45 PM
Gael Monfils doing pushups after a practice session on Grandstand.
4:20 PM
2nd set was a tad more competitive than the first, Ebden won 6-3 with ine break, but not as competitive seeming as that score might suggest. Hanging out at Court 6now, watching the highly regarded Lithuanian and #12 seed Richard Berankis closing out Spaniard Guillermo Alcaide. I came in start of second set, first went to Berankis 6-2, and the 2nd set may be the same. I was right on the Fratangelo match, 2nd set was also a 6-2 win for Wolmarans.
3:35 PM
Ebden match is a demolition derby, he gave Lemke a bagel (6-0) in the first set. Not much fun to watch, thou you can tell Ebden is good hard to tell how good when so little opposition on offer.
3:30 PM
So it wasn't kids shaking the stands. I didn't notice so much but the Richmond earthquake was felt at the tennis center. Begemann won a pointing to the Ebden match, Ebden up a break in first set.
3:10 PM
Wolmarans won first set 6-2, up a break in second. As a rule I watch full matches but have left that behind to see #14 seed from Australia, Matthew Ebden, playing James Lemke, another Aussie. While I wait for that on Court 15 taking a quick look in on Court 14 where Michael Venus from New Zealand is probably about to lose to Andre Begemann from Germany. Did I watch Begemann last year? As to Fratangelo, he isn't bad but Wolmarans is simply better, at net and on serve and I felt pretty safe leaving Court 7 that no miracles were in store.
2:15 PM
The match on Court 12 ended 6-2 Jouan in a game where all the points were decided on unforced errors, I.e., people making mistakes instead of great shots. Matsukevich had four of those errors to get broken. Basically, not very good tennis. Match time around an hour or so, Da Silva would beat either. Delic on Court 7 is around 30, now plays as a Bosnian instead of an American. His opponent from Russia is the 24th seed and in his very early 20s. Final set was a bust, Delic's game collapsed leading him to a ball abuse warning and I believe a point penalty for racket abuse. I was rooting for Donskoy, shall we say, hard to judge his game when his opponent's was going so far south. The first set was won by Delic in a tiebreak with at least four breaks of serve along the way. Final score 6-7 6-4 6-2. I am staying at court 7 to watch another young American, Bjorn Fratangelo, against Fritz Wolmarans from South Africa.
1:45 pm
settling in for final set of Amer Delic (US) and Evgeny Donskoy (Russia).
1:10 Matsukevich complaining to chair ump, likely since there is now even louder work being done by the "Chase Center" sign atop the nearby indoor tennis center.
12:55 PM
Jouan has the first set 6-2, but in a way I feel Matsukevich has been dictating the play with his errors, and that if he plays tighter it is still anyone's match. Court 12 is adjacent to the new small show court and there is a man two feet away drilling in concrete to make for a convivial tennis playing atmosphere. When I arrived at this court I was next to Jack Sock, an up and coming US player with a wild card into the main draw.
12:40 PM
I am on Cort 12 now, watching Russian Denis Matsukevich against Romain Jouan from France. Chose this because it was still in the first game when I was looking for a new match, so counts as a full. Jouan is up an early break 3-0 in first set.
12:35
Da Silva won in a tight 8-6 2nd set tiebreak. Good match.
11:50
Next page in the paper of man next to me is a USTASHI Line Evaluation Form. Isn't "evaluate" more a synonym for "rate" than for "help?". First set tonDa Silva 6-4. On serve in second, Da Silva just came to net, now 2-2 in 2nd set.
11:36 AM
Da Silva to serve for set. Man next to me in stands making notes tells me he isn't rating the lines people, he is "helping" them. I must remember that nice euphemism.
11:25 AM
The US Open is allowing iPads, so I can blog during the tennis day!
Though I niw live a mile further from the Tennis Center, Google Maps found me the quickest route to the Lemon Ice King of Corona, which makes up for it. Large vanilla chip.
On the grounds, a small new show court is now where courts 17 and 18 once were. The video boards on the grounds are working from day one instead of being tested, which will make it easier to check matches in progress as the day progresses. Armstrong and the Grandstand are open for people to watch practices from day one as wel.
I am on Court 6, watching the #5 men's seed Rogerio Dutra Da Silva from Brazil against Clement Raix, from France. Raix just double faulted to go down a break on the first set. I like that he is coming into net now and again However, in the early going Da Silva is clearly the better player and serving quite quite well, maybe even half a dozen aces in the first six games.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
B&N cuts back
So it's possible you've heard from different places, a blog somewhere or your editor trying to explain why your new offer is so low, that Barnes & Noble has cut back their orders.
Boy, are they!
B&N has long had a fixture called the New Mass Market Tower. It's the square thing that usually sits in the central aisle of the stores that's around six feet tall, four rows across and maybe eight or so down, with new mass market books.
A publisher pays to put your new mass market on the new mass market tower, of course B&N also has to agree they'd like it there because there are only so many books that can go on it over the course of the month and way more to choose from than that. But your publisher has to want it there.
And for all those years, it used to be that being on this fixture meant that pretty much every Barnes & Noble was going to get 8 copies of your new sf/fantasy book, other than for the really most awful stores for sf/fantasy where they would put in an initial order of 6 copies.
Those are nice numbers. You could certainly fill one pocket on the tower, maybe even fill two pockets, and maybe even have a copy or two left over to go back into the section.
Well, not any more.
Now a publisher is paying to get a book on to the New Mass Market Tower, and B&N is ordering 3 copies for the bad stores, 5 copies for somewhat better stores, dramatically fewer copies.
So, big picture, where once B&N might routinely have ordered 6000 copies in exchange for a New Mass Market Tower placement to cover store stock and a ready reserve for the warehouse, now it could be more like 4250 or 4500.
Little picture, let's look at those bad-in-genre stores that had gotten 6 copies and are now getting 3. Well, 3 isn't going to fill 2 pockets, so maybe you'll only get one. For thinner books, 3 copies might not even fill a pocket. Either way, there's no extra copy to go in section, so some dedicated genre fans who bee-line to the section might not notice your new book on the Tower. If one copy sells, all of a sudden there are only 2 copies in a pocket that can fit 3 or 4 so it's harder to see the book on the Tower, the display looks forlorn and lonely. B&N has a great supply chain and can get more copies of a new book from warehouse to store in a couple of days, but if demands at any of these stores is way stronger than expected you're still looking at maybe having only one copy for a day or two or maybe even going clean before the 72 hours it might take to get a box opened. To have this happening now... I can think of some B&Ns where demand might uptick because a nearby Borders has closed, it's a bad time to decide to be less robust in your ordering.
Will these things cost sales? Of course! If the initial order is down by 25%, if some stores are getting 50% fewer copies -- well, it doesn't matter if you have the same placement, this is going to have an effect.
But not to worry, you'll still find plenty of ways to accessorize your Nook.
Boy, are they!
B&N has long had a fixture called the New Mass Market Tower. It's the square thing that usually sits in the central aisle of the stores that's around six feet tall, four rows across and maybe eight or so down, with new mass market books.
A publisher pays to put your new mass market on the new mass market tower, of course B&N also has to agree they'd like it there because there are only so many books that can go on it over the course of the month and way more to choose from than that. But your publisher has to want it there.
And for all those years, it used to be that being on this fixture meant that pretty much every Barnes & Noble was going to get 8 copies of your new sf/fantasy book, other than for the really most awful stores for sf/fantasy where they would put in an initial order of 6 copies.
Those are nice numbers. You could certainly fill one pocket on the tower, maybe even fill two pockets, and maybe even have a copy or two left over to go back into the section.
Well, not any more.
Now a publisher is paying to get a book on to the New Mass Market Tower, and B&N is ordering 3 copies for the bad stores, 5 copies for somewhat better stores, dramatically fewer copies.
So, big picture, where once B&N might routinely have ordered 6000 copies in exchange for a New Mass Market Tower placement to cover store stock and a ready reserve for the warehouse, now it could be more like 4250 or 4500.
Little picture, let's look at those bad-in-genre stores that had gotten 6 copies and are now getting 3. Well, 3 isn't going to fill 2 pockets, so maybe you'll only get one. For thinner books, 3 copies might not even fill a pocket. Either way, there's no extra copy to go in section, so some dedicated genre fans who bee-line to the section might not notice your new book on the Tower. If one copy sells, all of a sudden there are only 2 copies in a pocket that can fit 3 or 4 so it's harder to see the book on the Tower, the display looks forlorn and lonely. B&N has a great supply chain and can get more copies of a new book from warehouse to store in a couple of days, but if demands at any of these stores is way stronger than expected you're still looking at maybe having only one copy for a day or two or maybe even going clean before the 72 hours it might take to get a box opened. To have this happening now... I can think of some B&Ns where demand might uptick because a nearby Borders has closed, it's a bad time to decide to be less robust in your ordering.
Will these things cost sales? Of course! If the initial order is down by 25%, if some stores are getting 50% fewer copies -- well, it doesn't matter if you have the same placement, this is going to have an effect.
But not to worry, you'll still find plenty of ways to accessorize your Nook.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Harlequin and e-royalties
There was a bit of controversy in June because Harlequin was sending out letters to "increase" their e-book royalty rates, but to levels that were in some instances less than what had become the industry standard. They've now sent out a second round response to some of the complaints that had been received, which I thought I'd comment upon.
The Harlequin offer is that they will pay the current industry standard of 25% of net receipts for books in their "single title" program. These are books that come out under Mira or Luna or other imprints that are under the branding of an imprint just like a Del Rey book from Random House or an Obsidian book from Penguin, but not under a broad 4-in-a-month numbered series umbrella like Harlequin Nocturne or Harlequin American. For in-series books, their offer is a scaled royalty of 15-20% of net receipts with escalations based on total digital revenue for the books. They explain this lower royalty by saying, essentially, that they are special. That their series are so heavily branded, and sales so dependent on the readership that buys their Harlequins every single month in their series of choice, that the author just isn't as important to the success of things.
If I had a stable of romance authors, I might say... Just in general, there are other publishers that have distinct marketplace impressions. Baen, Daw, Ace military SF, a Berkley Prime Crime book, these are some examples of publishers that have really strong identities in the marketplace. And even within a series there are books that will sell better or worse because of the identity of the author or quality of the manuscript. What if a book is first published as a series, the author takes off, Harlequin repackages outside the series to give the author a longer ongoing life resting more on the author name than series name? There are a gazillion other things that could be said about their offer, the letter explaining it.
But what fascinated me most is this part of the FAQ:
Q: When an older contract provides that the digital royalty is 50% of NAR [Net Receipts], how does that work in practice?
A: Our authors contract with Harlequin Books SA (“HBSA”), our related Swiss company. HBSA licenses the right to publish an author’s work in print and digital to our operating companies and to third party publishers, which then bring books to market in their country (incurring costs of translation, production, distribution, marketing, branding, etc.). In return, HBSA receives a license fee. The NAR is the license fee. For editions where the author is to be paid 50% of NAR, the author’s royalty is therefore 50% of the license fee received by HBSA. The license fees are expressed as a percentage of cover price. Historically they ranged from 6% to 8%. The author’s 50% share of that fee would then equal 3% to 4% of the cover price.
This is where Harlequin explains why it is better to get 15% or 25% of something, where you might otherwise think you are entitled to 50% of that exact same something.
Which -- guess what -- isn't entirely correct.
There are a lot of Harlequin contracts from the early 2000s that, per this FAQ, treat an e-book as a subsidiary right that Harlequin clearly has, but more as a right to be licensed to someone else instead of sold directly by Harlequin. Thus, instead of having a royalty rate, they lump those in with rights like book club or large print or audio that are most often, when given to a publisher, split 50/50 with the author. This is a general situation that pops up in publishing more often than you might think, when a publisher develops the capability to exploit a right that once required a third party.
The right to sub-license within Harlequin isn't as blanket a right or ability as the FAQ would suggest. Sometimes there will be language in a contract that says that licensing within the family has to be done on an arms-length basis, or on terms reflective of what one might get from licensing to a third party (loophole alert: who gets to decide what terms are reflective?), and even without the specific language there is a body of law on fiduciary duty that says you can't be too egregious in doing things that undercut the position of somebody who's entitled to a share of your income.
So let's look at how I as agent might discuss this FAQ, and what alternate answers might be given:
1. If you license your book to Rosetta Books, or to Open Road, or to eReads, you are going to get something like 50% of that third party e-book publisher's net receipts. If you go to Amazon's KDP platform, you might get 50% or 70% of the e-book list price that you establish less small deductions for delivery fees or the like.
2. If you're in the single title program, Harlequin is offering an industry standard royalty rate. You have a problem with that? And 25% is half of the 50% if Harlequin did all its e-books via Open Road, Rosetta, etc. There are many restrictions on using KDP and the similar e-book platforms, no major publishers are using those.
3. If you are in a Harlequin series, where they want to offer you a starting royalty rate of 15% of net receipts instead of the currently more customary 25%, things get a little more interesting but still to only a limited extent. The idea that you sign for 15% of net because it's better than the 3-4% of cover we'd have to pay under that 2002 contract doesn't look so good, but I'm sorry to say the argument isn't entirely that easy for the author or agent to make. As an example, if Harlequin did a broad license with an Open Road, can they say that some percentage of the customary e-book royalty was going to be allocated to granting Open Road the right to use Harlequin's series trademarks and branding, and that this was worth a fraction of the royalty? Probably, it might depend in part on just how much use or co-branding there was, but yes, there are probably ways to do this. Suddenly 50% of net receipts becomes 33% or 40% or 45% of net receipts that are actually allocated to the underlying rights to the book, the rest allocated toward use of the valuable branding or trademarks, and getting one-half of that would look very much like the offer Harlequin is making.
4. The biggest pitfall for Harlequin that I can see is on the question of whether it's a bona fide sublicense if Harlequin publishes a Harlequin e-book. The argument that can be made here is that Harlequin pays a full cover royalty in North American when their editors in NYC sign up a book for a contract that you negotiate with their Ontario-based contracts person, and that even if the contract is with Harlequin S.A. they don't claim that Harlequin S.A. is publishing the book under license to Harlequin in North America. If they don't make that claim for the mass market, how can they make it for the e-book? If that argument were successfully made, Harlequin might not be able to publish the e-book without having a specific royalty rate amended into these older contracts. Since that would be more of a Mexican stand-off, maybe Harlequin would sweeten their offer for the series titles.
5. But even then, there are alternative approaches Harlequin could take. As an example, the precedent is very much that not every Harlequin imprint around the globe does every book that Harlequin does in North America, so if they had e-books done through an Australian or British subsidiary that has a track record of exercising selectivity, and if the web sites that sell those e-books don't have tight territorial controls over where they sell...
In the course of publishing events, authors have made point #4s, and publishers have found point #5s. As an example, in the late 1990s (if memory serves) Harper settled an action over how much money Harper US received selling books to Harper Canada. If they sell the books to themselves for less, the net receipt is smaller, the author royalty is less. The authors "won" this, and Harper stopped selling books to Canada intracompany at artificially low rates. Then Harper decided to offer a lower royalty on those sales moving forward, and to be very firm on keeping to that lower royalty rate. The victory was ephemeral.
This post isn't to say that everyone rush to sign on Harlequin's dotted line, nor to say you rush to their attorney ready to make my point #4 regarding their 2002 contract. I'm admiring, in a way, because the Harlequin offer on series titles might be low, but at the same time just high enough that it's hard for the average author to say no. It's the velvet glove version of "make him an offer he can't refuse."
The Harlequin offer is that they will pay the current industry standard of 25% of net receipts for books in their "single title" program. These are books that come out under Mira or Luna or other imprints that are under the branding of an imprint just like a Del Rey book from Random House or an Obsidian book from Penguin, but not under a broad 4-in-a-month numbered series umbrella like Harlequin Nocturne or Harlequin American. For in-series books, their offer is a scaled royalty of 15-20% of net receipts with escalations based on total digital revenue for the books. They explain this lower royalty by saying, essentially, that they are special. That their series are so heavily branded, and sales so dependent on the readership that buys their Harlequins every single month in their series of choice, that the author just isn't as important to the success of things.
If I had a stable of romance authors, I might say... Just in general, there are other publishers that have distinct marketplace impressions. Baen, Daw, Ace military SF, a Berkley Prime Crime book, these are some examples of publishers that have really strong identities in the marketplace. And even within a series there are books that will sell better or worse because of the identity of the author or quality of the manuscript. What if a book is first published as a series, the author takes off, Harlequin repackages outside the series to give the author a longer ongoing life resting more on the author name than series name? There are a gazillion other things that could be said about their offer, the letter explaining it.
But what fascinated me most is this part of the FAQ:
Q: When an older contract provides that the digital royalty is 50% of NAR [Net Receipts], how does that work in practice?
A: Our authors contract with Harlequin Books SA (“HBSA”), our related Swiss company. HBSA licenses the right to publish an author’s work in print and digital to our operating companies and to third party publishers, which then bring books to market in their country (incurring costs of translation, production, distribution, marketing, branding, etc.). In return, HBSA receives a license fee. The NAR is the license fee. For editions where the author is to be paid 50% of NAR, the author’s royalty is therefore 50% of the license fee received by HBSA. The license fees are expressed as a percentage of cover price. Historically they ranged from 6% to 8%. The author’s 50% share of that fee would then equal 3% to 4% of the cover price.
This is where Harlequin explains why it is better to get 15% or 25% of something, where you might otherwise think you are entitled to 50% of that exact same something.
Which -- guess what -- isn't entirely correct.
There are a lot of Harlequin contracts from the early 2000s that, per this FAQ, treat an e-book as a subsidiary right that Harlequin clearly has, but more as a right to be licensed to someone else instead of sold directly by Harlequin. Thus, instead of having a royalty rate, they lump those in with rights like book club or large print or audio that are most often, when given to a publisher, split 50/50 with the author. This is a general situation that pops up in publishing more often than you might think, when a publisher develops the capability to exploit a right that once required a third party.
The right to sub-license within Harlequin isn't as blanket a right or ability as the FAQ would suggest. Sometimes there will be language in a contract that says that licensing within the family has to be done on an arms-length basis, or on terms reflective of what one might get from licensing to a third party (loophole alert: who gets to decide what terms are reflective?), and even without the specific language there is a body of law on fiduciary duty that says you can't be too egregious in doing things that undercut the position of somebody who's entitled to a share of your income.
So let's look at how I as agent might discuss this FAQ, and what alternate answers might be given:
1. If you license your book to Rosetta Books, or to Open Road, or to eReads, you are going to get something like 50% of that third party e-book publisher's net receipts. If you go to Amazon's KDP platform, you might get 50% or 70% of the e-book list price that you establish less small deductions for delivery fees or the like.
2. If you're in the single title program, Harlequin is offering an industry standard royalty rate. You have a problem with that? And 25% is half of the 50% if Harlequin did all its e-books via Open Road, Rosetta, etc. There are many restrictions on using KDP and the similar e-book platforms, no major publishers are using those.
3. If you are in a Harlequin series, where they want to offer you a starting royalty rate of 15% of net receipts instead of the currently more customary 25%, things get a little more interesting but still to only a limited extent. The idea that you sign for 15% of net because it's better than the 3-4% of cover we'd have to pay under that 2002 contract doesn't look so good, but I'm sorry to say the argument isn't entirely that easy for the author or agent to make. As an example, if Harlequin did a broad license with an Open Road, can they say that some percentage of the customary e-book royalty was going to be allocated to granting Open Road the right to use Harlequin's series trademarks and branding, and that this was worth a fraction of the royalty? Probably, it might depend in part on just how much use or co-branding there was, but yes, there are probably ways to do this. Suddenly 50% of net receipts becomes 33% or 40% or 45% of net receipts that are actually allocated to the underlying rights to the book, the rest allocated toward use of the valuable branding or trademarks, and getting one-half of that would look very much like the offer Harlequin is making.
4. The biggest pitfall for Harlequin that I can see is on the question of whether it's a bona fide sublicense if Harlequin publishes a Harlequin e-book. The argument that can be made here is that Harlequin pays a full cover royalty in North American when their editors in NYC sign up a book for a contract that you negotiate with their Ontario-based contracts person, and that even if the contract is with Harlequin S.A. they don't claim that Harlequin S.A. is publishing the book under license to Harlequin in North America. If they don't make that claim for the mass market, how can they make it for the e-book? If that argument were successfully made, Harlequin might not be able to publish the e-book without having a specific royalty rate amended into these older contracts. Since that would be more of a Mexican stand-off, maybe Harlequin would sweeten their offer for the series titles.
5. But even then, there are alternative approaches Harlequin could take. As an example, the precedent is very much that not every Harlequin imprint around the globe does every book that Harlequin does in North America, so if they had e-books done through an Australian or British subsidiary that has a track record of exercising selectivity, and if the web sites that sell those e-books don't have tight territorial controls over where they sell...
In the course of publishing events, authors have made point #4s, and publishers have found point #5s. As an example, in the late 1990s (if memory serves) Harper settled an action over how much money Harper US received selling books to Harper Canada. If they sell the books to themselves for less, the net receipt is smaller, the author royalty is less. The authors "won" this, and Harper stopped selling books to Canada intracompany at artificially low rates. Then Harper decided to offer a lower royalty on those sales moving forward, and to be very firm on keeping to that lower royalty rate. The victory was ephemeral.
This post isn't to say that everyone rush to sign on Harlequin's dotted line, nor to say you rush to their attorney ready to make my point #4 regarding their 2002 contract. I'm admiring, in a way, because the Harlequin offer on series titles might be low, but at the same time just high enough that it's hard for the average author to say no. It's the velvet glove version of "make him an offer he can't refuse."
Friday, July 29, 2011
Separation Anxiety
There just isn't much in my life so far that's leaving a hole in my existence the way the Borders bankruptcy is. Several years ago it would have been exciting on so many levels to see that Bouchercon is in Cleveland in 2012, and Albany in 2013. Never been to Cleveland, could have added at least a few Borders to my count, now I'm just looking at the date in early October and realizing I'd be going to Cleveland without even the chance of seeing a game at Jacobs Field, or whatever it is they're calling it these days. I need a new hobby, or something. And I can't see myself delighting in conquesting new art museums, or new Starbucks.
I wish B&N were any kind of a substitute, but it's not. And B&N is just getting more boring, less interesting, to me with each passing day. I've never liked their basic Front of Store fixturing as much, I hate those damned octagons. And they're reducing orders, reducing title counts. Their strength against Borders was that they did a better, more consistent job of stocking core series across a full range of their stores, they'd be the place that would have all the Deathstalker books and all the Blood books when Borders would be the place that had the weird gaps of not carrying books #1 and book #4 at various stores. Now I can't count on every B&N to have the entire Nightside series by Simon Green. Maybe I'm being old in my thinking, because Charlaine Harris and Brandon Sanderson and Peter Brett have stormed past my other clients, but I don't see Tanya Huff or Elizabeth Moon or Simon Green as doing appreciably worse now, not at all. They've been leapfrogged over, but I'm still reasonably certain that a typical B&N should have better selections on all three than they are. And even with Charlaine, B&N stopped carrying her Wolfsbane & Mistletoe anthology, which has been selling several dozen copies on Bookscan week-in and week-out without B&N, which means it should be at B&N.
So, no, I don't want to spend my life traveling around visiting B&Ns. With Borders, I could kind of afford to have the thrill of the hunt with walking into a bad one with a bad selection because at least I knew there was another chain with a more consistent selection, or maybe even a better Borders in the area. Now, if I visit a bad B&N, it'll just be depressing.
I wish B&N were any kind of a substitute, but it's not. And B&N is just getting more boring, less interesting, to me with each passing day. I've never liked their basic Front of Store fixturing as much, I hate those damned octagons. And they're reducing orders, reducing title counts. Their strength against Borders was that they did a better, more consistent job of stocking core series across a full range of their stores, they'd be the place that would have all the Deathstalker books and all the Blood books when Borders would be the place that had the weird gaps of not carrying books #1 and book #4 at various stores. Now I can't count on every B&N to have the entire Nightside series by Simon Green. Maybe I'm being old in my thinking, because Charlaine Harris and Brandon Sanderson and Peter Brett have stormed past my other clients, but I don't see Tanya Huff or Elizabeth Moon or Simon Green as doing appreciably worse now, not at all. They've been leapfrogged over, but I'm still reasonably certain that a typical B&N should have better selections on all three than they are. And even with Charlaine, B&N stopped carrying her Wolfsbane & Mistletoe anthology, which has been selling several dozen copies on Bookscan week-in and week-out without B&N, which means it should be at B&N.
So, no, I don't want to spend my life traveling around visiting B&Ns. With Borders, I could kind of afford to have the thrill of the hunt with walking into a bad one with a bad selection because at least I knew there was another chain with a more consistent selection, or maybe even a better Borders in the area. Now, if I visit a bad B&N, it'll just be depressing.
Friday, July 22, 2011
All in a day's work
So there are people in the world who wonder what an agent does and why an author might want one...
A couple months ago, a publisher came to us wanting to re-add e-book rights to an old contract, in which the e-book had to be published within x months and wasn't. The author wants to help out, we want to help out, we have an ongoing relationship with the publisher and want to support the newer books by the author. But I also pointed out to the author that there was an unearned advance of a few thousand dollars, that we'd get around $1.25 for each e-book sold, and we'd be a while in actually getting any royalties based on realistic expectations for the e-book sale. We ended up reaching an agreement with the publisher for the e-book to be separately accounted, so that print sales could still go against the advance, but it would be mutually beneficial for us to sign an amendment for the e-book edition.
[tying back to my last anniversary musing, the ultimate difference that Bill Baldwin and I had was this: I think if you're a professional writer that the goal is to make money, Bill that the goal is to have books in print, and the two are not always synonymous. This is an instance where the author's first instinct is to want to have the book available, and here I as agent was able to step in and find a way to bring the two goals closer together.]
We have our first contract with a big publisher. Big publisher is thinking they should no longer publisher children's books that they can't do an app for, because this is the big next new thing that people are talking about for children's books. Have they done any apps before? Not really. Are they definitely going to do an app for this book? Who knows. Do they know what they might include in the app if they were to do it it? Not really. But nonetheless, they have to have the rights. Big publisher wants to get the rights in the broadest way possible. The problem is that their broadest way possible will not make the general counsel at Big film studio happy if ever we are able to sell film rights, it probably won't make the publisher of any audio edition very happy, this app with who knows what that may or may not ever exist could make it impossible to sell other very valuable rights. So we have to go back multiple rounds with Big publisher to narrow the definition as much as we possibly can. Besides the back and forth with the publisher, when it becomes clear that the publisher is getting very insistent on having these rights, we need to talk to our client to have client support for the idea that the publisher has to come at least a certain way toward our position, or we will in fact say "no" to a decently sized advance. The ultimate resolution, we are still granting these rights to the publisher for the first time, and we're not very happy about it, and we really wish we weren't, but we've at least narrowed things down to the point where the definition is as narrow as it can be without saying "no," and we think narrow enough that if we ever have to discuss the contract with Big film studio, we should be able to do a film deal that will co-exist with the book deal.
Another publisher is very insistent on publishing books in the reverse order of the delivery dates in the contract. Hence, the author is delaying work on the revisions his editor requested on book #1 in order to have book #2 in early. Someone has to explain to the publisher that the author's delivery and acceptance advance on book #1 shouldn't be entirely held up because the publisher requested to have the other book in early.
These are some of the things we do to amuse ourselves during the workday.
There are bad agents who might not do any of these things. There are authors who have the knowledge and the inclination to do each of these things just as well or maybe better. But if you can't look yourself in the mirror and sincerely say to yourself that you would've held off on having an e-book edition just because it wouldn't make you money until 2017, or understood the conflict between the app rights and movie rights and dragged out your contract negotiation for rounds and weeks to protect yourself, and/or felt comfortable arguing when the publisher explained how it was like taking first born child to pay a delivery and acceptance advance for a book that hadn't had its revisions delivered and accepted, then you might conclude an agent can do some things for you.
A couple months ago, a publisher came to us wanting to re-add e-book rights to an old contract, in which the e-book had to be published within x months and wasn't. The author wants to help out, we want to help out, we have an ongoing relationship with the publisher and want to support the newer books by the author. But I also pointed out to the author that there was an unearned advance of a few thousand dollars, that we'd get around $1.25 for each e-book sold, and we'd be a while in actually getting any royalties based on realistic expectations for the e-book sale. We ended up reaching an agreement with the publisher for the e-book to be separately accounted, so that print sales could still go against the advance, but it would be mutually beneficial for us to sign an amendment for the e-book edition.
[tying back to my last anniversary musing, the ultimate difference that Bill Baldwin and I had was this: I think if you're a professional writer that the goal is to make money, Bill that the goal is to have books in print, and the two are not always synonymous. This is an instance where the author's first instinct is to want to have the book available, and here I as agent was able to step in and find a way to bring the two goals closer together.]
We have our first contract with a big publisher. Big publisher is thinking they should no longer publisher children's books that they can't do an app for, because this is the big next new thing that people are talking about for children's books. Have they done any apps before? Not really. Are they definitely going to do an app for this book? Who knows. Do they know what they might include in the app if they were to do it it? Not really. But nonetheless, they have to have the rights. Big publisher wants to get the rights in the broadest way possible. The problem is that their broadest way possible will not make the general counsel at Big film studio happy if ever we are able to sell film rights, it probably won't make the publisher of any audio edition very happy, this app with who knows what that may or may not ever exist could make it impossible to sell other very valuable rights. So we have to go back multiple rounds with Big publisher to narrow the definition as much as we possibly can. Besides the back and forth with the publisher, when it becomes clear that the publisher is getting very insistent on having these rights, we need to talk to our client to have client support for the idea that the publisher has to come at least a certain way toward our position, or we will in fact say "no" to a decently sized advance. The ultimate resolution, we are still granting these rights to the publisher for the first time, and we're not very happy about it, and we really wish we weren't, but we've at least narrowed things down to the point where the definition is as narrow as it can be without saying "no," and we think narrow enough that if we ever have to discuss the contract with Big film studio, we should be able to do a film deal that will co-exist with the book deal.
Another publisher is very insistent on publishing books in the reverse order of the delivery dates in the contract. Hence, the author is delaying work on the revisions his editor requested on book #1 in order to have book #2 in early. Someone has to explain to the publisher that the author's delivery and acceptance advance on book #1 shouldn't be entirely held up because the publisher requested to have the other book in early.
These are some of the things we do to amuse ourselves during the workday.
There are bad agents who might not do any of these things. There are authors who have the knowledge and the inclination to do each of these things just as well or maybe better. But if you can't look yourself in the mirror and sincerely say to yourself that you would've held off on having an e-book edition just because it wouldn't make you money until 2017, or understood the conflict between the app rights and movie rights and dragged out your contract negotiation for rounds and weeks to protect yourself, and/or felt comfortable arguing when the publisher explained how it was like taking first born child to pay a delivery and acceptance advance for a book that hadn't had its revisions delivered and accepted, then you might conclude an agent can do some things for you.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
An Anniversary Musing #8, Martial Law Pt 1
Military sf has been part of my existence as a literary agent for most of my career.
My first author in the genre was Bill Baldwin. Bill was a very, very successful author for Warner at a time when it didn't have a particularly successful sf program. There was Warner, then there was Questar, then there was Aspect, then there wasn't much, and eventually when the French publishing conglomerate Hachette came along and purchased Warner Books, they imported Tim Holman, who had done a great job building the Orbit UK list, moved the sf program from Warner to Little Brown/Grand Central, and have since had much better results. Not so back then, the Warner program wasn't much, and Bill and his Helmsman books were rare projects that would be displayed at the front of the bookstores. The Helmsman series was classic in its appeal, the lead character Wilf Brim a man's man of a space captain with a life full of women and adventure.
Working with Bill was one of the experiences that taught me that the first batches of royalty statements in the old days, before breaking out of reserves against returns, were good pretty much for toilet paper. The first statements would always be for really small numbers for books that were plastered at the front of bookstores, but mostly because there were 50% or 70% reserves or who knew how much, so if you looked just at those Bill was always magically in the midst of a collapsing career until two years later when the publisher stopped taking reserves and lo and behold the sales were nicely in line with all the earlier books.
When I went off on my own to start JABberwocky, Bill was incredibly supportive, except that he decided to go back to agent he had been with before joining Scott Meredith, who had lots of wonderful good ideas. Those ideas ended up being along the lines of "let's sell the next book in the Helmsman series!" Bill ended up coming back to the JABberwocky fold a few years later.
We still didn't have the best relationship. I tried hard to break him into the mainstream with a WWII thriller, but wasn't able to sell it. And I've always felt there are times that the best deals are the ones you don't do, that sometimes rights are valuable just sitting in the drawer until better things come along, while Bill really very much wanted to have his books "in print" even if it meant putting a book into iUniverse or with a smaller publisher on unfavorable terms. So we ended up parting ways again.
There would be an audience for the Helmsman books on Kindle, I expect. Those aren't available, but you can find the thriller of his that I wasn't able to sell available on Amazon, along with some of those small-press reissues and audios that I wasn't so fond of having. And if you think you like classic military sf, you'd probably have a good time with these.
Rick Shelley was my next military sf author. He'd started his career with stories in Analog and in Terry Carr's Universe anthologies (if you don't know Terry's name, he was the editor not just of the great Universe series but of the Ace Specials line, which discovered just a few wee important books to the field like Neuromancer by William Gibson and The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the very important editors in the history of sf/f, Terry was).
Rick is a little like Ronald Kelly, an author whose native gifts weren't as prodigious as for some, but who made the very very very best of them. The main thing with Rick, his batting average was really awful. For every published novel of his, there's probably one that wasn't and to be honest, shouldn't have been. It's not the nicest thing to have to say in one of my anniversary musings, but I think it's worth saying because it's an important thing for a writer to know, that you can have a long career and sell dozens of novels but still have a rough patch or an off outing, or can occasionally divert to something to try and stretch your aims and ambitions (though doesn't hurt to be prepared to return to home base if you need to), that you can have a relationship with an agent that can last even if there is sometimes a book that the agent can't sell or perhaps won't want to try selling. There are many kinds of careers in publishing, and they don't all consist of selling every word you write without anguish or setback.
And the books I liked of Rick's, I liked them. The first novel if his I sold, which wasn't the first novel that he sent to the Scott Meredith agency, it was something like the 4th or 5th (another lesson worth repeating for new writers, your first published novel is often not going to be the first novel you write, even some of my biggest clients like Brandon Sanderson and Peter Brett have learning experiences on their hard drive), was Son of the Hero, the first book in the Varayan Memoir fantasy series. I think it would make a good movie, it's a good example of a very archetypal story about the kid who finds there's something more to his life than he knows about. The trilogy will soon be available in JABberwocky e-book.
After an interesting attempt at Moorcockian fantasy (The Wizard at Mecq, The Wizard at Home), Rick found his calling writing military sf, but again not without some ups and downs along the way. His Lucky 13th series did pretty well, his Buchanan novels somewhat less well. But when I read Officer Cadet, I knew this was something that could be destined for bigger things. I encouraged the editor at Ace to follow the model Warner was using for David Feintuch, which they did, and the DMC series, which is now available on e-book, really took off.
Neither Rick nor I was making so much money back then that we could afford to travel a lot, and I met Rick only once at the 2000 WorldCon in Chicago. We had a very tasty lunch at Pizzeria Due. It was an especially enjoyable lunch because the DMC books were doing very well, Rick was tasting true success for the first time in his life, and we had things to be happy about.
And then a few months later, Rick was dead. Massive heart attack in the hotel lobby at Chattacon the following January.
It was strange, because Rick had always been very aware of his own mortality, that his father had died young and the men in his family died young. And then Rick died in his early 50s, with only a couple years of enjoying success when he really should've had the opportunity to enjoy it for another 20 or 30 years.
And the odd thing is, for all the books Rick wrote that I didn't like, there are books he wrote that I wish were published (the third book in his Wizard series, which was completed and cancelled), books he proposed that I wish he could have written (the sequel series to the Varayan Memoir books), and all in all still a feeling of loss. And something like the third book in the Wizard series, that was written in the mid-1990s, I doubt I even still had that pile of paper in the office five years later, because why would I keep it around? And I didn't talk to his mom or his sister about doing an instant recovery mission for any old manuscripts or old diskettes. Must check if any of that's still laying around somewhere...
You can click here to find your way to the available JABberwocky e-books from Rick Shelley, six as of July 21 and more coming.
Maybe I'll have a chance before the slower summer months give way to the much busier fall months to continue the JABberwocky military sf story...
My first author in the genre was Bill Baldwin. Bill was a very, very successful author for Warner at a time when it didn't have a particularly successful sf program. There was Warner, then there was Questar, then there was Aspect, then there wasn't much, and eventually when the French publishing conglomerate Hachette came along and purchased Warner Books, they imported Tim Holman, who had done a great job building the Orbit UK list, moved the sf program from Warner to Little Brown/Grand Central, and have since had much better results. Not so back then, the Warner program wasn't much, and Bill and his Helmsman books were rare projects that would be displayed at the front of the bookstores. The Helmsman series was classic in its appeal, the lead character Wilf Brim a man's man of a space captain with a life full of women and adventure.
Working with Bill was one of the experiences that taught me that the first batches of royalty statements in the old days, before breaking out of reserves against returns, were good pretty much for toilet paper. The first statements would always be for really small numbers for books that were plastered at the front of bookstores, but mostly because there were 50% or 70% reserves or who knew how much, so if you looked just at those Bill was always magically in the midst of a collapsing career until two years later when the publisher stopped taking reserves and lo and behold the sales were nicely in line with all the earlier books.
When I went off on my own to start JABberwocky, Bill was incredibly supportive, except that he decided to go back to agent he had been with before joining Scott Meredith, who had lots of wonderful good ideas. Those ideas ended up being along the lines of "let's sell the next book in the Helmsman series!" Bill ended up coming back to the JABberwocky fold a few years later.
We still didn't have the best relationship. I tried hard to break him into the mainstream with a WWII thriller, but wasn't able to sell it. And I've always felt there are times that the best deals are the ones you don't do, that sometimes rights are valuable just sitting in the drawer until better things come along, while Bill really very much wanted to have his books "in print" even if it meant putting a book into iUniverse or with a smaller publisher on unfavorable terms. So we ended up parting ways again.
There would be an audience for the Helmsman books on Kindle, I expect. Those aren't available, but you can find the thriller of his that I wasn't able to sell available on Amazon, along with some of those small-press reissues and audios that I wasn't so fond of having. And if you think you like classic military sf, you'd probably have a good time with these.
Rick Shelley was my next military sf author. He'd started his career with stories in Analog and in Terry Carr's Universe anthologies (if you don't know Terry's name, he was the editor not just of the great Universe series but of the Ace Specials line, which discovered just a few wee important books to the field like Neuromancer by William Gibson and The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the very important editors in the history of sf/f, Terry was).
Rick is a little like Ronald Kelly, an author whose native gifts weren't as prodigious as for some, but who made the very very very best of them. The main thing with Rick, his batting average was really awful. For every published novel of his, there's probably one that wasn't and to be honest, shouldn't have been. It's not the nicest thing to have to say in one of my anniversary musings, but I think it's worth saying because it's an important thing for a writer to know, that you can have a long career and sell dozens of novels but still have a rough patch or an off outing, or can occasionally divert to something to try and stretch your aims and ambitions (though doesn't hurt to be prepared to return to home base if you need to), that you can have a relationship with an agent that can last even if there is sometimes a book that the agent can't sell or perhaps won't want to try selling. There are many kinds of careers in publishing, and they don't all consist of selling every word you write without anguish or setback.
And the books I liked of Rick's, I liked them. The first novel if his I sold, which wasn't the first novel that he sent to the Scott Meredith agency, it was something like the 4th or 5th (another lesson worth repeating for new writers, your first published novel is often not going to be the first novel you write, even some of my biggest clients like Brandon Sanderson and Peter Brett have learning experiences on their hard drive), was Son of the Hero, the first book in the Varayan Memoir fantasy series. I think it would make a good movie, it's a good example of a very archetypal story about the kid who finds there's something more to his life than he knows about. The trilogy will soon be available in JABberwocky e-book.
After an interesting attempt at Moorcockian fantasy (The Wizard at Mecq, The Wizard at Home), Rick found his calling writing military sf, but again not without some ups and downs along the way. His Lucky 13th series did pretty well, his Buchanan novels somewhat less well. But when I read Officer Cadet, I knew this was something that could be destined for bigger things. I encouraged the editor at Ace to follow the model Warner was using for David Feintuch, which they did, and the DMC series, which is now available on e-book, really took off.
Neither Rick nor I was making so much money back then that we could afford to travel a lot, and I met Rick only once at the 2000 WorldCon in Chicago. We had a very tasty lunch at Pizzeria Due. It was an especially enjoyable lunch because the DMC books were doing very well, Rick was tasting true success for the first time in his life, and we had things to be happy about.
And then a few months later, Rick was dead. Massive heart attack in the hotel lobby at Chattacon the following January.
It was strange, because Rick had always been very aware of his own mortality, that his father had died young and the men in his family died young. And then Rick died in his early 50s, with only a couple years of enjoying success when he really should've had the opportunity to enjoy it for another 20 or 30 years.
And the odd thing is, for all the books Rick wrote that I didn't like, there are books he wrote that I wish were published (the third book in his Wizard series, which was completed and cancelled), books he proposed that I wish he could have written (the sequel series to the Varayan Memoir books), and all in all still a feeling of loss. And something like the third book in the Wizard series, that was written in the mid-1990s, I doubt I even still had that pile of paper in the office five years later, because why would I keep it around? And I didn't talk to his mom or his sister about doing an instant recovery mission for any old manuscripts or old diskettes. Must check if any of that's still laying around somewhere...
You can click here to find your way to the available JABberwocky e-books from Rick Shelley, six as of July 21 and more coming.
Maybe I'll have a chance before the slower summer months give way to the much busier fall months to continue the JABberwocky military sf story...
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