I went to see Pacific Rim with JABberwocky client Bryce Moore, the author of the award-winning YA novel Vodnik, and since we both blog we decided to exchange guest reviews of the movie.
After you've read Bryce's review, but sure to check out Vodnik, check him out on his own blog, and follow along with Bryce on Twitter. And click here for my review of Pacific Rim, over on Bryce's blog.
Movie Review: Pacific Rim -- by Bryce Moore
While I was at ConnectiCon, I had the chance to catch a viewing of Pacific Rim (as you already know, if you read my response to some of the robot names in the film). Setting aside my response to the name choices, what did I think of the actual movie?
Honestly? I loved it.
This is what I'd wanted Michael Bay's Transformers to be like. It's a movie about giant robots fighting giant lizards. If that sounds like something you'd be excited to see, you'll love this film, too. It is, hands down, the best robot vs. lizard movie you could think of. I guarantee it.
Yes, there's a premise. Yes, there are huge gaping plot holes throughout the movie. But if that upsets you, let me remind you what you paid to see: a movie about giant robots fighting giant lizards. Did you really expect Chariots of Fire? (Maybe if it were "Chariots ON Fire", right? Someone make that movie. Please.)
Before I saw the film, I had some reservations about Del Toro. He makes some truly stunning visuals, but sometimes I feel like his visuals take center stage, leaving the plot behind. It's one of the reasons I was relieved somewhat when he left The Hobbit. Would this be another example of that?
Pacific Rim makes me wonder what we would have gotten if Del Toro had been able to stick with The Hobbit.
The visuals are wonderful eye candy. The plot has some issues, but because the tone is so darned light and fun, you just don't mind. Yes, there are cliches left and right. But it doesn't matter. This is a movie about giant robots fighting giant lizards.
There was plenty of humor, and Ron Perlman has an outstanding cameo. None of the acting jobs were really noteworthy. They didn't need to be. This isn't a movie about closeups and lingering shots. It's about action. Destruction. Fighting. Where Man of Steel was the same fight scene over and over, this one kept you constantly on your toes, with new awesome coming down the pike every five seconds. See it big if you can. I saw it in 2D, and I kind of wish I'd been able to see it 3D, instead.
It's also pretty much completely clean--so much that I'm considering taking my 9 year old son to see it. There's fighting and action, but no swearing or sex. This is the sort of movie I was have adored as a 9 year old. (And still adore today) It's the realization of every awesome Saturday morning cartoon you've ever watched.
Oh---and a note for all you people who just leave as soon as it fades to black: stay at least halfway through the credits, people. There's more.
What do I give a movie like this on a star rating? Can a movie about giant robots fighting giant lizards really be worthy of 4 stars?
Yes my friends, it can. It didn't change my life. It didn't make me cry or think about things in a new light. It just did what it came to do, and it did it perfectly.
Four stars.
See it.
--Bryce Moore
Friday, July 19, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
The Longest Established Permanent Floating Thing I Do
We change, you know.
We think the things we're doing will always be the things we're doing, but we change.
Sometimes even the things that don't seem to be changing, change. As an example, I've been a literary agent for over 25 years, but the job description within the job has changed multiple times. I've had the same job, two employers (one of them being myself), and probably close to half a dozen job descriptions.
But for me, there's one thing that hasn't, and that's going to the movies.
And the earliest movie that I can place seeing at a particular theatre dates back to when I was five. We saw Airport at Radio City Music Hall. Would my younger brother had been with a baby sitter? It's hard even to think about.
And since my parents didn't believe in film ratings and took us to everything... Deliverance at the Plaza Cinema, or stopping for Godfather, which I think we might have done as a side trip returning from visiting family in upstate New York.
Sleeper in Manhattan the next year. One show was sold out, we walked across town to another show that was sold out, and then back again to the original theatre.
I can remember the drive that seemed to last forever to see Earthquake in Sensurround at the Cinema 46 in Totowa, NJ.
Montclair, NJ over the holidays, to see Network, and then stopping by actual non-Jewish family friends to hang out around their Christmas tree afterwards.
Drives up to Monticello in 1977 to see The Spy Who Loved Me at the theatre downtown, or to see Star Wars at the theatre by the dying mall on the outskirts of town.
The Brinks Job at the Sack Cheri in 1979, which we would have seen the same weekend that I got those free samples of Omni from the Boskone dealer's room, setting me on my current path. So the thing to remember here is that I have movie-going memories that date back almost seven years further than the career path.
No, I can't remember every single movie I saw, and I couldn't tell you which theatre I went to for every single movie I can remember seeing.
But think about your own life, and ask yourself what are the things you can still remember from when you were in kindergarten, and the things that you can remember from 40 years ago.
That's the movies, for me. The thing I've been doing, memorably and enjoyably doing, for longer than anything.
And hey, take a screen shot, print out the blog, in a few decades when I'm closing in on 90, let's see if I can remember the first batch of movies for this weekend, Filling the Void and 20 Feet From Stardom at the Kew Gardens Cinema. And bonus credit if I can remember that Filling the Void was on Screen 3, which is the big one at this cinema.
Pauline Kael I'm not. I haven't lost it at the movies, not yet at least. But I promise to keep trying.
We think the things we're doing will always be the things we're doing, but we change.
Sometimes even the things that don't seem to be changing, change. As an example, I've been a literary agent for over 25 years, but the job description within the job has changed multiple times. I've had the same job, two employers (one of them being myself), and probably close to half a dozen job descriptions.
But for me, there's one thing that hasn't, and that's going to the movies.
And the earliest movie that I can place seeing at a particular theatre dates back to when I was five. We saw Airport at Radio City Music Hall. Would my younger brother had been with a baby sitter? It's hard even to think about.
And since my parents didn't believe in film ratings and took us to everything... Deliverance at the Plaza Cinema, or stopping for Godfather, which I think we might have done as a side trip returning from visiting family in upstate New York.
Sleeper in Manhattan the next year. One show was sold out, we walked across town to another show that was sold out, and then back again to the original theatre.
I can remember the drive that seemed to last forever to see Earthquake in Sensurround at the Cinema 46 in Totowa, NJ.
Montclair, NJ over the holidays, to see Network, and then stopping by actual non-Jewish family friends to hang out around their Christmas tree afterwards.
Drives up to Monticello in 1977 to see The Spy Who Loved Me at the theatre downtown, or to see Star Wars at the theatre by the dying mall on the outskirts of town.
The Brinks Job at the Sack Cheri in 1979, which we would have seen the same weekend that I got those free samples of Omni from the Boskone dealer's room, setting me on my current path. So the thing to remember here is that I have movie-going memories that date back almost seven years further than the career path.
No, I can't remember every single movie I saw, and I couldn't tell you which theatre I went to for every single movie I can remember seeing.
But think about your own life, and ask yourself what are the things you can still remember from when you were in kindergarten, and the things that you can remember from 40 years ago.
That's the movies, for me. The thing I've been doing, memorably and enjoyably doing, for longer than anything.
And hey, take a screen shot, print out the blog, in a few decades when I'm closing in on 90, let's see if I can remember the first batch of movies for this weekend, Filling the Void and 20 Feet From Stardom at the Kew Gardens Cinema. And bonus credit if I can remember that Filling the Void was on Screen 3, which is the big one at this cinema.
Pauline Kael I'm not. I haven't lost it at the movies, not yet at least. But I promise to keep trying.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Surveillance State
A week back, Thomas Friedman, the distinguished author and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column approving of the NSA's surveillance and monitoring of metadata of email and phone calls for pretty much everyone.
His argument: I like civil liberties, civil liberties will take it on the chin even more than they are now if we have another 9-11 style attack. So the government should do all that is can to prevent another such attack, and if that's what the surveillance is doing, I'm in favor of it. Also, that this has been going on for two American presidencies now.
What an idiot!
OK, I mean, Thomas Friedman isn't an idiot, and there's a certain soothing logic to his column which reflects an opinion that's apparently shared by a lot of my fellow Americans.
But it's wrong, it's misguided, and quite obviously so.
It took me several days of mulling over Thomas Friedman's soothing article to zone in on the basic fallacy, but once you do, it's really quite simple.
And that fallacy is this: There is no guarantee that any of the NSA programs will stop another 9-11 type attack. The fact that the Boston Marathon bombings could take place is kind of proof positive that we cannot be 100% protected from terrorist activity. Since neither Thomas Friedman nor President Obama nor the head of the CIA or NSA or Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) or Speaker John Bonier (R-OH) or any of the other many people defending this surveillance cannot guarantee that their efforts will not protect us 100% from another 9-11, I would respectfully ask that my 4th Amendment rights be protected and that the government not go vacuuming up information on every single phone call I make. And that the government not go vacuuming up information on pretty much every e-mail I send.
Of course, the head of the NSA has come out and said how these wonderful surveillance efforts have lead to the stopping of 50 plots against us. Of course, he won't give much detailed information about any of these because it's a secret. I have no secrets, he gets to keep all of his? That's not the way to have a debate or discussion.
If we could look at the details, we would probably discover that many of these plots could have been discovered in ways other than vacuuming up metadata on every phone call and e-mail. We might discover that there would have been plenty of time to get warrants for the specific individuals vs. invading the privacy of all of us. But we won't get a lot of these details.
Several editorial cartoonists have been quite succinct in pointing out the ludicrousness of many of the same Senators who filibustered reasonable background check legislation for gun sales now turning around to say it's perfectly fine for the government to get the metadata for every single phone call I make. I guess it could be argued that I am inconsistent for wanting my metadata to be protected while thinking background checks for guns are a good idea, but isn't there a common sense difference between placing a phone call and buying a weapon used to kill people?
I don't buy the idea that my e-mails aren't being looked at because that program is limited to getting data for people overseas. I happen to email people overseas almost all the time, and I have this hunch that the computer that vacuums up the emails of those people will vacuum mine up along with it. Have you ever sent an e-mail where the chain includes ten other e-mails? Even, on occasion, the computer might fold in some e-mail from a completely different conversation because you started a new conversation in a reply or had the same subject line.
My blog is supposed to be about publishing, so I want to make this conversation a little bit relevant.
Government power: A lot of us think the Department of Justice had a pretty weak case against Apple and the major publishers on e-book price fixing. The publishers changed to a model that reduced the power of Amazon, which had 90% of the e-book business and was selling e-books as loss leaders. Amazon provided a lot of the information and a lot of the impetus behind the lawsuit. Yet the publishers all ended up settling. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. The government has a lot of power and a lot of tools and a lot of resources, and when it decides to use those against you, it's awfully hard to resist. Why do you want to give the government such benefit of the doubt that it will vacuum up all of this information and never use it foolishly or bullyingly or in a bad way?
Asymmetric information: The next time you are negotiating a new contract with a publisher, ask the publisher to show you their P&L (profit & loss) statement for the proposed acquisition. See how far you'll get! For all the increased amounts of information some publishers are providing, like real-time information to hard sales numbers, they are never going to negotiate where you have equal access to information with them. They will never tell you what their actual excess of revenue over expenses is, and let you see exactly how much of that money they are willing to give to you and how much they intend to keep for themselves. And if I come up with my own best guesses... you can trust me on this, that the publisher will always say I'm wrong but never come up with a specific beyond that. It's similar here. The government isn't engaged in an open exchange with any of us. The information we need to know is a secret, and all of our information is there for them to look at. And you don't have an agent in this negotiation.
His argument: I like civil liberties, civil liberties will take it on the chin even more than they are now if we have another 9-11 style attack. So the government should do all that is can to prevent another such attack, and if that's what the surveillance is doing, I'm in favor of it. Also, that this has been going on for two American presidencies now.
What an idiot!
OK, I mean, Thomas Friedman isn't an idiot, and there's a certain soothing logic to his column which reflects an opinion that's apparently shared by a lot of my fellow Americans.
But it's wrong, it's misguided, and quite obviously so.
It took me several days of mulling over Thomas Friedman's soothing article to zone in on the basic fallacy, but once you do, it's really quite simple.
And that fallacy is this: There is no guarantee that any of the NSA programs will stop another 9-11 type attack. The fact that the Boston Marathon bombings could take place is kind of proof positive that we cannot be 100% protected from terrorist activity. Since neither Thomas Friedman nor President Obama nor the head of the CIA or NSA or Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) or Speaker John Bonier (R-OH) or any of the other many people defending this surveillance cannot guarantee that their efforts will not protect us 100% from another 9-11, I would respectfully ask that my 4th Amendment rights be protected and that the government not go vacuuming up information on every single phone call I make. And that the government not go vacuuming up information on pretty much every e-mail I send.
Of course, the head of the NSA has come out and said how these wonderful surveillance efforts have lead to the stopping of 50 plots against us. Of course, he won't give much detailed information about any of these because it's a secret. I have no secrets, he gets to keep all of his? That's not the way to have a debate or discussion.
If we could look at the details, we would probably discover that many of these plots could have been discovered in ways other than vacuuming up metadata on every phone call and e-mail. We might discover that there would have been plenty of time to get warrants for the specific individuals vs. invading the privacy of all of us. But we won't get a lot of these details.
Several editorial cartoonists have been quite succinct in pointing out the ludicrousness of many of the same Senators who filibustered reasonable background check legislation for gun sales now turning around to say it's perfectly fine for the government to get the metadata for every single phone call I make. I guess it could be argued that I am inconsistent for wanting my metadata to be protected while thinking background checks for guns are a good idea, but isn't there a common sense difference between placing a phone call and buying a weapon used to kill people?
I don't buy the idea that my e-mails aren't being looked at because that program is limited to getting data for people overseas. I happen to email people overseas almost all the time, and I have this hunch that the computer that vacuums up the emails of those people will vacuum mine up along with it. Have you ever sent an e-mail where the chain includes ten other e-mails? Even, on occasion, the computer might fold in some e-mail from a completely different conversation because you started a new conversation in a reply or had the same subject line.
My blog is supposed to be about publishing, so I want to make this conversation a little bit relevant.
Government power: A lot of us think the Department of Justice had a pretty weak case against Apple and the major publishers on e-book price fixing. The publishers changed to a model that reduced the power of Amazon, which had 90% of the e-book business and was selling e-books as loss leaders. Amazon provided a lot of the information and a lot of the impetus behind the lawsuit. Yet the publishers all ended up settling. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. The government has a lot of power and a lot of tools and a lot of resources, and when it decides to use those against you, it's awfully hard to resist. Why do you want to give the government such benefit of the doubt that it will vacuum up all of this information and never use it foolishly or bullyingly or in a bad way?
Asymmetric information: The next time you are negotiating a new contract with a publisher, ask the publisher to show you their P&L (profit & loss) statement for the proposed acquisition. See how far you'll get! For all the increased amounts of information some publishers are providing, like real-time information to hard sales numbers, they are never going to negotiate where you have equal access to information with them. They will never tell you what their actual excess of revenue over expenses is, and let you see exactly how much of that money they are willing to give to you and how much they intend to keep for themselves. And if I come up with my own best guesses... you can trust me on this, that the publisher will always say I'm wrong but never come up with a specific beyond that. It's similar here. The government isn't engaged in an open exchange with any of us. The information we need to know is a secret, and all of our information is there for them to look at. And you don't have an agent in this negotiation.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Every Move You Make I'll Be Watching You
The British newspaper The Guardian found out that the US has very likely been receiving details of every phone call most of us make -- who we called, when we called them, how long we spoke.
Where are all of those constitution lovers who are so fond of my 2nd amendment rights to start using those guns to fight against this colossal infringement of our 4th amendment rights?
I'm bothered not just by the blatant violation of privacy rights but by the idiocy of this and of everyone who defends this.
Let's take a specific scenario, where the government knows that some particular person is a terrorist. Well, the government has always had the ability to go to a judge and get a warrant and find out who is calling this person and who this person calls, and even to listen in on the phone calls. Some of these abilities are impaired by the switch from land lines to cell phones. The calls no longer go through particular switching stations for particular phone lines in particular places where the government can attach a tap. However, solving that problem doesn't require getting detailed reporting on who every person in the country speaks to for how long. So the government isn't, in this instance, adding anything helpful for people whom we know are terrorists.
Let's say the government doesn't know someone is a terrorist until they do something bad. In such an instance, yes, the government might be able to review records retrospectively and find out who called this phone number. Emphasis on retrospectively. This is closing the barn door after cows left, after bad guy does his bad thing.
If you want to say that this is a good thing because we can catch this bad person and keep him from doing another bad thing -- well, I can't argue with that. But what I can say is that this isn't what the United States is all about, or at least not that the US is supposed to be about. We're not East Germany in the 1970s, where everyone was spying on everyone else. We don't keep everyone in prison because we suspect all of us might commit a crime someday. Or at least we're not supposed to do these things.
And once you start saying that all these little things are perfectly fine because we can't risk anything bad ever happening to us -- again, that's an argument we had 230 years ago which led to our having a Bill of Rights, and those rights are supposed to protect us from exactly this kind of thing.
So again, where are all the second amendment defenders now, when the fourth amendment is once again under attack?
There's also a practical problem here. For all the computers in the world that make our lives easier, there are real costs to our government to collect all of this data, to organize all of this data, and then the government is either just putting the data off in some dark corner just in case or it's taking time to have people look at all of those phone records for everyone. That's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of people, a lot of lots of things, all to go looking at data which is 99.9999% useless, records of calls that don't mean anything. But which are there.
So if you don't want the government collecting gun records for newspapers to find so that everyone knows where the guns are, do you want the government to have all this information on all the people you've called, how long you spoke to them, information which could somehow get out into the world and into the newspapers?
It gets worse. The government's also been collecting gobs of data from everyone who surfs the web from outside the US, around $20M worth a year for that expense according to The Guardian.
Where are all of those constitution lovers who are so fond of my 2nd amendment rights to start using those guns to fight against this colossal infringement of our 4th amendment rights?
I'm bothered not just by the blatant violation of privacy rights but by the idiocy of this and of everyone who defends this.
Let's take a specific scenario, where the government knows that some particular person is a terrorist. Well, the government has always had the ability to go to a judge and get a warrant and find out who is calling this person and who this person calls, and even to listen in on the phone calls. Some of these abilities are impaired by the switch from land lines to cell phones. The calls no longer go through particular switching stations for particular phone lines in particular places where the government can attach a tap. However, solving that problem doesn't require getting detailed reporting on who every person in the country speaks to for how long. So the government isn't, in this instance, adding anything helpful for people whom we know are terrorists.
Let's say the government doesn't know someone is a terrorist until they do something bad. In such an instance, yes, the government might be able to review records retrospectively and find out who called this phone number. Emphasis on retrospectively. This is closing the barn door after cows left, after bad guy does his bad thing.
If you want to say that this is a good thing because we can catch this bad person and keep him from doing another bad thing -- well, I can't argue with that. But what I can say is that this isn't what the United States is all about, or at least not that the US is supposed to be about. We're not East Germany in the 1970s, where everyone was spying on everyone else. We don't keep everyone in prison because we suspect all of us might commit a crime someday. Or at least we're not supposed to do these things.
And once you start saying that all these little things are perfectly fine because we can't risk anything bad ever happening to us -- again, that's an argument we had 230 years ago which led to our having a Bill of Rights, and those rights are supposed to protect us from exactly this kind of thing.
So again, where are all the second amendment defenders now, when the fourth amendment is once again under attack?
There's also a practical problem here. For all the computers in the world that make our lives easier, there are real costs to our government to collect all of this data, to organize all of this data, and then the government is either just putting the data off in some dark corner just in case or it's taking time to have people look at all of those phone records for everyone. That's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of people, a lot of lots of things, all to go looking at data which is 99.9999% useless, records of calls that don't mean anything. But which are there.
So if you don't want the government collecting gun records for newspapers to find so that everyone knows where the guns are, do you want the government to have all this information on all the people you've called, how long you spoke to them, information which could somehow get out into the world and into the newspapers?
It gets worse. The government's also been collecting gobs of data from everyone who surfs the web from outside the US, around $20M worth a year for that expense according to The Guardian.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Your Opinion is Important to Us
Since I still have a land line it is susceptible to getting calls from polling companies.
I kind of like this. It is occasionally interesting because you can tell who's paying for the poll by the kinds of questions being asked and the way they are being phrased. And who doesn't want to be asked their opinion.
But I've got to take a few minutes to complain in public about a call I got yesterday.
I was sitting around watching tennis from Roland Garros, so I figured I could watch tennis and be polled at the same time. And the person taking the poll assures me it's just a few questions and won't go on for very long at all.
It turns out to be a poll on the NYC mayor's race. I'm asked multiple times to choose whom I would vote for today, which I refuse to do. There are two or three candidates I am strongly considering and a few I am strongly not, and I don't want to pick a side now when there haven't been any debates and the contest not yet fully in swing. I'm read biographical descriptions of each candidate, all of them very much like what the candidates themselves would write. Then there are questionable actions about each candidate that are read off, and I'm asked to say if these things give me super strong doubts or tiny doubts or no doubts.
I admire the even-handedness of the poll. The biographies aren't suspiciously shady, and the doubt raising questions are all legitimate. This one did block paid sick leave legislation, that one did have shady fund-raisers, another did travel through the revolving door.
However, the poll just goes on and on and on and on. It takes a long time to read several candidate biographies and several more critical statements, and to repeat every time the "doubt" scale. And I admit, I took up a few minutes pointing out that the quick poll was at ten minutes, and soon approaching twenty. And then at around 18 minutes I explained that while I was sorry to have wasted everyone's time, I was hanging up. Because I sure as heck wasn't giving more than twenty minutes of my life to participating in this poll.
And that's the thing I don't get. How do you expect anyone to participate in a poll that's going to take a half hour out of their lives? Anyone? How can you have an accurate poll when the only people you'll get to take it are people with nothing better to do for an entire half hour.
Can Nate Silver explain this to me?
I kind of like this. It is occasionally interesting because you can tell who's paying for the poll by the kinds of questions being asked and the way they are being phrased. And who doesn't want to be asked their opinion.
But I've got to take a few minutes to complain in public about a call I got yesterday.
I was sitting around watching tennis from Roland Garros, so I figured I could watch tennis and be polled at the same time. And the person taking the poll assures me it's just a few questions and won't go on for very long at all.
It turns out to be a poll on the NYC mayor's race. I'm asked multiple times to choose whom I would vote for today, which I refuse to do. There are two or three candidates I am strongly considering and a few I am strongly not, and I don't want to pick a side now when there haven't been any debates and the contest not yet fully in swing. I'm read biographical descriptions of each candidate, all of them very much like what the candidates themselves would write. Then there are questionable actions about each candidate that are read off, and I'm asked to say if these things give me super strong doubts or tiny doubts or no doubts.
I admire the even-handedness of the poll. The biographies aren't suspiciously shady, and the doubt raising questions are all legitimate. This one did block paid sick leave legislation, that one did have shady fund-raisers, another did travel through the revolving door.
However, the poll just goes on and on and on and on. It takes a long time to read several candidate biographies and several more critical statements, and to repeat every time the "doubt" scale. And I admit, I took up a few minutes pointing out that the quick poll was at ten minutes, and soon approaching twenty. And then at around 18 minutes I explained that while I was sorry to have wasted everyone's time, I was hanging up. Because I sure as heck wasn't giving more than twenty minutes of my life to participating in this poll.
And that's the thing I don't get. How do you expect anyone to participate in a poll that's going to take a half hour out of their lives? Anyone? How can you have an accurate poll when the only people you'll get to take it are people with nothing better to do for an entire half hour.
Can Nate Silver explain this to me?
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Do The Right Thing
I feel good today, as Skyhorse and Start have announced better terms to facilitate their purchase of certain assets of Night Shade Books, hopefully avoiding a bankruptcy for Night Shade, allowing the two companies to invest themselves in the market for new science fiction and fantasy, and giving certainty to upwards of 150 authors who had been published by Night Shade.
Credit for this goes first and foremost to Tony Lyons of Skyhorse and Jarred Weisfeld of Start. We don't know how many authors they needed to get on board for the program or how many they had or seemed likely to have. We do know that their introduction to the world of full-blown involvement in sf/fantasy was overwhelming. They may have been lacking in forewarning or preparation; Tony was prepared to hear more from 20 or 30 authors about the deal than some 200 or more from all corners. But ultimately, they did the right thing. They reached out, spoke to people, and came to the plate with a considerably improved set of terms. They didn't have to. They could have gotten the minimum number of authors or titles or billings to make the deal happen. They could have washed their hands of the idea of being involved with the community. Instead, they decided to come in with an improved deal that makes it many times easier to get to yes.
I will give myself a little credit. I've had my blog going for more years than I can quite believe. Most of the year, more years than not, I find I don't have the time to blog as much on as many things as I'd really like to. Quite honestly, I didn't have the time now; it's our busiest season, London Book Fair is around the corner, and I had one title caught up in the Night Shade imbroglio with only a modest royalty due or likely at stake in the process. But I feel like this is why I've had the blog all these years, and it was Brillig's moment. Thanks to linking from io9 and Tobias Buckell and others, my original Night Shade post had more page views than any other post in the blog's history. And it's a post I'm proud of. Like a lot of things I do, even that one post was a team effort, with input and suggestions from everyone on the JABberwocky staff.
But that said, the post didn't operate or exist in a vacuum. Michael Stackpole looked a lot more closely at the ramifications of specific contract clauses than I did. Another agent, Andrew Zack, did a series of posts, spent a lot of time on the phone with Tony Lyons, said some things that I might have said, chose not to, but which probably did need to be put into the conversation by someone. Justin Landon at Staffers Musings filled in some blanks as well. Charlie Jane Anders was like the Lois Lane of io9 on this one! There were a lot of other people, many of them with modest direct interest, who took the time to talk about this.
Anyone who wants can quibble still with aspects of the revised Skyhorse offer, and I don't want to hear from those people! The royalty rate is low, but I've done a lot of deals with lower royalties than this, especially with small press. And this reasonably low royalty rate considering is on top of promised full payment of current arrears with a publisher that has a an awfully big arrear end. I'm not thrilled with the revised audio language, and I don't want to hear from myself on that; this isn't one of those times I get to be thrilled with everyone. The revised language on assignments -- well, it seems a lot like something I had in my own suggestions to Tony Lyons, which is sweet!
Under all the extant circumstances, this is a deal that's about making it easy to say Yes.
We can't let up. I'm still not sure who the arbiter is supposed to be to decide which of at least three possible figures for how much of a royalty is owed on Elizabeth Moon's MOON FLIGHTS is the correct one. Concerns have been expressed about the mechanism for paying people. I don't know who it is who communicates with my clients and I about the revised terms in a formal way, and provides the formal document for signing. Stuff like that.
And I'm going to dump a little more on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I've heard a gazillion excuses for why, even after this whole kerfuffle became public, they were still hiding off in a back room communicating in secret private ways like they were guarding access to a speakeasy, and I'm not convinced of any of them. Just at the level of the lowest hanging fruit, how could they have signed off on indicating to members that they were cool with the assignment language in the original agreement? That kind of broad assignment language is one of the most basic things I as an agent would negotiate away in any contract negotiation. And now, after e-mails to me that had a "go away, stop bothering us, and go give your clients whatever damnfool advice you want on the deal" kind of tone to them, and hiding off in a dark corner, and having some responsibility for not forewarning and preparing Tony Lyons (I don't know, maybe they did and he didn't listen, but it doesn't sound that way to me), they come out with some happy smug little statement about the new terms like it was all their idea and all their hard work. "After continuing talks with Skyhorse/Start, SFWA is pleased that the companies have decided to adjust the royalty terms in their author agreement to be more in line with industry standards for Science Fiction and Fantasy. We see this as a positive sign that they are listening to authors and are responsive to their concerns, and we hope that continues. SFWA has remained in close communication with our members who are directly affected by the sale of Night Shade Books assets and will continue to provide them with information and support." Just to say, I've been a dues-paying affiliate member of SFWA for pretty much as long as I've had JABberwocky, and their close communication never included me, as an agent, with clients who had interests in this and were affected by it. I've been a staunch supporter of SFWA, I've encouraged all my clients to join the organization as active members when eligible, and this is the and continues to be the darkest moment I can remember in my 27 years in this field. I don't know the extent to which SFWA has been involved behind the scene in talking to people over the past week, and I will happily change this tune if there's some different sheet music put in front of me. But they can't even be bothered to stick in a "listening to authors and their agents" to acknowledge the work of an Andrew Zack on a deal that SFWA had blessed?
The best way to close is to reiterate my heartfelt thanks to Tony Lyons and to Jarred Weisfeld for listing and revising and improving, and to thank all of those who took their time to get things to "go."
Onward and upward with the arts. And:
Excelsior!
Credit for this goes first and foremost to Tony Lyons of Skyhorse and Jarred Weisfeld of Start. We don't know how many authors they needed to get on board for the program or how many they had or seemed likely to have. We do know that their introduction to the world of full-blown involvement in sf/fantasy was overwhelming. They may have been lacking in forewarning or preparation; Tony was prepared to hear more from 20 or 30 authors about the deal than some 200 or more from all corners. But ultimately, they did the right thing. They reached out, spoke to people, and came to the plate with a considerably improved set of terms. They didn't have to. They could have gotten the minimum number of authors or titles or billings to make the deal happen. They could have washed their hands of the idea of being involved with the community. Instead, they decided to come in with an improved deal that makes it many times easier to get to yes.
I will give myself a little credit. I've had my blog going for more years than I can quite believe. Most of the year, more years than not, I find I don't have the time to blog as much on as many things as I'd really like to. Quite honestly, I didn't have the time now; it's our busiest season, London Book Fair is around the corner, and I had one title caught up in the Night Shade imbroglio with only a modest royalty due or likely at stake in the process. But I feel like this is why I've had the blog all these years, and it was Brillig's moment. Thanks to linking from io9 and Tobias Buckell and others, my original Night Shade post had more page views than any other post in the blog's history. And it's a post I'm proud of. Like a lot of things I do, even that one post was a team effort, with input and suggestions from everyone on the JABberwocky staff.
But that said, the post didn't operate or exist in a vacuum. Michael Stackpole looked a lot more closely at the ramifications of specific contract clauses than I did. Another agent, Andrew Zack, did a series of posts, spent a lot of time on the phone with Tony Lyons, said some things that I might have said, chose not to, but which probably did need to be put into the conversation by someone. Justin Landon at Staffers Musings filled in some blanks as well. Charlie Jane Anders was like the Lois Lane of io9 on this one! There were a lot of other people, many of them with modest direct interest, who took the time to talk about this.
Anyone who wants can quibble still with aspects of the revised Skyhorse offer, and I don't want to hear from those people! The royalty rate is low, but I've done a lot of deals with lower royalties than this, especially with small press. And this reasonably low royalty rate considering is on top of promised full payment of current arrears with a publisher that has a an awfully big arrear end. I'm not thrilled with the revised audio language, and I don't want to hear from myself on that; this isn't one of those times I get to be thrilled with everyone. The revised language on assignments -- well, it seems a lot like something I had in my own suggestions to Tony Lyons, which is sweet!
Under all the extant circumstances, this is a deal that's about making it easy to say Yes.
We can't let up. I'm still not sure who the arbiter is supposed to be to decide which of at least three possible figures for how much of a royalty is owed on Elizabeth Moon's MOON FLIGHTS is the correct one. Concerns have been expressed about the mechanism for paying people. I don't know who it is who communicates with my clients and I about the revised terms in a formal way, and provides the formal document for signing. Stuff like that.
And I'm going to dump a little more on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I've heard a gazillion excuses for why, even after this whole kerfuffle became public, they were still hiding off in a back room communicating in secret private ways like they were guarding access to a speakeasy, and I'm not convinced of any of them. Just at the level of the lowest hanging fruit, how could they have signed off on indicating to members that they were cool with the assignment language in the original agreement? That kind of broad assignment language is one of the most basic things I as an agent would negotiate away in any contract negotiation. And now, after e-mails to me that had a "go away, stop bothering us, and go give your clients whatever damnfool advice you want on the deal" kind of tone to them, and hiding off in a dark corner, and having some responsibility for not forewarning and preparing Tony Lyons (I don't know, maybe they did and he didn't listen, but it doesn't sound that way to me), they come out with some happy smug little statement about the new terms like it was all their idea and all their hard work. "After continuing talks with Skyhorse/Start, SFWA is pleased that the companies have decided to adjust the royalty terms in their author agreement to be more in line with industry standards for Science Fiction and Fantasy. We see this as a positive sign that they are listening to authors and are responsive to their concerns, and we hope that continues. SFWA has remained in close communication with our members who are directly affected by the sale of Night Shade Books assets and will continue to provide them with information and support." Just to say, I've been a dues-paying affiliate member of SFWA for pretty much as long as I've had JABberwocky, and their close communication never included me, as an agent, with clients who had interests in this and were affected by it. I've been a staunch supporter of SFWA, I've encouraged all my clients to join the organization as active members when eligible, and this is the and continues to be the darkest moment I can remember in my 27 years in this field. I don't know the extent to which SFWA has been involved behind the scene in talking to people over the past week, and I will happily change this tune if there's some different sheet music put in front of me. But they can't even be bothered to stick in a "listening to authors and their agents" to acknowledge the work of an Andrew Zack on a deal that SFWA had blessed?
The best way to close is to reiterate my heartfelt thanks to Tony Lyons and to Jarred Weisfeld for listing and revising and improving, and to thank all of those who took their time to get things to "go."
Onward and upward with the arts. And:
Excelsior!
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The Tachyon's Soul
As a tonic to all of the Night Shade discussions this week, let's talk about something that involves another distinguished sf/fantasy press in the San Francisco Bay area, Jacob Weisman's Tachyon Publications, which is the publisher of the Hugo-nominated novella THE EMPEROR'S SOUL by Brandon Sanderson.
It's an interesting story, to me at least, on many levels.
For one, I'm old enough to have grown up in an era when we didn't have all of these internet magazines like Lightspeed and Clarkesworld and Daily SF and etc. So just for that reason alone, it's hard to believe that it took a little over a year for Brandon Sanderson's THE EMPEROR'S SOUL to go from non-existence to Hugo finalist. Unless you really hit the jackpot, writing a story in January and submitting it to the magazines that were pretty much the only places to go for this sort of thing in 1980, having a quick try on the first sale and having the story sneak in to the November of December issue -- it just couldn't happen. Magazine lead times are so long.
And if anything, THE EMPEROR'S SOUL was compressed even further than that.
Brandon was touring Taiwan in Winter 2012. He was inspired to write something by some stamps he saw at a museum. During a break between drafts of A Memory of Light in February 2012, he wrote a few small things that could be fit into the available time. According to a forthcoming review for one of Brandon's books, he is "inhumanly prolific" so he managed to write this 30,000 word novella in a relatively short amount of time, finishing toward the end of February. He sent it off to Moshe Feder, the Tor editor who discovered and purchased Brandon's debut novel Elantris, for a look-see, and Moshe e-mailed on March 8, 2012 to say "What can I say? I love it!"
I was jealous Moshe had gotten first crack at it, so I got a copy myself. As that upcoming review says, Brandon is "inhumanly prolific," so I was able to load up my iPad with an epub file of the new novella, another new novella, and a new draft of his YA debut The Rithmatist, and with a free afternoon on the weekend of March 10/11 2012, I headed off to the New York Sports Clubs on Park Ave. and 23rd St. in Manhattan and spent a few hours on the elliptical reading new Brandon Sanderson.
I didn't just love THE EMPEROR'S SOUL. I thought it was something special. It made me feel the way I'd felt a few months before when I'd had a break in my reading pile and read an issue of Asimov's with Kij Johnson's "The Man Who Bridged the Mist," a great novella that was on all the award ballots and winning many during 2012 (that was read on the bike in my building's gym, there's nothing like having good reading to burn the calories).
But what were we going to do with something that I was convinced was an award-caliber novella?
This made for some interesting conversations with Brandon in the next day or two.
Brandon wanted the novella out in 2012. This is the opposite of the ideal approach for being on award ballots. Too early in the year, maybe people forget. Too late, maybe not enough time for people to read and word to spread. But Brandon was worried that he didn't have a book-length work of his own to come out in 2012. Alloy of Law had come out Fall 2011, Memory of Light was due January 2013, Brandon wasn't buying my "oh, the paperback of Alloy of Law will be out in 2012, that's a book!" arguments.
That made it very hard to consider the magazine route.
As or more important in deciding against the magazine route, Brandon was itching to be doing some e-books of his own. Even if a magazine purchased the story ASAP and could have it out, it wasn't going to pay a lot of money, maybe $1500 or $2000, and it wasn't going to allow a separate e-book.
Nor, in all likelihood, would Brandon's regular publisher, Tor. The big publishers will occasionally pick up something first published in e-book, and maybe be persuaded to leave the e-book rights behind, but as a rule they won't buy books where they don't have e-book rights.
We were waiting on publication that summer of Brandon's novella LEGION from Subterranean, but we didn't like that option here, of trying to have two Subterranean novellas in such quick succession.
And that was when I pushed back a little, and decreed that the novella was simply too good just to be done as an e-book by Brandon himself. Maybe none of the familiar things we were doing was the right thing for THE EMPEROR'S SOUL. Maybe, this was going to be my first Tachyon Publications book.
I confess, I was being a little selfish here.
I wanted a Tachyon Publications book so very very badly.
And I never had one.
I'd chatted with Jacob Weisman at the Tachyon table at WorldCon or World Fantasy for years and years. I'd watched the quantity and quality of books at his table grow. Not the literary quality, but the physical quality. The gorgeousness of the covers, the attractiveness of the design, every year he was in business a trip to the Tachyon table had become more and more of a visual feast.
The problem for me was that "literary quality" thing.
For all the success JABberwocky has had over the years, it was somewhat reflective of its owner's tastes. This is changing, because Eddie Schneider has a more literary bent in his reading tastes than I do in mine, and since adding Eddie to the staff in 2008, he's building a roster of authors with a very different profile. But I've always been a bit more of a plot person. I'm the kind of person who usually reads two lines of the fiction in The New Yorker and then starts flipping pages to look at cartoons en route to the "critics" section of the magazine that follows the fiction. My own tastes have intersected only occasionally with the Nebula Award ballot, and never with the World Fantasy Award ballot.
Which wasn't Jacob Weisman's thing with Tachyon. The sad fact was, I'd spend years looking longingly at this beautiful array of Tachyon books from all the best authors in sf/fantasy, and then I'd go thinking about the JABberwocky catalog which is usually in my bag just in case there's someone to give to at these conventions, and it was like the Mars and Venus thing.
So, heck no, Brandon Sanderson was not going to take an award caliber novella and put it out himself and deprive me of the one chance I'd had to actually give something to Jacob Weisman that I could suggest he buy -- well, let's not say "with a straight face," let's say "with a sincere and firm belief that he would and should want to buy it."
So on March 14, I e-mailed Jacob, and I told him I had an award caliber novella by Brandon Sanderson, it gave me the same feeling I had when I was reading the Kij Johnson story, and would he maybe want to take a look. And oh, by the way, Brandon really wants to keep the e-book rights, and he really wants to have this out before the end of the year.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Jacob asked me to send it along and promised me he'd read it quickly. He did. This was very important to me; it was one thing for me to know and feel in my heart of hearts that this was an award-caliber piece of fiction. Having Jacob Weisman agree to publish it -- that was the guy with the table full of beautiful books by all the authors who kept getting nominated for all the awards telling me it was.
We agreed that it was kind of late to absolutely promise 100% for sure that it could be out in 2012, but we'd all do our darnedest that it would be available by World Fantasy, Which made things a little more complex, since World Fantasy was in Canada, which meant longer shipping time and tighter deadlines.
He agreed that Brandon could do his own e-book. Not without some concessions at our end; the size of the advance or giving some UK rights to Tachyon were particular areas where I had to fight less zealously.
And by March 23, 2012, we were looking at the artwork that Jacob and his managing editor Jill Roberts were thinking to use.
I'm still a bit amazed by it all, that something so good that hadn't even been a thought in January 2012 had become a brilliant piece of fiction by the end of February, sold to the perfect publisher -- as if fate itself were guiding our hands -- by the end of March, and was sitting at the banquet tables at the World Fantasy Awards banquet on November 4.
And most amazing of all, that on March 30, 2013, around 13 months after it was finished, it was being announced as a finalist for this year's Hugo Award.
Is it the best novella on the Hugo ballot this year? I'll let you tell me that, and we'll find out together alongside the Riverwalk in San Antonio on Labor Day Sunday.
I will tell you that it is and always will be an award-caliber piece of fiction, and one that deserves reading.
Am I biased? Well, not as much as you think. There's nothing that can kill a book faster than bad word of mouth, and if you find me trying to sell you something, I'm going to try and sell you something I think you'll love. Something you'll tell all your friends you love, not something you'll tell them to avoid. Because what would have happened if I'd spent the past ten years trying to sell Jacob Weisman things that weren't really right for Tachyon? I could have, easily. But I respected the integrity of Jacob and the Tachyon Publications list way too much to do that. When I finally stopped chatting across the table in some hotel function space or convention center hanger that I sure hoped I'd have something for him someday and finally said "I have something," I think that counted for something.
Which, to digress -- some people say of agents, and rightly so, that we are the people who won't submit your book to all the places you'd send it yourself, that we are standing in the way and working for ourselves when we ought to be working for you. Well, yes! Because someday, you may want to be the author who benefits when I put my reputation on the line and say that this is something you should want, and want badly.
So when I write this blog post today, when I spend 1900 words telling you about THE EMPEROR'S SOUL, you'll know how much this novella means to me.
You can check out review quotes for the book on our website. Many of those quotes have live links to the original review.
You can order the novella directly from Tachyon.
Or you can order it from some big book retailer.
If you buy the print edition from anywhere, Brandon has this thing, he talks about it on this blog post, where he will send you a free e-book edition!
Or, you can just buy the e-book from some different big book retailer.
Hey, listen! Audio here.
For our friends in the British Commonwealth of Nations: Kindle (click link to find reasonably priced marketplace used copies, omnibus edition with Legion due this summer), and WH Smiths/Kobo.
There are arrangements made or in process for translated editions of the novella in Taiwan, Spain, Germany and other markets.
Obviously, we owe a lot of thanks to all the people at Tachyon, not just Jacob but Jill and everyone else there, for their work on this novella. And to Moshe Feder, who so often provides edits for Brandon beyond what he has to do in his role as an editor for Tor.
It's an interesting story, to me at least, on many levels.
For one, I'm old enough to have grown up in an era when we didn't have all of these internet magazines like Lightspeed and Clarkesworld and Daily SF and etc. So just for that reason alone, it's hard to believe that it took a little over a year for Brandon Sanderson's THE EMPEROR'S SOUL to go from non-existence to Hugo finalist. Unless you really hit the jackpot, writing a story in January and submitting it to the magazines that were pretty much the only places to go for this sort of thing in 1980, having a quick try on the first sale and having the story sneak in to the November of December issue -- it just couldn't happen. Magazine lead times are so long.
And if anything, THE EMPEROR'S SOUL was compressed even further than that.
Brandon was touring Taiwan in Winter 2012. He was inspired to write something by some stamps he saw at a museum. During a break between drafts of A Memory of Light in February 2012, he wrote a few small things that could be fit into the available time. According to a forthcoming review for one of Brandon's books, he is "inhumanly prolific" so he managed to write this 30,000 word novella in a relatively short amount of time, finishing toward the end of February. He sent it off to Moshe Feder, the Tor editor who discovered and purchased Brandon's debut novel Elantris, for a look-see, and Moshe e-mailed on March 8, 2012 to say "What can I say? I love it!"
I was jealous Moshe had gotten first crack at it, so I got a copy myself. As that upcoming review says, Brandon is "inhumanly prolific," so I was able to load up my iPad with an epub file of the new novella, another new novella, and a new draft of his YA debut The Rithmatist, and with a free afternoon on the weekend of March 10/11 2012, I headed off to the New York Sports Clubs on Park Ave. and 23rd St. in Manhattan and spent a few hours on the elliptical reading new Brandon Sanderson.
I didn't just love THE EMPEROR'S SOUL. I thought it was something special. It made me feel the way I'd felt a few months before when I'd had a break in my reading pile and read an issue of Asimov's with Kij Johnson's "The Man Who Bridged the Mist," a great novella that was on all the award ballots and winning many during 2012 (that was read on the bike in my building's gym, there's nothing like having good reading to burn the calories).
But what were we going to do with something that I was convinced was an award-caliber novella?
This made for some interesting conversations with Brandon in the next day or two.
Brandon wanted the novella out in 2012. This is the opposite of the ideal approach for being on award ballots. Too early in the year, maybe people forget. Too late, maybe not enough time for people to read and word to spread. But Brandon was worried that he didn't have a book-length work of his own to come out in 2012. Alloy of Law had come out Fall 2011, Memory of Light was due January 2013, Brandon wasn't buying my "oh, the paperback of Alloy of Law will be out in 2012, that's a book!" arguments.
That made it very hard to consider the magazine route.
As or more important in deciding against the magazine route, Brandon was itching to be doing some e-books of his own. Even if a magazine purchased the story ASAP and could have it out, it wasn't going to pay a lot of money, maybe $1500 or $2000, and it wasn't going to allow a separate e-book.
Nor, in all likelihood, would Brandon's regular publisher, Tor. The big publishers will occasionally pick up something first published in e-book, and maybe be persuaded to leave the e-book rights behind, but as a rule they won't buy books where they don't have e-book rights.
We were waiting on publication that summer of Brandon's novella LEGION from Subterranean, but we didn't like that option here, of trying to have two Subterranean novellas in such quick succession.
And that was when I pushed back a little, and decreed that the novella was simply too good just to be done as an e-book by Brandon himself. Maybe none of the familiar things we were doing was the right thing for THE EMPEROR'S SOUL. Maybe, this was going to be my first Tachyon Publications book.
I confess, I was being a little selfish here.
I wanted a Tachyon Publications book so very very badly.
And I never had one.
I'd chatted with Jacob Weisman at the Tachyon table at WorldCon or World Fantasy for years and years. I'd watched the quantity and quality of books at his table grow. Not the literary quality, but the physical quality. The gorgeousness of the covers, the attractiveness of the design, every year he was in business a trip to the Tachyon table had become more and more of a visual feast.
The problem for me was that "literary quality" thing.
For all the success JABberwocky has had over the years, it was somewhat reflective of its owner's tastes. This is changing, because Eddie Schneider has a more literary bent in his reading tastes than I do in mine, and since adding Eddie to the staff in 2008, he's building a roster of authors with a very different profile. But I've always been a bit more of a plot person. I'm the kind of person who usually reads two lines of the fiction in The New Yorker and then starts flipping pages to look at cartoons en route to the "critics" section of the magazine that follows the fiction. My own tastes have intersected only occasionally with the Nebula Award ballot, and never with the World Fantasy Award ballot.
Which wasn't Jacob Weisman's thing with Tachyon. The sad fact was, I'd spend years looking longingly at this beautiful array of Tachyon books from all the best authors in sf/fantasy, and then I'd go thinking about the JABberwocky catalog which is usually in my bag just in case there's someone to give to at these conventions, and it was like the Mars and Venus thing.
So, heck no, Brandon Sanderson was not going to take an award caliber novella and put it out himself and deprive me of the one chance I'd had to actually give something to Jacob Weisman that I could suggest he buy -- well, let's not say "with a straight face," let's say "with a sincere and firm belief that he would and should want to buy it."
So on March 14, I e-mailed Jacob, and I told him I had an award caliber novella by Brandon Sanderson, it gave me the same feeling I had when I was reading the Kij Johnson story, and would he maybe want to take a look. And oh, by the way, Brandon really wants to keep the e-book rights, and he really wants to have this out before the end of the year.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Jacob asked me to send it along and promised me he'd read it quickly. He did. This was very important to me; it was one thing for me to know and feel in my heart of hearts that this was an award-caliber piece of fiction. Having Jacob Weisman agree to publish it -- that was the guy with the table full of beautiful books by all the authors who kept getting nominated for all the awards telling me it was.
We agreed that it was kind of late to absolutely promise 100% for sure that it could be out in 2012, but we'd all do our darnedest that it would be available by World Fantasy, Which made things a little more complex, since World Fantasy was in Canada, which meant longer shipping time and tighter deadlines.
He agreed that Brandon could do his own e-book. Not without some concessions at our end; the size of the advance or giving some UK rights to Tachyon were particular areas where I had to fight less zealously.
And by March 23, 2012, we were looking at the artwork that Jacob and his managing editor Jill Roberts were thinking to use.
I'm still a bit amazed by it all, that something so good that hadn't even been a thought in January 2012 had become a brilliant piece of fiction by the end of February, sold to the perfect publisher -- as if fate itself were guiding our hands -- by the end of March, and was sitting at the banquet tables at the World Fantasy Awards banquet on November 4.
And most amazing of all, that on March 30, 2013, around 13 months after it was finished, it was being announced as a finalist for this year's Hugo Award.
Is it the best novella on the Hugo ballot this year? I'll let you tell me that, and we'll find out together alongside the Riverwalk in San Antonio on Labor Day Sunday.
I will tell you that it is and always will be an award-caliber piece of fiction, and one that deserves reading.
Am I biased? Well, not as much as you think. There's nothing that can kill a book faster than bad word of mouth, and if you find me trying to sell you something, I'm going to try and sell you something I think you'll love. Something you'll tell all your friends you love, not something you'll tell them to avoid. Because what would have happened if I'd spent the past ten years trying to sell Jacob Weisman things that weren't really right for Tachyon? I could have, easily. But I respected the integrity of Jacob and the Tachyon Publications list way too much to do that. When I finally stopped chatting across the table in some hotel function space or convention center hanger that I sure hoped I'd have something for him someday and finally said "I have something," I think that counted for something.
Which, to digress -- some people say of agents, and rightly so, that we are the people who won't submit your book to all the places you'd send it yourself, that we are standing in the way and working for ourselves when we ought to be working for you. Well, yes! Because someday, you may want to be the author who benefits when I put my reputation on the line and say that this is something you should want, and want badly.
So when I write this blog post today, when I spend 1900 words telling you about THE EMPEROR'S SOUL, you'll know how much this novella means to me.
You can check out review quotes for the book on our website. Many of those quotes have live links to the original review.
You can order the novella directly from Tachyon.
Or you can order it from some big book retailer.
If you buy the print edition from anywhere, Brandon has this thing, he talks about it on this blog post, where he will send you a free e-book edition!
Or, you can just buy the e-book from some different big book retailer.
Hey, listen! Audio here.
For our friends in the British Commonwealth of Nations: Kindle (click link to find reasonably priced marketplace used copies, omnibus edition with Legion due this summer), and WH Smiths/Kobo.
There are arrangements made or in process for translated editions of the novella in Taiwan, Spain, Germany and other markets.
Obviously, we owe a lot of thanks to all the people at Tachyon, not just Jacob but Jill and everyone else there, for their work on this novella. And to Moshe Feder, who so often provides edits for Brandon beyond what he has to do in his role as an editor for Tor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)