publishing

Moby Awards!

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I’m way behind on this, but the Moby Awards were just given out a short while ago. What are Moby Awards? They’re given to book trailers, of course.

This may seem a little silly (and it is) but the award givers seem to understand this: Here’s a list of the winners over on the Galleycat site. They’re fun to watch, especially the bad ones. The winner of the “Worst Small/No House” is particularly special, what with the delightful animation, the empty corner of an attic repurposed as a secret waterfront back room, the pirate costumes made from what appears to be shower curtains, and of course “Dubloooooooons!”

And when they give an award called “Most Monkey Sex” they aren’t kidding. Jeebus.

I don’t really understand the “Worse Music” selection. The song isn’t to my taste, but it seems to be a mediocre version of that sort of song.

Anyway, you may have heard that I’ve hired some friends to make a trailer for the Twenty Palaces books (since I’ve only mentioned it about a billion times, but I enjoyed watching these. They’re basically commercials, I know, but some are clever.

It’s the funny ones that work best, don’t you think?

“They’re so funny. They use the subjunctive when they ought to use the nupative.”

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Let’s make this a quick list of items of interest, okay?

First of all: Hey New Yorkers! I’m going to be in New York City next week, visiting Manhattan with my wife and son. Yes, I’m also going to meet up with my agent (first time face to face) and my editor (not first time). And others, too, if things go well.

Publishing people! Who use the subjunctive correctly! And who probably also know how to use the nupative, even though that doesn’t even exist, except in last night’s dream about condescending NY grammar fundamentalists. (See subject header)

Anyway, I’m also planning to attend the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series on June 15th. I don’t know either of the authors who’ll be reading there, but that just makes it more exciting.

Are you in New York? I’d like to meet there, and maybe do something after. I look like this. If you see me there, don’t hesitate to introduce yourself.

Second: I mentioned this on Twitter last week, but haven’t here; Twenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire, is 100% done! Well, unless Del Rey buys it and my editor has notes. And except for the copy edits. And galleys. And another polish, if I want to give it one, (and I always do).

Still: One. Hundred. Percent. Done. I’m back at work on A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark (aka: The Auntie Mame Files). I like this book, although I suspect it’s going to be a stand alone. We’ll see.

Third: On the advice of a friend, I’ve started polishing up some old short stories to self-publish them. I mean, why not? Several have been published before and several will need substantial rewriting, but it will be nice to have something new to put out into the world.

Fourth: Look what came in the mail over the weekend?

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It had this in it:

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I’m going to assume he meant “this book,” to mean “the book for Harry Connolly.” Seems obvious, right?

I sorta expect a significant proportion of this text to be right out of his LiveJournal, but with luck I’ll pick up some extra tips for writing short work for small checks, rather than doing these months-long projects on spec, which sucks.

Fourth: Is it completely ridiculous for me to record all the Bookscan numbers I get from Amazon.com into a spreadsheet? I mean, I can’t even keep my characters’ names straight, but I’m fastidious about this?

Fifth: I still have a lot to do before I head to NY. Good thing I finished those Dungeon Quest books (by Joe Daly). Now that the hilarity is over, I can get some shit done.

Look what arrived!

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On a Sunday, yet. I can only assume it was dropped at a neighbor’s place and they brought it by sometime today, probably while I was busy not-throttling my son.

Anyway, it’s open to my story, “Eating Venom,” and you can see by comparison that Black Gate is twice the height and width of my last novel while being nearly as thick. Have I mentioned that it’s 150K words? That’s an epic fantasy novel, for serious.

Check it out, guys.

The Twenty Palaces trailer

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Due to circumstances beyond my control and which have nothing to do with the excellent work being done by the guys at Wyrd, the trailer for the Twenty Palaces series won’t be released until July. The guys are nearly finished with their work (which looks fantastic) but other factors will delay things.

Which means I’ll probably be sitting on a finished–and awesome–trailer for weeks without releasing it. Have I mentioned that I’m not the most patient person in the world?

Ah well.

Randomness for 4/30

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1) 35 Fantastic Lego Ads.

2) Every Time Magazine cover in one image. Warning: big file

3) The Sartre Star Wars. Video. via Tor.com. The YouTube user’s other videos are pretty good, especially “Be A Good Sport, Sport.”

4) Now for a big change. Gorgeous… and I do mean gorgeous time lapse photography from a mountain in Spain. Video. Really amazing.

5) It’s been a while since I dropped politics into one of these link salads, but here’s one: Three important health care graphs. This is why I support effectiveness studies, which Republicans oppose: we’re already spending too much, and we don’t take the time to find out what works and what doesn’t. The first thing we should be cutting from our health care spending is a treatment that doesn’t work. Plus, I happen to believe we can learn something from the good examples of others.

6) Vintage condom posters.

7) This is awesome, and they need help from book collectors.

Quick followup post

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As a quick follow up to yesterday’s post about print costs, here’s a comment from someone who actually does small print runs.

Spent the morning writing

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And you know what? It feels great.

I sorta expected my wife to push me to return to the convention today and make another go of it–socialize! network!–but no. Today has been work day, and I’m happy about it.

Anyway, regarding something said during a panel at Norwescon yesterday: Lou Anders was talking about ebooks, paper books, and pricing, and he said that one of the things keeping prices of paper books low was large print runs. If ebooks drive down sales of paper books, he’ll have to choose between a) smaller, more expensive print runs, which means higher prices, or b) the same old large runs of books, but with most of them stored in a warehouse and earning him a tax hit at the end of the year.

But I thought there was a c) that he was missing. If printers want to keep their businesses alive, they’re going to need to adapt to smaller print runs and downward price pressures. It seems like new technology would be the ticket here. (note: I know next to nothing about the current technology used by book printers, so clearly I’m typing this with my ass.)

I don’t mean printers in stores (although that would be tempting) because that takes forever. We’re a long way from having one or more of those in a store, handling large numbers of books at once.

But I suspect the price pressure from ebooks is going to hit printing presses especially hard. Is anyone familiar with the current state of their technology? So much has changed with printing at home in the last ten years (although obviously that’s very different) has book printing tech been changing too?

Norwescon Con Report

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Short version: No.

Long version: I’ll be spending tomorrow at the library, writing my new book.

Probably.

I will say that I saw more ass crack than I’m personally comfortable with, and while people were perfectly nice, the folks I did manage to chat with did not share any of my interests. No, I’ve never seen the Matt Smith “Doctor” (and I’m not all that fond of Tennant, either). No, I don’t know what “GNOME” is, let alone what it’s doing on my MacBook (“running” apparently).

Actually, it was pretty much what I expected: a place for folks to connect with their friends and blather about things genre.

It does require me to ask myself: What the hell are my interests? What could I talk about at a con? The nuances of the ACA? What the hell do I know about now that I’m a stay-at-home dad who spends most of his time working on books and trying to get his son to flush the damn toilet?

At least I know what programming is like.

N Things Make a Post

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n-6 ) I want to say thanks to everyone who answers my hypothetical posts. I don’t always respond to every comment mainly because I don’t want to do a bunch of “Cool!” or “That’s a great idea!” replies, but that’s pretty much what I’m thinking. However, my filmmaker friend Steve Barr left this comment, which probably deserves its own story seed spot.

n-5 ) “Then you are prejudiced, Timmy, because Steve is your filmmaker friend, and not your friend.” (I suspect that the only people who’ll get that reference are readers Of A Certain Age.

n-4) According to Twitter, ARCs of Circle of Enemies have been spotted in the wild. Yay! (gulp!)

n-3 ) Norwescon starts today but I’m not going. I have some stuff to do, and I have other plans for tonight. Here’s my schedule for the rest of the day: 1. Finish this post. 2. Email agent to let her know Twenty Palaces is on the way. 3. Walk to the post office on this chilly, sunny day to mail said book. 4. Go to library to drop off books and write a few pages of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark. 5. Return home to have dinner (burger salad tonight!) 6. Kick back with a book and read for most of the evening. God, I’m so looking forward to reading again.

n-2 ) This deserves its own post, but R.I.P. Elisabeth Sladen. She was the costar of the first Dr. Who I ever saw, and every costar since has had to measure themselves against her. She was wonderful in the role, and I hope that she had good, happy, satisfying life. Too soon.

n-1 ) I’ve talked before about the Bookscan numbers Amazon.com shares with authors, and the fact that the numbers for my books were improving after I guest-posted at Charles Stross’s blog. Well, last week the numbers had nearly returned to the levels they were during my stint at antipope.org, and I wondered over it. This week, the numbers have jumped even higher. Like, much higher, about triple what they were before my guest blog. At this point, I don’t much care why. I just want it to keep going on.

n) I haven’t seen GAME OF THRONES and I’m not planning to. The problem with having a kid who’s a night owl is that I can’t spend late evenings watching grownup shows with the volume down while he sleeps. Instead, I spend them sitting beside him, gently suggesting he shut his damn eyes and lie back down. I’m seriously excited for the next book, though.

Randomness for 4/15

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1) Breaking it down.

2) The Pierley/Redford Disassociative Affect Diagnostic. About as accurate as any internet personality test, but this one’s actually cool to take (and only 20 “questions”).

3) The Amazing Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds

4) Seven basic things this Cracked.com writer thinks you’re doing all wrong, for certain values of “you.” The only one my household didn’t know about was the brushing after meals thing.

5) Borders execs try to justify bonuses on the revenue their company will bring in someday after they get this little bankruptcy thing straightened out. God forbid their bonuses should reflect what they’ve already done, rather than what they expect to do.

6) Book reviewers, let me point out a thing that is not cool.

7) This is simply wonderful. Play with it when you can listen to sound on your computer.