Editor’s Blog – Page 91

Nathan Shumate Looks at Lousy Book Covers

Monday, January 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

It’s a lot easier to publish a book than it used to be.

So easy in fact that people are doing it themselves. They’re doing away with traditional print and distribution, all the hassle of finding an agent, publishing contracts, and 20th Century promotional models entirely.

Unfortunately, in the process many of them are also getting rid of things they probably shouldn’t. Things like book design, and cover art. And marketing.

Or even proof-reading. I mean, who needs that, right?

Sadly, the result is that some good books are getting buried under terrible cover art, or painfully sub-standard art design. Nathan Shumate has made it his mission to showcase daily examples at his blog, Lousy Book Covers. Today’s poster child, Dixon Heurass’s Goat Suckin’, is sub-titled “Hotter Than It Sounds” (as Nathan dryly observes, “It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”)

Check out the many additional examples at Nathan’s blog to see just how many different ways there are to screw up cover art, or totally obscure passable art with poor title placement and font color.

We last discussed Nathan Shumate on the publication of his delightful experiment in communal self-publishing, Space Eldritch (which has a thoroughly excellent cover, incidentally).

Harry Connolly: “Let Me Tell You About My Ambitions, and Why They Don’t Include Kickstarter”

Monday, January 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

We’ve had some excellent discussions here about cloud funding, starting with Scott Taylor’s “The Pillaging of Kickstarter” last March. There’s no question that cloud funding sites like Kickstarter are here to stay, but the question remains: how much do they really help writers?

Harry Connolly has written a thoughtful and insightful piece on his blog from the point of view of a successful author and self-published writer, titled “Let me tell you about my ambitions, and why they don’t include Kickstarter (right now).” Here’s a quote:

Along with the release of the sales numbers of my self-published novel has come a flood of requests that I turn to Kickstarter to fund The Twisted Path… Currently, I have no plans to do that, and I’m writing this post because I want to explain my reasoning…

I want to be a best-selling author… It’s not about making a whole bunch of money, it’s about having my books in the hands of lots of readers from all over the world.

Several people have suggested that I could get new readers with a Kickstarter campaign, but I don’t consider that realistic. Take a look at these guys: their campaign has been fantastically successful. At the time I write this, they’re over 11,000% of their goal. However, they have fewer than 8,500 backers.

That’s huge for a Kickstarter but Circle of Enemies sold more copies than that and it’s considered a failure.

Harry Connolly’s first publication “The Whoremaster of Pald” appeared in Black Gate 3; his Twenty Palaces novels include Child of Fire, Game of Cages, and Circle of Enemies, all published in paperback by Del Rey, and the self-published Twenty Palaces.

You can read the complete blog post here.

The Rumors Are True: JJ Abrams to Helm Next Star Wars

Saturday, January 26, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Late last night, Walt Disney Studios announced that J.J. Abrams will direct the still-untitled Star Wars: Episode VII.

An announcement was expected following Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in October and rumors have been swirling around Abrams for the last 48 hours.

In entertainment circles, this hook-up is akin to the marriage of Michael Jackson and Priscilla Presley, which made Jackson Elvis Presely’s son-in-law. Abrams, who directed 2009’s Star Trek, unites science fiction’s two largest film franchises under a single creative umbrella.

Abrams had an impressive television resume long before he became King of SF Film: his creations include Felicity, Alias, Lost and Fringe. He wrote and directed the Spielberg homage Super 8 and the action flick Mission: Impossible III, and co-wrote Armageddon. George Lucas said in a statement:

I’ve consistently been impressed with J.J. as a filmmaker and storyteller. He’s an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn’t be in better hands.

According to Disney’s Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning writer of Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, and the upcoming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will write the screenplay. It will arrive in theaters in 2015, and Disney has announced plans to release a new Star Wars film every two to three years after that. The Empire Strikes Back writer Lawrence Kasdan will script the second, and Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) is on deck for the third.

Rumors abound on the plot of the next three films, including whether or not they will include Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford. Recent reports in The Guardian and Reuters suggest they could center on Luke Skywalker’s attempts to found a Jedi academy on the planet Yavin 4.

Hasbro Announces It Will Cut 550 Jobs

Friday, January 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Hasbro, owner of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering, announced plans today to cut about 10 percent of its workforce and consolidate facilities to reduce expenses.

Hasbro, known chiefly for its toy line, said fourth-quarter revenue failed to meet expectations due to weaker than expected holiday demand. Hasbro expects revenue for the quarter to decline nearly 4% to $1.28 billion, badly missing earlier expectation for a 6% jump.

Hasbro’s brands include Monopoly, Nerf, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. The company didn’t break down the earnings disappointment so it’s difficult to lay the blame on any particular division, but it probably didn’t help that last year’s Battleship film, co-produced by Hasbro, was a significant flop. The next Transformers film isn’t due until 2014.

Hasbro employs 5,500 worldwide; a 10 percent cut would affect about 550 people. Since Hasbro doesn’t break out earnings for its Wizards of the Coast division, fans are in the dark about just how successful the division is — and whether or not it’s likely to be affected by the coming cuts.

Stay tuned to Black Gate for news, gossip, and unwarranted speculation as it develops.

George R.R. Martin: “A Writer Who Needs to Get Writing”

Friday, January 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

George R.R. Martin is profiled by The Huffington Post today in a piece titled “13 Writers Who Need To Get Writing.”

Martin is the poster child — his smiling face is at the top — but the article also pokes Philip Pullman (“We want him to write The Book of Dust, the latest companion book to the His Dark Materials series”), George Saunders (“His quirky, disturbing sci-fiesque suburban short stories have critics fighting over each other… write a goddamn novel already”), and The Night Circus author Erin Morgenstern (“Morgenstern says her next book is “a film noir-flavored Alice in Wonderland“… WE WANT TO READ IT NOW.”)

In other GRRM news “The Princess and the Queen,” a new novella set in the world of A Song and Ice and Fire, will appear in Martin and Gardner Dozois’s upcoming “massive crossgenre anthology” Dangerous Women. Here’s the scoop from Martin’s blog:

Mine own contribution… well, it’s some of that fake history I have been writing lo these many months, the true (mostly) story of the origins of the Dance of the Dragons. The stand-alone stories, not part of any series, feature some amazing work as well. For those who like to lose themselves in long stories, the Brandon Sanderson story, the Diana Gabaldon story, the Caroline Spector story, and my “Princess and Queen” are novellas. Huge mothers.

Read the complete details at Tor.com.

Game Over? Atari’s U.S. Operations File for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Atari, one of the most storied game manufacturers in history, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, and has indicated it plans to to sell off its logo and most profitable videogame franchises.

Atari was incorporated on June 27, 1972 by videogame pioneer Nolan Bushnell and his partner Ted Dabney. Their first games included Pong, Asteroids, and Centipede. By the end of the 20th century, the company had fallen on hard times and essentially vanished. In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired Atari’s assets, including the name.

At this point, following the Atari brand gets a little tortured. The company currently operating under the name Atari was founded as GT Interactive in 1993 (long-time gamers may remember GT Interactive as publishers of Doom II, Unreal, Heretic, and Imperium Galactica). They changed names to Infogrames in 1999, and in 2003 licensed the Atari name and logo and changed their name to Atari Inc.

Through all the changes, Atari remained a premiere publisher, especially for fantasy fans. It owns or manages more than 200 brands, and in the last decade alone published Neverwinter Nights (2002), The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003), Master of Orion 3 (2003), Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard (2005), Dungeons & Dragons Online (2006), Star Trek Online (2010), Daggerdale (2011), and The Witcher 2 (2011). Its most recent release of note is the PC version of Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition.

The bankruptcy is intended to sever ties with its troubled French parent, Atari SA (previously called Infogrames), and secure additional funding to continue operations.

Atari US employs roughly 40 people and is seeking $5.25 million, primarily to develop games for digital and mobile platforms.

New Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace

Sunday, January 20, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in 1987, I was reading novels like Tim Powers’s On Stranger Tides, James Blaylock’s Homunculus, and K.W. Jeter’s Infernal Devices.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, all three men were friends. What I did notice was that all three shared a common fascination with Victorian-era manners and plots, and their books likewise shared a common aesthetic, an alternate-history extrapolation and love of steam-powered gadgetry. I remember Jeter’s famous letter, published in the April 1987 issue of Locus, in which he coined the term ‘steampunk’ to describe what he and his friends were doing, and make a modest prediction:

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like ‘steam-punks,’ perhaps.

How right he was. Steampunk did become the next big thing, gradually displacing the “cyberpunks,” who were widely considered The Next Big Thing in 1987. No one predicted steampunk would be just as much a clothing and cosplay phenomenon as a literary trend, but no one had heard of cosplay in 1987 either, so that’s understandable.

If you want to get into steampunk fashion, you’re on your own. But if you’re looking for a great introduction to the ideas and writers behind the defining SF aesthetic of the 21st Century (so far), Sean Wallace’s The Mammoth Book of Steampunk is a fine place to start. Reprinting fiction from Jeff VanderMeer, Aliette de Bodard, N.K. Jemisin, Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick, Margo Lanagan, Amal El-Mohtar, Barth Anderson, Jeffrey Ford, James Morrow, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Cherie Priest, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine, and many other, this fat anthology will make you an expert on the sub-genre in short order.

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk was published by Running Press in June, 2012. It is 498-pages in trade paperback, priced at $13.95, or $11.12 for the digital edition. Check it out.

Vintage Treasures: Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t discover science fiction and fantasy through novels — not really. I discovered it by reading short stories in Junior High, and especially the enticing anthologies on display every week in the library at St. Francis School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I didn’t really know what science fiction was; but if it had monsters on the cover, I was all over it.

The first anthology I can recall reading was Creatures From Beyond, a marvelous monster-fest if ever there was one. When I tracked it down again decades later, I was delighted to discover the editor was none other than Terry Carr, the legendary editor whose Best Science Fiction of the Year and Fantasy Annual paperbacks I read avidly all through high school — and who pulled William Gibson’s Neuromancer out of the slush pile at Ace Books.

I think the reason I still remember it so well after all these years is that, unlike most of the collections I checked out of the library, it wasn’t a kid’s book. It’s a genuine SF anthology, with short stories from Henry Kuttner, Clifford D. Simak & Carl Jacobi, Theodore Sturgeon, Donald A. Wollheim, Brian W. Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, and other top-flight authors.

Carr reasoned — correctly — that there was no better source for action-filled monster tales than pulp science fiction magazines and he mined them heavily to generate Creatures From Beyond. The fiction is drawn from Amazing Stories, Astonishing, Unknown, Other Worlds, Comet, Thrilling Wonder, Future, and a smattering of anthologies.

Of course, the other reason I remember it is Eric Frank Russell’s brilliant novelette “Dear Devil,” the tale of a handful of children who survive a nuclear apocalypse on Earth… and the curious (and hideous) explorer from Mars who helps put them back on track towards a new and better civilization. Rejected by all the major SF magazines of the time, it landed at Ray Palmer’s fledgling Other Worlds, where it almost single-handedly put the magazine on the map — and instantly made a name for the young editor who pulled it from the slush, 26-year-old Bea Mahaffey, who’d been thrust the reins of the magazine when Palmer was incapacitated in an accident.

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New Treasures: Lords of Waterdeep

Tuesday, January 15, 2013 John ONeill Comments 29 comments

Well, the holidays are finally over and all the gifts have been put away. Unless you’re like me and you piled them all in the living room so you can gaze at them happily.

My family has started to complain, though. I asked for a lot of games, and consequently this year’s haul is a little harder to step over. I can’t help it — ever since I was a kid, I’ve equated the holidays with gaming. There’s just something joyful about gathering all your closest friends and family together for a friendly game of strategy around the kitchen table at Christmas. And then, crushing them all with an iron fist.

Of course, anyone can crush their opponents in a routine game, as I’m fond of saying (every time I lose, without fail, my friends tell me). It’s only the most challenging games, those that add those rare elements of intrigue and power politics, that yield a true sense of triumph.

Forget strategy — I want a game where I can play to my strengths. Backstabbing and subterfuge, that’s what I’m good at.

Which is why I’ve been so interested in Lords of Waterdeep, the new Dungeons & Dragons board game from Wizards of the Coast.

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John R. Fultz’s Seven Kings on Sale Today

Tuesday, January 15, 2013 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

John R. Fultz took the world by storm with his first novel, Seven Princes, published last January. In a starred review, Library Journal praised it as “A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building,” and io9 labeled it “Epic with a capital EPIC.”

Seven Princes was just the down payment. The next installment arrives today. Seven Kings is the second of the Books of the Shaper, one of most hotly anticipated epic fantasy series on the market.

In the jungles of Khyrei, an escaped slave seeks vengeance and finds the key to a savage revolution.

In the drought-stricken Stormlands, the Twin Kings argue the destiny of their kingdom: one walks the path of knowledge, the other treads the road to war.

Beyond the haunted mountains King Vireon confronts a plague of demons bent on destroying his family.

With intrigue, sorcery, and war, Seven Kings continues the towering fantasy epic that began with Seven Princes.

John published three highly acclaimed short stories in the print incarnation of Black Gate: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine” (BG 12), “Return of the Quill” (BG 13), and “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). He was this week’s featured writer in our Black Gate Online Fiction line with his sword & sorcery tale, “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” available free online here.

You can read last year’s announcement on Seven Princes here; and we were proud to offer readers the complete first chapter of Seven Kings right here last month.

Seven Kings was published by Orbit on January 15, 2013. It is 496 pages in trade paperback, available for $15.99 ($9.99 ePub and PDF). Learn more at the Orbit website.

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