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Sep 9 2009 3:55pm
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Announcing Year’s Best Fantasy 9
Pablo Defendini

spacer Tor.com is proud to announce the immediate availability of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s definitive anthology, Year’s Best Fantasy 9.

This highly anticipated release also marks something we’re particularly proud of: Tor.com’s debut as a publishing entity, distinct from Tor Books and as a separate imprint under our shared corporate overlords at Macmillan.

YBF 9 is available only as a print-on-demand book, in keeping with our mission of always exploring alternative forms of publishing. Similar to the launch of the Tor.com Store, this title is one of our various publishing projects that seek to experiment with the available alternatives to publishing’s traditional sales, distribution, and delivery mechanisms.

Year’s Best Fantasy 9 is available in the Tor.com Store, of course, as well as via online retailers such as Amazon, B&N, and more. As you’d expect with multiple Hugo Award-nominated (and recent winner) editors like David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, the Table of Contents for YBF 9 is impressive (and I’m not just saying that because there’s a Tor.com story in there, which you can read in its entirety here); see for yourselves:

“Shoggoths in Bloom” - Elizabeth Bear

“The Rabbi’s Hobby” - Peter S. Beagle

“Running the Snake” - Kage Baker

“The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm” - Daryl Gregory

“Reader’s Guide” - Lisa Goldstein

“The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D.” - Al Michaud

“Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake” - Naomi Novik

“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” - Catherynne M. Valente

“From the Clay of His Heart” - John Brown

“If Angels Fight” - Richard Bowes

“26 Monkeys and the Abyss” - Kij Johnson

“Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita” - Debra Doyle & James Macdonald

“The Film-makers of Mars” - Geoff Ryman

“Childrun” - Marc Laidlaw

“Queen of the Sunlit Shore” - Liz Williams

“Lady Witherspoon’s Solution” - James Morrow

“Dearest Cecily” - Kristine Dikeman

“Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta” - Randy McCharles

“Caverns of Mystery” - Kage Baker

“Skin Deep” - Richard Parks

“King Pelles the Sure” - Peter S. Beagle

“A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead” - Richard Harland

“Avast, Abaft!” - Howard Waldrop

“Gift from a Spring” - Delia Sherman

“The First Editions” - James Stoddard

“The Olverung” - Stephen Woodworth

“Daltharee” - Jeffrey Ford

“The Forest” - Kim Wilkins


Pablo Defendini is the producer of Tor.com, a printmaker, a bookmaker, and a general rabble-rouser. He was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, one of the most SFnal places on Earth. He is secretly a Cylon.

Internet | Written Word | Year's Best Fantasy 9 | David G. Hartwell | kathryn cramer | elizabeth bear | Peter S. Beagle | kage baker | Daryl Gregory | Lisa Goldstein | Al Michaud | naomi novik | Catherynne M. Valente | John Brown | Richard Bowes | Kij Johnson | Debra Doyle | James Macdonald | Geoff Ryman | Marc Laidlaw | liz williams | james morrow | Kristine Dikeman | Randy McCharles | Richard Parks | Richard Harland | howard waldrop | delia sherman | James Stoddard | Stephen Woodworth | Jeffrey Ford | Kim Wilkins | print on demand | tor.com is a publisher | tor.com is a retailer | tor.com is a group blog | tor.com is a short fiction market | tor.com is one tag short of being a schizophrenic
23 comments
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1. ecmyers
view all by ecmyers | Wednesday September 09, 2009 03:59pm EDT
Excellent! YBF9 on 9-9-09!
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2. jasonhenninger
view all by jasonhenninger | Wednesday September 09, 2009 05:27pm EDT
Fierce line-up. Congratulations!
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3. bavardage
view all by bavardage | Wednesday September 09, 2009 06:14pm EDT
How about an ebook :D
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4. Janice in GA
Wednesday September 09, 2009 07:10pm EDT
Agree. I wouldn't buy POD, but I'd totally buy an ebook.
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5. bat_matt
view all by bat_matt | Wednesday September 09, 2009 07:22pm EDT
EBook!
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6. pablodefendini
view all by pablodefendini | Wednesday September 09, 2009 08:17pm EDT
The ebook is coming. Due to the particulars of our POD supplier's workflow, the e-edition takes a bit longer to process than the POD. But it's being worked on now.

That said, this isn't your daddy's POD. This is practically indistinguishable from a regular trade paperback edition. POD's come a long way.
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7. thanbo
view all by thanbo | Wednesday September 09, 2009 08:27pm EDT
So let me get this straight. A series (Year's Best SF/Fantasy) which has, for the past 14 years, been published as (currently) $8 mass market paperbacks, is now only available as a $16 POD. Which costs the consumer twice as much, and is more expensive to produce, and thus that much harder to sell (will it be on the New SF racks at Borders and B&N?) with perhaps a smaller profit margin. And no e-book versions (yet). And this is a good idea (for the editors/ authors/ consumers/ publisher) ... why?
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8. PeterAhlstrom
view all by PeterAhlstrom | Wednesday September 09, 2009 11:31pm EDT
thanbo, presumably because Borders & B&N did not want to stock any copies of a mass-market edition of the book, presumably because the previous volume did not sell well enough in the chains' eyes. (I don't have the numbers but this answer makes sense considering recent book market conditions.) (And no, this edition wouldn't be on the shelves either. It's POD.)
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9. BlueTyson
view all by BlueTyson | Wednesday September 09, 2009 11:31pm EDT
7

Actually, you are wrong about the format. The Year's Best Fantasy hasn't been a mass market paperback for several years now.

There have only been ebooks for the first five - not the 6, 7, 8 editions from small press Tachyon - who has never done an ebook or shown any indication of such as far as I am aware.

Given it was fairly obviously not selling well with a double publisher change - actually being electronically available and having a high profile booster like Tor.com might mean it can survive. The survive is the why.

Remains to be seen how the ebook is handled, of course. If it is handled the same as a few recent Tor books have been - same price as print, available in USA only,Or the even loopier ebook almost double the paperback crazypants Year's Best SF strategy from HarperCollins they will well deserve your criticism.
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10. MarcL
Thursday September 10, 2009 12:08am EDT
I received my contributor's copy of the POD today. It is a hefty 476 page trade paperback. I don't have any of the previous volumes to compare it with, but the introduction indicates it is larger than the previous volumes. I have a very tactile relationship with books, and hefting one in my hands is definitely part of the shopping/evaluation process; so I'm not sure how simply describing the book is going to convince people to shell out for something that does not exist as a physical object until they pay for it. That said, I am ever more accustomed to buying books sight unseen over Amazon these days. I'm as curious as anyone to see how this all works out.
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11. BlueTyson
view all by BlueTyson | Thursday September 10, 2009 12:58am EDT
Volume 8 was under 400 pages, although with small type.
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12. Jedikalos
view all by Jedikalos | Thursday September 10, 2009 08:30am EDT
I don't understand why an ebook could not be somewhat cheaper--do the printing costs, including paper ink and machine not add anything to the overall cost? I am truly curious, because I prefer ebooks, but it has seemed strange to me that there are often no savings offered in this format. Wouldn't the profit balance out in ebooks, lower production costs offsetting the lower price, so that profit margin remained the same? Or not? You guys at TOR seem the ones to ask, the ones who would know:)
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13. toryx
view all by toryx | Thursday September 10, 2009 08:52am EDT
Depending on the final format of the ebook, I'd probably be pretty interested in buying that. I like the idea of POD, if it's done well. And anything that continues the publication of solid short stories on an annual basis has got my support.
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14. pablodefendini
view all by pablodefendini | Thursday September 10, 2009 02:41pm EDT
Pricing for ebooks is not quite as cut-and-dried as "there's no physical object, so there's no costs associated with it". This came as quite a surprise to me as well, once I started looking at it from the inside of the process. Sarah Burningham and Bob Miller from HarperStudios have interesting takes on things from a publisher's perspective:
Sarah: I’m afraid that the publishing industry is at just about the point where the music industry found itself in 2004: insisting on an old pricing model, even as the rest of the world routed around them and created a new one. There’s nothing magical or eternal about the old economics of book publishing, any more than there was anything magical or eternal about horse-and-buggy transportation, or the telegraph. When a new model came along that the market decided was better, the new model won.

None of this is to say that the coming adjustment won’t be difficult or disruptive or painful....

Bob: I agree that e-books should be priced lower than physical books. But I don’t agree that being profitable at $27.99 translates to being profitable at $9.99. It only costs us about $2.50-$3.00 less for us to publish the e-book, not $18.00 less. The right price is certainly one that a consumer will pay, but we won’t have books for them to buy if authors and publishers can’t make any money. So we need to find the right pricing somewhere between the hardcover list price and the money-losing $9.99 that Amazon is teaching consumers to expect.

My wary opinion is that we're fully in the throes of that 'adjustment period' that Sarah refers to, where the costs of producing ebooks are still conflated with the costs of producing a book, period, regardless of media. Clearly, the publishing industry is in early days of this (rightly or wrongly is a conversation for another day).
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15. Snuph
Thursday September 10, 2009 07:10pm EDT
I work in an independent SF bookstore and was disappointed to see that, unlike many other POD titles, this has no trade discount available from the major distributors. In other words, we can't stock it without virtually doubling the RRP, ie we won't stock it for fear of being seen as rip-off artists. I understand the trying new technologies schtick but it is seems strange to alienate a large chunk of the marketplace that still buys books from bricks and mortar. We've supported this great anthology series from the beginning and can't do so any more - what a shame!
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16. pablodefendini
view all by pablodefendini | Thursday September 10, 2009 10:02pm EDT
@Snuph #15
We're actually working to correct that. Stay tuned.
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17. Snuph
Friday September 11, 2009 02:08am EDT
Great to hear, I was hoping it was just a glitch :). I'll keep an eye on it and catalogue it as soon as we can stock it.
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18. Jedikalos
view all by Jedikalos | Friday September 11, 2009 09:11am EDT
@pablodefendine: Thanks for the answer on ebook pricing and the link--it is very interesting to see this new marketplace being created from the beginning.
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19. BlueTyson
view all by BlueTyson | Friday September 11, 2009 10:15am EDT | amended on Friday September 11, 2009 10:16am EDT
Although of course the vast majority of books are paperbacks, and that is how most people think of buying books, for when they bring up the 'Oh Noes, my hardbacks, argument'.

If the cannibalisation crowd are right, then people only buy hardbacks because they are all that is available - not for the actual format. Which would mean they are medium to long term doomed anyway, wouldn't it? Plus that lots of the 'I love the smell of paper in the morning' crowd are lying.

Here's another quote for you, Eric Flint, from a week or so ago (talking about the Hachette type recently moaning about something like PD was quoting above) :-

"The most striking thing about the report -- ssuming it's true, which you always have to wonder with anything in Drudge -- is that it indicates that the chief executive of one of the world's largest publishing corporations is abysmally ignorant of the most basic facts concerning electronic publishing.. You can start with his belief that a $9.99 e-book is going to automatically drive down the price of a hardcover.

Gah. This is on a par with arguing that the world can't be round, because if it was the people living in China would fall off.

There is very little relationship betwee
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