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.
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.
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.
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).
We're actually working to correct that. Stay tuned.
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