Posts under ‘Posts’
Aren’t we a little tired of this?
Two more punches have recently been thrown in the general direction of SF and Fantasy from people who really should – one would like to think – know better. In the New York Times, a review for Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS pondered the following: “Perhaps a fantasy novel meant for adults can’t help being a [...]
Urban fantasy: confirmed undead
Much of the discussion concerning the general state of the SFF market tends to ignore urban fantasy. However, remove urban fantasy from the current SFF bestseller charts, and they collapse. Most of the bestselling authors disappear; many of the most successful new authors launched over recent years disappear; many of the authors with most rapidly growing sales [...]
The Chart of Fantasy Art
Never let it be said that publishers don’t research their market. Having surveyed all the fantasy books published by the leading SFF imprints in the US, we are now one step closer to unlocking the greatest mysteries of fantasy cover design. Behold, the legendary Chart of Fantasy Art! What does all this mean? Well, the most commonly seen [...]
What’s selling?
All trade publishers now use data from Nielsen Bookscan. Skip if you already know all this, but briefly Bookscan tracks retail book sales (i.e. actual sales to consumers). It’s an incredibly useful tool for gathering market intelligence. It allows us, for example, to find out quickly and accurately how well a particular title is selling, and we can retrieve data relating [...]
The incredible disappearing books
I love speculative ideas (goes with the territory), and thanks to Galleycat‘s Ron Hogan for the link to this vision of a bookless bookstore from novelist Moriah Jovan. I wonder if the Espresso machines could be out the back, leaving space for a nice pot plant. Whether or not we see stores without inventory, the not-too-distant future will almost certainly bring us stores that [...]
Kindle UK and USA TODAY
Two bits of Kindle-related news today … UK publishers are anticipating a UK launch for the Kindle in October this year. USA TODAY has announced that its weekly bestseller lists will include Amazon Kindle e-book sales, starting today. One of the challenges of operating in digital markets is that although online communities and their discussions are likely [...]
Current events
Over recent years, there has been a steady decline in the number of promotional author tours. I should probably try to back this up with statistics, but I’d hate to be proven wrong. A number of factors have contributed: publishers being less willing to risk budgets organizing events that might not be successful; fewer stores having the resources or inclination [...]
The e-books are coming!
Within this post on a related topic, the always-interesting Mike Shatzkin predicts the manner in which the e-book market will grow over the next ten years. He defines what he sees as “four distinct stages of e-book adoption” (leading up to the new marketplace), and I suspect he may well be proven more right than wrong. Each publisher will have their [...]
Cheeky devilonius …
I will also try to pass on occasional words of publishing wisdom, such as these from our galaxy’s leading science-fictionado Ronald Chevalier. More naughtiness over here.
Greetings
So what’s the big idea? The SF publishing world is incredibly fortunate to have so much discussion of SF publishing-related matters online. Almost every publishing issue of any consequence – and quite a few of little consequence – is subject to intense analysis and debate by the SF community, and often the debate is smart, interesting, and challenging. Whether it’s e-books, covers, [...]