Tue, 01 Apr 2003
News Flash: Big Engine in insolvency
Big Engine, who were due to
publish my novel Festival of Fools in April
(also due to be published as "Singularity Sky" by Ace in the United States
in August) are going into insolvency.
Publisher Ben Jeapes says, "looking at the projected figures of income
vs outgoings, there's no other choice. There's nothing wrong with it
that couldn't be solved with reinvestment ..." and he's not the only
one; the climate for small businesses in the UK today is grim.
Two years ago this would have been a bitter blow to me. I'm still
saddened by the loss of a small but important publisher who has been
doing significant and important work within the genre (republishing
unduly neglected works like the collected Sladek and Brian Stableford's
early novels). I owe Ben a huge debt; he was the first editor to offer
me a novel contract, and it was this that secured the interest of my
agent.
However, since then, I sold a total of five novels
in the US. This setback isn't going to prevent my books coming out from
Ace, Tor, and Golden Gryphon,
and they'll still be available in the UK as imports. (In fact, as far
as silver linings go,
it may even make it easier for my agent to sell my books in the UK; with no
pre-existing arrangement with a publisher, she'll have a clean sheet
to work with.)
Time to breath a sigh of regret and move on.
[ Discuss writing ]
posted at: 12:23 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry
|