BostonDan

Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  Hang on Charlie. You can't say that the publishing industry has to deal with the weirds and wonderfuls, so it can't change; and also say at the same time that you have to use MS Word because that's the standard. Yep. Upshot: people like the friend I refer to are the reason why big chunks of publishing, even in the age of electronic workflow, still takes place with red ink on lumps of dead tree. (She won't use word, and she's an award-winning high seller, so the lump of grit in the gear results in a persistent squeak that the...
• Charlie Stross commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  Trust me, I am fully aware of how hard it is to grapple with multi-volume story arcs involving an army of viewpoint characters. Merchant Princes/Empire Games series: 9 volumes, ~930,000 words. (It's not cheating to include the written-and-on-their-way-into-print books, right?) Laundry Files series: 7 volumes plus shorter works to date, ~850,000 words. (Plans call for at least 2 more novels and 2 novellas, ~250,000 words.) There are a couple of methods for keeping it all moving. Every few books, plant a stick of dynamite under the series -- e.g. the endings of "The Trade of Queens" and "The Rhesus Chart"...
• dsgood commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  "Harry Potter" -- What made the books so successful was that they appealed to people who weren't used to reading for fun. (Also to other readers, of course.) Which is rather hard to predict. As for "But their getting published proves the system does work" -- we don't know what books which could have sold as well never got bought. Might be zero, might be thousands....
• J Thomas commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  As for "But their getting published proves the system does work" -- we don't know what books which could have sold as well never got bought. Might be zero, might be thousands. That's important. Lots of successful books get lots of rejections before they get published and get successful. However, just because a book will be successful doesn't make it a good fit for a particular publisher. So authors have a responsibility to carefully choose the best publishers to send their works to. Madeleine L'Engle claimed her first published book A Wrinkle in Time was rejected at least 26 times...
• philrm commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  And also Jay@231: applause!...