Ketchup

So I stumbled upon this today, which should be of great interest to any writer or editor or bookworm types.

I guess there has been much hue and cry and flamewars and hollering on the blogosphere, but I’m oblivious until weeks later. Typical. But I thought this analysis of the book chains was veeeery interesting in a grim, cold-eyed, nuts-and-bolts kind of way.

Labels: book ordering, Borders Books, Publishing, the writing life

It’s a mixed bag this week. I had an email from my editor to say that Plague Year has gone to its third printing, which is excellent! The book has legs. Obviously we’re all very excited. In fact, with the new run, I’m now very close to having 100K books in print.

That’s not a huge number, and it includes the Spanish and German editions overseas. I know plenty of writers whose print runs for a single novel just here in North America are two or three times that much, so my head still fits easily through the door... but, hey, I’m just starting out. My second novel is only two months old, and the six figure mark will be a nice milestone.

Our quest to close the last small gap to 100K may have taken a brief detour, however. It looks like it'll be another foreign edition that takes me to that mark. My editor here in the U.S. also said that, due to some “scheduling Sudoko,” Mind Plague is now slated for a December release. In 2009. No, that’s not a typo. We’re not talking about this December. We’re talking about next December.

That sounds scary, but it's only a jump of two months. Originally, they were talking about October 2009. Publishing books is akin to landing planes at LAX. You’ve got a lot of traffic and only so many runaways. Sometimes the books, er, planes stack up.

I have a killer blog to write about the turning of the wheels in publishing and why I'm off the summer schedule that saw both Year and War out in August. I’ll try to get to that next?

In the meantime, I see this as good-news-bad-news. We’re excited to have the book out during that time of year when people need to grab a lot of Christmas stocking stuffers for family and friends... Ooh! How about some nice paperbacks? On the other hand, I also worry that everyone will have completely forgotten about me by then. That's a long wait!

Maybe next fall just before the book is out, if I light myself on fire, naked, with Paris Hilton, also naked, on Wall Street, while throwing out free $10 bills stuffed inside fire-seared blueberry muffins... we’ll scrawl the title of the book on the money... well, you can’t beat publicity like that, right? With puppies. And music by Van Halen. Stand back!

Labels: Mind Plague, Publishing, the writing life

So I've been eyebrow deep in Mind Plague again, which is a good thing, but today is an off day for me so I'm catching up on correspondence and errands. In the meantime, here’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. That’s right! Because you demanded it. Sordid hot personal rants for the Internet!

Well, not really. But here is a Deep Thought With Jeff.

I’ve taken a bit of heat from some reviewers and fans for the Plague novels being “short” books. Generally this person will come on fairly strong about how they enjoyed the novel and say that it was a quick enjoyable read, but, well, maybe it was short...

To which I say bullshit. There’s no question that I’m not writing the gigantic 200K word door stoppers you find in epic fantasy, for example, but I take exception with the idea that my books are short.

Oo! A nerve! We’ve touched a nerve! :)

Plague Year is 100K words, which is slightly on the long side of average. It’s just that it was published in paperback and in the tiniest legible font known to mankind. The book clocks in at 304 pages total, including maps and blurbs and one ad in the back... but those are densely packed pages, folks, full of flavor and satisfaction. Mmm.

My contract for Plague War mandated an identical count of 100K words — yes, this stuff is in the legalese — but my editor and I fought for more after I found myself halfway through that word count but not halfway through the story. The scope of the sequel is even bigger than in the first book, with more POV characters and a larger background.

War clocked in at 115K words even after a brutal tightening-and-polish of the final manuscript. I figured the finished book would run at least 330 pages and show those short people a thing or two. But an interesting thing happened. When I received advance copies, I was flabbergasted to discover that War was exactly 304 pages, too!

What’s happening here? My editor tells me that books are printed in 16 page increments. More, they love ‘em thin. You get more books in a box that way, saving on warehousing and shipping costs, not to mention paper and binding costs. You also get more books on the shelves in less space. Welcome to the future!!!

I asked her, But what happened to the extra 15K words? Did you guy chop out a bunch of stuff without telling me?

Nope. If you examine War, you’ll find that its pages are even more densely packed than those of Year. They used the same tiny font, but with even narrower white margins on either side and several more lines from top to bottom. Shazam! Magic!

Here's more evidence that my books aren’t short. The gorgeous hard cover from Minotauro runs 320 pages, a nice, standard thickness for a book... and hard covers always have a lesser page count than paperbacks because, well, the pages are bigger! Even with a normal-sized font and normal spacing between the lines, those lovely big pages hold more text than a paperback page.

Also, the German paperback is 400 pages. Why? They’re not using the smallest typeface ever discovered by scientists. So in your face, short people!

(Have I unintentionally begun a flame war with individuals who are vertically challenged? Tune in next week...)

Labels: Deep Thoughts With Jeff, German edition PLAGUE YEAR, Plague War, Publishing, the writing life