Hi,
Congrats on your new virtual existence. Hope that the virtual pint will turn out to be as filling as a good glass of bitter.
Has your publisher planned any hoopla for the release of Solitaire? Will there be a local appearance/reading at a bookstore (or pub) in the Seattle area? (Actually, the pub thing might even work –a literary Tuesday night at the local watering hole).
Nicola has a brief mention of your emergency appendectomy. Hope it didn’t turn into peritonitis (really, really, painful) and thus require an extended stay at the hospital.
Peter
Mmm, bitter.
Hoopla-planning is in progress, with hoopla being a relative term. The only thing I am sure of right now is a reading at University Books in Seattle, on September 25 at 7 pm.
In most cases, there is little fanfare for first novels, even those published in hardcover. That’s not a blanket statement of course, but generally a first novelist (especially in sf) can expect print advertising/reviews in trade publications like Locus, and reviews in some of the friendlier newspapers and periodicals, along with a local reading or two. Maybe some local media coverage. Perhaps a national review (New York Times, Washington Post) if one is lucky and one’s publicist has been playing nicely with the media. There are fewer outlets for review of sf novels than of literary novels, and genre prejudice is still alive and well in the critical world.
Having said all that, I’m not yet sure what to expect for Solitaire. The book has been on a strange and interesting path that has shattered all my assumptions about what will happen with it.
I sold Solitaire to Morrow/Eos as a mass market original. One of the basic rules of mass market originals is that there is no hoopla. There is a print ad in Locus and maybe a local reading if the author has made friends with the bookstore folks. Review copies are sent out, and the publicists do a fine job of making the books sound engaging and worthwhile. I’m not dissing the publishing people: they have to work with a high volume of product and they do a great job in making sure that every book gets a chance. But, along with genre prejudice, there is also “format prejudice.” Hardcovers get more credibility. Reviewers are more likely to pick them out of the pile of books. Sales reps will be more familiar with them. Again, no disrespect intended: it’s a hierarchical system, and although I don’t like it I can certainly understand it. Everyone needs a way to prioritize their work, and this is one of the ways it happens in publishing.
So I knew that Solitaire would get little support. I decided that I could accept that if I knew I had done everything in my power to support the book myself. So I made several reading copies and sent letters to some of the writers that I’ve had occasion to meet over the years, asking if they would read the book and consider giving it a promotional quote. I am fortunate to know some people who were generous with their time, and liked the book well enough to give it some advance praise.
And then my editor, who is a goddess of publishing, was able to use the quotes and her considerable force of personality and professional credibility to generate interest among key people at the publishing house. This is no mean feat: the people who oversee sales and marketing and publicity are busy. But they did take the time to read the book and reconsider the format, with the result that one day I found myself getting the call about being bumped into hardcover.
Now Borders has selected the book for the Original Voices program. I can pretty much guarantee that would never have happened if the book had been published as a mass market original, even though it would have been exactly the same book. It’s a huge thing for me because the Borders program is “literary”, not “genre” (and don’t get me started about these kinds of artificial distinctions, they make me so grumpy). Will Solitaire have the chance and the ability to cross over to some non-genre readers? That would certainly be a fine thing for me, since I feel pretty much the same about book category labels (like sf or literary fiction) as I do about sexual identity labels.
So now I’m hoping for a reading or some event at a Borders store in Seattle, although that is not yet certain. Possibly readings in Portland or Bellingham. Maybe some local press? A review in Publisher’s Weekly. Who knows? It’s all pretty interesting, an unexpected treat no matter how it turns out.
I like the idea of a literary pub event! I will tell my publicist.
And no peritonitis, thanks for asking. They got to the appendix just before the bursting point, and I was actually home less than 12 hours after the surgery with some good drugs and lots of food brought around by friends. I feel fortunate.
It’s quiet out here today. I guess everyone went out to the movies or dinner or something.
I’m currently rereading Solitaire. I had no idea you went through all those hoops to get some hoopla. I’m glad you did. Isn’t it great that the reptilian skills one picks up working in marketing do pay off? I believe every art program should include a mandatory class in guerrilla marketing and another in copyright laws and contracts. Publishers can afford to put out a few dogs and year and let them die unnoticed, that’s been factored into their expected losses. But writers can’t. Not after they’ve invested years into a novel.
I want to comment more on this post, about the genre vs. literary labels, but pizza and an episode of Lost are calling. BRB
Don’t rush on my account. Lost and pizza are definitely things to be enjoyed. We had pizza ourselves tonight (yummy) and beer, and are currently working our way through Bostom Legal, a show I find problematic in the extreme at times, but I cannot resist watching the brilliant James Spader.
I just wanted to say again how much I loved your novel. My public library has it and a lot of people have checked it out. This is in the ice cold uptight midwest, so maybe there’s hope yet. If you were going to write further about Jackal”s life, what direction would the adventures take(in 25 words or less, of course).
I’m getting a good education over here. I hadn’t even realized that something like a hardcover would lend a publication so much more prestige. I usually buy paperbacks because I have shelving-space limitations and a mania that tricks me to into carrying 3-8 books wherever I go. In my mind: paperback=moreBOOKS, therefore paperback=theBEST. Most of the people I know buy paperbacks because they are easier to handle and read. The true collectors buy both: hardcovers for their personal library, again paperbacks for the read.
Literary vs. genre… I hear you there, so I’ll be bad and get your started. *poke* Such ludicrous distinctions, no? Snotty. Yes. Last time I checked, post-apocalyptic fiction was classified as SF, right? Then critics decided Cormac McCarthy’s The Road didn’t fall into that category. “Nope,” they said, “you can’t exhibit it on the same section as Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. Not after it’s won the Pulitzer.” Oh, really? So if it wins mainstream awards, then it can’t be SF because SF doesn’t win mainstream awards?
I remember listening to an interview on PRI’s TTBOOK, some guy (can’t remember the author’s name at 1am, sorry) said he made the choice not to publish his novel as SF because it would cut its chances of earning recognition on literary grounds. EOS has Science Fiction and Fantasy tattooed all over. Do you feel this helped Solitaire reach its “perfect fit” audience, or did it constrain its distribution potential?
Barbara, thank you very much. I’m glad you liked it. I’m proud of the book because, in spite of its flaws, it comes pretty close to the target I had in mind, which was a particular emotional journey for Jackal.
As for what might happen next, well… that’s not a question I will answer in terms of “sequel,” since I don’t plan to do one. And I think that there’s a greater beauty in letting each reader imagine for herself what might happen. One thing I wanted was for the ending of the book to be a springboard of sorts into that imagining.
Having said all that, I found myself unable to completely let go of the characters, and so a few years after the book came out, I started experimenting with other ways to continue their story in small steps, to basically stay with the characters as opposed to writing a new novel (with, you know, plot and stuff…).
So I did this.
Start from the bottom, read up. Poke around the links — you’ll find some old friends.
As you’ll see, I didn’t get very far. But the cool thing is that I can go back anytime I want, and I hope to do so. If I do, I’ll let people know.
There will be more about this in upcoming Virtual Pint posts once we get to about 2005 or so, but why wait? I’ll be interested to hear what you think of story explored in this way…
Karina, yep, there is definitely a hierarchy. I prefer to buy and read paperbacks for all the reasons you cited, but in publishing Hardcover means either Take This Book Seriously (for books from unkown or breakout authors), or it means We Expect To Make A Pile of Money (for the JK Rowlings and Stephen King books of the world).
Hardcover publications for a first novel is a signal that the publisher is throwing more resources behind the book. It gets its own page in the catalog, sales reps talk it up more with booksellers, reviewers take more note. Those can all be good things for the book and the writer, but they can also be the Kiss of Death if the book doesn’t do well after all that extra effort.
I can’t imagine that a non-SF imprint would have bought Solitaire back in the late 90’s (which is when I actually sold it to Eos), both because of virtual reality technology (which was considered a clear SF marker then), and because I was a first novelist. So it’s not like I sat around getting strategic about whether an SF publisher would help the book reach its audience.
And yes, I think Eos was a great publisher. They took fabulous care of me and went to the wall for the book. No complaints at all. And there’s more about that coming up at some point in future virtual pints.
But the book didn’t do as well as any of us had hoped in terms of absolute sales, although it did very well for me in many other ways. In fact, it’s currently one of the contenders in this poll on obscure books, which I have to say makes me feel a bit sad.
I went to the link and read the bits and pieces. You can describe or depict character with a few words and gestures better than any writer I’ve read. Stories can’t develope without trouble, and there are implications of power trouble and relationship here. If it’s fun and satisfying, I hope you will want to keep working on it, however intermittently. Thanks.
I’m glad you liked it. I just re-read it myself — it’s been at least a year or so, so I was able to come to it very fresh. I’m really pleased with it, I have to say.
One of the interesting things for me is the tricky business of keeping the voices separate — all these first-person viewpoints, when the novel was very close third-person from Jackal’s point of view. And then telling a story in fragments, sometimes overlapping and sometimes with gaps, depending on what’s important to everyone. And the reader’s ability to jump around from one character to another at will.
Hyperlinked fiction isn’t new, of course, but I think the livejournal format adds immensely to the experience. I like the fact that each character has their own graphic environment, icon, et cetera. I like the ability to title each post, as if each were its own small story. And I love the group conversation in Solitaire….
But of course it’s also the sort of thing that could easily become tedious and self-indulgent, unless there’s also some story happening to move things forward. So many challenges!
I will keep working on it, although I expect it will truly be intermittent. But when I do update it next, I’ll make sure to say so in the blog.