Looseleaf Editorial & Production

Book Editing & Design

Angry Robot

Weekly Roundup: 1/20–1/27

by 2 Comments

Angry Robot: The Return of the Open Door

Angry Robot LogoAngry Robot, a publisher of science fiction and fantasy, ran an open door submission policy for a month last year. They’re going to do it again, but with slightly different rules. They will only accept epic fantasy, and they will only accept submissions that follow the format and standards laid out in their open door submission guide. Unless you write YA, in which case any type of SF&F is cleared for you to submit to their YA imprint, Strange Chemistry. Submissions will be made through the Angry Robot website April 16–30. That means you have a few months to get your manuscript completed and finalized before you send it in.

(To learn more about my thoughts on Angry Robot’s publishing style, see my post here. I’ve also reviewed one of their books, Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City, here.)

Gini Dietrich: Reading Fiction Helps Your Career

Remember last week, when instead of posting a weekly roundup I posted about how important stories are? On Tuesday of last week, PR pro Gini Dietrich posted about the same thing, but in a different context. She cites a thick chunk of research to back up her claim that reading fiction helps your career. See? Stories are important to your daily life as well as to your world citizenship.

Digital Book World: Bookseller Backed by Big Publishers Advocates Abandoning Digital Rights Management

Anobii, a bookseller whose stakeholders include the UK arms of HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House, is hoping to leave DRM behind. They’ve got good reasons too, including trying to give Kindle users more options.

Leaflet Review: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

by Leave a Comment

Zoo City by Lauren BeukesZinzi December has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job: missing persons.

I got Zoo City after the Angry Robot presentation at WorldCon, but I’d decided to read it before then. In the alternate Earth of the novel, if you’ve done something awful, you gain a magical animal companion that grants you a magic ability. If your Animal dies, a dark force colloquially called Hell’s Undertow will murder you within minutes. Zinzi December, a former drug addict and current email scammer (more or less against her will), is accompanied by Sloth and has the ability to feel a person’s lost items and follow threads from an individual to a particular lost item. Zinzi uses that skill to earn some money legally by finding lost rings and suchlike.

As you might imagine, having a visible display that you are (or have been) a criminal presents some issues. Most animalled people (called zoos) in the story live in a slum of Johannesburg, South Africa, called Zoo City. That’s where Zinzi tries to scratch out a life.

The book is told in first-person present tense, which normally annoys me a bit, but Zinzi is such an engaging narrator that I hardly noticed. Her descriptions are pitch-perfect and fresh, and her character shows in every sentence. She’s honest to the reader (if not exactly honest to other characters), three-dimensional, and you can’t help but root for her. Zinzi’s doing her best to make good in a world that won’t see past her Animal, and very few things go right for her. (Speaking of her Animal, Sloth is such a sweet little bundle of externalized guilt.)

The book’s plot is essentially Zinzi trying to piece together the truth of a mystery while piecing herself together at the same time. There were a few plot events I felt were a little less than flawless, but it was such an enjoyable ride I didn’t care.

One thing I really appreciated in this book was that it took place in a setting I’m unfamiliar with (while still being on Earth, of course). The author is from South Africa and she did a ton of research to make her portrayal of Johannesburg slums accurate. The book told a great story while expanding my awareness of other walks of life, locations, and events. That dimension of the book is something I’m especially grateful for because it came above and beyond the engaging characters and story I expected (and found).

All in all, I’m definitely going to pick up another novel from Lauren Beukes. I’ll leave you with some of the first lines of the book, which I think should convince you to go read it now:

“Morning light the sulphur color of the mine dumps seeps across Johannesburg’s skyline and sears through my window. My own personal bat signal. Or a reminder that I really need to get curtains.”

Content warnings: some language, drug references/use, violence, etc.

An Alternative to Publisher Branding?

by 4 Comments

Zebra herdAs Nathan Bransford has pointed out, branding and credibility are two things publishers have a great grasp of. A book gets a boost when it has a certain imprint’s logo on its spine, and the name recognition of some brands can give a debut author a leg up he or she wouldn’t be able to achieve on their own. Since most readers—most consumers, really—tend to go with names they trust, this branding and name recognition is a huge aspect of marketing that indie authors miss out on.

(To any of you who doubt that publishers’ brands have a strong pull, look to Angry Robot, whose bestselling item in their online store is a yearly subscription to their ebooks, sight unseen, and to the rabid Baen readership.)

Personal Branding and Group Branding

Most indie authors strike out to create their own personal brand associated with their name and style, and some of them do quite well—Amanda Hocking and John Locke, to name two. Traditionally published authors also achieve personal brands beyond their publishers—Tom Clancy is a good example there. But I wonder if group branding could be beneficial to indie authors.

Group branding, like that available via publishers to traditionally published authors, gives immense benefits to new or little-known authors as they’re building their own platforms and personal brands. Indie authors start with even less credibility than a debut traditional author, so I believe group branding is something they could definitely look into.

Currently I’m just musing, and I hardly have any hard and fast answers in this regard, but I wonder if some sort of group branding will emerge in indie publishing. A form I believe could be effective is a sort of authors club in which like-minded authors build a reputation as a group as well as individuals. An individual reputation could lend to the overall marketing draw of the group, and the group reputation could lend itself to newer writers.

Authors Clubs in Action

I’ve seen something like this work with writers already out on the market. Though Brandon Sanderson, Dan Well, and Howard Tayler all tell stories in different styles (and mediums), readers of one storyteller will often end up sampling the work from one of the others simply because these three do so much together (Writing Excuses, for one example). Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch share a similar sort of group branding because they’re married and do a lot together. Each author retains an individual identity within the group, but they draw readers to each other by virtue of the group. For example, when Mary Robinette Kowal joined Writing Excuses, my (already existing) interest in her book, Shades of Milk and Honey, grew because she associated with a group of people I was already familiar with.

Indie authors could likely achieve something similar. They could produce something together (like Writing Excuses) and promote each others’ individual works. Perhaps when someone came out with a new book, the authors in the group could all pool together and write an anthology of short stories based in the same world, using the same characters, or centered on the same theme that could be used to drive buzz and interest.

Practical Matters and Considerations

Of course, there a small difficulty of determining how you would go about creating some sort of authors club. The default answer would be to get your friends or writing group together and make that your club. This would present problems if your club needed to do some quality control and one member wasn’t quite up to the same level as the rest of the members; you’d be so tightly knit together that the interpersonal issues could create more drama than it’s worth. You could also try to attract a group of authors who have similar views on what stories and writing should do (entertain, enlighten, enlarge, etc.), or you could create a band of individuals who write with similar styles, in the same genre niche, or on the same topic (which would be especially useful for nonfiction).

Maybe you could try out a few mutually promotional anthologies or blog tours to test out the relationship before really going full bore on it; maybe you already have a group you work well with and you’d just need to share your brains a bit before you could make it work. There would be a lot of things that needed to be ironed out. Do you need a formal agreement? How do you determine who joins your club? How do you control quality and standards? How you do kick someone out? Can you kick someone out, and will you ever want to? Will anyone be “in charge”?

Bottom line, it could be really tricky to create a successful group for branding purposes. The Writing Excuses crowd are all friends, and Smith and Rusch are married, so their groups formed more or less organically. But I think the benefits of having a group pool of branding capital could be extremely beneficial for writers who are looking to strike out on their own. Yeah, “group branding” and “striking out on your own” are a bit paradoxical. But there’s a reason publishing has consolidated into a handful of large groups. It’s because a group has more opportunities than an individual, and in optimal circumstances the group flourishes when its individuals do, and individuals flourish my nature of belonging to the group.

The future and place of group branding in indie publishing efforts is something I’m curious about and keeping an eye on. What are your thoughts?

Image by Worakit Sirjinda via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Publishers’ Styles for Pyr and Angry Robot

by 1 Comment

Thursday I attended the presentations for two publishers: Pyr and Angry Robot. They talked about their upcoming titles, what they have planned for their readers, and did some promo for their authors. Listening to them gives you a good idea of the kind of vibe they like from their books and what is important to them (i.e. stuff that can help you pick the right publishing house to send your manuscript to).

Angry Robot Loves Cross-Genre TitlesAngry Robot Logo

Angry Robot is a pretty new publisher in the science fiction and fantasy space. Lee Harris, one of their editors, started the presentation by giving a quick rundown of their history since starting in 2008. They launched in the UK and in Australia in 2009 and they came out in America last year. They publish a lot of debut novelists because they know what they like and they don’t care who is giving it to them. Some of the books they’ve put out are getting a lot of critical acclaim and attention—I’m particularly interested in Lauren Buekes’s novel Zoo City, which is shortlisted for the World Fantasy Best Novel award this year (I picked up a copy from their free book giveaway and I’ll see how it goes).

The folks at Angry Robot are very big on making books available fairly to readers worldwide, so they always buy world rights. They absolutely love cross-genre work. If you’ve got a sci-fi book with mystery elements and a dash of the fantastic—or any other cross-genre speculative fiction—you should be looking at Angry Robot. They also have a strong horror line if you’re looking into that.

Angry Robot engages in a lot of reader/fan interaction. They have an ebook subscription model, so if you’re a fan of their editorial selections and taste, you can buy a year’s worth of ebooks for a discount price: $97 for a guaranteed 24+ (DRM-free) ebooks over the course of the upcoming year. If you buy a subscription, you also get a promo code that lets you buy backlist titles from their online bookstore at 33% off (just in case one of the 24 books you’ll get during the year is the second in a series).

Given their focus on audience, readership, and fans, the “special project” they announced here at WorldCon is pretty natural. They’re starting a program called WorldBuilder, which is essentially an encouraged and nourished fan fiction/fan art/fan music/fan creation community. Fans will be able to take part in building the periphery of a story’s world, and the “best of” will be published in a quarterly anthology (which will be headlined by a story or piece that is commissioned professionally).

If you’re interested in submitting to Angry Robots, know that they are not currently open to unagented submissions, but occasionally they are. This March they opened their doors for 30 days and invited anyone and everyone to submit. Lee said that ended up being a little crazy for them (they just got through the last of the submissions from that batch), but they want to do the same thing on a smaller scale in the future. They’ll probably open for a week or so when they’re looking for a specific sort of book. So keep an eye on the Angry Robot blog and don’t miss a perfect opportunity for your book.

Pyr Loves Gorgeous BooksPyr Logo

This heading for Pyr may be somewhat misleading, but Lou Anders, the editorial director at Pyr, is also the art director there, so he certainly loves a beautiful cover or a well-designed map, so he tends to rave about them.

Lou is a really approachable guy—I ran into him more on Friday than I did Thursday at the Pyr presentation. Friday at a small group he chatted with eight or so WorldCon attendees and gave us an inside peek at what he’s looking for: adult science fiction isn’t working so well for them right now (though he’s hoping Hollywood’s forays into sci-fi will drive interest in, say, a space opera), he doesn’t want cyberpunk, but he digs sword and sorcery. What he really wants to find is an author that can write an urban-fantasy–style cast of characters (specifically the lead female role) in a secondary, sword-and-sorcery setting.  He firmly believes that sword and sorcery people would love urban fantasy if they could make themselves read it, so he wants something to cross that line.

In November Pyr will launch the first three titles of its new YA line. Right now Pyr is publishing about 30 books a year, and eventually Lou wants 10 of those books to be YA (next year about 6 of them will be). For YA, the subgenre doesn’t matter; just make it good.

What I’m excited about with Pyr is a book called Blackdog (by K.V. Johansen). It just came out and it sounds amazing. Lou really, really, really wants Brandon Sanderson to read it and blurb it, because he’s convinced that Brandon will love it. I think I’ll love it, so I want to get my hands on a copy once I’m done with what I have on my plate right now.

If you’re considering submitting to Pyr, be sure to check their submission guidelines. They do accept unagented submissions, so even if you don’t have an agent yet, feel free to send your full manuscript.

I got a lot of insights from Lou, but I’ll share more of them in a special post about the editors I talked to while I was at WorldCon.

These Publishers Love Their BooksBlackdog by K. V. Johansen

With both of these publishers, you can tell by speaking with Lee Harris and Lou Anders that they love their books. If they’re publishing your work, it’s because you got them very, very excited. They have different styles that they prefer, so your work may be better suited to one over the other, but being published by either one would mean you had some very invested advocates on your work’s side. All you have to do is hear Lou trying to convince everyone at every panel he spoke at to get Brandon Sanderson to read Blackdog to know that he absolutely loves the book—and he won’t rest until he knows other people love it too.

ePublishing and Your Writing Career

by Leave a Comment

Renovation WorldCon 2011 LogoYesterday was Day 1 of WorldCon, and I’ve been roaming around as my writer friends’ freelance editor buddy. The day was fairly uneventful, but there were two major highlights for me: chatting with Moshe Feder from Tor and hearing from Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications. Some of what we talked about is particularly relevant to aspiring (and, honestly, established) authors.

While we were talking with Moshe (some friends of mine waylaid him, and he’s nice enough to chat with us), he mostly told stories about his career and let us know we are free to submit to him (I obviously won’t be taking advantage of that), but one tidbit you may be interested in is what he said about the touted ebook revolution, the future publishing structure, and the place of editors.

Editors in ePublishing

Moshe said that no matter how publishing convolutes, writhes, and reinvents itself, authors will always need an objective editorial eye to help them reach their full potential. While current publishing has a lot of rough patches (high overhead, etc.), it serves a purpose: it helps authors improve their work, grow their talent, and reach an audience. The need for those things will never go away. (So Moshe firmly believes that his line of work will not become obsolete, even if the printed word completely dies out.)

However, something that is changing, in Moshe’s mind, is how writers are reaching readers. As physical bookstores are fading from ubiquitousness, it will be harder to reach casual readers (you know, the readers that take a book outside the “die hard” readers and send it blossoming into widespread readership). In the past (and still now, to a certain degree), casual readers would pass book showcases (i.e. bookstores) in the mall or near their other regular errands. Then cover design and marketing could take over to let a casual reader know that he or she really did want to read a certain book. Now, Moshe says, no one in the industry is quite sure how to let casual readers know about awesome books. (This is also, he said with glee, marketing’s problem, not his. It’s a puzzle he doesn’t want to have on his plate.)

Career Writers’ Successes

While you’re thinking about the puzzle of publication promotion (couldn’t resist the alliteration), some words from Jacob Weisman may be hopeful to those of you looking to be career authors.

He said to remember you’re building a career, not just pieces of a career like a draft, interview, or promotion campaign. Judge your success on the right scale, and always remember the overarching career goal. Every step in your career should be a building block (but that doesn’t mean each one must be a success).

Here Weisman’s commentary ends and mine beings. When you’re building a career, one “failure” shouldn’t send you into a dizzying spiral of self-doubt and depression. A really rotten draft does not a rotten writer make: it’s one part of your career, one bit of the groundbreaking and foundation work you need to do. You won’t get anywhere without digging in the dirt for a while, but the dirt shouldn’t get you down. Keep at it, and when you get stuck, get yourself and objective eye.

Further WorldCon insights and commentary are forthcoming, so stay tuned! Today I ran into Brandon Sanderson (I almost didn’t recognize him with his goatee), talked with Liz Gorinsky of Tor, and went to presentations by Pyr and Angry Robot. Hopefully more about what I gathered from all them tomorrow.