BilmBlog500

 One of the great joys of Fantasy novels is the opportunity to experience the way characters evolve and grow, and to see that process demonstrated through the choices they make. The characters we love best are those whose sense of personal responsibility expands ever outward as they recognize their own power to effect change in the world – to aid someone in distress, to right wrongs.  We love this journey, in part, because it reflects our best hopes for ourselves. Most of us know that too often we narrow our own sense of responsibility, rationalizing that we are limited in what we can or even should do in our lives to help others when they need us. We call it being realistic or practical. Usually, it is an excuse for cowardice. I’ve been thinking a lot about the limits of my own sense of responsibility in the context of my reflections on a moment where I failed to act when I should have. As some of you reading this already know, in 2009 I hosted a JABberwocky dinner at a World...

I guess it's that time of year when we talk about the year that was... On the business end of things: When you're a literary agent, your work often comes ahead of the reward.  With the time lag between a book selling and the royalty reports coming along, a book that sells in January might not bring a royalty until November or with reserves against returns until the following May.  So in 2009 and 2010, we were getting paid for when there were 8 or 9 Sookie Stackhouse books on the bestseller lists in 2008 and 2009.  We were getting paid a lot.  It was also a bit like a one-legged stool, a bit unstable because so much of the income was coming in just a couple checks each year. In the years since, the business has become more stable.  The Charlaine Harris business is still huge, not as big as when there were 9 books on the bestseller list but still big.  Other authors have gotten bigger in the past few years, Brandon Sanderson or Peter Brett or Jack Campbell. ...

Two major agency efforts that reached fruition last week. The first I discussed here , was getting on line with our first e-book publication. The second was hammering out new boilerplate with Macmillan, the German-owned publishing conglomerate that owns Farrar Straus, Tor, St. Martin's, Holt and various other US publishing operations. Historically, Macmillan had kept separate publishing contracts for each of its many imprints, though certain corporate paragraphs were over time implanted into the separate agreements. In Fall 2009, they announced to the world that they had decided to have one contract form for everyone, which was politely attached to the e-mail. I gave thanks that all of our Macmillan authors ( Tobias Buckell and Brandon Sanderson at Tor, Jeri Westerson at St. Martin's Minotaur) were under contracts that had a book or two or four to go, said "tomorrow is another day," filed away the attachment, and was content to let others be the guinea pig. Bec...