BilmBlog500

Chuck Wendig just did a Terrible Minds post telling authors not to "pre-reject" their work, i.e., to finish their novel, say it's not good enough, and then dump it into the drawer or the trunk on top of all the other not good enough thing.  And maybe I'm reading too much into what Chuck says, or maybe I should understand that it should be implied that Chuck is taking a position really far on one side as a counterweight and not as an actual "position" position.  But as I'm reading his post, he doesn't say it's ever right to take a manuscript and put it into the pile inside the drawer inside the trunk. And that's wrong. I'm going to reject his thesis in two ways that are flip sides of the same coin, the you coming to me, and the me taking your manuscript to the world. In both instances, I note the old, true and wise saying "you've got one chance to make a first impression." If I as an agent look at three or four bad books by ...

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. ...

I'm not a big fan of pontificating too much about things with too much uncertainty, and believe it or not there are a lot of uncertainties about Random House's acquisition of Penguin that make it a mistake for people to get too far ahead of themselves. The first major uncertainty is government regulation.  In both the US and UK, the merger will give the combined company large market share in the publishing industry.  Will there be any divestitures required?  My guess is we're not looking at a lot, because 25% market share with four other decent-sized competitors is hardly a dominant market position.  But will the government look more closely at any particular categories?  As an example in sf/fantasy, the merged company would control Ace, Roc, Del Rey, and distribute DAW.  Which would be quite a dominant market share.  Our Bookscan account doesn't offer market share data, but it's out there, if anyone who reads this post has any light to shed on their p...

I don't have the tech savvy of E C Myers, who did this nifty little Acknowledgment Video for his debut novel Fair Coin, recently out from Pyr SF as part of their new YA line and well worth reading -- you can meet Mr. Myers at various events in the coming days as well. But after a busy and wonderful day of actually finally housewarming my apartment, I thought I should put a few thank you things out into the world... The biggest thanks in many ways have to go to my clients. Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse, and the True Blood folk kind of paid for the place, but I think it's a mistake to be too narrow in viewing the JABberwocky family. Because Charlaine wouldn't be a client today if it weren't for the general belief amongst authors in general that we do a good job for all of our clients, or maybe not a client today if back fifteen years ago when Charlaine Harris wasn't Charlaine Harris yet, but Arkham House and Elizabeth Moon and Simon Green were some of the ke...

Today's the day, the official on sale for Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole, first in a three book deal with Ace. Today's the day, the official on sale for the mass market edition of Kings of the North by Elizabeth Moon, the 2nd book in a 5 book Paks World arc. It's safe to say that these two authors represent very different paths to writing and selling a first novel. Elizabeth Moon sat down some thirty years ago to write a short story. She wrote, the short story grew, grew into the three book series known as The Deed of Paksenarrion that is one of the most enduring fantasy series of the 1980s. How many fantasies published between 1985 and 1990 have been continuously in print since? I don't know, but it's likely not more than in the dozens. She didn't have to look for an agent, I liked her early stories in Analog and wrote a letter asking if she had a novel, and if it wasn't the sf novel I was expecting we can stipulate that it was good. It wasn...

While the electronics world gets ready to gather in Las Vegas, we've been spending time over the holidays upgrading the JABberwocky IT. 2008 was a good year for JABberwocky, it was the year that True Blood arrived, but on our bottom line it was the last year to pre-date. And in that perfectly pleasant last year before the True Blood storm, our foreign commissions represented just under 18% of our total commissions for the year, which was about typical in percentage terms for the entire history of JABberwocky. Well, we get to 2011, and our foreign commission income alone is bigger than the entirety of our commission income in 2008. And, foreign commissions are approximately 25% of our total. Most of this is a direct result of the success of Charlaine Harris and the Sookie Stackhouse novels following on the success of True Blood, but nowhere near all of it. No, nowhere near all of it., In the UK, Charlaine Harris and Brandon Sanderson and Jack Campbell and Peter Brett are all se...

So having seen this as part of a group outing with Peter V. Brett , Myke Cole and a friend of Peter's let me not add it to the list of movies I've seen that I want to review and never do. Peter's friend hated the movie. The rest of us were debating the fine points of its aspirations to mediocrity. For those of you who can't figure it out from the title, if from nothing else, the movie is about a battle. Set in Los Angeles. Well, most of it is actually set in Santa Monica, which is worth setting foot in now pretty much just for the excellent rugelach you can get here since both the Borders and B&N on the Third Street Promenade have closed in recent years. So if aliens want to destroy Santa Monica, just so long as they leave that one block on Montana Ave. with the good rugelach untouched they can really do as they please. So the thing is that the movie kind of delivers pretty much what it wants to deliver, which is just unadulterated war porn military action. Th...

Well, on balance, 2010 was a pretty danged amazing year for Brillig, and the Business of Being Brillig. On the dollar-and-cents scorecard, I've told people I think 2010 was the best year I had, and ever will have, and then I have to listen to all of these people saying "oh, you can't know that." Maybe I am selling myself short, but... 2010 was the year we were getting royalties for the second half of 2009, which was when there were 9 Sookie Stackhouse books on the NY Times list at once (8 on paperback list linked, 9th on hardcover), a feat for an author that is unprecedented in the annals of publishing. I'd prefer to be pleasantly surprised if that can ever be equalled or surpassed by some other event or combination of events. Charlaine returned to Earth in the US in 2010, she was "just" an incredibly successful author, and the hardcover sales first week for DEAD IN THE FAMILY were "only" twice the first week sales of DEAD AND GONE the yea...

Lots and lots and lots of bookstores visited during my trip to Australia in September. Finally getting around to sharing some thoughts about the book market Down Under... For better or worse and probably both, the retail scene in Australia is a few decades behind ours. For one, and for what I'm used to not a plus, it's one of those places that still believes shopping should only be done during the day. Stores open from 9-5, 10-6, Thursday is the one day when places open late, at least they're as generous with their shopping hours on Sunday as they are the other days of the week. This also effects restaurants, most of which close by 10PM. And in Sydney, enforced; one of those Bald Guy chocolate places I walked by on a fancy boutique street full of shops shuttering 6ish had a sign in window that the local council was forcing them to close early because they weren't in a part of town suitable for a later closing. But as far as the book business goes, there are some pl...

Window Shopping at the Louvre So when we left off on this here , Eddie and I were collapsing in our hotel rooms after a very long day full of unexpected surprises on the way to London Book Fair. One bank I got a pretty decent night's sleep, and I had one goal for my morning in Paris before we headed off to catch the Eurostar. I wasn't in Paris if I didn't go to the Seine, which looked close enough for a round trip walk if I kept about my business. Down by the big department store and the opera house, stop at one chocolatier that's been around for 80 years then on next block see one that's been around for 90 years and realize you picked the wrong one. Down to the Louvre, walk along both banks of the Seine because I don't want anyone to think I'm slighting the left or the right bank or vice versa. Emerge near big old buildings and think "gee, I bet Benjamin Franklin visited some of these." Another bank It was a wonderful and delightful morning, i...