BilmBlog500

Pasting below my full schedule for Boskone 55 , which will be taking place at Boston's Westin Waterfront Hotel from 16-18 February.  Hope to see you there! If you're spending all of your time hanging out at big comic book and media conventions, and you have any ambition to be a published writer, I'd strongly suggest  you do a re-think some, and look a lot more closely at attending some of the conventions like Boskone that have been part of the science fiction and fantasy community for several decades.  In a convention center full of tens of thousands of people, I'm awfully hard to find.  At Boskone, it's a great opportunity to find and spend quality time with the editors, agents and most especially the authors that can help you to achieve your dreams.  In 2018, Boskone will have half a dozen of our clients attending, and some of them clients as a direct result of my meeting with them at Boskone or another sf/fantasy convention like it. clients in attendance: Dan...

When we’re interviewing for new staff, we’re often talking to people who are currently working at a publishing company, and we’ll often ask why they’re looking to move to an agency. The most common response is a variation of: “I realized that I want to work on the books I like, and at the publishing company, I’m having to work on books the publisher can publish.” And for me, I don’t think that’s ever been truer than in our work on Gil Griffin’s JUMPING AT THE CHANCE , a wonderful fish-out-of-water story about fish swimming very very far from America’s coastal waters. Twenty years ago, I was like many Americans.  Australian Rules Football was this weird thing you heard about, mostly as a strange joke about the strange things you’ll find watching TV in the middle of the night.  Then, in 1999, I went to Australia for the first time, and I went to see this strange thing for myself. Well, let’s just say I was mesmerized.  I sat in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and watched a Kan...

12:23 AM: Actually, I do know what to say.  For a movie full of shots of people slowly coming into focus, it's only fitting that the Moonlight win for Best Picture was initially so cloudy.  Totally, 100% fitting. It summarizes the aesthetic of the film itself.  And, I still can't stop laughing. 12:13 AM: I have nothing more to say.  I look forward to reading about the final ten minutes of tonight's ceremony.  I don't know what to say. 12:04 AM:  And Dunaway looks spectacular. 12:03 AM:  Beatty and Dunaway.  A nice touch.  Drunaway also appeared twice in the ill-timed Rolex ad, in her role in Network. 12:01 AM:  The most special Oscars are the ones when I get to start typing an "AM" in for the live blog. 11:58 PM:  If wishes were fishes.  But while I enjoyed La La Land, I just don't really see this, even if everyone kind of said it's what would happen. 11:57 PM:  I don't want Emma Stone to win. 11:50 PM:  The Best Acto...

The Oscars are a little over an hour away, and I reckon I shall do that old-fashioned live blog things again, so that my thoughts do not need to be burped out 140 words at a time. Last year, I was passionate about the MIA Oscar for Straight Outta Compton, which was a great movie that was left looking for stray drops of wine in the discarded bottles from the Oscar party.  This year the feeling's a bit different, because I'm not a big fan of Moonlight, or at least the half of it that I endured before walking out.  And Moonlight is considered a lock to win the Adapted Screenplay award, and near to a lock for Supporting Actor. And the movie didn't do it for me. My one lasting impression is of repeated overly artsy shots of people emerging in the frame out of focus and then, belatedly, does the focus puller decide to actually start pulling the people into focus.  I wasn't engaged by the story. Moonlight isn't along in being a critical darling that I didn't cozy up to...

I'm always excited to be at Boskone .  I wouldn't have my current life if not for getting sample copies of OMNI Magazine in the Boskone Dealers Room in the late 1970s, which got me hooked on sf/f and ultimate led to the current version of me. This year is even double extra super special with a Ruby Snap cookie on top, because my client Brandon Sanderson is the Guest of Honor, and we will be doing some program items together. List of items below, with rooms, times, descriptions, and fellow panelists.  And hopefully not the email addresses for the fellow panelists.  I have one item with my client Walter Jon Williams , will be doing a demo for the Crafty Games Mistborn: House War board game , and of particular interest, will be part of the rare opportunity to hear an author, agent and editor discuss together what makes a successful writing career, as I'm joined by Brandon Sanderson and editor Moshe Feder, who made the decision to push Tor to offer on Elantris. The Death Sta...

I haven't blogged in a while, but I thought I would do a post about my Barcelona trip, rather than 58 tweets. Why Barcelona? I discovered two years ago when I did the Eurocon in Dublin the week after LonCon that Eurocon isn't a great professional convention.  In Dublin, so much so that I decided to just put the bill for the whole stay as a personal expense so I could enjoy Dublin guilt free.  But, Barcelona is the heart of the Spanish publishing business, so when I saw the next Eurocon would be in Barcelona, I eyed it as a chance to see Spanish publishers on their home turf with more time to talk and learn than in the 30 minute appointments that we have in endless succession at London Book Fair.  And to visit Spanish bookstores, and with our agents for the Spanish market.  Any bar-con or schmoozing that Eurocon presented would be an add-on.  And then it turned out that Eurocon dovetailed nicely with a European tour that Brandon Sanderson had on his schedule, so ...

Here is a letter which I am sending today to the CEO of one of the major publishing conglomerates.  All authors and agents should feel free to copy and paste, put in appropriate specific details, and do the same. Once upon a time, the reserve against returns was kind of necessary.  Books only sold in print.  All those print books were fully returnable.  Sometimes 70% of the copies were returned. But now, books sell digitally, with very few returns on ebooks and downloadable audio.  Printed books are still fully returnable, but for a great many books, sales through channels that lend themselves to especially high return rates have dwindled.  I'm not saying reserves are entirely unnecessary.  I'm saying it's time to push back on doing things this way because they've always been done this way, accepting reserves in any quantity when they no longer serve their original and intended purpose. There are too many business practices tilting against authors, and...