digital marketing - Tor

Over the next few weeks this blog is going to focus on what the four imprints I’m using as case studies for my dissertation do to digitally market their books. Like a bookish clash between Come Dine with Me and Whose Line is it Anyway?, each imprint gets a turn, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. This post is about Tor UK.

TOR

Website: the imprint has a section on the Pan Macmillan website, but it works as a shop rather than a marketing tool (although it does contain a list of author events). This is unique for a publisher – to sell direct to customers and cut out the middle Amazon-man, so points to Tor for that. If you select a particular book by an author you can then go to a page specifically about the author, and subscribe to certain RSS feeds. More points.

Twitter: this site is Tor’s hub for marketing. Events will get mentioned, review links posted, pictures of tours, author ventures plugged (like China Miéville’s short story 'Covehithe' in the Guardian not long ago). Editorial Director of Tor Julie Crisp is always present on Twitter, tweeting their latest campaigns, communicating with readers and providing relevant links, whilst not being overly pushy about the books she’s publishing, so kudos points for that last part. Tor trends topics like #towelday – 25 May is Towel Day in memory of the great Douglas Adams - really taking advantage of what Twitter can do. Tor UK is on there too, obviously tweeting about subjects relating to their list, but with personality and, dare I say it, vim. They’re also using Twitter to advertise their competition in cahoots with SFX magazine for cover designing. More points to them.

Facebook: I can’t find their Facebook page, so I’ve assumed there isn’t one, or it’s nigh impossible to locate. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Digital advances: Amazon’s Kindle store lists 81 of their titles, and it can be assumed that this list is going to grow. They’re all ‘vanilla’ at the moment, however, in 2009 an anniversary iPhone app for Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was created that had plenty of special features. A Bookseller article from February 2008 details how Tor gave away free copies of some of their titles in eBook form to advertise a ‘website’, but it provides no further detail other than saying that readers were, understandably, pretty well-pleased. There are no other articles in the Bookseller that talk about Tor’s digital initiatives, and none that I can find elsewhere. It was a great start – but did it end here?

YouTube: ADDITION - When I wrote this I hadn't found Tor's YouTube page, which is part of Pan Macmillan's page - you can see trailers, interviews, TV appearances from their authors, and more. Points to them, and a few more because I missed it the first time around.

Blog: N/A

Extras: Tor UK do have an e-newsletter that you can sign up to, which is great, but it’s not released nearly as often as I’d like to receive it. Genre for Japan: the imprint offered a year’s supply of their books for the cause. Charity points to them.

Conclusion: contain yourself - an exciting summary will follow after all four imprints have had their turn. Disclaimer: they will not win £1000 presented to them on a silver platter. They will not get to read out the end credits in the style of a sports commentator.

China Miéville and his giant brain

For numerous reasons *@&&~~~# computer error code 124323### I was unable to write my weekly round-up this week, but don't worry, it should be back in force this time next ~~~@' unknown sandwich error***

China Miéville has been making waves recently at the Guardian - they've been lavishing him with some fabulous coverage. I’m going to case study him for my dissertation, because, according to the Guardian, he’s making Sci Fi cool again (plus his brain is so large his head has no room for hair). The only person to win the Arthur C. Clarke award three times, he’s just graduated to being the sort of writer who deserves to be featured in an A life in writing article. Basically the Guardian has trumped my dissertation topic by stating that Miéville has ‘combined his love of genre, geeky in its enthusiasm but scholarly in its depth, with an ambitious literary sensibility.’ He’s come a long way. In 2003 Miéville was credited by Granta’s editor as being ‘an extraordinary writer of dark fantasy’, but he still wasn’t included on their Best Young British Novelist list for that year. He might have been writing in an acceptably literary fashion, but he was still doing it by writing fantasy. Bad times. But that was eight years ago, and the snobbery (that’s ‘stigma’ according to my dissertation) isn’t as prevalent. Better times. He would hate my dissertation, because he’s waxed eloquent about this sort of ‘why are we so put-upon’ moaning, describing it as: ‘the endlessly arse-achingly expressed complaint from genre that no one takes us seriously.’ Yet, despite that, he recently wrote in his blog: ‘The sooner literary fiction recognises and accepts its generic identity, the sooner it can get help.’ Which is now a valid new section for my dissertation. I do believe that Miéville is the final push for genre. OK, so SFF isn’t as derided as I’d initially hoped thought it would be when I set out to write this beast, but it just needs a little bit more help to become as accepted as, say, crime (that’s the genre, not the act). Some people are always going to dislike it, but I think it would be great if this wasn’t just on principle. Now, if only I was writing my dissertation circa 2003…

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Voyager: one major part of my dissertation on stigma and genre fiction is that SFF books, in general, don’t get the press they deserve. They’re seldom seen in Guardian reviews, or in train stations (on posters, not waiting to catch the next one out), they’re often not ‘worth’ the advertising space for bigger publishers, who have fiction lists to take care of with their marketing spend. So no wonder Voyager is celebrating their ‘Read a Brett yet?’ campaign, for Peter V Brett’s sequel to his frankly awesome The Painted Man, The Desert Spear. With tube posters and Shortlist spreads, this is a huge deal for an SFF title that isn’t True Blood, or had its own HBO series. Although apparently there is rumour of a film in the works, which you can check out on Peter V Brett’s own site.

The David Gemmell Legend Award: speaking of Brett, he is one of the finalists who have just been announced for this year’s Fantasy award, alongside:

BRETT, Peter V - The Desert Spear (Voyager)
HEITZ, Markus - War the Dwarves (Orbit UK/US)
JORDAN, Robert and SANDERSON, Brandon - Wheel of Time: Towers of Midnight (Orbit UK/Tor US)
PEVEL, Pierre - The Alchemist in the Shadows (Gollancz)
SANDERSON, Brandon - The Way of Kings (Gollancz/Tor US)
WEEKS, Brent - The Black Prism (Orbit UK/US)

The ceremony will be held on 17 June and fan tickets are £20 each. The price includes exclusive mingling, champagne and canapés. Request your tickets by emailing christineharrison_007@hotmail.com

Tor UK: China Miéville, the only author to win three Arthur C Clarke Awards, saw the official UK publication date of his latest behemoth, Embassytown, yesterday. Tor very much appears to be whipping Miéville’s backlist into shape with the recent re-jacketing, almost as if it’s gearing up for something awesome. Great reviews are coming in thick and fast for his eighth novel (not including shorts Looking for Jake and Other Stories). SFX magazine’s 4.5 out of 5 star review sums up this Science Fiction offering perfectly: ‘no other novel this year will offer up both a zombie apocalypse keyed off by a new kind of Ambassador and a crucial plot twist involving semiotics.’ Sounds amazing. It’s definitely time I dusted off the old Perdido Street Station and gave it another go.

Orbit: author Kate Griffin (of the Matthew Swift series) has written a blog post about the role of women in Fantasy fiction. The portrayal of women in genre fiction is a topic I’m fired-up about (despite being entirely ignorant of feminism), because, as Griffin writes, there were traditionally two types of female heroines: the Damsel in Distress and She-Ra (I may be paraphrasing here). Recently, particularly with the invention of the Kick Ass Female Lead (I’m looking at you, Urban Fantasy), the role of the woman in genre fiction tends to swing between the femme fatale and the damsel, sassily smiting whilst secretly harbouring the need to be rescued from the metaphorical tower of her sad past. So this, Griffin writes, is why she doesn’t write heroines (as well as a number of other reasons, but you should really read it yourself, she’s a great writer). Writers shouldn’t be afraid of just writing characters, rather than chromosomes, and Griffin shouldn’t be worried either – if her next hero happened to have a pair of boobs, I’m pretty sure her readers wouldn’t be too put off. Clearly Griffin will read this and immediately be moved to write her heroine-centric next novel. Loyal reader (readers, if this is a good day), repeat after me: characters not chromosomes!

Gollancz: interesting fact. Charlaine Harris’ Dead Reckoning, her latest True Blood/Sookie Stackhouse novel and the 11th in the series, has been the most pre-ordered book on Amazon UK this year. What’s more, two other SFF titles have already held the lead this year for being the most pre-ordered title, George RR Martin’s A Dance with Dragons and L J Smith’s The Return: Midnight (The Vampire Diaries). OK, so all three are linked with TV equivalents, but still – SFF’s fan base is rapidly expanding. *Crosses out dissertation topic and starts from scratch.*

RPG: something happened to me this week. After many months of faithful service, my car died. At a loss as I was unable to travel (public transport be damned) on the day I was due to go into university, I decided to do some research for my SFF and stigma-topiced dissertation. This somehow (although I’m still not entirely sure how) lead to me deciding that in order to fully understand the stigma that affects readers of SFF, I needed to fully understand the world of LARP (Live action role-playing) and RPGs (role-playing games). So, I am now booked in for a beginner’s session by the lovely people at Fanboy3, who will be setting up a character for me. Completely inept on a daily basis anyway, when asked what the ‘slightly gothy version’ of me would be like, I replied with ‘A cross between Tyrion from A Song of Ice and Fire, and Buffy.’ What could go wrong?

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Eastercon: where I wish I was this weekend, instead of sitting in my pyjamas eating an unholy amount of peanut butter, bananas and honey on toast whilst watching MTV. Eastercon is a Science Fiction and Fantasy convention that has been put on over Easter (what would you do without me explaining these things?) since 1955 for meeting and greeting like-minded individuals. This year authors Peter F Hamilton and David Weber will be there speaking (and eating and drinking too no doubt), as well as publishers like Tor UK and Angry Robot Books. Although you’ll probably find out more by following them on Twitter (@2011illustrious) than you will from their website, which has more information on the Hilton’s excessive corking fees than the event itself. I’m currently living vicariously through the hashtag (#eastercon). Programmes throughout the weekend include Medical Horror Stories, Recognising Classics, Digital Fixes, Read This Novel! and SF&F for Kids. So far it looks like there’s been a lot of meeting, greeting and drinking and talk about the upcoming Hall Costume Day, which sounds both mysterious and exciting. I would go as a long, well lit one with a church pew in it.

HarperVoyager/HBO: A Game of Thrones started this Monday on Sky Atlantic, based on George RR Martin’s incredible A Song of Ice and Fire, an epic series of phenomenal scope and detail, so naturally it’s a ten-part series just for book one. There’s a minimum of four more books to go, and as it takes a good few years for each one to be released, the odds are that the current actors will be passing the baton to their own children at some point to keep up the illusion that the events have taken place over the mere months the series has spanned so far. There were some really positive reviews of it, but also some infuriatingly ignorant ones, like this one from the New York Times. I’m all for people having their own opinions, but please Ginia Bellafante, don’t speak for me and all women everywhere.

Just one enraging quote: ‘I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.’ The most bizarre part of this review, is that the aspect that Bellafante has determined has been ‘tossed in’ for the ‘ladies’ (snarl), is the incest. Not that my delicate sensibilities can’t handle a bit of twin sex, but really? If so Mel Gibson’s What Women Want would have been an entirely different breed of romantic comedy.

Filmed in Northern Ireland and Malta, the slick production values and top notch cast (Sean Bean et al) mean that the luscious scenes of Westeros really come to life and you can practically smell the offal. I won’t go into much detail here (it is ‘bite-sized’ after all), but I loved it, and although it was sexual and gory, that wasn’t the entire focus of the plot, and I didn’t feel that any of it was overly gratuitous or out of place. I can’t wait to see more of my favourite character Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), as people who haven’t read the books (yet) would be forgiven for assuming he’s a character whose only function is to have sex with voluptuous prostitutes. A gross misconception, he also likes to tie people up in verbal knots, as well as just knots in general.

Tor UK: 1: A few of their authors have had short stories based around climate change published by the Guardian online, including 'Covehithe' by China Miéville. 2: SFX magazine are helping Tor with an artwork competition. Fans are invited to submit their original artwork for the chance for their design to be on the eBook front covers of two of Peter F Hamilton’s short stories from his collection Manhattan in Reverse. Tor are releasing two stories from the collection a month earlier than the paperback, in eBook format. The deadline hasn’t been given yet, but keep checking the SFX site for information, all you budding artists/ have-a-go-heroes.

Orbit: the first of Orbit’s eBook shorts will be available soon. Brent Weeks will be publishing 'Perfect Shadow' in the US and UK in June 2011, which features the background of his character Durzo Blint so it will be set in the world of his Night Angel trilogy. A wily choice for one of Orbit’s first eBook shorts, with a simultaneous release of the audio version to boot (although I'm not entirely sure what 'to boot' means).

Gollancz: author Ben Aaronovitch will be signing copies of his book Moon Over Soho and ‘well, anything that gets shoved in front of me’ in Waterstone’s, Romford today at 13:00pm. It’s the sequel to the very excellent Rivers of London and my (unsigned) copy is due to arrive today. Romford, another place I wish I could be, if only I didn’t have more pressing matters to contend with (*wipes peanut buttery crumbs from pyjamas*).

And finally, Doctor Who: tonight, BBC 1, 6pm. Need I say more?

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Tor: What is it about cake and books? Atom did it (I’ve just looked at my blog post about that and realised that sometimes I am a total nerd. And not one of those cool nerds, either), and now Tor UK have had an event to celebrate the reissuing of China Miéville’s backlist covers by putting them onto cakes. And they’re right to – designed by Crushed, these new covers are gorgeous, and delicious. They remind me of Neil Gaiman’s now not-so-new covers, with the black background and delicate illustrations embossed with coloured foil. Well, sort of.

Voyager: contain yourselves, epic fantasy fans; George RR Martin’s A Dance with Dragons is going to be published by Voyager on 12 July 2011. Believe that date, it’s actually real this time. It’s book five in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series so excellently executed and horrifically detailed that if, like me, you have a memory that quails at the thought of recalling more than one thing at once, you have four months to re-read the previous books. Or watch the upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones for a reminder sesh; it does have Sean Bean in it. I hear his contracts now state that, should there be a death scene, it must be at least 15 minutes in length. True story. Except for the lies.

Orbit/A Dribble of Ink: Aiden Moher over at A Dribble of Ink interviewed Orbit author Daniel Abraham (The Dragon’s Path, The Long Price Quartet) and the interview treaded close to my dissertation topic. Namely, the accessibility of the genre to people who aren’t necessarily SFF fans (differentiating this, but not altogether separating it, from the commercialisation of the genre). It also brought out Abraham’s irritation for people who want to look sophisticated through their bookshelf, whether they’re reading what’s on it or not (a personal pet hate). Abraham encourages the kind of SFF people might prefer to read via the anonymity of their eReader: ‘There is something at the base of genre – and it’s commercial and accessible and low-class and embarrassing – that brings people to what we do, and I think writers turn away from that at our peril.’ Abraham dubs this – and he’s not alone in this definition – as ‘guilty pleasures’ reading. He encourages writers to write ‘what people are ashamed to love’. Perhaps this is the value of eBooks to SFF. And its more adventurous readers. Perhaps Erotic Fantasy will get its (discrete) moment.

Gollancz: Orion publicity assistant Louise Court has given an interview on her role with Orion and Gollancz on the Book Chick City blog. This is just a lovely insight into her role and her first love, the written word. She also gets in a few plugs for their Urban Fantasy list – well, she is a publicity assistant, after all.

Arther C Clarke Award: the shortlist was announced on March 4 and is as follows:

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (Walker)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
Generosity by Richard Powers (Atlantic)
Declare by Tim Powers (Corvus)
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)

I believe I have some reading to do…