bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

*Writing from somewhere in a hermetically sealed room* As I am now in the brain-melting throes of writing my dissertation (12,000 words and four weeks to go), these round ups are focused on what dedicated SFF UK imprints are doing to digitally market themselves, their books and their authors to their fans and wider readerships.

Gollancz: have recently announced they’re making the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, ‘the definitive reference work in the field’, available free online. In another step towards helping more genre books reach wider audiences, and helping audiences to reach more books, Gollancz are launching the SF Gateway. It’s going to be the ‘world’s largest digital SF library, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks’ (so not an intergalactic gateway to other such gateways, but still pretty neat). Available to access this autumn, the project has been headed by Gollancz’s digital publisher, Darren Nash. This really is an amazing venture, and really utilises the digital form. In a further step towards digital domination, Gollancz are also teaming up with pulp website Good Show Sir, with the goal of making every cover linkable to the actual text by 2012 (this last part might be a lie, but they’re missing out on a trick – who wouldn’t want to read about Nazi gnomes?!).

Angry Robot Books: are back again this week because I’ve been writing the section in my dissertation (known henceforth as the ‘Big D’) about how negative perceptions of the fantasy genre are often linked to cheap, and badly written, swords and sorcery fiction from around the 1950s. This was otherwise known as ‘pulp’ fiction (so-called due to the cheap wood pulp paper that enabled the printing of several key fantasy and science fiction magazines around that time). The Big D points out that publishers have been trying to put their sordid, scantily-clad maidens past behind them. Commissioning editors who were interviewed for the Big D all agree wholeheartedly that negative perceptions are linked to the covers for these texts (please see Nazi gnomes cover for reference). Art Directors and the like have been working for years to rebrand SFF away from these ‘pulp’ covers, only returning to them in a retro, ironic fashion. I write all of this because this week, Angry Robot announced the signing of swords and sorcery author Paul S Kemp. Kemp is ‘unashamedly a fan of the classic ‘swords and sorcery’ fantasy’. His series of novels will be bringing ‘swords and sorcery right up to date’. But with a few key changes. It’s about thieves and treasure hunters, who are the new assassins (Douglas Hulick’s Tales of the Kin helped with that), and Angry Robot are keen to emphasise that it uses ‘very modern language’. I’ve done a few questionnaires for my essay, and people generally find the language and names used (see Tolkien’s works for detail) off-putting when it comes to reading fantasy, and so would rather not. Could more books of this ilk being published, with modern covers, modern language and trending themes, be part of the key of helping SFF to reach wider audiences, without the need for a HBO series?

I will leave you with a quote from H. P. Lovecraft on the matter of being published by pulp magazines (which he was): ‘the field is so repugnant to me that it’s about the last way I’d ever choose to gain shelter and clothing and nourishment.’ Beautiful.

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

As I am now writing my dissertation (ha!) these round ups are focused on what dedicated SFF UK imprints are doing to digitally market themselves, their books and their authors to their fans and wider readerships.

Voyager: are gearing up for the release of George R R Martin’s long-awaited A Dance with Dragons – released 12 July. It’s been six years since A Feast for Crows, not that we should complain. According to initial reviews, it’s going to be well worth it. We should also celebrate Voyager’s new free app to ‘reward’ fans’ patience. There aren’t many apps for SFF titles, and that George (first names basis) has one is great, but also maybe demonstrates that to have time and budget dedicated to an SFF imprint author, that author needs to have proven himself (with a HBO series perhaps).

Orbit: are also gearing up for their biggest release, possibly of the whole year (warning: bias alert), Jim Butcher’s Ghost Story on 28 July. And in the process, Mark Yon, reviewer and administrator at the excellent SFFWorld, has been diligently slogging through The Dresden Files’ backlist (someone has to do it) and providing weekly reviews. Despite being a nerd for Jim Butcher, I am one fan (such a small word) who will NOT be eagerly awaiting the release of Ghost Story, because I’ve already read it. A staff member at Little, Brown on my work experience may have been subjected to several hours of My Love for Jim Butcher, and, possibly hoping I’d read it and shut up, produced a freshly printed copy for my greedy mitts. In response, and much to her relief, I exploded with happiness. Just another 12 months ‘till the next one. It’s embargoed so no review, unfortunately, except to say (without spoilers), that it’s… necessarily a departure from what readers are used to. I also recommend a re-read of Changes, to understand just how necessary a divergence Ghost Story is. Harry wasn’t just on the edge in that last book, he was free-falling from it.

Gollancz: are still celebrating their 50th anniversary. This time they’re publishing the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction online, free of charge. The first two editions won the Hugo Award – I wonder if it’s possible for an online resource to do the same? I’m also curious to know how much this makes sense commercially. But it is great publicity for Gollancz, so maybe they will reap the benefits elsewhere. Or, you know, maybe they’re just nice. You can eagerly await the launch by watching this space, following them on Twitter or visiting their Facebook page.

digital marketing - science fiction and fantasy

Over the last few weeks this blog has been focusing on what the four imprints I’m using as case studies for my dissertation do to digitally market their books. As promised, this is the exciting* summary of my findings, looking at which imprint out of the four – Tor, Orbit, Voyager and Gollancz – most effectively uses digital marketing to promote its authors and titles. Here are the results.

TOR

With no blog, a Facebook page I can’t find (although I’ve heard rumour of there being one) and an area on the Pan Macmillan website that is more shop than shoptalk, Twitter is Tor’s hub for digital marketing. Events will get mentioned, review links posted, pictures of tours and author ventures plugged. Editorial Director of Tor Julie Crisp is always present on Twitter, tweeting Tor’s latest campaigns, communicating with readers and providing relevant links, whilst not being overly pushy about the books she’s publishing. She helps to trend topics like #towelday – 25 May is Towel Day in memory of the late, great Douglas Adams - really taking advantage of what Twitter (and fans) can do. Tor UK is on there too, tweeting about subjects relating to its list with personality and a good degree of vim. Tor is also using Twitter to advertise its competition in cahoots with SFX magazine for cover designing – a unique way of promoting a title. Some stats: Tor’s Twitter stream has 1424 followers, Julie Crisp, clearly doing something right, has 1520. I recently heard that Tor has been allotted the budget for a new blog, so it’s obviously deemed an important tool in digital marketing – it will be great to see what Tor does with it.

ORBIT

Orbit UK has a larger team than most other dedicated science fiction and fantasy imprints, with various folk in charge of digital, publicity and general marketing, and Orbit USA and Aus/NZ banding together as well to digitally market as a global imprint, which is worth bearing in mind. Although it has a strong Twitter and Facebook presence, the most remarkable part of Orbit’s digital marketing strategy is its website. Orbit’s website is its hub for marketing, and what a hub. It streamlines the UK/USA/Aus/NZ imprints into one, accessible source of information. As well as containing its publishing schedules and author profiles (with links to websites and details about its titles), Orbit’s website is basically a very well-maintained blog. It contains, among other things, guest posts from authors (not always from Orbit’s own list), editors, editorial assistants and the very excellent, always enthusiastic, Art Director Lauren Panepinto. The site also contains a blog roll and links to SFF sites, and allows for comments on each post, maintaining a healthy online community. It really is a smorgasbord of information. Some stats: Facebook – 2292 likes. Orbit Twitter – 8727 followers. Orbit Editorial Assistant James Long Twitter account – 801 followers.

VOYAGER

Bearing in mind Voyager’s small team, it doesn’t have a Facebook page and its page on HarperCollins’ website is a bit impersonal (in-keeping with the overall professional image), but it does have a Twitter and blog, maintained mainly by one dedicated Assistant Editor, and a few guest bloggers. There tends to be about one to two posts every fortnight, and they can consist of: reviews from HarperCollins’ staff members of Voyager’s books, an huge ongoing campaign for George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, countdown widgets for upcoming titles for blogs and websites, trailers, the occasional book of the month, cover launches, a heads-up for its new ventures, a post on its physical consumer marketing campaign for Peter V Brett and a few non-marketing related posts, which arguably is good digital marketing in itself. The blog/site also contains links to other sites and every post can be commented on. Its Twitter account contains links to its blog posts as well as plenty of perky communication with fellow tweeters and readers, particularly considering there is only one person behind the tweets. What I like about this (warning: personal preference) is that HarperCollins is a hugely commercial publisher but the Voyager feed feels personal. Some stats: Twitter – 2577 followers.

GOLLANCZ

Gollancz does not have a strong blog presence although its website is good, and the team know how much time it can exhort updating it (hence its book and author of the month). Therefore Gollancz’s strengths lie in its Facebook and Twitter presence. Its main technique is to run competitions for readers to win its titles (admittedly, it hammered this more a few months back). It would be really interesting to find out how these competitions affect sales, if at all, as I think it’s a unique way of marketing, and great for smaller budgets (although the postage and packaging costs must be immense). Gollancz also: knows the beauty of a good hash tag, posts YouTube links to author interviews and trailers, flags up signings, reviews, posts pictures, links to other relevant information it feels its readers will find interesting (rather than making the rookie error of only talking about itself), news about its award nominations, and a whole host of other links and comments. Some stats: 1865 people ‘like’ its Facebook page, on average Gollancz posts 2-3 times per day, and it has one sister Facebook page, Gollancz Dark Fantasy, which has 3608 ‘likes’ (thank you, Charlaine Harris). Gollancz Twitter has 3144 followers, and Gollancz Dark Fantasy Twitter has 977. This might only be something I find fascinating, but this shows Dark Fantasy fans are more likely to follow its Facebook page than its Twitter stream, and vice versa for Gollancz main.

Conclusion of summary: Every imprint has its own way and knows how to digitally market its books into a reader’s heart. Unfortunately, man power, time and money are huge factors regarding what avenues you can take. Hence why Twitter and Facebook, being free, are great tools.

Active, healthy blogs look to be the way forward. Orbit’s just zings off the screen. Voyager’s is good, and would benefit from more time and posts (not always an option when one person is doing the posting), Tor’s is on its way. Gollancz could benefit from updating its blog more – but time factors probably get in the way so it picks and chooses when it utilizes this tool (eg, for its 50th anniversary).

Voyager and Tor (I may be wrong) both don’t have Facebook pages. Gollancz demonstrates why it’s important to reach fans both through Twitter and Facebook, through its discrepancies between Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers.

With Twitter it is worth the editors and other staff having personal accounts that tweet about the industry. Julie Crisp has more followers than Tor UK but it’s probably a surety that she achieves the same promotional benefits for Tor’s titles as Tor’s actual Twitter stream, only people can feel more connected to an actual person, rather than an imprint.

Both Voyager and Orbit have a brand of their own away from their publishing groups – this could be important as it builds and taps into that essential fan community. They both also have less ‘personal’ pages on their publishing groups’ sites, so this caters for a wider readership.

Conclusion of conclusion of summary: Orbit’s model of digital marketing is fantastic. They demonstrate the ideal Twitter/Facebook/blog/website combination – all regularly updated and mostly interactive. But time and budget are huge factors that not every imprint can indulge in, which is where the personal touch, and a bit of ingenuity, comes in.

*Excitement not guaranteed

digital marketing - Gollancz

Over the last few weeks this blog has been focusing 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 has had a turn, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. I have so far blogged about Tor UK, Orbit UK and HarperVoyager. This post is about Gollancz.

GOLLANCZ

Website: Gollancz has a section on the Orion Publishing Group’s website (which they’re owned by). When I first started this blog, this part of their website, and their blog, were not updated very often. In recent months however, particularly as it’s their 50th anniversary year, Gollancz have hit their stride with their webpage and blog. On their main page you can find their book of the month and author of the month (including links to their previous books so you can buy them, the author’s website and information about them), a bestseller list specifically for their titles with clickable links to further information and ways to purchase them, a list of their upcoming events and a nice link to a webpage for their most popular series, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood books. They also have a ‘What’s hot’ section that contains recent news: this week, brilliantly, they’re in cahoots with National Blood Week – cross-promotional AND charity points, they’re also showcasing a trailer for their book of the month, Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper, a link to the Masterworks Reading Project, (old) news about Ian McDonald’s Dervish House being shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award (won by Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City) and a celebration of the last 25 years of the Arthur C Clarke Award (or should that be the first?). Gollancz does have a young adult page, although I’m just focusing on adult fiction here.

Blog: also on the Orion website, you will find the Gollancz blog. If you click through their archive, you’ll see there was a post in November, the next post wasn’t until April, and then you get to the May tab, and you’ll understand what I mean about a lack of activity until recently. Every day for a week in May they celebrated 50 years of Gollancz with a new blog post (I’m sure they did more than write a blog post, 50 years is a long time). They had a readers’ vote for their favourite titles, which is now closed, but this flurry of activity shows what can be done. However, I imagine it took a lot of time and resources, and it’s possible they’re another small team (the entire team seems to have written a post for this seven day session) that can’t afford to do this all the time. So, 50th anniversary points (admittedly, very particular to Gollancz). And it’s a shame that more can’t be done with the blog, because it is a great way to connect with readers, if they allowed for comments, and Joe Abercrombie’s post on George RR Martin shows its potential for entertainment. But that’s where, for Gollancz, Facebook comes in.

Facebook: this is where the digital marketing really happens for Gollancz. Their main technique is to run competitions for readers to win their titles (admittedly, this was more prevalent a few months back). Many competitions. They have all the competition points. It would be really interesting to find out how these competitions affect sales, if at all. I really hope they help sales, I think it’s a unique way of marketing, and great for smaller budgets (although the postage and packaging costs must be immense). You can really see the dedication of the marketing team (person?) here. They also post YouTube links to author interviews and trailers, flag up signings, reviews, post pictures, links to other relevant information they feel their readers will find interesting (points for not just talking about themselves), news about their award nominations, and just a whole host of other links and comments. Some stats: 1859 people ‘like’ their page, on average they post 2-3 times per day, and they have 1 sister Facebook page, Gollancz Dark Fantasy, which has 3526 ‘likes’ (and does much of the same, only with more of a focus on Charlaine Harris).

Twitter: here, as well as the beauty of hash tags, there is more of the same frequency of posts and topics as on the Facebook page. They have a Gollancz, Gollancz Dark Fantasy and a temporary account for their 50th anniversary. They also have mystery book quotes for followers to guess, tweets about events they’re currently attending (like the David Gemmell Awards – topical), and are just generally entertaining. They definitely know their way around a hash tag. Hash tag points.

Digital advances: Orion has a ‘Reading room’ area of their website, which is an ace way of promoting your titles, taking a cosy concept but making it digital. Here you can access sample PDFs of some of Gollancz’s titles, like Charlaine Harris’ Dead Reckoning. Cosy concept points.

Recently their author Charlaine Harris became the latest writer to exceed the 1m Kindle eBooks mark. So they’re doing well here, particularly with this author (the TV series possibly helps).

Gollancz have a digital publisher, Darren Nash, who promised the following back in August 2010 for Gollancz’s digital future: ‘enhanced e-books and apps, backlist projects, building virtual communities and developing online interaction through social media such as Twitter and blogs.’ I would definitely say that social media (barring the blog, perhaps) has taken off and looks to be going very strong. However, apps and enhanced eBooks haven’t yet shown their faces. In a blog post, their author Joe Abercrombie did mention a meeting with his editor that resulted in an absolutely amazing sounding eBook package, but I can’t find any further mention of it. I’m not sure about issuing ‘just around the corner’ points, but, what the heck, I’ll do it anyway.

Oh, and Amazon.co.uk shows that they have 391 eBooks published by Gollancz. That’s a good number.

Extras: the Orion Publishing Group has a general YouTube channel where you can find Gollancz trailers and author interviews. I can’t find many uploads by Gollancz, however, but it’s good that they’re utilising Orion’s page.

Conclusion: contain yourself - an exciting summary will follow shortly. Disclaimer: none of the imprints will win £1000 presented to them on a silver platter. They will not get to read out the end credits in the style of someone trying to propose just as their loved one discovers a beetle doing backstroke in their soup.

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?

London Book Fair 2011: a student's experience

#LBF11: the London Book Fair – a summation of my own experience as a student on an MA Publishing course wishing to ask Science Fiction and Fantasy editors a series of questions for my dissertation, and as an exhibitor on my university press (very small) stand.

Day one:

Steeled myself for targeting the Gollancz/Orion stand first. Got to front desk, woman told me that Hachette Livre don’t own Gollancz. I apologised profusely and bimbled away. A quick Google check later and I was back: ‘Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry, but it appears you do own Gollancz. I can see them over there. On your stand…’ Woman looks at me in silence. A man leaps up to me with an Orion ID badge and directs me over to the lovely Gillian Redfearn, who saw me last year too, and who willing submitted to my abysmal interview ‘techniques’.

Tried Orbit/Little, Brown. Was told no one could see me. Asked about James Long, the new editorial assistant. Was told to come back on Tuesday when he’d be happy to answer my questions.

Tried HarperCollins, same girls who were on the front desk last year, uber tall, thin and stylish and looked at each other when I asked if I could see Emma Coode. Without checking, they told me she wasn’t on the stand, they didn’t know when she would be on the stand, and had no knowledge of her schedule. I stumbled awkwardly away with my many bags, feeling very northern, uncool and old.

Came back later with a friend from my course and saw HarperCollins were having a drinks reception. Recognised someone from my work experience and latched on to him. We grabbed a glass of champagne each and headed for the huddle in the centre of the stand. It’s all about confidence. It also helped that we’d already fortified ourselves with wine (note: not recommended if you wish to retain your dignity). Ate small sandwiches.

Day two:

Headed straight for Little, Brown and spoke to James Long. He didn’t have time to see me so gave me his email address. At some point during our conversation I took one hopeful step onto their stand, he didn’t move back, so whilst maintaining eye contact I carefully stepped back off it again, hoping he didn’t noticed the difference in my height. Awkward.

Went to a seminar where Philip Pullman was on the panel. Afterwards he signed World Book Night books. There were five of us left in the queue when the next seminar was due to start, so Pullman gestured for us all to follow him outside of the room. Happily, the five of us trailed after him across Earl’s Court 1, wondering where he was leading us, only to stop short as he went into the men’s toilet. We hot-footed it back to the seminar room, where we pretended we had been all along when he came back and kindly signed our books for us. If he’d noticed he’d been followed, he politely didn’t mention it.

Tried Angry Robot Books/Osprey stand to try to speak to Mike Ramalho. I had my ‘student’ badge eyed up by a very well-dressed man and was told to ‘Watch out for him in the aisles’ as he wasn’t on the stand. Rather than admit that the only way I was going to know what Ramalho looked like was to shout his name loudly and see who turned around, I thanked the man and walked away with poise (in my mind).

Went back to my own stand (recalling I was there to work) and helped some MA students out with their questions. As they were leaving one said, ‘Thank you for speaking to us like we are people.’

Accidentally ended up in a ‘Getting ahead in publishing’ talk, for people who already worked in publishing. Slightly embarrassing, especially as I bumped into a girl from the Little, Brown stand who had been lovely to me the day before, when I’d quite clearly explained to her that I was a student. I nodded to her and took my seat. It really is all about confidence (or, in my case, ignorance).

Day three:

Decided to try my luck with Orbit one last time. ‘Did you speak to James?’ / ‘Yes, he told me to email him.’ Slight pause. ‘Well… do that then.’ Yes, I did feel like an idiot, but you have to be persistent at the LBF and sometimes, sometimes it pays off. Which means that the majority of the time, you do look like an idiot. Or a stalker. I felt like they were mentally filling in the restraining order every time they saw me on the approach (signed, the Little, Brown stand and witnessed by the HarperCollins stand).


There was one last stand to try. Tor UK/Macmillan. Surely, they wouldn’t speak to me. But I had to get rejected by the last publisher on my list or I’d feel like I hadn’t truly put myself through the wringer. I approached warily. The women on the desk immediately put me at ease. Julie Crisp hadn’t arrived yet but of course they would take my details to pass on. I wasn’t made to feel naive for asking for some of the Editorial Director’s time, they were just happy to help. Then, Julie arrived. The girls on the desk leapt over to her and asked for a moment of her time. She’d had a cancellation, she was happy to withstand my incredibly awkward interview ‘skills’. Persistence. It does sometimes pay off. Luck helps too. But after those, you’re on your own.

The London Book Fair – stressful, and full of disappointments, adrenalin rushes, and that giddying feeling of achievement when you hit the right stand, at the right moment. I love it.

And finally, a vow. If I ever do get into publishing, and I end up on the other side of a publisher’s stand at the LBF, I will always endeavour to speak to students when I have the chance, or explain to them if I cannot. Let’s say it together, everybody: Students – they’re people too.

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Genre for Japan/ Floor to ceiling books: Amanda Rutter has been doing something amazing with the SFF genre in recent weeks – helping to raise money to assist relief efforts in Japan. She and a few other highly dedicated individuals have been requesting items to auction off from publishers, editors and authors. Together, they raised £11,203.36, which is, frankly, amazing. Some of my favourite donated items were signed copies of The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, the Angry Robot e-book collection, a year of books by Tor UK, a signed and stamped edition of I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, the chance for you to be in a novel by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, a signed proof of The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman… This actually just turned into a list of what was on offer, because it was all phenomenal, so you might as well just have a look yourself.

Orbit: have launched a unique, visually stunning advertising campaign for Simon Morden’s Metrozone series, about a worldwide nuclear disaster with a Zombieland-esque lead character who has survived by adhering to his own strict rules and ‘equations of life’, and then breaking them. Throughout London graffiti artwork has been appearing, warning citizens of the arrival of the Metrozone, and the pending apocalypse. This is such a brilliant, creative way of advertising a Science Fiction (or any) book, rather than the usual picture of cover and standard ‘have you read this yet you should do’ line. More please.

Locus Awards: the tickets are on sale now for the Science Fiction Awards Weekend, taking place June 24-26 in Seattle. So if you happen to be in the area and want to pop on by (and who wouldn’t?), purchase your tickets now.

Gollancz: are celebrating 50 years of publishing Science Fiction and Fantasy and they’re giving you the opportunity to vote for your favourite Gollancz book. There’s quite a surprising mix on there, including William Heaney/Graham Joyce’s Memoirs of a Master Forger, which I had the pleasure of reading recently and completely fell in love with it. Such a beautiful, whimsical read and highly recommended. If you vote you’re also entered into a prize draw to win a subscription to SFX magazine and the top ten books in the charts this autumn. Worth it.

Tor UK: China Miéville in interview at Only the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy blog, with questions from Pornokitsch, Mithril Wisdom and sffworld.com. Dauntingly eloquent, his verbose discussions include: losing his shit with excitement (who hasn’t?), being a lover of squid, Eygptian shabtis (right?), ‘Is urban the new fantasy’ (what?) and shenanigans. Choice quote: “(Do you mean) ‘The adjective "urban" is becoming increasingly disaggregated from what one might have thought its referent would be, and instead portending various fashionable aesthetic tropes actually contingent to metropolitan quiddity'?” End quote.

Voyager: is a review by me, so here it is again, as if I haven't flashed myself about enough with little regard for any of our dignity.

#lbf11: it’s the London Book Fair next week and I’m going down hellishly early tomorrow to set up the University of Central Lancashire stand in order to wax lyrical about the MA Publishing course and our Letters to Africa project. When I say wax lyrical, I of course mean babble incoherently. I will also be walking past the stands of major publishers attempting to pluck up the courage to see if anyone will speak to me.

A little list: Publishers I would like to see: Voyager, Tor, Gollancz, Orbit (although, they weren’t there last year, but Atom was)… and I think that seeing some independents would be just as exciting, particularly for my dissertation – Sparkling Books and Angry Robot in particular.

If you’re off to the fair, I’ll probably be hovering in the background somewhere near you on my 60th circuit.

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…

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Orbit: have posted a response to blogger Leo Grin’s derisive prejudgement of Joe Abercrombie’s new title The Heroes. Grin is tired of modern fantasy and its ‘writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage.’ He then goes on to use Abercrombie as an example of this, likening his First Law trilogy to:

Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.

Maybe it’s because I (whisper it) didn’t actually enjoy Tolkien’s meandering epic – ‘stringing you along for thousands of pages’ is about right - that alternative ending sounds bloody brilliant to me. He doesn’t stop there. Modern fantasy can also be comparable to: ‘artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces’. I bet Tolkien never expected to be in the same group as fecal blasphemy.

Abercrombie’s response is understandably confused and irate. He hasn’t superseded Tolkien and Howard, Grin’s faves (‘I’m reasonably sure Lord of the Rings is still in print’). As Abercrombie aptly puts it in that nihilistic way of his:

In the words of Mr. Pink, “fuck sides, man, what we need is a little solidarity here.” To me, it’s not really about politics, and it’s got nothing to do with sides, just various writers coming at a genre with their own set of unique concerns, influences, interests. Why must it be steak OR chicken? Can I not enjoy both?

Well met. I’ll meet you in the jaded literary sewer.

Angry Robot Books: Editor Lee Harris has been in discussion about the worth of eBooks, which is a worthy topic when a lot of people seem to think that they should be free. The vast majority of people place a helluva lot of worth in the physical copy. Is a book not its content? Would you love a blank page? To sum Harris’ points: Production cost differences between an eBook and a hardback is minimal; it does not spell the death of the publisher (have you read Harry Potter fan fiction?); an eBook (like any book) represents the publisher; it’s the culmination of a shed-load of work between editor/copyeditor/production/designer/marketer etc; it’s the product of investment; it’s priced to make a profit; and it’s worth blood, sweat, profanities and tears to an author.

So, reader, what it’s worth to you, you know, in your heart?

Gollancz: quick one this week – Ben Aaronovitch’s most excellent mash up of ghosts and waterways Rivers of London is in the Sunday Times top ten bestselling hardbacks list. I would link if I could but unfortunately it’s subscription only – a flaw in an otherwise foolproof digital content plan.

book review: Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch is published by Gollancz in the UK and Del Ray in the USA (who have bizarrely re-titled it Midnight Riot). I read the UK hardback version, with its utterly glorious cover, complete with luscious London map made of words and a cheeky blood stain.

Peter Grant is a probationary constable faced with spending the rest of his career in the Case Progression Unit to do the paperwork so the ‘real coppers don’t have to’. Fortunately for him, whilst standing watch at the site of a gruesome murder in London’s Covent Garden, he takes a statement from the only witness available; the ghost of Nicholas Wallpenny.

From that moment on Peter’s eyes are open to a brand new world. He joins Chief Inspector Nightingale, the last remaining wizard in England, to become his apprentice and Detective Constable. Together they form a very special unit of the London Metropolitan Police Service, aka ‘the Filth’, that’s kept firmly under wraps. Peter moves into the Folly, Nightingale’s mostly empty mansion (‘mostly’ because there’s a Molly slithering around in there somewhere) to begin his training.

He’s soon learning the basic steps of magic alongside investigating the freakishly similar murders that keep cropping up around the city. Although, it soon becomes apparent that the murderers are as much a victim of the wave of anger and despair that warps their features and drives them, as the bodies they leave strewn all over London.

On top of all that, there are the vampires and the warring god and goddess of the Thames to contend with, not to mention the distractions that the luscious personification of a river, Beverly Brook, and the incredibly perky WPC Lesley May provide Peter with.

This is probably best described as Urban Fantasy, being city-based and about the supernatural, but this particular novel is more centred on police, ghosts and folklore. The policing aspects of it in particular make Rivers of London a credible thriller as well as an Urban Fantasy, especially due to the level of detail involved.

As I possess a peculiarly specific taste in Urban Fantasy (Jim Butcher), which I mentioned in an earlier post, on the surface this novel ticks all the right boxes for me: set in a city, preferably Chicago or London: TICK. The police are involved in investigating supernatural crimes: TICK. And keeping them quiet from the public: TICK. Magic is needed to solve murders: TICK. It involves wizards: TICK. Vampires: TICK. Gods: TICK. And, bonus ticks for the unexpected yet delightful addition of Londoners turning into violent mannequins: TICK. (I feel you may need a reminder of why there's a ticking system.)

That was in theory at least. So I was, of course, delighted to discover it had all of those things it promised to deliver, and more. More because the characters are wonderful. I really got on well with the lead, Peter Grant, who was slightly whiney, but also thoroughly sympathetic, and wonderfully funny (and very ready believe in magic). Almost like Moss in the IT Crowd (who Peter firmly is, in my mind at least). Aaronovitch drip feeds enough of a back story about his character’s upbringing to enable the reader to understand the character’s motivations and worldly view, without it being a sob story.

While through the first person narrative you really came to know and love Peter (important, that), there is always the risk of the one viewpoint leaving other characters in the lurch. It would have been great to have gotten to know some of the other characters further. Beverly Brook, Lesley May and Nightingale all would have benefited from further examining, but this is only the first book of hopefully many, so there is always time for that. The snippets of characterisation you receive through the medium of Peter are enough to satiate you, whilst leaving you wanting a sequel to learn more.

Like all excruciatingly good Urban Fantasies, the city has to be as much of a character as any of the others, and Aaronovitch ensures that London ain’t no bit part. The city heaves off the page in all of her cobbled, crowded, violent glory. The author’s love of this city pours from the pages in the descriptions of the streets, landmarks, rivers (naturally), folklore and its spirit. Despite the reverence, Aaronovitch isn’t afraid to get London’s hands dirty. Whatever nasty is abusing the city is feeding from the spirit of riot and rebellion that’s been breeding in its alleyways for years.

The book has two plots running alongside each other – the main, meatier plot about randomly murderous rages overtaking innocent citizens, and the subplot about the dispute between the self-proclaimed god and goddess of the Thames. While they do neatly weave around each other, at times the subplot seemed to act only as a distraction for the lead from his main case. The two story strands did cross towards the finale, although this had a touch of convenience about it. I did, however, enjoy both of these stories equally on account of them being extremely well written.

Aaronovitch has written for Doctor Who, which always demands a creative mind, and there is certainly one at work here. The personification of lost and current London rivers feels both believable and magical through Aaronovitch’s deft hand. His debut novel is wickedly inventive and, to borrow the cover quote by Charlaine Harris, fresh and original.

The prose is often gently whimsical, but there is also a vividness to his writing. Aaronovitch’s snatches of description when Peter feels a flash of vestigia, magical resonance from a person, animal or place, is written in such a way that the reader feels, smells and sees it too.

Rivers of London is warmly humorous but never shirks from being brutally visceral when it has to be. For the first in a potential series, it’s self-contained with an ending that leaves you at once unsettled and fully satisfied. I thoroughly look forward to its sequel, Moon Over Soho.

8/10

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Night Shade Books USA: have released a trailer for their new Urban Fantasy title God’s War by Kameron Hurley. Wiping their hands of the usual Urban Fantasy tropes (yet still dubbing God’s War an Urban Fantasy), they’re declaring this title to be absent of back tattoos, vampires, telepathic werewolves, moonlit heavy petting and tight leather pants. I find it extremely hard to believe that this can be an Urban Fantasy without the presence of clothing seldom seen out of soft porn.

Nothing to do with publishing but I love it anyway. Although, personally, this song could also be ‘I’m watching TV’, ‘I’m eating breakfast’ or ‘I’m reasonably tired’.

Gollancz: are promoting Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London at the moment and have posted this great interview with the author at Forbidden Planet on their Facebook page. It’s also their book of the month on their website. I’ve been hugely excited about this book since I saw it featured in The Bookseller a while back. Aaronovitch describes it as ‘magic cops’, with a dash of the Sweeny and Gaiman’s Neverwhere (LOVE). I have an oddly particular taste in Urban Fantasy and this ticks all the boxes for me: set in a city, preferably Chicago or London: TICK. The police are involved in investigating supernatural crimes: TICK. And keeping them quiet from the public: TICK. Magic is needed to solve murders: TICK. It involves wizards: TICK. Vampires: TICK. Gods: TICK. And, bonus ticks for the unexpected yet delightful addition of Londoners turning into violent mannequins: TICK. Incidentally, barring the mannequins (yet), this is the same checklist that Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files gets full marks in. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned him.

best of the best: top Fantasy books of 2010

Some of these books have not strictly been released in 2010 (read: were definitely not released in 2010 – Fantasy Book News, I’m looking at you with Brian Sanderson’s 2005 Elantris on the list), but I don’t make the rules so these are – loosely – what a (random) selection of SFF sites and bloggers have listed as their top five books of 2010 (regardless of whether they have actually been released in 2010). Following in the spirit of things (i.e. disregarding the publication date entirely), I have added my own ‘best science fiction and fantasy books of 2010 (not necessarily released in 2010)’ to the list. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the data to fit nicely into a chart (preferably pie), but here it is in startling boring tabular form. I’ve highlighted recurring books in the same colour, although none occur in the same position in more than one list, so as an experiment this probably failed. So here’s what we learn from an exercise that took a startling long time to carry out: favourite books are relative, Tor dominate USA-side, Orbit and Gollancz are pretty much equal (in a small selection of unrelated best-of lists, one of which I realised after is purely a nominee list but I decided to keep it in anyway for data analysis/padding), I’d like to read Stephen Donaldson’s Against All Things Ending by Gollancz as it looks fabulous and if you are going to colour code a table in order to highlight recurring themes it’s probably best not to do this in a table that already has colours in it. Enjoy!

Websites used: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Fantasy Book Critic, Publishers’ Weekly, Good Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Fantasy Book News, SFGate, Fantasy Faction and me.

Website	1	2	3	4	5
Amazon.co.uk	Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan (Orbit)	Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)	Against All Things Ending by Stephen Donaldson (Gollancz)	The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan (Orbit)	The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton (MacMillan)
Amazon.com	Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (Ace Books)	Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan (Tor)	Changes by Jim Butcher (Roc)	Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs (Ace)	Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton (Berkley)
Fantasy Book Critic	Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)	The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Viking)	The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)	The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker (Orbit)	Aurorarama Jean-Christophe Valtat (Melville House Publishing)
Publishers' Weekly	The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum (Orbit)	Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit)	The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)	Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (Daw)	A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter by Peter Straub (Pegasus Books)
Good Reads (Nominees - winners announced soon)	The Way of Kings by Brian Sanderson (Gollancz)	Kraken by China Miéville (Pan)	The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Orbit)	The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman	The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett (Harper Voyager)
Kirkus Reviews	The Bird of the River by Kage Baker (Tor)	Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks (Orbit)	Side Jobs by Jim Butcher (Orbit)	The Palace of Impossible Dreams by Jennifer Fallon (Tor)	Shadows in the Cave by Caleb Fox (Tor)
Fantasy Book News	Lamentation by Ken Scholes (Tor)	The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz/ Orbit USA)	Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)	Daemon by Daniel Suarez (Quercus)	Elantris by Brian Sanderson (Tor)
SFGate.com	Not Less Than Gods by Kage Baker (Tor)	The Passage by Justin Cronin (Orion UK)	Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (DC Comics)	Horns by Joe Hill (Gollancz)	Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Fantasyfaction.com	The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett (Harper Voyager)	The Way of Kings by Brian Sanderson (Gollancz)	Spellwright by Blake Charlton (HarperVoyager)	The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Orbit)	Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz/ Orbit USA)
Me	Changes by Jim Butcher (Orbit)	Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot Books)	Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Corgi)	The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobbs (HarperVoyager)	The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Orbit)