Friday, 16 May 2008

The God of Publication Dates

Gather round, my friends, for I have some (slightly) bad news. Publication Date for Best Served Cold has moved from April 2009 back to June 2009. Only a couple of months, which is probably small fry for some of you folks who are used to waiting for books, but I thought that you should be the first to know. Other than me. And my editor. And some other folks at the publisher. And some booksellers. But I thought you'd want to know, anyway, nice and early, to keep any disappointment as small and far off as possible. Nothing worse than camping outside the bookstore all night in the pissing rain, charging in bright-eyed and sweaty-palmed as the doors open only to be told the book's been put back a year, right?

Now I hang around some forums, so I see people get quite irritated about shifting publication dates, and I entirely understand. So in the interests of full transparency, let me attempt to explain a) what's going on with my writing process that has caused the publication date to be moved in this case and, b) why it is that you seem to get considerable delays even once you hear a manuscript has been handed in.

So, Best Served Cold. It's a simple story, in a way, a lot less complicated than The First Law, certainly. So why's it taken me a good few months longer to write than I expected? New characters is the main problem. New characters mean new approaches, new feels to create. For me the characters are the essence of the book, so getting them properly realised is key. That's taken time to a degree I didn't entirely aniticipate. The characters in the First Law had fermented in my mind over the course of years, then I'd taken two or three years with no pressure to happily work the approaches out in the first book before I ever got a publishing contract, and long before anything was printed. You know, when it was a hobby and fun, rather than the hideous drudgery of actual work. These new characters, particularly the central one, have had to be worked out from scratch and that's been (and still is being) a challenge.

Plus I'd got used to the pace I was working at with Last Argument of Kings, and foolishly extrapolated my likely writing pace from there. That was pretty damn fast, took about 14 months including all the editing. But that was writing the third in a trilogy, the characters, plots, endings long established in my mind and ready to be vomited out onto the page. This new project has proved more difficult. In a sense, since the trilogy was one long story, this book has felt much more like my "difficult second album" than the second book did, which was only really a continuation of the first. I am beginning to understand why people end up writing endless series...

Partly in order to make my life easier, and partly because I like books that tend toward the shorter and more concise end of the epic fantasy spectrum, I'd aimed for something tighter than the previous three (which were 195,000, 200,000, and 230,000 words respectively, oh yeah, real short and concise, Joe), somewhere in the region of 150,000-175,000, which I thought I could knock off in 12 months. Slight errors at the planning stage (chronic overambition, incompetence, failure, that kind of thing) have led to the book getting quite a bit longer than that - I'm guessing it'll work out about 220,000 now. Longer books take longer to write, you'll be surprised to learn.

Then there are the distractions and pressures that come with having books out there in the marketplace and (relatively) successful. Interviews, blogging, responding to email, endlessly searching for anyone talking about you, checking your amazon sales ranks every hour in four different countries, etc. That vital work all takes up time and energy one could have expended writing. And though I'm doing a lot less of the day job these days, it's funny how the pace of writing doesn't necessarily increase to match (more on this in due course, perhaps).

Then, given that this is a standalone book, I decided to take a different approach. With a series, one would desire to write the entire thing before the first book is published, so if some brilliant idea occurs while writing the last you can just alter the first here or there to match. In the real world this tends not to be possible, since a man's gotta eat and so on, and generally you'll have to publish the first book before you've written the rest, which means you need to be pretty damn sure of where you're going if you want your last book to be any good. It means a lot of revising and thinking as you go along. An awful lot, in the case of The First Law. Because Best Served Cold is a standalone I thought, aha, I'll just Bosh out a first draft quick sharp, not worry too much about getting it right, then revise and edit much more heavily than usual en masse, giving much greater economy of scale! The shackles are off! I am free! Free! Problem is I know I've left a lot of stuff that needs a lot of work behind, and that's going to mean more editing than with the previous books, which is going to mean more time after the first draft is finished to get things right, and etc.

So cut the sh*t, Joe, can you just tell us what authors will never bloody tell us, and say where are you actually up to with this book? Well, er, yes, thanks for asking. It's in seven parts, and I'm just finishing the first draft of the fifth part, so about three quarters of the way through. Well, that doesn't seem so bad, it's only May, a whole eleven months before the original pub date! True, I still hope to have the first draft finished and then thoroughly revised to my own satisfaction maybe end of August. Two months for some furious editing, polish and tidy up, and a month for copy edit and back and forth, have the bastard well and truly nailed by the end of the year. Proofs out, all hail my genius, unprecedented combination of critical and commercial success, buried under an avalanche of cash and awards, no, no, not another Hugo, I couldn't possibly, oh alright then just one more, mansion in the country with pool shaped like a magic sword, right?

But I know what you're thinking now. If it's all finished before the end of the year, why the f*ck does anyone need to move the pub date from April to June?

Come closer, closer. No, even closer. Not that close, I can smell you. And attend, as I reveal to you the hidden mysteries of the dark arts of publishing.

There's a lot more to it than just getting it typeset, proof-reading for errors, then boshing it off to the printers and counting the cash. For one thing the production department of a big publisher may have dozens of books going through at a time, from many different imprints, and everything has to take its place in the queue. They can't just be twiddling their thumbs waiting for that one author you like to finish their manuscript. These things can take some time.

But there are much more time-consuming processes than the obvious ones of physically producing the product. If you're going to give a book the best chance of selling well then booksellers need to know when it's going to appear some time in advance. The more warning they get, the further in advance they can plan their buying, the better chance of getting better display space and support. Editors need some time to get folks in their own company enthused about a book - the publicists, the reps who will try to sell books on to booksellers, the rights department who may be trying to sell the book to other markets. The longer you have and the firmer the date, the better chance of prising some marketing cash from the gripping fingers of the soul-less money men (I don't mean it, I really don't). The more time you have between finishing the final edit and publishing the book means more time to get proofs out to reviewers and more time for them to read the book, which means more chance of it getting reviews, of there being some buzz, or at least some awareness of the existence of a book before it comes out. All of this is going to help sales. Indeed, for a little known author it could make the difference between some exposure and none, between some sales and very few.

Then there is the question of scheduling. A publisher doesn't want to be releasing two similar books too close together, because they'll end up competing with each other, not only for the generous cash of the book-buying public, but also for the attention of the marketing within their own organisation, the reps who go out and try and sell the books to booksellers, and the booksellers themselves who need to fill their shelves. They don't want to be saying, "this book is the most important epic fantasy released anywhere this month ... apart from this one which we also have, which is just as good if not better, well, not better, but ... where are you going?" Schedules get filled up, books have to be moved around other books, and the later the delay occurs the worse the problem, which is why sometimes a small delay in delivery can mean publication has to be shifted months later, into the next free slot.

So you can see there are a compelling stack of reasons why it's in the best interests of a book to have 9-12 months between delivery of a first draft and publication. With the really big, well-established authors it's less important. Booksellers, reps and readers aren't going to say no to A Dance With Dragons because it doesn't turn up on time, for example, but if you push it down to less than six months you're limiting editing time, proof-reading time, putting added pressure on everyone involved and taking some risks with the quality of the output. Ever wondered why books that are long-delayed may seem sloppily edited? Wonder no longer...

Phew. So that's why we've decided to move the publication date of Best Served Cold back a couple of months at this early stage, to reduce the pressure on the writing somewhat, to ensure the editing time isn't squeezed, to give the book the best chance as it goes through the pipes of marketing, repping, selling and so on. The God of Publication Dates is a jealous god, and it's best to upset it as little as possible. Best to move the book now, nice and early, to avoid disappointment later. Yours and mine. We all want the best possible product, after all.

So, as I say, Best Served Cold, June 2009, stick it in your diaries. I'm entirely confident it won't have to go back any further than that.

Honest...

Labels: announcements, news, process

Monday, 25 February 2008

Big Fish, Little Fish

The UK Mass-Market Paperbacks of Before They are Hanged (seen here on the right - the smaller one) turned up from the publisher today. They're due out mid-march and will swiftly replace the Trade Paperback edition (seen here on the left - the bigger one) which will go out of print.

Seemed a good moment to discuss the strange ins and outs of different editions, which I must confess I don't entirely understand, but here goes...

It holds generally true that a novel is released first in hardback, then in trade paperback (the hardback pages in a paperback binding, so generally a larger format paperback, sometimes, especially in the US, a truly flipping enormous one), then, perhaps a year after first being released, when committed readers of the author in question will already have bought the more expensive editions, in a mass-market paperback (small format, dodgier paper and printing) which will hopefully be the edition that sticks around on the shelves for at least a few years to come.

Of course, different publishers all have their own recipes when it comes to this type of thing. Many of them, especially smaller presses, only print trade editions, and don't go mass-market (Pyr, my US publisher, is one such). Others are only mass-market imprints, who tend to take books that others have already printed in trade editions (J'ailu, my French Publisher, had previously only published mass-market, but are starting this year to do Trade editions as well). Orbit in the US have been experimenting with putting some fantasy series straight into mass-market paperback and releasing them in rapid succession (even a month apart). Heyne, my German publisher, do only one paperback edition that is somewhere between a trade and a mass-market edition.

Gollancz, my UK (and main) publisher, do all three types (hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market), but they tend to release the hardcover and trade paperbacks together. There's a relatively short print run of hardcovers, which are usually bought by collectors. They don't tend to reprint these because only the 1st/1st is really of interest. The trade paperback edition is therefore the one that generally finds its way onto bookshop shelves and into the sweaty hands of early adopters. Once that edition has been out for around a year and sales have dropped off, and hopefully just before the author's next book is published in trade, a mass-market paperback is released and the trade edition phased out. This hopefully produces a new round of interest in the old book and reaches some markets that are usually closed to trade editions - some outlets, like railway stations and airports only carry mass-market formats and some bookshops just prefer to promote them for whatever reason.

So you can see how this approach makes perfect sense with, say, a crime writer. Each book promotes the next, and after reading a few mass-markets by an author a given reader might choose to get the next book early and move up to a more expensive edition. It becomes a little more problematic in the case of a fantasy series, though (doesn't everything), especially one by an unknown author. Let's say you get into the series a couple of months after the second book comes out, having read good reviews. You buy the first in mass-market, since it's the only format available in the bookshops. You then scramble to buy the second, but find it's only available in this irritatingly much larger format. You'll have no choice but to buy it in trade, or to wait for the mass-market of the second, but then you'll be in the same position with the third book.

Annoying, especially when amazon doesn't really specify what format it is, just says paperback, and gives the dimensions (like anyone checks the dimensions when they buy a book), but it's hard to see a better way of doing things, unfortunately. So for those irritated by a lack of matching books, I can only do what I always do, and blame my editor.

While we're on the subject, see laid out before your disbelieving eyes all five UK editions of Before They are Hanged:



Top Left - UK Uncorrected Manuscript Proof. Has a glossy rather than a textured cover, without foil, and isn't properly set therefore has more pages and is considerably chunkier than the production editions. Sent well prior to general release to reviewers, industry notables, and unscrupulous cads who then stick them on e-bay.

Top Centre - UK Hardcover. Only about 1,000 printed and getting pretty scarce, if the number of people e-mailing me to complain about not being able to find one is anything to go by. See the foil upon its lavishly textured wrap-around cover complete with photograph of the author gleam like the moon upon the sea.

Top Right - UK Book Club Hardcover. A small format hardback printed by the UK SF book club and sold only to its members. Again, a glossy, unfoiled cover.

Bottom Left - UK Trade Paperback, the workhorse edition, complete with textured paper and foil.

Bottom Right - UK Mass-Market Paperback, soon to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Smaller pages and hence more of them. Also incidentally includes a teaser chapter for the next book at the end, since it will be available in trade at pretty much the same time...

Labels: process

Saturday, 5 January 2008

Progress Report

I've noticed that readers can sometimes get a little ... irritated ... when authors don't keep them informed as to what's going on, particularly with regard to publication dates etc. So in the interests of full transparency, I thought I'd begin the year with a little progress report:

The Blade Itself is coming out in France with J'ailu in February in hardcover under the title "L'eloquence de l'epee" (The Eloquence of the Blade). That'll be the third foreign language edition to appear (as well as Spanish and German). Looks like Russian and Dutch will be out at some point later on this year as well. Czech, Polish, and Finnish rights have been sold but I've no news on when those editions might be published. You'll know when I know...

Before They are Hanged will be out in UK Mass Market Paperback in February, then in Trade Paperback with Pyr across the US in March.

Last Argument of Kings will be out in UK Hardback and Trade Paperback on March 20th, then hopefully in the US a brief few months later (maybe September). And my trilogy will stand complete before the world! Woooooooh!

Best Served Cold. Hmmmm. I've done the first draft of two and a half parts out of seven, and the rest is basically planned out to a point which I'm mostly happy with. So around 70,000 words, somewhat over a third of the way through. Trying a slightly different approach of forging ahead then revising large blocks, rather than constantly reading over and tweaking as I go. It should prove more efficient, but is tough on the confidence since the product day-to-day is lower quality. Still, slightly behind my ideal schedule to make the delivery date of mid-May '08. A variety of factors are responsible - one year old kicking me in the face all night, heavier than anticipated workload of the day job, an increase in interviews and distractions and other little bits of writing as more books get out there in more countries.

Chiefly, though, it's just the difficulty of writing new characters more or less from scratch. I'm finding they take a while to mature and settle in the mind. A couple of them have worked well from the off, but others, particularly the central character, are proving more elusive. With The First Law a lot of the ideas had been hanging around in my mind for years, and I spent two or three years writing The Blade Itself and another six months or so editing, so there was plenty of time with no pressure of deadlines for the characters to take concrete shape to the point where writing them was, well, not effortless, but certainly instinctive. Then Last Argument of Kings was particularly easy to write, since the characters and situations were all well established - I pretty much knew where I was going, the towers were built and it was just a question of knocking them down as effectively as possible. This is proving a lot more difficult.

Ironically, the positive responses that the other books are producing only make work on new material harder (not that I'd rather have bad reviews, oh no). The weight of expectation does begin to tell on one, especially given that the new work is something of a departure - hopefully keeping what's good about the trilogy and delivering it in a more compact form, but with less of the familiar epic fantasy trappings. Will people like it less? Will they get all teary-eyed for the sunny valleys of long ago when I wrote stuff they liked? Will I pick up some new readers, but lose a load of old ones? Will it be too much of a departure for them, or not enough? Worse still, will I like it less?

It's strange that, as a writer, you're always at least one book ahead of your readers, so while people are still reading and discussing The Blade Itself for the first time in the US, I'm writing stuff that probably won't even be published there for a couple of years (if it ever is, of course). "Yeah," you think, "you liked that, but how about some appreciation for what I'm doing NOW?" Even your editor is unlikely to read things and have an opinion until you're some way into them. In a way the approval for those old projects, that were completed so long ago that they almost feel like someone else's work now, only tends to undermine confidence in the new one. In the words of the narrator from Conan the Barbarian (who has taught me some of my most important life lessons), "truly, success can test one's metal as surely as the strongest adversary."

So it's been going slower than I'd hoped. But doesn't everything always? And publication is set for April '09, so there should still be ample time. Although it wouldn't be ideal (since it would eat into development time for the next book), I think I could still deliver as late as August if I really had to and still comfortably hit the pub date. Which is just as well since I have a feeling this will need a good deal more editing than The First Law books did. Still, day job commitments should drop off half way through January and I hope that work rate will improve drastically at that point, and the whole thing will become way easier.

As for specifics of content, I'll probably leave off talking about that until Last Argument of Kings has been out a while, as there are some characters in common, and I do hate spoilers. Let me only say this:

"A very dangerous woman is betrayed by her employer, her brother killed and she left maimed. So she sets out to seek vengeance on him and the six men who helped, and recruits a set of mismatched and untrustworthy allies - a master poisoner and his unlikely apprentice, a psychopathic convict obsessed with numbers, a Northman trying to escape a life of violence and failing (not who you're thinking), a torturer (not who you're thinking), and an over-the-hill mercenary who'd do anything for one last drink. Soon the most deadly killer in the world is dispatched to put an end to their schemes for good, while in the background, and then the foreground, a bitter war rages for control of Styria. The results, as one would expect, are fast and furious, occasionally humorous, always unpredictable, and very, very bloody."

The bottom line, then? It's going fine, and you'll get it when it's done. The same shit that all the other authors say, basically.

Not that anyone was asking...

Labels: news, process

Sunday, 25 November 2007

ARCs

Ahhhhhh, look what's arrived:


Uncorrected Manuscript Proofs, Advance Reader Copies, Galleys, all used pretty interchangably to describe things like these, nearly finished but still slightly unfinished books sent out to reviewers, booksellers, other writers (and a few lucky competition winners) to promote a title.

It's a book. It's an un-proofread book, which means it has a few errors still in it (hence uncorrected manuscript proof). It's printed on less good paper than the final one. It isn't properly typeset, so the lines are further apart, and hence the book ends up a fair bit thicker than an actual trade paperback will do, as you can tell from this superb photograph of an ARC (on the left) and a trade paperback (on the right) of BTAH.


You might also be able to tell from this that the ARC has a glossy cover rather than a beautifully textured one, it has no embossing or foil or any of those other wondrous inventions that cause fantasy fans to flock to my books like moths to a flame. It has no quotes from reviews or other authors on the back, like the finished book probably will, but instead features the usual synopsis plus thrilling bullet points (of slightly questionable truth, but hey, who's counting) intended to promote the book to booksellers, reviewers, and industry-insider-types. The Last Argument of Kings proof says, in fact:

"The gripping conclusion to this must-read fantasy trilogy"

"No-holds-barred action that will set the fantasy world on fire"

"Addictive reading for fans of George RR Martin and Robert Jordan"

"Highly promotable author who has received great critical acclaim"

"100% sales increase between Book 1 and Book 2"

Make of those what you will ...

There is also, as it happens, a disclaimer inside every proof that goes out, that says something like, "This reader's copy is for promotional purposes and review by the recipient. Any duplication, sale, or distribution to the public is a violation of law." But it doesn't stop a flourishing market in these things on e-bay and the like, with proofs often reaching very high prices. 130 of Her Majesty's Pounds Stirling? They must be mental. Everyone turns a blind eye to this because, well, it's all publicity, ain't it? Not that authors or publishers see a penny from such sales, he moans with little grace. But hey, if you expected grace, you can't have been following this blog very closely.

Anyway, the bottom line as relates to this particular title, is that some (though not yet all) proofs of Last Argument of Kings will now be in the mail. To reviewers and bloggers (so we may see some early responses relatively soon) and, of course, to competition winners (yes, I'm talking about YOU Josh Meyer).

Remember, the dice shall be selecting a new winner in 5, count them, FIVE, days. Can you taste the excitement? CAN YOU?

Labels: process

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Proof-Reading

Not so long ago I launched a scathing attack on reviewers who blame editors for bad books. Alright, not an attack, I just said I thought it was a bit weird, when you've no idea what the editor did or didn't do. I made the point that, ultimately, an author has the right of refusal on changes and has to be responsible for the finished work. Poor proof-reading as a criticism I gave similarly short shrift. The author reads the proofs too, you know - they should be checking for errors, and again have the ultimate responsibility for the blah, blah, blah.

Then this lot arrived:


Not the tea, the page proofs. For those unfamiliar, when these turn up from the publisher it is the final chance to catch errors. The manuscript has been edited and desk-edited. Now the author, plus a paid proof-reader, sit down and examine the proofs which are, in theory, the final setting of the book, just on loose-leaf A4 rather than in a bound hardback, paperback, or whatever. There should hopefully be very few changes to make at this point. A spelling error or two. The odd double 'the', stuff like that. No re-writing of any significance, certainly. In fact, the author is supposed to pay for any changes made at this point (though my dark masters at Gollancz, being nice folks as dark masters go, have let me off so far).

It's hugely exciting when you see page proofs of your work for the first time (at least for me, I don't get out much). Even in this age of word-processors and desktop publishing, there's still something about seeing a book properly typeset. It gives the work extra authority. It seems suddenly something more than that nonsense you dreamed up alone in a dark room.

Unfortunately, the novelty does somewhat wane with time. Especially when you see page proofs of a book for the second or third time - for a mass-market or a foreign edition, say. There's also a strange effect that seems to happen after a book has been out for a while. All that stuff you thought you went over so carefully, that stuff you combed, and straightened, and flicked at until it was all perfect, suddenly some of it doesn't seem quite right anymore. You start to see clumsy constructions, words repeated too close together, and above all, the dreaded things you'd do differently now.

You squint at the page thinking, "bloody hell, can this really be the same version I proof read last time? This can't be right!" You drag an old edition down from the shelf (I do, as it happens, keep a shelf-full of my own books to hand, don't hate me) and you leaf through til you find the spot and, "bloody hell it is the right version! How did I never notice how rubbish that is?" For some reason, sequences you always thought were great at the time are particularly prone to this - perhaps, having written them and thought they were good you mentally put them to one side, then pay less attention in the edit, while re-writing, polishing and improving the weaker parts to the point where they're actually better.

Then, of course, there's that strange feeling of shiftless panic you get when it's actually time to hand the proofs back and let go of your work. Ever have it when you're posting a letter? You raise it to the slot in the postbox then suddenly you think - hold on, this is the right letter, isn't it? The envelope's got something in it, right? I put a stamp on it, didn't I? Then there's this odd sensation of horror as you finally drop the thing in the box and can't retrieve it any longer. The button is pushed. Multiply that by a thousand and that's the feeling of finishing the proofs, for me at least. No big moment of wey-hey! Now I can have the one cigarette a year I allow myself only when I finish a book like James Caan in Misery! Just a long, slow moment of - Shit. What did I get wrong?

March is going to be a big month for me. And perhaps for you too, if you're a reader of me, who knows? Before They are Hanged is coming out in the US, then in the UK in mass-market paperback, then Last Argument of Kings in the UK in hardcover and trade paperback. Great. The downside is that all three sets of proofs have turned up to read at once. Now the Last Argument of Kings I don't mind so much. Firstly, it's a brilliant, brilliant book (ha ha). Secondly, I haven't yet been able to just sit down and read it right through in a set form. Thirdly, I'm sure I'll find quite a few little corrections I want to make.

But I also have two very slightly different versions of Before They are Hanged to read. Better yet, I read it already a couple of months ago when I read the entire series back to back looking for howling plot-holes, and sudden changes of character hair-colour and the like. I read proofs of the UK trade editions before it was published last year. Furthermore, of course, I've read and re-read the entire thing while copy-editing and editing, I've read every chapter while writing, I've gone over and over, cutting down and refining, cutting down and refining, until I know it like God Save our Gracious Queen, just without the misty-eyed nostalgia.

I mean, Before They Are Hanged, it's a brilliant, brilliant book (ha ha). Of course it is. But please, just for a year or two...

Can I not read it again?

Labels: process

Thursday, 30 August 2007

Don't Shoot the Editor

Just finished going through the copy-edit of Last Argument of Kings. All I can say is that I need to learn the differences between span and spun, between no-one and no one, and between half-way and halfway, and my life would be a great deal easier.

For those of you who might not be familiar with how the editing process works, allow me to elaborate:


I write the last words of the book. I celebrate said book's completion. Hurrah for me! The manuscript is sent in the form of an electronic computer file to my editor, the resplendent Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz.


1. Edit
She reads the book and makes general, large-scale comments. This chapter is not as effective as it might be, this strand is not working as well as it might, the behaviour of this character is unconvincing, things of this nature. She makes suggestions as to how some of these problems could be remedied. This, I suppose, would also be the point at which she would say - this book is shit! Die, author, die! Fortunately, that hasn't happened quite yet. My fingers are always crossed.

I now make a pass through the book looking at her changes and making cuts of my own. I agree with some things, refuse to do others. I rethink, realise she was right, and do most of the rest. Sometimes, her comments stimulate new ways of thinking in my fragile mind and I make improvements not suggested. Other times the text seems to have set like cement and it is a gargantuan effort just to change a sentence. I am not forced to do anything. If my editor feels very strongly about something, it would behoove me to carefully consider her opinions and find some compromise, but, in this tiny corner of my life, mine is the final word. Having celebrated the completion of the book, it is returned to my editor.

She goes through in detail, marking up the manuscript. Clunky writing gets the red pen, cuts are suggested (usually at the level of sentences or paragraphs, rather than whole chapters), factual errors, mistakes about the light in a room, time of day, what could be seen or could not, are flagged up. I go through the manuscript and address these issues, accepting the changes I agree with, rejecting those I don't, and do another round of fine tuning of my own.

Editing is finished. I celebrate completion of the book. Hurrah for me!


2. Copy Edit
The manuscript goes to a copy-editor (also called a desk-editor) who goes carefully through it, looking chiefly at the fine details - spelling and grammar, imposing house-style (the right kind of apostrophes, punctuation, and capitalisation etc.) It gets sent back to the author, previously as a big heap of paper, but more recently as a Word file with changes. I go through and accept what I like, reject what I don't. Probably one more pass through the whole manuscript at this point, to check no clangers have been made at any stage, and smooth off any rough prose. My critics guffaw. Alright, any prose that I think is rough.

The copy-edit is finished. The book is therefore finished. I celebrate its completion. Hurrah for me!


3. Proof-Read
A month later or so, with bound proofs hopefully printed and on their way to reviewers, the page-proofs come back, a big-ass heap of A4, pages set as they will appear in the finished book. I read through once again, checking for errors with the setting, plus a last look through for spelling mistakes, dodgy turns of phrase etc. Hopefully no glaring plot-holes at this point because (in theory) I must now pay for each correction I ask for (though if you don't do too many they usually let you off.) Simultaneously a proof-reader somewhere is doing the same. Between the two of us, hopefully, we catch any remaining mistakes.

Having reached the end of this final read-through, the book is finished. Time to celebrate completion, hurrah for me, etc.


Job done. Time to write another book ...

Clearly this is my experience, and I can't speak for every publishing house and every author, but the sharp-eyed among you will note that at no stage am I forced to do anything. In the light of this, it's amazing how often you read, in forums, blogs and reviews, opinions along the lines of "this book could have done with a tighter edit." How do these folks know that the book was not in fact already slashed to a third of its original length, thanks to heroic efforts on the part of the editor? Or that the editor didn't plead and plead for timely and intelligent cuts only to be refused by the author?

Another one you often see is "This book was full of spelling mistakes. It needed better proof-reading." Well, maybe, but perhaps the proof-reader already fixed 90% of the legions of errors? And why didn't the author make sure there were no mistakes in it? Did they not bother to proof-read it? It's their name on the front, no?

Often the 'author apologists' will go quite a few steps further, in fact, something along the lines of "I heard the author was forced to cut thirty pages to suit some arbitrary commercial pressure, and the start of the book felt a bit rushed, so I bet they made them take out loads of brilliant stuff at the start. Yeah, it would have been amazing if only those really great bits had been left in." As if the all-powerful editor is sitting on an angular throne, cackling with glee as they consign the best pages of the manuscript to the flames of Mount Doom, while the sweating author, chained hand and foot, weeps, "no, please, don't destroy the bestbits your Dark Majesty! Think of the readers!". It reminds me of people getting excited over deleted scenes on DVDs. I mean, there's a reason why they were deleted in the first place, right? Because they were unnecessary, and, in all probability ... cack.

Maybe I'm just amazingly lucky, but the folks I work with (chiefly the aforementioned Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz, but also the wondrously tall Simon Spanton) don't want to spoil my books and cut out all the best bits. Strangely, they seem to share my goal of wanting to make the books better, and, what's more, they know how to do it. There might conceivably be trifling reasons why a book would be better commercially at a certain length, but the ultimate commercial pressure, after all, is that the books be good.

Oddly, I've never EVER seen the reverse opinion expressed in a review. "Brilliant work by the editor. This book was exactly the right length." The author always seems to be given credit for good pacing. I mean I'm not saying they shouldn't get the credit (especially if it's me) I'm just saying they should shoulder the blame for the faults as well (even if it's me).

Ultimately, it's the author who has to take responsibility for their book.

So don't shoot the editor, eh?

Labels: process

Wednesday, 8 August 2007

A Tale of Four Covers

Covers. We all know about the dangers of judging a book by 'em, but it's amazing how many people do. I imagine that most publishing folks would agree with me that they're the most important marketing tool when it comes to selling a book, especially by an author who may *ahem* not necessarily yet be a houeshold name. This is why the publisher likes to remain in firm control of this key element.

For those of you who are unaware, we authors (even unlike me, proper, big-selling ones) have no contractual say in the covers of our books. Of course, it behooves our editors to seek our opinions and take some notice of them, lest we become tetchy and difficult. Just as it behooves us (strongly behooves, in fact) to take careful note of our editors opinions about the text, lest we be dropped by our publisher.

A great deal of work goes into the covers for my books, therefore, before I ever get close to them. Some, I'm sure, would even say more work than the inside of the book, but that's another story. So the first version of the cover for Last Argument of Kings that I saw looked a little something like this:



Loved the background. Loved, it, and still do. For me it maintained the basic theme of the other two books (which I'd always liked, despite having nothing whatsoever to do with the idea) while adding more colour, more sense of action, more impact. I was a lot less sure about the lettering. Hard to take in at a glance, which is always a worry, and just the slightest bit, for want of a better word, girly. The big vase of flowers on the 'L' I found particularly ill-advised. I wanted to go less Jane Austen and more Frederick Barbarossa on the font, prompting this response:

Once I calmed down from my towering rage on seeing my first name spelled wrong, I realised that it was a definite improvement. The 'L' was now much more butch, but had lost legibility somewhat, and had slightly the appearance of an overgrown climbing frame. I also felt that there was a degree of twee about the whole thing. A touch Yorkshire tea-house menu although, admittedly, a menu blood-spattered and on fire.

Plus there was that issue of foil to consider. The previous covers had both featured some shiny stuff to hook in the jackdaw-like fantasy fan. Could we not give 'em the old razzle-dazzle this time, too?


Now we were really getting there. The whole thing was bursting with testosterone. I feel more manly just looking at that bad boy, don't you? (Ladies need not reply).

Of course, I'm a pedantic git (as Gillian, long-suffering editor, and Laura, long-suffering designer, tell anyone who will listen, mostly each other). The lettering on my name was still perhaps somewhat spindly. The 'L' was perhaps now too scintillating in comparison to the rest of the text, and the gold needed to be spread out around the other letters to give the whole thing a valuable flavour. Also, the sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that there were still some letters near the bottom of the page, just below my name, left over from whatever document Laura had torched to make the background in the first place.



This version came in today, and I'm sure will be very close to the final one. The foil has spread out and become a darker and more sinister bronzy colour, the mysterious letters are gone, and my name is now bold as Boromir. The finished version will be on textured paper, and the lettering and certain parts of the burned surround will be de-bossed to give it yet more depth. Mmmmmmmm.

Thanks Gillian. Thanks Laura. Job done. You could sell any old rubbish with that round it.

Now to start whining about the back cover ...

Labels: news, process