KatG
January 25th, 2007, 06:33 PM
Irrelevant thought for a day: Imagine Katherine the Great's gestating fantasy novel as a phone book, on each page a new character drifts off into a 800 word soliloquoy on how things came to be in such a deplorable state. The villain will be overcome by the sheer of mass of profundity heaped on her tortured soul.
Yes, I can imagine what sort of rep for my fiction I'm building with my lecture posts, but people will ask me questions. :) In my fiction, though, one of my problems is that I tend to leave out useful explanatory info and make it too mysterious, and then have to go put it back in. Who'd have thunk it?
HE -- having a sff section in the bookstore does not keep people from wandering the store. It just means that there can be a whole lot more sff than there could be otherwise, because sff is getting additional shelf space. It's been getting category sff out of the back of the store and onto those table displays, where the money is, that's been the tough thing. And now that's become business as usual. Also, we have lots of non-category sff that's getting lots of attention and is indeed being sold not only in general fiction and table displays, but in the sff sections of the bookstore. Rather than category sff selling to a very small group of people, we now have it selling to a very large group of people, who also often read other things. But we can't make young folk read other things than sff if they don't want to. But the sff section of the bookstore is not a funnel -- it's an extra room.
Me, I'm just happy that anybody walks into a bookstore -- they were suppose to be extinct by now, you know.
But who is it who decides where to put McCarthy, for example, when he writes a book like The Road? Is it the publisher who sells it to a particular market or is it the bookstore who wants in in general literature to attract a broader audience? Can a pulisher dictate where it wants its titles to be shelved?
He's not a category sff author with a fanbase in that market. He is a contemporary fiction writer who sometimes does historical stuff. He decided to write a science fiction novel. His regular publisher in the U.S., Knopf, not a category sff publisher, put it out. And most importantly, he is a major bestselling author with massive name recognition. Bestselling authors go in the front of the store, no matter what they write. "The Road" is being marketed and publicized to the category sf audience extensively, through the sff imprints in Random House, but there's no reason for them to then ignore the author's regular fanbase and the potential general fiction audience either -- both of which are larger than the category sf audience.
It's not as rigid as you keep trying to make it, Gary. They want readers, period. The sff section of the bookstore is a way to try and draw in more readers for sff, not keep all the readers in separate categories. By and large, what area of a store you go in is due to what you write, who publishes you, your level of name recognition, and what seems to be the best strategy to present you to the readers who are most likely to buy your work, and any others they can wrangle after that. The bulk of authors are in general fiction. Category authors can get their category section and general fiction too. If they don't fly in general fiction, they at least have their reliable category fan audience. The bigger that category audience grows, the more interest publishers and booksellers have in marketing general fiction to category audiences too.
The big chains often won't buy your books, Gary, because they don't trust your publisher not to screw them. Small presses are notoriously unreliable and book chains don't have time to chase after them. Small presses can build up good impressions in the industry and bookstores may then take a chance, and if they get good service and the titles sell okay, then they may order more from that press. Letting book people get to know you may help with that; it's hard to say.
New thing: The next round in the Hobbit film saga has the head of New Line saying he won't work with Peter Jackson, who is an arrogant greedy man for suing them. Now, accusing actors and directors of being arrogant and greedy in the press sometimes works, but special effects directors like Jackson are busy turning themselves into mini-producing studios with lots of product in the pipeline. This guy at New Line not only pissed off Jackson, but he's cutting his throat with other directors who have lucrative projects.
So the Hobbit may move forward with a new director, but it seems like Jackson's reported strategy of getting the option clock wound down may be working, in which case the film may be delayed several more years.
Yes, I can imagine what sort of rep for my fiction I'm building with my lecture posts, but people will ask me questions. :) In my fiction, though, one of my problems is that I tend to leave out useful explanatory info and make it too mysterious, and then have to go put it back in. Who'd have thunk it?
HE -- having a sff section in the bookstore does not keep people from wandering the store. It just means that there can be a whole lot more sff than there could be otherwise, because sff is getting additional shelf space. It's been getting category sff out of the back of the store and onto those table displays, where the money is, that's been the tough thing. And now that's become business as usual. Also, we have lots of non-category sff that's getting lots of attention and is indeed being sold not only in general fiction and table displays, but in the sff sections of the bookstore. Rather than category sff selling to a very small group of people, we now have it selling to a very large group of people, who also often read other things. But we can't make young folk read other things than sff if they don't want to. But the sff section of the bookstore is not a funnel -- it's an extra room.
Me, I'm just happy that anybody walks into a bookstore -- they were suppose to be extinct by now, you know.
But who is it who decides where to put McCarthy, for example, when he writes a book like The Road? Is it the publisher who sells it to a particular market or is it the bookstore who wants in in general literature to attract a broader audience? Can a pulisher dictate where it wants its titles to be shelved?
He's not a category sff author with a fanbase in that market. He is a contemporary fiction writer who sometimes does historical stuff. He decided to write a science fiction novel. His regular publisher in the U.S., Knopf, not a category sff publisher, put it out. And most importantly, he is a major bestselling author with massive name recognition. Bestselling authors go in the front of the store, no matter what they write. "The Road" is being marketed and publicized to the category sf audience extensively, through the sff imprints in Random House, but there's no reason for them to then ignore the author's regular fanbase and the potential general fiction audience either -- both of which are larger than the category sf audience.
It's not as rigid as you keep trying to make it, Gary. They want readers, period. The sff section of the bookstore is a way to try and draw in more readers for sff, not keep all the readers in separate categories. By and large, what area of a store you go in is due to what you write, who publishes you, your level of name recognition, and what seems to be the best strategy to present you to the readers who are most likely to buy your work, and any others they can wrangle after that. The bulk of authors are in general fiction. Category authors can get their category section and general fiction too. If they don't fly in general fiction, they at least have their reliable category fan audience. The bigger that category audience grows, the more interest publishers and booksellers have in marketing general fiction to category audiences too.
The big chains often won't buy your books, Gary, because they don't trust your publisher not to screw them. Small presses are notoriously unreliable and book chains don't have time to chase after them. Small presses can build up good impressions in the industry and bookstores may then take a chance, and if they get good service and the titles sell okay, then they may order more from that press. Letting book people get to know you may help with that; it's hard to say.
New thing: The next round in the Hobbit film saga has the head of New Line saying he won't work with Peter Jackson, who is an arrogant greedy man for suing them. Now, accusing actors and directors of being arrogant and greedy in the press sometimes works, but special effects directors like Jackson are busy turning themselves into mini-producing studios with lots of product in the pipeline. This guy at New Line not only pissed off Jackson, but he's cutting his throat with other directors who have lucrative projects.
So the Hobbit may move forward with a new director, but it seems like Jackson's reported strategy of getting the option clock wound down may be working, in which case the film may be delayed several more years.