[Gary Wassner]

I would like to read something of yours, Alison. Maybe we should exchange some books?

[KatG]

Sadly, YA sci/fi, which in a sense is the market it was always geared to, is fading.

No, just temporarily quiescent because YA and children's fantasy have exploded, thanks to Rowling, Pullman, and Lemony Snickett. Fantasy has always been the dominant sub-genre in children's with sf having a much smaller market. Now fantasy is the powerhouse sub-genre of children's and it's hurt the picture book market and made things difficult for other children's writers. Plus it's creating a glut, which should continue okay with Harry Potter #6, but after that, it might collapse, causing real problems. Eventually, though, children and YA sf might have the best shot in the market, better than adult sf. All it will take is one good sf series that builds up a sizable following.

Yes, the publishers and editors complained that they cannot find enough that is ahead of the imaginations of today's readers and today's scientific possibilities.

I apologize for being cryptic and then disappearing. My exclamation of dismay was not for one moment because I believe that publishers really can't find sf of scientific imagination and that's the problem. I was sad to hear what the editors at the convention said because such nattering indicates that major sf/f publishers are going to do a purge, and that purge will probably not be only in sf.

SF surged ahead along with fantasy in the seventies and eighties. There were a number of sf "stars" like William Gibson who provided sf with a lot of market power. A lot of the sf was sociological sf -- focusing on cultural and social issues with science as the backdrop, instead of the more difficult to find an audience hard science stories, and there were concerns that hard sf would disappear because of soc sf and fantasy. What happened instead was that in the nineties, sf shrank back down to more normal sales levels. Cyberpunk lost media and fan interest (though the Matrix movies kept it going in film,) and hard sf, along with military sf -- perhaps fueled by computer games -- started making a comeback but at a smaller rate of growth. Fantasy sub-genres also saw their market shrink back down, except for epic fantasy, which was buoyed by a wave of new fans, and children's fantasy, which was revolutionized by Harry Potter and other big kids fantasy successes.

Right now, sf/f publishers are not happy with sf numbers, even though some sf authors are doing quite well. There are no break-out stars, the movies are only buying rights to classic sf stories, and sales aren't growing at a fast enough rate for them, especially compared with leading epic fantasy authors. They also have a glut of inventoried titles, especially in epic fantasy, and sales are dropping in fantasy, except for big names where sales are increasing. They are under pressure from their corporate heads and from booksellers to produce bestselling stars. In such circumstances, publishers may do the following: close down most acquisitions of new titles unless a title is believed to be a potential breakout star right out of the gate (bestseller or bust mentality); cut authors with modest followings that aren't considered to be growing fast enough, even if they have low returns and sales increases; let classic titles of the backlist go out of print; reduce promotion and support of the booklist. This happened in the mystery genre in the nineties and recovery has been slow. Look at how small the mystery section of the bookstore is now, with bigger names being moved to general fiction.

When sf editors say that they are not seeing any new stories to match technology, then, what they really mean is not that sf writers are suffering from a paucity of imagination, but that they aren't finding a story that they believe to be sexy, able to attract media and Hollywood interest and become an instant star, like William Gibson's "Neuromancer." It means that they are going to be cutting and reducing their sf lines and not doing much to support those sf titles they do put out. And this will likely carry over to fantasy, with epic fantasy acquisitions dropping, promotional support going exclusively to star names and shelf life for all titles decreasing. It may also mean that the renewed interest in contemporary urban fantasy, in such authors as Gaiman, Hamilton and Mieville, will not spur an increase in publishing titles in those sub-genres.

I had hoped that publishers had decided to put some muscle behind sf to take advantage of the wide market the fantasy rush has produced. There were some good signs -- the prominence if not high numbers of sf titles on bookshelves, the literary mainstream respectability sf has been cultivating these last years, the large numbers of paperback reprints of sf classic titles, the success of sf movies like "Minority Report," "A.I." and "I, Robot" and continued interest in sf movies and t.v., and a nice group of successful authors like Tad Williams and C.J. Cherryh who write both fantasy and sf. This would have helped to keep the momentum of sf/f growth going. But there were also disturbing signs, like S&S dissolving its sf/f imprint entirely, which would effect both sf and fantasy. If the publishers are making excuses for why they are not buying sf titles, then it means that they are probably planning to purge sf imprints. And will probably also be doing the same thing, to a lesser extent, to fantasy titles too. It means it will be even harder for new writers to break in and that we may lose a lot of good sf writers for no good reason. But, markets are unpredictable and publishers change their minds. All it would take is one good sf writer who gets a lot of buzz, media attention and a film deal and strategies would change. :) Even so, that might not be enough to help out epic fantasy. It's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.

Sorry to ramble on again. This thread is becoming my state of the market board, but that's not really what you started it for, Gary, so I'm going to ease up here and let the conversation get back to epic fantasy.

[alison]

Interesting, nevertheless, KatG - thanks for the observations. I found them very interesting. I guess the problem always is that publishers are essentially in it for the business, and writers (and hopefully readers) are in it for something else. These things aren't necessarily incompatible, in the best circumstances both interests can run fruitfully together; but there is often a shortsightedness in the "bottom line" mindset that appears to me to be peculiarly self-defeating (ie, how are those supposed stars expected to emerge from a desert? surely it would be better business to, as it were, fertilise the field?)

[Gary Wassner]

So much depends upon your own editor. As it happens, I have a great editor for my children's mysteries. She became my editor by default, as the original editor who acquired my manuscript was subsequently fired. We had already worked together for months on it, so I was wary of what was to come next. As well, the program of books that I was to be a part of was tabled for 18 months.

Right on the button, my editor contacted me to begin again on completing the project. At first I balked at the editorial requests. A new editor, a new mindset. But she was aware of my book all along, as she is the senior editor at my publishing house, so it wasn't all new to her. As it turns out,her suggestions were right on the money. I just finished the final rewrite and submitted it today. She promised me that there will be no more changes requested and that all that's left now are minor things which she will work on and send to me for approval.

My point here was that I would not have realized what was wrong with my original text at all. My resistance to changing it at first was strong, but then I just decided that she might possibly know better. My voice remained the same, the story didn't change. But now it works.

If there were any great sci/fi editors today I am sure they could also direct the talents of their authors. Editors can really add the touch that an author needs, the direction and the guidance.

I write children's mysteries by default. I originally intended to write an adventure with a slight background of a mystery. They wanted a true mystery with my characters and setting,so I rewrote it for that, but the first book I had to back into the mystery aspect. It was much harder to do that. The second and third were mysteries from the start and much easier to write.

The industry needs good editors. I believe there are plenty of good authors around. It's the combination that sometimes yields perfection.

[KatG]

Interesting, nevertheless, KatG - thanks for the observations. I found them very interesting. I guess the problem always is that publishers are essentially in it for the business, and writers (and hopefully readers) are in it for something else. These things aren't necessarily incompatible, in the best circumstances both interests can run fruitfully together; but there is often a shortsightedness in the "bottom line" mindset that appears to me to be peculiarly self-defeating (ie, how are those supposed stars expected to emerge from a desert? surely it would be better business to, as it were, fertilise the field?)

Actually, I would say that publishing would be in much better shape if it were much more businesslike and only interested in the bottom line. Yes, a lot fewer books would be published and for us newcommers, it would be much harder to break in, but the business would be a lot more profitable and stable. More monochrome, but stable.

It is because publishers are not just concerned with the bottom line that a lot of the problems come up. Because they are under a lot of pressure from outside forces -- corporate owners, booksellers and media -- they do get trapped in a bestseller mentality, which has apparently been a problem since the seventies when megablockbusters in fiction publishing started. But they do gamble on a lot of works, and try to give selected favorites time to develop, which often results in big losses which make things worse. Most of the people who work in book publishing, and certainly in fiction publishing, care immensely about books and may even feel a higher obligation than corporate profits. But that doesn't mean they always pick the best strategies.

What I keep hoping to see more of is publishers trying to bump the sales of each title on their list not to bestseller size but up the next level of sales, through strategic marketing, encouraging offers to booksellers, and so on. There are some publishers doing some of this -- Hearst/William Morrow did it with Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River" with great results, but not enough. It's still too reactive rather than strategic. But Harry Potter #6 will be not only a boon for Scholastic, but other sf/f publishers as well, and perhaps this will buoy sf up in the end. My big fear is that the growth of the fantasy market will cause publishers to try too much mainstreaming of the genres (which may have been the goal in S&S UK's dissolution of their imprint,) which would be bad news for both genres, but particularly sf, because mainstream acceptance isn't high enough and they'd lose genre fan support. But the sf/f publishers would like to get bigger audiences -- they feel the lack of respect for genre authors too.

Gary -- there are a lot of good editors out there, but one problem they have is that they have less and less time to edit, to really work with authors on development and even line-editing. The average time to publish a work used to be one year. Now they can and regularly do publish titles in five-seven months. That means a lot less time to work on manuscripts, and less experience for younger editors serving their apprenticeships. The amount of administrative and organizational duties expected of editors has also increased, giving them even less time to spend on editing. It's the main reason that freelance editing has expanded as a business. Many of my clients were published authors who wanted a more in-depth editorial process than their editors could provide. The unpublished ones were dealing with the fact that with less time to edit works, publishers need works that are nearly ready to go to print and require little editing, so authors have to polish their stories to even get in the door.

[Gary Wassner]

KatG, though I know you have much more experience with the industry than I do, I think the issue you bring up with regard to the readiness of a manuscript and the time a publisher needs to get it ready and into print, differs dramatically from publisher to publisher. My children's book publisher only does children's books. They are very focused, which is good for them and good for their authors. Distribution is excellent and guaranteed. But aside from that, my editor told me last year that she needed 18 months to get the book we were working on ready for publication, and it is now scheduled for september 2006. She told me that we will start working around now, and right on schedule, she contacted me with the editorial changes she wanted. At my publisher, they offer programs of books, shipped in groups, to all the libraries and schools around the country. They complete about 20 books for an age group, 6th grade for example, and ship them all at once.

I just finished my final edit and I made all the changes she suggested, or almost all of them. A few I did not totally agree with, and I modified those parts of the book rather than delete them. I changed one particular thread that was important to me, to a narrative and descriptive section, as opposed to one that influences the action. But now it's in her hands. She will do the final changes and then send it to me for approval. But we will be done 18 months before the scheduled release date. I am not sure why that amount of time is required - it seems like an awfully long time to me - but that's what they need.

I am thrilled with the business like way this has been handled. It actually gives me confidence in the process, and confidence in my publisher. They are supposed to be the business end of this transaction. I am the creative end, and my editor is right in the middle, both creative and business like.

[KatG]

It does indeed depend on the publisher and the gameplan the publisher has to release a title, and a lot of other circumstances. I'm just talking in general about the publishing industry as a whole. Your publisher may be trying to take advantage of the school calendar, may have to take more time because the original program was temporarily benched, or because of whatever system they have for copyediting and production. But in general, editors have a lot less time to edit and work with authors than they used to. That's why I was able to stay in business doing freelance editing. We're still straying from the topic, aren't we? Ah well. :)

[Gary Wassner]

Ah yes, the topic! We write Epic Fantasy, and we love to write it because it allows our imaginations to soar and it allows us to explore all of those grand and uplifting qualities that we read about in newspapers once in a while and watch on tv when those human interest special segments appear, but we so rarely see in the course of our own lives. We write Epic Fantasy because we can escape into another world where anything is possible, and as an author you are bound to nothing but coherence. The only rules are consistency and coherence. We write Epic Fantasy because it empowers us by doing so because we can pose questions and create conflicts and generate arguments and issues that we don't have to resolve all at once, that we don't have to argue for logically, that we don't have to prove. We write Epic Fantasy because we understand that it is speculative fiction. We write Epic Fantasy because we love to dream and we believe that in so doing, we can actually answer some of those fundamental questions that plague us eternally. We write Epic Fantasy because we are passionate people with passionite ideas. We write Epic Fantasy because we cannot help it!

[KatG]

Okay, I'd probably go along with some of that. But I don't agree that epic fantasy or any fantasy is speculative fiction. That term was floated around as a possible new alternative for science fiction, which did not take for the most part. Then fantasy fans seized on it as part of a bid to try and make science fiction just a sub-genre of fantasy (see, it's all the same and we'll call it all speculative fiction!) And that didn't work, though occasionally someone uses the term that way, say for a sf/f website and such. Then there was a purist speculative fiction faction that insisted speculative fiction was a particular sub-genre that only certain types of sf stories belonged to. I got lectured about that one once at a conference, but it was never clearly defined what the sub-genre consisted of.

You could certainly say that some sf stories are speculative in that they speculate on what form the future of this reality may take. But fantasy doesn't speculate about what will be; it makes up realities. So it seems to me to be a pointless term to apply to fantasy and an unnecessary term in general. As for epic fantasy, I suspect it may morph into some other term soon, as all these shifts in sub-genre names and campaigns for new names are going on, but perhaps we'll keep it, inaccurate as it is.

[Gary Wassner]

not based on fact or investigation; ideal; theoretical; not established by demonstration; contemplative.

I would not hesitate to say that I write speculative fiction.