My 22nd novel, formerly known as The Great Martian Fossil Rush, has a new official title: Red Planet Blues. When I asked for suggestions online, hundreds of possibilities were put forth. Red Planet Blues was separately suggested by Jeff Beeler on Twitter, Nazrat Durand on my Facebook wall, André Peloquin on the forum maintained by [...]
For those following Doranna Durgin’s posting — on her own blog and at the Writer Beware blog — about her dealings with Fitzhenry & Whiteside in relation to her novel Dun Lady’s Jess, my comments: Doranna contends that the book is out of print, and so the rights should be reverted to her. Fitzhenry & [...]
I updated the letter I send to beginning writers who ask me for advice today; the current version follows: Dear Beginning Writer: You’re getting this letter because you’ve contacted me about writing science fiction. Unfortunately, so many people have taken to asking me for advice that I’ve had to resort to this form letter of [...]
Another indication of the sad state of publishing: The Easton Press is canceling its long-running Signed First Editions of Science Fiction series, a collection of leather-bound volumes signed by the authors. They’d done my Illegal Alien — which had been my last title in the 1990s for Ace — and, as soon as I moved [...]
As The Guardian reports, the estate of James Bond creator Ian Fleming has chosen to withhold ebook rights from Penguin, his UK publisher, and instead market the electronic editions directly themselves. I’m a proud Penguin author myself (in the US and Canada; my UK publisher is Orion), but I’m not surprised by this development. Back [...]
I was the only author invited to give a solo talk at this year’s Canadian Book Summit, which had the theme of “Hot New Models” — the implicit assumption being that new technologies and ways of doing business, such as ebooks and print-on-demand, were going to be the salvation of traditional publishing. My talk was [...]
I was asked at the Canadian Book Summit yesterday if I could change one thing about what my publishers do, what would that be? A better answer than the one I gave has occurred to me: Give the author more free copies to distribute for promotional purposes. (Believe it or not, boilerplate contracts from most [...]
Jim C. Hines’s survey results on how writers broke into print is well worth looking at. Among Jim’s conclusions: “To those proclaiming queries and the slush pile are for suckers, and self-publishing is the way to land a major novel deal, I have bad news: only 1 author out of 246 self-published their book and [...]
An interesting exchange took place on my Facebook wall recently (starting on 8 February 2010). Facebook content scrolls away and is very hard to access after a few days, so I thought I’d reproduce some of it here. There were 109 messages posted in the exchange, but the first two were the first two below, [...]
After six days of being unavailable for purchase there, paper editions of Macmillan books — including Tor Books such as my novels FlashForward, Hominids, and Rollback — are now back on sale at Amazon.com. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup • Email
An email I sent this morning: My little line of books can only publish Canadian authors, so there’s nothing I can do for you. But, trust me, hyping your book as a “mass market dream” and hoping that it’s somehow going to drive sales that you started writing as a teenager are statements that will [...]
First The New York Times and now The Washington Post have reported that Amazon gave into Macmillan’s demands, and it’s been flashing all over the web that this is the case for four days now. But check the source. The only reference is to this unsigned anonymous post buried deep on the Amazon.com site; that’s [...]
Last week in Montreal, I gave a talk about how one structures a story. I spoke about how the stakes should get higher and higher with each subsequent plot revelation. This weekend, we encountered a perfect real-life example of that structure: First revelation: my books are no longer on sale at Amazon.com (personal jeopardy) Second [...]
Holy crap! See this coverage from The New York Times. Tor is the publisher of the current North American editions of my novels Golden Fleece, Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, Foreigner, End of an Era, Frameshift, Factoring Humanity, FlashForward, Calculating God, Hominids, Humans, Hybrids, Mindscan, and Rollback, all of which are still in print. This really, really [...]
An email I received today: I wondered if I could pick your brain. Firstly, I am about to self-publish a book I have written and wondered what format I should choose, size, paper weight, etc. for a Science Fiction book. I have read about them being about 100,000 words and 288 pages in a 8-1/2″ [...]
This showed up in my inbox this evening, in my role as editor of Robert J. Sawyer Books, the science-fiction imprint for Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside. It violates two of the cardinal rules for trying to sell a book to a commercial publisher. The first is: don’t query until you’re ready to submit; she [...]
Okay, I gotta say it. You folks who are designing your own books: there are some simple rules you should follow. 1) the first page of a chapter does not have a page header 2) blank pages have no page headers 3) don’t put extra space between paragraphs 4) the first paragraph of a chapter [...]
I got asked today by a new writer if it was worth touring for a second book, and whether I’d done that for my own second novel, Far-Seer. My reply: The first thing to remember is that Far-Seer came out 17 years ago: before the World Wide Web, or any of the social media associated [...]
A query I received in my capacity as an editor for Red Deer Press this morning began thus: I’ve got a Fiction Novel of 40,000+ words which I am trying to find a publisher for. Front cover has been designed already and it’s on it’s way for professional editing. I stopped reading after that, and [...]
Received today, via FedEx, the actual production manuscript for my novel Wake, returned from Ace Science Fiction, my New York publisher. This manuscript is the one that was marked up (in various colors of pen and pencil) by the copyeditor and the book designer and me (and Carolyn, too). I now have 18 such master [...]
British SF writer Alistair Reynolds just did a 10-book one-million-pounds deal with Gollancz, as reported in The Guardian. I think I’ve only ever met Alistair once — we were on a panel together about hard SF at the 2006 Los Angeles Worldcon — but GOOD FOR HIM! Still, I’m irritated by the reportage, because the [...]
Just bought Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto by Mark Halperin and am very much looking forward to reading it. From the publisher: Renowned novelist Mark Helprin offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language, and collectivist bias against the rights of individual [...]
Laura Shin, my wonderful editor at Penguin Canada, has moved on to greener pastures. Penguin is now looking for her replacement: a genre-fiction editor who can, among other things, specifically handle science fiction. Note: the deadline for applications is this Thursday. Commissioning EditorPenguin Group (Canada) Location: Toronto, ON Deadline for applicants: April 30, 2009 Date [...]
So, one of my editor friends just got a partial manuscript that she liked: she took time out of her busy schedule to read it, think about it, talk it over with her colleagues, and ask to see more (and her response time was rapid by the standards of our industry). And what did the [...]
I’ve been meaning to rant about this for a while, but haven’t found the time. But the topic came up in conversation with a good friend today — a brilliant lady who had done a book with a small press, and had cringed when she finally held the finished product in her hand because the [...]
Realms of Fantasy is coming back, it seems. SF Scope — as is so often the case these days, first with the news — has the scoop here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Rocky Mountain News, a major daily newspaper in Denver, Colorado, one of the few US dailies to routinely and intelligently review science-fiction novels over the years, is gone. Mark Graham, the usual SF reviewer there, had been very kind to me. For instance, on Calculating God, he wrote: “I always look forward to Robert [...]
Over in my Yahoo! Groups newsgroup, Martin Bennedik wrote: I read Wake on my phone by downloading the ebook version of Analog from Fictionwise. Not only was the novel excellent, but I found this was a good way to get the book early and in a format which allowed me to take it with me [...]
I’m lucky, and I know it; most of my colleagues aren’t. Gary Karbon discussed this last year in the blog Culture Feast: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Quill & Quire Online just reported: The Harper Tories have promised to maintain existing funding levels for the country’s magazine industry ($75.5-million annually), but guidelines announced this week for the new Canada Periodical Fund could put Canada’s small-run literary magazines in jeopardy. The new Canadian Heritage-run program merges two other federal funding bodies – the [...]
