Ingram now distributing Robert J. Sawyer Books

January 14, 2010 -- Ingram Publisher Services Inc. (IPS), the full-service book distribution company of Ingram Content Group Inc., today announced a new distribution agreement with well known and award winning Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Under the terms of the agreement, IPS will provide Fitzhenry & Whiteside and its wholly-owned associate publishers, Fifth House Publishers, Red Deer Press, Stoddart Kids, and Robert J. Sawyer Books with comprehensive distribution in the United States.

In addition, Fitzhenry also represents selected other Canadian and European publishers, including Thistledown Press, Hades Publications, Edge and Telos Publishing. These houses will also benefit from the increased American distribution possibilities that IPS offers.

"At Ingram, we are committed to offering our clients best-in-class solutions that will deliver long-term success for both them, and the book industry," said Mark Ouimet, Vice President and General Manager, IPS. "We are pleased to add Fitzhenry & Whiteside to the IPS family of distribution clients, and to expand the reach of their excellent list of titles throughout the US marketplace."

Fitzhenry & Whiteside is best known for its highly acclaimed lists of educational and children's titles, and its strong line of Canadian specialty titles. Just recently, Greener Grass: The Famine Years by author Caroline Pignat, a historical children's fiction title from Fitzhenry & Whiteside, was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award winner 2009. The Governor General Literary Award is one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Fitzhenry & Whiteside currently has over 1300 titles in print. In addition to working with IPS, Fitzhenry & Whiteside is exploring print on demand options with Ingram's Lightning Source to bring back into print, many of the firm's out of print titles still under copyright.

About Fitzhenry & Whiteside

Based in Markham, Ontario, and in Brighton, Massachusetts, Fitzhenry & Whiteside is a second generation family company, founded in 1966 by Robert I. Fitzhenry, former Vice President and Sales Director for Harper & Row, and by Cecil Whiteside, former Vice President of Sales for Musson Books. The house specializes in geology, nature, history, biography, poetry, reference and children's and young adult titles. Our books have been honored with many awards, including the Governor General's Award, the Sheila Egoff Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, and the Silver Birch Award, among others. Visit our website at www.fitzhenry.ca for more information.

About Ingram
Ingram Content Group Inc. provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram's operating units are Ingram Book Company, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Digital, Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Tennessee Book Company LLC, Coutts Information Services, and Ingram Marketing Group Inc. For more information, visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com or www.ingramcontent.com.

Contact:
Keel Hunt
(615) 321-3110

The gift I enjoyed giving the most

I gave inscribed copies of the anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction to four very special ladies today. The book. which is edited by me, carries this dedication:

For My Nieces

Melissa Jasmine Beckett
Megan Rose Beckett
Annabelle William Clink
Abigail Maria Clink

Canada's Future

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How not to sell your book

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 queried me years ago, and had nothing to submit after I expressed interest. What possible point is there in querying a publisher if you don't intend to immediately follow up with a manuscript submission if you get the go-ahead to send on in?

The second rule I address in my response.

Hello Robert,

A few years ago I sent you an email to see if you were interested in publishing my first novel. You were interested but I did not follow up because I was still working on it. Finally it is complete, and I will soon have it posted on Amazon.com.

If you would be interested in reviewing this work for me I would be extremely grateful. If you would be interested in publishing it, I would be even more grateful.

My response:

No commercial publisher is going to be interested in picking up a self-published book unless you can show massive sales in the self-published format. So, sorry, but no; no way I can even consider it for my line now that you've published it yourself. Other publishers will feel the same way, I'm afraid.

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Events at the RJS Books table at Worldcon

Robert J. Sawyer Books (Red Deer Press / Fitzhenry & Whiteside) will have a table in the dealers' room at the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention ("Anticipation") later this week, and we'll be feturing these one-hour signings at our table:

Thursday at 4:00 p.m.: Hugo Award-winners Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson and two-time Analog AnLab winner Paddy Forde signing Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction.

Saturday at 11:00 a.m.: Hugo and World Fantasy Award finalist Nick DiChario signing Valley of Day-Glo and A Small and Remarkable Life, both of which were finalists for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year.

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RJS Books co-hosts Friday night Worldcon party

Robert J. Sawyer Books, the imprint I edit for Red Deer Press (a Fitzhenry & Whiteside Company), is co-hosting the SF Canada Party at the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention, starting at 9:00 p.m. in the Delta Hotel, Suite 2815.

(But come an hour earlier to the same place for the launch of new novels by two of my writing students, Hayden Trenholm and Matthew Johnson, both of who have books debuting at Worldcon from Bundoran Press.)

And Robert J. Sawyer, Paddy Forde, and Robert Charles Wilson will all be signing Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction Thursday at 4:00 p.m. at the Fitzhenry & Whiteside / Robert J. Sawyer Books table at the Worldcon.

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Table of Contents: Distant Early Warnings

DISTANT EARLY WARNINGS
Canada's Best Science Fiction
edited by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer Books [Red Deer Press],
trade paperback, August 2009

[Award wins cited are for the stories listed; all the short-story authors have won or been nominated for the Hugo or Nebula, or have won the long-form Aurora]

Table of Contents

• "Copyright Notice, 2525" by David Clink [poem]

Introduction by Robert J. Sawyer

• "In Spirit" by Paddy Forde [AnLab winner; Hugo finalist]
  
• "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner [Sturgeon Award winner; Hugo and Nebula finalist]
  
• "Bubbles and Boxes" by Julie E. Czerneda
  
• "Shed Skin" by Robert J. Sawyer [AnLab winner; Hugo finalist]
  
• "Halo" by Karl Schroeder
  
• "The Eyes of God" by Peter Watts
  
• "You Don't Know my Heart" by Spider Robinson
  
• "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog" by Nalo Hopkinson
  
• "The Cartesian Theatre" by Robert Charles Wilson [Sturgeon winner]

Lightning Round [short-short stories]

• "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis" by James Alan Gardner
  
• "Men Sell Not Such In Any Town" by Nalo Hopkinson
  
• "The Abdication of Pope Mary III" by Robert J. Sawyer
  
• "Repeating the Past" by Peter Watts
  
• "The Great Goodbye" by Robert Charles Wilson
  
  
• "Stars" by Carolyn Clink [poem]
  
  
• Award-Winning Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy [annotated list]
  
• Online Resources

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Distant Early Warnings

Cover art by James Beveridge
Cover design by Karen Thomas

Click picture for a larger version
Behold the cover for Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by Robert J. Sawyer, and published by the Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint of Red Deer Press. Copies arrived in our warehouse from the printer today.

We'll be launching the book at Readercon in Boston in July; McNally Robinson in Saskatoon on Tuesday, July 28, at 7:30 p.m.; and at Antcipation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.

Distant Early Warnings contains stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder, plus poetry by Carolyn Clink and David Livingstone Clink.

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Nick DiChario novel from RJS Books nominated for Campbell Memorial!

Nick DiChario is now two for two! His Valley of Day-Glo, published under Fitzhenry & Whiteside's Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, is a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award -- the principal juried award in the science-fiction field, voted on by a blue-ribbon panel of American and British academics, critics, and authors.

The Campbell Memorial is considered the third of the big-three SF awards, after the Hugo and the Nebula (and is the only major award for which only science fiction, and not fantasy, is eligible).

Nick's A Small and Remarkable Life, also published under my imprint, was previously nominated for the same award.

The winner will be announced in Kansas City at the Campbell Conference, July 9-12, 2009.

The full list of nominees is here, and you can read Nancy Kress's introduction to the book here.

Congratulations, Nick!

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Asimov's loves DiChario

In the July issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, Paul Di Filippo gives a rave review to Nick DiChario's Valley of Day-Glo, which was published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. The review says, in part:

Nick DiChario has written a new bonkers novel, Valley of Day-Glo (Robert J. Sawyer Books, trade paper, $15.95, 240 pages, ISBN 978-0-88995-415-1), which channels the proud and seminal shades of Robert Sheckley and George Alec Effinger into a vivid and unique tale of some outrageous and bizarre post-apocalypse doings involving a handful of hapless survivors. DiChario's dry wit and antic imagination propels this weird odyssey at an unflagging pace, and carries the reader effortlessly along.

You can read the whole review right here.

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SciFiDimensions podcasts Rob

The terrific online SF magazine SciFi Dimensions has a meaty podcast interview with Robert J. Sawyer right here. Among other things, we talk about my new novel Wake, the forthcoming Flash Forward TV series, and author Nick DiChario, whom I publish under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Educators' Guide for The Savage Humanists

When I commissioned the anthology The Savage Humanists, edited by Prof. Fiona Kelleghan of the University of Miami, for my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint at Red Deer Press, the idea was to produce a modern teaching anthology of science fiction: recent meaty stories by Hugo and Nebula finalists that could be used in the classroom.

Toward that end, we included a 17,000-word scholarly introduction by Fiona (which formed the basis of the cover story that took up most of the December 2008 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction), and her extensive notes along with the stories.

And what stories! The anthology contains work by Gregory Frost, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Jonathan Lethem, James Morrow, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Tim Sullivan, and Connie Willis.

And now we've gone a step further. Prof. Kelleghan has prepared a comprehensive 7,000-word educators' guide (or teachers' guide) to the anthology -- and we're giving it away as a PDF right here.


Fiona Kelleghan

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Brockport revokes NAFTA

In response to my posting about being unable to publish any further non-Canadian authors under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, Marcos P. Donnelly sent the following:

BROCKPORT, NY, REVOKES NAFTA

BROCKPORT, February 26 -- In a surprise response to complaints by the Canada Council for the Arts concerning the publication of U.S. works by Robert J. Sawyer Books, the upstate New York town of Brockport announced its unilateral revocation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"That's it, we're done, we've had it!" fumed town supervisor Nat O. Lester, who declared the revocation late Thursday. "We're shipping back all the Labatt's in town, and we're closing our portion of the Erie Canal to Canadian boaters."

Town merchants voiced initial support of the NAFTA overturn. "I'm sick of those foreigners sneaking in here with their funny-looking money," said Lorenzo Villaguarde, owner of Lorenzo's Mexican Market in downtown Brockport. "You know how hard it is to convert from Canadian dollars to American dollars to Mexican pesos to Colombian pesos? Madre de Dios, the exchange fees are killing me! Seal the border!"

Reaction from Washington was guarded.

"As the, uh, new guy here in the Oval, uh, Office, I'm not fully ... fully certain whether Brockport has, uh, the legal right to reverse, um, NAFTA," said one Washington official who declined to be identified due to his high rank in the administration. "The Canadians seemed ... pretty nice to me. Didn't they seem, uh, nice? I think they're nice."

But as Washington waffled, Brockport bustled to rid their town of all things Canadian. Bulldozing of the local Tim Horton's began at 8:00 p.m EST, and the local Wegman's announced it would now refuse any checks drawn on Scotiabank or Toronto-Dominion.

"In addition, I'm encouraging Brockport citizens to send testy emails to Canadian political leaders," supervisor Lester said, although he later admitted he couldn't identify any of those leaders by name.

In an ironic twist to the Brockport NAFTA revocation, local author Marcos P. Donnelly discovered that the Canadian engine of his Chevrolet Cavalier had been removed from his car and deported.

"Great," Donnelly muttered. "Now how the fuck do I get to work tomorrow?"

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

RJS Books: Canadian authors only from now on

Sharon Fitzhenry, the publisher of Fitzhenry & Whiteside, parent company of Red Deer Press, which publishes my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, just called.

The Canada Council for the Arts has objected -- probably quite rightly, from their point of view -- to me publishing Americans under my imprint while the Canada Council helps to subsidize the costs.

So all future books under the Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint will be by Canadian authors only.

In the past, I published the absolutely brilliant Letters from the Flesh by Marcos P. Donnelly of Brockport, New York; two wonderful novels (A Small and Remarkable Life and Valley of Day-Glo) by Nick DiChario of Rochester, New York; and the terrific anthology The Savage Humanists edited by Prof. Fiona Kelleghan of the University of Miami with (except for a story by me) all American contributors. They're great books, and I'm very proud of all of them.

Next up from Robert J. Sawyer: Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by me and with 100% Canadian content. That should make the Canada Council happy. :)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Have I taught you nothing?

The opening of an email I just received:

Dear Editor:

I am seeking the publication of my young adult novel, TITLE, complete at 168,000 words.

My reply:

You'll never get anywhere like this. My guidelines say no YA, and nothing over 100,000 words -- I didn't read anything beyond that in your letter. I wish you luck, but, believe me, all editors just chuck emails that begin "Dear Editor" (our names aren't that hard to find), especially when they show a complete disregard for the guidelines of or an unfamiliarity with the publisher being approached.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Distant Early Warnings

This evening I delivered the manuscript for the anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by me, to be published by Red Deer Press under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint this summer.

Included are stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The Savage Humanists in my hands!

And, OMG, it looks gorgeous! This is the latest book under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint for Red Deer Press; my copies were just delivered to my home. It looks fabulous.

The anthology, edited by Fiona Kelleghan, will be hitting the stories shortly. That's Fiona, below, in a photo I took at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando in March 2008. More about the book is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site