The Furious Spinner

K.A.: Publishing has changed drastically in the last 10 years. The midlist seems to be dying. Some believe this is because of the Thor Power Tool decision. Others see it as big business "buying up literature." Yet publishing has always been a business. What do you think has changed? Is there any hope for the midlist? Any bright spots on the publishing horizon?

J.F.: Yes, I think the Thor Power Tool decision has certainly had a deleterious effect on the business, especially the backlist business. And there have been many, many other changes, some related to that, and others totally separate. The rise of the big bookselling chains, the emergence of "superstores," the consolidation of wholesalers into just a few giants, these are factors, and they operate in many businesses as well.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and as long as I've been in publishing, I've seen new publishers come in to being and grow into successful businesses even as many cry doom and gloom.

There's no question the business is in some ways tougher than it's ever been, but the essence of good publishing is to find solutions to the problems that face publishers in terms of bringing good books to the public, and with technology and all the tools publishers have, there are lots of opportunities for writers and entrepreneurs. It's always changing, and I think it always will continue to change, and the challenge is to see which changes are the most important and promising ones, and to make them work.

The bright spots, of course, are all the talented writers around. As long as there are good writers creating stories that engage people's interest, publishing will be o.k. We'll find a way to make it work.

K.A.: Now here come some of the tough questions. When I ask my writing friends what questions to ask an editor, you can imagine the response. First and foremost is the question about communication. Publishing is in the business of communication, yet writers often feel as though no one in publishing is actually communicating with them (this includes agents, editors, publishers, etc.). The writers are the ones providing "the product," yet often no one is communicating about what is happening with this "product." Why do so many publishing houses seem to have problems communicating with their writers? (I recently spoke with a lawyer who works in publishing in NY, and she said that most publishers and editors are afraid of writers—they think we're all freaks. I said, "We wouldn't be freaks if someone would just TALK to us.") Do you think you have different experience of publishing since you don't live in New York?

J.F.: The only good reason I know for editors not communicating with writers, and the one that plagues me and just about every other editor I know, is a lack of enough time to do everything when you'd like to do it. And it's always been this way. They say the internet, and email gives you more time . . . well, yes, in a way, but also it sucks up a lot of time. I get at least fifty emails a day, and more than half are business. I would like to answer all of them in timely fashion, but many of them require research, asking questions of others, doing work that is required in order to give a good answer, etc. So it enables me to get more work done . . . but it also takes up a lot of its own time.

I don't know any editors who say or think that writers are all freaks. I'm sure we all have stories about particular writers, particular moments, but in general the editors I know really like their writers, become friends with them, care deeply about them. I say "in general." There are no absolutes in human relations, of course. Some people get along better, some not as well, and it's not a one-way street. It's like meeting someone. You might hit it off really well, or not. . . . or somewhere in between. But I have many writers who I consider real friends, people I'd love to just spend time with and do whenever I can. I think if you don't like the people you work with, you're in the wrong business.

And there's no real difference for me not being in New York. When I'm on the phone I feel as if I am in New York. I'm on the phone a lot, and emailing a lot, and sending memos hither and yon, letters, production materials, etc. so it's not as if I'm not doing what the rest of the people in the company are doing. Of course, there's a longer walk down the hall from my office to the next office, but we do the best we can to keep in close touch, and I go to meetings at least several times a year and often more than that.

K.A.: The other question I got from writers was, "Why do publishers buy a book and then do absolutely no promotion?" I've actually gotten this question from lots of people who aren't in the business, too, which is interesting.

J.F.: There are some publishers, mainly very, very small ones, that do absolutely no promotion for their books. And that's not only criminal, it's also self-defeating for the publisher. I think this probably happens because some of the very small new houses just don't know how to do what they do. But any house that's been around for a while in trade publishing does promotion. It may not be as much promotion as the author wants, but things like catalogs, press releases, bound galleys—these are things we do for every single original book we publish, and that's real promotion. Of course, there are books for which we do much more, and there's a huge range.

It's not something one can guarantee, and it depends on a lot of factors, and I understand how and why authors are frustrated by publishers' efforts if their books aren't getting the promotion they'd like.

The fact is, there are always going to be some books that get a hugely disproportionate amount of promotion, simply because we feel they will sell disproportionately well.

It's a difficult bookselling environment these days, and the
mass-merchandising of books is great for big books, and not so great for smaller, less commercial books, which as a result may or may not get the attention they deserve. Nobody in publishing wants to give a book short shrift, but it does happen. It's never by design, however.

K.A.: And the other most-asked question was, "Why does everything take so long?" To a writer, the entire process seems excruciating, especially when one is trying to make a living.

J.F.: There are various things that make publishing take time. For starters, we start working on the promotion of our books at least ten months, and perhaps as much as fifteen months in advance of publication. We have to prepare for catalogs, and that means trying to get advance quotes and good artwork . . .from there, it's a process of meetings, copy deadlines, production stages . . . we want the books to be done right, and that really does take time.

And again, it's a question of the number of things an editor has to do. No editor is working on just one book at a time. While I'm editing one book, I have a copy deadline coming up on another, have to request a contract for a third, must deal with the copyediting questions on another, the page proof corrections on yet another, the jacket mechanical on another, the mass-market copy and then mechanical for yet another. . . .

Then there's reading submissions one has requested from agents, and then other submissions.

I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of stuff, but perhaps you get the idea.

K.A.: You are also the creator of the Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction series. How did that come into being? What other projects have you helped birth that you are especially proud of?

J.F.: When I was an editor at Dell Books from 1976 to 1981, I was very aware of Judith Merril's Year's Best series from the 50s and 60s. It was a great series, but ended well before I got to Dell.

Lester del Rey had edited a series at Dutton, and I thought it might be good to reprint that annual series in mass-market paperback. By the time I was able to buy one, Gardner Dozois was editing the Dutton series. We reprinted two, I think, and then I left Dell, because they stopped publishing SF and I was laid off.

When I started Bluejay Books I thought it would be terrific to do another series of Year's Best SF, so I asked Gardner if he was interested. Dutton had stopped publishing their series when Dell stopped buying the reprint rights, so Gardner was free.

But I thought that since Bluejay was a trade and not mass-market distributed company. We couldn't do a mass-market book, but we had to compete in the marketplace with mass-market year's Bests, the Wollheim and I think still the Terry Carr at that point (don't quote me—I'm not positive.)

So I thought, if we can't do a mass-market book, perhaps we could grab attention if we do a book bigger than a mass-market publisher can do. Take our disadvantage in distribution and turn it into a unique advantage of size.

At first our distributor, St. Martin's Press, was very discouraged. When we had to decide how many copies to print, there were only about 4000 orders for the trade paperback, and about 400 orders for the hardcover. But we'd done good advertising, and the reviews were just about to start to come in.

I felt that this was a risk we had to take, so we printed twice as many as we had orders for—something one wouldn't normally do. But if we were going to make any money on this at all, we had to do it.

It got rave reviews, and got picked up nicely by the chains, supported by jobbers, and we eventually had to go back to press. And it's just done better every year.

I always think of Ian and Betty Ballantine when I think of that series, because they were never afraid to take a risk if they thought it made sense. Having the courage to take a risk is essential to good business. As long as you don't make it the only thing you do, of course. You've got to really think through something that might be risky; and if you're right, it pays off.

I've been proud of a lot of books; the list is too long to even start right now. Except perhaps for Dr. Adder by K.W. Jeter, which was a book that I wanted to publish at Dell, but which I didn't do because Dell was phasing out their SF. So when I started Bluejay I bought it for Bluejay, and had Matt Howarth do black and white illustrations, got Barclay Shaw to do a pretty cool cover, and then to promote it printed a series of post cards, black and white, each featuring an interior illo. and a Q and A designed to intrigue readers and booksellers. We released the cards one a week for six weeks starting before publication. And we ended up selling about 14,000 trade paperbacks, which was just fine; we sold reprint rights, too. Everyone did well. It was fun because that book had been rejected by a lot of publishers, and we made it work.

K.A.: Is it true that editors no longer read the slush pile?

J.F.: No. I don't read every single thing in the slush, but I do read some; so do my interns, and assistant. SF is one of the few areas where we read slush.

K.A.: What else in publishing do you see as positive these days? Anything you are excited about? Anything I forgot to ask you?

J.F.: I'm very, very excited about Inventing Memory by Anne Harris, which was just picked as a BookSense 76 Selection by the ABA, which means it'll get some additional push from the BookSense program. It's a unique book that really will benefit from the selection. That's really cool.

And I've got a number of books I like a lot coming out in the next months, fantasy like Bonds of Vengeance by the talented Crawford Award-winner David B. Coe, the new Isavalta novel, The Firebird's Vengeance by Sarah Zettel, another very talented writer, the new Amos Walker mystery, Retro by Loren D. Estleman, the new Chris Sinclair novel, Grudge Match by Jay R. Brandon, the reprint in trade paperback of Dreamfall by Joan D. Vinge, a couple of pretty neat new Andromeda tie-ins, and that's just this spring and summer. In the fall, Frederik Pohl's new Gateway novel, The Boy Who Would Live Forever comes out, and that's very, very exciting. And we'll have a trade paperback of The Dark edited by Ellen Datlow, a very cool ghost story anthology that's gotten wonderful reviews and a spectacular cover, new Andre Norton Witch World novel, The Duke's Ballad, reprints of The Solar Queen omnibus, and a new Witch World omnibus as well, Lost Lands of Witch World, which has a terrific introduction by Mercedes Lackey to go with the second three novels in the original series, all marvelously entertaining.

Whoo. I could go on, but I suspect you don't want me to just turn this into an ad for all our books.

K.A.: Thanks, Jim! 0 comments

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