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Bakker XLIII - the prattle of unnumbered years


sologdin

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I'm pretty sure that unless he's under contract for the next series with Overlook, given how things turned out with this book, Bakker will move to another publisher.

Problem is, Overlook will still have the right for the first two series, with no mass market paperback editions of the books available. 

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5 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

I'm pretty sure that unless he's under contract for the next series with Overlook, given how things turned out with this book, Bakker will move to another publisher.

Problem is, Overlook will still have the right for the first two series, with no mass market paperback editions of the books available. 

How have sales of ebooks impacted the sales of mmpbs? I feel like ebooks would displace those the most.

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6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

How have sales of ebooks impacted the sales of mmpbs? I feel like ebooks would displace those the most.

Dunno about the US, but in the UK there was a massive explosion of ebooks until they took up about 15% of the market, eating into both hardcover and paperback sales. Then they dramatically slowed. It was close, but our biggest bookstore chains just about survived and seem to be doing okay now. Some reports suggest that paper book sales have actually gone up at the expense of ebooks recently.

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In the USA, Bakker's ebooks are pretty much all 10.99$ each. So yeah, much more expensive than the market's average for genre books.

In Canada, I just discovered that the first trilogy is out of print and there are no digital edition. Other than Neuropath, only The White-Luck Warrior is available in ebook format and that for 9.99$.

So we're not talking about price points that will entice new readers to give Bakker a shot. . .

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It all sounds like a horrible clusterfuck in terms of actually getting books into the hands of interested readers, much less the difficulty of the text itself.

Pat and Wert, any insight into what individuals such as myself (someone who "runs" - does basically nothing - a forum) or someone like bakkerfans (mrganondorf from Second Apocalypse) who has every kind of social media account or the average, enthused reader can do to help Bakker reach a wider audience?

Especially during this crucial contemporary release stage?

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Ebooks need to have something akin to steam sales. 

I also don't know how much care bakker has in shopping his contract around. He seems like the kind of person uninterested in the mundane details like what his editor does or marketing or sales.

I'm not sure a lower print run will have an ARC, especially from overlook. Maybe orbit, in which case I'd think someone like wert would have a better shot. WLW, iirc, didn't have any.

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1 hour ago, Madness said:

It all sounds like a horrible clusterfuck in terms of actually getting books into the hands of interested readers, much less the difficulty of the text itself.

Pat and Wert, any insight into what individuals such as myself (someone who "runs" - does basically nothing - a forum) or someone like bakkerfans (mrganondorf from Second Apocalypse) who has every kind of social media account or the average, enthused reader can do to help Bakker reach a wider audience?

Especially during this crucial contemporary release stage?

Difficult. The books have been around for a while now and have attracted a negative stigma/reputation from the POV of not being great books for women: the near-total absence of female fans of the books, and particularly female bloggers or critics rating the books, is a massive problem for sales no matter if you think the criticisms are justifed or not. That's difficult to overcome given that, in the marketplace, women make up notably more than 50% of readers. That's a large chunk of your potential readership gone right there. The plus points, people comparing the books to Dune and LotR, are pretty good though. The difficulty of the text is monumentally overstated: they're not David Eddings, but they're not any more difficult to read than Dune, the biggest-selling SF novel of all time, and I would argue not as hard to read as either Steven Erikson or Stephen Donaldson, both of whom have sold a lot more (Donaldson also seems to have problems with not having many female readers, but clearly he's been able to overcome that to sell). The readability/language thing is a non-issue.

A much bigger problem is Bakker's utter lack of interest or engagement with marketing. I've met Scott and he's a personable, great guy in fact-to-face interactions with quite an amusing sense of humour. This mostly fails to come across in interviews and his online statements. It also doesn't help to use Twitter if you never engage with other people on it and just make (sometimes darkly ironic) odd pronouncements every now and then. Author engagement is a massive thing and has been for a while. Erikson is also pretty disdainful of it, but he managed to launch his series just before it became a required thing, got a lot more books out to speak on their own merits and in his interviews is able to switch on "friendly PR mode" a bit more readily than Scott, although both clearly despise it.

From the actual marketing thing, yeah, getting cheap and affordable ebooks out there is 100% necessary right now at this time. Go bold and give away The Darkness That Came Before free for a week or something. Also, trying to get someone do a reread on Tor.com or something, but you're going to run into problems with the perceived lack of interest.

Something Overlook could do quite easily is ask GRRM for a cover quote. George read the PoN trilogy a decade ago, enjoyed it, did a joint appearance with Scott in Spain and at other cons and has praised the books a few times. Whack a GRRM quote on the cover and get at least a thousand extra sales or so that way.

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Quote

WLW, iirc, didn't have any.

Not that I recall. I did get a pre-release copy a few weeks before the book came out. But my Orbit contacts have been pretty quiet for a while so I'm not sure if I'll be able to swing one. I might be better off asking Scott directly.

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Heh. One way to get people to read it is to post in various places 'the book that the Rabid Puppies leader DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ'. Vox Day's infamous bad review and making of Bakker as enemy #1 might endear him to a whole lot of WorldCon readers, who are fairly good at spreading the word. 

Alternately, go the other way and get the MRAs/Breitbart/GG guys to shill for it. Shouldn't be that hard to do.

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6 hours ago, sologdin said:

ARCs distributed to rabid animals such as ourselves?

It didn't work out great with me, did it...

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not sure a lower print run will have an ARC, especially from overlook. Maybe orbit, in which case I'd think someone like wert would have a better shot. WLW, iirc, didn't have any.

I'm sure Pat will see an ARC. If Wert gets one, the more the better, especially at this stage of the saga.

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

...

Thanks, Wert. I appreciate the thoughts.

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Given Bakker's tendency to come off badly online it's perhaps a good thing he doesn't engage more. Shame he sounds personable in real life - maybe he overthinks things when posting/tweeting?

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I happen to think any of us online, who recognize each other as members of the online readership, probably are too close to the whole crux of Bakker online - we're a minority among people who actually buy his books, even if we majorly contribute to how Bakker is perceived, at least online, possibly at large.

I don't see a world where Bakker suddenly starts engaging more regarding the narrative (via interviews, TSACasts, Q&A, tweets, blog posts on writing, whatever) and somehow that's going to make worse how he's already perceived - especially, because readers who don't engage online but who do follow an author's (or bakkerfans) social media, aren't bogged down by reading all this minutia we've spouted over the past decade.

 

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A more accessible website/blog would probably help too. Abercrombie, Morgan, Tchaikovsky and Mark Lawrence all have sites I don't mind dropping by every now and then and usually find something fun or informative. Most of them are just progress updates or reviews of films/tv/books but it makes them seem approachable. I've no idea if their blogs boost their sales (besides making me aware of their books) but they rarely do anything that would put people off.

I think the sad thing about Bakker controversies is that I wasn't even aware of them until brought up in these threads and they seem to perpetuate via his online fans. A friend of mine was shocked when I told him about some of the hate for Bakker and he scratched his head completely unaware (and ultimately deciding not to take it board). That means I was responsible for spreading the controversy around him and I count myself as a fan. I just bring it up as his fans could be part of the problem?

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18 hours ago, Werthead said:

Difficult. The books have been around for a while now and have attracted a negative stigma/reputation from the POV of not being great books for women: the near-total absence of female fans of the books, and particularly female bloggers or critics rating the books, is a massive problem for sales no matter if you think the criticisms are justifed or not. That's difficult to overcome given that, in the marketplace, women make up notably more than 50% of readers. That's a large chunk of your potential readership gone right there. The plus points, people comparing the books to Dune and LotR, are pretty good though. The difficulty of the text is monumentally overstated: they're not David Eddings, but they're not any more difficult to read than Dune, the biggest-selling SF novel of all time, and I would argue not as hard to read as either Steven Erikson or Stephen Donaldson, both of whom have sold a lot more (Donaldson also seems to have problems with not having many female readers, but clearly he's been able to overcome that to sell). The readability/language thing is a non-issue.

Before TTT was released and maybe even a bit later, my recollection was that there were a bunch of female fans. Not as many as male fans, but that's probably true of most epic fantasy series's. I think some people brought up some objections, Bakker didn't handle it well, and then his lack of appeal to women became memetic.

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It's a complex and novel crux is online fandom in the modern age but yes, red snow. What you said :).

Lawrence, followed by close-runner up Abercrombie, are the best examples of an author engaging online. Lawrence wins for me because he's a scientist - and that rigour bleeds into a lot of his analysis regarding the industry and how he expresses his agency - and he takes the "bakkerfans" approach, which is be absolutely everywhere (in my travels across the web proselytizing, Lawrence always is already there, just being accessible).

Now every author is their own person and their physical social environments determine the time they can spend bent towards their craft. And Bakker writes. That dude writes like virtuosos practice violins. Every damn day. So from my vantage I can see how TPB is product of limited time (as he spends say twenty minutes, days at a time, working on those blog posts), not the choice to be online in one capacity at the cost of another medium for self-promotion. Not that he wouldn't benefit from doing a post on writing here or there.

But I don't believe that no engagement is the answer either. There are outreach strategies of best fit for every author, any person.

 

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11 hours ago, Madness said:

It didn't work out great with me, did it...

I'm sure Pat will see an ARC. If Wert gets one, the more the better, especially at this stage of the saga.

Thanks, Wert. I appreciate the thoughts.

 

11 hours ago, Madness said:

It didn't work out great with me, did it.

you haven't been permitted to talk about it, though?  a bunch of us could actively pimp it in internet discussion and review space?

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