Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah that wert guy, what does he know.

[Damelon]

On 05/10/2016 at 10:35 PM, Werthead said:

Further to the above, on the Reddit thread (see last entry) Josiah does say he'll hook up anyone who asks with the book in an alternative format. Although he'll also get no revenue from that, but he's happy to do that to spread the word.

There seems to be a paperback edition available at amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk and Bookdepository.

[Werthead]

31 minutes ago, Damelon said:

There seems to be a paperback edition available at amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk and Bookdepository.

Yup, as I have it, but that's an Amazon-printed book. So if you have a moral objection to dealing with Amazon, that's not going to help.

[Damelon]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yup, as I have it, but that's an Amazon-printed book. So if you have a moral objection to dealing with Amazon, that's not going to help.

Right, well a matter of picking your poison? I prefer paper reading myself.

[Blank]

On 10/6/2016 at 6:14 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah that wert guy, what does he know.

It is monstrously difficult to be taken on as a debut author by a big publisher, and with small publishers the benefits can be minimal. Publishing is ruled by the numbers guys these days (and not clever ones). Reviews are really not taken into account. Any book trailing a disappointing sales history (which is basically impossible to avoid as a self published author) has a vast hurdle to overcome if it is to be traditionally published. 

[Damelon]

4 hours ago, Blank said:

It is monstrously difficult to be taken on as a debut author by a big publisher, and with small publishers the benefits can be minimal. Publishing is ruled by the numbers guys these days (and not clever ones). Reviews are really not taken into account. Any book trailing a disappointing sales history (which is basically impossible to avoid as a self published author) has a vast hurdle to overcome if it is to be traditionally published. 

Well, that is the state of affairs. Still, what we cán do is support the writer. Like this one.

[Darth Richard II]

Wert is well aware of how publishing works, me thinks.

[Werthead]

Quote

It is monstrously difficult to be taken on as a debut author by a big publisher, and with small publishers the benefits can be minimal. Publishing is ruled by the numbers guys these days (and not clever ones). Reviews are really not taken into account. Any book trailing a disappointing sales history (which is basically impossible to avoid as a self published author) has a vast hurdle to overcome if it is to be traditionally published. 

It depends on the quality of the book, and this one is very strong. Gollancz would have taken it on almost 100%, and I suspect Orbit would have as well. In the US it's more questionable because the market is so big, but it would be right up Tor's street on the more literary side of their stuff.

[Blank]

On 10/15/2016 at 3:58 PM, Werthead said:

It depends on the quality of the book, and this one is very strong. Gollancz would have taken it on almost 100%, and I suspect Orbit would have as well. In the US it's more questionable because the market is so big, but it would be right up Tor's street on the more literary side of their stuff.

" In an average year, I’ll submit between 150-200 works to publishers, publications, and agents. I will never stop trying." Josiah Bancroft.

To me this doesn't sound like a man who didn't bother to try to get Senlin Ascends published traditionally and would have gone smoothly onto Gollancz or Orbit's books had he tried.

 

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Blank said:

" In an average year, I’ll submit between 150-200 works to publishers, publications, and agents. I will never stop trying." Josiah Bancroft.

To me this doesn't sound like a man who didn't bother to try to get Senlin Ascends published traditionally and would have gone smoothly onto Gollancz or Orbit's books had he tried.

 

Short stories and poetry (it's unlikely he writes 150 novels a year, unless he is Chuck Tingle...wait a minute)?

He lives in America, so it's unlikely he's tried submitting to the UK houses. Tor he might have done, but Tor have such a titanic inbox it's less likely a blind submission will have succeeded there. The real question is if he's tried acquiring an agent.

[Darth Richard II]

Hell. who the fuck writes 150-200 short stories a year?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Well, let's say his average short story is 5000 words. 200 short stories means a million words a year. Which is insane, especially because we're not talking raw output but rather a product suitable for submission. 

500 words a story might work, but on average? Does he specialise in mass-producing flash-fiction?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Oh, and you don't submit individual short stories, flash fiction, or bits of poetry to publishers or agents. You submit them to publications (magazines), unless you're trying to query an entire collection. 

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah thats an interesting quote.

[benpeek]

For what it's worth, it probably doesn't mean he writes 150/200 shorts a year. It probably just means he has a backlog that he cycles through magazines and publishers. 

I did the same thing when I was starting out. You'd write a few short stories, try the top end markets, wait for a response, write another story, get bounced, resubmit to your next market, but now you have two, and so on and so forth. Eventually you box the old stuff, or you sell it, and you catch up, but it's quite easy to get a backlog if you're prolific.

If he doesn't have an agent for manuscripts, the wait on publishing houses can be pretty long, as well. So why the number sounds like a lot, it doesn't necessarily mean he produced it all that year.

[Blank]

On 10/15/2016 at 3:58 PM, Werthead said:

 

[Blank]

I will have to retract on the subject of whether Bancroft chose to self-publish without trying traditional first as, despite the upthread quote about applying to many agents, he said on r/books a couple of days ago that he didn't try traditional publishers.

I still maintain that even with a book of this remarkable quality getting published is far from a sure thing. 

[Werthead]

Arm of the Sphinx by Josiah Bancroft

Senlin's quest to recover his wife from the Tower of Babel has led him from a quiet life as a schoolteacher to an unlikely new career as an air buccaneer, scouring the skies around the Tower for a way of finding his way back inside. A series of unlikely mishaps leads him and his crew to the domain of the mysterious and enigmatic Sphinx, the master-inventor who oversees everything in the Tower for their own inscrutable - and unscrupulous - purpose. There they must face their greatest and most formidable challenge yet: recovering a book from a library.

Arm of the Sphinx is the second volume of The Books of Babel and the sequel to Senlin Ascends, already the best book I've read this year. Like its forebear, Arm of the Sphinx is a clever, witty, beautifully-written, offbeat and joyously engaging slice of speculative fiction that grabs hold from the first page and doesn't let go until the end.

Arm of the Sphinx is a different novel, however, with the author changing things up. Senlin Ascends was primarily told from Senlin's POV and he was the primary character. In Arm of the Sphinx the viewpoint now expands and we get POV sections from all of the other characters. This fleshes them out in much greater detail, giving each character their own internal and external struggle to deal with, and allows the reader to re-assess Senlin. It was easy to feel sorry for Senlin and motivated to root for him when we saw his viewpoint on everything. When we get to see what others think of him, something of a re-appraisal is in order.

Bancroft also wrong-foots the reader. If you thought this was going to be another whistlestop tour of the ringdoms of Babel with lots of stand-alone-ish adventures in each new locale before we get a fresh clue to Marya's whereabouts and set off again...then you're kind of correct. But things aren't as predictable as that. The new ringdom of the Silk Gardens is bizarre and strange, forming a slightly surreal mini-adventure that doesn't immediately connect to the rest of the book around it. But it's clearly laying groundwork for later events, and I suspct this will turn out to be a very key episode in the series. The rest of the book is set in the Sphinx's domain and sees our heroes split up into smaller groups. We learn a lot about them even as the Sphinx does, but we also learn more about the Sphinx and the ultimate purpose of the Tower, which starts moving things in a more SF direction. However, we also learn some more about the world, and can start forming more of an idea if this is supposed to be the Biblical Tower or not.

There's also a harrowing solo adventure for Senlin and the introduction of the best librarian in fantasy fiction since that one that goes "Ook". Arm of the Sphinx packs an awful lof of story, character and incident into its pleasingly restrained page count (370 pages in paperback).

Arm of the Sphinx (*****) is available now in the UK and USA. The third book in the series, The Hod King, is due out next year. The author's website is here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

[oberonus]

Just bought both books because of your reviews. can't wait to dive in

[Blank]

I withdraw my withdrawal!

From Josiah's AMA on reddit:

I actually did a lot of marketing in the past three years. I sent my book to more than a hundred indy reviewers, about twenty of whom reviewed the book in some form. I've been rejected by BookBub twice. I did four or five giveaways on Goodreads. I purchased ads on reddit, Goodreads, and Google. I was Writer of the Day here on r/fantasy last year. I (to my chagrin) paid several hundred dollars for a couple of reviews from disreputable sources. I later submitted the book to more than a hundred and fifty agents, and about a hundred publishers. I started a website, a Facebook page, and began attending conventions where I sometimes wore funny clothes as I mewed at the teeming throngs, "Please buy my book."

 

In your wertface!