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Bakker LVII


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48 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Wait, what? 

Where and when did this happen? 

And furthermore, why? 

Back as early as 2013, Bakker had part or maybe all of TGO/TUC finished, but began continually complaining on his blog that Overlook was dragging its feet + he had editorial turnover. What RSB didn't talk about was how he wanted to include his updated glossary but the book was "too long" for a lower-mid-list author like himself, so he entered negotiations of some kind to split the third book into two so as to retain the glossary, and fabricated, at least to some extent, Overlook's overall reluctance to assign an editor and/or initiated an email campaign on the part of the fans -- some of which were harvested here -- to show Overlook there was interest in the series. In short, RSB was kinda sorta flat-out lying about the Overlook situation through proxies, not the best sort of thing to do, particularly when the fandom is pretty hardcore and have been theorizing for five-six years straight by this point.

Some of the principle fans involved in this campaign were not, it turns out, stable individuals, and there was some drama regarding them and other posters that I know of but don't feel qualified talking about. All in all it eventually came out that a lot of this was a feeble, ill-considered way of getting TAE to be four books rather than three, which was especially galling when the split shouldn't have happened in the first place, given how the series turned out in the end and the relative paucity of the new information given in the glossary.

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On 9/13/2019 at 1:14 AM, Lord Patrek said:

Those rights will revert to the author in a number of years, but they should have nothing to do with future installments in the series.

They won't revert until they decide not to reprint the series, and the series remains in print and continues to sell moderately well for them. The PoN trilogy by itself has sold something like 200,000 copies, which for a relatively small press like Overlook is pretty damn good. They may be expecting Aspect-Emperor (which has definitely not done as well) to pick up as a long tail.

The books have done quite well for Overlook over the very long term, but they're certainly not a short-term priority.

 

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*shrug* I don't really know, I just know it's been brought up here and Bakker is against it for..whatever reasons.

 

I think it's more the Bakker is self-admittedly not great at PR, marketing etc, all the things you need to be good at to make crowdfunding work. 

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29 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The books have done quite well for Overlook over the very long term, but they're certainly not a short-term priority.

It's legitimately surprising to see them not wanting to take advantage of the popularity in fantasy that GoT, Witcher 3, probably the Witcher TV series as well, to say nothing of the visible success other series have had, and, I don't know, reissue them, or maybe market them to digital media producers, given the cinematic scope of the books. 

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47 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

It's legitimately surprising to see them not wanting to take advantage of the popularity in fantasy that GoT, Witcher 3, probably the Witcher TV series as well, to say nothing of the visible success other series have had, and, I don't know, reissue them, or maybe market them to digital media producers, given the cinematic scope of the books. 

The PoN books are hard to market for a variety of reasons. Overlook get a chunk of cash from the paperbacks (which they licensed through Abrams Publishing), so I don't think they have a major incentive to change the current arrangement.

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Feelings about said series aside I'll never understand why they didn't put a GRRM blurb on the front, giving he liked the first book at least. (Don't know if he ever read farther).

Also, whoever wrote the, crap, I forget what they are called, the what this book is about summary thing on the inside flap, needs to not be allowed to write those, the one for the third I remember being laughably bad.

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25 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Indulge my curiosity - how much would he have to raise by way of crowdfunding to self-publish?

Isn’t this a function of how much it would take Bakker to agree to write as opposed to getting a job to make money that doesn’t leave him time to write? I assume self publishing costs these days are not large and we are really paying Bakker for his time. 

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2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Indulge my curiosity - how much would he have to raise by way of crowdfunding to self-publish?

I imagine about two years of a reasonable annual salary, whatever the average of that is in Canada.

As far as crowdfunding goes, the amounts that authors bring in can be quite risible and nothing like what a real wage is. After quite a high-profile campaign back in 2012, Becky Chambers raised $2,810 to write The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. That's what, about three weeks of an average American salary?

It does vary depending on pedigree and how good you are at marketing. Michael Sullivan brought in $220,000 in two Kickstarter campaigns in the same year for two of his books, but he was riding high on his previous back catalogue and, from the look of it, has sold far more books than Bakker ever has. I imagine Bakker could expect to raise about $10,000 in a Kickstarter campaign, maybe a bit more than that, but not the Sullivan level of income.

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I imagine Bakker could expect to raise about $10,000 in a Kickstarter campaign, maybe a bit more than that, but not the Sullivan level of income.

Nowhere near what Sullivan could raise. Sullivan is a New York Times bestselling author with a huge following. He didn't renew is book deal with Del Rey because he'd make more with the audio rights on his own. Very few writers could do that and come out on top.

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2 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

Nowhere near what Sullivan could raise. Sullivan is a New York Times bestselling author with a huge following. He didn't renew is book deal with Del Rey because he'd make more with the audio rights on his own. Very few writers could do that and come out on top.

Agreed. Although Bakker is a far superior author, he's also a very niche one in comparison, and doesn't do himself any favours (by his own admission) when it comes to marketing and PR.

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54 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Although Bakker is a far superior author, he's also a very niche one in comparison, and doesn't do himself any favours (by his own admission) when it comes to marketing and PR.

He's acknowledged it's not a strong skill? Might be time to find someone with a PR background then, to breathe new life into the series. And get rid of the awful, awful covers with creepy stare-y guy. 

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22 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ouch.

I honestly don't remember. I mean, we had a few of his uh fans do some...uh...advertising for the last book but that turned out..poorly. But that's honestly not the reason I'm thinking of.

Yeah whatever fan 'campaign' happened from the fans that got ARCs or(actually believe it was read the manuscript) turned out to be complete BS.  Have no idea wtf went on with most of that and it all seems to make less sense now than when it happened but kfc what a goddamn cluster fuck of nonsense.  Between books that didn't exist and/or were or weren't split or glossaried... 

Bakkers 7 books in TSA might be my favorite series and some of the theories and discussion I've read here are the best I've participated in on the internutz, but at the same time it's also one of the most filled with insanity and bs and fucknuttery.  I still come back to check what's going on with Bakker threads.  I read old threads at what is probably an unhealthy frequency.

But damn if all that fan astroturfed marketing wasn't an extra load of shit 

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On 9/18/2019 at 6:59 PM, sologdin said:

is there an easy summary in these threads somewhere of the misadventures and cross accidents to which y'all have been alluding?  and have there been any successful prosecutions of the alleged malfeasors?  i've lost track of it over the years.

No, but in the threads from about 6 months prior to the release of TUC to its release is when there was one dude who'd allegedly read the manuscript doing these 5 big reveals, and everything he said turned out to be wrong.  Actually now that I think about it this may have been pre-TGO.  EAMD.

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