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Michelle West dropped by publisher (Daw Books/Penguin Random House)


Lin Meili

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13 hours ago, Werthead said:

Patreon is effectively a combination of Blog and Kickstarter. The writer writes blog entries (either private, to patrons only, or for everyone to read) and uses the subscription money to fund their ongoing writing project. Sometimes the writer might put up an exclusive short story every month or provide news and updates, or not do anything special and it's just a way for fans to support their favourite author whilst they get on with work.

~200,000 words or thereabouts.

That's not mega-long. A Game of Thrones is 300,000 words almost right on the money (A Storm of Swords is 420,000 words and considered very long; The Lord of the Rings in its entirety is about 460,000 words), so 200,000 words is about 500-550 pages in paperback.

However, with the cost of printing and recording audiobooks, longer books do represent a significantly greater investment over shorter books, and the pendulum has swung back in publishing in general in favour of shorter books. If you're not selling at least Joe Abercrombie numbers (and even he's shorter than he used to be), you can forget about books of that size. I suspect that's why Steven Erikson's latest is, by his standards, quite short, given his sales profile has dimmed in recent years (though some early reports that the new book has done so well it sold out a print run and left several venues clamouring for stock; good if true).

A shift back to shorter novels is a good thing.  The bane of fantasy novels is bloat, and I don’t really see why that has to be so.  The Earthsea trilogy were c.50,000 words each, and all the better for being tersely written.

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This is all stuff I’ve had go bear in mind while writing - I suspect readers and publishers alike are done with 800 page books in a multi-book series that may or may not end.

Just finishing the last chapter of a fantasy book that’s about 120k words and just decided the structure of the series: A quartet, with other plotlines to be explored in follow-up smaller series (like Hobb). And that’s ‘ignoring’ the standalone prequel that’s already out.

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I am all for long books.  I will admit that if I see a fantasy book on Amazon I always look at the page count.  The shorter it is the less likely it is I will buy it.  I have never understood people asserting shorter books are better books.  I think my problem is that shorter fantasy books often have pacing issues because they have been chopped way down from what they should have been.  Long and ponderous every time!    

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Ideally the length should be based on what works best for the story since that is going to vary. I don't think A Game of Thrones would be as good if it was 200 pages long, at the same time I don't think The Tombs of Atuan would have been better as a 500 page novel.

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1 hour ago, williamjm said:

Ideally the length should be based on what works best for the story since that is going to vary. I don't think A Game of Thrones would be as good if it was 200 pages long, at the same time I don't think The Tombs of Atuan would have been better as a 500 page novel.

Yes.

I generally prefer long books too so long as its not padded out. At times some novels are drawn out unnecessarily.

When I was younger I was more prejudiced against short fantasy books, which delayed me reading David Gemmell

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5 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I am all for long books.  I will admit that if I see a fantasy book on Amazon I always look at the page count.  The shorter it is the less likely it is I will buy it.  I have never understood people asserting shorter books are better books.  I think my problem is that shorter fantasy books often have pacing issues because they have been chopped way down from what they should have been.  Long and ponderous every time!    

I think it is harder writing a short book. There has to be more manipulation of language and narrative to effectively tell a story in a concise manner. Long books are better for beginning authors because they have more room to express themselves and accomplish their literary goals. 

But in the end less is more. Different stories requisite different lengths, but the shorter that story is the more effective.  

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11 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

This is all stuff I’ve had go bear in mind while writing - I suspect readers and publishers alike are done with 800 page books in a multi-book series that may or may not end.

Yup. To publish a long novel now you have to be a legacy author (Williams, Hobb, Martin) or you have to be an insane mega-seller (the same, plus Rothfuss and Sanderson) or you have to have to have proven yourself with shorter books first before moving up (Samantha Shannon).

Even the legacy thing doesn't work if your sales have dipped in the meantime, hence West/Sagara's situation, and possibly Erikson's.

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Brent Weeks' The Burning White (2019), final book in the Lightbringer series, is 992 pages in hardcover. Peter V. Brett's The Core (2017), final book in The Demon Cycle, is 856 pages in hardcover. What about The Ember Blade (2018) by Chris Wooding? I believe Erikson's Walk in Shadow will be just as long as the previous novels in The Kharkanas Trilogy. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is wildly popular with really hefty books.

In science fiction: Pierce Brown's Dark Age (2019), book five of the Red Rising series, is 800 pages in hardcover. The first volumes in the series were much shorter.

Also in space opera: Christopher Ruocchio's Kingdoms of Death (2022), book four of the Sun Eater series, will be a whopping 912 pages in hardcover. This series is actually published by DAW.

In young adult epic fantasy: Sarah J. Maas's Kingdom of Ash (2018), final book in the Throne of Glass series, is almost 1000 pages in hardcover. First book in her new series, House of Earth and Blood (2020), is more than 800 pages in hardcover.

Also in YA fantasy: Cassandra Clare's Queen of Air and Darkness (2018), final book in The Dark Artifices trilogy, is over 900 pages in hardcover.

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On 8/2/2021 at 3:59 AM, ants said:

Nooooo!!!!! !@%!%^!^

Probably my #1 author. This is devastating. I love her Esaylien books, although I do think her last series did get a bit bogged down. It was 8 books, and probably should have been 4. But her prose is absolutely beautiful. She invokes images in the mind as you read it that (for me) are reminiscent of Tolkien's grandeur. Often the fighting is more like dueling than fighting, with a weight of history pressing down on the battle. They're full of speech but that is because an enemy is partly to be savoured, not simply overcome. 

Unfortunately, the overarching events in the world have not been resolved, which really sucks. There are currently 3 series of around 16 books set in the world which have detailed the ongoing war against Alasarkar. But the final war has not yet been even started. 

I've never heard of patreon, I'll have to look into what it is. 

I assume her Cast series and the world of Elantra is 'safe', which is at least something. 

This really makes this day a sucky day. :(

I registered just to say how much I agree with this, and how much this blows. I'm making the face in my user pic right now.

Also as @Jussi points out, there are still a lot of huge fantasy novels being published, even by DAW. It's weird.

Also, does Kristin Britain really sell that well? Cause her books are giant bricks.

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It's not weird. Big books have higher production costs. The only way to offset that is with volume. Your profit margin remains smaller, but at least you sell a lot of units to make up for it.

With West, a smaller profit margin and modest sales mean that it's not necessarily worthwhile for PRH to produce and distribute her forthcoming works.

And yes, other than Rothfuss and Williams (though Williams' latest novels haven't really sold well), I reckon that Britain is probably the next biggest selling author on the Daw roster. One of the few who ended up on the NYT bestsellers' list.

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On 8/4/2021 at 9:55 AM, Jussi said:

Brent Weeks' The Burning White (2019), final book in the Lightbringer series, is 992 pages in hardcover. Peter V. Brett's The Core (2017), final book in The Demon Cycle, is 856 pages in hardcover. What about The Ember Blade (2018) by Chris Wooding? I believe Erikson's Walk in Shadow will be just as long as the previous novels in The Kharkanas Trilogy. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is wildly popular with really hefty books.

In science fiction: Pierce Brown's Dark Age (2019), book five of the Red Rising series, is 800 pages in hardcover. The first volumes in the series were much shorter.

Also in space opera: Christopher Ruocchio's Kingdoms of Death (2022), book four of the Sun Eater series, will be a whopping 912 pages in hardcover. This series is actually published by DAW.

In young adult epic fantasy: Sarah J. Maas's Kingdom of Ash (2018), final book in the Throne of Glass series, is almost 1000 pages in hardcover. First book in her new series, House of Earth and Blood (2020), is more than 800 pages in hardcover.

Also in YA fantasy: Cassandra Clare's Queen of Air and Darkness (2018), final book in The Dark Artifices trilogy, is over 900 pages in hardcover.

These are all legacy authors, or new(ish) authors publishing later volumes in series where the first books were significantly shorter (Throne of Glass was only 430 pages; The Black Prism was 640 pages). Gabaldon and Clare are also very comfortably in the giga-selling category with tens of millions of sales apiece, and Pierce Brown isn't far off.

Wooding might be the only outlier, and he was specifically asked for a "throwback fantasy" by his publisher, including a lengthy page count.

If Erikson does get Walk in Shadow out at a hefty size - and recall that Forge of Darkness was actually relatively short by SE's standards as well, second in shortness in his oeuvre only to The God is Not Willing - it will likely be because God is Not Willing's sales helps justify it. Otherwise I can see him being advised to cut or keep it short or even split it in two.

Quote

It's not weird. Big books have higher production costs. The only way to offset that is with volume. Your profit margin remains smaller, but at least you sell a lot of units to make up for it.

Yup. More than 80% of sales are made up of print and audio, and longer books dramatically increases production costs on both. To record the 600,000-word+ Jerusalem by Alan Moore, Simon Vance, one of the most popular audio book readers in the world, had to block out a whole month to do it, which cost the publishers a fortune, and the 1200+ page single-volume edition was expensive to print as well.

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One thing West didn't address in her post was whether or not her agent had tried to find a new home for this forthcoming series. Maybe at a smaller press like Angre Robot, Saga, or Tachyon?

Daw Books is not the only publisher around, after all. But given her low numbers, it might be that Daw was the only imprint willing to publish her writing under that pseudonym.

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On 8/13/2021 at 3:04 AM, Lord Patrek said:

One thing West didn't address in her post was whether or not her agent had tried to find a new home for this forthcoming series. Maybe at a smaller press like Angre Robot, Saga, or Tachyon?

Daw Books is not the only publisher around, after all. But given her low numbers, it might be that Daw was the only imprint willing to publish her writing under that pseudonym.

Angry Robot is a bit bigger than the others but yes, they would make a reasonable home.

The biggest obstacle for any publisher picking up a publisher is the previous books. If there are 16 books in the series already and four more to come, the publisher will want to pick up the 16 existing books to make the deal worthwhile. If the old publisher won't give up those rights (because they still make money, no matter how little), no new publisher will be interested. This is the situation numerous authors, like Paul Kearney with the Sea-Beggars, find themselves in.

It's possible that someone like Angry Robot could pick up the UK reprint rights from DAW (I don't believe the series has ever had a UK publisher) and then make a new deal for the last four, with the understanding that those books could then be exported to the US. That's how Janny Wurts has managed to get her Wars of Light and Shadow series to its conclusion despite the American publishers dropping her several books back.

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Well, I've signed up to support her on Patreon on the middle option. Had to think, if someone offered you the book and it was the only way to get it, how much would you pay? And that would be several hundred bucks, which is what it will add up to if she produces one book every two years (which with her, may be optimistic). 

On the publishing switching, would the fact she's still writing the Elantran books with the current publisher be a block as well? 

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On 8/17/2021 at 4:44 AM, ants said:

Well, I've signed up to support her on Patreon on the middle option. Had to think, if someone offered you the book and it was the only way to get it, how much would you pay? And that would be several hundred bucks, which is what it will add up to if she produces one book every two years (which with her, may be optimistic). 

On the publishing switching, would the fact she's still writing the Elantran books with the current publisher be a block as well? 

No, the deal with the Elantran series would be completely separate.

The fact that the Elantran books still sell makes you wonder why they don't consider a reprint of the other books with the Sagara name on them. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have read the first 3 "Cast in" books (they are quick reads) this summer and ultimately disliked them for a variety of reasons - does it still make sense for me to try the "West" books? Are they different enough, particularly in how the female characters and their relationships are handled? I kinda intended to try her for years, but the Elantran books put me off now.

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23 hours ago, Maia said:

Are they different enough, particularly in how the female characters and their relationships are handled?

They are different, yes.  I'm not sure what exactly you didn't like of course, but the Essalieyan books are different in the way you mention.

Spoiler

For example, there is nothing like the relationship between Kaylin and Nightshade at all and there is very little even approaching Kaylin and Severn...very little sexual tension type non-romances going on.  Essalieyan is light on romance period.  There are some small romantic moments, though.  The main character...who I would say is the main character, the character most like Kaylin Neya...does have a male figure around her at almost all times, and he could be seen to be like Nightshade, and there is complexity to their relationship but it isn't really romance sort of stuff.  There are a few relationships like that.

 

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17 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

They are different, yes.  I'm not sure what exactly you didn't like of course, but the Essalieyan books are different in the way you mention.

I was really put off by the main protagonist's incompetence at her official job and how she generally behaved like a spoiled brat about it, while being coddled and abetted by a host of avuncular/fatherly men, and was waiting for a wake-up moment until I finally realized that it wasn't going to happen because

 

Spoiler

Severn needed to continually prove his relevance as a love interest by "taking care" of Kaylin and propping her, so she _had_ to remain agressively ignorant, directionally challenged, have abysmal work ethic while constantly prattling about how important being a Hawk was to her, etc. and coast on her "Chosen" status and good heart. The love triangle with that quintessential alphahole Nightshade doesn't help either, nor do the hints of additional multi-angles incoming. She is also not quite a queen bee, but almost - all of her most important relationships are clearly with men, who almost universally dote on her. So, this is a combination of tropes and traits that I have come to detest.  

Oh, and I may have been irrationally irritated by how Kaylin's name gets used like a million times in 3 short books. She can't make a few steps without somebody saying "Kaylin..." for one reason or another.

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