Hi Debra,
Agreeing to disagree is good. We are both
speaking, I think, from our perceptions of the
situation... which is a little like arguing about
religion, no?
This message isn't meant to argue, just to expand
a little on my perception of the subject.
My take on the relation between the tie-in sf
audience and the mainstream sf audience is that
there almost isn't any. Tiny overlap.
There's tons of mainstream sf out there -- but it
seems to me that these days, none of it is being
given the chance to succeed the way science
fiction has always succeeded: by constant steady
sales over years, if not decades. Books are
whipped up onto the racks and whipped back off and
pulped.
New writers are whipped up onto the racks, told
that if they can't "hack out a manuscript every
nine months" they have no chance of a writing
career, and whipped off into the recycle bin after
a couple of novels.
I'm curious if anyone has, or is willing to
publicize, total sf sales? Not average sales per
book, but total cumulative sales. I would be
pretty surprised if that number were falling, but
if it were I'd certainly admit error and retire
from the lists.
I think that media tie-in novels expand the total
book-buying audience. What I'm not convinced of is
that this has any effect (positive or negative) on
the sales of mainstream science fiction. If we
could get numbers, we wouldn't have to rely on
belief.
The slush pile: I wonder if the ease of production
of 500 pages because of word processing has had a
significant effect on the slush pile? Making it
bigger and slushier? Who knows? Maybe that's just
the nature of the beast. I edited an anthology
many years ago (Aurora: Beyond Equality, an
anthology of humanist sf stories -- which is
usually described, to my bafflement, as "an
anthology of sf by women," though it was almost
exactly half and half when we published it, which
was before Tiptree's true identity was known by
anybody, including me) and we had to read 200
terrible stories to find 10 good ones. And many of
the 200 terrible stories were by writers you've
heard of -- I came away convinced that some
writers see an announcement for an open anthology
and immediately send out their battered bottom of
the trunk stories just in case they might fool
someone into buying them. Then there were the
several that had as far as I could tell been
written specifically to annoy me and my co-editor,
paeans to misogyny. (Plus an extremely unpleasant
letter from someone whose work I respect -- still,
despite -- ridiculing the whole idea of the
anthology... written in crayon.)
I know of a number of writers who do stuff that is
beautiful and _different_, and who can't get
arrested even to the tune of a 2500-word spot in
an sf magazine. Their rejections baffle me. (So do
some of mine, which run to "This is too much for
my readers," and "I understand that the point of
the story is the whole point of writing the story,
but if you'll completely change the point of the
story, I'll buy it.") Traditionally, new writers
have honed their skills writing short stories and
short story editors have been willing to risk some
of the experiments. I'm not convinced that's so
true anymore.
Question of idle curiosity -- do book editors read
the magazines? Do they ever contact writers whose
short work excites them and ask to see their first
novel, or is that too risky? (I expect that it is,
having, myself, been trashed repeatedly when I was
young and foolish enough to think that strangers
who asked me to comment on their unpublished
novels realio trulio wanted to know what I thought
-- beyond, of course, "This is the best thing
since sliced bread, here's an introduction to my
agent and a letter of instruction to the biggest
editor in the field that will result in the
publishing and bestsellerdom of this book!")
More questions of maybe not-so-idle curiosity:
One of the major refrains of this whole discussion
-- including my participation -- is "I don't
know..." Why _don't_ we know? Does DAW do market
research? Does any publisher? Do they have any way
of tracking how effective their ads are? Is
anybody doing a "Got SF?" campaign? Is the profit
margin of book publishing so low that nobody can
afford any of this? How _can't_ they afford it?
I mean, we have all heard, "I don't read sf
because I'm not interested in space bimbos" or "I
don't read sf because I hated science in high
school" or "I can't understand it" or "it has all
cardboard characters" or "cyberpunk instills in me
a profound ennui" and we KNOW that if we could get
the person to read a different sort of sf than
whatever it was that gave them their first unhappy
experience, they'd love it. The question is, how
to get from "I don't know" to "There's something
for everybody and here's how to find it." I'm not
aware that anyone is even _trying_ to do that.
Like I said, if I had a couple of megabucks, I'd
give them to Eileen Gunn and let her make the
attempt.
Yours in cheerful disagreement,
Vonda
P.S. It's true that hardcovers are awfully
expensive; but one problem in waiting for the
paperback is that if the hardcover doesn't sell
well, there may never _be_ a paperback.
On Mon, 10 Nov 1997 16:36:42 -0500, Debra Euler
<DEBRA.EULER@PENGUIN.COM> wrote:
>Vonda--
>
>I wrote that original message, which was a bit of a rant of my own.
>I'm sorry if ...
http://www.sff.net/people/Vonda
The Moon and the Sun -- One of Publishers Weekly's
"Best Books of 1997"
http://www.bookwire.com/pw/bestbooks97.article$3946
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