18 Comments on “A Bracing Moment of Market Reality: The Class of January 2005”

1. John, thank you for bringing my own barely-buried paranoia roaring to the forefront. Here’s to four-digit Amazon sales ranks all around, huh?

   I’m just hoping to sell through. That seems like a modest and reasonable goal. Anything above that will be a big, fat, squeaky bonus.

2. Heh. Yes, I saw you in there. I’m sure you will do fabulously. Heck, your Amazon Sales Rank is 800,000 above mine at the moment.

3. *g* I think the Sales Rank is a tool invented to keep writers from accomplishing anything. Instead, we can just sit there and hit the refresh button. *click* *click* *click*

4. If only that damn Robert Heinlein would stop writing new books! He’s barely beaten out by that L. Ron Hubbard guy in terms of new books.

5. Holy crap, a new Berserker book!

6. I think Piers Anthony has a new one EVERY month, doesn’t he? :-)

7. Personally, I wouldn’t worry. I mean, who read that Bova guy anyway? :-)

8. The existence of a list like that undoubtedly makes nervous authors cry. That I look at that list and go, “Huh, nothing interesting coming out that month” might make a faint-hearted publisher tear up.

   Unrelatedly: “Todd McCaffrey”? What, the franchise passes down to Anne’s heirs? Yeesh.

9. What’s really interesting about that list is all the names of authors, attached to these books in one way or another, who are

   1. dead
   2. relatively inactive at this late date, or
   3. you’re kidding! He’s/she’s still writing?

   Maybe you can get Old Man’s War retitled The Ghosts of Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein Present John M Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Foreword by Robert Silverberg.

10. joking comment from my wife (who used to work at Dream Haven, sf bookstore in Minneapolis…)

    So I’d like to get a a copy, let me know when it gets remaindered…

    (Just kidding!)

    -pc

11. Any idea when its coming out in paperback? I dont buy hardcover as a rule (shelf space being the primary issue…)

12. PeterP asks:

    “Any idea when its coming out in paperback?”

    Probably about a year after its release in hardback, more or less.

13. Good GOD! You should see the look of dumb horror on my face.

14. Hey, on that list it looks like there are two I’m likely to request from the library (the hc budget isn’t what it used to be, but the library’s good about buying them for me, heh) and a couple mmpb/tpb likely buys. And, yes, yours is one of the hc requests, and Hammered will get a look and a random-page test at the minimum.

    The catalog system doesn’t have Old Man’s War in the database yet, so I can’t request it. (In the past, Cambridge has bought SF books several times when I’ve requested them even though other libraries had them on order; the SF collection is quite solid for a public library. My tax dollars at work, yay!)

15. John, if it helps, note that your list of titles includes reprints.

16. Maybe I’m displaying my publishing ignorance here, but it seems to me that paperback and hardcover could practically be considered two different genres. I mean, most bookstores I’ve been to don’t mix the two…so in actuality OMW will be competing for shelf space with only the hardcovers (and, in some cases, trade paperbacks, depending on the store). So maybe it’s not QUITE as daunting as it looks.

    -j.

17. Not having a dog in this hunt you appear to be in good company on that list. (What, you maybe wanted to go up against Fatty Arbuckle’s “50 Years of Vaudeville”?) But I do second the motion for you to write ATTS as a screenplay – when you get a bit of slack time. Give it to a trusted agent (is that an oxymoron?)to peddle and let them have at it.

18. Wil Mosher writes:

    “But I do second the motion for you to write ATTS as a screenplay – when you get a bit of slack time.”

    It’s not a bad idea, except for the fact that I really have so little desire to write a screenplay it’s not even funny. The format doesn’t really call to me. The money’s nice (if you sell a screenplay, that is), but, eh.