Day: January 15, 2013

As today is a double book release day, I’ve got lots of links for you to get your click on at.

1. First, a contest from ThinkGeek!

You’re being sent on an Away Mission, so what better way to prepare yourself than with this Away Team Kit? Best part about it is there’s a signed copy of John Scalzi’s Redshirts included! It’s got everything you need to succeed!

…at dying. Sorry, did we fail to mention that you’re sporting a red shirt? Good luck out there, buddy!

Click here to enter the contest, which is only open until  5pm ET, Wednesday, January 16th. You can also buy the Away Team Kit directly right here. All Away Team Kits include signed copies of Redshirts!

2. New York Times Best Seller (for the excellent Gun Machine) Warren Ellis has nice things to say about “The B-Team” over on his site:

What comes out is rich and smart and funny – still very much a good-time rollercoaster entertainment, but also pleasingly human and self-aware as it rattles along its tracks, scattering spaceship wrecks, lethal diplomacy, species dieback and interstellar spookshow paranoia in its wake.

Yes. All that. Ad if you’d like a second opinion, here’s a spoiler-free review from Stainless Steel Droppings.

3. Want to read me discussing The Human Division at further length? How could you not? So then I have two links for you. The first, over at Amazon’s Kindle Daily Post, I’m talking about how the episodic nature of The Human Division came about. And then, over at the Nook Blog, I write about the challenge of making a new book in an established series, and how I avoided the pitfalls. Both are good, quick reads.

4. There’s still time to enter the Choose Cory Doctorow’s Scanned Face poll. Go there. Now.

5. Oh, and hey: My pals Paul & Storm have their new Web show live and running. Meet Learning Town! And while you’re at it, listen to notable geeks like Felicia Day, Neil Gaiman, Scott Sigler, Garkfunkel and Oates and even me share our memories of the Learning Town show from our childhood. It’s all true.

There, that should keep you busy.

One: Here’s the link to it at Audible.

Two: Note the price. Cheap! All the episodes are at this point similarly priced. You could get the audio and the text versions of each episode and still be well under the cost of your daily Starbucks hit! Hint! Hint! Hint!

Three: The audiobook version is read by William Dufris, who read Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony. He rocks it.

Four: If you go to that link above, you’ll see there is a special deal available to you on the audio of “The B-Team.” No, I’m not going to tell you what it is, you gotta link through. What, do I have to do everything for you? Suffice to say you may find the special deal intriguing. Especially if you’ve not delved into audiobooks before and are wondering what the hubbub is all about. So clickity-click, friends.

Five: Audible now lets you pre-order, so if you’re so inclined you can pre-order the rest of the episodes so they’re ready for you the instant they go live. Oh, look, here’s a link to the audio of Episode Two.

And there you have it.

Update: For those of you who want it (and you do want it! You do!): A direct link to that special deal I was hinting at. Note: This special deal is available only for two weeks from today. So get to it! Also, this special deal is independent of any other things Audible might be doing, as I understand it).

Also, look! An Audible page for all the Human Division episodes! To make your pre-ordering easy and fun!

Today is not only the release of The B-Team but also the trade paperback release of Redshirts, meaning, yes! Those of you who wish to have to book in a slightly more compact, slightly cheaper print form, this is your day! Also, I imagine at some point today the price of the eBook version will drop a bit to reflect the changeover in format, so be looking for that, too.

I’ve been delighted with how well Redshirts has done out in the world; it’s my best-selling hardcover release ever and overall (including eBook and audiobook version) it’s done gangbusters. It’s fair to say that its success surprised me; I wrote it almost entirely for the sheer fun of it (“What? No one’s actually written a novel called Redshirts? Well, let me just pluck that low-hanging fruit”) and I thought it was going to be a fun little book that would do okay and kill time until The Human Division came out. But it’s clear that it’s outperformed well beyond that.

The lesson I take from that is: You never know how people will respond. Don’t worry about it and just write as well as you can. The other lesson I take from it is that all those people who think humorous science fiction doesn’t sell, or can’t sell, are really completely totally high. It sells. It sells just fine. I’ll probably talk about this a bit more at some point in the near future.

In the meantime: Look! Redshirts in trade paperback! Available at your favorite book store! If you haven’t gotten it yet, now is a fine time to do so. Also, if you want the book in hardcover, I’d hurry.

And so we begin. “The B-Team,” the double-length debut episode of The Human Division, my latest novel and the newest book to take place in the Old Man’s War universe, is out today in DRM-free electronic book form, in as many eBook retailers across the world as we could get it into. It will be followed every Tuesday, through April 9, by another episode; there will be thirteen in all. Each of these episodes will tell its own story and adventure and can be enjoyed for itself, but if you read the entire sequence of episodes you’ll see themes and idea arcing through the entire run. It’s an episodic novel.

I’ve answered questions about the novel and its format, but to briefly recap: No, you don’t have to read all the other Old Man’s War novels to start on this one, since I put in context where necessary, but if you have you’ll get more right off the bat. Yes, each of the episodes works as its own tale, although again, the more of the episodes you read, the more you’ll see a larger structure. The length of each episode ranges (from 6,000 words to 22,000), but we’re selling each for the same price (99 cents here in the US). Yes, for those of you who prefer to read in one sitting and/or prefer print books, The Human Division will have a compiled, single release in eBook and hardcover: May 14. And yes, there is an audiobook version out. More on that in another post.

For those of you wondering what happens in “The B-Team” itself, here’s the episode description:

Colonial Union Ambassador Ode Abumwe and her team are used to life on the lower end of the diplomatic ladder. But when a high-profile diplomat goes missing, Abumwe and her team are last minute replacements on a mission critical to the Colonial Union’s future. As the team works to pull off their task, CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson discovers there’s more to the story of the missing diplomats than anyone expected…a secret that could spell war for humanity.

A couple of early blogger reviews of The B-Team are available here and here. Tor.com is doing a read-along for each episode that you can post your comments and questions to; here’s the one for “The B-Team.”

Also, look, here’s what New York Times Best Seller and dashingly-bearded human Warren Ellis said about “The B-Team” just last night:

So there you go.

I am really excited about the launch of “The B-Team” and about presenting The Human Division to you in this episodic way. Doing a novel like this was something that I had been thinking about for a while now, and one of the genuinely excellent things about this process is that Tor and Macmillan not only liked the idea but have been full partners with me in making this idea work — I’ve had really astounding support from everyone there for it. It’s good when your publisher not only lets you take a risk but steps out on the ledge with you. I’m grateful for that.

And now “The B-Team” is out to you. Get ready to go exploring again in the Old Man’s War universe. I hope you like it. And I hope you’ll tune in next week for Episode Two: “Walk the Plank.” This is going to be fun.

The B-Team: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|iBookstore (apple)|Google Play|Kobo (all US links)