Publishing

Mini-Essay on the Internet and Publishing on SF Signal

I’ve got a mini-essay (three paragraphs) up today in the new “Mind Meld” feature of SF Signal. The question was about how the Internet has impacted publishing and the author’s ability to sell more books. Quick excerpt: But even more important, the Internet has allowed me to keep in touch with readers during the (too long) break between novels. Before the prevalence of websites and blogs, the only way for newer SF authors to keep … Read more

An Inside Look at the Copy Editing Process

If you’re at all interested in the copy editing process that a novel goes through before it sees print, you might find this interesting. Here’s a conversation I just had this morning with my copy editor, Deanna Hoak, about a sentence in my upcoming book MultiReal. I’ve done a very minimal amount of editing to remove the “brb”s and such, but otherwise this is exactly how the conversation occurred.

MultiReal by David Louis Edelman The chapter in question is a flashback featuring a conversation between Marcus Surina and his daughter Margaret. In the original passage, Marcus says: “There’s a look people get when the Null Current is about to pull them under, Margaret. A look of inevitability. It’s the look of the stalk of wheat, watching the thresher approach and knowing that the time’s come for a newer, stronger crop to bask in the sun.”

Now Marcus Surina’s supposed to be a little — well, odd. But Deanna’s concern was that having him ascribe emotion to a stalk of wheat might be a little too odd. So we hashed it out this morning over IM as follows:

Deanna: With the wheat thing, maybe about a mouse that can’t get away fast enough?

Deanna: I’ll look at it more closely on second read, or you can let me know if you think of something.

DLE: Let me look at that sentence

Deanna: I just know it hit me as off when I read it the first time.

DLE: Hmm

DLE: You’re right… it does seem weird for a stalk of wheat to have a “look”

Deanna: Yeah, I was afraid the reader would perceive him as loonier than you intended.

DLE: He *is* supposed to be odd, and use really weird metaphors

DLE: But… you’re right. That might be pushing it.

DLE: What if I said something like “It’s the look that the stalk of wheat must get when it watches the thresher approach…”

DLE: Does the “must get” distance it at all?

Deanna: Hm. I think “look” is really the problem.

Deanna: “Look” with “wheat”

Deanna: From my way of thinking…

Deanna: It’s early in the book. The reader isn’t going to know yet if it’s just him who talks that way, or if you just write that way. I would fear someone picking it up in the bookstore and thumbing through the first few pages might think you continually use those.

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The New Cover for “Infoquake”

As I mentioned the other day when I unveiled the final cover for “MultiReal,” the great Stephan Martiniere is also doing the cover for Solaris’ mass market paperback release of “Infoquake.” Well, wait no longer. Here’s the final version of the new cover.

The Final Cover for “MultiReal”

I mentioned that Pyr was moving in a new direction for the “MultiReal” cover art. Well, feast your eyes on the final cover of “MultiReal,” hitting bookshelves early summer 2008.

“Infoquake”: It’s Back

I’m still reeling from this news, which I just heard about literally 20 minutes ago… but it appears that Solaris Books has just inked a deal with Pyr to release a mass-market paperback edition of “Infoquake.”

“Infoquake”: The Bad Reviews

I’ve noticed a few other authors posting links to bad reviews of their novels on their websites. By bad reviews, I don’t mean poorly written or incomprehensible reviews — I mean reviews that tear your book a new asshole. I mean reviews that compare your book unfavorably to various types of animal dung. There’s one site I visited recently where the author had three columns displaying the “good,” the “bad,” and the “ugly” reviews of his work.

I always thought this behavior was kind of peculiar. We’re all aware that no single book will please everybody. I’ve eagerly pressed copies of Dune and Neuromancer into the hands of intelligent, well-read, open-minded people who later told me these were lousy books. So obviously, even if your novel emits white light and a heavenly choir chants every time you crack it open, there are going to be people who think it sucks big time. Why emphasize the negative?

Infoquake Book CoverI think I’ve discovered now why authors do that.

Imagine you’re sitting in the Coliseum in ancient Rome and two gladiators come out of the pen. One of them’s slick and unblemished with hardly a mark on him. The other guy’s got scars all over his arms and he’s missing a few teeth. Which one are you gonna bet on? I’m betting on the guy with the scars. Why? Because a scar is evidence of a tough fight that you came out of alive. It’s a mark of experience. And when we see the clean and unmarked gladiator, we just don’t believe that this guy has gone through fight after fight without making a single mistake. We figure that he’s just too young and green to have earned his scars yet.

It’s the same thing with being a novelist. If you haven’t had people dislike your novel, either a) you’ve accomplished something that nobody on this Earth has yet accomplished, or b) not enough people have read your book yet.

Lately I’ve been seeing some negative reviews of Infoquake cropping up on the web, and I’m in the mood to show them off like a gladiator shows off his scars. There was a rush of great reviews for the book when it first came out, and I’ve been wondering how much those reviews colored other people’s readings. I wonder how many people picked up Infoquake because they had heard good things about it, and were tremendously disappointed, but just didn’t feel like bucking the trend.

So I’m going to list here some of the bad reactions I’ve read over the web and some of the bad comments I’ve heard about the novel. (Of course, I encourage you to sample some of the reviews from the praise page to balance out the criticism.)

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How Did You Get Your Novel Published? (Part 2)

I’ve gotten a few requests to finish the story of how Infoquake got published, so I’m going to go ahead and finish that tale now.

When last we left our intrepid hero (i.e., me), I had spent several years working on my science fiction manuscript, carefully researched literary agents, and sent out about two dozen packages to all of the major players.

What was my original query letter like? I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Dear [Insert Agent Name Here],

Did a flashy marketing campaign persuade Lando Calrissian to buy the Millennium Falcon? Did the company that built the Star Trek transporters have a branding strategy? Did a military contractor sell arms to the Starship Troopers — and what kind of PowerPoint presentation did he use to sell them?

As a programmer and dot-com executive, I am often frustrated by the short shrift science fiction gives to the business world. Authors who go to great lengths to make their work conform to the laws of physics will completely ignore the laws of economics. This frustration was the impetus for my first novel INFOQUAKE, a literate techno-thriller in the tradition of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.

The book’s hero Natch is an entrepreneur in bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He’s a crusader in a war being fought through product demos, press releases and sales pitches. His Holy Grail? The number one spot on the Primo’s bio/logic investment guide.

Now Natch is willing to do anything to get his hands on a radical technology that harnesses the computing power of the mind. But so is the competition in the rough-and-tumble world of bio/logic programming. So is the ruthless Defense and Wellness Council, which sees Natch’s technology as a grave threat to public order. And so is a shadowy organization that wants to bring humanity to its next phase of evolution — ready or not. Eventually Natch must ask himself the eternal question: how far should you go to make a profit?

A little about me: I have trained Members of Congress on computer software, programmed websites for the U.S. Army, and run the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. My non-fiction has been published in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, and Publishers Weekly. My fiction has been published in Urban Desires and Zeniada.

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript (120,000 words) or its opening chapters, along with an outline of two proposed sequels in the INFOQUAKE trilogy. An SASE is enclosed for your convenience.

The world’s greatest cover letter? No. Good enough to get someone to crack open the manuscript? I certainly thought so. I used Andrew Zack’s example from Writer magazine as my model (Adobe Acrobat file, 89K), and I think I followed his example pretty closely. If you’ve read the final marketing copy that’s on the final book cover, you’ll see that a lot of that copy comes from this exact cover letter.

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The Infoquake Has Arrived

Today is a banner day for the Edelman household. My author copies of Infoquake have arrived. You can see a stack of them below on my dining room table, along with a picture of me holding a copy of the book. (That chair, by the way, is where I do most of my writing and reading.) The book looks fabulous. From the cover (designed by David Stevenson) to the layout to the recurring use of … Read more

How Did You Get Your Novel Published? (Part 1)

Ever since I signed my book contract with Pyr in January of 2005, I’ve been getting the same question from friends and acquaintances: “How did you get your novel published?” (The unspoken corollary to this question is, of course, “How can I get my novel published too?”) Here’s the basic story of how “Infoquake” found its way into print.