AtSoT AFTER HonorCon??? (28-30 October!)

Louis R wrote:608 pages is 19 32-page signatures, so it's a good approximation of how the book will be manufactured. It would also be a parameter given to the typesetter: no more than 608 pages, shoe-horn as needed.

Dauntless wrote:RFC probably gave them guesstimate of how many words he was thinking it would be and they've extrapolated number of pages from there.

either that or they are using the last several books as a guideline

Just took some time to lookup this topic about 'page signatures'. I already knew, from Shakespeare history, about quartos as a printing method of 4 print pages to a side of a broadsheet of paper rendering 8 printed pages. Now you have me idly wondering what to call a 4 by 4 broadsheet that would render 32 printed pages at a time, a quarto-quarto?

Just goes to show how desperate I am, being in the throes of snippet deprivation!

I think Wikipedia is trustworthy on this one [IOW, you got me wondering, so i looked it up ]:

sextodecimo or 16mo

Charybdis wrote:Just took some time to lookup this topic about 'page signatures'. I already knew, from Shakespeare history, about quartos as a printing method of 4 print pages to a side of a broadsheet of paper rendering 8 printed pages. Now you have me idly wondering what to call a 4 by 4 broadsheet that would render 32 printed pages at a time, a quarto-quarto?

Just goes to show how desperate I am, being in the throes of snippet deprivation!

Randomiser wrote:

Duckk wrote:David is basically in crunch mode, and has been for the past 9 months or so. It's so bad it's not likely I will see him at all this trip. Sharon says maybe a few more weeks to finish Safehold, then he needs to go back and make some changes to Shadow of Freedom. After that, I'm guessing he'd want some time to relax.

Are we really talking about Shadow of Freedom (published 2013) here or is it a misprint for Shadow of Victory? If it's SoF, why is he changing it now? If it's SoV 'A few more weeks to finish Safehold then some changes to SoV' means DW won't be finished with SoV till mid-August. Which gives about 10 weeks from turning in the final version to the publication date of 1 Nov. I know Baen are good, but ...

I know most folks are not all that precise when speaking/writing, but it all really boils down to (1) what was meant by "a few"; and how extensive the changes are to SoV. If "a few" is 2 weeks or so, and the changes to SoV aren't significant, both could be ready by the end of the month.

I feel somewhat sorry for David being in "crunch mode"; but to a certain extent it's his own fault. Spreading himself thin with so many different projects pretty much makes certain that "crunches" are going to occur from time to time. It might not be as bad for authors whose books are at most a couple of hundred pages; but when you're talking works at 500+ pages each, the time requirements per project book are huge. That's why you tend to see authors with many concurrent series in genre like mysteries and such - they're more like extended magazines than novels.

I'm not saying one can't be so prolific with long novels, but it's definitely going to take a toll over the long run if it's continuous. Unfortunately, each series has it's own following; each demanding the next book within a "reasonable" time frame. The problem is that "reasonable" to a reader probably isn't the same as "reasonable" to a (self induced) overworked author.

One saying from the "Dirty Harry" cop movies seems to address this very problem - "A man's got to know his own limitations".

I suspect that things went out of kilter schedule wise for David a year ago this past winter when Sharon had health problems and dealing with that understandably diverted David from his work. This past winter went better healthwise for the Webers so far as I know, but it seems like sinse then, David has been off balance and behind. Then, too, factor in the reality that he's not getting any younger and you come up with the present situation.

For his own sake and his family's, I hope he cuts back on his commitments even if it were to turn out to mean that he doesn't write books I've been looking forward to reading.

Don

-