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

This is late-phase editing - the absolute last point where changes to the text, as opposed to corrections, can be made - so probably the changes are going to have to be entered into the typeset file, reflowed and proofed, but they're changes that have already been agreed with Baen, so they won't disrupt the workflow that much. 10 weeks is just shy of the normal 3 months allowed for printing and distribution, so not that far off a normal schedule.

Randomiser wrote: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 ...

Duckk wrote:Ok, I have spoken to Tom Pope.

Just wondering, who is Tom Pope? an editor??

Best way to put it is David's chief lieutenant. He handles a lot of technical stuff for David, and occasionally some business stuff as well.

Duckk wrote:Best way to put it is David's chief lieutenant. He handles a lot of technical stuff for David, and occasionally some business stuff as well.

Thanks!

Randomiser wrote:Don't understand how the publishing industry works or how they can be so clueless about marketing. Given the lead times it must have been evident to TOR for several months that AtSoT wasn't coming out in October/November, because it hadn't been handed in yet so why on earth did they put it up on their own website and manifestly not tell Amazon there would be a change in the schedule?

I wonder if is not a deliberate business practice. By putting the book up on Amazon, even with a date they know is not going hold up, they get some sales now. That is immediate revenue, rather than revenue sometime next year when the book actually comes out.

Henry Brown wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Don't understand how the publishing industry works or how they can be so clueless about marketing. Given the lead times it must have been evident to TOR for several months that AtSoT wasn't coming out in October/November, because it hadn't been handed in yet so why on earth did they put it up on their own website and manifestly not tell Amazon there would be a change in the schedule?

I wonder if is not a deliberate business practice. By putting the book up on Amazon, even with a date they know is not going hold up, they get some sales now. That is immediate revenue, rather than revenue sometime next year when the book actually comes out.

Does Amazon charge you for the book before it is shipped? Indigo-Chapters doesn't.

No, they don't. They do, however, use pre-orders as a leading indicator for demand, and therefore the size of their order for the book.

The publisher uses those orders to set the size of the print run, so there is certainly an incentive to have the listing up even if the date is known to be wrong. And once they know it's wrong, they are not going to embarrass themselves further by changing it several times, so it won't be touched until the new date is carved in stone. IOW not until the manuscript is in hand and they know exactly how long the production process will take.

BTW, publication dates can be scheduled as much as 3 years in advance. In fact, I've seen Tor pencil stuff in 8-9 years ahead, before there's even so much as a title for the book. [Baen's pencil is only about 2 years long, and kept pretty close to Toni's chest precisely so she doesn't have to deal with whines of 'you told us...'] They used to use 2035 or 2050 as placeholder dates for the relatively rare cases when they announced a book but really didn't know exactly when it was going to be turned in.

Keith_w wrote:Does Amazon charge you for the book before it is shipped? Indigo-Chapters doesn't.

Henry Brown wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Don't understand how the publishing industry works or how they can be so clueless about marketing. Given the lead times it must have been evident to TOR for several months that AtSoT wasn't coming out in October/November, because it hadn't been handed in yet so why on earth did they put it up on their own webosite and manifestly not tell Amazon there would be a change in the schedule?

I wonder if is not a deliberate business practice. By putting the book up on Amazon, even with a date they know is not going hold up, they get some sales now. That is immediate revenue, rather than revenue sometime next year when the book actually comes out.

If the book is not finished how do the publishers know that there will be 608 pages?

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

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