I've added fairies to the list of things in fantasy-type fiction that I can no longer stomach. When I could spill a coffee in the YA section and easily hit at least eight fairy books (three of which are about how the main female character is a lost fairy princess/needs to become the fairy queen), then I'd think it's pretty safe to say that authors need to get the fuck off that bandwagon.

This makes me sad, because Gregory Maguire wrote a YA tooth fairy story and I'm curious, but am not sure I could bring myself to get through it.

So instead I've picked up Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic. Her characterization doesn't seem to be quite as smooth as in No Humans Involved, but thus far I'm easily able to forgive her for it. Here's to hoping for the best.



Okay. So Borders put out an employee newsletter where they went on about the success of their proprietary publishing venture, then told employees they'd love to publish someone from within the company & to send in a manuscript by January. To the best of my understanding, I am not seeing how this is a good idea.

I won't spend much time on the problems of their solicitation column's title ("So you want to be an author?" You write, you're an author. You may be a bad author, but you're still an author.) and instead focus on how staff submitting their books to Borders is a Bad Idea. My reasons for this hinge upon the same things Borders is putting forward as examples of their success: the books Slip and Fall and The Hammer.

Slip and Fall, a mob-flavored crime drama that I found both unappealing and overdone, was written by the guy who helped write the (now-canceled) show Prison Break. It hit the streets in early June--and by the time I checked on Sept. 20th, was listed in our title look-up as already out of print. As J. A. Konrath explains here, This Is Really Really Bad. And with all the heavy-duty pushing Borders has done for this author, who has a track record of crime drama and a fan base from Prison Break, my store's sold about two thirds of the books we got in with no second shipment or need to re-order. Company-instated publicity pushes here include but aren't limited to officially requesting Slip & Fall feature as a staff pick for a month, having a majorly misprinted set of ARCs handed off to Borders staff (the last chapter was bound before the first), multiple mentions on the Borders Shortlist (weekly email), multiple large signs, and shelf sitters proclaiming it the "hottest mystery of the summer."

The Hammer, a book about Hank Aaron intended to pick up attention as Barry Bonds got close to Aaron's home run record, had a street date of June 23rd. Out of the twenty-some copies my store got, we've sold five. As of Sept. 20th, it was also listed as out of print. Its sales pretty accurately reflect the amount of publicity it's gotten. This is also Very Not Good.



Could an employee be guaranteed the same amount of publicity Slip and Fall got, or would they be more likely to get something along the lines of The Hammer? Would there be giant posters and window hangings for an unknown author, or a virtual publicity hiccup in the form of a .gif in a mass Borders email? Remember: No matter how much money Borders saves with internal publicity, if (general)your first book doesn't sell well, you might never be able to get published again.



But then again, who's your book getting sold to? The world? No; if published as a Borders exclusive, the vast majority of your books would be sold to Borders customers with maybe a handful going to Amazon.com. And how many is that? Think of it this way: On the Potterpocalypse, 8.3 million copies of HPDH were sold across America. Borders and associated branches (Borders Express, Waldenbooks) sold 1.2 million copies. Worldwide.

That is one hell of a limited audience.

Combine the incredibly limited audience with a possibly severely limited publicity plan and with the newsletter's promise to have a handful of staff and store legal types draw up a contract for you (not your agent--agents aren't even mentioned, even though agents are awesome because they help keep n00bly authors from getting reamed) and I'm not seeing the good in this. Yeah, there's the possibility that someone'll have a really awesome work that'll take off--but then again, even a POD/vanity published author can take off under the right circumstances.

The question is, would an unknown author want to risk the future of their publishing career on the hope that Borders will get it right this time? I don't think I would.



ETA: Well, now I know how Borders does publicity for an unknown author: my latter option above, a single picture mention in the Borders Shortlist. The winners of the Gather.com First Chapters contest got a single mention in the Shortlist--and other than that, I haven't even seen them in the store.

These ones are published through Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint, not Borders, but I'll be watching to see how long it takes them books to go out of print as well.