I have a question. How come you guys over in England get the book in July and we (americans) have to wait till next year?!? Is it an editing thing?

I dunno, but you guys in the states got the Garth Nix - Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen over a year before us in the UK...

It's just the publishers who decide it that way... My personal feeling (no official thing this) is that when they published TEA here they weren't sure if it was going to be worth it to publish in the US, when it was a hit they decided to do it, so they will end up keeping a year in between books...

Hiya Snarky - welcome to the fforum.

I've been thinking about the whole publishing thing, and there's a few factors that affect it. One of them is exactly the same reason that America gets Hollywood films first - Jasper was picked up by a British publishing house and so they get released here first. Carla would know better than me, but I'm pretty sure that the UK publishing industry is bigger than the American one in terms of the number of titles, so I'd guess this happens more often than the other way round (we tend to get American authors after you too). The best way to see the same process is with music - we get your stuff after you and you get our stuff, er, well you don't buy our stuff at all in fact. (and while we're on it could you please cease and desist from the following: Linkin Park, Nickleback, Busted, Staines, Shania Twain, Cher, Madonna...)

Another reason is that the publishing rights tend to be sold to several publishers for several markets. In America Mr Ff is published by Penguin, if I'm not greatly mistaken, whereas over here it's Hodder & Stoughton. The logic behind this is that authors can flog their book once for their home market, and then when it's succesful they can flog it again with a nice big bidding war. It's the sort of thing that makes agents rub their hands. Another advantage of this is that publishers tend to know their own markets and can use better strategies. Some publishers don't have overseas divisions, too.

The third reason I can think of off the top of my head is basically the same as Carla's. It took years for any of Mr ff's stuff to be picked up even over here, and the books are defiantly British. I suspect that it would have been hard to sell the American rights of an unknown author who had been rejected so many times. Once they started to sell, it became easier to persuade someone to take it up. You'll probably also find that lots of people who worked for publishing companies (and lets face it - the Thursday Next books are written for people who like books) started talking about it - which helps sell the rights too. As the books are quite 'British' there may have been some reticence to take the risk either. Once you have a gap like that it may be kept to keep people waiting for the next installment - especially if they come on here and keep hearing about it from people who already have it!

If there's an editing delay then I can't see why that might be, unless some of the names are changed (a la Asterix) but AAC is the best person to ask about any changes like that.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

But this happens to authors that aren't so essentially british as well.
I was talking to Joanne Harris in the signing last week and she was saying that she is published all over the place but nearly every country is currently doing a different book and she has no idea why.

We got stuff late in Portugal, but that was because it needed to be translated.

Loads of American books get here really late...

I have some books in American editions (Lirael, Ella Minnow Pea, Jennifer Government) because they come out first in the US and then the publishers give us american copies to see if we want to stock them.

Now we've got a US office I need to find out how many books are published in the US each year - in the UK it's around 2,000 per week (that's new, revised and translated titles) and we monitor over 144,000 different titles per week sales wise.

If you think about it - the top 5,000 books (volume wise) each week accounts for about 75% of the total market monitored and you need to sell over 90 copies a week to get into the top 5,000 - that means there are over 135,000 titles out there each week selling less than 90 copies - how many of those are only shifting a dozen per week? It's crazy!

2,000 a week = 100,000 titles per year = approx one title for every thousand people in the UK. Scary numbers...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Yeah, having Garth Nix first almost makes up for having Jasper second... And we do too buy your music!! Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beatles, B*Witched (thanks a helluva lot for THAT one), the Corrs...ok, they are mostly Irish, but still in your general vicinity right? Ha

p.s. Hi Snarky, welcome to the fforum!

- Currer



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Revolt! Revolt! No matter why or when,
It's novelty--old novelty again.

the Red Hot Chili Peppers are from California...just FYI

My imediate thought too - B*witched and the Corrs are Irish, and I can't remember the Beatles recording past 1970-ish... Not exactly a great export market for us, all in. There's a lot of Brit stuff used for sporting occasions over there though (Blur, Fat Boy Slim to name just two) but they don't make unit-shifting radio friendlies.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Jamiroquai did pretty well over here, as did Oasis, Bush, on and there's always the Pet Shop Boys... (lol)

Oh, AAC, do you actually expect me to know anything about the real world? Honestly!

Really, I heard someone tell someone that the Red Hot Chili Peppers had something to do with Ireland. Now, I think that refutes all your idiotic facts about them coming from Cali!



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Revolt! Revolt! No matter why or when,
It's novelty--old novelty again.

LOL...I guess you just didn't know any better...can't expect too much from "infants" can we? ROFLMAO!

Yes, it is up to the publishers, and they seem to like the year interval between books. And when books are released in different countries is entirely up to the publishers in those countries.

For example, Diana Gabaldon lives in Arizona, and is an extremely popular author in many countries. Often her books are published in the US and/or Britian and Australia first, and then translated for other countries later. However, her next book will be published first in Germany (in German) this summer, but won't be released in the US until Christmas gift buying season.

Yes, publication dates are almost entirely up to the publishers, and designed to maximise sales -- publishing is a business, after all. One example of this is that the paperback editions of second novels from authors whose first novel was a critical and / or commercial success are often published the week after Christmas, or thereabouts.

The reasoning goes like this: When a second novel that everyone is waiting for (such as Zadie Smith's or Maggie O'Farell's) is published in hardback, a proportion of fans of the first novel will buy the much more expensive hardback edition, but many will not because of the cost. If you publish the paperback edition before Christmas, most of the remaining fans will buy the paperback for themselves. However, if you delay publication of the paperback until after Christmas, lots of friends and family will buy the hardback as Christmas gifts for fans. This may sound devious, or even unlikely to work, but it does significantly increase the hardback sales of novels in the UK.

So it's rather good news that TWOLP is being published in hardback and paperback at the same time (even if the pb is a more expensive trade paperback) -- perhaps there'll be a standard-format paperback in early 2004 (but I for one am certainly not going to wait that long).



Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

According to the blurb on the back of my proof copy, the standard paperback will be published in January 2004.



Naomi

That's what Waterstone's told me, too. And they didn't seem very sure about the trade paperback.

Do I ring them and ask to speak to someone who knows what they're talking about, or is that, in other people's experience, just a waste of time?



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

To give them credit, Waterstones probably don't really know - publishers change publising dates like the wind changes!

EG - there should have been a new biog on Catherine de Medici due out this July (first info on it was date in May) but now it's changed to Jan 2004! For goodness sake, I put off starting writing my biog of the geat woman to wait for this one to come out - I could have written at least the second draft by now!!

I have two things to say that may get me laughed out of here:

1. Who is Garth Nix?

2. Jamiroquai is British??!!??


Snarky

Waterstones people won't know much about pub dates and stuff because Waterstones (like borders) have central buying. Booksellers don't see reps therefore don't know what is coming. Books etc has localized buying, each shop sees reps from publishers and knows and decides what is best for their branch... If you have a Books etc nearby it's better to ask them...
:-)

And Garth Nix is the author of a brilliant trilogy - Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen, all already out in the US while in the UK we only have Sabriel... I had to buy the american Abhorsen on amazon

Jamiroquai are indeed British... So are Bush, while I think about it, except we don't like them over here...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.