It occurs to me that I've never read any Lindskold. This can be fixed, however. There's a bookstore on my way home.

The Egyptian book sounds just plain nifty. Both in terms of idea, and in the described design.

Anyway, no, it wouldn't seem they're related.

luck.

I've been finding that more and more attention is being lavished on bound galleys/ARCs, incorporating corrections and revisions, to the point where they're becoming viewed as de facto 1st editions.

Robert L: I just uploaded the files for what in my office we call a galley--which I believe is technically an advance reader copy (ARC)?--to our printer's server this evening, and yes, often the text in these things is the final version. For one title that's on a truck somewhere right now, we actually ordered galleys/ARCs after sending the book to the printer. This may have something to do with our being mad--I sent pages out for indexing at the same time, and it wasn't really, um, proofread much.

I do not recommend managing one's production in this way, but I'm told that it's the secret to our success. Or one of them, anyway.

The punishment is that we never, ever get to use embossing or foil. And I'm growing a lot more gray hairs since I took this job.

I liked Lindskold's _Changer_ a lot, but was disappointed by the sequel. The first book set up a really interesting situation (mythic creatures live among us, and the costs of living in secret are going up--they're deciding whether to go public), but then, instead of having at least some of them go public and seeing what happens, the sequel is a thriller. Not a bad thriller, but not as cool as a big change.

So give three cheers and one cheer more for a perfect match!

I thought the main point of sending out advance copies, be they bound MSS., galleys, or ARCs, was to garner quotes, reviews, advance orders, offers for movie rights... If you're going to have finished books real soon, why suddenly decide to do bound galleys?

and it wasn't really, um, proofread much.

If you had come to me...

Had I come to you, you would have (a) laughed at what we paid, or (b) cried when you learned how late we would pay it.

As for the purpose of our ARCs, we use them mainly to garner reviews. The other purposes on your list are, if addressed at all, met with copies of the raw manuscript that we laser-print and spiral-bind ourselves. I guess you could call those galleys, too, if you were feeling generous.

Oh, don't be so sure about that. Though of course I go for the gold when I can, I'm more concerned with working on interesting stuff than I am with strictly monetary issues. If all I wanted was the big bucks, I'd be working on business or medical stuff all the time. Sure, there is a certain need for cash flow, but since I'll make money whether I'm bored or interested, I'd rather be interested. And since I work a lot, a lower-paying job here and there isn't such a big deal. Nor is late payment as long as it gets there eventually.

And if your rates really are so laughably low that I couldn't accept such a pittance and retain my self-respect, I probably know someone who's a little hungrier than I am who's still interested...

You can email me at legault50[at]aol.com if you'd like to discuss this further.

In another case, though, I blew it because I let the collector in me make corrections in a light pencil, and one major error that I tried to correct didn't get seen by the publisher. _That_ taught me a lot about what really matters in proofing.... But I was young then, and very few of you probably saw that chapbook. At least I got them a good artist.

I hate embossed foil covers.

Of course now my brain will do little else than try to figure out which company this was (stupid brain)... it wasn't the firm run by two gentlemen (using the term very loosely) named M*** C**** and T**** S****, by any chance?

Not that you, T., would ever do that. I know you wouldn't.

[hackles up] As if one of my typographic designs would ever detract from the words.

Harumph.

But seriously, we designers and typesetters love to have a beautifully designed book that makes it past the critics and allows us to present something that is pleasing to the eye and the soul.

I can only cite a couple of my favorite typos, and let everything be inferred from them. The first is the so-called "Evil Bible," an edition of the Good Book which gave the commandment, "Thou shalt commit adultery." ("You see, baby, it says right here in the Bible...") The printer was jailed for that one.

The other was from some book on economics that a certain large publisher put out maybe 7 or 8 years ago. This was caught in the proofs, but presumably the bound galleys contained the error. What it was supposed to say:

"This is the case, for example, under capitalism, where the labor of the many is exploited for the benefit of the few."

What it was set as:

"This is the case, for example, under capitalism, where the labor of the many is exploited for the benefit of the Jew."

As for design, I think that there are many approaches that work. Some may be impractical (those die-cut covers) even if they are theoretically nice to look at. Design is an art similar to architecture: It's important that it looks good, but it's even more important that it work for the user; and people who can accomplish both are true artists.

I said I hate embossed covers. I also hate cut-outs. I hate gaudy, garish cover art. All the stuff that publishers put on the cover to make it more noticable, makes me less likely to buy. A quiet, plain cover in the science fiction and fantasy section is a blessed relief, and even persuades me to buy a science fiction book now and again. It says "This is a quality book, we don't have to scream at the customers about it." (Are you listening, o editors?)

One of my personal non SF/F genre favorites is the work of Georgette Heyer. She wrote very witty, true-to-period books set in the English Regency. It's damned frustrating to get one of her books set in a lurid "bodice-ripper" cover: sort of like scribbling a mustache on the picture of your favorite aunt - the one who let you read in bed as late as you wanted and never talked down to you.

Even worse, IMO, than bad cover art is when the person who writes the jacket blurb obviously didn't read a single word of the book. One favorite novel of mine contains a major plot point: the heroine is very rich, but very plain. She marries "well" (impoverished Earl) because of her money, and the rest of the book is long on the hard work of a marriage between two people who barely know one another and very short on happily ever after (in other words, realistic rather than romantic). In order to explain her marriage to the hero, the back of the jacket describes her as "very beautiful." Barf.

For cover art, I like either realistic people who don't look like people modeling in the artist's studios who just have a spacesuit painted on them, or brightly colored vaguely abstract yet detailled things. Nicely done sci-fi settings sometimes work, too.

For Lindskold, I quite liked her wolf books, "Though Wolf's Eyes" and "Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart". Good yarns, great characters, believable world with unique touches, no requirements to swallow ridiculous plot twists.

Oo! And looking this up on Amazon, I just realized that "The Dragon of Despair" is next in that series! And it's glittery! Oh, now I'm looking forward to it... I'm your target audience, right here.

The embossed cover I have mixed feelings about. I really don't mind embossing on the title, but embossing the cover illustration seems rather chancy to me. (And you can sometimes get some pretty ludicrous results--one fantasy book I have has a picture of a pretty sorceress on the front with HEAVILY embossed breasts which very obviously protrude more than anything else on the cover. Although...perhaps I'm not the target audience there.)

Jill: Just started reading Georgette Heyer (after hearing her mentioned so frequently here and on a certain writing board, how could I not?) and I can see what you mean about the bodice ripper cover I found on one of them. (The rest of the covers were all much more restrained and indicative of the Regency period.)

Finally, while I'm not a book designer, I'm definitely employed as a graphic designer, and I know the pain of having your least favourite concept chosen for the final piece. (Wouldn't submit my least favourite concept except that the art directors say things like, "Submit five concepts by ten o'clock tomorrow morning," and so you do, but then they pick the one of the five you thought was the least workable and you wonder if you're going to want to point out that design in six months and have anything to do with it.)

A Civil Contract! It's my favourite Heyer so far, and the one I've reread the most.

But that's from a specialty bookseller's perspective, which is not the perspective most publishers think is their primary market (and, in truth, it isn't).

(P.S. I really enjoyed Viable Paradise VII.)

Roger Zelazny gave permission to the very talented Economics Professor Philip Fellman, Southern New Hampshire University, to write certain specific stories in Roger Zelazny's multiverse. Roger Zelazny was impressed by Professor Fellman's status as 5th Degree Black Belt in traditional Japanese swordsmanship (Iaido), and the Professor's depth of understanding of Zelazny's fiction...

I have some of the approved draft mss, and have been asked to do some rewrite...

Lord of Light: please give me some time in my schedule...

"Other" than what? I find no prior references in this thread to posthumous Roger Zelazny fiction.

Jane Lindskold wrote a couple of books with him while he was alive, if I recall correctly, which isn't the same thing.

I guess that I was answering a question that I thought was implicit in:

"Alice Keezer ::: (view all by)
::: March 24, 2004, 09:48 PM:
Salmon of Doubt is a posthumous Douglas Adams . . . what is it, exactly? Collection?
Anyway, no, it wouldn't seem they're related."

But I guess it wasn't implied by her at all.

Never mind...

Or, should I rephrase as:

"There will be, other than the stuff you've seen of his while he was alive, posthumous Roger Zelazny fiction!"

Thanks.

Roger Zelazny gave permission to the very talented Economics Professor Philip Fellman, Southern New Hampshire University, to write ...

If it's not written by Zelazny, it will, alas, not be Zelazny fiction...

...certain specific stories in Roger Zelazny's multiverse.

Which multiverse?

It would be nice to have a (printable) word for the Betancourt Amber books, the Thompson(sp?) Oz books, the recent "V. C. Andrews", etc. to distinguish the revived from the merely exhumed; "resurrectionist", perhaps?