Some good news from my friend Lou Anders, Editorial Director at US publisher Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books. Last year Lou wrote plugging one of Pyr’s authors, David Louis Edelman, whose novel Infoquake, described on America’s National Public Radio this weekend as “yuppies from another planet” was being touted as the world’s first “science fiction business thriller.” Pyr billed it as “Dune meets the Wall Street Journal.”
Lou explained “It’s a different sort of book, and I wanted to push it beyond just touting it to the usual SF&F channels, so I did what I’ve never done for any of our other 29 titles and wrote personal emails to several hundred people.”
Well, the power of personal marketing paid off. Barnes&Noble.com just picked Infoquake as their number one title in their Editor’s Choice: Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006
Pyr are also publishers of the books at #4 (Sean Williams’ mythic The Crooked Letter) and #6 (John Meaney’s SF adventure Resolution) on the list, which is testament to the quality of the novel iteself, which is a terrific read, and Lou’s hard work promoting the title over recent months.
Infoquake author Edelman, was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition yesterday, along with writers TC Boyle (whose latest novel Talk Talk takes the subject of identity theft and treats it like a horror story), Charles Stross, who I mentioned recently, Jeff Vandermeer, and others. The piece, entitled “Writers Find New Fiction Source in Economic Genre” is now online in both RealAudio and Windows Media formats.
The 10-minute interview is an interesting piece with each author revealing the background to their recent work, with Boyle pointing out that the things that scare us change as society does and ID theft certainly terrifies many.
More interesting to me is the impact a personal e-mail marketing campaign can have, particularly as many indie comics creators often ask me for advice on getting their work “out there”. It’s another plus in favour of “social communities” others have been banging on about for ages, and it will be interesting to see what, if any, sites like ComicSpace, which I recently joined, ultimately have on the plus side for “small press” in the UK and elsewhere.
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics - Books, Other Worlds, Science Fiction
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