sigel%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa (05/28/85)
From: Andrew <sigel%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> gitpyr!roy@topaz.arpa (Roy J. Mongiovi) writes: > Well, I picked up the paperback version of "The Door into Shadow" by > Diane Duane this past week. I was startled to find, when I got it > home, that this is the sequel to "The Door into Fire" which will be > released in August. Is this something new, or have I been asleep? > I thought the usual way is to publish volume 1 first, and then > follow it up with volume 2, not vice versa.... "The Door into Fire" was first published by Dell in late 1979, less than a year before they decided fantasy/sf was Not What They Wanted To Carry, and canned Jim Frenkel, f/sf editor, along with their entire line except for "Dreamsnake" (by Vonda McIntyre) and "The Snow Queen" (by Joan Vinge), both Hugo/Nebula award-winning novels. "The Door into Shadow", second book in the series, was bought for the newly formed BlueJay Books (edited and published by Jim Frenkel) over four years later. As "Fire" had been out of print in the U.S. for about four years, and the only copies available were those imported from England, Frenkel decided to also bring out "Fire" in a reprint trade paperback. > Is this a new way to sucker money out of us? Did the publisher take > statistics and determine that it wasn't good enough to just split > single novels up into several volumes to make more bucks? (As an > aside, I bet that if "The Lord of the Rings" was published today it > would be in five volumes instead of three. Sigh.) Maybe too many > people buy volume 1 and then decided not to read volume 2. What > gives? I suspect that the reason "Fire" was originally released after "Shadow" in the oversized editions was to build up the market for those who wanted a uniform version of "Fire". If there isn't immediate demand for a book when it comes out, it disappears permanently from the shelves in short order. So, the publication of "Shadow" (a new novel, and therefore more likely to sell than a reprint) was set, and helped create demand for the reprinted (albeit slightly revised -- with five more years as a writer, Duane had things she wanted changed, some to strengthen the overall series) first novel. I fail to see anything objectionable in this. From there, the two month differential in the mass market paperback editions (from Tor) follows very simply. Publishers almost invariably have a standard waiting time between trade and mass market editions. Since "Shadow" was released by BlueJay before "Fire", "Shadow" is being released by Tor before "Fire". As for the Evil Plot of artificially separating big books into multi-volumed series, both "Fire" and "Shadow" can be read on their own as individual novels. What makes them a series (two of four volumes) is that they are even richer read together (and, of course, have many of the same characters and background). Andrew Sigel PS: The novels are both well worth reading. I highly recommend all of the author's works, and this includes the "young adult" fantasies "So You Want to be a Wizard?" and "Deep Wizardry", and the Star Trek novels, "The Wounded Sky" and "My Enemy, My Ally".