chabot@miles.DEC (L S Chabot) (04/12/85)
> DON'T BLAME THE AUTHOR FOR THE PACKAGING OF HIS BOOK!!!
Well, yes, few authors can even complain (and get results) about a proposed
cover--this is true not just for science fiction authors. (or fiction authors)
However, some biggies appear to be able to influence things some. I've heard
Harlan Ellison at public lectures flame about getting them to leave off those
ads and forms you often get at the end of a book. He claims to have been
successful. Let's see...Patricia Wrede's latest (_The_Harp_of_...) doesn't
have any ads, but both Steven Brust's _To_Reign_In_Hell_ and Pamela Dean's
_The_Secret_Country_ do, and all of these came out from Ace this spring. So,
SZKB, can you comment on these ads? I can imagine that Ace wouldn't give
Pamela Dean much say so, since this was her first book, but you've got a
couple. Does anybody other than Ellison gripe about the ads at the end?
L S Chabot
UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot
ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPAecl@ahutb.UUCP (e.c.leeper) (04/15/85)
Regarding ads et al at the ends of books... Books are bound (well, glued, these days) in signatures of 32 pages (or some power of two. This means that a novel that has 200 pages will have 24 (32 * 8 - 200) blank pages. Well, there's the title page, perhaps an introduction, perhaps an afterword, but as often as not, there are leftover pages. Rather than have them go blank, the publisher uses them to advertise other books. The solution is probably to write so that there are exactly 32n pages in the novel when you're done (counting the title page, of course). :-) Evelyn C. Leeper For now, I am ...ihnp4!ahutb!ecl But, on May 1, I become ...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl
brust@hyper.UUCP (Steven Brust) (04/26/85)
> > DON'T BLAME THE AUTHOR FOR THE PACKAGING OF HIS BOOK!!! > > Well, yes, few authors can even complain (and get results) about a proposed > cover--this is true not just for science fiction authors. (or fiction authors) > > However, some biggies appear to be able to influence things some. I've heard > Harlan Ellison at public lectures flame about getting them to leave off those > ads and forms you often get at the end of a book. He claims to have been > successful. Let's see...Patricia Wrede's latest (_The_Harp_of_...) doesn't > have any ads, but both Steven Brust's _To_Reign_In_Hell_ and Pamela Dean's > _The_Secret_Country_ do, and all of these came out from Ace this spring. So, > SZKB, can you comment on these ads? I can imagine that Ace wouldn't give > Pamela Dean much say so, since this was her first book, but you've got a > couple. Does anybody other than Ellison gripe about the ads at the end? > > L S Chabot > UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot > ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Well, uh, gee...I dunno. I don't really care. It would be nice if they only advertised author's I like, or other writers in my writer's group, but I'm not about to make a stink about it. I've never heard anyone else complain about such things. They used to have an advertising blurb at the beginning of the book, too. I was hoping that eventually everyone in our group would appear in the advertising for everyone else, but now they've changed to it to a "Other ACE books by the same author" sort of thing. That's okay too. -- SKZB