It begins….
Now, obviously I am not going to reveal my sources, but I believe I can safely observe that one result of last year’s anti-PNH campaign is that I happened to make a few contacts in the publishing world aside from the obvious ones at Simon & Schuster and Random House. Some of you have probably noticed that we were among the first independent publishers to make use of Pronoun, which may have surprised those who were under the impression that we were anti-Macmillan, but that was never the case.
Anyhow, I understand that we can look forward to hearing that a number of Tor authors are going to suddenly develop newfound respect for the art of self-publishing. And, moreover, this harrowing of the authors is, at least in part, the result of the failure of a major new book from a top author upon whom the publisher was counting to produce significant revenue in a timely manner.
You see, when a Castalia author is late, it doesn’t harm us in the slightest. But when a big book from Tor Books slips, or worse, doesn’t produce, or even worse, slips and then doesn’t produce, that inflicts serious harm on their financial flows. And, contrary to the impression created by their sizable revenues, the big publishing houses tend to get by on relatively small margins, so even a moderate financial shortfall often has to be addressed by slashing books and contracts and authors.
So, keep your eyes open. We should learn exactly where the cuts have been made in the relatively near future.
Tor delenda est.