I’ve got one—another technical question. You said when you were at the signing you were quite angry at your English publishers over your books because they published your last book in December.
They released it way ahead of schedule. They promised me not to do that.
Did it take some steps in the direction to punish them for that?
Well, they will not be able to do it again.
Because frankly, I have to say that I like their books better.
Well, I’m sorry to hear that.
Because they publish better [ inaudible ]. The books are better, the cover doesn’t come off, and so on.
There are some serious business problems with that.
Yes, I understand.
One is the copyright.
They put my copyright in danger. I don’t hold still for that. They put my copyright in danger. So, they’re still my English publisher; I will deliver the books to them as contracted. And I will deliver the books to them exactly as contracted. But it’s not going to happen again; they’re not going to release the books again. One thing they have promised me that they will put a hold on—their first class hold, which I thought they had been doing before, which is what they do in the United States—which means that if a bookstore puts the books up on sale early, there are sanctions against that bookstore.
It’s only a matter of a few weeks, but it’s important to the sales of the book pretty internationally. If the book makes number one in the United States, and also if it makes number one in London; that matters. And by breaking the date, they put his opening at number one in both countries in at risk.
In danger. They put it at risk.
And there was no reason to do that.
Because people from the States could have bought it, and perhaps enough.
And they did.
And some people did—they found out about it and bought it. But they put the making of that number one opening, which from a purely commercial point of view, is important. If you open at number one, if you’re at number one, you get publicity, you get a lot of things. You get discounts—stores sell your book at a discount. You don’t get any less of a royalty, but they put a deep discount on your book, which they make a lesser discount if it’s further down in the top ten. And there are more people who will buy the book at the deeper discount than will buy it at the lesser discount. So these things are important. This is my rice bowl, and they threw rocks at my rice bowl.
Well, they did write a very apologetic letter.
Yes, they did.
Because they read the internet, too. [laughs] And I don’t think it will happen again.
No, I don’t think it will happen again.
And also, my dear husband had been kind of begging Tor Books to send the discs to England so that they could make the same date.
So that they could publish at the same time.
And Tor really didn’t want to do this.
They didn’t, but I kept saying “please, please”.
He was doing them a favor to make them able to do this.
I was doing them a favor to get them to do that so they could release the books on the same day.
Yeah.
Because see, even if I deliver the manuscript to New York, and at the same time I send the manuscript by courier to London, New York can get under way faster and have books ready to go faster than London can. So what I would do would be deliver the manuscript to New York, and New York would prepare everything ready to send to the printer on disc. And I would beg a copy of that disc from New York to send to England so they could hit the presses within 24 hours of the Americans doing this.
On the same date. And they hurt Tor doing this. So that is also personally embarrassing.
It was very embarrassing to me.
Yes, we’d asked one company for a favor.
Because I’d asked my American publisher to do this favor for me—for a number of years I had done it, to do it for the English.
And the reason for that is once we turn the book in, I have done my editing but they then have a copy editor who goes through for commas and the little stuff, and that isn’t on our discs, and it should be that the books are identical. So it was a mess. It was not happy.
No, no . . . but I think it’s okay now.
But I really think it will be okay now. And it’s only a matter of about two weeks, but it made a big difference.
Honey, yes. And I don’t think it’s going to happen again.
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