Pyr is walking on dangerous ice. And you really shouldn't mix hot and cold like that.In the above link, Lou Anders has announced that they picked up .
Now I have nothing against Solaris or Pyr. Business is business and if Pyr thinks that Akers going to be a big enough draw then good for Tim and good for Pyr. I'll admit the book sounds intriguing.
What has me worried is my bibliophilia. When books series change publishers they do one or more of the following.
1. Change cover sizes (HC to TPB, PB to HC, etc)
2. Change cover artist
3. Change cover layout (fonts,positions,etc.)
When this happens, the bibliophile in me loathes to line up two disparate books on the shelf. Try to get a matching set of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Doesn't exist. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files went to HC around Book 7 and the cover art changed dramatically. I'm still not sure what to do with myself.
Something similar happened before with David Louis Edelman's Jump 225 series. I believe Solaris put out the 1st edition of Infoquake and then Pyr took over with the 2nd Book, MultiReal. I know there was a cover change and maybe a format change but I believe Pyr actually put out a reissue of the 1st book with a spine close enough to the 2nd book that they could line up on a shelf together.
I've spoken with Lou Anders in the past and I believe he as much of a bibliophilic cover-junkie as I am. If Pyr covers are any indicator, then he is. If that's true Pyr might manage to republish the Heart of Veridon in a matching format. Or at least something that won't make me cringe every time I look at the shelf.
Heart of Veridon will be released September 29th, 2009.
UPDATE: Lou Anders was kind enough to stop by and explain that the books are in different series so there will be no bibliophilic anxiety after all. I misread his post and combined it with some information from Amazon.com regarding Heart of Veridon being the first book in a trilogy. Most of this post makes no sense now but I am glad the Pyr has vowed not to hijack authors mid-series.
Congrats to Tim!
Actually, you are off on both counts.
ReplyDeleteThe Horns of Ruin is NOT the second book in a Veridon series. It's a completely new story, its own animal in a new world/universe. It just happens to be steampunk noir fantasy (or "noird" as China Mieville terms it), which is what I responded to so well in Heart of Veridon. I know that Tim does have a sequel outlined for Heart of Veridon, but I have a policy against picking up books in a series begun elsewhere. But having read Heart of Veridon, I really wanted to work with him, hence this new book (series?).
Also, Infoquake was originally published in trade paperback by Pyr. When we licensed the mmpb rights to Solaris, we worked with them to time their MMPB release with our trade paperback release of MultiReal, and we put Stephan Martiniere on both covers for that visual continuity. However, we also worked off the fonts used on our original trade paperback edition of Infoquake, so that there would still be that all important continuity between our trade paperback editions of Infoquake and MultiReal despite Stephan coming in as the cover artist from (our) book two.
'Cause yeah, I'm a huge bibliophilic cover-junkie. Hope this restores your faith!
Thanks for clearing that up Lou. I misread your original post and made some assumptions based on Heart of Veridon being linked to a trilogy in the Amazon description. So this series is "noird" and the other series is fantasy/urban fantasy. Got it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I knew there was something going on with the Jump 225 books but I wasn't completely clear. It was Martiniere coming on for book 2and giving me the option for matching covers or matching formats that bugged me. I went with the matching formats and like you said you worked off the first cover so it looked great in the end.
And I never said Pyr had done anything wrong, just that they were on thin ice.
Can I just say that having someone from Pyr reading and commenting on your post is awesome.
ReplyDeleteLou, thanks for taking the time to write here. It makes it seem like Pyr is genuinely interested in the peoples. I'm looking foward to having more Pyr titles for Kindle (ok, my Kindle for iPhone app...)
Patrick, thanks for owning up to your mistake, and making it clear what's really going on. Far better than waiting a few days or leaving the rant up just to drive pageviews (which, sadly, has been done elsewhere.)
Thanks for the awesome website! I'm completely hooked on the Dresden Files thanks to you. :)