Aurealis #135
Page 9
At the same time, I was at work on a project making use of the fact that Gollancz still held hardback rights in roughly the first twenty Discworld novels. After much strategising, wrangling, backing-and-forthing and the application of a light coating of octarine, the Discworld Collectors Library was born, with the first books published in November 2013. Wibalin-bound, foil-debossed, with ribbon markers and cover artwork by a wonderful artist by the name of Joe McLaren, they looked absolutely beautiful, if I do say so myself, and proved to be extremely popular with the Discworld fanbase.
We did such a good job with them that Rob Wilkins, Sir Terry’s right hand man—and now guardian of the Pratchett Estate—pitched up at the Gollancz offices with some absurdly talented artisans from The Discworld Emporium and a proposal to resurrect our Discworld Diaries, which hadn’t been published for seven years. The first of the new diaries, We R Igors, was published in the second half of 2014. So, my ‘just a calendar each year’ was now a calendar, a diary, a new Discworld Companion and a handful of Collectors Library hardbacks. And then the Discworld Colouring Book. And the Discworld Colouring Book Artist’s Edition. And finally, the glorious Discworld Imaginarium. Paul Kidby’s tribute to the genius of Terry Pratchett, replete with beautiful finished artwork, pen-and-ink drawings, pencil sketches and alternative versions is just gorgeous. A labour of love for all involved. The Imaginarium was the last Pratchett project I worked on before leaving Gollancz and returning to Australia, and I can’t think of a more fitting farewell.
And speaking of fitting farewells, Sir Terry’s passing in March 2015 was obviously a blow to everyone who had known him—either personally or through his work—and that certainly held true in the Gollancz offices. We drank to his memory, cried at the beautiful final message on his Twitter feed, revisited our favourite books and laughed despite the sadness, because that seemed right. And we decided that the next diary must be a tribute to Sir Terry rather than the usual themed book of Discworld ephemera. And so the call went out to the great and good—friends, colleagues, super-fans—for appreciations to publish in the diary. We scoured the Discworld books for quotes to add to each week, and produced in the end something that I hope pays sufficient respect and honour to one of modern fantasy’s true giants: The Terry Pratchett Diary.
Although I only met the great man once during my stay in England—by the time Gollancz’s Discworld projects were in full swing, Sir Terry, sadly, was in decline—it was an honour to be even a small part of the Discworld. But if time with Terry Pratchett was rare, I was lucky enough to be in regular contact and strike up a friendship with his business manager Rob Wilkins. A few of us from Gollancz were honoured to be invited to the memorial, which Rob organised a year after Sir Terry’s death. It was one of the most extraordinary events I’ve ever attended. Its peculiar mix of melancholy and hilarity was one hundred percent Pratchett—a bewildering mix of writers, actors, academics, publishers, artists, friends and family passing each other on stage, having delivered streams of tears or peals of laughter (sometimes both) in what looked like only ever being one step from chaos, but in actual fact was choreographed in minute detail by the man to whom the Pratchett family has entrusted Sir Terry’s legacy. You won’t find a more passionate and committed advocate for Terry Pratchett’s work than Rob Wilkins. The Discworld could not be in safer hands.
But to return to the world that doesn’t sit atop four elephants balanced on Great A’Tuin’s mighty shell…
Trouble at t’mill
Back to the SF Gateway. Given Gollancz’s long and storied history, you’d be forgiven for thinking that many of the books we were planning to publish digitally were titles to which the company already held the rights. But you’d be wrong. Certainly Gollancz had published many of the books over the previous fifty years, but most of them had dropped out of print and rights had reverted to the authors. (In fact, it was this loss of many of the genre’s touchpoint books to the merciless logic of printing economics that prompted Malcolm to launch the SF Masterworks in the first place, in 1999. He reasoned that, individually, these books—many of them award-winners—would be no easier to keep in print than they’d proven to be before, but as part of a coherent, curated series, they should be more commercially resilient. And so it proved to be, leading the way, a decade-and-a-bit later, to the SF Gateway.)
We therefore had to go out and acquire (or re-acquire, as the case may be) the rights for almost every title we planned to publish. That process was not always viewed entirely without suspicion.
But in addition to the reservations of the rights holders and/or their representatives, there was a commercial imperative: we didn’t want anybody else to know what we were doing until we had acquired all of the rights we wanted—or at least, the rights to enough of the major authors to make it undesirable for another publisher to decide to compete with us. So it was that in September of 2010 I was appointed Digital Publisher for Gollancz, without being able to explain to any of our authors what my job actually entailed. It remains the closest I’ve come to being able to say legitimately, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’ And as enjoyable as my brief dalliance with James Bondesque banter was, it was a huge relief when we announced SF Gateway in July of 2011, and I could finally come clean about what I’d been doing for the previous 10 months or so.
Of course, once the secret was out, the SF Gateway was fair game, with the ebook reading discussion groups on various message boards (which were still a thing in 2011) particularly keen to offer opinions on the project. Most of the correspondents seemed content to watch with interest and withhold judgement until we’d actually launched the project, but there were the usual outliers who felt compelled to proclaim the SF Gateway as an outrage/rip-off/threat to the very fabric of classic SF (delete as appropriate).
One particularly amusing (though not at the time) school of thought was that because we’d used the word ‘library’ in our press release, it therefore followed that the ebooks must be free, and any attempt to apply prices to them was an act of infamy the likes of which had never before been perpetrated, etc. As many of the more reasonable members of the message boards pointed out, it was well within everyday usage to refer to a collection of books as a ‘library’ and the use of the word did not necessarily imply that they would be offered for free. Happily, the forces of reason prevailed, and this ridiculous notion quickly disappeared.
There was also some scepticism that our pricing model would represent value for money, but I think the offer of just two discrete price-points—£2.99 and £4.99—was at the very least competitive, and in most cases quite attractive when compared with the prevailing pricing models for ebooks at the time. After the SF Gateway was better established, we could introduce more granularity in the pricing, allowing us to go up in price for the longer books, but also to introduce £1.99 and even 99p price points for shorter works.
So, certainly there were reservations, but the vast majority of SF readers and writers appreciated what we were doing and were hugely supportive of our efforts to return entire backlists to availability. In fact, I’d be very remiss in any account of SF Gateway’s early days not to mention the enthusiastic backing of the SF author community—not least of whom was two-time Arthur C Clarke Award-winner Pat Cadigan, who has been a passionate and vocal supporter of the initiative right from the start. If you’re not familiar with Pat’s work, check it out at the SF Gateway. She’s a class act—both as writer and human being—and a tireless advocate for SF in general and SF Gateway in particular.
Build it and they will come
So. Two websites and a thousand ebooks, you say? In a year, you say? And under budget? Sure. How hard could it be? Funny you should ask…
First, the websites: a year might sound like a long time to most people—and, to be fair, it can be—but when your previous website experience might best be described as ‘rudimentary’, I can assure you that the passage of time is experienced very differently! In addition to being on a learning curve every single
day, I still had to make progress on the two sites, both of which were being conceived and built from scratch in parallel, and sometimes being re-conceived depending on what I’d learnt the day before. In hindsight, it all seems to have flowed so smoothly but, at the time, it felt like I was learning to juggle while driving dodgem cars with my feet.
There were multiple factors that had to be taken into account, balancing commercial considerations with the need to retain our fannish sensibilities, and the whole thing needed to be compatible with the wider company’s ONIX metadata feed. I also had to implement Malcolm’s list of desired features, such as a community forum, a blog, the capacity to compile lists, the capacity to link directly to the book pages on retailer sites and, of course, the whole thing had to operate in concert with the SFE.
There were a multitude of different approaches for each of the site functions we wanted. The community forum alone threw up a host of competing options, each with very different pros and cons. For example, we briefly considered using Facebook to power the forum until it was pointed out to us that that would mean Facebook owned any content published on that forum. We quickly rejected that option—and that was even before we knew what we know now.
We also had to come up with a way to present links to retailers so that they required as few clicks as possible to buy a book. We solved that by using a JavaScript pop-up that linked directly to the book page on the retailer site by slotting the ISBN of the individual ebook into a retailer-specific search string. We then applied a randomiser to ensure that no retailer would appear to have pre-eminence owning solely to the first letter of its name. At the time, we couldn’t find anything similar to copy (I’m sure it was out there—it just evaded our searches) so this all had to be done from first principles.
Now, of course, the sort of functionality SF Gateway enjoyed is taken for granted, but in 2010 it was all pretty new—for book publishers on limited budgets, at least—and there was very much the impression at the company that we were breaking new ground. As it happens, a number of functions and ideas we incorporated into SF Gateway eventually made their way into the new group-wide website. And they say science fiction isn’t relevant to the real world…
* * *
In Part 2, I’ll share the excitement (and trepidation) of launching SF Gateway into the world, the birth of the Gateway omnibuses, the brief life of the re-launched Fantasy Masterworks, some personal highs and lows and some words about one of the truly great figures of British publishing.
The Author: Darren Nash
A lifelong science-fiction fan, Darren Nash has spent almost his entire working life in publishing, having held positions in sales, marketing, audio, editorial and digital for a variety of multinational houses. From 1998 until 2017, he lived in the UK, and worked for Simon & Schuster, Orbit and—most recently—Gollancz, where he launched and ran the SF Gateway ebook programme. He currently works in digital for an independent Australian publisher and edits on a freelance basis. His website can be found at www.darrenanash.com.
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Reviews
Reviews Editor: Eugen Bacon
Eugen Bacon is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing. Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted or commended in national and international awards, including the Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Website: www.eugenbacon.com. Twitter: @EugenBacon.
Featured Reviewer: Chris Foster
Chris Foster was meant to be an archaeologist. Or an architect. Even an accountant. Instead, he became an author, delving deep into storytelling and designing fantasy worlds to balance books. When not reading or writing, he enjoys painting models and using puns to everyone’s* amusement.
Chris’ career started by winning an international poetry award. Since then he’s published seven books, including bestsellers The Potion Master and Tango in a Teacup. Rare author sightings are available at www.chrisfosterwrites.com.
*accuracy of this statement not guaranteed.
Horizon Zero Dawn
by Anne Toole (writer)/Ann Maulina (artist)
Titan Comics
Review by Chris Foster
Mechanical dinosaurs and tribal humans fight for survival in an exciting imagining of future Earth. The first foray into exploring the Horizon world through a comic medium promises strong female leads, PG levels of violence and an easy-to-follow story.
This comic follows a fierce hunter, Talanah, the first female to rise to the rank of Sunhawk, leader of the Hunter’s Lodge. She’s hunting down a new breed of machine that’s more dangerous than others. Along the way she meets up with an old friend and a mysterious stranger helps her. Sparse dialogue supplies the backstory.
Art style falls into semi realistic cartoon, filled with plenty of action scenes. Bright colours with wide fill areas provide cheery, child friendly imagery. No gore. Despite an attack by a mech with a chainsaw attached to its jaw, Talanah’s grievous wound is instantly bandaged in the next scene.
Overall, the comic feels aimed towards the female tween audience. Providing a framework that shows powerful women reaching the top of their organisations, while allowing them space to follow quests that appeal to them, it reinforces the positivity for young female readers to pursue their dreams.
Playing into the cool factor of mechanised dinosaurs who exist to keep Mother Earth healthy, even if that means stopping humans spreading too far or urbanising too heavily, offers a sense of wonder. The world creating, in short, is fantastic.
Horizon Zero Dawn helps establish the world, yet feels too short to be judged alone—creating the ‘one more’ yearning good book chapters use to keep readers hooked.
Blade Runner 2019 #8
by Michael Green & Mike Johnson (writers)/Andres Guinaldo (artist)
Titan Comics
Review by Chris Foster
Ash is back.
Blade Runner 2019 came out swinging as a gory, uber realistic comic filled with twists that would leave the reader questioning everything, yet satisfied with the storytelling.
Issue #8 does not disappoint. Opening with a brief glimpse into Ash as a young girl, empathy and sympathy bleeds for her from any non-psychopathic reader. Then the story leaps straight back into the whirlpool of plot in the previous instalment. Ash is meeting Isobel Selwyn—a woman she saw fatally wounded in the first issue of the comic. Without introducing spoilers, the story is so well executed it feels like a novella is fitted between the pages.
Once more we have gritty noir atmosphere, scenery working with dialogue to layer the story and plot turns sure to excite. Ash’s character fills the role of quiet detective, minimal fuss, just enough dialogue to keep the revelations going. The introduction of another Blade Runner provides insight into how much of Ash is her personality and how much is her job.
Tight, gripping and very dystopian grimdark, Blade Runner 2019 continues to excel.
Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia Part One
by Steven Moffat (writer), Mark Gatiss (co-creator), Jay (artist)
Titan Comics
Review by Chris Foster
Benedict Cumberbatch has gone from screen to manga in his role as Sherlock Holmes.
From his pale complexion, unruly black hair and sharp features, it works wonderfully well in the new medium. Along with Martin Freeman drawn to life as Dr Watson, the duo continues to solve regular crimes until they must recover scandalous photographs from Irene Adler. It should be a simple case, but has Sherlock met his match? The manga form works well for portraying the humour that runs through Sherlock Holmes.
Sadly, not everything is so easily transcribed. Sound effects, such as phones ringing, are awkward to notice, especially as a significant subplot changes the ringtone. This obfuscation makes the joke harder to enjoy.
Likewise, the traditional manga format of reading back page through to front, right to left on each page, is prese
rved. Perfect for physical copies, or even an e-reader. For those reading on a computer in a PDF viewer it’s painful to read a page, top to bottom, then have to scroll up over the page again to get to the next one. A simple decision from the publisher to reverse the page order for the digital edition would have allowed readers an easier experience of scrolling in a single direction instead of the constant backwards and forwards for each page.
Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia Part One manages multiple plot threads, accurate representation of the screen actors and the sharp, witty humour Sherlock Holmes is known for. Very enjoyable with a cliffhanger hooking readers for Part Two.
Stormblood
The Common Book #1
by Jeremy Szal
Gollancz
Review by Megan Kelly
Jeremy Szal’s debut novel, Stormblood, more than delivers on the promise of a dynamic, action packed military sci-fi experience.
In a past life, Vakov Fukasawa was a Reaper—a biosoldier—who fought in defence of the intergalactic governing body of Harmony during brutal invasion. His service left a legacy of addiction to adrenaline and aggression, courtesy of the stormtech Harmony used to create super soldiers: a body chemistry altering injection of extinct alien DNA.
Vakov is drawn back into the action when Harmony reveals his former Reaper comrades are being killed. Learning his estranged brother is involved creates urgency, tests allegiance and spirals Vakov deeper into addiction and he navigates a criminal underworld.
Stormblood is rife with action sequences beautifully tied together by elaborate world-building, well-paced intrigue and meaningful character interactions.