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8/16/2008 2:42:33 PM
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gdozois
Posts 4314
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Unthemed anthologies that are sold as books on bookshelves became increasingly hard to sell in the '80s and almost impossible in the '90s, after all the great unthemed anthology series of the '60s and '70s, ORBIT, NEW DIMENSIONS, UNIVERSE, had died. Theme anthologies came to be seen as more "sexy" than unthemed anthologies, able to draw customers who would theoretically buy them because they were intrigued by SF stories about turnips or Paris Hilton or whatever, and that largely remains true even today. Even today, most of the new anthology series are from smaller publishers, either small presses or relatively small trade lines such as Solaris or Pyr. To sell to the major publishers, you still have to have a "sexy" theme ("sexy" in the sense of potentially intriguing lots of customers, not necessarially having anything to do with sex), and these days it's still not going to fly unless you can get lots of Big Name Authors, preferably New York Times bestsellers, to agree to be in it.
I'd love to do an unthemed anthology myself; publishers take note. <g>
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8/16/2008 9:59:33 PM
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Thomas R
Posts 3572
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The Starlight series is the last major unthemed anthology deal I can think of. They were kind of downbeat, but had a few good stories. Story of Your Life was first in Starlight 2, which is the only one in the series I have.
--
"Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies." Federico Garcia Lorca
"I was going down a long hallway, and at the end of it there was a bright light a kind man with a beard reaching his hand out to me, beckoning me, and he looked at me as I got closer.. and said: 'Hey buddy, can you spare some change? I want a cup of coffee!'" Tom Servo
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8/16/2008 10:03:52 PM
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gdozois
Posts 4314
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STARLIGHT probably WAS the last major unthemed anthology, until the recent start-up of FAST FORWARD and ECLIPSE and THE SOLARIS BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION. Rumor has it that it didn't sell well either. Perhaps there IS something to the idea that readers find intriguing themes to be "sexier."
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8/16/2008 11:25:52 PM
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pc
Posts 2231
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Announcing!!! Dozois's and Doublet's new anthology of the genre's most dull and boring SF tales. No sex of any sort! You have never seen its like.
(Market this right, and who knows?)
--
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes -- Douglas Adams
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8/16/2008 11:39:53 PM
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gdozois
Posts 4314
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Reminds me of the long-running British play called NO SEX, PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH!
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8/17/2008 2:17:20 AM
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natipal
Posts 665
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So much for going to Britain.
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8/17/2008 3:29:06 AM
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Dave_Truesdale
Posts 675
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Gardner saith: "STARLIGHT probably WAS the last major unthemed anthology, until the recent start-up of FAST FORWARD and ECLIPSE and THE SOLARIS BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION. Rumor has it that it didn't sell well either. Perhaps there IS something to the idea that readers find intriguing themes to be "sexier.""
I theorize that part of why STARLIGHT didn't sell all that well (from whatever the numbers were after the first one), was because, as you recall Gardner, folks were dismayed/put off (or whatever), that it was billed as SF. Folks bought it, found that it contained not (so) much of it, and lost interest. PNH even had to write the intro to the second volume explaining in greater detail, IIRC, what exactly STARLIGHT's philosophy was more specifically (he sorta backtracked, actually), such was the outcry about the misnomer. Didn't seem to matter. The (general) buying public (as opposed to the insular wannabe "hip" SF insiders), wasn't buying it, literally. They wanted _SF_ and didn't feel they were getting it, rightly or wrongly.
Another "experiment" that sounded good to the publisher (given the time, and ahem, who proposed it), and SF Literary Insiders, that didn't seem to resonate with the unwashed masses. Speaking only economically, natch, issues of "literary" merit totally aside.
Do I have the general gist of it somewhere in the ballpark, Gardner? :-)
Dave
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"When any category of science fiction has become dull and repetitive, there is always a brilliant story waiting to be written by giving up the assumptions that made the story easy to write." -- Damon Knight
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8/17/2008 5:26:57 AM
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mark-h
Posts 44
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Was PNH's philosophy so much different from Damon Knight's, Robert Silverberg's or Terry Carr's? All of them put off the general SF public?
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8/17/2008 10:06:41 AM
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Gordon Van Gelder
Posts 198
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Does anyone here know how well the ORBIT, NEW DIMENSIONS, or UNIVERSE anthologies sold? (Or, for that matter, Roy Torgeson's CHRYSALIS anthologies, or Roger Elwood's unthemed anthologies?) I don't know actual numbers, but my impression is that the market for unthemed anthologies has been pretty consistent from ORBIT 1 through the FULL SPECTRUM volumes and on to Jane Yolen's fantasy antho XANADU, PNH's STARLIGHT, and now the new crop of anthologies from Strahan, Anders, and Mann. And when I say it's consistent, I mean it's a steady but small market.
If you count it as an unthemed anthology, I suspect the biggest commercial success of the last decade in this category is Robert Silverberg's LEGENDS. Of course, it might be fair to call it themed since the book consists of novellas by established writers writing in their most popular worlds. The reader comments about it on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Legends-Stories-Masters-Modern-Fantasy/dp/0765300354/) are very telling---two of the first three commenters say they bought the book just for the Robert Jordan story.
---Gordon V.G.
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8/17/2008 2:16:50 PM
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gdozois
Posts 4314
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I don't think that ORBIT, NEW DIMENSIONS, and UNIVERSE really sold all that well, especially toward the end of their sequences, which is one reason why their publishers dropped them. Part of the reason, I think, is that as hardcover prices crept steadily up (all of them started out as mass-market paperbacks and converted to hardcovers after a few issues), it became harder to sell enough of them to cancel out the production costs (that may have been a factor in STARLIGHT too, along with what Dave mentioned--which could also apply to the old '70s series, particularly to ORBIT, which was running almost no real SF by the end of its run--and the fact that there were large gaps, of years, between the appearance of one volume and the appearance of the next volume).
I've thought for awhile now that hardcovers cost too much, particularly now, for a hardback original annual anthology series to be able to easily earn its operating costs back and stay solvent. Mass-market paperback, with its lower production costs, ought to work better, which might bode well for the SOLARIS BOOK OF SF. Trade paperback might work too, although it's dicier. One indication that this may be true is the old series STELLAR, edited by Judy-Lyn Del Rey, which I believe was operating in the black at a time when hardcover series such as ORBIT were dying, and which also made a point of running real center-core SF (it died with its editor; I don't think economics put it out of business).
The odds are probably stacked against the new series, though, unfortunately. Throughout the '80s and '90s, I can't think of one new unthemed original anthology series that managed to successfully establish itself--that was even true in fantasy, where several attempts to establishi original anthology series such as XANADU and OTHER EDENS died in spite of the fact that fantasy was booming at the time in novels.
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8/17/2008 4:47:25 PM
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Sam Wilson
Posts 1123
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...got my checkbook out right now to buy a hardcover copy of Gardner's Turnips and Paris Hilton sci fi antho...
--
If the rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
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8/17/2008 8:04:48 PM
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gdozois
Posts 4314
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Sam, how could you tell the difference? Except that one of them is richer.
I actually did two erotic horror anthologies in the '80s, KILLING ME SOFTLY and DYING FOR IT, but apparently neither the horror nor the erotica was extreme enough, because they weren't successful. I'm told that to be successful in that market, both the horror and the erotic elements have to be really gross and graphic, where the stories in my book for the most part were more like romantic ghost stories with a smattering of mildly explicit sex.
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8/17/2008 10:34:13 PM
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Ellen Datlow
Posts 117
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There have indeed been several non-themed anthologies of sf and fantasy published since Starlight: Firebirds and Firebirds Rising both from Viking; Salon Fantastique from Thunder's Mouth; and most recentlyThe Del Rey Book of SF&F. I don't know how the Firebird anthologies do but they pay at least as well as the magazines. SF has not done very well as far as I know, but since the book was orphaned before it came out and lives in the limbo of the Perseus debacle that's no real surprise. It paid better than the magazines. The Del Rey Book of SF&F has done very well and paid better than the magazines.
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8/17/2008 10:44:17 PM
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Ellen Datlow
Posts 117
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I was the one who initially brought up the topic for panels at two recent conventions: Readercon and Denvention, because as I've been allowed to edit unthemed anthologies in sf/f/h for the first time in my past 25+ years editing short fiction, I looked around and noticed that there were indeed more unthemed anthologies being published--by all kinds of presses. Fabrice, I don't understand why you dismiss smaller presses--this is new for them too and they're doing a great job of it. I don't have a clue to the sales figures for the Solaris, Nightshade, or Pyr titles but if they weren't making money or making a splash somehow, the publishers wouldn't be publishing them.
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8/18/2008 5:29:02 AM
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dolphintornsea
Posts 529
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All of this is a bit depressing. I actually prefer unthemed anthologies, and have bought about five of them for every themed anthology I've acquired. The trouble with themed anthologies is related to the nature of science fiction - the writing is so diverse, so far out, that you seldom feel that you actually are reading stories on the same theme. I prefer not to be burdened by any expectations, and to let the stories go wherever they like.
For example, I was looking at the TOC of The Best Time Travel Stories of the Twentieth Century yesterday, and it contains Robert Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium". But [SPOILER ALERT for those who haven't read this classic] ...
No one travels through time in that story! That's the sort of minor annoyance you have with themed anthologies. I think you'd enjoy that story more if you weren't told to expect time travel.
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8/18/2008 5:56:14 AM
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StevenLP
Posts 683
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The third volume ("Gateways to Forever") of Mike Ashley's History of SF Magazines has a chapter on the boom and bust of the 1970's original anthologies market.
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8/18/2008 8:08:52 PM
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Sam Wilson
Posts 1123
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Gardner, if you did that antho, think of the possibilities for the cover artist...Paris Hilton...turnip... My checkbook is out.
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If the rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
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9/23/2008 5:25:30 AM
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Marian
Posts 3065
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On small press anthologies, themed or unthemed, the big problem seems to be that of lack of publicity or name recognition. Once that gets solved, I suspect small presses will be the wave of the future because they can explore the odd corners the big publishers don't.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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