In which they do their very best to sabotage me, yet again...

[desperance]

Snarl.

There is this thing that happens, a few months before a book comes out: where early copies - ARCs, or sometimes bound typescripts, depending on schedules and costs and such - are sent out to Influential Persons (you know who you are) to elicit high praise and misdemeanours (such as blogging, early reviewing, the Provision of Quotes for the Cover etc).

Or sometimes, of course, it - um - just doesn't happen.

We did draw up a list. We did communicate about it. We did agree that what with time schedules etc it might be better to send out typescripts now than ARCs next month. All of that.

You know what? They never got sent.

Don't ask me why. It's just a part of the ongoing publishing conspiracy to fuck up my career, every chance they get. Which means, by definition, every book they get.

This isn't the worst, not quite, but it's a pretty good one. Here we are trying to relaunch me under a new name, new series; so hey, how's about if we just don't tell anyone it's happening, hide the book entirely, that'd be cool, huh? So then vol one just won't get noticed, which will automatically kill off vols two and three, and that's the new name dead just as the old one is, hee hee...

[Or, of course, there's that theory that says it's not a conspiracy, it's just a cock-up: but I do not believe in an industry that can cock things up quite so drastically and quite so often. How would it survive...? Nah, trust me: they're out to get me, that's all it is.]

*sulks*

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Bummer.

So tell me about the name change rationale and what the new name is? And was it your idea, your agent's or ylour publisher's?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The rationale is simply that my own name now carries an inescapable rep, "Chaz Brenchley? Writes good books that don't sell"; and the bookstores' computers know this, so no bookstore will stock me. Either side of the Atlantic. And man shall not live by special orders alone, you have to be out there on the shelves.

So, new name. Lots of people are doing it; Robin Hobb did it, eg. Rather successfully, in her case.

I am Completely Not Allowed to tell you what the new name is. (All I can do in lieu is to murmur vaguely in support of my good friend moshui, Daniel Fox to the hoi-polloi, who has a book coming out at the same time; if I can't yell about my own, I shall damn' well yell about his...)

I've been seeing the writing on the wall for ten years now; it's taken me that long to persuade publishers that it really would be a good idea, honest.

And now they've done their best to sabotage it from the get-go. Bastards.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Any chance of electronic ARCs?

[dedbutdrmng.livejournal.com]

If you do not buy Chaz Brenchley's books then you are mental.

That's my opinion as an official book reviewer and stuff.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It's a possible (but as it happens, I do know that you in fact do have an official ARC; it was in one of your boxes, you mentioned it in a list-post. It was the copies-for-blurbing that didn't get sent out...).

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.

[looks at stack speculatively]

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Wow. They'd better make up for this and increase the promotion budget.

Also, it sounds you caught it at the right time, but my, what a nightmare.

Hope the book will be a resounding success.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Sorry. Hope they can rectify things.

Signed,
a penname

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

They didn't send them out? That is just... W*nkers.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hint: you can confirm your guess with a glance at the copyright line, which has my name in error. They tell me that'll be corrected in the book, but at the moment I don't believe a word of it.

[triciasullivan.livejournal.com]

Grrrr....I am so angry on your behalf. Who can I smash?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Whoops!

I've had at least one book where they completely forgot to include any name for the author, which I think is worse.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thanks. Will you eventually be allowed to tell or will it remain a closely guarded secret.

Yes, Robin Hobb did it very well (though don't get me started on the Soldier Son trilogy!)

At some point you'll have to tell us which book we need to rush out and buy.
:-)

[pennski.livejournal.com]

"Never assign to a conspiracy that which can be explained by a cock-up"...or some such platitude.

Still, what idiots!