Journal Entry
Arctic Rising
So a few sharp eyed folks noticed the title of the novel I was working on, Arctic Rising, is not the title of the novel I’d previously mentioned as coming up next, which was Duppy Conqueror.
Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose were three books loosely related to each other, set in what I call ‘The Xenowealth’ (the reasoning is explained at the end of Sly Mongoose).
Sadly, the sales have not been as strong as everyone around me wanted. Crystal Rain did somewhat okay in hardcover in libraries and online sales, but not as much on the book shelves (particularly at Borders). It did get Wal-Mart distribution in paperback, however, which was nice. Ragamuffin, sadly, suffered from very low orders (almost no presence in Borders in hardcover) and limped out there. Sly Mongoose was a nice rebound in the big picture, selling more copies than Ragamuffin but not quite as much as Crystal Rain: but mostly online. Sly Mongoose was hardly carried in actual bookstores, but has sold fairly briskly online. Last checked, I think over 60% of sales have been online with Sly.
It’s been a symptom of: bookstores order 100, sell 50, then order 50 the next time, and sell 25, and then for the third book order 12.
Sly Mongoose got incredible reviewer love, my agent and editor both are happy with everything I’ve done. About half or more of my income, despite the slowing bookstore orders, still comes from writing novels. So I’ve been pretty chipper. But as I finished the Halo book and looked back at restarting Duppy Conqueror, which I have somewhere between 10-20,000 words of, my editor and I sat down to chart out what we could do to get bookstores re-interested in me (particularly now that I had NY Bestseller next to my name with the Halo novel).
So my editor, agent and I, decided to reboot. We didn’t want to change my name (this is usually what authors do at this point to ‘fool’ the bookstores, often quite successfully), but send a signal with whatever I work on next that I’m doing something different, that is not associated with the Space Opera series to see if we can dream a bit bigger and go for the brass ring. I had two novels I owe Tor still, so why not?
So last month, before I flew out to New York, and after my health excitement in November/December was over, I came up with two proposals to show my editor.
We settled on Arctic Rising. Since writing Mitigation (soon to be in one of the Year’s Best anthologies) with Karl Schroeder and Stochasticity for Metatropolis, I’ve wanted to write some nearer future stuff that took advantage of a great deal of research I’ve been doing. Arctic Rising, if you’re read Mitigation, will be very familiar. It’s a novel about the resource rush to develop the north polar region after the ice melts.
And yes, there will be blimps.
I’m playing with ideas about seasteading, climate adaptation and mitigation, re-terraforming, future politics, post-democratic tribalism and feretting out really cool ways to blow shit up in the 30-50 year timeline.
This will most likely be out in 2010, not 2009. But both my agent and editor think it’s pretty groovy, though all I gave them was a fairly odd first chapter (since ditched as I found my bearings) and the pitch.
I’ve described it to my friends as “if Michael Chricton was on crack and hadn’t disbelieved in the concept of global warming, and he collaborated with Bruce Sterling at the height of cyberpunk, you’d get Arctic Rising.”
So far, 6 chapters in, it’s been a great deal of fun to write. And seeing how Sly Mongoose was this much fun to write, it looks like it may be an interesting book.
As for Duppy Conqueror and Desolation’s Gap, they’re both plotted out in fair detail. I may one day get back to them, but for the immediate future they’re on hold. I was happy with the money they were making me and the direction and fun of the Space Opera, and I hope everyone will be willing to follow me into the nearer future anyway.
And who knows, there may be other opportunities to still finish the Xenowealth books, so don’t give up hope!
Filed under the topic Journal on March 19th 2009 at 2:34 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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Tobias is a Caribbean-born SF/F novelist who lives in Ohio.
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Coming Soon
# Arctic Rising – Tor Books (Feb. 2012)
# The Rydr Express – The New Hero II (TBD, 2012)
# A Tinker of Warhoon – Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (February, 2012)
# Jungle Walkers – Armored (2012)
In Progress:
-untitled for Fireside Magazine (outlining)
-novelette Seafarer for TBA (~92%)
# The Trove (~40% complete)
# The Apocalypse Ocean (~31%)
more at my bibliography
Free Fiction
Novels
Read the first 1/3 free of:
-Crystal Rain: First 1/3 [RTF]
-Ragamuffin-First 1/3 [RTF]
-Sly Mongoose-First 1/3 [RTF]
Short Stories
Toy Planes
The Fish Merchant [pdf]
Her
The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)
Necahual
Four Eyes
Aerophilia
Shoah Sry (with Ilsa J. Bick [pdf]
Audio
1. Mark Terry on Mar 19th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I read a book for the Thriller Award titled: Antarktos Rising. Just FYI. (And I’d call it SF, too).
2. Mark Terry on Mar 19th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
By the way, and feel free to answer offline if you want to answer at all if you’re more comfy, but despite the sales figures Tor was still interested in you? I say this, as you know, as an author whose last publisher dropped me like a hot potato when sales figures didn’t meet their expectations.
3. Tobias Buckell on Mar 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Well, Arctic Rising is coming out from Tor in 2010
As I mentioned, I’m still making half my income off the novels, so it hasn’t been a complete dwindle, but it’s clear that the bookstores really aren’t interested anymore. So I could comfortably keep that 60% fanbase that buys a couple thousand hardcovers of my Space Operas no matter what and try and grow that, but the big money/growth is in bookstore sales still (e-sales/online sales are still not as big, no matter how much energy everyone expends on it).
I daydream about a medium sized press offering to continue Duppy Conqueror, b/c I know we can move 2-3,000 hardcovers of it with minimal bookstore presence, and I’m willing to bet *someone* could make that worth both our whiles who’s nimble and lean, but Tor would like more out of me, so I’m willing to try (maybe it’ll bring in more sales). I have 2 books on contract, so it’s worth trying
4. Joey on Mar 19th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
A shame about The Xenowealth sequence. I would’ve thought the Halo success would boost sales for the next book, whatever it would be. I’m glad you’re having fun writing the new book.
5. Hugh Staples on Mar 19th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
That 60% of your sales for Sly Mongoose were online doesn’t surprise me. I’m finding increasingly that the books I want to buy, aren’t being carried by Borders, and often not by Barnes and Noble, either. None of the Borders or B&N’s in the Cincinnati area are carrying Allen Steele’s latest book in the Coyote series, Coyote Frontier, for example, despite Allen being an established author and Coyote being a fairly successful series (of course, I don’t have access to sales figures, so it may not have been as successful as I think, particularly in the brick-and-mortars).
I’ve bought some of your books from Amazon, and I’m fine with continuing to do so if necessary. I figure you get the same royalty either way.
To the bookstores I can only say: Dudes. If you don’t sell what I want to buy, I can’t give you my money. And whatever you don’t have, Amazon generally does. For less.
6. Steve Buchheit on Mar 19th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Remember when computers were meant to serve us (and were fast)?
It seems strange that the computer models for bookstore don’t incorporate total sales in all markets, instead of just the individual book chain the program runs for, when deciding what to buy and how much. You know, like if the bookstores were in, I don’t know, actual competition with each other and trying to out do each other instead of having a race to the bottom line. You know, like business used to be run before MBA’s ruled the land.
7. Emily on Mar 19th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Aw, I was looking forward to the next one! I just bought Ragamuffin in a Barnes & Noble (though they had to order it for me), and will be buying the other two as soon as I can scrape together the money. I’ll make sure to get them at a physical store too, so that little bit will count.
Arctic Rising sounds great too, though.
8. Rob on Mar 20th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Speaking of Ragamuffin, any idea if Tor will be releasing the ebook version anytime in the next few years?
Congratulations on the nomination for Metatropolis, I really enjoyed listening to it on a recent trip.
9. Fred Kiesche on Mar 21st, 2009 at 7:26 am
“…if Michael Chricton…”
I’m not sure if you meant to spell it that way!
Anyway, on “Rising”, there will be blimps, cool! But what about spaaaaaccceeee zombies? Or at least, Space Bat?
I hope you return to “Xenowealth”. Because that is what got me interested in your books!
10. Fred Kiesche on Mar 21st, 2009 at 7:28 am
Hmmmm…here’s a thought. Keep working on those two books. Put up drafts/completed chapters on a sub-section of the site. Keep the buzz moving. If it worked for that Scalzi fella…
And that way, you can continue to feed our addiction.
11. Wyman Cooke on Mar 21st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Toby, have you considered alternating? Have the next book be a Xenowealth novel, and then the next novel be something else?
12. Berry on Mar 22nd, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Well, the sales news re: the Xenowealth books frankly stinks. I have only a few pages left on Sly Mongoose and will end up getting Crystal Rain when I get paid in a week and a half.
I’ve been digging more and more on near-future science fiction, so I’m definitely interested in the new books.
RE: “I’m playing with ideas about seasteading, climate adaptation and mitigation, re-terraforming, future politics, post-democratic tribalism and feretting out really cool ways to blow shit up in the 30-50 year timeline.”
Dude, I’m there!
13. M. Thyer on Mar 22nd, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I’m about 2/3rds of the way through Raggamuffin and read/listened to Sly Mongoose before this. Crystal Rain is sitting in the stack on the night stand. Let me first say that I really enjoy this series and am glad that you spent the time necessary to produce it.
That said, let me say I’m glad you’re getting pushed toward a different universe. Your contribution to METAtropolis was (drum roll please) the best! Seriously, I enjoyed the other shorts in the audtio book, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed your contribution. I’ve been poking at John Scalzi to start organizing the next one and I sincerely hope you’ll have something new to contribute.
Anyway that’s my 2¢ on the topic …
14. Brenda Cooper on Mar 25th, 2009 at 9:51 am
I think you are not entirely alone in strange sales numbers – although I haven’t seen any proof, my first book was gangbusters good sales for what it was and the hardback on number two was skipped at Borders, so I’m finger-crossing on the mass market. There may be a few of us in the boat of writing new things while trying to maintain interest in our first series. I don’t think it’s us (I loved Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin). I think it’s the times. I’ve also noticed way less shelf space for far future sf of any kind.
I’m looking forward to Arctic Rising. I’m sure it will be wonderful.