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A Collection of Sizemore Fiction — Thoughts and Possiblities
An odd thing is happening.
I’ve had two different small press publishing houses query me for a short story collection. I find this to be amusing, considering I haven’t written anything new in nearly two years. It is gratifying to be asked, for sure, but frustrating at the same time. A guy drowns the internet promoting his publishing company for years and years to mixed success (okay, two Hugo Award nominations are nice…), and yet it is my little read short fiction that draws the most attention.
Of course, if I do go forward with a Sizemore collection of short fiction, then I would need To Do Things. Stuff like maintain this blog. Actually post to it on a regular basis. Instead of spending 100% of my energy promoting Apex titles, some of that effort will need to go toward promoting my book. Also, I would need to find the time to write several new stories to include in the collection.
Another publishing option that many friends in the publishing business have advocated is that I self-publish a Sizemore collection via Apex. This appeals to me as a sound financial strategy.
You can tell I’m waffling and stalling, mostly because I’m not sure what the right play here is. What do my small cadre of readers think?
Would you buy a collection of Sizemore fiction? The last thing I want this to be is an exercise in futility.
7 responses to “A Collection of Sizemore Fiction — Thoughts and Possiblities”
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I would buy a collection of your fiction, absolutely.
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I’d buy. 🙂
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I think a collection of yours would obviously sell. The harder question is whether you should publish it with Apex or someone else. The advantage to publishing with Apex is that you know and like your team and how they work or, obviously, they wouldn’t work for you. So, you have no question that the book would be handled how you wanted.
But publishing with someone else has two advantages as well, one minor, one maybe major. The minor advantage is that it might be cool to go through someone else’s publishing process just to see what you might crib from them for Apex (“Oh, they send out all their review copies with chocolate! We should do that.” or something.).
The other advantage it may give you is when it comes down to getting reviews and publicity. I know over here in the university press world, it’s hard to get media attention for books that it seems like the Press has to publish–for instance, if we did a collection of all the speeches given by our faculty at the Chancellor’s birthday celebration, no matter how good those speeches were, no one’s going to review the book.
It may be different in your world. But that would be my concern. If you publish it yourself, are you lessening the chances for people who don’t know you to hear about it? How would your potential reviewers perceive it if Apex published it?
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I would buy it, Jason, but I would be more likely to buy an ebook version than a paper version these days.
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What Betsy said.
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Well, you *know* if you did it through Apex, I’d be happy to format it for you, though it could be cool to go through somebody else, depending on who that somebody else is, what their rights requests are, payment offerings, etc. At first, reading this, I thought “hmm, yeah, maybe not through Apex” but then I thought about it, and Kelly Link didn’t seem to have any trouble with her collection through Small Beer Press getting reviewed and highly regarded, so maybe it’s becoming more of a moot point whether or not you’re involved in the small press that publishes you.
And yeah, I’d totally buy a copy. Print for me, though, because I’d want to badger you to sign it. 🙂
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Go for it! Apex will still be here when you get back.
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