Presented without implied indorsement

[james_davis_nicoll]

Because I have no idea if the following is true or not.

David Drake on Robert Jordan

I'm inclined to be at least a little skeptical when he says I further said and will repeat: there were quite a lot of people who sneered at 'Robert Jordan' but whose own books wouldn't have been published without the Wheel of Time to subsidize them. Since the onset of Jim's (Jim Rigney's) illness, he hadn't been able to write--and a lot of those people are not being published any more.

The thing is, publishing is a horrible darwinian battleground, especially for writers, and over any given interval a large subset of mid-listers will find that their careers have come to an end. It wouldn't particularly surprise me if Tor's total number of titles per year stayed roughly constant at the same time that the mix of authors changed.

[Added later: titles per year should be easy enough to check. More later]

Comments

[tandw.livejournal.com]

...I'm inclined to be at least a little skeptical...

The subsidy argument, I could buy--IIRC, many years ago Donald Wollheim was asked at a WisCon why he published the Gor books. He claimed in response that they sold Really, Really Well, and w/o that revenue stream he wouldn't have been able to take a chance on a lot of other authors (Doris Piserchia and Jo Clayton are the only ones who spring to mind, although CJ Cherryh may have been a DAW find).

What I have a lot more trouble with is the comment that

...the plots for individual volumes were decided by very highly placed people in council with the author.

That one looks like a pretty extraordinary claim, and I'd expect more proof than a comment by David Drake (even though he'd be far more likely to know about something like that than I am).

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

CJ Cherryh definitely got her start at DAW. The final H on her pen-name was to keep it from sounding too "girly".

Wollheim published a lot of stuff that wasn't terribly profitable. As I recall, the translated foreign words would be an example.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

That makes sense--"Caroline Cherry" sounds like a Harlequin Romance house pseudonym.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

...the plots for individual volumes were decided by very highly placed people in council with the author.
That one looks like a pretty extraordinary claim, and I'd expect more proof than a comment by David Drake

Could it be some sort of bizarro take on "author's spouse, acknowledged as author's most influential first reader, also happens to have professional connection with author's publisher" ? I know nothing about David Drake and can't judge whether this would be plausible from him.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about Drake as a person (I don't even know if he knew Rigney personally) but I believe that in the past published authors have from time to time been less than fully informed about the minutia of the publishing business. It wouldn't violate the laws of nature of Drake was incorrect.

I am fairly certain [1] that Drake and Jordan had different editors, FWIW.


1: I need an icon for "I may have no idea what I am talking about".

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Hartwell edits Drake, no?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I don't recall.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Googling suggests that this is the case.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes; I can attest to this directly, having worked with both of them on a book. (I wrote jacket copy for one of Drake's novels during my short career writing jacket copy.)

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Having learned that this is true, I now wonder why I knew it. It doesn't seem like information that's likely to be of direct use to me, or the sort of thing you'd just pick up in the normal course of existence...

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

Jordan's editor was Harriet McDougal, his wife, and she didn't edit anybody else once she married him and moved south...so Jordan and anybody else (post 1991 or whatever) are guaranteed to have different editors.

From reports I got around the time of the publication of the last several books (which may or may not be completely accurate), the folks at Tor had no real idea what was going to be in Jordan's books until they were delivered. The books came in, in essentially final form, went into a lightning round of copyediting, and were shoved out into stores about as quickly as humanly possible.

I'm skeptical of Drake's claim, and posted about it in rasfw. But he may have inside information, so I won't be dogmatic on the subject. It is possible that Jordan talked regularly to Tom Doherty, and Doherty had some influence on plots...but I still doubt he would have told Jordan to deliberately slow the books down; Tom's a guy who loves and appreciates good books, and I can't see him making something worse on purpose.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

It could just be that he discussed plots with the publisher before starting to write each book. That's not remarkable.

I'm reminded of Vernor Vinge's comments about how Deepness was essentially completely rewritten based on the advice of his editor.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

But there's a big difference between rewriting a single book based on editor's advice and the publisher telling the author to put in additional books because the series is selling so well. That's what I have trouble believing.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

That's an overstatement of what Vinge said at Lunacon, and according to Frenkel is an overstatement period. Vinge is obviously very pleased with Frenkel's editorial oversight, though--he has followed Jim from publisher to publisher and does, as you say, speak very highly of his input into the novels.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but the claim that books were expanded into several at the publisher's request solely to pad sales. It seems discourteous, at least, to a recently-dead author to say this.

[kate_nepveu]

At least.

I also find it very hard to believe of Tor.