An interview with yours truly has just been posted on the Fantasy Literature site...

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/author-interviews/ian-whates/

Good Lord, reading through it, I almost sound interesting!   

Congratulations to all involved!   

I'm delighted to say that no fewer than seven stories from the NewCon Press all-new vampire anthology The Bitten Word have shared the same honour... so congratualtions to the following as well:

Brenchley, Chaz “Hothouse Flowers,” The Bitten Word.
Constantine, Storm “Where the Vampires Live,” The Bitten Word.
Hook, Andrew “Red or White” The Bitten Word.
Kilpatrick, Nancy “Traditions in Future Perfect,” The Bitten Word.
Martin, Gail Z. “Vanities,” The Bitten Word
McMahon, Gary “Thos Damned Kids,” The Bitten Word
Scott, Donna “Lord of the Lyceum,” The Bitten Word
Stone, Sam “Fool’s Gold,” The Bitten Word

Pricing books is always a toughie.

The majority of NewCon Press anthologies (I'm not including the novels and novellas in this) released over the past three years have contained 75,000 to 100,000 words of fiction and been priced at £9.99 for the paperbacks, £18.99 for the signed limited edition hardbacks.  An exception to this is The Bitten Word, launched at World Horror Con in Brighton.  The largest book to date, the limited edition hardback includes Les Edwards' back cover art as a colour plate inside, a bonus story from Ian Watson, and two bespoke pages of signatures from all eighteen authors (Kelley Armstrong, Tanith Lee, Simon Clark, Storm Constantine, Freda Warrington, Jon Courtenay-Grimwood, Chaz Brenchley, Nancy Kilpatrick, Gail Z Martin, etc).  For this I bumped the price up to £32.00. 

Sounds a lot, but bear with me.  With all the extras in the book, and the need to post signing sheets out to Canada, the USA etc and back, each of the 150 hardbacks cost me around £13.50 to produce. The majority of books sell through trade; either to specialist dealers or to wholesalers such as Gardners and Bertrams.  By the time you take trade discount into account and the postage costs (which I have to cover) I clear around £15.00 a book.   Not exactly a huge return for the months of blood, sweat, cajoling and editing I invested in its compilation and production.  When I then sell the book at conventions, I've always discounted heavily, so that the con goer doesn't have to bear the full brunt of the 'margin' I've had to build into the price to cover trade.

At the other end of the scale, the Anniversaries anthology, launched last May, with original stories from Juliet McKenna, Liz Williams, Chaz Brenchley, Freda Warrington, Kari Sperring etc, was intended to promote The Write Fantastic.  As such the paperback is only £6.99 and the hardback £15.00.

So please don't think that all small presses are out there to fleece the average reader or even the collector for all we can get, or that an apparently high cover price automatically means vast profits for the publisher.

I wish!   
 

[Shoes, Ships and Cadavers: Tales from North Londonshire]

Shoes, Ships and Cadavers:  Tales from North Londonshire

The latest NewCon Press anthology has just gone to print and will be launched at Newcon 5 on October 9th.  The book features all original stories from the members of the Northampton Science Fiction Group, plus an extensive introduction by Alan Moore.

The twelve stories include science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror, and are all set in Northampton and its surrounds.

Northampton:
A town that sits at the heart of England.  A town that has played host to kings, saints, parliament, public hangings, and hot air balloons.  A place steeped in history, laden with mystery, and bursting with wonders just waiting to be realised.

Let us be your guides...

Available as a limited edition (of just 50) dust-jacketed hardback, and an A5 sized paperback.
12 stories, 256 pages, 80,000 words of intrigue, humour, magic, terror and conjecture.

Paperback edition:     £9.99    (ISBN:  978-1-907069-18-5)
Hardback edition:    £15.99    (ISBN:  978-1-907069-16-1)

Available to pre-order at:  www.newconpress.co.uk

Full contents: 

1.   Introduction – Alan Moore
2.   A Walk of Solace with my Dead Baby – Ian Watson
3.   Lifeline – Susan Sinclair
4.   These Boots weren’t Made for Walking – Ian Whates
5.   Mano Mart – Andy West
6.   What we Sometimes do without Thinking – Mark West
7.   Arthur the Witch – Donna Scott
8.   Goethe’s Wig – Steve Longworth
9.   The Old Man of Northampton and the Sea – Sarah Pinborough
10.   The Last Economy – Paul Melhuish
11.   Hanging Around – Neil K Bond
12.   I Won the Earth Evacuation Lottery – Tim Taylor
13.   The Tower – Nigel Edwards
14.   About the Authors

After its first bad (actually, scathing) review a week or so ago, The Noise Within has just received another glowing one:

http://www.walkerofworlds.com/2010/07/review-noise-within-by-ian-whates.html

I think that makes it:

13 good to enthusiastically glowing reviews
3 balanced but still marginally positive
1 truly awful review

I can live with that sort of split!   

A great review of my latest novel, The Noise Within, has been posted here:

http://speculativebookreview.blogspot.com/2010/06/review-noise-within-by-ian-whates.html

"The Noise Within is one of the best sci-fi books that I've read in recent years. It ticked all the boxes for me and left me looking forward to the next installment. I'm expecting great things from this space opera series."

Good Lord, is that really my book she's talking about??!?   

I have to confess that some of the comments made in this thread puzzle me a little.

I'm a member of the BFS (unless my subs are overdue again!).

I regularly sell books as a small press publisher at Fantasycon.  In order to do so, I pay my membership to the convention and then pay for a dealers' table.  Forgive me, but, having done those things, I then feel I've earned the right to sell books there. 

I don't feel obliged to join the BFS from a sense of gratitude at their allowing me to sell those books (particularly after I've paid to do so).

I'm a member of the BFS because I choose to be, because I want to support an organisation that supports the cause of genre fiction in the UK.  Obligation doesn't come into it. 

Two more authors have been added to the Forbidden Planet signing event this Thursday (22nd April):

Chris Beckett and Chaz Brenchley.

Just to alert anyone who might be interested that there's to be a massed signing event at the Forbidden Planet store in Shaftesbury Avenue, featuring many of the authors from the two latest NewCon Press anthologies, namely:

Conflicts:
Keith Brooke
Eric Brown
David L Clements
Andy Remic
Rosanne Robinowitz

The Bitten Word
Kari Sperring
Sarah Singleton
Sam Stone
Ian Watson
Ian Whates

This will be late afternoon (5pm til 7.00pm) on Thursday May 22nd, all are welcome (Hopefully someone will turn up, or it's going to be a very lonely session... I mean, I don't want to spend a couple of hours talking to these guys; I know them already!)

Full details can be found here: http://www.brokenfrontier.com/headlines/p/detail/forbidden-planet-hosts-newcon-press

Thanks again, Ally...

My word, you have been busy!   

Thanks for posting that, Ally!

Never have mastered the art of importiing images into these 'ere boards.

Vincent who...?   

Hi, Vinny,

The book looks fabulous.

Blimey, somebody seems to like my book... who'd have thunk it?

Just stumbled on the following review of my debut novel, City of Dreams and Nightmare, which was only released on March 4th. Quick work, and not at all bad for a first review.

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2010/03/city-of-dreams-nightmare-by-ian-whates.html

[City of 100 Rows]

Always feels a little weird writing about myself... far less room to make things up!

Okay, I've been a fan of fantasy and science fiction forever and am delighted to now be writing about such things as well as reading about them. 

To date I've had some 40 short stories published in a variety of magazines, webzines and anthologies, including two in the science journal Nature, one in Beneath the Surface 2, a collection shortlisted for a Bram Stoke Award, and two -- "The Gift of Joy" and "The Assistant" -- shortlisted for Best Short Story in the BSFA Awards (2008 and 2010).  Many of these stories are collected in The Gift of Joy (2009).
http://www.newconpress.co.uk/BookDetail/tabid/57/ProdID/4/RtnTab/70/PageIndex/1/CatID/-1/Default.aspx

My debut novel, City of Dreams and Nightmare, was published by Harper Collins' imprint Angry Robot on March 4th 2010 (UK & Australia), August 2010 (USA).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/City-Dreams-Nightmare-Ian-Whates/dp/0007345240/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267977869&sr=1-1

I'm currently dividing my time between writing two novel sequences; the 'City of 100 Rows'  books are urban fantasy with steampunk overtones, while the 'Noise' series, published by Solaris, are space opera with a twist.

The current publishing schedule for these runs as follows:

City of 100 Rows (Angry Robot)
City of Dreams and Nightmare (March 2010)
City of Hope and Despair (September 2010)
City of Light and Shadow (2011)

The Noise Series (Solaris)
The Noise Within (May 2010)
The Noise Revealed (May 2011)

In between writing, I also edit books, including The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (co-edited with Ian Watson) for Constable and Robinson, and I edit and publish books (primarily anthologies though I've been branching out lately) via my own small publishing house NewCon Press, which I established in 2006 because of my love of short stories and genre fiction in general.

To date, NewCon Press titles and their contents have won 4 BSFA Awards, 1 BFS Award, have been collected in 'Year's Best' anthologies for SF (edited by Gardner Dozois) and horror (edited by Steve Jones), and gained honourable mentions in 'Years Best' books, plus 4 recommendations from Locus Magazine as among the 'Best of the Year'.  Not bad for a sideline!

www.ianwhates.com
www.newconpress.co.uk

Hi, All,

I've just discovered that those nice people at Harper Collins' imprint Angry Robot have made the opening chapter of my debut novel, City of Dreams and Nightmare, available online.  This is urban fantasy with heavy steampunk overtones, and is set for release in March:

http://angryrobotbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CityOfDreamsNightmare-samplechapter.pdf

Thanks... sidles off into a corner feeling simultaneously embarassed and thrilled as hell!