FAQ 3: Random Questions
This is the former "SFBC FAQ," but I've added FAQ 1: About the SFBC Blog and FAQ 2: About the Science Fiction Book Club, so this collection of questions is now #3. It's intended to be perpetually a work in progress, so please do leave any other questions in the comments.
1. How do I let the SFBC know that I want to see a specific book in the club?A: You can write to us at sfbceditors@sfbc.com, about that or about anything else you'd like to tell the editors. I keep a very long list of books requested by members, mostly from e-mails, and we regularly use that list to plan our "Collector's Corner" features.
We're more likely to check out a book the more people ask us about it, and requests are generally more effective on classics than on current books (since we're already looking at those). But there are several series that we started to take seriously because members kept bugging us about them, and we do read and keep track of all requests.1a. When will you offer Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?
A: I'm afraid the SFBC's parent company hasn't yet been able to make any deal with Scholastic, that book's publisher. Until such a deal is made -- and there's no guarantee that it ever will -- we can't offer that book to our members. This is all taking place on a rarefied plane far above me, but I believe we're still trying.
Update, 3/1: Still no news on Half-Blood Prince, and I'm afraid all of the above applies to Deathly Hallows as well. I don't know exactly what negotations are going on, but my hopes are not high.1b. When will you offer Chainfire by Terry Goodkind? (And how about Phantom, too?)
A: We made what we thought was a good and reasonable offer to Terry Goodkind's publisher, but we weren't able to come to an agreement on those books. There is one final book planned in that series, and we hope to make a new offer for the last three books then -- but it's quite possible that offer will also be rejected.2. Are you going to offer e-books?
A: We don't have any plans to do so at the moment. It seems like a very SFnal idea, so it would be a nice thing to do. Unfortunately, e-books are still a small, fragmented market, and we don't have the rights to do bookclub books in electronic form without paying more money to their original publishers. So offering e-books would mean starting up a whole new line of business, which we're not ready to do just now.3. I just wrote a novel. Will you look at it for the SFBC?
A: We are happy to consider any book professionally published in the US or Canada, but we do not consider self-published or vanity published books. We do very little original publishing, and all of it is commissioned; we do not read unpublished works.If you are a publisher who would like to submit books for consideration, please query me at sfbceditors@sfbc.com, and I'll give you our guidelines.
4. Are SFBC books exactly the same as the ones I'd buy in a bookstore?A. Yes and no.
The text is identical; we don't abridge or alter the original text in any way. But the physical book itself is often printed and bound in a smaller size; bookclub editions are more likely to be about 5" x 8", while publisher's editions are more usually 6" x 9". We also regularly eliminate foil, embossing, and other cover gewgaws that are designed to grab a reader's eye in a bookstore, since we don't sell through bookstores.And we also regularly do omnibus editions, or hardcover editions of original publisher's paperbacks, which are quite physically different from the original books.
We sometimes reset the publisher's text, but we generally try not to in most cases, since that's costly and often introduces new errors into the text. We do mostly get electronic materials from publishers, and can sometimes reformat those to fit our specifications. We also photographically reduce page size much of the time.5. I vaguely remember an old SF story. Can I tell you about it and have you figure out what it is?
A. Sometimes we might be able to work out the story you're trying to remember, but there are only a couple of us here. A much better bet is to post such requests to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, where there are many more people and such requests are regularly seen and answered. (If you've never accessed Usenet directly, you might find it easier to use the Google Groups interface at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written?hl=en.)6. I am outraged that Author X has done this! You must stop this immediately and tell that author to go back to the stuff I like better!
A: I'm afraid that we don't have any control over what authors write, and fairly little direct contact with authors. We see books after they are written, and decide then whether or not to offer them to our members.If you want to complain about the direction of a series, or a change in your favorite author's writing style, you'd be much better off writing to the original publisher of that book, or to the author directly.
7. I am outraged that the club is offering Book Y! It is written by an author I despise, or is in a sub-genre I can't stand. I demand that the club never offer any more books like this, and concentrate only on the things I like!A: The SFBC covers the whole spectrum of speculative fiction, from elfy-welfy epic fantasy to blood-soaked military SF. There's no one here who loves all of the things we offer, so we certainly don't expect the members to enjoy everything equally. But all of the books we offer do have their devoted fans, and we try to have books that all of you will enjoy.
If you're not seeing the books that you'd like to see, it's much more constructive to write to us (at sfbceditors@sfbc.com) to ask about the books you want than to write and complain about the books you don't want. (Though I do appreciate that the latter can be more psychologically satisfying.)Reposted 4/2/07 at 1:28 PM.