Road Trip Update

[kinzel]

Dear Friends of Liad and all the ships in space...

As many of you know I left Maine last week on a sudden trip south.

While going south in-and-of itself can be fun and interesting, this
trip was pretty much a dash-in, dash-out surgical-strike situation,
with me arriving at the Atlanta AMTRAK station just before 9 AM on
Thursday and being on the way out of town by 2:09 PM in a rental
truck loaded with books.

In the interim, I visited briefly with FoL nlbarber who did
yeoman's duty picking me up at the AMTRAK station and delivering me
to the Budget rent-a-truck place and helped me with the pre-trip
check of the truck as well. She pointed out the great big rock that
is Stone Mountain, let me visit with her crew for a cat-fix after my time
on the train, and even waited patiently with me while the clerk at the
rental place flirted with a customer.

Nancy and I parted at just before 11 AM and then I was on my way to
Meisha Merlin world headquarters in Stone Mountain proper, where
Stephe Pagel and I (but mostly Stephe) loaded the Budgetmobile with
about a ton or so of books, a few posters, and some Balance of Trade
postcards.

I spent the next couple days on the road and have arrived home in
time to unload the truck just ahead of the storm that was already
dropping snow, ice, and rain on Western portions of the state.
That developed into three or four inches of snow, and on the
overnight gave way to rain. Locally there are flood warnings and watches;
I'm rushing this... on account of we're expecting more power outages.

More on the trip:

It was good to see Stephe Pagel, but it marked quite a sad moment for us.
Given the distribution issues Meisha Merlin has suffered through over the
last few years we have, with sorrow, come to an agreement not to publish
MM editions of Web of The Trident and the scheduled follow-on to Balance
of Trade. Neither of these books exist, and at the moment, neither are
contracted for. Our agent is exploring options.

For now we probably have as many questions as you about what will
be happening over the next year or so with the Liaden Universe(R). Again,
our agent will help determine what happens when. For the meantime, we're
working with Fledgling as part of our own Liaden fix, and we're working on
the Liaden Universe Companion, Volume 2, as well. And it's not that we're
slacking off, since we're also doing the Webscription thing with Baen
books, and of course we're also going to be doing the two volume Duainfey
with Baen.

When we have news, we'll get it to you. If you still want to help
with the road trip as seen on Sharon's blog, by ordering a road-trip signed
copy of the new edition of Partners of Necessity direct from us
please do -- we'll let that stay in force until this afternoon,
or by special request this week.

We're still taking trip jar
donations as well. A comment on that trip jar -- donations to
the trip jar helped me pay for my rail accommodations on the way
to Atlanta. I slept well on the train and was wide awake and alert
for the Meisha Merlin meeting and for the start of the drive back,
which I think would not have been the case if I'd have had to sleep
in coach. Thank you!

And oh yes, at this point, you can do best by us by getting your
Lee & Miller books from the science fiction specialty stores
like Uncle Hugo's, The Missing Volume, Pandemonium Books, Larry Smith
(at conventions) or direct from us. Sometime this week I'll have a
list of the MM books we'll have available direct...it'll
probably be on the SRM catalog but we need to check with
the accountant to see how we need to work that.

And so sometimes there really is journey in journeyman.

Comments

[otaku-tetsuko.livejournal.com]

SOOO glad to see you home safe! Were you able to return the truck before it got ugly, or are you stuck with paying further rental?

The news about Meisha Merlin is sad indeed, although oddly comforting to think it might be the publisher's problems that kept the sequel to Cats in Cyberspace from coming out, rather than something with the author or the book itself.

I'm sure you'll find a new home quickly--MM proved to the publishing world that you are, too, a viable property, and although the larger houses can be cavalier in their treatment, at least the books DO get out!

Sending all kinds of good wishes and thoughts in your direction--hunker down with something hot to drink and...oh, I don't know...write, maybe? (Hint, hint).

HUGS!
Sarge

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Glad you beat the storm.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Me too, you betcha

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Home again, home again. Warm and safe and dry.

I await the reading of more book and MM news. Shows how clueless and out of the loop I am, I thought their distribution troubles had gone away after signing up with comic book distributor people (whose name escapes me at the moment, but I think you know who I mean).

[clarkesworld.livejournal.com]

That would be Diamond.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Right. Diamond. Thanks, Neil.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Well... we kept hearing from people that they couldn't find our books, and then there was the problem last year where it seemed to take a full three months for Crystal Dragon to roll out across the country ... that was our first MM release in years to miss hitting the Locus bestseller list.

Distribution seems to be the stumbling block for many of the smaller houses...

[clarkesworld.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you made it home safely and ahead of the worst of the storm.

-Neil

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. I can't say enough about how well the truck ran; with a second driver I could easily have been across country by now!

They key, of course was watching the weather. It was a shame not to get to tarry in the spring weather at all, but most of the driving was in sun or mostly sunny, and traffic was great except for about an hour Friday approaching the Harrisburg merge zone at rush hour...

I'm really glad not to be driving in what's happening right now!

[clarkesworld.livejournal.com]

Hitting only one hour of traffic on that trip is quite impressive. Definitely a good thing you aren't out today. My regular one-hour commute this morning was a time consuming series of detours around flooded sections of NJ. I should have stayed home. It's just getting worse.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Okay, so - this was the Bad Thing? And the Bad Thing was that you guys are parting ways with Meisha Merlin and you had to go get a truckload of your books from them?

I'm not sure if I have this straight so I'm trying to understand.

Does this mean that trade paperbacks are less likely in the future? (I can hope for a silver lining, right?)

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

There's depth.

We're basically out a publisher we've been dealing with for about a decade, out scheduled books, out the time it took to get there and back, out the credit card bills it took to make trip, out knowing how our readers will be able to get our books (besides the ones we have on hand) and most likely out things like NASFIC, World Fantasy... and beyond that there's depth we haven't mentioned.

So yes, this is the bad thing.

[(Anonymous)]

So is Meisha Merlin out of business, as has been rumored since a week ago?

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing they were going of of business since about the week we first signed with them in the late 90s, so this is not for me to say. All I can say with specificity is that they are not going to be publishing any more of our books.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you all. And I'll try and see if I have room on my shelves for any more Liaden books.
I hope Ace is still treating you guys okay in the meantime.

[aitchellsee.livejournal.com]

Sorry to see that my intuition as to the nature of the bad thing (based on the existence of the road trip) turn out to be correct. I join with your other readers, friends and F's-of-L in hoping that a new publisher comes along soonest.

Meanwhile I've friended you because it seemed as if it was long past time to do so. :-)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that trade paperbacks are less likely in the future? (I can hope for a silver lining, right?)

Well, in the sense that it may be less likely that there will be books in the future, yes; though you'll excuse me if I find that ...difficult to accept as a silver lining.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

No, THAT would suck.

I hope you guys will talk to Baen - it'd be lovely if more of your future books came out with them.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

Glad that you are home, safe and sound. It sounds like a really terrible storm. We, on the other hand are actually down on snowpack and precip for the year despite the December and January storms. Only about 68%, as I understand it.

Regarding publishers, is there any possibility that Baen with pick up contracts on those other planned books. They certainly have distribution down, you have developed a respectable following and you already have a relationship with them. I'll keep my fingers crossed about new contracts. Distribution problems were a serious concern with MM. I tried to wait until books were in store to buy them, in order to encourage bookstores to order them. But sometimes the wait was really unbearable. Nevertheless, I have actually seen your books in all of the local big box bookstores consistently over the past several months. Of course, that includes the mass market paperbacks from Ace.

[(Anonymous)]

Baen might be interested in picking up the Liaden series but I don't think that they would want to share with Ace. So how tied in to Ace is the Liaden series?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Who wants to know?

Liaden books - used market

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to hear about your problems with MM. Unfortunately their decision to go with Diamond actually made it harder for us (a teeny-tiny little mostly-used-books bookstore) to support them by buying their books. (Diamond has a minimum--MM did not--and we can't afford to buy $10000-worth of new books per year from a single distributor to get the "standard" discount. For as few new books as we carry, Amazon or Sam's Club is about the best deal we can find.)

Since we do deal in used books, I tend to monitor internet listings for certain books (mostly stuff that I collect myself). You might be interested to know that the current listings show a used copy of I Dare starts at $34.95 (+$3.49 s/h) at Amazon--for the Ace mass market edition, (though you might be able to find a MM trade pb at half.com for a few dollars less)--and there are only about a dozen (out of 125 million books being searched) copies for sale. And the lack of hardcovers available for sale indicates that all those are being kept and not making their way to the used book dealers. I don't know how the author-publisher communications work, but you may want to bring this to their attention at either Baen or Ace (or both). Ace could definitely make some money with a reprint (as MM apparently had planned). Plan B isn't quite as scarce (though its rank at Amazon is higher), but still has less than 100 copies listed for sale on the internet, as do most of the other Liaden series titles. That's a level that I would define as "scarce"--and not expected to ever show up in our bookstore. (The only Liaden Adventures that have shown up in our store were my personal copies that I decided to let go of since I had upgraded to hardbacks.) I send customers who are looking for your books (and yes, I have had one or two looking specifically for them) to the internet, and try to make sure they know about SRM Publishing, especially for the new ones.

I hope you can find a new publisher soon, and don't fail to consider going with SRM. (Better published late than never.)

Elizabeth Skelly [Skelly Fine Books, Norman Oklahoma]

Re: Liaden books - used market

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

>Sorry to hear about your problems with MM. Unfortunately their decision to go >with Diamond actually made it harder for us

I heard the same from a number of smaller stores, I'm afraid.