The Sadness of Memory

I finally started working on the manuscript for my novel Memory, getting it ready for conversion to ebook and print-on-demand. The process involves cleaning up the styles, converting manuscript punctuation to print punctuation, and adding in the copy editor's changes—which means going through it page by page.

In the process I've been re-reading a lot of the story and it's left me feeling very sad today. Not because it's a sad book. Memory is poignant at times, but it's not written to leave you weeping. The dedication sums it up: "A quest, a puzzle, and multiple lives." This is an action story set in a unique story world. My sadness is for the book itself. Memory may well be my best book and I think it deserved better than it got. I'm also sad because I honestly can't see myself ever attempting to write anything on this level again. There just doesn't seem to be any point to it. Here's why:

Memory was originally published in April 2003 by Tor. Below are the most recent sales figures I pulled out of the file, as of June 2007. (I'm sure I have more recent figures, but they were probably sent as PDFs and I didn't bother to print them out and I'm not going to look them up. The figures likely just got worse anyway as more returned books came in.)

Hardcover: 1822

Ebook: 50

Trade paper: 1574

Mass Market Paperback: 7097

That's 10,543 total units four years after publication—a spectacular market failure by any measure. (On the positive side this means there's a huge potential market that could still be persuaded to buy the book when it's resurrected by my publishing company Mythic Island Press.)

I used to want to write a great novel. Now I just want to write an amusing one.

I truly respect the person who wrote Memory, but—you knew this was coming right?—that earlier version of me is just a memory now. I'll be writing shorter, simpler books for the foreseeable future, hopefully in more viable genres.

I still can't bring myself to write about zombies though.

Sorry.