tradition bound

This morning I wrote to my editor at Ace –
 
Dear Susan:
 
This morning’s paper had a story on yesterday’s successful launch of Curiosity, the car-sized probe that will land on Mars next year, sometime between August 8th and August 20th. 
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
 
If ever there was a perfect time to release a uniform Marsbound Trilogy set, this would be it.  It might even be worth a dump.  Nail some of the people who are going into bookstores just before school starts, while Mars is on their mind – and all over the news!
 
Why not let NASA help subsidize our ad budget?
 
Hot jets!
 
(a “dump” is a standing box display)
 
But reconsidering, I wonder whether it’s do-able.  The last book in the trilogy, EARTHBOUND, is coming out next week, so in the normal course of things, the paperback would come out one year later.  Three months after the probe lands.
 
Trade publishing is flexible and inflexible.  If I turned in a manuscript the week before Election Day that proved Newt Gingrich has sex with other newts, it would be on the stands before people went to the voting booth.  But to ask for a regular trade book to come out three months early, it’s “Sure, if you win the Pulitzer.”
 
It’s like what we used to call a LILO stack in computer science, “last in, last out.”  Once a book gets in the queue, it has to wait its turn. 
 
(“But it’s about MARS!”  I insist.  “Talk to the astrology editor,” they say.)
 
Joe