World Fantasy Convention 2013 – report – part 1
This year, I went to the World Fantasy Convention instead of the World Science Fiction Convention for the first time. Here are some reports from the panels I attended:
Thu 31oct13
PS Publishing Kaffeeklatsch
PS publishing is now the “UK’s smallest big press” according to its owners Peter and Nicky Crowther. They started about 15 years ago with the Postscripts magazine but soon expended into full blown publishing. Nowadays they publish about 45 books a year. They are in principle only taking agented submissions, though for short fiction to be published in Postscripts magazine, they take (of course) unagented stuff.
Asked how they get the word out about their publications, the answer was that they have about 7000 subscribers to their newsletter and a solid customer base that they built up over the past fifteen years.
Concerning how they manage such a large volume of books, the answer was that they have a horde of freelance people working for them in editing, artwork etc. departments.
In principle they look for “quirky” stuff, whatever the definition of quirky is.
Harper Collins Kaffeeklatsch
Editor Jennifer Brehl works in the Harper Voyager department where they have 3 editors in the US.
I found it interesting to hear that despite Harper Collins having a no unsolicited submissions policy, Jennifer said she still gets some 20-30 unsolicited queries per day. There are pushy people out there…
She is dealing with some fifteen to twenty books per year, most of them being from already established authors. An editor’s success is measured (more or less solely) by his/her profit and loss sheet 18 months after the launch of the book.
When not editing an editor spends most of his/her time networking within the company, trying to convince the sales department etc. of the benefits of book a or b. The positioning of a book = the sub-genre definition is extremely important according to Jennifer.
And one tip, she won’t become the editor of a book that has unicorns in it 
“Buddy, can you spare an e-reader” panel
I attended a panel on eBooks that day where the story was the same as always and centered around “cream will rise to the top” “naturally” in the self-publishing department. However, some good stuff may drown in the too much content out there when people don’t know how to get the word out. The lessons learned here being: not everyone can be John Scalzi.
The only interesting idea I got out of this panel was that you can change the cover and maybe even the title of your book and put it out there again in case the book does not fly well under its current cover and/or title.
Fri 01nov13
Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft and the Development of the Weird Tale panel
On Friday the first panel I attended dealt with Arthur Machen’s influence on H.P. Lovecraft.
While Lovecraft read a lot of junk and had the gift to refine some of it, he of course also read non-junk like Machen. Lovecraft seems to have liked Machen’s work, however the two men were fundamentally different concerning their religious points of view with Machen being a Christian and Lovecraft an outspoken atheist. Machen glorified mysteries, Lovecraft feared them. In essence he was fearful of everything and everybody and believed that nothing but a thin veil lies over the true and horrifying reality underneath.
Style or Substance in Fiction panel
In this panel the general consensus was that you need both as an author but that you might get away with a not too brilliant style if your content is gob-smacking. In general one might say, looking at the best seller lists, that plot is more important than pretty prose.
The more transparent your thoughts are on the page, the more you can nail down your meaning, and the better will be your style, which is essentially the sum of the choices that you make in your prose.
One mistake aspiring writers often make is that they over-dramatize and overwrite. As so often, simple is best. Writing is like being a cartographer, who is standing where, doing what, what’s happening, who is the POV character, etc. the sooner and more precisely you can convey that, the clearer will be your prose. Don’t think a story but imagine it. One cool statement from panelist Geoff Ryman was – you don’t know what the story is about until you’ve written it. Once you have your first draft, go back and rewrite it, knowing now what it is about.
The End is Now panel
Some key words from the “apocalyptic panel” that stuck in my mind were: there are personal and large scale catastrophes. SF has the tendency to tell about large scale apocalypses, since in essence SF is all about change. The more comfy you are, the greater the downfall when it is all taken away from you.
Fiction is a way to structure life.
Even if SF is dealing a lot with the apocalypse, usually there is a hero to survive at the end. That grain of hope is important, don’t end a full length novel on a bad note, William F. Nolan, author or Logan’s Run, said (several times).
Do Awards Really Matter? panel
During the awards panel I had hoped they’d talk a bit about all the scam contest out there that are not worth their submission fees (and to which I have fallen victim as well…) but they rather talked about established awards like the Arthur C. Clark, Philip k. Dick or Bram Stoker etc. awards.
The problem with popular awards (= majority vote) is these days again the masses of content out there. Since the market is so diversified, the lesser known magazines / books etc. get looked over and people go back to what they know, which is, for example, one reason why Locus Magazine keeps winning the Hugo all the time.
Another interesting comment was that publishers don’t care so much about awards, for them rather the sales figures are interesting.
I’ll post the second half of my panel reports tomorrow (or so).
