PeterZ wrote:Theemile wrote:It's Tor - they have a 18 month cycle for publication. It's partially due to their internal processes, it also partially due to their agreements with their book printers.
I believe Baen has a ~9 month cycle, and I believe I was told they have a set # of printed book slots each month with their printers.
PeterZ wrote:The idiots should sell e-books in some form leading to the HC release.
Randomiser wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the 'idiots' reckon that if they publish the e-book first it will damage sales of the HC. Due to retailer's sentiment if not reader's. Also when do you then do the advertising push?
Does Baen's e-arc sales harm their HC & e-book sales? I don't think so. I am pretty sure the opposite is true. TOR's 18 month cycle is just too cumbersome in the current market environment.
Part of the problem is how far ahead a publisher sets his schedule. Suppose I know I have 6 slots (just to pick a number) in each quarter. That's 24 new releases a year. I start plugging books into slots as they come in, probably holding one or two for the big book I really
hope will come in, but the odds don't look real good. As I get closer to the release date, I fill in the ones I held back. Let's say that I try to solidify the schedule out for a full year --- that is, I close up those open slots as my production cycle gets to the go/no go point for each quarter.
So right this minute (start of 3rd quarter) I'm scheduled solid through 3rd quarter of next year --- that is, though end of October 2020 --- and I've got my PR scheduled and timed for that.
Now one of my writers (in this case,
two of my writers) hand in a book I didn't expect to have for another three months. I look at my schedule, and there's no place to put it
at all prior to November 2020. I have other books already in the production queue ahead of it, and I already have most of my slots for 4th quarter 2020 filled up. So I schedule this new one for 1st quarter of 2021.
Not saying that's exactly how it worked in this case, but that's sort of how the process goes in general. Tor is definitely slower in production than Baen, and that adds onto the time cycle, but it's really more about timing on receipt of the manuscript than dawdling.
As for early e-book releases, if you're talking about doing it on the scale of Baen's earcs, I agree it should be doable if Tor didn't have a policy against it. Releasing the
e-book early would
definitely poison hardcover sales, though.