George Sandison's Blog

We all know, you’ve got to have a hook, right? It’s a vast yet overcrowded marketplace with a bajillion books for notably less than a bajillion readers.

People are brutal these days. My dad gives a book 50 pages to convince him to read on; some people decide based on Amazon’s Look Inside preview; many more are swayed by Goodreads scoring before they’ve read the book; occasional beautiful maniacs even pick random books in a shop and read the opening pages until they find one they like enough ...

One thing that is commonplace knowledge is that editors acquire books by giving an author an advance, along with royalty payment terms for books they sell. It’s a simple principle that is tremendously complex in practice.

At the core of this transaction is one of the formative relationships in any publisher – the one between Sales and Editorial.

To be deeply reductive about the scope of both disciplines, Sales want to sell as many books to customers as possible and Editorial want to find t...

One of the things that will be clear from my previous article is that a lot of books get rejected, both by agents and publishers. There are a huge number of possible reasons why, but one of the ones you might have heard from an editor is: ‘It’s not a fit for our list’.

This is perhaps one of the quintessential examples of coded Publishing language. You say it to me, I nod sagely and appreciate the nuance. You ask my wife and she says, ‘What does that mean,’ ‘Do the books come with size labels...

I find myself, these days, in the preposterous position of working in genre fiction. Having been publishing since 2014 as an indie, and heading up a major trade list since 2019, it’s close to second nature in a lot of ways.

But for the vast majority of people outside the industry, publishing is arcane, weird and no doubt seems arbitrary. There is a huge extended community of readers, reviewers, fans and authors fascinated by publishers and their lists, but so few ways for those people to get ...

Werewolf films are the rare export of horror. There seem to be so few of them out there, even though the standouts are shining examples of of the genre. Undeniable classics such as the tragicomic beauties of An American Werewolf in London and the brash anarchism of Dog Soldiers. Also everything I’ve heard about Ginger Snaps (which I criminally haven’t seen).

But we just don’t get enough of them, right?

Well, step up WOLF GARDEN, run by my man Wayne David, which launches on Indiegogo right...

I am absolutely delighted to announce that I have a collection of short stories publishing on 25th March – it’s called Hinterlands and it’s being put out by the mighty Black Shuck as part of their Shadows series.

Hinterlands features 10 stories, including 4 first publications and pieces published in BFS Horizons, The Shadow Booth, Unthology and more. If you like your horror plausibly adjacent to reality, probing the odd shadows in tube stations and the weird glitches when your eyes play t...

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again returns to the themes of 1997’s Signs of Life (which by coincidence I read for the first time a couple of months before this). Weathered by time, the new treatment is considerably less dramatic, the intricately eroded extrusions of a formerly vast sandstone tower, or a non-conformist friend who has long outgrown the need to spread discomfort. The results, I suspect, will only further strengthen Harrison’s reputation as a luminary of literature to be relished ...

Preamble, establishing image, cliche about buses, news!

My story, Grandparents, Smiling, £7.95, has just been published on the Fairlight Books website. This one came out of many conversations about psychogeography, a holiday to Cornwall and a real photo of my grandparents they used to have in their house. The excellent folks at r/Fantasy are organising a virtual con to deal with the reality that lockdowns suck. Theyre running a panel on small press publishing on 22nd April and Im delighted...

Only a couple of days until I head to my very first WorldCon (I got into SFF publishing properly late in 2014. I live in London. Insert facepalm emoji here). The last few years have been wild and unpredictable in the best possible ways and that’s all because of the most lovely SFF community.

So heading to Dublin to hang out with friends old and new – and meet some face-to-face for the first time – is A Big Deal for me. Add the fact that it’s the first con I’ll be flying the Titan flag at and,...

I get to start the week with good news because it’s just been announced that I will have a story in the forthcoming Unthology 11, published on 25th July 2019.

It’s got a typically gorgeous cover and will no doubt contain some of the finest new writing to emerge from the indie press scene (including Angela Readman!), and my story. If you’re not already a fan, this is a great time to pick an issue up.

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It’s a story I’m particularly proud of, trying to make sense of some of the insanities of Lon...