The Sword and Laser discussion

Wow. I really disliked Bitter Seeds and have no intention of reading either of the other books in the trilogy, but you hate to see someone go through something like that. Bitter Seeds did seem to "do it" for a lot of people, and it seems that Tregillis feels like a third-class citizen because of things out of his control. Bummer for him. :(

I suspect this has to do with publishers being so shortstaffed. The friend I know who signed a book deal, in between the signing and publishing, half the editorial staff of his (pretty major) publisher had been laid off, leaving only the people at the top to get the work done. Now we're seeing the fallout, and I feel really badly for him!

P.S. Since he's taking a writing break, maybe he'd want to be interviewed for a certain podcast, hahaha.

According to the copyright page, the book was edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who with his wife Teresa are the main editors at Tor. If he's undergoing "editorial vapor lock" it could be a bad sign for SF since Tor is the preeminent publisher in the field.

The other possibility is that Bitter Seeds didn't sell well, so the sequels have been given a lower priority and PNH is being nice about it. (If you read Kristine Kathryn Rusch's and Dean Wesley Smith's blogs, they often talk about how publishers coddle writers and try to shield them from bad news.) This has happened before -- there are a number of series in limbo because the publisher decided to drop it after two or three books. In the best case scenario, the author retains the rights and can find another publisher, or put it out online as Lawrence Watt-Evans is doing with the Ethshar series. In the worst case ... well, put it this way, Melanie Rawn has two trilogies with only two books in them -- one of them has been awaiting its conclusion since 1997 (and you thought Martin was bad).

Sean wrote: "The other possibility is that Bitter Seeds didn't sell well, so the sequels have been given a lower priority and PNH is being nice about it.."

Bitter Seeds went into a rush second printing three weeks after it came out. That's a good indication that it's selling better than well, and therefore PNH isn't being nice about anything.

It sort of reminds me of the way Fox bumbled and then killed Firefly.

Ninja Sock Puppet wrote: "Bitter Seeds went into a rush second printing three weeks after it came out. That's a good indication that it's selling better than well, and therefore PNH isn't being nice about anything."

from all the press BS got (mentioned on just about every blog, including io9 and boingboing), i would guess it sold rather well for a debut -- good to hear that's the case.

Ian has my sympathy. It must be tremendously frustrating for him to have his work in limbo or whatever you want to call it.

I loved Bitter Seeds, and cannot wait until the other books are finally released. I hope that the new editor can get them out the door, and soon!

I just went to buy Bitter Seeds. I found S&L after the book was a pick. The Kindle edition is $5 more than the paperback! $2 more than the hardback. Since I'm looking for something to read on my new Kindle, I skipped it for now. What is Macmillan thinking?

Based on Ian Tregillis's blog posts over the past year, my thought was that his original editor got very depressed. As a person who has been depressed in the past, the way he described his editor's behavior matched very nicely with my experience of it--especially the part where even though you're getting absolutely nothing done, you pretend that everything's fine, until you get caught by all the people depending on you.