Wizard’s Tower

Worldcon #77 – Day 2

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Well that was eventful.

I was fortunate enough to be able to sleep in a bit this morning because the first thing I had to do was be at the convention centre for 11:00pm as Juliet McKenna was doing a signing. That went very well. We sold a whole bunch of books, both The Green Man’s Heir and The Green Man’s Foe. We were very happy.

Immediately after that I was moderating a panel on promoting translations. I was very pleased with that. I had a very knowledgeable panel, including Neil Clarke and Francesco Verso who are doing far more to promote translations than I am. We had an interesting discussion on how awards might help, what sort of awards were needed, and why the proposal for a Best Translated Novel Hugo is a bad idea.

While we were doing that, the Friday Business Meeting was in progress. While they rarely do Objection to Consideration any more, they can ask for a motion to be deferred for a year to allow more discussion to take place, and that’s what happened to the translation Hugo proposal. I do hope that the people who put it forward will listen to people in the translation community over the next 12 months rather than stubbornly bring back the same flawed proposal in Wellington.

During the panel, Julie Nováková said that she’d like someone to revive the SF&F Translation Awards (or something like them). The charitable organisation that we set up for them has been disbanded, but the website still exists and I’d be happy to talk to anyone who wants to take this on.

After the panel and a quick lunch I headed down to the other venue to check out the tech situation for tomorrow. I have to give my robotics talk in one of the Odeon rooms at The Point and I needed to make sure everything would work. These rooms are effectively overflow programming space, which is great because the con is much bigger than anyone initially expected. However, they are actually in an Odeon. The rooms are part of a multi-screen cinema. This means that the seating is great, but there isn’t much of it. Screen 4, where I will be, only seats about 80 people. What’s more, there is a queueing system. You can’t go and wait outside the room. If you don’t go through the official queueing process then you may not get in. Please bear this in mind if you are coming to listen to me tomorrow.

While I was at The Point I had a look around the Art Show which is very impressive. There are a lot of really good artists in there, the show itself is very big, and the large amount of natural lighting it gets is ideal. I have finally got to see some of Emma Newman’s art in the canvas, so to speak, and it is very pretty.

Unfortunately I also managed to lose my phone while I was down at The Point. I put this down to being very tired by that point and not thinking straight. Fortunately I was able to cadge favours of friends (thanks to Kevin & Andy and to Alan) and get the deivice disconnnected, and I didn’t have anything irreplaceable on it anyway, but it does mean that no one can phone me right now. I will go and talk to the phone company tomorrow, but I may not be able to get a new phone with my old number until I arrive in Belfast next week. If any of you are in the habit of contacting me on WhatsApp please bear this in mind.

Back at the Convention Centre, I inhaled a sandwich and headed off to moderate a panel marking the 50th anniversary of The Left Hand of Darkness. I was pleased with that, so thanks again to a great group of panelists. We all agreed that the book is very relevant, even if part of modern society are less hidebound in their attitudes to sex and gender than poor Genly Ai.

During the panel Nick Hubble mentioned Genly’s suspicion that the Gethenians were genetically engineered from baseline humans sometime far in the past. Genly thinks this was an experiment of some sort, but we only have his word for it and the details appear to be lost in the mists of Hainish history. I would love to see someone write a novel that tells the story of how the Gethenians came to be. Obviously there would be copyright issues, not to mention the jaw-dropping terror of trying to write a novel in one of Le Guin’s worlds, put I’m putting the idea out there just in case.

That was me done for the day. Thankfully I don’t have to go to the Business Meeting tomorrow to fight the translation Hugo proposal, so I have time to see about the phone situation. Over lunch I am being interviewed by Scott Edelman for his Eating the Fantastic podcast. Then it is off to The Point to give the Prehistory of Robotics talk.

We may have a solution to the issue of internet access for the Hugo Award Ceremony coverage, but there’s no guarantee that it will work. I must say that I am deeply disappointed at how successive Worldcons continue to not care in the slightest whether we are able to do this coverage. Despite Josh Beatty trying really hard for us, the Award Ceremony Director simply doesn’t have enough clout to make this happen. We have to get made an official part of the convention staff, with someone on the committee who can fight to get us what we need from the outset. I think WSFS Division is the only logical place for us, because we are an official WSFS function. I shall probably rant about this again after the convention.

Worldcon #77 – Day -1

~ Cheryl

Hello Dublin, thank you for having us!

I am safely arrived at my apartment for the week. It is a lovely little Air BnB near the Castle. The travel all went more or less according to plan, despite the best attempts of the West Country weather to have everyone phoning Mr. Noah to ask if he still has that big boat. I haven’t got to the convention centre yet, but I know how to get there and have bought a ticket for the Luas (the city tram network).

Dublin is teeming with fannish persons. When I arrived a flight from Helsinki had just disgored a legion of Finns. I knew three of my fellow passengers on my flight, and several others were clearly fans from their dress and hair color. I ran into John Picacio while I was out shopping for supplies.

The other thing I have been doing today is making sure that The Green Man’s Foe is available online tomorrow. Amazon and Kobo should go live at midnight. B&N and Google may take a little longer. And of course the ebooks will bbe available through the Wizard’s Tower shop.

The Green Man’s Foe at Worldcon & Eurocon

~ Cheryl

Worldcon is approaching fast, and The Green Man’s Foe is officially launching on August 15th, the first day of Worldcon. We should, barring disasters, have paper copies for sale at both Worldcon and Eurocon. One of my current tasks is to work out how many copies to have shipped to Ireland.

The convention sale prices for the book will be €10/£10 for the paperback and €15/£15 for the hardcover. They’ll probably be about 1:1 by then. If you want to pay in US$, talk to Kevin or myself.

If you want to be sure of getting copies, please email me and let me know how many and which format(s). If you want copies of The Green Man’s Heir as well, let me know.

The book will be available from Francesco Verso’s Future Fiction company in the Dealers’ Room. I’ll be on the stand as much as I can. While you are there I suggest you pick up a copy of his new anthology, World Science Fiction #1: Visions to Preserve the Biodiversity of the Future, which contains stories from authors from all over the world. He’s also having a launch party (Saturday, 17 August, 12:30-13:30, Warehouse 2 (WH2), first floor, Point Square) but I won’t be there as I’m being interviewed for Scott Edelman’s fabulous Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I will also carry some books around with me, so you may be able to get a copy at one of my programme items. Juliet may do the same. I don’t know as yet whether she will have a signing, but I don’t know if you are allowed to sell books at a signing.

Francesco and I will also be at Eurocon in Belfast so if you are only going to that convention you can pick up there book there. Be warned that we may try to sell you a pre-support for the Fiuggi Eurocon bid, which you will want to buy because a) it is near Rome, and b) the 2021 Worldcon will be in the USA which may be an unsafe destination for many of us.

And finally a reminder that you can pre-order the ebook from either Amazon or Kobo. Those links are for the UK stores, but the book is available internationally.

Congratulations, Juliet!

~ Cheryl

Here’s a piece of news I have been sitting on excitedly for a few days now. The Green Man’s Heir is a finalist in the Best Fantasy Novel category at the British Fantasy Awards. Naturally I think this is thoroughly deserved. Juliet is a great writer. She was a finalist in the BSFA Awards last year in the Non-Fiction category (for an essay in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, a book which won Non-Fiction in the BFS Awards), but this is her first major fiction nod since 2000 when The Thief’s Gamble placed 5th in the Locus Award for First Novel. This has been way too long in coming.

Congratulations are also due to Ben Baldwin whose magnificent cover has played a huge part in the book’s success. And to editor, Toby Selwyn, because everyone needs an editor and Toby certainly made the book better.

I am, of course, irrationally pleased that a book that draws its inspiration from a legend of the wild wood is up for the Robert Holdstock Award.

This is the first time that any book I have published has been up for a major award. I am absolutely delighted about it. It shows that even the smallest presses can produce great fiction. And more importantly it shows that the original premise of Wizard’s Tower — the idea that previously successful writers whose sales have taken a dip are not over the hill and can produce great work again if properly supported — is indeed correct. Mainstream publishers please take note.

Obviously I will be in Glasgow for FantasyCon. This will involve a certain amount of rearranging schedules because I was supposed to be elsewhere that weekend. But somehow I have to be at that award banquet.

The Green Man’s Foe – Open for Pre-Orders

~ Cheryl

Preparations for the publication of The Green Man’s Foe continue apace. I’m hoping to get proof copies of the paper editions later this week, but in the meantime you can pre-order the ebook editions via the following links:

Pre-orders aren’t a huge issue for me because I’m not going to be making any publisher decisions based on them. Nor do I expect to see the book in best seller charts, or indeed stocked in bookstores. However, they are very important for Juliet because mainstream publishers look at those figures and if they see a book they don’t know from an author they do then they ought to pay attention. And of course Amazon will take notice. Discoverability is everything on Amazon, and a large number of pre-orders will help the book hugely when it becomes available.

What does matter to me is how many copies to take to Ireland. I don’t want to run out early in Worldcon, and equally I don’t want to be stuck with a large pile of books to take home. So I’m looking into possible ways that I could allow people to buy the book for collection at Worldcon or Eurocon.

Happy Solstice, McKenna Fans

~ Cheryl

When considering when to do a cover reveal for The Green Man’s Foe, Juliet and I decided that the Summer Solstice would be an ideal time. The Green Man, after all, is deeply connected to the natural world. And frankly, he’s going to need a bit of sunshine to help deal with this guy.

When you do a good job for someone, there’s a strong chance they’ll offer you more work or recommend you elsewhere. So Daniel Mackmain isn’t particularly surprised when his boss’s architect brother asks for his help on a historic house renovation in the Cotswolds.

Except Dan’s a dryad’s son, and he soon realises there’s a whole lot more going on. Ancient malice is stirring and it has made an alliance in the modern world. The Green Man expects Dan to put an end to this threat. Seeing the danger, Dan’s forced to agree. The problem is he’s alone in a place he doesn’t know, a hundred miles or more away from any allies of his own.

A modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles.

It is, of course, another genius piece of art by Ben Baldwin. Juliet and Toby-the-Editor are just putting the final touches to the text. And when they are done I get to do the layouts. I’m still planning on having the book available at Worldcon. Once I have everything I need in my paws I will put the book up for pre-order.

More Champagne for Juliet

~ Cheryl

Last March I happily announced that The Thief’s Gamble by Juliet E. McKenna had become the first book from Wizard’s Tower to reach 1,000 sales. I was really pleased by that. It had taken 6 years to get to that point.

Sales of that book are now fast closing in on 1,500, because Juliet’s stock has risen significantly among readers. That’s because of The Green Man’s Heir, which I can now happily announce has sold more than 10,000 copies.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that Wizard’s Tower would ever publish a book that was that popular. The additional good news is that I have just read the sequel, The Green Man’s Foe, and it is a real page-turner. Juliet is already posting snippets of it on her Twitter feed, and we’ll have more news about it later in the month. I am expecting to have the book available at Worldcon.

Best Seller Again

~ Cheryl

The Green Man’s Heir has been on sale at Amazon UK all month. A month-long deal is never going to reach the intensity of sales of a single-day sale, so we won’t be #1 in all science fiction and fantasy again, but the book is currently #1 in Folklore, which is nothing to be sneezed at because it gets us a fancy ribbon on the sale page and more exposure.

It looks like the book will sell around 900 copies in the month, which will take us very close to 10,000 lifetime sales. I’m very pleased with that. And it bodes well for the sequel which is well underway and should be available at Worldcon.

And this, folks, is the sort of thing that can happen when you show faith in a brilliant writer like Juliet E. McKenna. Mainstream publishers please take note.

Also, if you are in the UK and still don’t have a copy of The Green Man’s Heir, go get one now while the sale is still on.

Another Amazon Sale

~ Cheryl

I’m delighted to report that Amazon UK is once again putting The Green Man’s Heir on sale. This time it is for the whole of April. So if you don’t have a copy yet, do please pick one up. It is a bargain. And tell all of your friends.

The image above is a reminder of what happened when we were on the Daily Deal. I don’t expect the same level of visibility this time, because the mere fact of an offer being one day only tends to concentrate sales. But being on any sort of Amazon sale does wonders for your visibility, which in turn does wonders for sales.

I note also that if we do well again this time then Amazon will want to put the sequel on sale too when it arrives later this year.

New Book – Lyda Gets an Omnibus

~ Cheryl

Now that I have the Wizard’s Tower bookstore open again I have been able to do something I have wanted to do for a couple of years: offer omnibus editions of some of the books we publish. The Tales of Einarinn omnibus is doing very well. This month it is the turn of Lyda Morehouse and the AngeLINK books.

Back when I was doing Emerald City, the AngeLINK books were one of my favorite discoveries. We are used to queer SF now, but back in 2002 it was much more revolutionary. How could I not love books featuring a transgender archangel?

These days the books seen scarily prophetic. The USA has been taken over by religious fundamentalists who are using the internet as a means of social control. One of the main characters is a Muslim hacker, because who else is going to save the world from the Apocalypse? Well there’s the Antichrist, of course, but whose side is she on? And what about Michael? What is more important to him: his job as commander of God’s legions, or the human woman that he loves? This series is a tremendous ride.

If you haven’t read them yet, the omnibus edition is now available as an ebook. Because we love you, it is on sale until the end of February. It is also available on Kobo, but the sale price won’t kick in until tomorrow as with Kobo you are not allowed to schedule a sale to start on the current day.

I might be able to get the book up on Google, but their site has been balky with the Enarinn book. It will not be on Amazon. Besides, Lyda gets more money if you buy direct, so please do so. If you don’t have GBP, PayPal will do the currency conversion for you.

Oh, and don’t those Bruce Jensen covers look great together? I’m so pleased that we got a new cover for Apocalypse Array so that the set was complete.

Tales of Einarinn 20th Anniversary

~ Cheryl

Doesn’t time fly! It was 20 years ago this month that Juliet McKenna burst onto the fantasy scene with The Thief’s Gamble. Given the auspicious anniversary, Juliet and I thought that it would be a good idea to have presents, for you folks.

From now until the end of January, the five volumes of the original Tales of Einarinn are on sale. The prices are US$2.99, £2.35 and €2.99. Apologies to European readers, but Amazon won’t let us sell for less than that at their standard royalty rate. I see that Google are already discounting the price of some of the books, so you might try them.

But that’s not all. You can also buy a fabulous onmibus edition that contains all five novels and the short story collection, A Few Further Tales of Einarinn. And until the end of January it is priced at just $9.99/£7.99. That’s live in Barnes & Noble and Kobo now. Google will doubtless catch up at some point. It is not on Amazon, because their website kept crashing when I tried to upload the file (insert rant about the bloated nature of the Kindle file format here). But if you need a Kindle version you can buy it from the Wizard’s Tower Bookstore.

Yes, the bookstore has re-opened after a couple of years stuck in limbo due to VAT issues. Thankfully that’s all sorted now, although it we do end up with a No Deal Brexit, which is looking increasingly likely, it will have to close again.

Of course I’d like you to buy everything from the Wizard’s Tower bookstore, because Juliet gets more money that way, but I appreciate that you may need to pay in your local currency.

That’s today’s Wizard’s Tower news. There will be more later in the month.

Update: Corrected to 20th anniversary. Guess who can’t count.

Happy Solstice – Time to Get Green!

~ Cheryl


Happy Winter Solstice, everyone! Here in the Northern Hemisphere the days will be getting longer and it is time to welcome the green back into our lives. Down south it is summer, and hopefully not too parched, Australia.

What better way to celebrate than with the Green Man? In view of which Juliet and I have decided to put The Green Man’s Heir on sale for the rest of December. Thanks to an unlikely coincidence of exchange rates you should be able to find it for £0.99, $0.99 and €0.99, though some stores may adjust dynamically through the month. Prices in other currencies will be scaled accordingly.

Update: The sale is live on Amazon as well now.

Of course when I say that you can find it there’s always a catch. Kobo, Google and Barnes & Noble have already adjusted their prices as I requested. Amazon tell me that it could take up to three days to make the change.

However, if you are a Kindle user there are many free tools that help you convert epub books to mobi, so if you really can’t wait that’s always an option. If that sounds scary, Amazon will catch up before the month is over, and doubtless it will take them time to change back in January.

Happy reading, everyone!

Wizard’s Tower in Bath Tomorrow

~ Cheryl


If you happen to live in or near Bath, you may be interested in Small Publishers’ Gathering which is taking place in the city tomorrow. Wizard’s Tower will be one of the publishers attending, as will our good friends Tangent Books who do all sorts of amazing titles about Bristol.

The event is taking place at the Friends’ Meeting House on York Street and will be open to the public from Noon for you to come any buy books. If you weren’t at BristolCon you should come along and pick up a copy of Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner. This is an author I have been longing to read since hearing about her at Gendered Voices last year. Kudos to Handheld Press for bringing out a new edition.

The Green Man’s Reviews

~ Cheryl

As well as selling ridiculously well, The Green Man’s Heir is garnering some great reviews. I have just updated the page for the book over at the Wizard’s Tower Press website. For sheer sound bite brilliance I love K.J. Charles’s comment: “So far up my street it could be my house.” However, the thing that really warms my little publisher heart is getting a review in F&SF.

It is not just any review either. Firstly it is by the acknowledged master of contemporary fantasy, Charles de Lint. If you have a book in that genre, and Charles says it is good, you know you are onto a good thing. But he doesn’t just say it is good, he says, “It’s one of my favorite books so far this year.”

Naturally Juliet and I are delighted. On the one hand, of course, the sales of the book have so far outstripped our wildest dreams that something like this is just icing on the cake. On the othe hand, almost all of those sales have been in the UK. The book has yet to come to the attention of the US market. Sales have picked up a bit since the review came out, but they are not yet at the level they were in the UK prior to Amazon picking the book for the Daily Deal so there is a long way to go. So if you are in the US and have read the book, please talk about it. If you havent read it, you can get it for Kindle, or as an ePub.

I note that people are asking about a sequel. Certainly Juliet and I have talked about it, but she’s got a lot on her plate right now. What I am going to do is make a hardcover edition, if only because I can finally do that thing of adding a page or two saying, “Praise for this book.” So if anyone else out there would like to be included in that, please let me know.

After the Flood

~ Cheryl

Following yesterday’s excitment, things are returning slowly to normal here at Wizard’s Tower. The Green Man’s Heir is no longer on sales at 99p, and is no longer receiving special promotion from Amazon. However, the effects of that promotion linger on. As I type this, the book is still ranked #6 in all fiction sales on Amazon UK, and is still #1 in science fiction and fantasy. That is still leading to a pleasing level of sales, though obviously nowhere near yesterday’s flood.

As a publisher, what interests me is the long-term effect of all this. How long will the sales rank stay high enough to keep the book easily visible on the Amazon website? How many of yesterday’s thousands of purchases will result in reviews, or returns? What will the effect be on the sale of Juliet’s other books? Only time will tell, but I will be keeping an eye on the data. Other small press owners may well be interested.

In the meantime I’m just going to keep staring at that screenshot at the top of this post. There are no Hugos for Best Publisher, but I’ll happily take that instead.

Best Seller!

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Much to the delight of Juliet and myself, The Green Man’s Heir has been selling very steadily ever since it was published. A couple of years back Kameron Hurley got a lot of notice for this blog post in which she explained that the average book sells 3000 copies in its lifetime. Given that Wizard’s Tower is a very small press, I’m not surprised that nothing we had published to date had reached that milestone. (Although of course we major in reprints and many of the books we published did sell that well in previous incarnations.)

The Green Man’s Heir was different. It was a brand new novel, something we had never done before, but from our best-selling writer, Juliet E. McKenna. I hoped it would do well, but didn’t have huge expectations. I was really pleased by how well it was selling. What I didn’t expect was what that would lead to.

Someone at Amazon clearly noticed that the book was doing very well, and that it was getting stellar reviews. They offered us the opportunity to be part of a promotion, though without giving much detail. I asked Juliet and she said yes, so we signed up and a week or so later we got an email saying that the book would be a “Daily Deal” at £0.99 on August 13th. Just the UK, one day only. Does that make a difference?

You bet it does. To start with there’s this, which I shall be proud of for the rest of my publishing career:

#1 in Fantasy

That, of course, is a result of numbers. Looking at the sales numbers, I am now confident the The Green Man’s Heir will sell 3000 copies today.

No, not that it will pass 3000 copies lifetime, it will sell over 3000 copies today, which will mean it is heading for 5000 copies lifetime.

The really interesting thing about this, however, is that the vast majority of the sales, both prior to today and during today, have been in the UK. US sales haven’t really taken off. The Daily Deal promotion is UK-only, but Amazon US have chosen to put the book on sale. Kevin reports that it is $4.16, down from a list price of $5.99. So why not get in on the act, America? Find out what thousands of British readers have been getting excited about.

UK readers, if you don’t have your copy yet, you can get it here.

US readers, the link for you is here.

Paper copies are available from both stores. If you are going to be at Worldcon you will be able to find the book in the Dealers’ Room on the Cargo Cult table.

Green Men Can Fly

~ Cheryl


I don’t have a lot of time for doing Wizard’s Tower work right now, but I’m delighted to say that The Green Man’s Heir doesn’t seem to need my help. Copies are fair flying off the shelves. The latest rave review to appear is by Paul Weimer over at Skiffy & Fanty. And yesterday on Twitter the master of contemporary fantasy, Charles de Lint, described it as, “one of my favourite books so far this year”. Purchase links can be found here.

Airship 2 Deadline Extended

~ Cheryl

This is the point at which I should be reminding you that you need to get your submissions for Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion 2 in by the end of the month. However, Jo & Roz are currently in the throes of moving house and they have told me that they won’t be able to look at anything for a couple of weeks. Consequently I am extending the deadline to May 14th.

Full submission details here.