Killers -- Lessons Learned

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 20, 2008

It's a shame, but all the Robinson's and the author's hard work seemed to have been wasted.

But that wasn't true.

We now have everything in place to sell off-site and at Cons from next year.

The moral of this is, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). To any editor or publisher who plans to produce a signed edition, I'd advise them don't.

But if you're going to do it...

Work out the mechanics. Book-plates look cheap, but may be the only option. Dust-jackets work, if the other points below are covered.

It's never too early to plan. And if circumstances change, re-evaluate your plans.

As soon as you have your stories in, work out who is going to be where and when, and make it a part of the deal that they be somewhere where most of them can sign together. So try to avoid multi-national anthologies, or if you must, get as many people together so there are only two postings, rather than our seven or eight.

Physically gather as many of the signatories as possible at a single place at some point in the future; this may mean planning up to twelve months in the future -- Killers was conceived eighteen months prior to launch, but the detailed execution didn't start to happen until perhaps seven or eight months pre-launch (one of the contributors didn't deliver until two months after deadline, which didn't help).

Have the cover produced as early as possible. One of the bugbears is paying artists cover fees, so publishers tend to work on a just-in-time basis. But by paying a royalty (or even nothing at all: many Eastern European artists will work for almost nothing) payments can be deferred. Once the cover art is generated, there are spin-off benefits -- more on that a later date in the future...