Roundup of Thoughts

Brian Sanderson Blog entry Posted on 06.01.09

Roundup of Thoughts

Hey, all, there are several things I want to talk about, so I'm just going to attack them in order. (And if you work at Adobe, or know someone who does, make sure you read the last thing on my list.)

Warbreaker
I doubt you need a reminder, but the launch of Warbreaker is only about a week away! Barnes and Noble has kindly decided to put it into one of their big summer promotions, and has ordered a LOT of copies. This is fantastic, since--if you've been reading the blog for a few years--you know that we've consistently had troubles with distribution at Barnes and Noble. Well, they've thrown themselves behind this book a great deal. Finally. So, of course, my natural panic rises that now we won't sell any copies, will prove them right for not supporting the Mistborn books to the extent we wanted, and go back to the old model of never having enough copies out. (Sigh. Sorry, it's hard to not worry about these things.)

Anyway, if you want a numbered/personalized edition, I'm happy to comply--so long as supplies last. But know that if you want to buy the book at your local B&N, Borders, or independent bookseller, I'm going to be touring a great deal over the next two years--so the chances are good I'll be able to get that copy of yours signed.

There WILL be audio editions; I suspect they'll be out a few weeks after the hardcover. There WILL be an official ebook edition to buy, if you want one--and in order to sweeten that deal, we're probably going to be selling the ebook directly through Tor.com with ALL of the annotations included months, even years, before I get them posted on my website. There should be a special deal of some sort for those who bought the hardcover to get the ebook (with annotations) for a fraction of the regular price, but I'm not sure what it will be. You might have to order both through Tor.com, or maybe there will be a rebate. So if you're thinking of getting both editions to grab the annotations and bonus content, then save your receipt on the hardcover just in case. No promises, but maybe there will be something Tor does to promote.

The edition in stores does have new scenes that aren't in the edition posted to my website. I will eventually post the pdf to my website of the final edition, though I'm not sure when I'll do that, as I don't want to undercut all of the special effort Tor.com has put into coming up with really nice ebook edition with bonus content. We'll see.

BEA
First off, BEA was awesome. It's generally about meeting booksellers, particularly those who work at independent bookstores. While I do appreciate all of you who work at the chains and pass my books on to readers, there's something special about the little independent booksellers, particularly those who focus on science fiction and fantasy. I got to meet several of those, which was a real treat, as well as some very enthusiastic folks from various sections of the publishing world. I'm now laden down with advance copies of books to read. We'll see if I can even get to many of them, with all of the writing I need to do...

WRITING I NEED TO DO
And, speaking of that writing, things are going very well. The WAY OF KINGS rewrite is proceeding quickly, and I should be done on-target. I'm feeling very good about the rewrite, though I won't be certain about my plans for it until I get through a few trouble areas later on. As for The Wheel of Time, I just got the Copyedit--which is the final part of THE GATHERING STORM that needs to be done. This will distract me for another week or so from doing new material, but we'll see.

ADOBE...HELP!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've hired a full-time assistant to help with all of these things I need to do, which will be essential to me getting both KINGS and AMOL2 ready for publication next year. After one month of working with Peter, I can say without any equivocation that it's been WONDERFUL to have him. My productivity has been boosted, and there are a lot of things that are getting done on the website that I'd let languish. (For instance, he's doing a proofread/revision of the Misbtorn Three annotations right now, which was something that needed to be done before I could post them. With Peter on the job, they'll actually start getting posted--and in a timely way!)

One problem, however, has to do with software. For some of the projects I want Peter to do (like the annotations) we felt we needed to get him Photoshop and In Design from Adobe. (I know there are other options, but those are the programs he was familiar with, and generally I've been impressed with them when I've worked with them.) Now, these programs are expensive, particularly for a small business owner like myself who doesn't plan for the products to really make him much money. But we did the right thing, and rather than sneaking a copy from pirate bay, we went ahead and shelled out the price to upgrade our educational version to a full professional version of Design Standard.

In tandem with this, though, we've needed to do a cross-platform swap, since I had a PC version. We've been trying to get this to work since May 1, but Adobe's customer support representatives keep telling Peter to call back in 48 hours. Their online help system promises a response in 24 hours, but the case hasn't been updated since May 21.

So, I thought I'd do a post here. Do I have any readers at Adobe who could help grease the wheels a little bit? I feel more than a little annoyed. I'd always been told that Adobe was easy to work with, since they appreciate it when people do the right thing and pay them for their software, rather than joining the many pirates. But we can barely get the time of day out of them. We're a small client, probably not worth their attention, but we've paid out hundreds of dollars for programs we can't use. I can't help thinking that THIS is why people just pirate in the first place. We spend hours and hours of time spent with customer service TRYING to be a good, paying customer who appreciates their software, and all we've gotten are headaches.

So, anyway, any of you WoT or BS fans at Adobe--we could use your aid. Just drop me an email if you notice this and might be able to help.