The Struggle to Publication
Then came a waiting period when I did other things and tried not to think about the book. At last the word came from Firebird. Sharyn loved it, eagerly accepted it, and had great plans for it. Miracle of miracles, money came. I had a good contract, a good book, a great agent and a legendary editor. I already had websites up and a MySpace page
. I was home free. I would get to work with the wonderful Sharyn November and together we'd create the best Ratha book ever. The series would come roaring back, with beautiful new covers (scroll down on the link page) and an exploding readership. Maybe even achieve a place on the bestseller lists, challenging Warriors and Harry Potter for the top Y/A spots.
Well, I'm not going to go into excruciating details, but it didn't quite work out that way. The first hint that all was not well at Viking-Penguin was a slowdown in communications. Next a delay in editing. I tried to push things along by writing a critique of my own work as a guide to improving the book. Thanks, they said, very helpful, don't call us, we'll call you. I did my own edits and revisions on the novel, sent in the fresh manuscript. More waiting, more silence, more doubts. Surely they couldn't be back-pedaling on someone as co-operative and full of initiative as my wonderful self?
Meanwhile, the Firebird reprints began appearing; Ratha's Creature and Clan Ground in Spring 2007. The covers were gorgeous, the first reviews enthusiastic. They were on Amazon.com, and through Amazon on sites all over the Internet. I actually had a book on Amazon! Within a few months, Creature had corralled 30 five-star Amazon customer reviews; (42 now) Clan got 10. Authors of MySpace spotlighted the series. I set up two websites and got a flood of emails. Things were starting off like a cheetah after a gazelle.
Then, on 6/22/07 came the email letter that struck me numb. Viking-Penguin had re-thought the whole thing. They weren't that happy about the sales of the first two books. Even though Amazon had re-stocked several times and the chain bookstores were carrying Creature and Clan, it wasn't enough. Apparently they expected a monster seller that could squash Harry Potter #7, and didn't get it. So V-P decided that they were never going to sell more than 2100 copies of the new hardcover, therefore they weren't going to make any money, therefore they were going to cancel the book. Cancellation agreement to follow, nice doing business, but you were a disappointment. We'll just move on to the next potential Hunter or Rowling.
I am sure that the decision came from the higher-ups in Viking-Penguin, and that Sharyn herself tried to fight it. She believed in the series; they didn't.
Not that it mattered that they asked me to write the book in the first place, and I spent more than a year of my life doing it. And that I completed my obligations as stated in the contract, supplying copies of the old books, writing the new one and turning it in on time, even going far out of my way to be helpful. None of that, apparently, mattered. Nor did it seem to matter that readers and reviewers who got one of the few advanced readers copies of Courage raved about it.
Richard Curtis and I fought like rabid cougars, using everything we could think of, including a letter that had quotes from the emails I had received from fans eager for the book. Nothing worked.
Then, more discouraging news from V-P. Oh by the way, we're thinking of canceling Thistle-chaser and Challenge as well.
Us rabid cougars redoubled our efforts and some Ratha fans offered to pelt Viking-Penguin with protest letters. In the end, it was a compromise. We saved Thistle and Challenge, but we lost Courage.
The next two books came out in the Fall of 2007, appeared in bookstores and on Amazon. Fans on Library Thing and Goodreads rated them between 4-5 stars, as they had the first two. Though I was desolate over Courage, I had gotten the series back into print.
It was Richard Curtis who told me about Greg Bear's experience with his new novel Quantico His US publisher unexpectedly rejected it. Curtis suggested an alternative, the infant, but lustily growing e-book market. Greg agreed, Quantico came out as an E-Reads, did well, and went into physical publication. Quantico deserved to succeed; I bought a hardcover copy, read the book, and thought it was excellent.
Could Courage take the same path as Quantico did? I thought for a while, exchanged an email with Greg Bear, who encouraged me to try, and decided, what the heck, why not. I owed it to Ratha fans to get the book out. The road to e-publication was a bit bumpy, but new ways often are. First, Courage was scheduled to appear as an E-Reads release on Fictionwise.com. Then, when E-Reads allied with Baen Books, they decided to make Courage a featured e-release for April.
So here we stand, with the series back in "deadtree" print and the new book ready to jump out on the Internet. I have learned a lot about Internet book promotion in the process. I have tried my best not only to get the book out on the Internet, but to interact with fans via email and posts on many websites, including MySpace, LiveJournal, LibraryThing, Goodreads, Facebook, Wands and Worlds, Baen's Bar, You-Tube, and others as user "rathacat".
. The character visualization 3-D animations still appear on You-Tube, along with clips from the animated Storybreak Ratha's Creature episode (also on MySpace). The author and series have a Wikipedia entry and comes up on search engines and query sites, such as Ask.com. There is a new role-playing site (Into The Mist; Voyage Untold) and a fan site (Trails of Conquest). The Scratching Log, hosted by Blogger, is syndicated to various sites, including the Amazon Connect facility. Courage itself has captured a five-star review on the Internet.
Not too shabby for a book that got canceled.
Wands and Worlds' review of Ratha's Creature also has some good words about Ratha's Courage.l
Plus a link to the book's page on Baen Webscriptions.
Later this spring, Amazon.com will carry Courage as an E-book (right now the page says not available, but it will be) and it will appear on Fictionwise.com.
In some ways, Ratha's Courage resembles the series character Thistle-chaser, Ratha's daughter, who was nearly killed in infancy. Like Thistle, the new book has survived, shaken off its injuries and will thrive in the hearts of its devoted fans. Thanks to everyone who made this possible, live long and enjoy.