Now that Jordan is gone and Goodkind's series is wrapped up. What series or author being pubbed by Tor merits the mega-advance? ****Please note this is not a sarcastic question. If there's a really good epic-fantasy series out there (it can be from other pubs too)I'd really like to know about it. Lately nothing in that particular field has grabbed me.

Tor is heavily backing Brandon Sanderson who's new book "Warbreaker" comes out this Winter and he will be taking over for Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series.

Tor is heavily backing Brandon Sanderson who's new book "Warbreaker" comes out this Winter and he will be taking over for Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series.

I've tried Sanderson, both the Mistborn series and Elantris. The concepts and characters in both storylines are interesting, the writing and plotting seem solid. I want to like them, I really do, it's just I can't seem to get hooked on them. *sigh*

I hate to say it, Rose, but if Borders goes under, then indie bookstores aren't magically going to return. Besides the startup costs, which explains why so many Frumpy Fiftysomething's Used Books and Quiet Desperation Emporium franchises are so ridiculously undercapitalized (yelling "But I wanna stay in the publishing business!" isn't likely to convince most banks for a very long time), you have the simple fact that bookstores are getting hit with the same situation as hardware stores and pet shops. Namely, considering the nutjobs and passive-aggressives that run far too many indie bookstores, many readers (myself among them) are going directly to online venues instead of dealing with the dubious joys of the indie bookstore.

You're right that publishing is changing, and the typical Frumpy Fiftysomething's is as quaint as home milk delivery. I'd personally get a hot Clorox enema before I'd buy another Tor or Baen book again, but that has everything to do with the content. Both publishers have been busting their tails to make a market for themselves via online sales; the only other non-university press I've seen that does as good a job at promoting itself online is Timber Press. That's in addition to both publishers' efforts in cultivating fans via LiveJournal and Facebook: in another couple of years, the successful books are going to be from publishers who are MySpace-savvy, not the ones still wasting their time on newspaper and magazine ads. It's going to be an interesting ride for the next couple of years, I tell ya.

Oh, and is there any way to include paragraph breaks on this forum? I swear, that last post, without breaks, read like a Usenet post.

Paul: Here I thought you wanted it to sound like a Usenet post! Use HTML < br > tags to make line breaks.<BR><BR>Call me old-fashioned, but I actually really like patronizing small local businesses. I get a much higher quality of service there than I ever have at a big chain.

Joel: Keep an eye out for Ken Scholes's <I>Lamentation</I>, which is coming out from Tor in February and is the first of a five-book epic fantasy series. I also really like Daniel Abraham's Long Price books, though they're much darker, more George R.R. Martin than Terry Goodkind.

Rose, I definitely agree with you. If you ever get out this way, I'd be glad to show you my favorite bike shops, pet shops, and music supply venues, because they're all local. The problem here is that for every bookstore I come across that offers great service, I step into five where the staff doesn't even bother to look up when a new customer walks in, the person at checkout openly sneers at the books being purchased, and I get blatant lies about calls back about special orders. (The worst part is that I'm willing to pay in advance for special orders if asked, and I say so.) Sorry, but a yellowing "BUY LOCAL" sign on typing paper in the front window, along with the guilt trips on how somehow we're letting civilization collapse if we don't frequent a Frumpy Fiftysomething's, is making it harder for me to have any sympathy for the plight of most indie stores.
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That said, again, I figure that we're probably going to be doing all right. Yes, a lot of publishers are feeling the pain, and so are a lot of stores. I honestly suspect that things are going to get better after Borders explodes: publishers are going to have to think longer and harder about their acquisitions, and do some serious market analysis as to whether a book will actually sell, and whether it's all wishful thinking. I'm actually fond of POD publishing, because it means that the truly deluded are going to be leaving the rest of the business alone in attempting to sell crap like <i>Space Ark</i>. Most importantly, I suspect that we're going to be seeing a lot of interesting ideas in book and magazine sales that don't involve existing distribution chains. I couldn't begin to tell you what those are going to be, but I've been delightfully surprised before.

I suspect there are two forces working for Tor and Baen and their like. First, most small publishers are already as lean as they can be. They can only be completely abolished; they cannot be made leaner. Second, genre fiction is cheap and comforting (even horror!) and more resistant to bad times – or possibly more successful in bad time, if the cliché is correct about bad times breeding escapism.
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And here is a sentence sandwiched between two HTML break codes
to test a way to avoid mashed-potato posts.<BR><BR>

That test was successful, dear readers. Put two break codes between paragraphs, as in
< BR > < BR > without the blanks.

<P>Now I'm trying to encase a paragraph within HTML paragraph codes.</P>
<P>Followed by a second paragraph.</P>

Which did not work. Sorry. We must apparently use the double-break method - which even to me, a web-wizard, seems easier.

The assumed explosion/implosion of Borders may or not happen, I hope not (I work there). The trouble is really not with the book end of the biz, although that has its problems, like buying too many of the big books and not enough of the midlist and/or backlist. One problem is that corporate insists on carrying lots of non-book items (check out the toys, puzzles, etc.) many of which are non-returnable, as is the food, etc., for the Seattle's Best coffee shop stuff, most of which is horrendously overpriced and quite often ends up being dumped. Same with the Paperchase division, lots of cool stuff that's way too expensive and ends up being sold as clearance items. The service level and customer satisfaction is pretty good, unfortunately, payroll cuts preclude much improvement. Again, thank God for the genre books - mystery, romance, SF, horror, etc. That keeps selling (and frankly, that's mainly what I read too).
The next year or so will be very interesting and the fate of the company will be decided then. Sorry, I don't know how to do the paragraph breaks.

My husband posted a link to "Tor Dodges A Bullet" on a "Writing Popular Fiction" discussion board for the master's program at Seton Hill University. A student who responded to it said they were encouraged that genre fiction would survive the financial troubles of recent weeks. I'm reminded that pulp fiction thrived in the dark days of the Great Depression as a way for people to escape their own problems for a while. Thank you for words of support, on behalf of genre writers of the future!

Bookstores in Canada have been huge. Fantasy and S.F. sales are big here. We have some major bookstores and tons of Independents. They all do well, they are all busy all the time. Lately I can rarely avoid standing in a lineup to pay for books.
I am currently writing my first Fantasy, creating a series and TOR is my obvious first choice. I have rarely been dissapointed in the books they publish.