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Nuts & Bolts: Ellen Datlow
July 28, 2008

Welcome to Genreville! I'm your host, Rose Fox, editor of PW's SF/fantasy/horror and mass market reviews, and I'll be writing about all aspects of speculative fiction publishing. Genreville will feature interviews, news, reviews, links, and discussion of the past and possible future of the speculative genres, plus anything else that looks interesting. New content will go up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Subscribe to our RSS feed to get instant updates. (The feed is also syndicated on LiveJournal as genreville.)

To start things off, I'll introduce our first regular feature, Nuts & Bolts, a short Q&A with an author, editor, publicist, agent, or publisher discussing how a particular title has gone from being a gleam of inspiration to a finished volume on the bookstore shelves. Our first Nuts & Bolts interviewee is renowned editor Ellen Datlow, who talked with us about her recently released anthology The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Del Rey, April 2008).

Genreville: Where did the idea of doing an unthemed anthology for Del Rey come from, and what attracted you to that idea?

Ellen Datlow: I've always wanted to edit non-theme anthologies but they're always a hard sell. When SCIFICTION (the fiction arm of SCIFI.COM for which I was editor for almost six years) was folding, I was approached by Chris Schluep and Colleen Lindsay, editor and publicist, respectively at Del Rey. They asked if I'd be interested in editing an all original anthology of fiction along the lines of what I edited/published at SCIFICTION. I couldn't resist an offer like that and said sure.

GV: What challenges did you face when pitching, editing, and promoting the book?

ED: In this particular case, I didn't have to pitch the book. Honestly, the only problem was coming up with a title. I already had at least three stories I wanted to buy for SCIFICTION when I learned it was closing down so buying those three stories was a no-brainer.

Although this doesn't always happen, I was lucky enough to receive an amazing variety of SF/F/H plus oddball material for the anthology. So in that sense the work entailed in creating the mix I ended up with was minimal.

I've been promoting my books as much as possible online, making sure that the publicist sends out review copies to bloggers as well as traditional reviewers. The handle is the fact that it is a non-theme anthology in a period when non-theme anthologies seem to be on the increase.

GV: How did it inspire or discourage you? How is that experience affecting your current and future projects?

ED: I've been incredibly encouraged reading the reviews so far. Although only some of the reviewers seem to "get" all the stories, most have enjoyed enough of them to recommend the book as a whole.

In any anthology that tries to showcase stories from different subgenres of the fantastic you're taking a chance. It's possible that readers who only read science fiction or only fantasy or only horror might be disappointed.  Of course, I hope they won't be.

One of the most satisfying thing readers have said to me (to my face or on blogs) is that they buy everything I edit because they know the anthologies will be a good read, whatever genre they're in. Does that mean I'm a brand? ;-)

I won't know how the book does for a while. I'm hoping it sells well enough that Del Rey will commission me to edit a second volume.

Next week's Nuts & Bolts will feature author John Scalzi discussing his forthcoming novel Zoe's Tale (Tor, August 2008). In the meantime, stay tuned for Wednesday's post on Readercon 2008 and our second regular feature, Series Business, debuting on Friday.

Posted by Rose Fox on July 28, 2008 | Comments (14)