User login
There is currently 1 user online.
- C_Cobban
You are here
How many books have you written altogether?
Tue, 08/02/2005 - 12:00am | 
Jack Whyte
...and how many of those are Canadian, as opposed to American?
That’s one of the questions I am asked most frequently, and it is one that I sometimes despair of answering intelligibly. So let me tackle it in slices:
To this point, in September, 2011, I have published a total of thirteen novels, but I have a fourteenth "in gestation" and a fifteenth under research. The first nine novels were a sequential progression that dealt with the Arthurian legend, providing a feasible, non-magical explanation of how the original elements of the legend could have come into existence. All of them were based in 5th-Century, post-Roman Britain. I followed that series with a trio of novels dealing with the rise and fall of the medieval Order of the Knights Templar and spanning the 200-year period between the end of the 11th Century and the turn of the 14th Century. And 2010 saw the release of The Forest Laird", the first book of an entirely new trilogy, entitled "The Guardians" and set in 14th-Century Scotland during the Scottish Wars of Independence. The second book in the series, Renegade of these books, is scheduled for publication in August/September, 2012, and the third, currently nameless, will probably be released the following year, in 2013.
A few of the books have different titles in the USA and Canada. Those are listed below:
Canada: The Sorcerer, Volume 1; The Fort at River’s Bend;
USA: The Fort At River’s Bend;
USA: The Fort At River’s Bend;
Canada: The Sorcerer, Volume II; Metamorphosis;
USA: The Sorcerer, Metamorphosis;
USA: The Sorcerer, Metamorphosis;
Canada: Clothar the Frank;
USA The Lance Thrower.
USA The Lance Thrower.
Comments
Same Book/Different Titles
I was discussing this very subject with my on line book discussion group. We are all over the world and have found quite a few books with different titles but the exact same content/author. Why do publishers do this? When I saw Lance Thrower, I was all excited that there was a published book by you that I had not yet read! I should know better, but at least I found out before I bought another copy. *G*
I also want to wish you and your lovely wife a Happy Hogmanay and may the first foot at your door be tall with dark hair.
Lifting a fine glass of Glenmorangie in your direction!
Vicki
Different Titles
Hi, Vicki, and Happy New Year to you, too.
I can't begin to tell you why Publishers do what they do with titles . . . I gave up trying to figure that out years ago, though I formed the distinct impression that most of it has to do with the insatiable, anonymously egotistical demands (and I know that's both an oxymoron and a paradox) of Marketing Departments... Places where generally underpaid people are paid money as part of their Learning Process to come up with (supposedly) brilliant and "insightful" (their word, not mine!) prognostications of how a given book will perform within a specific marketplace... They usually have little effect, but they have great, if formless, power.
Same book/different title
You'd think they'd have the courtesy to list somewhere that is "also published as". Although that might lower their sales. I'm all for selling as many books as possible (as an aspiring writing), but I sure wouldn't want to tick off the reading public.
I loved the "oxymoronic" description of marketing departments, these are the same folks that put your books in the "Fantasy" department, are they not?
Filed in 'Fantasy'
Yeah, I called Chapters on the carpet for putting Jack's books into the Fantasy section of their stores. You know what the excuse I got back was? I got told they put it there because the cover art for the first printing of THE SKYSTONE looked like a Fantasy cover.
Anyone familiar with what the first cover for THE SKYSTONE looked like will know that it's a drawing of what looks to be a section of an ancient Roman frieze. Exactly what is 'Fantasy looking' about that is beyond my comprehension. Pathetic excuse Chapters.
I suspect the real reason is that no-one could be bothered to read the book, saw that it had something to do with Arthurian legend, figured it would be filled with the same kind of hocus pocus prestidigitation of pretty much all the other Arthurian novels out there, and just stuck it there in Fantasy to be done with it.
Book store Placement
I retired from working in a library. All books have an ISBN number and most books have a LOC (Library of Congress) assignation. This gives an approximate area to place books. Given that reading the first page should give a content placement. THE SKYSTONE was published quite a while ago, you would think that Chapters would admit their error and change the placement.
Do you want to visit all the Chapters in your area and switch them to their rightful placement in Historical Fiction? I do place favourite books with cover out instead of just spine showing, when I'm browsing in book stores. Anything to promote my favourite authors.
Admitting their error
Oh, I asked them about that. They told me they figured that people were now so accustomed to looking for Jack's books in the Fantasy section, that they didn't want to change their location after all these years.
It would be a monumental task to move the novels over to the General Fiction section (there is no Historical Fiction section). The Chapters here in Langley usually carries quite a large selection of Jack's novels, so finding enough space for them in another section would require hours of work. And I'm not inclined to travel to the other Chapters stores in the area - they're a fair distance away.
But I do neaten up the books while I'm there - putting them in the right order, and putting them all together on the shelf. I often find them higgledy piggledy and mixed in with other authors' work on the shelves.
Moving books
I do hope you know I was kidding. Moving all of Jack's Books to a different area would require breaking into the store after hours and doing a major shift in shelving. While I love the books, I'm not quite ready to go to jail to get the books moved to their proper area.
I too am a compulsive tidier of books. I like the spines aligned, the books in reading order, and at least one of the books with the cover out to draw the eye to the different series.
Cheers
Vicki