Jeri Smith-Ready

Best. News. Ever.

Wednesday afternoon I got two bits of great news, which I was going to mention today and Monday (when I'm on deadline, I like to dole out the blog topics one at a time, purposely stringing them out so I don't have a huge gap of silence, during which people wonder if I've died).

But Thursday night my editor gave me the two words an author loves to hear most:

SECOND

PRINTING

In that order.

So the other news will have to wait until Monday and Tuesday.

Less than a month after its release (23 days, to be exact), Wicked Game has gone back for a second printing. I'm told this is pretty fast.

What does it mean? First of all, it doesn't mean every copy has been sold. That would suck, because then people who want it couldn't buy it, and then people who have bought it would be knifed and punched in the street for their copies, and the last thing I want is for violence to break out because of Wicked Game.

(Okay, maybe it's not the last thing I want. I've got a wee bit of rock 'n' roll ego, after all.)

Anyway, there are still plenty of copies* in stores and in warehouses, but not enough to meet future demand. There are a few possible reasons behind this situation:

1) booksellers have put in new orders, more than originally expected
2) several thousand copies were eaten by termites
3) or fell off the back of a truck in North Jersey
4) or fell off the back of a truck in North Jersey and then eaten by termites

The publishing industry is shrouded in mystery, so really, it could be any of these. (We can probably rule out #4, unless we're talking about the heavily wooded extreme North Jersey, but things are less likely to fall off trucks up there.)

So to avoid the aforementioned shortage and mass muggings, Pocket has decided to print some more copies. Hopefully this will happen again and again and again.

To a publisher, the success of a book isn't so much about raw numbers of copies sold as it is about expectations. They're much happier with a book that sells 12K out of a 15K print run than one that sells 20K out of a 40K print run. I know, it seems weird at first, but when you think in terms of net versus gross revenue and getting a return on investment, it makes sense. (If this is confusing, let me know and I'll do a separate post. This one is getting long and way too self-congratulatory.)

See you Monday for Second Best. News. Ever. (Yes, I'm evil, and I'm okay with that.)

*of what is now officially the First Edition--get yours today before they're gone! I hear it's a bad year for termites.

Labels: bookstores, vampire series, writing life

• posted by Jeri @ 12:19 AM
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