Alastair Reynolds signs 10-book deal

ixoy

I know there's a good few Alastair Reynolds' fans here (I'm one of them) so it's good news that he's got a 10-book deal for the next 10 years landing him a neat £1m. From the Guardian via SF Signal:

As banks struggle and businesses collapse, the science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds is making his own contribution to the flagging UK economy, signing an unprecedented ten-book deal with Gollancz worth £1m.

Reynolds, who has published eight novels with the Orion imprint Gollancz since his 2000 debut, Revelation Space, said he was "amazed and thrilled" to commit himself to the same publisher for the next decade. "It gives me a huge amount of security for the next ten years," he said, "and writers don't have a lot of security. Even at the best of times you're worrying about the next deadline, the next contract. To have that in place is fantastic for me."

He has always struggled to write when his future has been uncertain, he continued, so he's delighted to be able to start "thinking strategically ... not just thinking one book ahead, but 'where do I want to be in four books?'"

Good news for all and it also means that he can start planning trilogies or even quintets or more!

mcgovern

ixoy wrote: »

I know there's a good few Alastair Reynolds' fans here (I'm one of them) so it's good news that he's got a 10-book deal for the next 10 years landing him a neat £1m. From the Guardian via SF Signal:


Good news for all and it also means that he can start planning trilogies or even quintets or more!

Great news, lets hope there was a condition that some of them have to be in the Revelation Space universe!

kencleary

I'm really big fan of Alastair Reynolds' stuff, particularly his latest - House of Suns. 10 books over 10 years is a fairly high output though and I hope quality doesn't suffer!

protos

I like that it will let him look at writing big story arcs over several books. Should produce some interesting stuff.

Fair play to him for landing the contract. Good money for an SF writer.

Trojan

Fair play to him. I hope the £1M doesn't include royalties, otherwise it doesn't seem an awful lot.

I've enjoyed a fair bit of his stuff, but find it difficult going sometimes, hard sf tires me when I just want some bubble gum

I also don't like the way it's hard to figure if it's set in Revelation Space universe or a completely new one (maybe I'm missing a distinction on the covers).

ixoy

Trojan wrote: »

Fair play to him. I hope the £1M doesn't include royalties, otherwise it doesn't seem an awful lot.

That's what we were thinking - a 100k a year doesn't seem a huge amount (esp. with inflation) for a top-seller in the genre. I wonder what actual figures are like in terms of volumes sold?

I remember several years ago, Raymond Feist was saying how he got about $2 for each hard-back sold and $1 for each paperback (hard-backs have a higher profit margin). Wonder if there's something similar for Reynolds (although I doubt he'd be quite as well off)?

I also don't like the way it's hard to figure if it's set in Revelation Space universe or a completely new one (maybe I'm missing a distinction on the covers).

Well normally it'd say it on the cover? FWIW, they're all Revelation Space bar "Zima Blue", "Pushing Ice", "House of Suns" and "Century Rain". The forthcoming "Terminal World" isn't from the Revelation-space universe either.