Graham Sleight tells us about the book project he has been working on for the last couple of years, the collected short stories of Joanna Russ:
Perhaps I should explain. In, I think, 2006 or 2007, Farah Mendlesohn very kindly asked me to write a chapter on Joanna Russ’s short fiction for a book she was editing; this became On Joanna Russ (Wesleyan, 2009). At the time, Wesleyan were reprinting a number of Russ’s novels. Via Farah, a request came through. Wesleyan were interested in publishing a Collected Stories of Joanna Russ, but the bibliography seemed a bit complicated. Would I be interested in working with Joanna to sort it out? I would, I said, and began corresponding with Joanna. Over the course of several years and a lot of airmail post, we worked out the contents list, the texts to be used, and the scholarly apparatus. In addition to the published collections, the book would contain about another collection’s worth of unpublished material. (About a quarter of this Joanna referred to as “Ghastlies”, meaning early work she wasn’t that keen on; but most of it was astonishing, like the late hilarious story “Invasion”. Most is not from the sf field but rather from small literary/feminist magazines.) I sent the completed MS off to Wesleyan in late 2008 and waited.
This book is currently in limbo, but needs to happen, a fitting tribute to one of science fiction’s best writers. Sadly much of her work seems to be out of print now, while it’s not very easy to find secondhand either, at least not here. I’ve rarely seen her work in the secondhand bookstores I browse in.
This is not an unique position a sf writer can find themselves in of course; apart from the obvious classics, most of science fiction’s history is out of print. Gollancz aims to change this, by launching the Science Fiction Gateway. From their press release:
Gollancz, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, announces the launch of the world’s largest digital SFF library, the SF Gateway, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks.
Building on the remarkable success of Gollancz’s Masterworks series, the SF Gateway will launch this Autumn with more than a thousand titles by close to a hundred authors. It will build to 3,000 titles by the end of 2012, and 5,000 or more by 2014. Gollancz’s Digital Publisher Darren Nash, who joined the company in September 2010 to spearhead the project said, “The Masterworks series has been extraordinarily successful in republishing one or two key titles by a wide range of authors, but most of those authors had long careers in which they wrote dozens of novels which had fallen out of print. It seemed to us that eBooks would offer the ideal way to make them available again. This realization was the starting point for the SF Gateway.” Wherever possible, the SF Gateway will offer the complete backlist of the authors included.
Gollancz has always been one of the most important, if not the most important publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the UK, both commercially and for the development of the genres. If any publisher can make this project work it’s them, but will all depend on how this gateway will work in practise. They’re getting at least one thing right, by going for volume from the start, rather than being cautious in what they’re offering and by going for the backlist as well as new titles. Now all they need to do is make sure all those minor little details like pricing, ease of purchase and how to handle territorial copyright, digital rights management, not to mention which formats to publish in and so on.
What I want from the SF Gateway is being able to buy all of Joanna Russ’ backlist, for about the same money that I could get them from a secondhand bookstore from — they should not be more expensive than a new mass market paperback — and do so hassle free, with no DRM or nonsense about not allowed to buy them because I’m not in the UK.