Book deal: Coffin rides again!

[Jon Loomis]

So, it looks like we've finally settled on a workable deal with SM/M to do the third Frank Coffin mystery--either Fire Season or Hurricane Season. It's a modest advance, but for a single book rather than two (good news for me: I was reluctant to tie up the next four years of my writing life in one contract), and with a deadline I'm pretty sure I can handle. It's great, too, because I won't have to teach freshman English for a whole year--woo hoo!

[Jon Loomis]

Yeah, I can't even read the goodreads stuff, it's basically Neuroses On Parade. At least in a professional review there's usually a good-faith attempt at something like objectivity.

[Jim Thomsen]

I think the online/reader/amateur reviewers do too much judging of books on almost anything but their merits. Just looking at your Goodreads reviews shows people judging your books by a) their distaste for sex crimes; b) what they wanted your book to be, as opposed to what it was; and c) confusion caused by reading the books out of sequence, among other reasons. And then there were the people who had nothing bad to say but gave one book or the other just three stars out of five.

Anyone who wants to review art would do well to remember Roger Ebert's guiding maxim: "It is not what it is about, but how it is about it."

[Jon Loomis]

Professional reviewers generally like me. Some of the online/reader/amateur reviews haven't really gotten what I was trying to do, I don't think. Or haven't cared.

[Jim Thomsen]

That's awesome. Glad to see your publisher is understanding (sooner than most, apparently) that squeezing authors on e-book royalties will only send them running in other directions.

Just checked out your reviews .. wow. Universally positive. Nice tongue bath from Booklist, especially!

[Jon Loomis]

Hey Jim,

The single book was my idea--they wanted two. I've got a couple of other projects in mind that I'd really like to work on, but with a full-time teaching job there just isn't time to do everything. So I was reluctant to tie up years of my writing life, given the size of the advance they were offering. This way we can take them one at a time and see where we are--actually, I'm glad it took as long as it did because in the intervening time Minotaur's ebook royalty on new contracts went from 12.5% to 25%. Who knows where it'll be in a year or two.

Jon

[Jim Thomsen]

Not to look for the negative, but in reading between the lines, it sounds like you had a tough negotiating road despite two well-received novels. Was the single-book contract their idea or yours? Were you being put through The Midlister Squeeze™?

[Karen Dionne]

Terrific news, Jon! Congratulations!!!

[Jack Getze]

Great news, Jon. Congrats.

[Jon Loomis]

Thomas--Of course. Happy to sign for you. I'll apologize in advance for the six-month wait!

[Jon Loomis]

Ha. Thanks, Thomas.