Conversation with Eric Flint

[Malcolm]

I talked with Eric Flint a while back when he was hosting a panel at a convention I was at. I mentioned that I was reading some online work that I really enjoyed (Fel's of course) and I wondered what it would take to get some of that published. He did mention Jim Baen and his group; the question is would Fel be interested in doing that. Eric is a really decent guy but he does stay really busy. I would buy Fel's stuff if he ever got it published and I am sure there are many more out there who would as well. What do the rest of you all think?

[Spec8472]

Much of this has been discussed before - including the Baen angle.

I would think Fel would need to do some work to prep his stuff for consideration.
Baen (and other publishers) receive many many submissions. If it's to have any chance of it catching a reviewers eye amongst the piles of crud they need to wade through, he's going to need at least one book that's cleaned up and edited down quite a bit.

Not to be unkind to Fel, but most of his *chapters* are as long as some books. From a publisher's perspective - this isn't a good thing.
It's somewhat like a resume - one that's overly long immediately ends up binned. You need to know what to leave out.


Here's some word counts:

• Firestaff: Tower: 342k
• Firestaff: Quest: 425k
• Firestaff: Honor: 546k
• Firestaff: Shadow: 309k
• Firestaff: Weavespinner: 312k
• Pyrosian: Axe: 393k
• Pyrosian: Sword 302k
• Pyrosian: Bane: 267k

Firestaff and Pyrosian: 2.8M words combined, for 9 books.

Kit is worse, from a publishers perspective: It's about 800k words, over about 1,000 A4 pages. In trade paperback you're looking at somewhere north of 3,000 pages.
Kit's story does break up fairly nicely into three or so books, but, again, you'd still need to be editing the story down to roughly 1/6th of it's current size to get it even glanced at.

Comparing these to other well known books:

• Harry Potter - the entire seven books - tops out at just over 1M words.
• War and Peace: ~587,000 words.

So, yeah. Not as simple as just mailing it in. I would love to see Fel get the recognition due though, but it'd mean we'd be without new writing for quite a period as he spent time editing his books.

[Bester]

As a quick rule of thumb, a published book should run ~120k words +/- 10%. That's not to say that rule of thumb never has exceptions (I don't know word count, but I know the Weber's Safehold books in general, and the last one in particular, were huge). Something the size of these books would need to be split into several books, and the pentalogy would need to be at least 14 books, and the trilogy would need to be another 7.

And, as Spec said, there would need to be a fair amount of editing and chopping and twisting. I strongly feel that overall the story is publishing quality, but that's not to say that an editor wouldn't have a field day going through all of it.

[the_scot]

I think editing most of Fel's works to that degree would destroy their intrinsic value.

[Bester]

I don't necessarily agree with that. There is a fine line, but beyond the normal stuff (spelling, incorrect verbs, grammatical errors, etc.) there is a lot that can be done by a good editor to trim up the story without losing anything from it. I don't think cutting chunks or massive changes are in order, but I think a lot of smaller changes can be done without losing the spirit and feel of the story.

[Greymist]

...

Firestaff and Pyrosian: 2.8M words combined, for 9 books.

Comparing these to other well known books:

• Harry Potter - the entire seven books - tops out at just over 1M words.
• War and Peace: ~587,000 words.

When you put it that way, it makes me realise why it has taken so f$£%ing long for me to read as far as I have. I started reading the Firestaff series again in June, and I'm now half way through The Shadow Realm (though I didn't put a lot of time into reading them in the first month). By the time I've finished I will have almost read Harry Potter twice (not that I've even read it once).

I think one I've finished the Firestaff part of the series, I'll give it a break, and go back to some normal length books. That way at least I feel more sense of accomplishment at finishing a book

[arargh]

Here's some word counts:
...

• Firestaff: Tower: 342k
• Firestaff: Quest: 425k
• Firestaff: Honor: 546k
• Firestaff: Shadow: 309k
• Firestaff: Weavespinner: 312k
• Pyrosian: Axe: 393k
• Pyrosian: Sword 302k
• Pyrosian: Bane: 267k

Firestaff and Pyrosian: 2.8M words combined, for 9 books.
...

Hmmm, I only see 8, where is #9?

[Fawks]

I think editing most of Fel's works to that degree would destroy their intrinsic value.

DITTO!

Although I REALLY would like to see a publishing company take Fel's stories on. Even if they only fix the misspelled words, and fix an annoying little fairy's husbands name.