My editor from New American Library was one of the special guests at the local Writers Guild conference this past weekend. It was great finally getting a chance to meet her. I’d spoken with her on the phone before, and e-mailed of course, but I had no idea what she looked like at all.
Someone asked me about sales numbers for The Road to the Dark Tower at the conference and I didn’t have an answer for them, so Rose (my editor) promised to look ’em up when she got back to New York today. I’d heard through the grapevine that it had sold over 10,000 copies by the beginning of the year, but I didn’t know how many in total.
Turns out, it’s been doing quite well. Over 30,000 copies as of now, with an 88% sell-through (I guess that means 12% of the copies were returns) rate. Rose tells me that the average sell-through for a trade paperback is 65%, so Road’s doing quite well. It should also backlist well, so it should continue to sell. Cool beans.
I’m finalizing revisions on the novel-in-progress, hoping to get the manuscript to my agent by the end of March. This is a busy time, since I have a Cemetery Dance column due in a couple of weeks and I’m going away for a week this month and half a week next month for World Horror, but I’ve gotten a ton of work done on the book in the past couple of weeks and I’m very happy with my edits. NY Times bestselling author John Lescroart was at the Writers Guild conference this weekend, too, and he gave this advice: Write in “genius mode” (I’m the best writer in the world and this story I’m telling is the best thing that’s ever been created) and edit in “idiot mode” (this manuscript is a pile of crap and every word needs to be changed). An interesting perspective!
