Because a number of folks have emailed or posted asking this question, I figured I should address it in a post.
This edit of SERVANT was signficant, but it involved mostly line edits, copy edits, resequencing, and one important adjustment and addition.
Line edits are things that make individual sentences or paragraphs read more clearly. I made line edits to almost every page. I think most readers won’t notice these. But then that’s the point.
Copy edits catch small things like typos and misspellings. There were a number of maddening copy issues that were introduced into the manuscript in the publisher’s version and others that weren’t flagged. I fixed a number of these and then had two copy editors read over the manuscript to find more. No book is perfect. I’m sure there are still some gremlins lurking in the text. But we caught a lot of the little buggers.
Resequencing is moving chapters or sections around and does affect the experience. The biggest resequence was switching the first eight chapters back to the original order I intended. This is an important change and will have a large effect on the reader for the first quarter of the book. Then there were three other smaller sections inside the story that needed to be moved around to make the chronology clearer and improve the suspense.
The line, copy, and resequencing edits make up the bulk of the edits. But I did adjust and add a short section to the ending immediately after the climax to clarify a few things that should have been revealed in the first version and that lead into book two.
What does this all mean?
It means that while this is a superior version of the tale, the base story remains the same. I care about the stories of Sugar, Talen, Argoth, Hunger, and the dilemmas they face. So I did not change their tales. However, I did significantly change the experience of those tales for the reader.
If you have already read SERVANT, you know everything that happens. However, you will want to get a hold of a copy of the new version to review the updated ending for the new information it includes. To avoid spoilers and confusion, I will not be releasing the ending in a separate document. But if you sign up for my release notification, I’ll let you know when I have my release sale so you can get it cheap.
One final note. Because I feel this is a superior version of the story, and because I do not want readers to be confused about which version to read, I’m releasing it with a different title and different cover art. It will be called “Servant” and include the series label “The Dark God Book 1.”
I think readers are going to be very pleased with this version. I know I am. And then we can move on to “Curse,” the next in the series, followed by “Glory.”
John, is there any chance you could say more about the contract terms you are trying to avoid, and perhaps about what changed with your previous Tor situation? I’d be interested to know what I should be on the lookout for in the future. Of course, I understand if you’d prefer not to discuss specifics, but I thought I might ask.
Greg,
With the Tor situation, it really was the vision thing and delays as I described in the post about that.
With the contract terms, a good explanation of the issues can be found on http://www.kriswrites.com. Look for the deal breaker posts in her publishing page. Read them all.
For me specifically, it’s a money versus what I get for the money. If someone wants to pay me boatloads of money and averages a lot of units sold, I’m willing to take 25% of net on ebooks (the industry standard right now) AND promise not to publish anything else in the series we’re working on together until I’ve delivered my manuscript. Heck, maybe until they put out their hardback. And I’ll be okay binding myself to them for a couple of books. But that’s only for LOTS of money. I DON’T want to do that for a low offer.
My understanding is that romance novel authors get an average of $4-5k on a book. The average for SFF authors is $7k. My advance from Tor was more. But I need to know what’s common in the thriller market. If it’s low, I’m not going to do it because I think I can do as good for myself going indie. If it’s substantially higher, then I think it will be worth while.