I am extraordinarily proud to give you the first look at the mass market version of Infoquake, the first copy of which arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It’s back from the printers quite a bit earlier than I expected, considering the official release date isn’t until June, but that’s the publishing business for you. At least I managed to get the matching redesigned website up first.
Here are the front and back covers. (Forgive the lousy Treo camera pics and the even lousier attempts to brighten up the lousy Treo camera pics in Photoshop.)
The mass market edition of Infoquake is being published by Solaris Books, the folks who also recently published my story “Mathralon” in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two.
And they’ve done a bang-up job of it too — this thing looks sharp. Not only is the cover art by Stephan Martiniere crisp and stunning, but Infoquake might be one of the few books that will catch just as much attention when the spine’s facing out as the cover. It’s hard to tell from the pics above, but you can read the title on the spine from across the room. Plus the book has a nice weight and thickness to it, and it tickles my vanity by opening with several pages of rave quotes from authors and reviewers. (Not as many pages of rave quotes as the mass market of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, but one can’t set the bar too high.)
Those who have read Infoquake in the (equally stunning) Pyr trade paperback version might be interested to know that I’ve made 155 changes to the text for this edition as well. But lest I be accused of breaking my own rules for ethical self-promotion, I should point out that they are entirely minor changes. For instance, one of the most substantial changes I made was to alter this somewhat nonsensical sentence…
It became less comforting still when Natch realized that several of the dartguns pointed at him were actually multi disruptors.
to this much clearer version…
It became less comforting still when Natch spotted a few multi disruptors in the group.
Much better, don’t you think? For the edification of all those future students of literature who I predict will one day be obsessively studying my works in classes taught by stuffy university professors, here is the actual Excel spreadsheet I sent to Solaris detailing my changes for the mass market edition. Really, it’s not that interesting. I’m guessing that two-thirds of the changes are me rethinking the use of italics for emphasis in character dialogue. So, “We can’t just let people die!” became “We can’t just let people die!”
(And if you future stuffy university professors are having trouble thinking up a name for the course, might I suggest “Edelquake: Decontextualizing the Metaphorical Implications of Jump 225 in a Hyperrational Postmodern Society”?)
My only regret is that it didn’t occur to me to change the Acknowledgments section in the back of the book to thank the guys at Solaris for all their hard work. So, to George Mann, Christian Dunn, and Mark Newton, I will now put on my proper British bowler hat and tip it on your direction.
The mass market of Infoquake won’t hit the stores for some weeks yet, but have I mentioned that you can pre-order a copy on Amazon? Oh yeah, I just did.