Some bad news... Wizards of the Coast Discoveries folding

I haven't confirmed this with my editor, but when I tell you that Steve Tem is not the kind of fellow to joke about these sorts of things, I hope you know that there's no way Steve would joke about something like this.

http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/5535

This is particularly bad news for me, as you can imagine.

I bet more than a few of you fine folks had projects on submit with them, thus I felt like it might behoove us to spread the word a bit.

Again, I'm still waiting for confirmation from my editor.

Pike said:

Crapola, Ducky. But I wondered about the line when they stamped it as "genre-light" if they wen't shooting themselves in the preverbial foot. Y'know, when they turned their noses up at the "tired, old" genre staples such as vamps, weres, serious sci-fi - the stuff that's selling like mad! And for such a large publishing arm to only crank out four titles seemed rather weak. They could have potentially flooded the market with a dozen books off the bat if not more and taken it by storm.

It just hasn't been the same since D&D went corporate.

Pike

Click to expand...

You don't have the whole story, Pike, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't use this tone when your statements indicate your total darkness.

I won't post it publicly in full, since from me it is just hearsay, but feel free to PM me and I'll fill you in on why many of the legitimate objections to this imprint you list are completely bogus, and more than a little bit offensive to me, in particular. I'll be civil. It's not your fault you don't know.

I do wonder why you would turn around and post something phrased like this in the face of what is always bad news to every reader and writer. Please keep the context of your statement in mind. This is bad news to a lot of people around here, who have projects on submission (or out) with this very company.

The editorial and promotional and production staff at Wizards of the Coast did a phenomenal job, and they had every intention of continuing to do a phenomenal job. If given the chance they deserved, they would have done great things exactly as they set out to do them.

This is Hasbro's folly. Hasbro is focusing on their core competencies in a time of economic turmoil - namely, doing "kid stuff".

Applying MBA business truisms from 1950's kitchen appliances to an information age media company in 2010 is about as useful as applying the rules of DDT-era farming to satellite radio. But, as Steve says over at his forum about this, "that's showbiz".

Let's not speculate too heavily on what is and what could be and what could have been better, pike. Especially when we still don't know the whole story, and I'm still waiting for confirmation.

Heck, I will likely not know the whole story, ever, and I'm as close as you can be to the issue without being directly affected.

My projects are all fine, as far as I can tell. It's these other authors, fine people and very talented, all of them, like the Tems, who have to deal with the full fallout of Hasbro's decision.

People should be reading Cory Doctorow's Locus articles in B-school more than they should be reading Welch, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Oh, and all ye book collectors take heed:

This line of books was marked by it's quality. These authors will all continue on to have great careers. First editions (with such an interesting backstory) will likely be worth picking up at the store, and saving for later.

Also, reading, but you know... Obviously for reading!

I learned something very important:

As long as the books that are out (including, I assume, Tim Waggoner and Ari Marmell's books that aren't out, yet) continue to sell well, the Discoveries imprint will continue printing them.

Gee, I wonder what could possibly convince Hasbro that shutting this line of books down is foolish and wrong...