Okay, so now we need to assemble the juicy details on Angry Robot, so anyone interested in submitting can head into the matter well-informed. I know Angry Robot is a very impressive small publisher, but does anyone know:
-- What their distribution is like?
-- What a new writer can expect in a contract with them?
-- Any other information that's relevant to a writer thinking of submitting to them?
Their paperbacks are distributed to book stores in the UK and US, much like Big Six publications. I've seen at least a few of their books in the SFF section of every British book shop I've looked in.
Contracts seem pretty standard - rights revert if your book goes out of print or is no longer available to buy online, for example. Mine went through a top London agent, so there's certainly nothing dodgy lurking in there!
They're currently a very small outfit - two editors and a publicity guy - but very enthusiastic and friendly. The head honcho, Marc Gascoigne, has many years' experience in genre publishing in the UK, so although Angry Robot is the new kid on the block, it's head and shoulders above most of the little startups out there. Editorial standards are very high - my ms was cleaner than most, and it still went through a couple of rounds of proofing before it went off to the printers.
Did I mention that Marc won the World Fantasy Award last year in the "Special - Professional" category for his work on AR? Their authors and cover artists regularly win awards too...
As the entrants in the last Open Door discovered, they're not just looking for good books - they're looking for good books with an "Angry Robot" flavour, which is very hard to define but generally means something that's far enough off the beaten track to not be readily comparable to stuff that's out there, but not so interstitial that it's uncommercial. Epic fantasy is a new direction for them, and I expect they will want something a little bit different from the
Wheel of Ice and Truth kind of stuff that the Big Six are putting out
In
this post, they mention they will want all English language territory rights, that they likely will offer eBook and audio versions in addition to the print version, and that they offer both advances and royalties.
This is correct. All their books now come out simultaneously in the UK and US, in paperback and all popular ebook formats, with the audiobook following a few months later. Audiobooks are a new addition, so there aren't many of their backlist on audio, but new titles are all being recorded. E.g.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455885347/?tag=absowrit-20 (mine isn't listed yet, but is under way)
Advances and royalties are pretty much what you'd expect as a debut SFF author - not enormous but certainly around the industry average.