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Our 2008 Catalog
is online at this time ...
Click right here to download the PDF (download size is 1.12MB),
and take as read your permission to copy, print, forward, and generally pass it along. (If
anyone gives you grief, send them here!)
Drop us an
email to request a catalog for a friend who
doesn't have internet (or computer) access. We can
mail direct to your friend, or mail to you, and
you forward. (If you'd like a block of catalogs to
send along to multiple friends, let us know how many
to send ... and many thanks for helping us 'get the
word out' that MK is back, and better than ever!)
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Results of the "Favorite Genre" Survey;
Readers are divided into three groups: one group chooses SF and fantasy; the next
chooses historical (but will take historical fantasy in a pinch); the third
group doesn't have a preference!
A 2006 poll via this website asked readers to nominate their favorite novel,
and the results came in like so:
EQUINOX, about 1% ahead of DEATH'S HEAD UNABRIDGED, which was about 1% ahead
of SCORPIO ... in fact, the vote was so close and so unanimous, you'd have
to group these three books together as NARC SERIES, and go on from there.
Next on the list, polling highly (about 10% behind the NARC books)
come FORTUNES OF WAR and THE SWORDSMAN, with the vote split so evenly,
you couldn't pick the winner. No surprises so far ... the surprises came
next! WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT and HELLGATE: CRY LIBERTY are running about
20% behind SWORDSMAN and FORTUNES. What's surprising is that readers
chose Part #3 of a series, over the rest of the series. Well ... CRY
LIBERTY is an extremely good book.
Results of the "Thick Books" Survey;
New Survey: what's your favorite genre?
Many thanks to all readers who responded to our survey
regarding the pros and cons of DreamCraft producing
"Thick books" (n the 500pp bracket). If you need to
catch up with the argument behind "thicks,"
click here, and then
click back to return to this point.
By and large readers were less troubled by the pricing of
the thicker books than we at DreamCraft were! (What has
been bothering us most is the postage, which virtually
doubles, for the addition of around 50% of the length/thickness
of the book. We're not comfortable with that).
One reader made a comment which "nailed" the whole argument:
thick books are fine, so long as they weren't "bulked-up"
with so-called "white space" (meaning, the way so many thick
books are produced these days, with big type, broad margins,
and ridiculously wide gapping between lines of text).
While it had never been part of the plan to "bulk-up" the text,
that comment got us thinking about the exact reverse of
allowing the books to get thicker naturally ...
Could we compress them? And if so, how far, while at the same
time as maintaining clear, attractive pages?
The question was answered with NOCTURNE and DEATH'S HEAD
UNABRIDGED. We were able to take a massive (204,000 word)
book, NOCTURNE, and get it into 366pp, which is under the 500g (one pound)
weight ... so you pay exactly the same postage as normal.
Compressing the new 178,000 word DEATH'S HEAD issue into 300pp
was the next challenge, and we did this too, which gives us a
base-line to work from...
In the short term, "thick books" probably won't be necessary ...
because we can take a book which would be 500-600pp in the hands
of many other publishers (Harper Collins/Voyage, is a good example),
and compress it right back to a normal DreamCraft edition. And if or
when it became necessary to do a 500pp book, Mel would have written
something over 300,000 words long! Nothing so monstrous is on the
horizon at this time, so the "thick books" question has been resolved!
SPECIAL INFORMATION FOR AOL USERS: As soon as you've subscribed or joined as a Member go to your address book and make sure we're listed there! Otherwise AOL will intercept any message
from DreamCraft as potential spam ... you won't receive your Member's password, or your newsletters! The address to list in your address book is (forgive the spider-proofing) mkhelp-at-sa-dot-chariot-dot-net-dot-au."
Email addy should match this GIF:
Thank you!
NEW READER SURVEY:
WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE GENRE ... GIVEN THAT *ALL* MEL'S BOOKS
FEATURE GAY CHARACTERS AND RELATIONSHIPS ...?
In all the years of Mel's professional relationship with
GMP, later Prowler, and last of all Millivres, a clear picture
of just what readers want never emerged. Various
editors would state their preference for a certain kind of
book, or an opinion (that SF is unpopular, for example!)
but Mel was never able to ascertain if this were true, or
what the real reader preference might be!
So, could we beg a few moments of your time? If you would
like to tell us your favorite genre, both DreamCraft and
Mel Keegan would be grateful, and after a few months you'll
be able to see where other readers' genre preferences lie
too, when we report results on this page!
Please
Email to DreamCraft and let us know
your genre of choice. In the subject line of your
email please type READER SURVEY. Many thanks
for your time!
SPECIAL INFORMATION FOR AOL USERS: As soon as you've subscribed,
joined as a Member
or ordered a book, you *must* go to your address book and make
sure we're listed there! Otherwise AOL will intercept any message
from DreamCraft as potential spam ... you won't receive your order
confirmation, your Member's password, or your newsletters! The address
to list in your address book is (forgive the spider-proofing) mkhelp-at-sa-dot-chariot-dot-net-dot-au.
Email addy should match this GIF:
Thank you!
<<< BACK...
THE PROS AND CONS OF THICK BOOKS
Mel has written some monster books, up to a quarter of a million
words long, and of course we can't cram those into 340 pages!
Even with the tightest "pack" possible, we can only jam such
a novel into around 500pp! And (as always) there's both an
up-side and a down-side to what the publishing and bookselling
world calls "thicks."
They're obviously more expensive to print, and because
DreamCraft specializes in small printruns, we're rarely in a
position to have access to cut-price printing. A 500pp book
would carry a pricetag of something in the region of US$23.95.
The up-side is, the book would be close to twice as long as a
normal novel like THE DECEIVERS, for "only" US$9 more on the
cover price. So if you look at it in terms of "your reading
dollar," you're way ahead.
The real down-side, however, is the cost to ship. We can ship
a normal book for US$10, which covers both airmail and parcel
insurance, to anyplace in the world. Postage from Australia
is inexpensive on parcels under 500g. However, a 500pp book
is more like 750g, and the cost of insured airmail is an average
of A$15.50. Again, it's a lot less than shipping two books
separately, so if you look at "your reading dollar," it's a
good deal
The bottom line, however, is a purchase price of US$39.45 or
so for a 500pp "thick" by Mel keegan, airmailed, insured. We
know that's quite a pricetag, so we're inviting your feedback
on this question before we go ahead and make plans to produce
some of Mel's major works. In a "thick," you'd get the
equivalent of TWO books the size of THE DECEIVERS or
EQUINOX, but the pricetag would be around fifteen bucks higher
than for any "normal size" book. You actually save around
ten bucks on the *reading* itself, but to make the saving
you need to shell out quite a bit more, which makes this a
good question to ask!
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