Juno has certainly gone through a lot of changes since the first blog post on 06 May 2006 02:51 pm. And it is still evolving.
I’ve thought long and hard about what this 100oth post should be. I still am not sure I should be so open about our biggest news. I’ve noticed editors don’t really say all that much publicly about a lot of stuff. There are good reasons for that. But Pocket Juno is different and so am I, so…
Instead of a-title-month for 2011, there will be six Pocket Juno books (and all are super—of course, I will soon be telling you more):
- Jan 2011: Arcane Circle (Circle Series #4), Linda Robertson
- Mar 2011: Rogue Oracle (Oracle Series #2), Alayna Williams
- June 2011: Shadow Fall (Shadowchasers #3), Seressia Glass
- Sept 2011: Concrete Savior (Blood Redemption #2), Yvonne Navarro
- Nov 2011 Blood Sacrifice (Bloodlines #5), Maria Lima
- Dec 2011: Virtual Virgin (Delilah Street #5), Carole Nelson Douglas
Beyond 28 November 2011—what I assume is the release date for Virtual Virgin—I don’t know.
All I know is that I continue as editor of Pocket Juno, that this is the full schedule for Pocket Juno 2011, and that I’m not offering contracts at the moment for future titles. (So, right now, no need for submissions.)
Yes, there are authors and books whose series have hooked you and characters you already love missing from that list. You wanted to see more and soon. And you wonder what the future will be for those on that list too. I know, I feel the same way—except more so.
I think we all understand that the better the sales, the brighter the future for any author.
One thing most readers—and writers and even some editors and many publishers—don’t understand is just how little control one (whether that “one” is a corporate entity or an individual) has in this business these days over so many factors. Publishing is in the middle of some very interesting times, so that makes it even more unpredictable. And Pocket Juno is just a tiny part of publishing.
Steve Wasserman (literary editor of Truthdig; former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review; former editorial director of Times Books at Random House, as well as editorial director of Hill & Wang at Farrar, Straus & Giroux; currently a literary agent) wrote on the impossibility of predicting the future of publishinga s a whole:
The predicament facing the publishing industry is best understood against the backdrop of several overlapping and contending crises: The first is the general challenge confronting publishers of adapting to the new digital and electronic technologies that are increasingly rendering traditional methods of production and distribution obsolete, and undercutting profit margins; the second is the profound structural transformation roiling the entire book-publishing and book-selling industry in the age of conglomeration and digitization; and the third and most troubling crisis is the sea change in the culture of literacy itself, the degree to which our overwhelmingly fast and visually furious culture renders serious reading increasingly irrelevant, hollowing out habits of attention indispensable for absorbing long-form narrative and the following of sustained argument.
There are ideas percolating for Juno, but they haven’t completely brewed yet. I can’t be pessimistic because the future may be even more exciting and fulfilling; but I can’t be overly optimistic either, one never can be in such “interesting times”.
I’m striving for a sort of zen balance right now.
