Worldcon success

My colleague Kevin and his crew in the Glasgow FPI tell me that the FPI tables in the dealer room at Worldcon did very well with many attendees enjoying browsing and purchasing our many and splendid wares, from Daleks to books and graphic novels – thanks to those who dropped by the tables.

Stand-outs for us in terms of interest and sales were an old favourite of mine, Kim Stanley Robinson (fantastic author and a very nice guy) – HarperCollins very kindly got us some advance copies of Stan’s new hardback, Fifty Degrees Below which is out in September and Kevin tells me they sold almost instantly. Charlie ‘Call me Hugo’ Stross required re-stocking over the weekend – his books since they were flying out the door I hasten to add, although I suspect the man himself may have required re-stocking too.

And I am delighted to say that the splendid anthology of Scottish Speculative Fiction that is Nova Scotia roared off the tables, selling in vast quantities and was our best-selling book at the ‘con, which is terrific. It is an excellent collection with some superb Scottish and Scottish-based writers in there, including the aforementioned Mr Stross, Ken MacLeod (who will be writing for the second FPI magazine I’m glad to say and has his new noel, Learning the World out now), Hal Duncan (read Vellum, read it now!), Debbie Miller (Swarmthief’s Dance, her new fantasy, is out this autumn), Willie Meikle (who gave us the delightful romp of the Jacobite rebellion but with vampires a few years back and if any UK publishers are reading this, you should be looking at his novels) and too many more to mention.

Nova Scotia is also one of our SF Book Picks in the first-ever issue of the FPI Magazine and obviously a lot of readers agreed with us because they picked it up by the bucket-load. I’m guessing more than a few of the overseas delegates had serious baggage weight problems when they went to the airport!

Some larger publishers are wary of anthologies, but I know that collections by the likes of Ellen Datlow or Gardner Dozois have sold very well over the years and Nova Scotia proves that there is still a demand for quality SF anthologies. It’s a great way for readers to experience different writers and themes before committing to a full-length novel and it encourages new writers (larger publishers take note).

Its also terrific to see such success coming to one of Scotland’s great wee independent publishers (based in Edinburgh) – kudos to Mercat Press for publishing Nova Scotia and congratulations to them and to editors Neil Williamson and Andrew J Wilson on its success.

We’d also like to thank Vikki and the Mercat crew and indeed all the publishers who were so very helpful to our team in supplying new books and material for us to offer. Special thanks also go to Cheryl and Marcia for all their help in making it all work for us so we could be there for our customers and fans and of course, much thanks to those of you who came by the FPI stand – we hope we’ll see you again in our stores in the UK, Ireland and New York and if you can’t make it to a store, our mail order catalogue and online sites are always open to browse.