TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Scott Sigler Q&A: How he recorded EarthCore, with his eyes on p-book and Hollywood deals

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Moderator’s note: You can hear a just-recorded podcast of Scott Sigler’s chat with his friend Mark Jeffrey, as well as Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti’s podcast overview of her article below. Meanwhile here’s the actual EarthCore podcast. A new podcast novel from Scott Sigler, incidentally, will be on the way in September–Ancestor. - D.R.

The Scott Sigler Q&A
By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Scott Sigler has done what some would consider unthinkable–or, at the very least, enviable. He has taken his e-book and podcast of his science fiction story EarthCore and, now, has received a contract deal for a p-book, as we call it. Amazon is already collecting orders.

Sigler garnered an agent in 1999 after spending two years (’96 to ’98) writing EarthCore. Since then he has gone from the earlier e-book edition to the p-book deal, which raises some questions to those loyal in the e-book community. Regardless, Sigler makes for an interesting and honest interviewee, filling in the gaps and answering the questions that are on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

Does Sigler see any conflict between an e-book and a p-book? Has he somehow been disloyal? we wonder. Absolutely not, he says–and in fact he is working on yet another book.

Read on, and you’ll see exactly what Scott Sigler and his book phenomenon, EarthCore, are all about. Here, we find Sigler by turns creative, smart, and above all, candid.

What made you think of EarthCore? What were the seeds of the book–had you always had an interest in sci-fi?

I’ve always loved sci-fi. EarthCore is a combination of elements that I found interesting: artificial life such as theorized by Alan Turing, distributed intelligent networks, genetic regression due to an isolated and shrinking gene pool, and deep-earth mining.

When did you start the book and how did you start it on the Net? Did you begin with text excerpts or did you immediately start podcasting the book in chapters?

I wrote the book in 1996-1998. It was good enough to land me an agent in 1999, and it was first published in 2001. I started podcasting the book in March 2005. I just started from the beginning and podcasted the whole 617-page monster.

Roughly how long was each podcast or chapter? I imagine it would take a lot of time to do a whole book as a podcast, right? But perhaps your podcasts were quite long–what was the average length, would you say?

They averaged about 45 minutes. It takes 3-4 hours to record one chapter.

Did you supplement text or podcasts with each other… i.e., did they work together or did you use just one method?

It’s mostly a straight reading of the original text. I did, however, have to chop out a lot of attributions, such as “he said” and “she said.” Those things don’t make sense when you’re doing character voices.

Let me ask you this, did you in your heart hope this would lead to a print book–or were you content to let this be an e-book?

I started this project with the specific goal of getting EarthCore into print, then turned into a movie. I hadn’t even planned on doing it as [a re-released] e-book, but so many listeners have requested that I think I underestimated that segment of the market. And if my fans want it, they’re going to get it.

Now that it is a p-book, have you received an advance payment on royalties on the book as would be normal in trade publishing and a royalty percentage, may I ask? I ask because this helps us gauge how much of a trade breakthrough this really is–whether or not this book will now make it into the big chains, etc.

EarthCore will not be in the big chains–yet. This is a long-term campaign. First, the podcast with a goal of hitting 10,000 listeners, which I accomplished. Now, the p-book, with the goal of selling 5,000 copies. It just went on Amazon.com last week, so we’ve got a way to go. If I can accomplish that, I create a publicity/marketing campaign to get chains to carry the book. I did receive an advance, but it wasn’t a five-figure advance (and, ahem, it wasn’t a four-figure advance, either).

Which leads me to… will this book be selling in bookstores - regular bookstores and BN etc. or just online venues?

Bookstores can order the book just like any other title. Right now my challenge is to create demand.

Scott, can you tell me what the plan was overall, whether or not you intended a print book all along, and do you have an opinion about the value of print books over e-books or are they equal in your mind?

I think I covered my Master Plan. Every form of consumption is equal in my mind, all I care about is getting my stories to people that want to be entertained. I’ll mime the damn thing, if that’s what it takes.

Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher and has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and others. She has been widely published and now writes regularly for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.