So What Happened to Goodkind's 3 Book Putnam Deal?

The recent press release from Tor (which I took some liberties with here) confirming Terry Goodkind's new contract for three more Richard and Kahlan novels came as no real surprise. His widely publicized Law of Nines, dubbed a thriller, was a bomb, and not the good kind. I don't have any hard figures on the sales, but it is pretty clear that the hard cover print run was severely ambitious. When you start seeing hardcover copies in your local B&N for $2.99 and on Amazon for less than the cost of most paperbacks, well, you can be sure sales are not as rosy as you expected.

Further evidence of the Law of Nines relatively poor sales can be inferred from what happened to Mr. Goodkind's "revolutionary" website and all its fancy Flash functionality. It stopped working for six months. My assumption is that someone, somewhere, just wasn't getting paid. Did I mention the website magically returned to coincide with the announcement of the next Sword of Truth book?

Lastly, the issue of timing. A well known moderator of the Terry Goodkind forums asserted that the new Richard and Kahlan novel with Tor will be released before any further books from Terry under his Putnam contract. Now, given the early 2011 release date set for the new Sword of Truth book, and the nature of the publishing cycle, this means that for all intents and purposes the book is already written?! Which, in turn, means that Mr. Goodkind started writing it shortly after the Law of Nines sales figures came in and his next book, something about the Devil being chained in someone's basement, got a red light?!!

I could reference more circumstantial evidence, but then this might actually come off as a rational argument as opposed to the unfounded rambling that it is. Did I mention I might be biased? Not surprisingly, a number of forums have addressed these issues more or less rationally, so I refer you to those explanations in lieu of any sort of logical rigor on my part. So what if your average author would sell her firstborn for figures like Goodkind's, or hitting the New York Times bestseller list like he did... doesn't mean I'm not right.

Rant: The Sorry State of Giveaways

Today was "clean out old emails day" and, going through 1400 emails, I came across four different giveaways that I have won in the last couple months. I remember my jubilation upon 'winning' these books, as all of them were ones that I very much wanted to read, either based on a review I had read or previous knowledge of the book. I will give the benefit of the doubt to one of the giveaways, as it has only been a month since I won, but the others are well in excess of that, and I have not seen hide nor hair of them. Giveaways won: 4 - Books received: 0.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not really upset over the issue since I can walk, quite literally, 4 blocks and be at the Union Square B&N in under five minutes. That said, it is a matter of principle that when you hold a giveaway, you should actually send the book to the person who won it! Given the anonymous nature of the internet and the potential traffic giveaways can generate, I understand that it is pretty easy to get away with these things, but come on!

So, that said, who is to blame? No one really. I understand that there are generally two types of giveaways, and please correct me if I am wrong. The first of these is these is run by many of the smaller blogs where the blogger will actually mail the book herself. The second is run by a publishing house or publicist or what have you, who is ultimately responsible for sending the book out to the winner once the contest is completed. This second type of contest is generally easier on the book blogger since he need not bear the cost of shipping.

I don't think the books that I won went deliberately unsent, I think better of the book blogging community than that, so my assumption is that something got lost somewhere along the 'giveaway chain'. It may be that the publishing house simply misplaced the email or that the blogger hosting the contest forgot to send it, in brief I can think of a number of things which went wrong, including pressing time constraints in the real world. Human error happens, and I understand that.

Have other contest/giveaway 'winners' had similar things occur? I have sent emails to the bloggers whose contests I won, but there really isn't a need to mention them by name here. I will do a follow up post if the email replies merit it, but I doubt there will be anything truly revelatory in them. To celebrate the potential of the giveaway, and the fact that you have read this post in its entirety, I will send the first two people to post a comment any book they want--yes, you heard me correctly, any book at all--as long as you live in the continental United States and the book is not ridiculously expensive, just email me your address and the name of the book through the link in my profile.