3/26/15
I asked LT3 for information about potential release dates for any of the three stories I'm currently contracted for. The contracts for The Oracle's Sprite and Dragon Consultant had been signed a while ago and I was getting worried that they had been lost somewhere. Luckily, LT3 replied to my email promptly, explaining that I haven't heard because they changed their release date policy. I admit that I was probably being a little impatient and I really appreciate their candor. I do wish I had known about their policy changes ahead of time; I wouldn't have been complaining to you about not hearing or bothering them for information if I had known. Over the past year or so it has been clear to me that LT3 is growing at a very quick rate. They are introducing new authors regularly and have had to end their serial story line because of it. However, while LT3 has been growing as a business, they haven't been growing in personnel. Changes needed to be made to keep the increasing workload from overwhelming them and I ran into one when I sent that email. When I first started publishing with LT3 they were lucky to have one release a week and four releases a month. These days they average two or three releases a week and about a dozen a month. When they only had a few releases to worry about, if an author or editor missed a deadline it was easy to move a story back a month or so; they had plenty of open spots and enough free time to make the changes easily enough. I freely admit that I am an author who messes up deadlines on occasion. I get the return date wrong or get pulled away writing another story instead of working on the edits for the story that's due soon. These days, however, if I miss a deadline by a week LT3 can't simply compensate by pushing the release date back a week or two to another open slot in their release calendar. Those open slots don't exist any more! Instead, being late means a book might not be published for months because that was where the next earliest open spot was. That's one of the reasons why Road to Home, which was originally supposed to come out in July 2014, was instead released this past January. I hadn't understood what this actually meant in terms of giving out release dates. When I started working with them, LT3 would give out a potential release date that would later be solidified or changed depending on how quickly the story moved through the editing process. When they give out a release date now, it's a permanent one and changing it would cause a ton of problems. What this means is that while a year ago I would have a date to share within a few weeks of signing the contract, now I will not learn anything about when my story might be published until it is at least halfway through the editing process. That's the point when LT3 feels like they can gauge when a story will be ready for release and set a date into stone. What this means is that since The Oracle's Sprite was very recently put into an editor's hands and Dragon Consultant is still waiting to be assigned somewhere, it will be months before I hear anything. I am estimating about two months before I see any edits and an additional two to five months for the editing process to be complete. The earliest possible release dates I can estimate would be sometime between September 2015 and March 2016, with an even more distant date for Dragon Deception. I will of course announce when I do get edits and the moment I know a release date I will share it with you. I will have to learn patience with this process as it becomes longer as LT3 continues to grow.
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April 15, 2023 AuthorMell Eight is an author writing with NSP. For more information about Mell and her writing, please visit her website: http://melleightfiction. Tags
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