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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Aug 12, 2020 0:38:52 GMT -5
I'd be more concerned about printing facilities, personally; and certainly the concept of "hitting store shelves" is not what it was. Normal publicity measures have gone out of the window. However, there are other aspects of the book industry which are comfortably compatible with working from home, and agents are reporting a surge in submissions. Of course, in this particular case, I remain relatively confident that the book was already complete and is just sitting on a server. We cannot know for certain because all is speculation on exactly what's going on with the book in the first place. In the short term, probably the best we can hope for is for somebody to finally ask Handler about it. Google Books now has this listed for the 4th of January 2022 as well.  I'm beginning to wonder if the book has perhaps been reworked to such a large extent that it's being treated as an entirely new novel and these ever-moving listings for 2018's Poison for Breakfast will just continue to drift out there in the ether like the ones for the TRR: audio dramatization |
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Post by Dante on Aug 12, 2020 3:11:47 GMT -5
I'm starting to feel that there's no adequate answer. If the delay to the novel really starts to creep towards four years, then that's far too long for a normal publisher to just be sitting on it until a better opportunity arises - but at the same time, it seems a very long time for Handler to be taking the opportunity to rework the novel unless he essentially just threw the whole thing out, too. Remember, this was ready to go back in 2018. Even assuming he took advantage of a significant delay to rework it into, say, the first part of a series, he could probably have had a sequel out by now as well, or coming soon. If the book really doesn't come out in 2021, the gap between Snicket novels will be longer than that between ASoUE and ATWQ.
It is enough to make one wonder why Daniel Handler has been writing more novels under his own name for the past few years... and not published by Little, Brown & Co., either. Top priority remains to seize any opportunity to ask the man himself.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Aug 12, 2020 4:22:33 GMT -5
I'm starting to feel that there's no adequate answer. If the delay to the novel really starts to creep towards four years, then that's far too long for a normal publisher to just be sitting on it until a better opportunity arises - but at the same time, it seems a very long time for Handler to be taking the opportunity to rework the novel unless he essentially just threw the whole thing out, too. Remember, this was ready to go back in 2018. Even assuming he took advantage of a significant delay to rework it into, say, the first part of a series, he could probably have had a sequel out by now as well, or coming soon. If the book really doesn't come out in 2021, the gap between Snicket novels will be longer than that between ASoUE and ATWQ. It is enough to make one wonder why Daniel Handler has been writing more novels under his own name for the past few years... and not published by Little, Brown & Co., either. Top priority remains to seize any opportunity to ask the man himself. Exactly. The real problem is that it's so tough to get any kind of handle on what the situation is actually like; we know just enough information to drive us mad and not enough to actually provide any concrete answers. I think Daniel Handler owns the rights to the Snicket name and despite ATWQ's underperformance, it's still too valuable for any publishing house to just never use again. But then again how does one explain the partially completed book that disappears into the ether? What do you think is going on here? Personally, I'm thinking there has to be either some sort of legal/contractual holdup or there is some kind of conflict between Handler and the publishing house. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 12, 2020 4:28:59 GMT -5
Which publisher is going to release the book in the United States? Aren't they trying to sell publishing rights to other publishers around the world to make a simultaneous release? (dream, I know it 's not that).
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Post by Dante on Aug 12, 2020 6:30:30 GMT -5
I think Daniel Handler owns the rights to the Snicket name and despite ATWQ's underperformance, it's still too valuable for any publishing house to just never use again. But then again how does one explain the partially completed book that disappears into the ether? What do you think is going on here? Personally, I'm thinking there has to be either some sort of legal/contractual holdup or there is some kind of conflict between Handler and the publishing house. Well, I didn't want to be the one to say it, but disaffection between author and publisher had crossed my mind; that's essentially why Handler left HarperCollins, after all, because they fired his long-time editor Sue Rich (reasons unkown) and he followed her to Little, Brown & Co. It wouldn't surprise me if there was something contractual going on, too; after all, if you sign a contract for Daniel Handler to submit and you to publish a book in Year X, and then you do not publish that book in Year X, there may be an issue there. Legal issues would also account for everyone keeping their mouths shut on the matter. All of which is pure speculation, of course. As you say, I'm sure the Snicket name is still a hot commodity (? Tragedy) if used correctly; HarperCollins managed to use the Netflix series as an opportunity to publish (in addition to the obligatory new editions of ASoUE) Read Something Else, a reimagined version of the Horseradish wit-and-wisdom collection - which doesn't strike me as the most obvious bestseller, but clearly they saw something in it. On a similar note, it's not difficult to find new books which publishers are pushing as "great for fans of Lemony Snicket" (I'm looking to obtain one in particular which itself seems very obviously the work of a Snicket fan). It's a valuable brand. Makes it all the more baffling that this thing was clearly done in 2018, and yet here we are. Which publisher is going to release the book in the United States? Aren't they trying to sell publishing rights to other publishers around the world to make a simultaneous release? (dream, I know it 's not that). I wouldn't have thought it was anything to do with holding the book back so foreign-language translators could get it ready for a global release; if that was the sort of thing there was any demand for, they'd have it done by now. Snicket's main overseas publishing partner is the U.K. publisher Egmont, which has covered the British release of just about all his work and so would presumably handle Poison For Breakfast as well; they seem to have a close relationship with Little, Brown & Co. and Snicket in general, so it's hard to believe the hold-up would be on their end. (Saying that, they had been bringing Neil Patrick Harris's Magic Misfits over from Little Brown, but appear to have given up after the hardback release of the second book.) |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 12, 2020 8:40:04 GMT -5
Which publisher is publishing Snicket fan books? When I finish Matt Litory I will send them an original.
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Post by Dante on Aug 12, 2020 8:58:12 GMT -5
Which publisher is publishing Snicket fan books? When I finish Matt Litory I will send them an original. Once I've read it and made sure, it'll probably appear in the Odd Real-Life Coincidence Thread, though I suspect it's neither odd nor a coincidence. |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 12, 2020 10:00:29 GMT -5
There are, of course, Snicket fan books already in existence, most notably Pseudonymous Bosch; also The Thirty-Nine Clues, which Tiago famously described as 'Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code in a blender'.
I have just been reading a book which is, I think, thematically similar to Snicket at a very abstract level, though quite different in style and subject-matter, and which includes the word 'lemony'. It's probably a coincidence, though.
(I have also been reading a book by a Jewish author from the Bay Area which includes a character called Theodora. I do wonder about possible influences there.)
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TheAsh
Formidable Foreman
Posts: 176
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Post by TheAsh on Aug 13, 2020 0:32:32 GMT -5
Maybe Lemony finally figured out the identity of what's in the Sugar Bowl and thus had to rework the book. Or maybe VFD got to him before publishing....
Out of universe, I wish we had more Lemony.
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Post by Dante on Aug 13, 2020 3:44:46 GMT -5
Twenty or so "main installments" in twenty years (counting the major supplements) would sound impressive from most other authors, but of course these all lie years in the past, and many of them were published two or even three to a year. Of those twenty years, there's a pretty much even split between years with new publications and years without, and the years without run in long stretches. It's a genuine problem for Snicket's readership, which probably partly accounted for the underperformance of ATWQ, that we do get these dead periods where momentum and interest totally dries up, such that the majority of fandom falls off and the eventual new material has to start largely from scratch. Other authors are able to keep up a constant, rolling release schedule that retains long-time readers while picking up new ones at roughly the same rate as it loses the old, but because Handler is dividing his attention between picture books, children's fiction, and adult novels, he can't do that. (To be clear, this is an explanation, not a criticism.) The Poison for Breakfast anomaly viciously exacerbates this problem; the book should have been able to capitalise on the ongoing Netflix series for having revived interest in the Snicket name - but no. Whenever it comes out, it's practically a guarantee that it won't perform as well as it would have in 2018.
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Post by thesugarbowl on Sept 30, 2020 19:11:23 GMT -5
I've been mulling over sharing this for a while, but think it should be alright. I met Daniel Handler back in November at a bookshop in London last year. Long story short, me and a group of friends got to ask him - 'Would you ever consider writing an adult novel set in the Snicket universe?'
While I can't remember word for word his answer, he sighed a little and said that while he wasn't sure about an adult novel necessarily, he found the question interesting because he and his publisher were having conversations back and forth about the newest Snicket book he had just written. He said that his publisher thought the novel was too adult for his younger audience, and that it was causing 'issues'.
Hopefully this clears up what everyone has been wondering - clearly, Poison For Breakfast has been finished for quite some time and was deemed as too 'adult' for release. Honestly, I feel like those behind the scenes are perhaps being a bit too fussy, Handler clearly knows his audience and I really don't see how bad the material could be. We've had cranioectomies, babies being hung from towers in cages and assumed suicides, and from a young age too. I was seven when I started reading and never found the material to be too gruesome or grim.
Seems like a lot of hype for a book that was gonna be standalone and, from what I was predicting, average at best. I hope we all get to read it soon, though!
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 30, 2020 22:21:01 GMT -5
My heart can't take this kind of news ... And there's a little blood coming out of my nose now.
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Post by Skelly Craig on Sept 30, 2020 22:36:53 GMT -5
That's disheartening to hear... perhaps above all that the publishers lack the faith in Handler to know his audience. I doubt it would stem from any issues that would be similar to those Rowling is facing nowadays (sorry, the topic just keeps popping up, doesn't it)... Maybe there's some risqué (read: erotic) content in it, considering Handler's recent interest in writing about these things with All the Dirty Parts.
Poison For Breakfast Bullets For Lunch Daggers For Dinner |
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Post by tricky on Sept 30, 2020 23:14:16 GMT -5
Surely it can be listed under "young adult fiction" and not children's books to avoid such an error? The anticipation for this ruddy book is huge...
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Post by Dante on Oct 1, 2020 2:59:13 GMT -5
Thank you for sharing this news, thesugarbowl. That is absolutely fascinating and rather plays into my suspicion that Little, Brown & Co. would like to pigeonhole Snicket as more of a children's writer than he is. One almost wonders if they've actually read any previous Snicket books; the events in the later volumes of ASoUE and ?4 in particular strike me as exhibiting a level of moral complexity which makes it absurd to start complaining now - and moral complexity is as "adult" as I would expect from Snicket, rather than an uncharacteristic plunge into sex and violence.
This also seems like a good time to bring up that I have also since heard whispers on the grapevine about what is going on with Poison for Breakfast. Interestingly, my source's well-informed speculation had a different obstacle in mind, but similarly had it straight from Handler's mouth that the book was finished but in "publisher limbo". Apparently he had cause to believe that next year might finally be the year, though.
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