I just wanted to say a thing or two about the recent issue related to Prime Books that have popped up in a variety of blogs. Prime is run by Sean Wallace, and Prime published my first book, Gunning for the Buddha. They'll also be publishing two novels by me -- A Gathering of Doorways in October and Maps and Legends next year.

I want people to know that my experience with Prime has been, overall, pretty good. I went into each endeavor with Prime armed with the knowledge that the publisher is a small one, with a minuscule staff (it's pretty much Sean running the show, with some excellent assistance from graphic artists, typesetters, and an assistant editor or two).

Delays from a small press are almost to be expected. So I was impatient and a bit annoyed when my story collection came out in 2005 instead of 2004, as I'd expected. But I dealt with it, especially once the reviews started rolling in, including a great one from Locus and an okay one from Publishers Weekly. Prime got the books to the people who needed to review them, and that was huge.

For my upcoming novel, I've had to stay in touch with Sean via IM quite a bit, but once I realized that IM was his preferred method of communication (and that emails were likely to get lost in the shuffle!), I used IM, as much as I dislike that form of communication...

You do what you can -- and what you have to -- in order to make it work. I'm excited about my books coming out from Prime, and I know the publisher will get behind these books, as they're offset instead of POD books (which means it's in Prime's best interest to sell those books instead of paying to store them in a warehouse).

From reading other authors' blogs about their experiences with Prime, it appears that your mileage may vary. I've had overall positive experiences with Prime in general and Sean in particular, and I wanted to add my voice as another data point in this discussion. Later!