MBToolBox
Tuesday Oct 17, 2006

An Interview with Neil Gaiman

gaimann2.jpgBookslut Jessa Crispin (who apparently has a character named after her in one of his books) interviews comic god Neil Gaiman, who stands as a testament against everyone who says that successful writers need to find a genre and stick with it:


Your agents much love you, because you seem to be up for any medium, any experiment.

I am. I'm not very good at genre snobbery. If it's anything I'm interested in, I'd obviously love to do it. And I keep bumping into people who'd much rather I did one thing or another. My movie agent would much rather I did movies forever and didn't, for example, do TV. Whereas TV is fun, lots of people see it. It's interesting to do TV. I like doing novels, but I'm astonishingly puzzled and grateful that I live in a universe that I have a short story collection published as a major novel. We live in a universe in which the odds of being able to turn to a publisher and say, "Would you like to publish a collection of my short stories?" is right up there with me saying, "Would you like to invest in a zeppelin business?" Doesn't happen very often.

When eight years ago they published Smoke and Mirrors, it was with no fuss or fanfare. I said, "Shall I do an author tour for it?" and they said, "No." It was like, why would you tour for a short story collection? Then they were incredibly puzzled when they looked around and it was still selling. I picked up a copy in the offices at HarperCollins this morning and noticed it's now in its 17th printing in trade paperback. And maybe later than that, but the one I picked up had a little 17 on it. Smoke and Mirrors just came out and just took over. Suddenly I'm in a universe where I have a publisher who is publishing short stories of mine as a major book with quite disturbingly high numbers. If it were me, I would have done a print run of about half that and then gone back to press. With a really cool cover.

More here.


Read more on MBToolBox

Interested in advertising on MBToolBox?

Anonymous Tips


mediabistro Blogs

TVNewser
GalleyCat
UnBeige
FishbowlNY
FishbowlLA
FishbowlDC
mbToolbox

Editor: mediabistro.com

Email:

About

Links

Absolute Write

American Press Institute Journalist's Toolbox

At Last! Beware Writer Blogs!

Del.icio.us/Journalism

Del.icio.us/Writing

Freelance Success

Gawker Media Bubble

Lifehacker

Marketwatch: Jon Friedman's Media Web

Romenesko

Sreetips

Writers Weekly

Categories

Careers

Community

Courses

Design

Editorial

Events

Multimedia

Tech

The Business Side

Archives

view archives...

Recent

Subscribe

Click here to receive the Daily Media News Feed by email.

Job Listings

Freelance Marketplace


mediabistro.com l Member Benefits l Jobs l Freelance Marketplace l Courses l Events l Forums l Content
mediabistro Blogs: Media News l TVNewser l GalleyCat l UnBeige l FishbowlNY l FishbowlLA l FishbowlDC l mbToolbox
Site Map l Help l Advertising/Sponsorships l Store l About Us
mediabistro.com inc., call (212) 929-2588 or email us
PRIVACY POLICY Copyright © 2006 mediabistro.com inc. All rights reserved.
MEDIA BISTRO is a registered trademark of Laurel Touby.