Acquiring a novel is always a risk. Acquiring a debut novel even more so. Acquiring a debut novel and two further as yet unseen novels on the basis of just one chapter...well you get the picture.
Every editor’s career is made up of both hits and misses, built on chances taken, hunches followed. You have no way of knowing how any book you acquire will end up doing, whether enough people will share your enthusiasm for an author’s work. And what a dull business reading would be if you could be certain.
And that uncertainty never goes away. Your colleagues read the book and like it: but maybe it’s just them. The first good review comes in: but that’s just that reviewer. The first review to express a quibble appears: uh-oh. And so it goes on. Right up to, and well beyond, publication day.
We publish Hannu Rajaniemi’s extraordinary debut novel, The Quantum Thief, on September 30th. Who would have thought a Finnish mathematician with a PhD in String Theory could write one of the most important SF novels of recent years? Well, ever since I read that first chapter sent to me by agent John Jarrold, I did. Thankfully it now seems as if quite a few people also think so. Perhaps now I can begin to feel a little more certain?
