| This page was last updated on 14 April, 1999 | SAVE THE MODE SERIES | ||
 THE FOURTH BOOK IS ON THE WAYDoOon Mode Virtual Mode You can help to Save the Mode DirWebsite (Shawn) received a letter from Piers and posted it in the Piers Anthony Newsgroup on 30th July, 1998 Michael Gomez (Mage 16) wrote a letter to Piers and among other things he mentioned the Mode Petition. He received a reply by mail and was kind enough to post a copy of it in the Piers Anthony newsgroup on 28th August, 1998 |
|
 The DisMember issue of Piers Anthony's Newsletter (which you can
read for yourself at Hi Piers)
contains some exciting news. Unless Piers gets any urgent commitments for other
work, he will write the novel in the next three months or so. If it is picked up by
a publisher we will probably get to read it in the year 2000. If not, Piers says
that he will publish it on the Internet and if that's the case it should be available
sometime during 1999! |
Wow! It
seems that when a few, dedicated people work together...anything is possible. I
can't help but wonder if this could have been possible without the Internet.
Personally, I don't think so.
The Internet is a medium that seems to cop a lot of flack especially in relation to porn but on the other side of the coin...what a wonderful thing it is! It is able to bring together a group of total strangers who have nothing more in common than the love of an author's writing and turn them into friends. It shows us that if we work together and dedicate ourselves to something we believe in...we can even change the mind of The Ogre* :-) If it can do this...well the possibilities are endless.
Lynn...Dream Weaver (never stop dreaming...sometimes they come true!)
*Just to clarify, this is in no way meant as a slur...Piers Anthony calls himself the ogre in his autobiography Bio of an Ogre!
To Date, Piers Anthony has published three books in the "Mode Series."
Book 1 of the Mode Series - Virtual Mode
Book 2 of the Mode Series - Fractal Mode
Book 3 of the Mode Series - Chaos Mode
Unfortunately, because of a lack of interest from the publishers it seems that book four of the Mode Series may never get published (although if all of Piers Anthony's fans in the alt.fan.piers-anthony newsgroup have anything to say about it we will do everything within our power to get that book up and running.
Piers has said that he wants to continue the series with DoOon Mode, however he doesn't work for free and if there isn't anyone willing to pay him to write it, it isn't going to get written. In this vein, a petition has been started and YOUR input is needed! The petition is run by DirWebsite (Shawn) at the following URL. So, if you would like to see book four published, I urge you to go there and sign the petition. The more signatures...the more chance we have! http://members.aol.com/DirWebsite/mode *
* It seems that this site is not working at present. I'll leave the URL here for now just in case Shawn starts it up again...if you're out there Shawn...I hope you're OK :-)
Please Note - I had assumed that anything published in newsgroups was "public domain" and that is why I have taken the liberty of placing the following relevant postings on my website. I felt that the more people can read about the "Save The Mode Campaign" then the more people may sign the petition. If I have indeed infringed on the copyright of the owners of the postings I apologise. Please let me know and I will remove the content immediately. Email
On Thursday, 30th July, 1998 DirWebsite (Shawn) posted the following to the alt.fan.piers-anthony Newsgroup.
Hello everyone, I have an update on the Petition. I received a letter today from Piers Anthony, and in it he explains, pretty plainly, why he is not intending to continue the series (anytime soon). Following is the actual contents of the letter:
Dear Shawn,
Let me give you my canned paragraph on Mode:
I had planned to continue the Mode series with #4 DoOon Mode. But the publisher did not do well commercially with the series, and expressed no interest in continuation. So though I like the series, and feel that Colene is one of the best characters I've had, I have no present plans to continue it. It's not enough to have a good series; it has to have good promotion and reach a sufficient number readers, and this one did not. :(
Okay, now let me be less polite: my literary agent got me a good contract on the Mode series and it should have done very well. But when we checked to see how Virtual Mode was doing by calling a major bookstore, the proprietor said "You mean that's been published? Why didn't they tell me? I've been waiting for it!" The publisher hadn't even sent out their salesman that month, so the store never learned about the novel. Faced with that sort of thing, naturally the orders the publisher got were reduced. So they cut down the print order, and then didn't have enough for the market that suddenly appeared when folk belatedly learned that the book had been published. As I recall it had to have three printings to catch up. But what about all the stores that never learned it existed, until it was too late and their shelves were filled with books published later? These things have to be done on their schedule, or they have missed the plane. The publisher had succeeded in destroying the prospects of a series that should have been a best seller, because they limited the number of printings of the sequels to what they call the sell-thru of the first novel, and it hadn't sold well because of their sloppiness in promoting and distributing it. So they really never tried on the sequels, and buried the series. Okay, I could have written the fourth novel but might not have been able to get it published at all, and if the publisher did take it, it would have bee for a small fraction of the money they had paid before. Thus I would have been rewarding them for torpedoing my series. Change publishers? Again the novel might not sell at all, and if it did, it would be for a pittance. Publishers don't touch book they think will bomb, and they don't care about the reason. I am a commercial writer; when I am offered a lot of money for another Xanth novel, and nothing for another Mode novel, I either do the Xanth novel or I run myself out of business. Do I like the system? No, I hate it, but that's commercial writing.
Face it: the publisher doesn't give half a crap what you or any other readers want. Not unless they're convinced there are a million of you ready to buy. They buried the series, and they would have to admit to making a mistake in order to un-bury it, and they would rather pretend the author wrote bad novels than do that. I could write it and put it on the Internet, perhaps at Xlibris. But folk don't rush to buy novels there; I did put my quality World War Two novel Volk there, and I think it's sold something like fourteen copies there so far, and a couple hundred at the other site, Pulpless.com, in two years. Tell that to a regular publisher and you'd get laughed out of town; these are insignificant figures. So though I like the Mode series, and feel it is superior fantasy, I'll wait until I can't sell my other novels and have time on my hands before I write DoOon Mode for nothing. I think you would agree that if you were offered two types of work, and the one you preferred paid peanuts, while the one that was merely okay paid a good living wage, you'd take the latter, even if you had enough savings to get by without it. This is mundane reality. Someone else on the net has condemned me for writing for money, as if a writer can exist without making money; but writing is similar in this respect to any other job. Writers *do* need to be paid for their work, and they have to write what they can sell. The average writer earns barely enough from writing to exist at the poverty level. I have done better in my part because I have a series that does sell well. Too bad that series isn't Mode. I think it could have been Mode, but for publisher idiocy, but what's done is done. If someone shoots you in the foot, you can object, but you won't win any foot races for a while. I object to what happened to Mode, but can't change it.
However, I'm glad there are folk who like the Mode series, and who knows, if something remarkable were to happen, such as a movie outfit wanting to make a movie and needing the fourth novel to fill it out, Mode would return to life. I suspect that eventually I'll write it. Just not while it would subtract from my regular income, writing what sells.
Now you know. P.A.
In response (I just received the letter 20 minutes ago, so I have yet to respond to him): I don't know if we would be capable of obtaining a million individuals anytime soon, especially at the rate they're coming in (17/week = approximately a millennium (Yes a thousand years)) -- we would probably be better suited in finding someone to make a movie from it. :)
I don't know about you, but just the images of walking across the Mode and seeing the worlds changing is enough to pique my interest. I think we should continue collecting sigs on the petition, however, that won't have much effect unless we can demonstrate that these people that are signing it are SERIOUS about purchasing a copy of DoOon Mode or else it's a bunch of names without significant import to the publisher. He doesn't sound too impressed with Xlibris and Pulpless, so that doesn't seem like a viable option right now. I will add an option to the site asking if visitors would be interested in seeing a Mode movie (that would be awesome), and let them all tell us 'yes' there. :)
If anyone has any ideas . . . well you all know.
Shawn
Save the Mode !!!
http://members.aol.com/DirWebsite/mode *
*It seems that this site is not working at present. I'll leave the URL here for now just in case Shawn starts it up again...if you're out there Shawn...I hope you're OK :-)
Michael Gomez (Mage 16) wrote a letter to Piers Anthony and among other things he mentioned the Mode Petition. He received a reply by mail and was kind enough to post a copy of it in the alt.fan.piers-anthony newsgroup on 28th August, 1998.
Dear Michael,
Yes, I heard about the Mode Petition. I'm glad that so many people like the Mode series, but publishers are corporations that don't much care what people might want. What I plan to do now is wait until I have about three months free between other projects, the write DoOon Mode and see what happens.
Probably I'll have to put it on the Internet, where publishing is possible now; my World War Two novel Volk is there, at Xlibris.com, since I couldn't find a regular publisher for it. My present schedule requires about nine months a year, so maybe next year there will be time. But I never can tell what will come up. Often enough things come from left field to take my time, so I never can be sure. As for a Mode movie: I'd love it. But it's the big rich movie studios who decide about things like that, and so far they have never made a movie from any on mine. They keep expressing interest, though so maybe there's faint hope.
Piers Anthony *Signature*
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