Norilana Books Publisher Vera Nazarian announces a delay in five previously announced anthologies. She writes: After receiving the October unit sales numbers for last month, and seeing that they were still low and not growing fast enough in this very sluggish economy, I made the painful decision of postponing most of next year’s scheduled anthologies a whole year, from 2011 to 2012.
The five affected anthologies are:
* Lace and Blade 3
* Warrior Wisewoman 4
* The Ladies of Trade Town
* Scheherazade’s Facade
* Clothesline World
Four of the above anthologies are simply re-scheduled for the same month, simply a year later.
One anthology, The Ladies of Trade Town, edited by Lee Martindale, has been returned to the editor and she will proceed with it under another arrangement.
Note: this situation affects only the five books mentioned above. All other scheduled Norilana Books titles remain scheduled as originally planned. Nothing else has changed.. (Note, the anthology Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress is also unaffected by this and will continue as scheduled this and next year, etc.)
Why am I doing this to anthologies and not to novels?
Anthologies are wonderful, but are a labor of love. They cost me many thousands of dollars to produce out-of-pocket (author advances alone are the most difficult expense) and they do not pay for themselves sufficiently—basically I cannot justify this expense next year when all my efforts will be going toward raising income in a difficult economy.

Following up on that news, Martindale (as alluded to above) has decided to publish The Ladies of Trade Town under her own HarpHaven Publishing imprint. She writes: The tag line of the chorus to “The Ladies of Trade Town” (the song) is “…whatever the planet, whatever the time, the ladies of Trade Town hang on.” Well, The Ladies of Trade Town (the anthology) hangs on, as well. It will be coming out from HarpHaven Publishing, in trade paperback edition in or before July 2011 (I’m going to try to shoot for the first of June, so it can roll out at A-Kon) and, when possible, a subsequent ebook edition.