Reading · Things Of Interest

In fact I have two publishing deals. Some of you may have already seen this news, and you may be able to guess where this is going.

The first deal is with Ballantine Books, a US-based publisher which is part of Penguin Random House. The second deal is with Del Rey, a UK-based publisher which is also part of Penguin Random House. Ballantine will be publishing my book There Is No Antimemetics Division in North America, and Del Rey will be publishing There Is No Antimemetics Division in the UK and most of the rest of the world. If all goes well, publication day will be in the fourth quarter of 2025. UPDATE: publication day will be 11 November 2025.

This will be a fully overhauled, thoroughly rewritten version of Antimemetics. I'm calling this "version 2", and the original version "version 1". I'm still working on rewrites right now, but the draft of V2 in front of me is already (in my subjective opinion, if you value that) a mile beyond the original. There is plenty about V1 which I felt could be improved anyway, but it is frankly amazing what one can achieve with the assistance of real-life professional editors!

So an important question rears its head...

With Antimemetics V2 in the works, what is going happen to Antimemetics V1?

At the time I'm writing this, Antimemetics V1 is available to read in several different places:

You can, of course, read it for free at the SCP Foundation project. This is Antimemetics' original home.
You can buy the ebook from Amazon, Gumroad and Google Play.
You can buy the paperback from Amazon.
You can buy the hardcover from Amazon.

Antimemetics V1 is staying online at the SCP Foundation. I repeat: Antimemetics V1 will always be available to read for free on the web. Normally, when an amateur writer self-publishes on the web and then gains enough traction to be picked up for a publishing contract, a clause of that contract calls for the original self-published version of their work to be taken down. Not in my case. My contracts specifically acknowledge the SCP Foundation copy of V1, and they do not call for me to take that copy down. (Which is not something I could do anyway, even if I wanted to.) My intention is to leave that copy essentially untouched, indefinitely. I love the SCP project and I'm proud to have my work be part of it. You're alright.

However, all the paid ebook and print editions of V1 will be removed from sale at the end of September 2024. I can't give a precise hour and minute when they will go offline, because this isn't something I can schedule in advance, but I plan to start pushing buttons around midnight UK time on 1 October 2024.

This is regrettable but unfortunately unavoidable. It should be fairly obvious why I can't continue to sell Antimemetics V1 at the same time as my publisher is selling Antimemetics V2.

It might be less obvious why I have to pull Antimemetics V1 this month, rather than when V2 is released, a year from now. The reason for this is that traditional publishing has many moving parts compared with self-publishing. Before a bookseller can sell Antimemetics V2 to you, publishers (Ballantine and Del Rey) need to sell Antimemetics V2 to the booksellers. This other sales process is much more complicated, and it is starting up right now — it has to, because it informs all kinds of decisions relating to printing, distribution, marketing, inventory, etc.. Having Antimemetics V1 still on sale while all of this is happening would confuse both the buyers and the sellers, and undercut the process.

The bottom line: if you are considering purchasing Antimemetics V1 in any format, either for yourself or as a gift, do this before September ends. The clock is ticking. Buy now!

Those purchase links in full:

There Is No Antimemetics Division, paperback edition: Amazon.com (or UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA, AU)
There Is No Antimemetics Division, hardcover edition: Amazon.com (or UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE)
There Is No Antimemetics Division, Amazon Kindle edition: Amazon.com (or UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, JP, BR, CA, MX, AU, IN)
There Is No Antimemetics Division, EPUB: Google Play, Gumroad
Pentaquark Bundle, EPUBs: Gumroad (includes There Is No Antimemetics Division and four more books by me)

"Book 2"

Both of the publishing deals I have mentioned are actually two-book contracts.

Book 1 is Antimemetics V2, an overhauled rewrite of Antimemetics V1. All of it, I mean. I have not split V1 into two books.

I have no idea what Book 2 is going to be right now. I haven't written a single word of it, there's no title, there's no pitch. It may take place in the same continuity as Antimemetics V2 or it may not. I also have no idea when Book 2 would be released. If you've been following me for a while you'll know that I write quite slowly relative to the typical professional writer. It will probably be several years from now. I really couldn't say. The publishing industry generally understands that art takes as long as it takes, and I have no deadline as such. That said, I've never actually written professionally before, so who knows what might happen? I've also never written a whole book offline, rather than as a web serial. We shall see. I am as interested to see what could happen as you are.

In any case, right now my focus is on finishing Book 1.

Q&A

Questions in the comments, please!

"Congratulations!"

Thank you!

"Will there be an audiobook edition of Antimemetics V2?"

Yes!

Update, 2025-09-28: and the narrator is Rebecca Calder.

"Will you continue to be involved with the SCP project?"

I may make small edits to the SCP Foundation copy of V1 to fix formatting, typos, tags and the like. However, for the most part I plan to be hands-off.

I don't have plans to write more long-form SCP content, although I may contribute a new SCP or a Tale one day if inspiration strikes me.

I do still show up in the SCP Discord on occasion.

"Will anything replace the Pentaquark Bundle?"

Yes, I will produce a Tetraquark Bundle containing my other four books: Ed, Fine Structure, Ra and Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories. This will happen soon after the Pentaquark Bundle is taken down. Probably.

Edit: you can now buy the Tetraquark Bundle!

"Will Antimemetics V2 be released under a Creative Commons licence?"

No. Creative Commons licences are essentially incompatible with traditional publishing. Publishers have no interest in property that they aren't able to obtain exclusive rights to. There is a very small number of exceptions to this rule; I am not one of those exceptions.

"Does that mean that V2 will have the shared-setting elements (SCPs, the Foundation) removed?"

Yes. This is not an SCP book.

I have mixed feelings about this. As I've said, I love the SCP project and the SCP setting and the many amazing things which writers at all levels of experience have been able to build on top of those foundations. I'm proud to be part of the project, and my decision to scrub the SCP elements from V2 was not made lightly. But it had to be done in order to get published. There was absolutely no other way that this was ever going to happen.

Remember, V1 is staying where it is!

"What are you changing/adding/removing for V2?"

I can't go into details about V2 right now, and in any case I could fill a book with the changes I'm making and the rationale for each change. I think it's probably best if we wait until V2 is out. Then, people can compare and contrast the two books and ask me about specific points of interest?

"Will there be foreign-language translations of V2?"

Yes, several! Each translation involves a different contract with a foreign-language publisher and these contracts are still being wrangled, but it is likely that the book will be translated into Italian, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.

"Have you quit your day job in software development?"

No. I am not 100% certain if writing can be a full-time career for me yet, or if that's something I want. Additionally, if I quit software development entirely for any amount of time, it would potentially be very difficult to resume that career later.

"Will Book 2 be Ra V2?"

This is not totally impossible, but it is very unlikely. Book 2 is more likely to be something completely original.

I absolutely do want to produce a V2 of Ra one day. There is far more that I would love to improve in Ra than there ever was in Antimemetics.

Update, 2024-12-23

Antimemetics V1 is now fully sold out in all formats, in all regions. It took several months for Amazon.com to sell off all of its pre-printed paperback and hardcover stock, but that has now happened. Thank you to everybody who bought copies!

V1 is no longer available to buy, but you can always read it for free at the SCP Foundation project.

"Do you have a sneaky final copy of V1 which you can send me?"

Nope, that's it! I have no stock of my own. More importantly, I cannot sell V1 anymore, this is a contractual obligation.

Discussion (53)

2024-09-19 19:03:38 by iano:

Oh wow this is exciting news! [massive spoilers for antimemtics v1 in this post] I am unsure if you are open to feedback. In case you are: I find the interactions with Marion and Adam to be profoundly moving. In the most wonderful way, I have cried multiples times in my rereads of the stories. The love they have is truly apparent and the "just misses" they get like in Ará Orún is completely heart breaking. And it happens *again* in Tombstone. Just got tears re-reading that part now. Love it. I imagine that in your major rewrite one area you may have in your mind for cleanup is the stuff associated with "What the Dead Know," since you didn't directly write that material. I am hoping you are able to preserve some of that heartbreaking back in forth in Ará Orún -- not knowing each other, knowing each other, but it's too late as Marion dies, the the memory being wiped again. So good!! If you do get rid of that sub-plot, I am sure there is a way to capture that heart-breaking roller coaster in other ways. Another area I imagine you might consider removing is Immemorial, since it is less narratively necessary than other stories, and acts as a decent stand alone. Please do not, it is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. It perfectly encapsulates the loss of an antimemetic war. The reader falls in love with Eli and loses her all in one chapter. It's brilliant. Perhaps you can make Red more of a villain character with agency to increase the narrative importance of this chapter. Or leave it as the brilliant chapter it already is. For constructive criticism, I was feeling like the story with Red was a bit anticlimatic. He is set up to be a great face of the villainous 3125 in Ojai (and earlier perhaps in Your Last First Day if that voice is "him"), but his later mentions are very brief. And his death at the hands of Adam happens so quickly that it feels too easy. I get the point is that he *isn't* 3125, just some aspect of it, but I think there is room to expand the character and character arc of Red.

I have a publishing deal!