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Interview with Christopher Morgan from Tor Books


Oliviarfrias
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Chris Morgan Interview For UMS's second interview, I sat down with Christopher Morgan at Tor to discuss everything from how he got into the industry, to Tor's submission policies, to what new books should be on your fall reading list.

Olivia: Tell me a bit about yourself and how you ended up at Tor.

Chris: The quick and dirty version is I was in grad school at Mississippi State University, and I was working on a history paper at 2 in the morning. I looked around and said, "I don't really want to do this." Then, I looked behind me and saw a bookshelf full of Tor books and wondered to myself, "How do you do that?" How do you make books? Where I'm from publishing isn't a job. People think books come fully formed out of the sea. I spent the rest of the night looking up book jobs instead of working on my paper. After graduation I moved to New York City. The next Monday after I moved I had an interview at FinePrint Literary Management. I got an unpaid internship there which lead to an internship at Tor. I met fantastic editors like Kristin Siveck and Melissa Fringe who was a YA editor at the time. I also met Stacy Hill who I think of as my mentor.

After the internship was over it was time for me to find a real job. I got a paid job as a contractor thanks to Kristin Siveck working with two websites, Criminal Elements and Heroes and Heartbreakers. Unfortunately, Heroes and Heartbreakers is no longer around. I worked there for a few years and then a position opened as an assistant to Stacy Hill in the editorial department. I jumped at the chance and I've been at Tor ever since.

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Olivia: What do you think makes Tor stand out as a publisher?

Chris: I could give the company line of we're the #1 science fiction and fantasy publisher in the country, but what I think makes Tor stand out is that we've developed an incredible sense of openness, of being willing to embrace the new. It may be cliché to say, but we're a very unique bunch of weirdos. We've been described by Macmillan as the weird theater kids who sit in the back of the room smoking cloves, making fun of everyone. That is very true. At Tor you have a very unique personality and brand. No matter what department you're working in you're gonna get people who understand weird, who understand nerds.

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Olivia: What advice would you give a new author about self-publishing versus traditional publishing?

Chris: I mean I don't have a recommendation on which one you should go with, but I do want to say the choice of self-publishing and traditional publishing is dependent on your own work ethic and your own ability to manage your own projects. If you want to go into self-publishing, you have to be a good project manager and you have to be a good publicist and a good marketer. I have the freedom to only be a project manager and I have other professionals that take on the other sides for me. When an author publishes through me we can all team up. But when it comes to self-publishing, you have more freedom when it comes to genre and everything.

The Big 5 are beholden to market trends. We have to hit the broadest net possible. One of the stories I always tell people is I usually go to the Writer's Symposium at Gen Con, which is specifically to help writers who want to get into game writing or game design or just traditional fiction publishing. I knew this author who was there. We became acquaintances. He let me read his book. I read his book. I liked his book. It was very 80s, 90s fantasy. I told him that. We can't do something like that anymore. But the market is out there. He has since done his research and made a very successful income out of self-publishing that series. He was able to do things we at Tor cannot. And we can do things he cannot. You have to understand what you're writing.

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Olivia: You said that as a big publisher you have to be aware of what the market is trending towards. What are some trends that you find that new authors often aren't aware of?

Chris: So that's a very hard question to answer. The biggest advice I have is to read what's being published now. The trend overall is moving away from broad sweeping multi-family house epic fantasy and more towards a very character-forward story. The main important thing is that the character's motivation is plot. So you're not really focused on broad, epic world spanning battles. You want to know what's going on inside people's heads. A lot of people who come to fantasy want to be Brandon Sanderson, or Robert Jordan, or George RR Martin, but that's not what the market is wanting right now. They want to understand the people who are living through these earth shattering events. I can't imagine what has happened in the past three years that has made people want to understand what it's like to live through world changing events. You can still have wizards and battles and fights and blood, but you want to do it with the character forward.

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Olivia: What red flags do you often see in manuscripts by new authors?

Chris: There's the obvious. There's using outdated language in regards to race, gender identity, sexuality, things like that. In terms of other red flags, honestly, when I'm reading a book I'm looking for it to catch me. I'm looking for it to make me want to turn the page. The only thing that turns me off immediately is, like I said, I still see a lot of outdated language when it comes to human beings. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you are dealing with other human beings who are reading what you're writing and you have to be aware of what languages and tropes you are using. I myself was recently made aware by a New York agent that the use of the term "golem" might cause issues because it's so tied up in the Jewish religion and Jewish folklore. Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder are moving towards the term "construct," which essentially just means "magic robot." But you just have to be aware. Educate yourself in the modern use of language and what is okay and what's not okay. Other editors have different lines like violence against children or violence against animals. I have very few hard lines in terms of content, other than haunted dolls. I cannot stand haunted dolls and will not abide by them.

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Olivia: I noticed Tor no longer accepts unsolicited manuscripts due to COVID-19. Do you see this policy changing in the future? 

Chris: Yes, our founder Tom Doherty, one of his biggest pillars on what makes Tor different is that we never say no to a good story. But due to COVID, most of the editors and staff in general have spread to the four winds and we don't have a physical location at the moment. We still have an office here in New York City, but a lot of us aren't there to check the email and do regular reviews of the slush pile. In the future, we hope to go back to opening up everything. It will look similar to what our imprint Nightfire has in terms of their open submission policies. We hope to go to an online system that doesn't require the staff to be physically next to each other.

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Olivia: Do you have any advice for new authors looking for agents?

Chris: Just do your research. I always encourage authors to look up every publicly available profile of the agent they are looking at. Look at Instagram. Look at Twitter. Look at LinkedIn. Don't stalk them, but look at their public social media. Look at what authors they represent and what publishing deals they have. One thing you can do is pick up a book you want to be next to on the shelf, go to the end and read the acknowledgements. Almost always an author will thank their agent. If they are writing the stuff you want to write, then you want to look up that agent. You can also look up agents on "Writers Beware" and it will tell you that agent's reputation within the industry. I don't know how actively that's being updated. But the important thing is to do your research. Don't just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

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Olivia: What new and/or upcoming debut novels are you excited about?

Chris: Well, I'm going to plug my people. So I have over my shoulder here R.R. Virdi's The First Binding. It is a doorstop of a fantasy book, but it is something I am so proud to have worked on. It came out last week. I also have Wake of War by Zac Topping that came out with our Forge line at the end of July. It is a fantastic near future story about a possible civil war. Zac is an Iraq war vet and he wrote a fantastic character-driven novel about what it's like to be a person thrown into an impossible situation. Then I have Daniel M. Ford's The Warden which is about a necromancer who graduates first in her class and then she is shipped off to the boondocks. She is a very cosmopolitan persona who is shipped off to a very rural town and she must help them. Shenanigans ensue. That's coming out later this year. Those are some of the debuts I'm working with, or at least first to be traditionally published. I'm very excited about all of them.
 

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