The Juice Boxes - Best SFF Press for eBooks (2011)

Winner: Pyr

The first question would be, 'Why not an award for the best SFF Press, period?' The short answer is because it would be impossible and capricious. How do I compare something like Night Shade who does 25 books a year to Orbit who does 75? Or how do I look at Spectra who only publish SFF in relation to Doubleday who does SFF and scads of other stuff? I can't, so I won't. What I can judge, is who's making the effort to put out the best eBooks. And that's Pyr.

It shouldn't be new to anyone who reads this blog that I'm a dedicated eReader. The vast majority of books I purchase are eBooks and the vast majority of ARCs I read are electronic. Gone are the days of error ridden eBooks from major publishers (largely), but there's still a huge gap between the quality of hard copies and their eBook counterparts. Lou Anders, and Pyr, are changing that one eBook at a time.

Sure, their eBooks are almost never available on release day. And yes, they're not as affordable as those from Angry Robot or Night Shade (who both do a great job with their eBooks also). But for me Pyr has become the go to source for beautiful, professional eBooks. I'm sure you're asking yourself, what the hell is a beautiful eBook and what's important about it?

Writing this post, I pulled up a random Pyr title from my electronic library, in this case, The Greyfriar by Clay and Susan Griffith. The first thing I noticed was the cover. Believe it or not, a lot of eBooks don't come with covers. They'll start with the copyright page, or a text title page, or something else equally lame. The second thing I notice is the type settings - plural. There's a typesetting for the chapter heads, for the drop letters, and for the primary text. They even take the time to drop in custom scene dividers - no triple asterisk or hash tag here. And check this out - they've been proofread. In fact, I'm pretty sure Pyr puts the same editorial integrity into each eBook than they put into their hard copies. It shows.

Lou Anders w/Hugo.

Know what else? They aren't overpriced. While not 'cheap', I've yet to see a Pyr title in the $12.99-15.99 dollar range now so popular among the big-6 new hardcover release. I get that an eBook is almost as expensive to produce as a bound copy, less print and distribution costs. Still, there's a mental hurdle that many consumers have right now in paying more than $10 for an electronic copy. Until that changes, and I'm not sure it ever will, price matters and Pyr seems to grasp that, coming in at just under $10 even for hardcover releases.

Admittedly, this isn't an award I'm going to repeat in future years, but I felt compelled to recognize Pyr for being an leader in the industry. So thanks to Lou Anders (a proclaimed eReader himself) and his editorial team for making it a priority. Special shout out to Rene Sears, who I'm pretty sure does a lot of the heavy lifting.

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If you missed my Thanksgiving post, I explained that I'm doing a series of awards. I'm going to call them the Juice Boxes. See if you can keep up here... so there are the Hugos. My name is Justin. Put those two words together and you get Jugos. Jugo in Spanish means Juice. The Juice Awards sounds like something O.J. Simpson would bestow on someone, so I added the box. After all, who doesn't like Juice Boxes?

I'll be doing a separate post for each category with a goal of having them all done before Christmas (we'll see). My award categories are as follows:

Best SFF Press for eBooks

SFF Editor of the Year

SFF Cover of the Year

Most Disappointing SFF Book (2011)

Best SFF Book I Read This Year Not Published in 2011

SFF Debut of the Year (2011)

SFF Book of the Year (2011)