Edited with an Introduction by Jonathan Oliver, Dangerous Games: An Anthology of Original Short Stories contained eighteen short stories by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Lavie Tidhar, Melanie Tem, Gary McMahon, Robert Shearman, Helen Marshall and Pat Cadigan, amongst others.
Games Creatures Play was the latest in the series of themed anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner. It contained fifteen paranormal sports stories by Joe R. Lansdale, Ellen Kushner, Mercedes Lackey, Adam-Troy Castro and others, including a new “Sookie Stackhouse” story by co-editor Harris.
Harris was also the sole editor of Dead But Not Forgotten, an anthology of fifteen “Sookie” stories by Jonathan Maberry, MaryJanice Davidson, Rachel Caine and others.
Editor Stephen Jones’ The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror reached a landmark 25th Anniversary edition featuring twenty stories and Stephen Volk’s novella ‘Whitstable’ before the title was promptly dropped by UK imprint Robinson after a quarter of a century, when an American co-publisher could not be found. PS Publishing quickly stepped in to continue the series under its original title of Best New Horror, retaining the original numbering sequence.
Editor Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year from Night Shade Books reached its sixth volume with twenty-three stories, one poem and a summation of the year, while Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014 from Prime Books contained an impressive thirty-two reprints.
Salt Publishing launched yet another “Year’s Best” anthology series with Best British Horror 2014 edited by Johnny Mains. Despite not casting its net as wide as the other “Best” volumes, it featured twenty-one stories plus a tribute section to author Joel Lane.
Datlow and Jones overlapped with just a single story by Simon Strantzas, along with authors Neil Gaiman, Lynda E. Rucker, Kim Newman and Robert Shearman. Datlow and Guran included the same contributions from Nathan Ballingrud and K.J. Kabza, and both featured different stories by Dale Bailey, Laird Barron, Neil Gaiman and Priya Sharma. The contents of the Jones and Guran books didn’t overlap at all, although they shared authors Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee and Angela Slatter.
The Jones and Mains volumes shared three stories (by Tanith Lee, Thana Niveau and Reggie Oliver) along with authors Ramsey Campbell, Joel Lane, Robert Shearman, Michael Marshall Smith and Stephen Volk. Datlow and Mains only shared a story by Robert Shearman, and there was no overlap of either fiction or authors between the Guran and Mains volumes.
In May Amazon.com stopped accepting pre-orders for all Hachette Book Group imprints over an ongoing dispute about how much the online book retailer took from e-book sales. Amazon was also accused of delaying delivery of some Hachette books, running banner ads for deeply discounted rival titles on authors’ pages and even removing pre-order buttons for print and Kindle editions of many Hachette titles.
Heavy-hitters such as James Patterson and Jeffery Deaver came out against Amazon, and Douglas Preston circulated a series of open letters signed by a number of authors and editors. Stephen King publicly accused the bookseller of “strong-arm tactics”.
Meanwhile, writers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland also accused Amazon of using similar tactics to put pressure on Swedish publisher Bonnier Group during negotiations.
Hachette and Amazon finally announced in November that they had come to a “new, multi-year agreement for e-book and print sales in the US”. The settlement allowed Hachette to set the prices of its e-books, known as the “Agency model”, while maintaining the same royalty revenue for authors.
It was also estimated that Amazon paid around $5-10 million for the new Internet domain “.book” and $4.6 million for “.buy”.
In July, Amazon launched a new subscription service, Kindle Unlimited that, for a $9.99/£7.99 monthly subscription, gave Kindle owners unlimited access to some e-books and audiobooks on offer from Amazon, up to ten titles at a time. The majority of the 600,000 titles available were self-published and their creators, unlike traditionally published authors, shared a monthly pool of cash determined by Amazon instead of a standard royalty payment.
Tor Books announced a new imprint, Tor.com, to publish novellas, short novels and serialisations as e-books, print-on-demand and audiobooks. Authors were offered a choice of a traditional advance against net earnings, or no advance against a higher royalty rate.
Doing just what it said in the title, Bradbury/Matheson: Interviews with the Authors featured a pair of fascinating interviews with the two late masters of the genre by Dennis Etchison (with a little help from George Clayton Johnson on the second one). It was available as an e-book from Crossroad Press, which also put out digital editions of Etchison’s novel California Gothic and his collections The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss and The Death Artist.
John Joseph Adams’ monthly online Nightmare Magazine featured new fiction from, amongst others, Tim Pratt, Adam Troy-Castro, Dale Bailey and Tim Lebbon, along with reprints by Lucy Taylor, Gary Braunbeck, Tanith Lee, Glen Hirshberg, Nathan Ballingrud, Lucy A. Snyder, Michael Cisco, Dennis Etchison, Tom Piccirilli, Simon Strantzas, Charles L. Grant, Lisa Tuttle, David Morrell, Christa Faust and Michael Marshall Smith. Artists showcased included Mike Worrall, Jel Ena, David Palumbo, Federico Bebber, Márcio Martins, Leslie Ann O’Dell, Galen Dara, Reiko Murakami, Sam Guay, Jeff Simpson and Brom. Kate Jonez, Ramsey Campbell, Joe McKinney, Nicholas Kaufmann, Don D’Auria, Brandon Massey, Janice Gable Bashman, Lucy A. Snyder, Lesley Bannatyne, Chesya Burke, Eric J. Guignard and Simon Strantzas all provided columns on horror, and there were interviews with Christopher Golden, Dean Koontz, Jeff Strand, Darren Shan, Nancy Holder, Mark Morris, Del Howison, Daniel Knauf, Cecil Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates, Leslie Klinger and Robert Shearman.
The e-book editions of Nightmare Magazine included exclusive content not found on the website version, while the October issue was a special Kickstarter-funded “Women Destroy Horror!” issue guest-edited by Ellen Datlow.
The Winter edition of the excellent Subterranean magazine was guest-edited by Jonathan Strahan. Unfortunately, the free online title suspended publication with its Summer 2014 issue.
Amber Benson and Robert Picardo starred in Morganville, a six-part Kickstarter-funded digital series based on the “Morganville Vampires” novels by Rachel Caine.
Dark Hearts: The Secret of Haunting Melissa on iTunes was a horror movie app, a sequel to Haunting Melissa (2013), which changed the audio and visual clues each time an episode was re-watched.
Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales from print-on-demand publisher Hippocampus Press collected nine superior stories (five reprints) by Canadian author Simon Strantzas, along with a Foreword by Laird Barron. From the same imprint, Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft contained twenty-four stories and poems (nine original) by Don Webb, along with an entertaining biographical Introduction by the author.
The wonderfully titled Ghouljaw and Other Stories collected fourteen stories (six original) by Clint Smith, along with an Introduction by S.T. Joshi, while Bone Idle in the Charnel House: A Collection of Weird Stories contained twenty tales (nine reprints) by Rhys Hughes.