The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: 12 edited by Stephen Jones contained twenty-two stories and novellas, along with the usual comprehensive overview of the previous year in horror, a detailed necrology and a list of useful contact addresses for aspiring writers and horror fans. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection reprinted forty-four stories and nine poems, plus the annual summations by the two editors, Ed Bryant and Seth Johnson, obituaries by James Frenkel, and a list of so-called ‘Honorable Mentions’. The Datlow/Windling and Jones books overlapped with just four stories from Ramsey Campbell, Kathe Koja, Terry Lamsley and Paul McAuley.
After much ballyhoo in the small-press world and to the anger of many of its contributors, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy: 2000, the first in a proposed new annual series announced by editor Steve Savile, was abruptly cancelled by print-on-demand publisher Cosmos Books.
HarperCollins globally launched its e-book imprint Perfect Bound in February with titles by Raymond E. Feist, Joyce Carol Oates and an omnibus of The Nightmare Room by R. L. Stine, containing six novels.
Following the May launch of AOL Time Warner’s digital imprint iPublish, The Authors’ Guild warned its 8,000 members that the new company’s publishing contract was ‘among the worst the Authors’ Guild has seen from a publisher of any size or reputation’. The Science Fiction Writers’ Association agreed, describing the publisher’s non-negotiable terms as ‘rights stealing’.
Ignoring the criticism, iPublish announced a new popularity contest in conjunction with the monthly publication of three works discovered through its website. However, in an unexpected move in December, AOL Time Warner pulled the plug, citing a slowdown in the overall economy as its reason for the decision. The company concluded that a separate electronic publishing division was not currently viable at that time. While iPublish titles remained available for the time being, electronic book sales were moved to other groups within Time Warner Trade Publishing.
In a landmark decision in June, the US Supreme Court ruled 7–2 on The New York Times v. Tasini case that publishers must obtain consent for the electronic reproduction of work originally created by freelancers for print. This resulted in thousands of articles being deleted from electronic databases and on the Internet.
After buying ‘exclusive electronic rights’ to around 100 backlist titles by authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, new e-book publisher RosettaBooks was sued by Random House, who claimed that their existing contracts with the authors giving them the right to publish the works in ‘book form’ included digital rights. In July, a federal judge in US District Court in Manhattan ruled against Random House’s request for a preliminary injunction, and the publisher subsequently appealed.
Barnes & Noble Digital debuted on September 11th with an original e-book by Dean Koontz, The Book of Counted Sorrows, but delayed the launch of its other titles until mid-October. Economic fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks may also have caused Random House to fold its AtRandom electronic imprint, launched in June 2000.
At the beginning of the year, editor Paula Guran announced that it had become obvious to her that the only way for her weekly electronic newsletter DarkEcho to evolve was ‘for it to head directly into extinction’, which it did. However, after publishing more than 300 issues since 1994, Guran did revive the title occasionally as a once-in-a-while informal newsletter.
Along with co-sponsoring a story contest, Leisure Books began sponsoring original fiction by new and established authors on Brett Savory’s quarterly webzine The Chiaroscuro.
Delirium Books’ website was removed by its host server in November after a complaint about the site’s graphic content. As a result, certain features such as the ‘Gross-Out Tournament’ were moved to another server.
The Spook was a fully downloadable electronic horror magazine in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format launched in June by publisher/editor Anthony Sapienza. Featuring short fiction, celebrity profiles, reviews, cartoons and poetry, among the featured authors were Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Dennis Etchison, Damon Knight, John Shirley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Jonathan Carroll and Joyce Carol Oates. Features included interviews with Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Carroll, actress Linda Blair and artist Alan M. Clark, plus articles on Halloween’s Michael Meyers, the Zodiac Killer, the witchcraft of Shirley Jackson and the truth behind Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Ramsey Campbell’s opinion column (originally in Necrofile) began running from the second issue onwards. Because it was sponsored by advertisers, the full-colour monthly magazine was free to readers and received more than 4,000 hits in the first forty-eight hours.
Gothic.net underwent its annual make-over and the $15 subscription entitled readers to get the ‘premium’ short fiction, change the colour scheme, post comments and receive regular updates.
Among the authors whose stories were featured on Ellen Datlow’s Sci.Fiction on SciFi.Com in 2001 were Charles Beaumont, Terry Dowling, Ian R. MacLeod, James P. Blaylock, Geoffrey A. Landis, Lucius Shepard, Gerald Kersh, Glen Hirshberg, Richard Matheson, Pat Cadigan and many others.
After six issues as a print publication, Paul Lockey’s Unhinged, subtitled Disturbing Fiction for Discerning Adults, became a twice-yearly online magazine in May with articles, reviews and fiction by Sean Russell Friend, Mark Howard Jones, Michael Chant, T. M. Gray, Ray Clark and others.
Paul Fry’s Peep Show, published by Short, Scary Tales Publications, featured erotic horror fiction by David J. Schow and others, and more horror stories could be found on John Urbancik’s webzine Dark Fluidity.
The Zone SF, a non-fiction site, went live in mid-September with interviews with Dan Simmons and Simon Clark, and a list of the Top 10 Heavy Metal Albums with SF Themes.
Edited by Sara Creasy, aurealis Xpress was a monthly science fiction and fantasy e-bulletin for subscribers to Australia’s twice-yearly Aurealis magazine. The electronic update was issued eleven times a year (except January), and you could subscribe to both magazines by visiting the website and printing off an application form.
Pam Keesey’s Monsterzine.com looked at monster movies and was linked to the related site, BioHorror.com, while Ghoul Britannia was a tribute site for Hammer Films and other Brit horror movies.
Douglas Glegg’s ‘The Infinite Road Diary’ debuted on the Cemetery Dance website. While the author travelled across America promoting his new hardcover novel The Infinite with bookshop signings, he updated his electronic diary every few days. Neil Gaiman’s electronic diary was also credited with boosting sales of his latest novel, American Gods.
Stealth Press marked Halloween on its website with a free downloadable PDF e-anthology, All Hallows-e: Halloween Tales from Seven Masters of Terror, compiled by Paula Guran. It featured reprints by such Stealth authors as Ray Bradbury, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, John Shirley, William F. Nolan, Al Sarrantonio and Peter Straub.
Stealth’s e-freebie page also featured a downloadable e-chapbook of Nolan’s 1967 Playboy short story ‘The Party’, from his new collection Dark Universe, and a sample from Wilson’s novel An Enemy of the State, featuring a new introduction by the author along with the prologue and five chapters.