 
GW: I want to ask you about that because I've noticed that the newer books have a higher quality look and feel then some of the earlier ones. Are you using different printing technology now than you were before?
SM: We're using different printers. We've gone through about three different printers. We started off really not knowing much about books at all. There's so much involved in printing and shipping the books, so it's really been a process of trying to discover which is the most economic way of having the books printed, which printer to use, which printers have the most expertise in paperback printing -- and then how they're packaged and how they're sent on to our distributors, who then distribute them to all the book shops, and all these sorts of things. We keep moving around and looking for a better deal because in publishing, the margins are very small, so you have to make your savings where you can.
We have some ideas whether to do the larger print, paperback format of some of our books, and there are other things we have to think about in the future. But at the moment, with the current economic situation, it's not the best time to be looking to splurge money. We have a few ideas of what we might do in the future in terms of the look and feel of the books.
 GW: You mentioned that you work closely with MGM. Can you talk to us about what the normal process is like in submitting a book to MGM, and then how you work with them as the book is being written and is ready to be published?
SM: Sure. The first thing we get [from the author] is a one-page outline that comes to me, and if I like it and think we haven't got a book too similar, I'll ask for a 4,000-word outline of the story, which goes to MGM. They look at that and make sure it ties in with the feel of the show, and hopefully there's not too much of an overlap with upcoming episodes. Although, we have recently had a problem with a book that is going to be published soon by James Swallow -- and it's an excellent book, and we are publishing it and it's a wonderful book -- I'm not going to say what, but there's an element to it which has recently appeared in an episode.
GW: Oh, really?
SM: Yeah. It's not huge. It doesn't spoil the plot or anything. It's just a surprise element. I'm not going to say what it is because it is a brilliant book. Our lead time is much longer than the show. We'll have a year thinking about a book, and then they'll come in and rush an episode that gets filmed a couple of months after it's written. We don't work that close with production, so that can happen occasionally. This is the first time it's happened at this point, but the book is ready to go and it's going to go to the printers soon.
By and large, what happens is we send the outline to MGM, they approve it, and it comes back to us. The author writes the manuscript, which comes to me, and I do some editing if it needs it, and it goes back to the author, and then it goes back to MGM, and they will read it and come back with some comments.
They usually have some comments. It could be anything. Sometimes our authors get a bit carried away with a bit too much gore, a bit too much blood here and there. So, we have to tone that down if they feel like it's going a bit beyond what you'd see in the show. They give us their comments, which then go back to the author, who incorporates those. We come up with an agreement with an MGM. Sometimes we'll argue a point if we think there is a reason to keep something a certain way.
And then we get final approval from MGM and it all gets laid out and proofed. They sign off on the galley print, which is basically the book as you would see it printed out on the computer screen with all the legal stuff that will have to get approved by their legal department every time. Once that's all okay it's off to the printers! So, that's how we work with them.
GW: Has there ever been a time where you had a book you really liked and really wanted to publish, but MGM said, "You can't do this one for reason A, or reason B." Has that happened yet?
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" Because our authors are fans of the show, by and large, they will take a concept from an earlier episode and they'll say, I wonder what the implication of that event was? "
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SM: No. We've never had it where they say, "No, not that." I know that has happened with people of other TV shows where they say, "No, you can't do that because that's going to come up in the season coming up."
Because our authors are fans of the show, by and large, they will take a concept from an earlier episode and they'll say, "I wonder what the implication of that event was?" A lot of our stories are woven around things that have happened in the series. They tend to be set, say, in Season Three, so they're not dealing with issues that an upcoming show has to deal with. In that sense we've been quite lucky that we have not really trodden on their toes or they've not trodden on ours. The production has priority, but we didn't start doing the books until Season Seven, so we only had three more years where they were still in production with SG-1 -- which gives us a bit more freedom to weave our own bits of story around what the show established.
What I like about tie-in books is we can get inside the characters' heads that television doesn't allow. You have your 45 minutes to tell a story, and you have your actors and they bring all the emotion to it, but in a book you can really be inside the character's head and play out what they're thinking, how they feel about certain events, and really analyze some of the things that have happened in the show. Julie Fortune did that really well in "Sacrifice Moon," I thought.
GW: I liked that one. That was a good one.
SM: I really liked that one as well. A lot of that was about Daniel and Sha're and his feelings about that. That's what I like.
We actually have a lot of male writers coming up. I realize we have had a lot of female authors, and I'm aware that women write certain subjects in a certain way. They have an interest in the more internal aspects of the story, and male writers will often go for a more gung-ho plot. We deliberately looked for some more male voices to bring in that aspect of the show.
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