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Victoria Strauss -- Some Interesting Recent Blog Posts and Articles

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Below, links to some interesting and useful articles and blog posts that I've encountered recently in my travels round the Web:

- On Nathan Bransford's blog, guest blogger Eric, a sales assistant at a major book publisher, provides a primer on how publishers sell books into bookstores. An eye-opening post that points up, among other things, the vital importance of sales reps.

- As a new author, you're an unknown quantity--which means (from publishers' and agents' perspective) that you're a risk--but also, possibly, that you could break big. Once you're published, however, you are largely defined by your sales numbers. If you're a US-published author, how do publishers and agents know your sales numbers? From Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70% of all bookstore sales in the USA. Bad BookScan numbers can torpedo your next sale--and if you think you can just change your name, or slide on over to a new agent or publisher, think again: they have BookScan too.

But how accurate is Bookscan, really? It doesn't, for instance, track sales from big-box retailers like Walmart, so if you're lucky enough to get placement for your novel in one of those stores, those numbers will be missing from your BookScan total. Even for bookstore sales, BookScan may not tell the whole story. This interesting series of posts from agent Andrew Zack, sparked by his discovery of a major discrepancy between the BookScan numbers for one of his authors and the author's actual royalty statements, explores that issue.

- From the Shelftalker blog, the do's and don'ts of promotional emails--very good advice for authors (and publishers) looking to promote their books.

- From Editorial Ass, a balanced post on when, why, and possibly why not to hire outside editorial assistance.

- Ever wondered what the heck a blog tour was, and how to organize one? The Book Publicity Blog answers all your questions.

- From John Scalzi, why "new" novelists are often kinda old.

- For the procrastinator in us all, a wonderful essay from author Ann Patchett on the scariness of starting a new book: Why Not Put Off Till Tomorrow the Book You Could Write Today?

- What do writers really do with their time? Novelist J. Robert Lennon lets you in on the secret. I absolutely adore this article--if anyone ever asks me about my writing process, I'm just going to refer them here.

Victoria Strauss -- Authorfail: When Authors Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:50:00 +0000

Last week, the Twitter- and blogosphere were abuzz with two tales of authorial bad behavior: much-published author Alice Hoffman's Twitter meltdown over a poor review (Hoffman tweeted several angry messages about the review, including one that provided the reviewer's phone number and email address and encouraged fans to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics;" Hoffman's publisher subsequently yanked her Twitter account, and Hoffman issued an apology); and philosopher and author Alain de Botton's blog explosion (de Botton posted an angry comment on the reviewer's blog, concluding "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make"; he, too, subsequently apologized, excusing himself by saying "It was a private communication to his website, to him as a blogger...It's appalling that it seems that I'm telling the world." Well, duh).

Although you can blame these errors in judgment on the social media phenomenon, which encourages us all to tweet (or comment, or post, or email) before we think, they are hardly isolated incidents. Authors wigging out over criticism is nothing new.

This past April, a Russian court ordered a journalist to pay compensation to a writer who objected to the journalist's review of his novel. Compensation amounted to US $1,000; the writer had originally demanded much more. Per the news report of this incident: "Observers have commented that this judgment creates a very dangerous precedent, opening the way for lawsuits based on subjective opinion. Some have even suggested that if a book reviewer can be sued, a reader who did not like a book can sue the author for making a bad quality product." Holy frivolous lawsuits, Batman!

A recent article on the Hoffman debacle from Salon.com provides several more examples of authors behaving badly over criticism. Authors Caleb Carr, Jonah Goldberg, Stanley Crouch, and Richard Ford have (respectively) written invective-laden letters to, blogged obsessively about, slapped the face of, and spit upon/shot holes in the books of reviewers to whose analysis they objected (one of those reviewers, ironically enough, was Hoffman herself).

In 2007, Stuart Pivar sued blogger PZ Meyers for libel for Meyers's negative review of Pivar's book Lifecode, which proposed "an alternative theory of evolution." Most observers dubbed the charges "frivolous" and "empty." Pivar eventually dropped the suit.

Also in 2007, author Deborah Anne MacGillivray organized a virtual lynching of an Amazon reviewer who gave MacGillivray's book just three stars. Despite the reviewer's attempts to notify Amazon of harassment by MacGillivray and her posse, Amazon suspended the reviewer's posting privileges (though not, apparently, her privilege of spending money on Amazon products).

MacGillivray isn't the only author who has cracked up over Amazon. In 2004, bestselling author Anne Rice posted a long, angry, barely coherent screed addressed to negative Amazon reviewers, testifying, among other things, to her "utter contempt" for them. So weird was this rant that some people speculated it might be a hoax, but Rice herself confirmed it in a later message on her website.

Then there was the late Michael Crichton, who struck back at a reporter who wrote a less-than-flattering article about him by making the reporter a character in his 2006 novel, Next--a really disgusting, evil, morally corrupt character. At least, the reporter thought so.

In 2001, author Jaime Clark contacted a list of literary editors, offering a $1,000 bounty to anyone who would tell him the name of the author of a negative review of his book in PW. (No word on whether anyone did, or what Clark planned to do with the information.)

In 1998, science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer sent an angry letter to a Canadian magazine protesting negative comments about his latest novel, alleging that the reviewer was waging a vendetta due to Sawyer's earlier criticism of the reviewer's own writing. The reviewer turned the tables, suing Sawyer and the magazine for libel.

I've been on both sides of this issue. As a novelist, I've gotten negative reviews--some of them thoughtful, some misguided, some just stupid (such as the one from a major review publication in which it was clear that the reviewer did not read the book). Do they upset me? Yes, probably much more than they should--especially the more thoughtful and intelligent ones, the ones that make points worth considering. Am I ever tempted to respond--by contacting the reviewer, bitching in public, getting Amazon to take down the review? Never. Never ever ever. Bad reviews go with the territory. If you launch yourself into the public sphere, you have to expect that not everyone will appreciate you. You need to learn to suck it up and act like an adult. A bonus of behaving professionally: the sense of moral superiority it can confer, especially if the review is really dumb. (It can take a while for this to kick in. But trust me, when it does, it helps.)

As a reviewer, I've written negative reviews (though I have to say that over time, I became ever more reluctant to do so). I had some rules for those, however. I never wrote a review--negative or positive--of a book where the author and I had a connection, either personal or professional. I never reviewed a small press or self-published book unless I could mostly say nice things about it (small press and self-pubbed authors have enough to contend with already). Large press-pubbed books were fair game, but I never wrote a negative review without fully reading and carefully considering the book--in other words, I did my best to write the kinds of negative reviews that I, as an author, could respect. Over my nearly 10 years of reviewing, I heard from just two authors whose books I criticized; both disagreed with my criticisms, but thanked me for taking their books seriously.

Bottom line: all of us need to remember how little privacy we really have professionally, especially those of us who are active on the Internet--not only because of how widely any bit of information can now be disseminated, but because of how long it can stick around to haunt us.

Victoria Strauss -- It's Official: DOJ Investigates Google Book Settlement

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Yesterday, the US Justice Department confirmed that it is opening a formal investigation into the Google Book Settlement.

A quick recap: Several years ago, Google entered into agreements with a number of libraries to scan the books in their collections. The books were then listed online via Google Books, along with publishing info and, for books still in copyright, limited "snippets" of text (for public domain books, the entire text was available). Claiming that the scanning was fair use, Google argued that it didn't need to seek copyright holders' permission first. Authors disagreed, and in 2005, a group of publishers and the Authors Guild filed suit to stop the scanning.

Last October, the parties in the suit reached a settlement--a mind-numbingly complicated arrangement that, depending on whom you ask, is either the first step toward a universal world library or the next step in Google's quest for world domination. Much like desperately ill patients forced to research their own health care, authors were faced with the prospect of taking a crash course in Googlenomics in order to decide whether to opt in to the settlement--in which case they'd receive a small amount of money for Google's use of their work, but potentially give up a good deal of control of that use--or opt out, in which case they would get no money and potentially lose all control.

Originally, the deadline to opt in or out was May 5, 2009. But, responding to a petition from a group of authors, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York extended the deadline to September 4. Along with increasingly vocal opposition to the settlement from a variety of groups, the delay seems to have spurred the interest of the Justice Department. Over the past couple of months, there've been reports that the DOJ has been contacting Google and publishers with questions about the settlement.

Now it's official. Judge Chin, who issued the deadline extension, has released the letter he received from the DOJ, along with his order that the government present its findings by September 18, 2009 (ahead of the settlement's October 7 fairness hearing). The letter begins:

The United States writes to inform the Court that it has opened an antitrust investigation into the proposed agreement between Google and representatives of publishers and authors which forms the basis of a proposed settlement of a pending class action in The Authors Guild Inc. et al v. Google Inc., Civil No. 1:05-CV-8136. The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement may violate the Sherman Act.

There's no way to know what the investigation will reveal, or whether the settlement will stand, change, or be struck down as a result of the fairness hearing. But whatever happens, the deadline for authors to opt in or out falls before both the DOJ deadline and the fairness hearing--which means that authors must decide on the basis of the current settlement terms. Authors absolutely owe it to themselves, therefore, to be as informed as possible, so they can make the best possible decision--whatever that decision may be.

If you're tempted to do nothing (which I suspect many authors will be, given the complexity of the settlement and the issues surrounding)--resist. As in the health care metaphor I used above, doing nothing is the worst of all possible worlds, since, if the settlement does stand, you will gain neither the possible benefits of participation (which include the right to tell Google to remove your books from its database), nor, if you decide to opt out, the moral satisfaction of giving Google the finger.

To assist with the decision process, I'm re-posting some of the resources I compiled in an earlier discussion of the settlement, along with a few others I've found since. These are resources that I personally found helpful; I hope you will too.

- The Google Book Settlement website.

- What the Google Book Settlement Means for Authors and Publishers--An admirably clear and concise (given the complexity of the settlement) summary of the settlement's key points from Joy R. Butler. I guarantee you'll find something here you didn't know.

- From the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency, a guide to your options under the settlement and how (and whether) to exercise them.

- From the Dear Author blog, a roundup of info on the settlement plus links to more articles.

- The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books: A thoughtful summary of issues of concern--including the huge control over orphan works Google could gain from the settlement--from James Grimmelmann of the American Constitution Society.

- Law professor Pamela Samuelson discusses the orphan works issue, as well as the potential monopoly the settlement may give Google, in The Dead Souls of the Google Book Search Settlement.

- More on the potential Google monopoly from Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. The comments are interesting as well.

- From the Books and Corsets blog, a summary of a Columbia Law School-sponsored symposium on the settlement. Worth reading, because it highlights some issues that other sources don't seem to have picked up on.

- Mike Shatzkin has questions about the distribution of revenues generated by the settlement.

- An article in Time magazine details librarians' concerns about the settlement.

- The other side, from (respectively) readers', researchers', and publishers' perspectives: a defense of the settlement from columnist Mark Gimein, another from John Timmer at Ars Technica, and another from Tom Allen of the Association of American Publishers.

- And finally, for the technophiles among us, NPR reveals details of Google's patented scanning process.

Victoria Strauss -- Fourth Fiction: (Yet) Another Literary Reality Show

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:48:00 +0000

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a small obsession with so-called literary reality shows. (Amazed that such things could even exist? See this recent post for a recap.) To date, seven of these suckers have surfaced. Five never got past the planning and announcement stages. The jury's still out on the sixth (I'm not holding my breath), and the seventh is still embryonic (not holding my breath there either).

Now, however, there's a literary reality show that might actually go all the way.

Fourth Night, a blog maintained by writer Constantine Markides, will launch FourthFiction, "the first blog-based literary reality show," on July 4. Twelve writers will write original novels, which they'll post in tri-monthly installments, according to literary guidelines provided by Mr. Markides. Readers will vote to eliminate one contestant per round. On December 4, the single survivor of all twelve rounds will be announced. What does he or she win? Well, maybe nothing, apart from the sense of achievement in having completed a novel in five months. But maybe a small-press publishing contract. Mr. Markides says that he approached several small presses at BEA to discuss the possibility of funding limited publication of the winner's novel. (Writer Beware-ly caveat: some small publishers are no prize, and a number of really bad ones were at BEA. I hope Mr. Markides has thoroughly checked them out.)

The writers are anonymous--and some, apparently, have never written fiction before. They'll be Twittering at will during the month of July, as a way of warming up and letting readers get to know their styles. The contest proper will begin on August 4.

In my opinion, this is really the only way a literary reality show is possible. The writing process simply is not interesting to observe (nor are writers--or if they are, it's generally not because of their writing), nor is it easy to come up with telegenic challenges involving authoring ("Writers, give us 5,000 words on love and death while sitting at a sticky table in a noisy Starbucks with a latte that isn't hot enough, using only one hand! You've got two hours--now go!"). Attempting a televised literary reality show is a recipe for failure (as Tony Cowell, Simon Cowell's brother seems to have discovered) or ridiculousness (as demonstrated by announced plans for The Ultimate Author, in which contestants were to vie hotly for supremacy in such vital authorial areas as spelling and arranging a room attractively for a book club gathering). By putting all the emphasis on the writing, and cutting image and identity out of the picture entirely, Fourth Night has come up with a literary reality show concept that actually seems workable.

You can participate, or just observe, by subscribing to free email updates or Fourth Fiction's RSS feed.

Victoria Strauss -- Hassett vs. Hasselbeck: What A Plagiarism Lawsuit Reveals About Writers' Fear of Theft

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Writer Beware often gets correspondence that goes something like this:

Dear Writer Beware,

I [wrote/self-published] a book about [topic/plot synopsis]. I sent [the manuscript/the book] to [name of agent/publisher]. Next thing I know, there's a book on the market just like mine! I'm sure that someone plagiarized it. What can I do?

My answer (couched, of course, in much more tactful terms): Get over yourself.

Theft is an incredibly common writerly fear, but for book writers, it's almost completely unjustified, especially where unpublished work is concerned. A good agent or publisher won't risk his or her reputation by stealing; a bad agent or publisher isn't interested in your manuscript at all, only in your money, or else is too unskilled to do anything with your manuscript even if they were stupid enough to try and steal it. Also, if your writing is marketable (the biggest "if" in the quest for publication), it's a lot less trouble just to sign you for representation or publication than to expend the effort of filching your work and pretending it was created by someone else. In the long catalog of things that book writers need to worry about, theft truly is at the bottom of the list.

I was reminded of this by a recent news story about a self-published author who has filed suit against TV personality Elisabeth Hasselbeck, her publisher, and "John Doe" (I'm guessing this is Hasselbeck's ghostwriter). The author, Susan Hassett, alleges that Hasselbeck plagiarized Hassett's book, Living With Celiac Disease, in writing her own book, The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide.

These claims are detailed in a letter to Hasselbeck from Hassett's lawyer (the letter was obtained by gossip website TMZ.com). The letter alleges that Hassett sent a copy of her book to Hasselbeck, care of ABC Studios, in April 2008. (Hasselbeck's book came out in May 2009--which all on its own could refute Hassett's allegations, since, given the timeframes in publishing, Hasselbeck's book may well have been complete or mostly complete by the time Hassett's book arrived at ABC.) "Subsequently," the letter indignantly, and somewhat ungrammatically, notes, "Ms. Hassett never received a response or than [sic] even an acknowledgement [sic] of any kind." (No surprise. I'm quite sure the book went into the bin along with the other unsolicited items that Hasselbeck and her co-hosts on The View probably receive every day; it doesn't seem likely that Hasselbeck ever saw it.)

The letter goes on to quote both books, in order to identify what it calls "glaring similarities" between the two. The examples chosen are neither glaring nor, really, very similar. (Most are also, as pointed out in this post from Gluten-Free NYC, a celiac-focused blog, restatements of common advice that was widely available long before either book was published). But they do suggest, no doubt unintentionally, that Hassett's book may be somewhat lacking in the style and grammar department (example: "A person with celiac disease should only shop in the outer isles [sic] of the supermarket. The reason being is the only thing down the other isles [sic] is things you can't have"). Which makes it still less plausible that Hasselbeck or her ghostwriter plagiarized Hassett.

For me, Hassett's lawsuit demonstrates both of the basic misapprehensions at work in writers' fear of theft: first, that theft is common (i.e., it's a more likely explanation than simple chance for why someone else's book is similar to yours); and second, that the book is worth stealing (the hard truth is that, most likely, it isn't--which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality). These unrealistic assumptions are often coupled with a lack of understanding of commercial publishing (the timeline confusion noted above) and, as in this case, with the misguided belief that celebrities actually look at the stuff that regular people send them.

Most theft-obsessed writers never get beyond stewing in their own paranoia, but Hassett has taken it a step farther, into court. For her sake, I hope her lawyer is working on contingency.

Courtesy of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, you can see Hassett's complaint here. Not surprisingly, Hasselbeck and her publishers have denied Hassett's allegations.

Victoria Strauss -- IndieReader

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:50:00 +0000

There's been some recent buzz about IndieReader, a new service for self-published books launched by commercially-published author Amy Holman Edelman.

"The fact is," the IndieReader website says, "self-published authors know it's a rough world out there. They get no respect from publishers and little attention from consumers." But "more and more Indie books [are] finding mainstream success (Still Alice, The Shack) and more mainstream authors [are] writing Indie books (Dave Eggers, Noam Chomsky)." IndieReader is poised to become part of this "vast sea change in publishing:"

People are naturally drawn to what’s unique and genuine, be it Indie movies, Indie music...or Indie books. They are tired of hearing about the next John Grisham, of taking their cues from traditional publishers who are afraid of what's new, niche and different. They are hungry for something like IR—and with a team that has a combined 40 + years of public relations and marketing experience—we plan to give it to them. In short, what Sundance has done for Indie films—making what's outside the mainstream "cool"—IR will do for Indie books and authors.

(You all probably know my opinion of this kind of sloppy use of the term “indie,” but that’s not the point of this post, so I won’t make a fuss about it here.)

As "the premiere community of self-published and print-on-demand authors," IR will promote, market, and sell self-published books on its website. For an annual fee of $149 ($25 of which is a submission/reviewing fee), plus an extra $25 per book if they want to publicize more than one, authors get their own Web page and URL (here’s a preview), and keep 75% of the proceeds from any sales (IndieReader gets a 25% commission).

So far, so good--and not so very different from other self-pub-focused book listing/selling websites, such as Jexbo or Publitariat Vault. But there's a twist: IndieReader will be selective. "[G]ood books must be in good company, and so we reserve the right to exclude books that don’t meet certain standards of quality, both in terms of basic spelling and grammatical errors and content." According to IR’s FAQ, this vetting will be done by "editors, literary agents, publicists and just plain book lovers." Who they are or might be isn't revealed, though Ms. Edelman provides some clues in a recent interview. There’s also this job listing, which suggests that at least some IR vetters will be college students.

What if your book doesn't pass muster? Well, you can choose to participate in ReadRoxie, IRs non-vetted book listing site (which doesn’t yet appear to be online), or you can get a refund of your annual fee, less the $25 reviewing fee. You have to delve into IndieReader's Terms and Conditions to discover these last two facts. Some other significant provisions of the Terms and Conditions:

- Authors must fill orders within two weeks (if they don't, IR can cancel the order "and count these orders against your fulfillment rating").
- They must make sure the info on their Web pages is "accurate and current."
- They must maintain a "reasonable return policy," (the cost of that, along with shipping and handling, appears to be passed on to the buyer).
- They must agree "not to take any action to discourage customers from making purchases on the website" (a rather broad stricture that could cover a lot of things, including, conceivably, successfully promoting book sales on your own website).
- They may terminate their relationship with IR at any time with 10 days' notice--but IR reserves the right to terminate also, for any reason, including authors' failure to timely fulfill orders.

IndieReader is an interesting concept. Considering the many opportunities the Internet offers for self-published authors to throw money away on worthless marketing and promotion schemes, the $149 membership fee doesn't seem outrageous (and before anyone decides to pillory me for not getting angry at Ms. Edelman for requiring a $25 submission fee, I see this as analogous to a contest entry fee, rather than to an agent's or publisher's reading fee). Still, there's plenty of reason to be cautious, in my opinion, mainly because IR is new and unproven. Can IR really market its way to the kind of visibility that will justify its fees? Will the screening process be rigorous enough to fulfill its promise of quality (hmmm...college students)? Important questions, since these are the things that principally distinguish IndieReader from other book listing/selling websites--and presumably will be major publicity hooks for it.

If you don't know a great deal about the self-publishing community, you might suppose that self-pubbed authors would be open to the idea of a new and relatively low-cost service designed to help them achieve greater visibility. You would be wrong. IndieReader has been greeted with a good deal of skeptical and even angry discussion--much of which centers on the vetting process. An apparently harshly critical post at the Publishing Renaissance blog has been removed, but the paragraph quoted at Self-Publishing Review gives a sense of what must have been the tone:

Once again, we see Old Publishing trying to shoehorn it’s methods into the new Internet environment. It’s the same 20th-century, top-down, corporate approach to deciding the value of media — an approach which runs antithetical to the realities of the business of media on the Internet. Just take a look at how online booksellers such as Amazon, or book recommendation websites like Goodreads help individual readers decide what to read next. They don’t make recommendations according to what a small number of tastemakers have chosen; instead, the recommendations are based upon community input and involvement.

Though the post is gone, the comments remain (including several responses from Ms. Edelman), and they make for interesting reading. Valid points are raised about shipping procedures, the listing fee, what makes IndieReader different or better (or not) from similar services, whether IndieReader will be capable of providing enough of a sales boost to make it worth authors' financial while--but much of the discussion revolves around the screening process, which many of the commenters seem to feel is elitist ("Why form a special club that will shut some out based on the taste of you and those you’ve employed? How is this better than the system we already have in publishing?") or unnecessary ("It is readers now who judge and recommend, and social network, and etc. This is the internet, welcome to it.").

Given the extreme sensitivity of so many self-published authors to the issue of gatekeeping, I don't find this reaction surprising. Just as much as IndieReader’s promise of quality screening, however, it’s a tacit acknowledgment of the problem of perception that afflicts self-published books. Whether you admit the need for quality control, or decry it as a poisonous relic of "Old Publishing," it’s still the elephant in the self-publishing room.

Victoria Strauss -- The Most Published Author in the History of the Planet

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:33:00 +0000

You may never have heard of him, but with more than 200,000 nonfiction titles in his name (more than 100,000 of which are listed at Amazon), Philip M. Parker may be, in his own words, the most published author in the history of the planet.

How does he do it? According to a 2008 article in the New York Times, Parker, a professor of marketing at INSEAD business school in France and founder of ICON Group International, "has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject—broad or obscure—and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one." (This patented process is explained step-by-step in a YouTube video.)

Parker's books sell anywhere from a few hundred to a few dozen copies each. In addition to compiling books himself, he offers compilation applications to other businesses via EdgeMaven Media (whose website includes a fascinating FAQ), and has branched out into animation and video games. It all sounds quite lucrative--though in the Times article as well as an interesting Q&A at O'Reilly TOC, Parker dodges the question of income, claiming that his company makes no profit because it plows all revenue back into R&D.

Is Parker a Long Tail visionary or a one-man author mill? Are his thousands of computer-generated books an amusing and possibly useful curiosity, or the first, distant echo of the death knell for live individual authors? These are fascinating questions. Parker himself would seem to view his system as author replacement, at least in some areas of publishing. Per his patent application (quoted in The Guardian):

Parker quotes a 1999 complaint by the Economist that publishing "has continued essentially unchanged since Gutenberg. Letters are still written, books bound, newspapers printed and distributed much as they ever were."

"Therefore," says Parker, "there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer." He explains that "further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labour, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel."

Parker hasn't eliminated the human element entirely. In his O'Reilly interview, he says that while 90% of his content is computer generated, writers, editors, and designers are are all "relied on heavily at many stages." And there would still appear to be some room in Parker's world for individual creative effort. From the EdgeMaven Media FAQ:

“Human creativity” in this sense is the absence of formulaic authorship techniques that can be reverse engineered. Some Ph.D. theses, and forms of poetry for that matter, are not that “creative”. Creative authors, therefore, need not fear being replaced by this process. The same is true for creative doctoral students, moviemakers, television producers or PC game makers.

Ah, but what's creative? Not romance novels, apparently. Per the New York Times article linked in above, Parker "is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. 'I’ve already set it up,' he said. 'There are only so many body parts.'" (A reductive statement that, no doubt, will infuriate romance writers everywhere.) What's next? Computer-generated SF novels with stock aliens? Algorithm-created crime dramas with hard-boiled dialog swiped from the movies? Robo-poetry to populate a hundred Poetry.coms?

Apart from imponderable questions of creativity, Parker's system of content aggregation poses another dilemma: copyright. In his O'Reilly interview, Parker says he uses "the sources that are used by regular authors," i.e., information that is publicly available. However, "publicly available" does not necessarily mean "public domain." How does Parker ensure that the materials his algorithms stitch together are copyright-free? If they aren't, how does he ensure that his sources are properly cited?

Good question. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, several linguists recently challenged a number of Aboriginal-language thesauruses, dictionaries, and crossword puzzle books created by Parker's computers, alleging that the books violated copyright. The dispute is discussed at Language Log, a linguistics-focused blog (among other things, it's pointed out that the domain Parker uses for his dictionaries, websters-online-dictionary.org, is not connected with the Merriam-Webster dictionaries), and in a long post by one of the challengers, Peter Austin, who presents an argument for why, although "[i]t is not possible to copyright common knowledge such as words and meanings," Parker's use of material from Austin's 1993 dictionary of the Gamilaraay language constitutes copyright violation.

Parker has since removed the offending books from sale, saying "There was no malice and certainly no financial motive. That was the furthest thing from my mind."

Victoria Strauss -- Fruitloops Galore

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:13:00 +0000

The book world is sometimes a very weird place. In keeping with that, two news items caught my eye today...

Another Harry Potter Infringement Claim

According to this press release, the estate of children's author Adrian Jacobs is suing Bloomsbury Publishing, alleging that J. K. Rowling stole the plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from Jacobs' 1987 book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard--No 1--Livid Land, and that Bloomsbury is in copyright violation for printing and selling Goblet. According to the press release,

Both books describe the adventures of a main character, "Willy" in Jacobs' book and "Harry Potter" in Rowling's, who are wizards, who compete in a wizard contest which they ultimately win. Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures, "the merpeople" in Harry Potter. Many other similarities are described in the Claim filed by the Estate, which include the idea of wizards travelling on trains.

Shades of Nancy Stouffer, who in 2000 alleged that Rowling lifted ideas from Stouffer's 1984 children's fantasy The Legend of Rah and the Muggles! According to Australia's The Daily Telegraph, the suit is being "promoted" by "Sydney celebrity publicist Max Markson," who says that Jacobs' estate is seeking an injunction to prevent continued sale of Goblet of Fire, and is also seeking a court order against Rowling to determine whether to add her as a defendant in the action. (Which seems odd. If you're arguing plagiarism, wouldn't the author be your primary target--especially when the author is as wealthy as Rowling?)

Stouffer's suit was tossed out of court in 2002. Although much of the press coverage seems to be taking this new lawsuit seriously, I suspect that the Jacobs estate is heading for the same outcome. On investigation, Willy the Wizard proves to be a 36-page illustrated children's book, somewhat vitiating comparison to Rowling's 640-page young adult tome. Also, while the press release prominently alleges that Jacobs "sought the services" of Rowling's literary agent, Christopher Little--an attempt, presumably, to establish a connection between Jacobs and Rowling--there's no evidence that Little was ever actually Jacobs's agent (the recently-created website for Willy the Wizard several times mentions a "literary agent," but never provides a name). Putting this together with the fact that nearly thirteen years divides the publication of Willy the Wizard from that of Goblet of Fire, I suspect it will be tough for the Jacobs estate to argue that Rowling ever had an opportunity to view Jacobs's book.

Oh, but she could have found it in a bookstore, you may be thinking? Maybe not. Although I can't find any specific info on Jacobs's publisher, Bachman & Turner, the Willy the Wizard website reveals that Jacobs commissioned his own illustrations and was "impatient to publish" and didn't want to re-write, as his unnamed literary agent apparently advised him to do. Along with the awful title and the rather-less-than-stellar writing, this suggests vanity publishing, to my suspicious mind at least. (Interesting possible parallel: Stouffer's books were vanity published.)

Writing samples and illustrations (hope Jacobs's estate got permission for those) can be seen at the Willy the Wizard website, which appears to have been designed with the lawsuit specifically in mind.

Would-Be Book Burners to Civil Authorities: Can We? Please?

What's the world coming to? Used to be, book burners just went out and burned books. They didn't bother with any silly stuff, like asking for permission. But in Wisconsin, four purported members of something called the Christian Civil Liberties Union have filed a complaint with the city of West Bend seeking the right to burn or otherwise destroy the West Bend Community Memorial Library's copy of Francesca Lia Block's YA novel, Baby Be-Bop.

According to this post from the American Library Association, the complaint describes the novel as “explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian.” Moreover,

“the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” specifically because Baby Be-Bop contains the “n” word and derogatory sexual and political epithets that can incite violence and “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”

As opposed to building a bonfire, which might ignite neighboring objects, such as children.

The CCLU's complaint follows on a challenge by local residents to a number of titles in the library's YA collection, and a decision by library trustees to leave the collection intact. There's more coverage in this article from The Guardian.

(A web search on "Christian Civil Liberties Union" turns up plenty of discussion of book burning, but no info on this group. Methinks it was invented for the occasion.)

Victoria Strauss -- Diggory Press: Stranger Than Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:56:00 +0000

We tell some strange tales here on the Writer Beware blog. There's scam agent/vanity publisher Martha Ivery, noted for harassing authors and for impersonating herself with her alter-ego, Kelly O'Donnell. There's scam agent/writers' conference promoter Elisabeth von Hullessem, who had a similar mania for aliases and, it turned out, was wanted by the police for a crime much worse than relieving writers of their cash. There's Christopher Hill, another scam agent who created elaborate forgeries to fool his clients and then used a fake name to out himself on a popular writers' message board. There's the guy who tried to get people to pay him $1 per word to add to his collaborative novel. There's the literary agency that wanted writers to bid for representation on eBay. There are the literary reality shows. The list goes on.

As strange as anything we've ever covered, however, is the tale of vanity publisher Diggory Press, which has been explored in a number of posts at Mick Rooney's excellent POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog. From Mick's most recent post about Diggory, put up today:

It is a story of intrigue, deception, fraud, defamation, theft, forgery, religious persecution, death threats, hatred, subterfuge and much more, culminating in investigations by the British Police Force, Scotland Yard, An Gardai (Irish Police Force) and I have even encountered unsubstantiated claims of Interpol being involved; resulting in, at first, small claims court actions, and now, potentially, a civil court case early next year.

I couldn't say it any better than that. Check it out, especially the links. I've heard from most of the parties in the dispute, and I think Mick's analysis is spot on.

Victoria Strauss -- Another Interesting Promotion From AuthorHouse

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Author Solutions, Inc., parent company of POD self-publishing services AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Trafford, is nothing if not an inventive marketer.

Last year, ASI debuted "gift" publishing ("First-of-its-kind Service Allows Gift Buyers to Make Loved Ones' Dreams of Publishing a Book Reality"). Then, this past weekend, ASI hooked up with the AARP to offer publishing incentives to older people attending the AARP Life Festival in Chicago. Over-50 authors were eligible to "get their age in free books" just by agreeing to publish with AuthorHouse. The catch? Authors had to agree to buy one of AuthorHouse's more expensive Premium packages--and to talk to an ASI "publishing consultant." Based on the stories I've heard about ASI's hard-sell phone tactics, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the authors wound up buying more than just publishing.

What's next? Your weight in free books?

Victoria Strauss -- BEA Report

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:56:00 +0000

I meant to post this yesterday, but after the frenzy of getting ready for BEA and then three high-adrenaline days of being there, I needed a day to recover. Plus, I sustained an injury in the cause of bringing scam awareness to North America's largest book show--but more about that later.

Writer Beware's presence at BEA this year--courtesy of our new co-sponsor Mystery Writers of America, which kindly gave us space in their booth and let us raid their fridge for water and soda (thanks, Margery!)--was something of an experiment. Some of us had attended the show before in other capacities, but this was the first time that Writer Beware attended as a group.

Overall, we feel it was very much worth it. We brought handouts (my article, Writer Beware, and Ann's anti-scam handout, Excuse Me, How Much Did It Cost You?), business cards, and a brand-new Writer Beware brochure, and gave out a lot of each to the librarians, booksellers, aspiring authors, journalists, and others who stopped by the MWA booth. Many people were familiar with Writer Beware and its work, but many weren't, and it was great to get the word out and to make new connections.

Friends and fans of Writer Beware also stopped by to visit, some of whom we'd only previously met online; it was fun to put faces with familiar names. We had visits from a few non-fans as well. I got into a bit of an argument with a representative of one of the POD self-publishing services, who wanted to tell me how wrong I was about the viability of "traditional" publishing; and we were surprised (to say the least) to come face to face with a Ghost of Scams Past. I'll leave that story to Ann.

The Ghosts of Scams Present were also in evidence. As I mentioned in an earlier post, several BEA attendees were familiar to us from our complaint files, and some of them appeared to be doing brisk business at the show. Just a reminder of how important it is to educate not just writers, but the publishing industry, about the prevalence of literary fraud.

I won't attempt to punditize on the show, since so many other people are already doing so (GalleyCat provides a roundup), other than to say that although there was much pre-show prognostication about shrinking attendance numbers, the crowds seemed respectable. The aisles were busy on Friday and Saturday, with signings and special events drawing what appeared to be decent-sized crowds (including the one that gathered for an appearance by Captain Chesley Sullenberger to promote his upcoming book; he seemed both deeply dignified and profoundly out-of-place up on the stage in his pilot's uniform). Sunday was quieter, with Javits Center workers starting to roll up the carpets even before the official closing time of 3:00.

Disappointingly, freebies were in short supply, though we did score some nifty pens and travel clocks from Google (yes, I know. Taking clocks from the enemy. Have we no self-respect?) at its well-attended Saturday presentation.

One of my goals for the show was to see the Espresso Book Machine, which was being demoed at the Ingram booth. It's surprisingly compact, consisting of a big copier attached to a somewhat larger rectangular box where the copied pages are stacked, bound, and trimmed. The finished book pops out a slot at the bottom (I was able to flip through one while it was still warm). The box has clear sides, so you can see the whole process. A very, very cool machine! According to the enthusiastic spokesperson, the Espresso is currently installed in 15 locations (mostly bookstores), a number that is expected to increase to more than 100 over the next couple of years.

So what about that injury I mentioned in the first paragraph? As I was walking to Penn Station on Sunday, juggling my suitcase, computer bag, and purse, feeling tired but pleased with myself, I failed to pay attention to my feet, and tripped over a curb and fell flat on my face. My stuff went flying; my sandal ripped right off my foot. Contrary to popular mythology, New Yorkers are extremely helpful; people came rushing over to help me up and ask if I was all right. Bruised but fortunately not bleeding, I gathered my shredded dignity and limped on, and managed to make my train. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't just my pride that suffered. Today I look as if someone did the bastinado on my knees, both of which are swollen and black-and-blue. And my sandal, I fear, is completely ruined.

The things I do for Writer Beware.

Victoria Strauss -- BEA Bewares

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:52:00 +0000

If you're a writer, you've probably heard of BookExpo America. Although it describes itself as "the premier event for the North American publishing industry," in recent years it has shrunk considerably, both in exhibitors and attendance. There are those who question its relevance, not to mention its survival (see Mike Shatzkin's interesting essay on the dwindling of BEA, and the changes in publishing and book retailing that have driven this).

Nevertheless, for many writers BEA retains its gloss as a kind of book industry Mecca, a place to make pilgrimage in hope of establishing contacts, promoting a recently-published book, or even attracting the interest of a publisher or agent. And wherever there's something writers want, there are people waiting to take their money.

I touched on this issue last week, with a post about vanity publisher SterlingHouse Publishing, which sells its authors face time at BEA for astronomical prices. I would not be at all surprised to learn that another vanity publisher loudly touting its BEA attendance is doing something similar.

(Yes, questionable agents and publishers do exhibit at BEA. I've looked at about half the exhibitor list so far, and have identified five companies about which Writer Beware has received significant complaints. At BEA, as elsewhere, don't take everything at face value.)

Vanity publishers aren't the only ones looking to make a profit from BEA. Writer Beware knows of several fee-charging agents who give clients the "opportunity" to pay extra to have their manuscripts carried to BEA, supposedly in hopes of making publisher contacts. (A good agent shouldn't need a book fair to make publisher contacts, but never mind.) Last year, I heard from a writer who paid his agent $250 for this privilege; all he got for his money was a few business cards, which the agent could easily have acquired just by spending half an hour walking around the floor.

Other questionable agents solicit writers (not just their clients, but writers whose addresses they've bought or harvested from the Internet) for inclusion in a catalog that they promise to bring to BEA for publishers to peruse. We know of one agent who charges $300 per catalog page, which includes an author photo, bio, and brief synopsis. Cut-rate book publicists and print-on-demand self-publishing services also sometimes offer BEA catalog listings--for instance, this one for $499 from POD self-pub service Llumina Press (scroll down the page). Or from Trafford, last year, this one for $669.

Do BEA attendees really look at these catalogs? ...What do you think? The catalog owners, on the other hand, make a stack of cash.

There are also consultants, writing coaches, and the like who offer BEA "representation" to aspiring and self-published authors. They promise to develop a pitch or press kit to promote writers' proposals or self-pubbed books to appropriate agents and editors at the fair, and report back once it's all over. Fees can be hefty: $1,500, $2,000, or even more. Sometimes only a certain number of hours of effort are guaranteed; beyond that, further charges accrue.

While many such consultants have questionable or marginal resumes, and are rarely able to point to successes, others have genuine credentials, and present convincing-sounded testimonials--for instance, AuthorOneStop, which offers several BEA representation packages. Ask yourself, though--do you really want to pay $2,000 for a service like this, which basically is an expensive gamble that offers no guarantees, either that any contacts will result or, if they do result, that representation or publication will follow? Why not just query in the ordinary way? If your ms. is marketable, you stand just as good a chance, if not better, of being picked up. If your ms. is not marketable, the best BEA representation pitch in the world won't get you closer to publication.

Apart from any considerations of cost or honesty, the fact is that while BEA is a great place to meet, greet, schmooze, and learn, it's not really an optimal venue to try and sell unpublished manuscripts, or to promote self-published books. Even for a BEA service that's offered by competent people in good faith, writers' dollars are probably best spent elsewhere. As it is, most of the services are ripoffs--just another way for unscrupulous people to leverage writers' desperate desire for publication.

Just a reminder: Writer Beware will be at BEA on Saturday and Sunday, in Booth 3828 (courtesy of Mystery Writers of America). Stop by and see us, and pick up one of our brand-new brochures.

Writer Beware at BEA

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:38:00 +0000

Writer Beware will be attending BookExpo America this year!

Mystery Writers of America has generously offered to host us in its booth (Booth 3828). We'll be handing out literature and talking about Writer Beware all day Saturday and Sunday, so please stop by and visit us.

Look forward to seeing you there!

- Ann C. Crispin
- Victoria Strauss
- Rich White

Victoria Strauss -- SterlingHouse Publisher's Cover Gambit (Or, How Some Publishers Make Money)

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:28:00 +0000

One of two covers for this week's edition of Publishers Weekly features SterlingHouse Publisher and a number of its writers--just in time for Book Expo America. Over the SterlingHouse logo and seven author photos floats the cover caption "Hot New Authors."

If you're a Writer Beware regular, you may know that SterlingHouse is one of a number of publishers included on our Thumbs Down Publisher List. Why? Because SterlingHouse's contracts require writers to buy bulk quantities of their own finished books (550 books is a typical number, for a total cost of just under $7,000)--a fact that is not revealed anywhere on SterlingHouse's several websites. Recently, SterlingHouse added an interesting twist to its vanity-style contracts by offering some writers a small advance ($250 to $500, in contracts Writer Beware has seen). The buyback clause is still included, so writers still wind up considerably out of pocket--but now they can in honesty (well, half-honesty) say that they signed with an "advance-paying publisher."

What's a vanity publisher doing on the cover of PW? Well, PW's cover is advertising, and anyone who's willing to incur the fee can buy it. A more relevant question might be why a vanity publisher is willing to cut into its profit by paying premium advertising rates.

Oh, but SterlingHouse isn't paying. Its authors are.

It's all part of SterlingHouse's annual attendance at BEA. SterlingHouse will have a booth at the fair, with its own staff, video crew, podcasts, and other special events, and authors are eligible to participate at several different levels (Writer Beware has seen a copy of the participation offers, which were sent to SterlingHouse authors last fall).

At $9,500, the "Premier" package is the richest. It includes not just the PW cover spot, but (among other items) passes to BEA, an author signing in the SterlingHouse booth, 150 copies of the author's book, a poster and tabletop display, a podcast, sitting/storage space in SterlingHouse's booth, and an invitation to SterlingHouse's Annual Beer and Pretzel Celebration. (For $9,500, I'd expect champagne and cake, but that's just me.) Nine Premier slots are available.

Can't afford $9,500? Authors interested in a somewhat lower-priced package can spring for the "Spotlight"--just $8,250, including a spot on PW's inside cover ("no less than 1/8 page"), BEA passes, free books, a signing in the SterlingHouse booth, assorted extras, and, of course, the beer and pretzel party. The Spotlight has just six slots.

But there's more. Authors really looking to economize can choose "Special Level One" or "Special Level Two" ($4,650 and $2,995, respectively), which don't involve PW but do include a signing, a BEA pass, and free books (and, yes, beer and pretzels). Up to 40 spots are available for Levels One and Two; however, since signings are in the BEA autographing booth, rather than the SterlingHouse booth, not all those slots are guaranteed.

So how much money will SterlingHouse make on author BEA attendance? There are seven authors on PW's cover, so that's a cool $66,500 from the Premier package. I haven't seen PW's inside cover, so I don't know how many authors opted for the Spotlight package--but assuming a similar level of participation (4 slots out of 6), that's another $33,000. As for Special Levels One and Two, a search of the BEA Autographing Area schedule turns up 12 SterlingHouse authors. Let's assume the lower level of participation. That's at least another $35,940.

Gross total: $135,440. Granted, there are costs associated with all of this--the PW cover, the SterlingHouse booth, the autographing slots, the BEA passes, etc. But I don't think it's much of a stretch to surmise that SterlingHouse is realizing a tidy profit. And don't forget that all these authors have already paid several thousand dollars each for publication.

Of course, SterlingHouse authors don't have to pony up for any of these BEA packages if they don't want to. If they have a ticket to the show, they can even stop by and visit SterlingHouse's booth. But if they do, they shouldn't count on sitting down ("...we will not have any author storage room or sitting space for authors who are not participating at the Premier or Spotlight level"), or on being included in any of the video footage SterlingHouse is organizing ("...footage will be used to promote SterlingHouse and authors participating in [sic] at the level of Premier, Spotlight and Special levels"), or on making contact with any of the "regional sales force, foreign and domestic reps and distributors" with whom SterlingHouse staff will be meeting (that's for participating authors only). As for face time with their publisher...sorry. "Due to the amount of appointments scheduled for Cynthia Sterling, she will be unable to meet personally with authors who are not participating at the Premier, Spotlight or Special levels."

The beer and pretzel celebration is right out, as well.

Victoria Strauss --Free Ebooks and Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:24:00 +0000

A little less than a year ago, I blogged on ebook giveaway experiments by major publishers (including Tor, Random House, and St. Martin's Press), and the question of whether such giveaways could boost print sales. At the time of my blog post, what reports there were (from both industry sources and individual authors) indicated that sales could indeed benefit.

Now someone is trying to quantify that information. Bloggasm reports that a doctoral student, John Hilton, is collecting data on the sales impact of ebook giveaways. He has identified approximately 40 titles for which a free e-version was released after the p-version was published, and tracked Bookscan numbers for eight weeks on both sides of the e-release.

Results so far are interesting. While four of the five Random House books Hilton identified showed an uptick in sales post-e-version, 20 of 24 Tor titles showed a decrease. Why the difference? "One possible explanation is that by making the free books available for only one week a different dynamic was present [for Tor] than when the books were made permanently available [by Random House]," Hilton says. "The opportunity for word-of-mouth to spread about the free book may have been significantly diminished in the model used by Tor."

Ultimately, as Bloggasm notes, "These are all unknowns, and these unknowns leave enough wiggle room so that proponents of both sides of the argument have plenty of leeway to argue why releasing a book for free — whether it’s through a Creative Commons license or Google Books — has a net benefit or detriment to sales."

Hilton's study is continuing, and presumably more information will be forthcoming.

Victoria Strauss -- Agent for a Day

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:23:00 +0000

On the heels of Queryfail and Agentfail and all the anti-agent feeling generated thereby, agent Nathan Bransford hosted a Be An Agent For a Day contest. The goal of the contest: to see whether people could pick the three published authors from a group of fifty query letters (all posted on Nathan's blog).

Nathan posted the results a couple of weeks ago. None of the published books were among the most-picked queries (the one that became a NYT bestseller had a pick rate of just 15%) and only two of the more than 300 people who participated in the contest picked all three.

What to take from this contest? First off, it demonstrates how subjective these choices are. Agents' decisions are informed by their experience and their knowledge of the market, but the bottom line is that one person's "Gotta have it" is another's "not for me." Most queries get multiply rejected, even for manuscripts that go on to become extremely successful books.

Nathan's other conclusion, though, is one I find most interesting:

I think this contest goes to show how people may have overemphasized the query itself when they were playing agents. The queries that generated the highest response rate were the most technically precise. They were tidy, they were well-organized, they followed the rules. They were good queries (and some of them may go on to have success stories of their own). But this wasn't a contest to spot the best queries.

When an agent is reading a query we're trying to look past the query to get a sense of the underlying book. We're evaluating the concept and the writing, not ticking off a box of requirements. I don't reject people solely because they start with rhetorical questions or their word count isn't quite right or they break one of the query "rules". I can't afford to do that. Nor do I request pages for a book that has a perfect query but whose underlying concept is flawed.

A good concept and strong writing are more important than good query form.

Interesting, yes? And, I imagine, frustrating. Writers are exhorted to follow the "rules" of querying, yet the truth is that marketability trumps the rules (at least to some extent). So why follow the rules at all? Because you can never know. The strength of your concept might shine through your non-conforming query letter--but then again, it might not. Statistically speaking, it's safer to let the rules be your guide.

Nathan concludes, "I hope everyone will remember this contest the next time a poor agent or editor is mocked for passing on [insert bestseller here]. Because getting it right is incredibly hard."

Amen.

Victoria Strauss -- Why You Are Probably Not an Independent Author (or, Another Post for Which I Expect I Will Get Some Flack)

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:46:00 +0000

In my last post, I discussed the misleading appropriation by self-publishing conglomerate Author Solutions (parent company of AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Trafford) of the term "independent publisher."

The flip side of this is the growing tendency among self-published authors to call themselves "independent authors" or "indie authors." I don't know where this term came from, or who originated it; but I'm seeing it a lot these days (Google it to see what I mean), and, stickler for precision that I am, it bugs the crap out of me.

If you are a true self-publisher--if you've handled every aspect of publication on your own--then yes, you can accurately call yourself an independent author, in at least one of the senses below. If, however, you've used a POD self-publishing service, here are three reasons why the term won't fly.

1. It's inaccurate. You didn't publish on your own. You hired a service to publish for you. If you've used a print-on-demand self-publishing company, you've granted it a limited license to your work, you've chosen from a pre-determined package of services, you're dependent on whatever distribution the company provides, and you probably don't own your ISBN number. Also, since most self-pub companies reserve the right to discontinue publication for any reason, you don't fully control your work's availability, and since most pay a royalty, you don't control its income, either. In other words, you are not independent.

2. It's redundant. In the larger sense of being independent contractors rather than employees, all authors are independent, unless they're doing work-for-hire. This is true whether they've scored a contract with a large commercial publisher, have gotten an offer from a non-advance-paying small press, have fallen into the clutches of a dishonest vanity publisher, or have bought a publishing package from a self-publishing service.

3. It's a euphemism. Giving something a different name doesn't change what it is. What's wrong with "self-published," anyway? (Whoops, don't answer that--you might have to admit that self-publishing actually does still carry a stigma.) If you're proud of having self-published, why not call it what it is? If you're ashamed, why do it to begin with? Euphemisms are of help to no one. All they do is make things more confusing.

I do realize that I'm fighting a losing battle in pointing out these contradictions, and I fully expect that, like "traditional publisher" a decade earlier, "indie author" and "indie publisher" will become the terminology of choice among those who don't know better, who wish to pretend, or who fear to offend. None of which, clearly, are me.

Bah humbug.

Victoria Strauss -- Vanity is the New Indie: Weasel Words from Author Solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:51:00 +0000

Back around the turn of the century, a certain author mill headquartered in Frederick, Maryland decided it wanted to distance itself from the business model of the then-new print-on-demand self-publishing services--because even though it followed most of the same practices (little editorial gatekeeping, minimal distribution, no marketing, and reliance on digital technology), it didn't charge an upfront fee, and even paid a miniscule "advance." So it invented the term "traditional publisher"--intended specifically to denote a publisher that did not require its authors to pay upfront, and thus was not a vanity publisher.

"Traditional publisher" has come into wide usage over the past ten years. This is unfortunate, for it's a meaningless term. Commercial or trade publishing, in which authors are not required to pay for publication, is neither more nor less traditional than vanity publishing or self-publishing, both of which have been around for just as long. Also, the simple fact that a publisher doesn't charge an upfront fee may not mean much. Plenty of amateur publishers charge no upfront fees. Plenty of stealth vanities shift their fees to the back end. The fact that a publisher calls itself "traditional" tells you nothing whatever about its business model.

Into the publishing-related euphemism game now comes POD self-publishing juggernaut Author Solutions. In a recent widely-promoted "white paper," The Next Indie Revolution, it attempts to re-brand itself, and services like it, as "indie book publishers."

The term "independent book publisher" has a long-established and well-understood meaning: a publisher that is not owned by a larger company. Knopf, for instance, is an imprint of Random House, which is owned by Bertlesmann; although it has an independent identity within the company, it's part of a conglomerate and thus not an independent publisher (any longer. Like many large-house imprints, it used to be). Macadam/Cage, on the other hand, is not owned by a larger company. It is an independent publisher.

Sensibly, Author Solutions doesn't try to pretend that it offers independence in that sense. (Author Solutions is, in fact, a conglomerate: starting originally with AuthorHouse, it recently acquired rival services iUniverse, Xlibris, and Trafford, turning these formerly independent companies into "brands" in a process reminiscent of the way that large trade publishing houses have acquired formerly independent publishers and turned them into imprints). Instead, it attempts to attach a new meaning to "independent publisher," or rather the hipper "indie publisher": not a publisher independent of larger corporate control, but a publisher of "independent" writers. Invoking the example of indie films and indie music, in which artists bypassed big studios and big music labels to finance the creation of their own works and market them directly to the public, AS announces that "Now it's publishing's turn."

Over the last decade, as new technologies have emerged, the obstacles that once loomed in front of prospective authors have all but vanished. Since the introduction of print-on-demand technology and the Internet bookstore, the process of getting a book to market is following the pattern previously established in film and music. It's not longer necessary for authors to wait years for someone else to put their book on the market. Now, through indie book publishing companies like AuthorHouse and iUniverse, authors can let the reader decide if their book is any good or not.

This analogy doesn't hold up, however. Those independent filmmakers and musicians didn't pay a company to package and market their work, they did it themselves. They're equivalent to the true self-publishing author, who coordinates the entire publishing process on his or her own--not to writers who buy publishing packages from self-publishing services. If you sign a contract with a self-publishing company, you are not an independent writer, no matter how emphatically the self-pub company says you are.

AS is eager also to establish that these new "indie book publishing companies," which provide a service that it dubs "supported self-publishing," are not the same as vanity publishers. Unlike vanity publishers, AS claims, supported self-publishing services make books available through major retail and online channels, offer additional editing and marketing services, and don't require authors to buy their own books. But this argument doesn't hold up either. Today's vanity publishers, most of which have switched to digital technology and use the exact same printers as the self-publishing services, do or don't do all those things as well.

The irony of all this indie-ing, of course, is that it offers indirect proof of something that AS, and many of its clients, would no doubt hotly deny: like the stigma attached to vanity publishing, the stigma attached to self-publishing is still alive and well. Otherwise, why be so eager to adopt a euphemism?

Having declared that the commercial book trade is in crisis ("According to Nielsen BookScan, fewer than 10 percent of new titles published in the US in 2007 sold more than 1,000 copies in their first year"--a percentage that's seriously skewed by the fact that it applies to all new titles, including vast numbers of self-published books, for which sales average fewer than 200 copies), and implied that reality for a self-published author isn't really all that different than for a commercially published author ("[T]today, even if your name is Clancy or Rowling, you will do your own marketing"--a glib claim that ignores the fact that post-publication promotion is not the same as pre-publication marketing), AS draws to a grand conclusion, envisioning a brave new world in which all is vanity:

There's no argument that the independent publishing model is changing the book-publishing industry; the only question left is how soon it will become the standard, and how quickly traditional publishing houses will adapt to this model to remain profitable and continue to discover new talent. That's the next chapter.

So all you would-be "traditional" authors, start saving, because that book your agent just submitted to Doubleday? Next year, you just might have to pay to publish it.

Sadly, I'm not entirely joking. See this post from Jane Smith's How Publishing Really Works blog on what may be a new trend: commercial publishers making referrals to self-publishing services, or establishing their own pay-to-publish divisions.

Victoria Strauss -- Judge Extends Google Book Settlement Deadline

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:21:00 +0000

If, like me, you've been frantically devoting hours to reading up on Google Book Settlement in an attempt to make up your mind about what to do in the final days before the May 5 deadline...take a breath.

PW reports that "In a surprise move, New York Judge Denny Chin today granted a four-month extension to a group of authors, led by Gail Knight Steinbeck, delaying the May 5 deadline to opt out or object to the Google Book Search settlement to early September."

So you've got until September to decide.

I've pretty much made my decision, and was planning to blog about it this week...but I think I'll delay until closer to the date. What I will say now is that this is a historic settlement that presents the possibility of sweeping changes in many different areas, and has far-reaching implications for authors and publishers. If you're tempted to bury your head in the sand and do nothing (and I completely sympathize with that feeling--the volume of information and opinion is overwhelming)...don't. As I understand it, doing nothing is the worst of all possible worlds, since you will neither be able to direct Google to remove your books from its database nor collect the income generated by Google's commercialization of the database. Whether you agree with the settlement or not, whether you choose to opt in or out, you MUST do something.

In the meantime, here are some resources that I found helpful in clarifying the settlement and the issues surrounding it.

What the Google Book Settlement Means for Authors and Publishers--An admirably clear and concise (given the complexity of the settlement) summary of the settlement's key points from Joy R. Butler. I guarantee you'll find something here you didn't know.

From the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency, a guide to your options under the settlement and how (and whether) to exercise them.

From the Dear Author blog, a roundup of info on the settlement plus links to more articles.

The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books: a thoughtful summary of issues of concern--including the huge control over orphan works Google will gain from the settlement--from James Grimmelmann of the American Constitution Society.

Law professor Pamela Samuelson discusses the orphan works issue, as well as the potential monopoly Google may gain from the settlement, in The Dead Souls of the Google Book Search Settlement.

More on the potential Google monopoly from Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. The comments are interesting as well.

From literary agent Lynn Chu, an opinion on the possible costs of the Book Rights Registry, which the settlement establishes to administer rights claims and payments (by the way, I do not agree with her advice to do nothing).

From the Books and Corsets blog, a summary of a Columbia Law School-sponsored symposium on the settlement. Worth reading, because it highlights some issues that other sources don't seem to have picked up on.

Mike Shatzkin has questions about the distribution of revenues generated by the settlement.

Victoria Strauss -- The WRITE Stuff: Another Author Reality Show

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a small obsession with author reality shows. It's the kind of concept that would seem like a complete non-starter--watching authors sit at their desks for hours at a time? Or, alternatively, avoiding sitting at their desks for any time at all? Not exactly riveting viewing. Yet over the past few years, no fewer than five author reality shows have attempted to get off the ground. Let's recap.

- Book Millionaire. The brainchild of Lori Prokop, owner of her very own vanity press, this show was to feature "Eight people with dreams of seeing their book ideas become published and being the next author launched to best selling and celebrity status." It never got beyond the video audition stage.

- The Ultimate Author. Created by journalist and self-published author Lauren Spicer, this show promised contestants "go[ing] toe-to-toe in a writing competition that tests their ability to develop attention-grabbing content." At least one show appears to have been taped, but there's no sign it was ever broadcast.

- American Book Factory. Four books were to be co-written by teams of authors "competing for what could turn into a major book deal." This one is dead as a doornail.

- Healeth Publisher. In connection with an Internet TV company, Healeth promised a reality show competition "that will change the publishing game forever." It's DOA as well.

- Publish My Book! Proposed by Tony Cowell, Simon Cowell's brother, this is the only author reality show that seemed even marginally credible. But it fared no better than the rest. Announced for the summer of 2007, it has never appeared.

Five shows; five failures. Nevertheless, a sixth author reality show appears poised for launch: The WRITE Stuff, which, apparently unaware of its predecessors, bills itself as "America's First Literary Reality Show" (caution: the website features intensely annoying music).

In a history-making reality show hosted by Conversations Book Club President/Publicist Cyrus A. Webb, a total of 14 contestants will be chosen to compete in a contest that will challenge not only their creativity but their drive and determination to make it in the business. Whether their desire is to pursue a career as an author, playwright or spoken word artist, this show will give them the ability to showcase nationally what they are able to do.

Exactly how is not detailed on the website, which provides no info on show formats or schedules. The winner receives a one-book deal and 10 "virtual copies" of their book from AG Press, two years of representation by Cyrus Webb's Shadow Play Entertainment, and a variety of other stuff, including "a detailed marketing plan," a Dell laptop, and features in online and print magazines, most of which appear to be ventures owned or operated by Mr. Webb.

Auditions have been conducted and candidates chosen. Judges have been confirmed, some successful commercially-published authors among them. Reading/networking parties are being conducted in various locations. National and local TV channels are being "courted"; the show will also be broadcast on The WRITE Stuff's YouTube channel. It's even claimed that the show has entered into a deal with Coca-Cola-owned Vitaminwater, but I can't find any independent confirmation of this arrangement. (Though The WriteStuff has produced its own YouTube commercial featuring the product, that commercial, interestingly, isn't listed on the show's YouTube channel.)

According to the website, the first show is slated to air this June. So will The WRITE Stuff be the one author reality show to actually become, well, real?

Maybe not.

This recent article by journalist Adam Lynch, published in the Jackson Free Press, reveals that Cyrus Webb does not exactly have a strong track record when it comes to public events. Lynch reports that in in 2005, a Webb-organized talent show (for which participants had to sell sponsorships), failed to pay the winner the promised prize of $2,000, and rewarded him only with "[a] computer printout...of an award certificate in a cheap frame." In 2006, Webb sold $50 tickets for the supposedly exclusive Missisippi's Best Awards show, but delivered an event with "no celebrities, no food and paltry awards, which Webb printed himself on his personal computer." (The debacle is discussed in detail in an earlier article by Brian Johnson, and also in a couple of lengthy discussion threads on the Jackson Free Press website, which feature many angry comments from people who attended the show.) As part of the events surrounding the awards show, Webb announced that he was booking several contestants from the hit reality show Project Runway, but the contestants apparently later claimed that he never paid their promised appearance fees and expenses.

Lynch also reports that several of the TV stations that Webb claims as potential markets for The WRITE Stuff deny having any arrangement with him. “We were only aware of the show because the network brought it to our attention, and I made sure we didn’t have it scheduled. If it were to come to our attention, we probably wouldn’t air it because we believe it’s produced without our approval,” says the Vice President of CW69 in Atlanta, Tom Canedo. As of this writing, however, that channel is still listed on Webb's website.

It also turns out that the show isn't so much a show as...an infomercial. “When I was on WAPT-16," Lynch quotes Webb as saying, "I would buy a block of time, and you have 28 minutes and 30 seconds. That’s basically how it works, only instead of selling a blender, it will actually be a show.”

A show with prizes. But what about those prizes? There's not a lot of info floating around about Webb's Shadow Play Entertainment, but I can't discover that it has a significant track record of marketing or promoting books. As for that one-book deal with AG Press...remember the Lanaia Lee Of Atlantis plagiarism uproar? And Lee's "literary agent," Cheryl T. Pillsbury? Well, guess who owns AG Press (which, by the way, isn't really a publisher at all, but a self-publishing service). That's right: Cheryl T. Pillsbury.

I'll say this for Cyrus Webb: he's ambitious. Though The WRITE Stuff hasn't yet aired, he's already planning a spinoff...in Nigeria.

Victoria Strauss -- The Sun Sets on Desert Rose Literary Agency

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:02:00 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a pair of literary scammers named George Harrison and Janet Kay Titsworth. The Titsworths lived in San Angelo, Texas, and ran a "literary agency" called Helping Hand Literary Service (later re-named Janet Kay & Associates) that charged its victims an "expense reimbursement" of $100, $200, or $300, depending on how many publishers they wanted the Titsworths to contact for them.

For the money, writers received a "submission packet" consisting of a set of pre-printed publisher address labels, a form query letter on agency letterhead, and a return envelope. They were instructed to stick a stamp on the return envelope, place the letter, envelope, and accompanying materials (the writer's own query letter, synopsis, and sample chapters) in a manila envelope, affix the pre-printed label and sufficient postage, and drop the packet in the mail.

So unprofessional were these submissions, and so inappropriate the lists of publishers, that the Titsworths quickly became notorious among editors and editorial assistants. Writer Beware heard from more than one editor who contacted the Titsworths to forbid them from ever submitting to that publisher again.

More unusually for these kinds of cases, local law enforcement also took an interest. In early 2002, the San Angelo Police Department initiated an investigation, culminating in February 2004 with a raid on the Titsworths' home. Unfortunately, the Titsworths had already fled. A warrant was issued, and they were finally captured in September 2004 (having started not one, but two new "literary agencies" while on the lam). In April 2006, the Titsworths each pleaded guilty to one count of theft under $100,000, and received a sentence of ten years' probation apiece and a restitution order of $159,320.62.

A fuller account of the Titsworths' scam is provided in my blog post of May 2006.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end here--for, as sometimes happens, one scam spawned another.

The Titsworths had an employee, Leann Murphy (a bird of a feather, having had a bit of history with the law herself: she was sentenced and fined at least once for writing bad checks). In early 2004, just before the demise of the Titsworths' scheme, she set up her own literary agency, Desert Rose Literary Agency.

Dozens of reports received by Writer Beware confirm that Leann followed in her former bosses' fee-charging footsteps, requiring clients to pay a "deposit to help cover marketing expenses" of $250 (for six months) or $350 (for a year), plus a "reinstatement fee" of $75 for authors who chose to re-up their contracts. Fortunately, Leann didn't adopt the Titsworths' editor-annoying paste-on-label submission scheme, but authors who signed with her told us that they rarely heard from her once they'd paid the fee, and had trouble getting her to respond to requests for contact.

Needless to say, no book sales ever resulted.

Leann knew that Writer Beware was watching her, and wasn't happy about it--hence this page on her website, accusing "hate" sites of attempting to destroy the livelihood of independent literary agents. But Writer Beware wasn't the only one with eyes on Leann. Texas law enforcement was watching too. In 2007, Sergeant John Walker of the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office opened an official investigation into Desert Rose Literary Agency. Writer Beware posted an Alert on our website, directing complaints to Sgt. Walker, even as we continued to receive them.

I'm very happy to report that the investigation has been concluded. On April 9th, 2009, a Search and Arrest Warrant was executed on Leann Murphy at her residence. Numerous boxes of files, manuscripts, computers and other items were taken as evidence, and Leann was charged with Theft by Deception, a felony in Texas.

So, happily, another scam goes down. We're very grateful to Sgt. Walker and other law enforcement officials of Tom Greene County, who refused to tolerate literary fraud in their community, and took action to bring it to a halt.

We'll keep you posted as to the outcome of Leann Murphy's case.

Victoria Strauss -- Lulu Acquires Poetry.com

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Until very recently, www.Poetry.com was the Internet home of the infamous International Library of Poetry (ILP), the nation's premier (and I use that adjective with irony) vanity poetry anthologizer. But in early March, the Poetry.com domain was purchased by self-publishing service Lulu.

Why was the domain for sale? According to Wikipedia, "Publish Today and Noble House Books, the branches of Poetry.com that managed the publishing and printing of their books, have gone out of business." Wikipedia is never the most reliable resource, but Lulu appears to confirm this report on the new Lulu Poetry website: "Lulu.com, an award winning Internet company, recently purchased the URL 'www.poetry.com' from the previous failed business that owned it."

Here's PW's coverage of the purchase. And here's Lulu's rather arch press release.

I covered the vanity anthology scheme recently in a post on brand-new vanity anthologizer Eber & Wein, but briefly, here's how it works. The anthology company places ads in various high-visibility publications announcing a free poetry contest, with cash prizes for the finalists and guaranteed publication for finalists and semi-finalists. Everyone who submits is declared a semi-finalist, no matter the quality of their poem. The company then hits them up for money: $40 or $50 to buy the anthology, plus, often, substantial fees for "extras"--adding a biography to the anthology, having the poem mounted on a plaque, attending a big bash poetry convention...the list goes on. It's not exactly a scam, since if you buy something you do receive it--but the anthologies never see the inside of a bookstore (despite the companies' claims), and because there's no editorial gatekeeping, they are not regarded as a legitimate publishing credit.

So should we be rejoicing at the demise of a major deceptive scheme that for decades has been relieving inexperienced writers of their cash? Will Lulu use that bad old domain to turn over a new poetic leaf? Or will it be vanity anthology business as usual?

Lulu's press release claims that it is completely overhauling and rebuilding the domain. Granted, it's early days, but the new Lulu Poetry website doesn't so far show much sign of overhauling. It's got a new template, but otherwise is very similar to the old Poetry.com (courtesy of the Internet Archive), with many of the same categories (Greatest Love Poems, Need Help Rhyming?, Test Your Poetry IQ, etc.) and much of the same content. The 9/11 Poetry sections differ only in the number of posted poems. The Poetic Techniques section of the old website is identical to that of the new--including several articles by Len Roberts, who was Educational Director for the ILP, in charge of its fake poetry association/convention division, the International Society of Poets.

The free contest has changed, however. The annual prize amount has dropped from $10,000 to $5,000, and a daily prize of $25 has been added. And while much of the verbiage of the contest rules remains unchanged from the old website to the new, a community ratings element has been added to the judging, with (unnamed) judges selecting winners "from among the top 10% of poems with the highest daily, monthly and yearly ratings by the community."

Most significant, Lulu has removed the following language from the contest guidelines: "Additionally, various promotions are conducted from time to time." This innocuous-sounding sentence covered the ILP's shilling of anthologies and other products to contest "semifinalists." And compare the old Poetry.com FAQ, which includes an entire section on anthologies, to the new Lulu version, in which there's no mention of anthologies at all. A response from a Lulu staff member in the Lulu forums makes this explicit: "For the record, the 'crap poetry anthologies' have already ended and we have no interest in starting them again."

So it would appear that Lulu plans to discontinue the vanity anthology portion of the business (it does offer publishing services to poets--but it's a self-publishing service, after all, and there's no linkage to the contests). Nor could I find any evidence that Lulu plans to retain any of the ILP's associated vanity-style activities--the International Society of Poets convention website, for instance, now defaults to Lulu Poetry.

This is good news--although we shouldn't get too comfortable. Any gap that might be left by the demise of the ILP will easily be filled by any of the many other vanity anthologizers still in business--or by the new ones, such as Eber & Wein. There's also the question of whether Lulu can transcend the toxic associations of the notorious URL it has acquired. There's some bitter discussion of this in the Lulu forums, and Lulu is clearly aware of the problem--a followup article in PW quotes Lulu's PR Director, Gail Jordan, who notes that "people have been contacting Lulu with questions about its association with Poetry.com’s former incarnation and that the company is 'trying to be very transparent and be very up-front' about the difference." Given the shortness of the public attention span, my guess is that the bad memories will soon fade. But only time will tell.

A final note: though this doesn't seem to have been officially announced, Whois records indicate that Lulu has also taken ownership of several other domains associated with the ILP: www.Poets.com (the ILP's social networking website, which remains unchanged); www.Picture.com, a.k.a. the International Library of Photography (the ILP's vanity photography counterpart, whose website is still active but which is currently closed to contest entries and claims to be "revamping the contest in an attempt to improve the entire system"); and www.ArtsandKids.com (the ILP's vanity arts contest for kids, which targets educators and is still soliciting entries).

Guest Blog -- Playwriting in America: Percentages, Pitfalls, and “Pay-to-Play”

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:34:00 +0000

On the Writer Beware blog, we talk a lot about the danger to book writers of reading fees, submission fees, and vanity or "partnership" publishing arrangements. But being forced to pay for the promise (not necessarily the actuality) of exposure isn't just a danger for aspiring writers--it's a problem in all areas of the arts.

Our guest blogger today, writer and playwright Jill Elaine Hughes, provides a fascinating expose of fees and pay-to-play in the theater world.

**************

In the United States, the theater world is, for the most part, not-for-profit. Only Broadway productions and national tours (think shows like The Producers, Rent, and Jersey Boys) actually make money (on paper, anyway). Theatres are generally nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations that are chartered under the 501(c)3 section of US tax code, and rely heavily on donations for their income. Even when these theatres charge hefty admission prices for their shows (and they often do; the average price of a professional theatre ticket in this country hovers around $40 and is often higher, especially on Broadway), admission fees generally cover only a tiny fraction of production costs. The rest of the money comes from--you guessed it--donors.

When we think of “donors” to the arts community, we generally don’t think of the artists themselves--we think of wealthy individuals, corporate sponsors, and private foundations. In a perfect world, the donated monies would always go towards paying the professional artists--who in the theatre, include actors, directors, designers, and playwrights. But increasingly, theatres that produce new plays are exploiting a new source of income--the playwrights that write those new plays themselves.

Why target playwrights? Actors aren’t charged to audition, directors aren’t charged to submit resumes; neither are designers. But more and more, in the American theatre, playwrights must pay for the privilege of having their work produced, even read. Why? Well, probably because playwrights are often quite willing to shell out the cash.

Percentages and Pitfalls

Playwrights are already accustomed to poverty. Very few theatres produce new plays at all--because they are financially very risky endeavors. With American theatres cash-strapped as it is, small wonder they will avoid new works altogether and instead choose to produce already well-known and popular plays like The Sound of Music or the (royalty-free) works of Shakespeare.

Because theatres take a big risk whenever they do produce a new work (especially a new work by a relatively unknown writer), most mid- and large-sized theatres require something called subsidiary rights from playwrights in the initial production contract. In a nutshell, subsidiary rights is a rights agreement that guarantees the first theatre that produces a new work a certain percentage of that new play’s earnings for as long as that play is in copyright. (In other words, if the Goodman Theatre in Chicago produces your play for the first time, and you agree to give them a subsidiary right percentage of 20%, then the Goodman Theatre gets 20% of that play’s earnings, whether from production, publication, film, translation, whatever--forever.)

That might not seem like a lot, but consider this. Playwrights who get produced by big-name theatres like the Goodman must also have literary agents, and those agents take 15-20% off the top of their clients’ earnings. Playwrights generally earn very little from a play’s first production, anyway (5% of gross, if they’re lucky, 10% of gross if they’re very lucky; but it’s usually a flat fee averaging about $5,000-$10,000), and therefore they rely heavily on future production, publication, and film rights earnings for income. (That’s assuming the play ever gets produced more than once--they often don’t.)

And the first producer of a new work is seldom the only organization that demands subsidiary rights. These days, new plays must often spend years in “development” (i.e., staged readings, workshops, etc) before they even see a full production, and all the theatres and dramaturgical organizations that do play “development” usually want a cut of subsidiary rights, too. This can really eat away at a playwright’s earnings As an example, a few years ago a new play called Intimate Apparel by New York playwright Lynn Nottage became quite popular, and was produced in theatres across the United States. But that play spent years and years in “development” at numerous other theatres and development organizations, to the point that when it finally made it to its first big production, a huge percentage of its royalties were already committed elsewhere. (Rumor has it that when combined with the first producer’s cut, the subsidiary rights percentage was in excess of 60%, which means when combined with her agent’s cut, Ms. Nottage was only earning about 25% of what she’d otherwise be entitled to.)

Think that’s bad? It gets worse. In addition to the very poor financial terms that playwrights already must endure, many legitimate professional theatres (and countless amateur and semiprofessional ones), as well as reputable play development organizations and playwriting contests, are now actually charging playwrights for the privilege of reading their plays. Peruse any call for unagented play submissions (and even some agented ones) and you’ll see requirements for “submission fees,” “processing fees,” “reading fees,” “donations,” etc. These fees can be as low as $5 per play for small theatres and playwriting contests, to as high as $30 per submission to the internationally renowned New York Fringe Festival and even $35 per submission to the highly prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theatre Conference (the US’ most highly respected venue for developing new plays; the latter two organizations also require participating playwrights to agree to significant subsidiary-rights grabs). Submission fees upwards of $50 or even $75 have been reported.

The fact that prestigious theatre organizations like the O’Neill are now charging monies just to read professional playwrights’ work is bad enough, but when you consider that even the most successful playwrights rarely--if ever--earn a living wage, it’s even more despicable.

Pay-To-Play

Playwrights’ member organizations that provide production and development opportunities for playwrights, especially those that maintain prestigious (and free) “residency” programs for a select group of playwrights, are also jumping on the submission fee bandwagon, especially in the current economic downturn. Those fees can range from $40 a year for The Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis (which buys you access to a submission-opps newsletter, some script-review resources, and access to some local programs) to hundreds of dollars annually (such as the Chicago Dramatists’ Playwrights’ Network, which in my opinion does not offer a good return on investment.)

There are indeed still prestigious residency programs out there for playwrights that provide new play development, promotion--and even productions--free of charge to a select few playwrights, such as the venerable New Dramatists in New York City. But the once-venerable Chicago Dramatists (which in addition to its pay-to-play Playwrights Network also runs a free-of-charge, prestigious playwright residency program modeled on New Dramatists in NYC), recently started something it calls the “Senior Network Membership,” where for the bargain price of $300, a playwright supposedly can get fast-tracked into its prestigious (and “free”) residency program--something that used to be offered based on merit and professional accomplishment alone.

If all of this weren’t bad enough, playwrights are frequently called upon to make individual donations to the theatres that produce their work, especially now that the economy has soured. Recently I received an impassioned plea from none other than Chicago Dramatists (full disclosure: I used to be a dues-paying member of their Playwrights’ Network) for “urgent” donations; that email got instantly deleted from my inbox. While many playwrights are happy to assist theatres in fundraising efforts (such as appearing at benefit parties, selling raffle tickets, etc), I don’t believe any playwright should be asked to donate his or her own money to keep a theater going. Playwrights are broke as it is, and there are plenty of other sources for donations beyond an arts organization’s own artists.

It’s disheartening to any up-and-coming playwright to see how much of the legitimate American theatre operates on a “pay-to-play” model. But there are bright spots to report. The Dramatists Guild of America has recently enacted a policy that it will not publicize any production opportunities or playwriting contests that require submission fees. Many playwriting newsletters (such as The Loop for Playwrights) have adopted similar policies. And I’m pleased to report that despite the fact I don’t submit plays to any producing organizations that require submission fees (even the prestigious ones, like the O’Neill), I still manage to get my work produced--a lot (for example, I recently had several plays produced by the nonprofit Love Creek Productions in NYC, a theatre where I knew no one prior to submitting, have never paid a submission fee, and have never been asked to donate or help fundraise a dime). I also no longer support playwrights’ organizations like Chicago Dramatists that have gone heavily over to the “pay-to-play” model, and that hasn’t hurt my playwriting career, either (though I’m sure they’d rather I didn’t say that in public).

My advice to any aspiring playwright is this: Learn how the business of the theatre world operates (it’s very different from the publishing world), get an agent, and watch your back. And never, ever pay a submission fee to anyone--no matter what.

And keep your day job.

*************

JILL ELAINE HUGHES’ plays have received productions and staged readings in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix, Ohio, Toronto, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. She also founded the nationally renowned Stockyards Theatre Project, Chicago’s only theatre company dedicated exclusively to women’s theatre and performance art in 1999, and served as its artistic director/producer for five years. She served three years as President of Chicago Women’s Theatre Alliance (2000-2003) and formerly served as Treasurer on the executive board of the International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP). Her plays and monologues have been excerpted and anthologized by Smith & Kraus, Applause Books, and Meriwether Publishing, and she has written plays for the high school drama market which are published and licensed by Brooklyn Play Publishers.

In addition to her theatrical endeavors, Jill Elaine is a fiction writer, essayist, and humorist, and has contributed to many newspapers and national magazines, including The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Missouri Review, New Art Examiner, Dialogue, Cat Fancy, Black Gate, and many others. She is also a published novelist under her pseudonym “Jamaica Layne.” She is represented by Lori Perkins of the L. Perkins Agency.

www.jillelainehughes.com
www.jamaicalayne.com

Victoria Strauss -- Appeal to Airleaf Victims

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Last May--largely as a result of tireless campaigning by writers' activist Bonnie Kaye--the Indiana Attorney General's Office filed suit against fraudulent vanity publisher Airleaf and its CEO, Carl Lau. The suit seeks restitution for 120 identified authors (the true number of the defrauded is closer to 450), civil penalties of up to $5,500 per violation, and reimbursement for the cost of the investigation.

In addition, complaints for criminal charges were filed with the Indiana U.S. Attorney’s office. But last week, Bonnie learned that the U.S. Attorney has decided not to proceed with bringing criminal charges against Lau and Airleaf.

I just received this letter from Bonnie, which I'm publishing in its entirety. If you can help by signing Bonnie's petition to reverse the U.S. Attorney's decision, please contact her at Bonkaye@aol.com. You don't have to be an Airleaf victim--just a concerned member of the writer community.

Dear Victoria,

As the organizer of the Airleaf Victims, a group of over 600 authors who have joined together over the fraudulent activities of the now defunct company of Airleaf Publishing in Martinsville, Indiana, I was extremely disheartened and shocked when the FBI informed me on April 3, 2009, that the United States Attorney of Indiana, Timothy Morrison, had decided that our case was not going to be prosecuted by his office. According to Mr. Morrison, our case does not meet the "criminal codes" of Indiana.

When my campaign against Airleaf started in August 2007, I gathered from authors in this country as well as Canada, the UK, Australia, Mexico, and South America concrete proof of money that was paid for services that were never provided. For the 18 months that I helped the federal agencies gather this information, it was very clear to me that according to their codes, as explained to me, I was able to make a case separating what they could construe as "bad business practices at best" from "criminal practices."

Hundreds of forms were sent to the FBI, Postal Inspector, and Attorney General's office during this investigation from authors who had hundreds to thousands of dollars disappear with no services. The fraudulence of Airleaf went way beyond book publishing; blatant scams included promises to sell books in Europe on trips that were never taken; selling a cruise to authors that was never booked nor the money returned; selling magazine reviews that were never sent to the magazines; promising to make movies out of books but never turning them into films; and continuing to collect royalties (though not pay them to authors) from Internet distributors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble long after Airleaf was shut down. This is just a small sample of Airleaf's efforts to steal money from authors. Your readers can read the list of charges, and some of the stories of our victims, at my website at www.AirleafVictims.com.

Some of our victims spent their entire life savings on these scams. Many of them are elderly or disabled people who were sold a dream that became a nightmare. If Airleaf had no intention of fulfilling their promises, then it was their responsibility to return the money to the authors. No money was returned, but the owner, Carl Lau, certainly enjoyed a plush lifestyle with an airplane and a cabin cruiser from our hard earned money. The Executive Vice President, Brien Jones, was earning a six-figure salary with our money until he decided to open his own publishing company, Jones Harvest. His authors are standing right in line behind the Airleaf Victims, with over 70 documented complaints to date, which you can read about on my website www.JonesHarvestFraudVictims.com.

I am asking the author community to express its outrage and give support to our victims by signing a petition to the U.S. Attorney, Timothy Morrison, which I will personally deliver to his office in June with some of my fellow authors. I have just launched my new website at www.IndianaWelcomesCrooks.com to publicize this injustice. I am hoping that the good people of Indiana will stand by us as we push to have this decision reversed, so that criminal charges will be pressed against those who cheated so many of us.

The Attorney General's office filed a judgment against Carl Lau and Airleaf nearly a year ago; unfortunately, he is claiming bankruptcy and there is no money to be returned. That is why criminal charges on the federal level are so important. If they are not handed down, then the criminals will walk away without punishment after taking over $2 million of our money. If the U.S. Attorney's decision isn't reversed, predatory publishers will see it as a green light to proceed in Indiana. This is an outrage.

If your readers are willing to sign our petition, please have them contact me at Bonkaye@aol.com and I will email them a copy.

Thank you such much for your help.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.

Victoria Strauss -- Articles on Self-Publishing: The Need for Balance

noreply@blogger.com (Victoria Strauss) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:40:00 +0000

The growth of the self-publishing industry is a popular journalistic subject. Some articles on self-publishing, such as the New York Times's recent Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab, provide reasonably balanced coverage of the issue, while others, such as Time's Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature, are fatuous and overstated, with a distinctly triumphalist "old publishing is dead, and good riddance!" feel to them.

With each of these articles, I get a flurry of emails from writers wanting to know what I think. Is it really true that that print publishing is "over?" Has the self-publishing stigma really vanished? Are publishers really combing through offerings from self-pub services for likely prospects? Has paying for POD really become a viable way for a new author to break into commercial publishing? So with the latest example, Elham Khatami's April 6 article for CNN, More Authors Turn to Web and Print-On-Demand Publishing.

Articles on self-publishing often follow a similar formula, and Khatami's is no exception.

1. Pick a rare instance of self-publishing success--in this case, Lisa Genova, whose iUniverse-published novel Still Alice garnered a major publishing deal. Make sure not to tell the whole story--omit, for instance, the fact that Genova hired PR firm Kelly & Hall--the same firm that propelled self-published Brunonia Barry to success--to publicize her book, and acquired a literary agent as a result of the attention Kelly & Hall was able to generate.

2. Segue to the growth of self-publishing and the great possibilities it offers for budding authors, while taking a swipe at the commercial publishing industry. Totally ignore the contradiction inherent in the fact the success of the self-published author just discussed hinged on her transition to a commercial publisher.

3. Toss out a few random facts about self-publishing (not all of them necessarily relevant--Khatami notes that the self-published author "retains the copyright to his or her book," as if this were not the case with commercial publishing), while ignoring the issue of low sales (the average self-published book sells fewer than 200 copies) and limited distribution (most self-pubbed books are not distributed beyond the Internet).

4. Mix in some boosterish quotes from representatives of self-pub companies, such as Keith Ogorek, Author Solutions' VP of Marketing, who "cited several pluses of print-on-demand publishing: the speed with which a book gets into the marketplace; the fact that readers, not critics, 'decide whether your book is any good or not,' and the environmental benefit of fewer printed copies." (Now, there's a comfort! My book only sold 50 copies, but at least I saved some trees.) Rhapsodize a bit about democratization. "'Anyone can publish, that's the beauty of it,' said Gail Jordan, Director of Public Relations at Lulu. 'Nobody's going to say, We don't like your cover. Chapter 10 should be Chapter 6.'" (Actually, a commercial publisher isn't going to say that about your cover, either...because commercial publishers don't expect authors to provide their own covers.)

5. Feature a happy self-pubbed author. Khatami's example: Melinda Roberts, author of Mommy Confidential: Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood, who turned to self-publishing after being turned down by three publishers, and is pleased with her experience despite the fact that "she has sold fewer than 300 books, mostly by word-of-mouth."

6. Conclude (explicitly or by implication) that "traditional" publishing is [pick one] dead/dying/running scared. For bonus points, include something that encourages inexperienced aspiring authors to make completely inaccurate assumptions about the possibilities of self-publishing. Keith Ogorek again: "'Traditional publishers are looking at us to find new and upcoming authors,' he said. 'We provide that for them.'"

There doesn't seem to be any question that the self-publishing industry continues to grow, even as the commercial publishing industry enters a period of contraction. Nor is there any dispute that self-publishing can be successful in specific circumstances: for writers who are able to sell directly to their audiences (frequent conference speakers, for instance); authors with niche nonfiction books that can be marketed directly to interested readers; people with non-commercial projects such as genealogies, family recipe books, or memoirs for limited distribution; and anyone who, for whatever reason, isn't interested in commercial success.

For most writers, however, the path of self-publishing offers substantial downsides and pitfalls (for a full discussion of these, see Writer Beware's Print on Demand page), and successes on the order of Lisa Genova's remain few and far between. These hard facts are way less sexy than the vision of a brave new technological world that makes it possible for (a few) authors to bypass the traditional route to success--but they are no less real. In my opinion, journalists who write about this issue have a responsibility to cover both sides.

It's a responsibility they too often seem to neglect.