Book2book today draws attention to an article in the Independent about copyright theft.
Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt has announced that the UK Government will launch a national strategy to combat the theft of intellectual property.
The figures quoted by Hewitt are quite impressive. The 'creative' industries -- which in this context apparently include music, film, design, publishing, computer games and architecture -- are big revenue earners. They employ 2 million people in the UK, account for about 8% of output, and contribute £11.4bn to the balance of trade. And, of course, although Ms Hewitt doesn't actually mention it, they provide lots of tax revenue for the Government, which they can then spend on really useful things like the war in Iraq.
Trouble is, of course, lots of this intellectual property and hence revenue is being pinched, which means that the Government isn't getting its fair share, so obviously that can't be allowed. Hence the initiative to wipe out piracy. Ms Hewitt estimates that 7% of the world's trade is accounted for by counterfeit goods.
Well, yes. All of that is certainly true on the macro level, and the drive for ever tighter copyright protection is being driven, as usual, by big business, which simply hates losing so much as a penny.
On the other hand, there may not be quite the same need for concern on the micro level. When drafting this post I remembered once reading an article by an American woman who was a singer, and she produced convincing evidence that, as far as her career was concerned, she actually benefited from allowing free downloads of her recordings. Through the miracle of Google I was actually able to find this article again. It's by one Janis Ian, who has nine times been nominated for a Grammy award, and it's an interesting read. What Janis has found is that people who can hear her stuff for free are much more likely to buy her CDs and tickets for her concerts.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that Janis Ian has abandoned the major recording labels because sticking with them involved a loss of artistic control. It is also worth noting that her article may not be all that difficult to find because (according to her biography) it is posted on 5,000 web sites in all. So maybe someone actually agrees with her.
Reverting to the book world, it is fairly well known that Cory Doctorow, whom I mentioned only yesterday, found that it paid him to give away electronic copies of his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Doctorow allowed distribution of his book under a Creative Commons licence, which meant that readers were allowed to read the book for nothing, and then copy it and send it to a friend if they wished. In the first ten days after Down and Out was published, 50,000 copies were downloaded. Far from damaging sales of the printed book, which emerged at the same time, this process seems to have acted as a valuable advertisement. Doctorow reports that his publishers do not regret the decision to use a Creative Commons licence.
This 'giving it away for free' strategy does not always work, however. There is a novelist called Jon Wright who also offers his work as a free download. I had some email correspondence with him a while back, and at that stage Jon's free book had found just three readers. Though things may have improved a bit since then.
Which leads me to my final point, which is that this very blog, the GOB itself, is also made available under the terms of a Creative Commons licence -- see the little logo at the bottom of the sidebar. What this means is that you are free to copy and distribute any part of this blog, provided you identify me as the author of it. What you can't do is take my work and sell it for your own commercial advantage -- not, at any rate without agreeing terms with me. Neither can you 'alter, transform, or build upon' the work without asking my permission.
Yes, I know that very few of you would want to do any of these things, but that's the position if, by any chance, you do. And it is rather different from the tight-arsed attitude which is embodied in traditional copyright law, observance of every letter of which is insisted upon by the paranoid writers of this world on the one hand, and, of course, big business on the other. The big business representatives would no doubt tell us that you gotta look after the bottom line. Which is true. But it turns out that there is more than one way of doing it.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Literature versus trash and other myths of the modern age
The Reading Experience provides a link to an article in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. The article is by one Daniel Stolar, and it describes the hard times which he experienced while trying to arouse interest in his book of short stories, The Middle of the Night. (The book was published by Picador in the USA.)
Now.... As far as possible in this blog, I try to avoid anything which might be thought of as ad hominem criticism. So I will try, in this particular post, not to write anything which might be thought of as a comment on, and especially not an attack on, Mr Stolar personally; he evidently has enough on his mind already. Instead, I will use his article as the starting point for posing a number of questions, to which I will then provide answers, together with some comments.
But first, what does Stolar have to say?
It turns out that Stolar's book (a collection of eight short stories, mostly set in his home town of St Louis) was published about a year ago. After initial interest from his agent, editor, and publicist, it turned out that the publisher was not going to organise a major author tour or get him on the Oprah Winfrey show, so he set out to drum up his own publicity in his home town. And he was quite successful. He got himself interviewed by lots of newspapers, contacted everybody he could think of, and then, to his apparent amazement, discovered that local bookshops weren't remotely interested in him. Or his book. All they were interested in was organising publicity for the forthcoming Harry Potter.
Stolar himself now seems fairly resigned to this state of affairs, but he nevertheless tells the story as if the reception that he and his book were given was somehow surprising, and also, somehow, inappropriate; because, as he points out, the book was published by a major New York firm. And he was a local boy. His parents were quite well known in the city.
Ah well.
Here are the questions and comments which this situation brings to my mind. They are couched, as far as possible, in general terms and, to repeat, are not intended to reflect directly upon Mr Stolar.
Point 1:
It is not unusual to find that authors are surprised and upset when no one takes any notice of their newly published book. But why are they surprised? And do they have any sensible reason for being upset?
Answers: Authors are surprised by this kind of reception only if they know next to nothing about the book business. And I am surprised -- well, no, not surprised, but disappointed -- disappointed that any young writer could possibly be dumb enough to imagine that anybody would take any notice. Such a reaction can only be based on a profound ignorance of the facts.
Here in England we have over 2,000 new books published every week. Every week! Of these, about 10% are fiction. That's 200 novels (plus a few collections of short stories) every week. Or roughly 30 a day. Newspapers review about 10% of these. Maybe. Is it surprising that no one takes any notice?
As for being upset.... Again, this can only be the result of ignorance, or an amazingly high (and unjustified) opinion of one's own importance in the general scheme of things. Booksellers, believe it or not, have a business to run. They have a payroll to meet at the end of the week. They have mortgages to pay and children to feed. Of course the bookseller is going to concentrate on Harry Potter! Hellfire, the UK paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out on 21 June this year, and it sold 1.7m copies on that day alone! Yes, 1.7 million. That will go a long way towards helping to pay quite a lot of mortgages, not to mention buying burgers and fish fingers for the kids. But a book of short stories from a literary publisher? Oh, please. You cannot be serious.
Point 2:
It is common to find that literary authors look down on what sells and dismiss it as 'puerile', 'worthless' and 'trash'. How do they come to believe such things? And are their views justified?
Answers: It is, regrettably, abundantly clear why literary authors come to believe that there is a distinction between 'good books' on the one hand and 'worthless trash' on the other.
They believe this because they have mostly taken degrees in English literature. And for three or four years they have sat and listened to lecturers propounding these half-baked ideas. And because the students have never understood that the main purpose of education is to learn how to question and test the value of what you are told, they have accepted their lecturers' arguments without, apparently, a moment's thought.
Judging by the evidence on the internet, Eng. Lit. graduates emerge from university not so much educated as damaged. They venture out into the real world, blinking furiously from the light, and reveal to us all that they suffer from three major delusions. They are deluded about (a) the nature of literature, (b) the function of publishers and booksellers, and (c) the extent of their own talent as a writer.
A modicum of thought on the part of Eng. Lit. students and graduates would reveal that much of what passes for the received wisdom in Eng. Lit. is, to put it as politely as possible, a load of old balls. It is intellectual snobbery of the worst possible kind, without any sound foundation. (If you want more detailed argument, see chapter 5 of my book The Truth about Writing.)
And how does it come about, you may reasonably ask, that the Eng. Lit. lecturers come to be teaching all these things? Well, because it's a lot easier to go along with the established party line than it is to question it. If you're a lecturer/professor in say, a liberal-arts college somewhere in the mid-west, or the UK midlands equivalent, it's a lot more profitable to sit deadly still than to start rocking the boat. If you just do the safe thing -- teach what everybody else teaches, and publish a paper on the number of commas in Wordsworth from time to time -- then no one will question your tenure. But if you start to wonder whether there is any point to your existence at all, and the existence of many more like you, then all of a sudden you're going to become very unpopular indeed.
Point 3:
What should writers do in order to avoid the kind of heartache which arises when you publish a book and no one takes a blind bit of notice?
Answer: If you are thinking of writing a book, it would surely be a good idea to learn a little bit about the modern book trade. Read the Bookseller for a year or two, or Publishers Weekly if you're an American. Read a few books on the business. That's what books are for! They encapsulate forty years of experience into a couple of hundred pages. Jason Epstein's Book Business is a classic example.
If you, dear reader, take the time to find out a bit about the book business, in advance of writing your book, will probably save yourself a great deal of time and trouble. For a start, you will very quickly realise that there's no money in it; that your chances of being reviewed in any major journal are somewhere between slim and zero, and Slim just left town; and that reviews do not necessarily translate into sales, or anything else of much value.
If you must write short stories, or a novel, put the damn thing on the internet, for free. If it's any good, in terms of producing emotion in the reader, word will spread fast enough, you can be sure of that -- ask Cory Doctorow. And if you can find 50,000 readers or so, and prove that you’ve entertained them, then you won’t have to go looking for a publisher, because a whole gang of them will undoubtedly come rushing up the path to your door.
But please, please, don't bleat to me about what a crime it is that bookshops won't stock your literary masterpiece.
Now.... As far as possible in this blog, I try to avoid anything which might be thought of as ad hominem criticism. So I will try, in this particular post, not to write anything which might be thought of as a comment on, and especially not an attack on, Mr Stolar personally; he evidently has enough on his mind already. Instead, I will use his article as the starting point for posing a number of questions, to which I will then provide answers, together with some comments.
But first, what does Stolar have to say?
It turns out that Stolar's book (a collection of eight short stories, mostly set in his home town of St Louis) was published about a year ago. After initial interest from his agent, editor, and publicist, it turned out that the publisher was not going to organise a major author tour or get him on the Oprah Winfrey show, so he set out to drum up his own publicity in his home town. And he was quite successful. He got himself interviewed by lots of newspapers, contacted everybody he could think of, and then, to his apparent amazement, discovered that local bookshops weren't remotely interested in him. Or his book. All they were interested in was organising publicity for the forthcoming Harry Potter.
Stolar himself now seems fairly resigned to this state of affairs, but he nevertheless tells the story as if the reception that he and his book were given was somehow surprising, and also, somehow, inappropriate; because, as he points out, the book was published by a major New York firm. And he was a local boy. His parents were quite well known in the city.
Ah well.
Here are the questions and comments which this situation brings to my mind. They are couched, as far as possible, in general terms and, to repeat, are not intended to reflect directly upon Mr Stolar.
Point 1:
It is not unusual to find that authors are surprised and upset when no one takes any notice of their newly published book. But why are they surprised? And do they have any sensible reason for being upset?
Answers: Authors are surprised by this kind of reception only if they know next to nothing about the book business. And I am surprised -- well, no, not surprised, but disappointed -- disappointed that any young writer could possibly be dumb enough to imagine that anybody would take any notice. Such a reaction can only be based on a profound ignorance of the facts.
Here in England we have over 2,000 new books published every week. Every week! Of these, about 10% are fiction. That's 200 novels (plus a few collections of short stories) every week. Or roughly 30 a day. Newspapers review about 10% of these. Maybe. Is it surprising that no one takes any notice?
As for being upset.... Again, this can only be the result of ignorance, or an amazingly high (and unjustified) opinion of one's own importance in the general scheme of things. Booksellers, believe it or not, have a business to run. They have a payroll to meet at the end of the week. They have mortgages to pay and children to feed. Of course the bookseller is going to concentrate on Harry Potter! Hellfire, the UK paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out on 21 June this year, and it sold 1.7m copies on that day alone! Yes, 1.7 million. That will go a long way towards helping to pay quite a lot of mortgages, not to mention buying burgers and fish fingers for the kids. But a book of short stories from a literary publisher? Oh, please. You cannot be serious.
Point 2:
It is common to find that literary authors look down on what sells and dismiss it as 'puerile', 'worthless' and 'trash'. How do they come to believe such things? And are their views justified?
Answers: It is, regrettably, abundantly clear why literary authors come to believe that there is a distinction between 'good books' on the one hand and 'worthless trash' on the other.
They believe this because they have mostly taken degrees in English literature. And for three or four years they have sat and listened to lecturers propounding these half-baked ideas. And because the students have never understood that the main purpose of education is to learn how to question and test the value of what you are told, they have accepted their lecturers' arguments without, apparently, a moment's thought.
Judging by the evidence on the internet, Eng. Lit. graduates emerge from university not so much educated as damaged. They venture out into the real world, blinking furiously from the light, and reveal to us all that they suffer from three major delusions. They are deluded about (a) the nature of literature, (b) the function of publishers and booksellers, and (c) the extent of their own talent as a writer.
A modicum of thought on the part of Eng. Lit. students and graduates would reveal that much of what passes for the received wisdom in Eng. Lit. is, to put it as politely as possible, a load of old balls. It is intellectual snobbery of the worst possible kind, without any sound foundation. (If you want more detailed argument, see chapter 5 of my book The Truth about Writing.)
And how does it come about, you may reasonably ask, that the Eng. Lit. lecturers come to be teaching all these things? Well, because it's a lot easier to go along with the established party line than it is to question it. If you're a lecturer/professor in say, a liberal-arts college somewhere in the mid-west, or the UK midlands equivalent, it's a lot more profitable to sit deadly still than to start rocking the boat. If you just do the safe thing -- teach what everybody else teaches, and publish a paper on the number of commas in Wordsworth from time to time -- then no one will question your tenure. But if you start to wonder whether there is any point to your existence at all, and the existence of many more like you, then all of a sudden you're going to become very unpopular indeed.
Point 3:
What should writers do in order to avoid the kind of heartache which arises when you publish a book and no one takes a blind bit of notice?
Answer: If you are thinking of writing a book, it would surely be a good idea to learn a little bit about the modern book trade. Read the Bookseller for a year or two, or Publishers Weekly if you're an American. Read a few books on the business. That's what books are for! They encapsulate forty years of experience into a couple of hundred pages. Jason Epstein's Book Business is a classic example.
If you, dear reader, take the time to find out a bit about the book business, in advance of writing your book, will probably save yourself a great deal of time and trouble. For a start, you will very quickly realise that there's no money in it; that your chances of being reviewed in any major journal are somewhere between slim and zero, and Slim just left town; and that reviews do not necessarily translate into sales, or anything else of much value.
If you must write short stories, or a novel, put the damn thing on the internet, for free. If it's any good, in terms of producing emotion in the reader, word will spread fast enough, you can be sure of that -- ask Cory Doctorow. And if you can find 50,000 readers or so, and prove that you’ve entertained them, then you won’t have to go looking for a publisher, because a whole gang of them will undoubtedly come rushing up the path to your door.
But please, please, don't bleat to me about what a crime it is that bookshops won't stock your literary masterpiece.
Monday, June 28, 2004
Rimington revealed
On 23 March I noted that Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, had 'written a novel', to be published in June. There were, I said, two possibilities in relation to this book. One, that she had written it herself, in which case it wasn't likely to be much good (because, whatever other talents she may possess, she is not an experienced novelist). And two, that she had had it written for her, in which case it might well be better.
Yesterday's Sunday Times carries two references to the Rimington opus, At Risk, which has just been published. Richard Brooks's 'Biteback' column reports that the book 'has an acknowledgement to the novelist and ballet critic Luke Jennings', and adds, 'I wonder how much help he gave.'
A few pages later, we have a review of the book itself, which goes further. The reviewer says bluntly that 'Rimington's memoirs were notoriously soporific but here (thanks perhaps to her collaborator Luke Jennings) the writing is lively'.
So, maybe between them Rimington and Jennings have written a halfway entertaining book. Jennings certainly has the necessary talent as a writer -- see the readers' reviews of Beauty Story on Amazon, for instance -- and Rimington has the espionage expertise, so it looks like a sensible combination of skills. And they both share the same publisher, Hutchinson, who may have effected the introduction.
In case you sense any disapproval of the ghosting process on my part, let me say that it is a form of collaboration of which I wholeheartedly approve, even if the 'author' does no more than lend his or her name to the project. We live in a celebrity-obsessed age, and a novel of x quality plus famous name will go a lot further than a novel of x quality on its own.
Furthermore, there are some ghosted books which are excellent. Take, for instance, Geri Halliwell's first 'autobiography', If Only. This was written for her by a man. I once knew his name, but have forgotten it. Anyway, you only have to read the first page and a half of that book to know that he is a professional.
Another ghosted book of good quality is Baptism of Fire by Frank Collins. The nominal author of this was an SAS man who participated in the operation to release the hostages held in the Iranian Embassy. Subsequently, and rather to his own surprise, he became a Church of England clergyman. Collins's story was written for him by a woman -- and a woman who did not believe in God, at that. Unfortunately Collins's story did not end happily. He committed suicide.
Mark Lucas acted as agent for both of those ghosted books.
Yesterday's Sunday Times carries two references to the Rimington opus, At Risk, which has just been published. Richard Brooks's 'Biteback' column reports that the book 'has an acknowledgement to the novelist and ballet critic Luke Jennings', and adds, 'I wonder how much help he gave.'
A few pages later, we have a review of the book itself, which goes further. The reviewer says bluntly that 'Rimington's memoirs were notoriously soporific but here (thanks perhaps to her collaborator Luke Jennings) the writing is lively'.
So, maybe between them Rimington and Jennings have written a halfway entertaining book. Jennings certainly has the necessary talent as a writer -- see the readers' reviews of Beauty Story on Amazon, for instance -- and Rimington has the espionage expertise, so it looks like a sensible combination of skills. And they both share the same publisher, Hutchinson, who may have effected the introduction.
In case you sense any disapproval of the ghosting process on my part, let me say that it is a form of collaboration of which I wholeheartedly approve, even if the 'author' does no more than lend his or her name to the project. We live in a celebrity-obsessed age, and a novel of x quality plus famous name will go a lot further than a novel of x quality on its own.
Furthermore, there are some ghosted books which are excellent. Take, for instance, Geri Halliwell's first 'autobiography', If Only. This was written for her by a man. I once knew his name, but have forgotten it. Anyway, you only have to read the first page and a half of that book to know that he is a professional.
Another ghosted book of good quality is Baptism of Fire by Frank Collins. The nominal author of this was an SAS man who participated in the operation to release the hostages held in the Iranian Embassy. Subsequently, and rather to his own surprise, he became a Church of England clergyman. Collins's story was written for him by a woman -- and a woman who did not believe in God, at that. Unfortunately Collins's story did not end happily. He committed suicide.
Mark Lucas acted as agent for both of those ghosted books.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
The amazing efficiency of the British book trade
Just over a week ago -- Thursday 17 June to be precise -- I said that the British book trade was, in general, not very well managed. And you may, just conceivably, have thought that I was painting the picture a little too black. That I was, so to speak, over-egging the pudding. Surely, you might well have said to yourself, things are not as bad as all that. We all do our best in difficult circumstances. Life is not easy. How unfair it is then, of that grumpy fellow with the long hair, to criticise those who are working hard to put books into our hands.
Well, my dears, I didn't tell you the half of it. Only yesterday I was compelled to remind you that Dorling Kindersley printed 10 million too many copies of their Star Wars books, and pretty much went bust as a result. And today comes further news of the -- ahem -- minor difficulties at Penguin.
Book2book, aka booktrade info, gives us a link to a report in Publishing News (PN). This gives further details of the problems which Penguin UK has been having with the new computer system in its book-distribution centre. These problems have been known about for some time, but, as is fairly typical in the book world, have been muttered about in fairly hushed tones, on the general principle of there but for the grace of God...
The problem, in short, is that the new software doesn't work, or cannot be made to work. This means that Penguin cannot supply books to booksellers -- not, at any rate, through its brand new, much improved, state of the art system. It can only get books to booksellers by using blokes to pick 'em out by hand, just as they used to do in the nineteenth century.
And, so far, the loss to Penguin is estimated at somewhere between £20m and £30m.
Now, the thing is this, see. This is not the first time that the book trade has had this kind of problem. A firm called Tiptree had very similar difficulties ten years ago. You can read the grisly details here. According to PN, Littlehampton was another company which also 'came to grief for much the same reasons.' And I seem to remember yet another book distribution company which went bust as a result of a software debacle, but I won't name it here in case I am misremembering.
Penguin have this week despatched a senior executive to brief the three big firms of authors' agents, one of whom says, 'It's a nightmare.'
And what, I hear you asking, what of the poor bloody infantry? Has anyone devoted a moment's thought to them? Well, it seems that Penguin authors who go into bookshops, looking for their new books, are being told that they ain't there and aren't likely to be there for some time. But don't worry! Penguin is planning to write to their authors. Soon. To explain the situation. So that's all right then. The authors aren't likely to worry about the loss of a little income -- they only do the job because of a deep-seated love of literature.
Oh, and by the way. PN also reports that Penguin got 'little change for a million pounds' when the firm bought rights to Rageh Omaar's Revolution Day, a book which has so far sold a disappointing 25,000 copies. Disappointing, that, is, if you've paid a million for it.
Like I always say, publishing fair takes your breath away. Never a week goes by without I sit here having to pick my jaw up from somewhere near the floor.
Well, my dears, I didn't tell you the half of it. Only yesterday I was compelled to remind you that Dorling Kindersley printed 10 million too many copies of their Star Wars books, and pretty much went bust as a result. And today comes further news of the -- ahem -- minor difficulties at Penguin.
Book2book, aka booktrade info, gives us a link to a report in Publishing News (PN). This gives further details of the problems which Penguin UK has been having with the new computer system in its book-distribution centre. These problems have been known about for some time, but, as is fairly typical in the book world, have been muttered about in fairly hushed tones, on the general principle of there but for the grace of God...
The problem, in short, is that the new software doesn't work, or cannot be made to work. This means that Penguin cannot supply books to booksellers -- not, at any rate, through its brand new, much improved, state of the art system. It can only get books to booksellers by using blokes to pick 'em out by hand, just as they used to do in the nineteenth century.
And, so far, the loss to Penguin is estimated at somewhere between £20m and £30m.
Now, the thing is this, see. This is not the first time that the book trade has had this kind of problem. A firm called Tiptree had very similar difficulties ten years ago. You can read the grisly details here. According to PN, Littlehampton was another company which also 'came to grief for much the same reasons.' And I seem to remember yet another book distribution company which went bust as a result of a software debacle, but I won't name it here in case I am misremembering.
Penguin have this week despatched a senior executive to brief the three big firms of authors' agents, one of whom says, 'It's a nightmare.'
And what, I hear you asking, what of the poor bloody infantry? Has anyone devoted a moment's thought to them? Well, it seems that Penguin authors who go into bookshops, looking for their new books, are being told that they ain't there and aren't likely to be there for some time. But don't worry! Penguin is planning to write to their authors. Soon. To explain the situation. So that's all right then. The authors aren't likely to worry about the loss of a little income -- they only do the job because of a deep-seated love of literature.
Oh, and by the way. PN also reports that Penguin got 'little change for a million pounds' when the firm bought rights to Rageh Omaar's Revolution Day, a book which has so far sold a disappointing 25,000 copies. Disappointing, that, is, if you've paid a million for it.
Like I always say, publishing fair takes your breath away. Never a week goes by without I sit here having to pick my jaw up from somewhere near the floor.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Star Wars: success and failure
The Literary Saloon draws attention to an article in USA Today on what the Lit. Saloon calls the 'baffling' success of the various Star Wars books.
It is nearly thirty years, apparently, since Del Rey books (in the USA) first published a spinoff novel based on George Lucas's 'wildly popular' Star Wars films. The estimate from Lucas Licensing is that there are now some 65 million Star Wars books in print. And Del Rey has just signed a deal to go on doing much the same thing until the end of 2008.
The USA Today article gives the impression that the Star Wars books have been 'consistent best sellers' and that they constitute a totally dependable source of income.
Well, yes, and then again, no.
It is not so long ago since a British publisher had a nasty accident in this particular minefield. In 2000, Dorling Kindersley found itself in severe financial trouble because in the previous year it had overestimated the likely demand for its series of publications related to Star Wars. DK was left with -- ahem -- some 10 million unsold books. And in the six-month period to 31 December 1999 the firm ran up a loss of £25m.
Now it is not uncommon for publishers to be too optimistic about the likely sales of a given book. But to print 10 million copies too many? Seems a bit excessive, wouldn’t you say? The Chairman of company later complained that no one had told him about this large print order.
The outcome was that DK had to be sold to Penguin. Job losses: 350. Also affected were 14,000 people in the UK, and 40,000 worldwide, who were employed as part-time agents for DK products.
So, yes, Star Wars is indeed a nice little earner. But, as ever in publishing, you have to get your sums right.
It is nearly thirty years, apparently, since Del Rey books (in the USA) first published a spinoff novel based on George Lucas's 'wildly popular' Star Wars films. The estimate from Lucas Licensing is that there are now some 65 million Star Wars books in print. And Del Rey has just signed a deal to go on doing much the same thing until the end of 2008.
The USA Today article gives the impression that the Star Wars books have been 'consistent best sellers' and that they constitute a totally dependable source of income.
Well, yes, and then again, no.
It is not so long ago since a British publisher had a nasty accident in this particular minefield. In 2000, Dorling Kindersley found itself in severe financial trouble because in the previous year it had overestimated the likely demand for its series of publications related to Star Wars. DK was left with -- ahem -- some 10 million unsold books. And in the six-month period to 31 December 1999 the firm ran up a loss of £25m.
Now it is not uncommon for publishers to be too optimistic about the likely sales of a given book. But to print 10 million copies too many? Seems a bit excessive, wouldn’t you say? The Chairman of company later complained that no one had told him about this large print order.
The outcome was that DK had to be sold to Penguin. Job losses: 350. Also affected were 14,000 people in the UK, and 40,000 worldwide, who were employed as part-time agents for DK products.
So, yes, Star Wars is indeed a nice little earner. But, as ever in publishing, you have to get your sums right.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Boccaccio and all that
Last week I was in Eastbourne, where I took the opportunity to visit Camilla’s secondhand bookshop.
Camilla’s (probably no relation) is one of the more extraordinary shops of its kind. You enter on the ground floor (obviously), and then you can go either down to a basement or up to another floor. But you move only with great difficulty, and at considerable risk to life and limb. Each floor is packed and stacked with books. I can’t imagine how it has escaped the attentions of the health and safety people, not to mention the fire authorities. On the ground floor the books must go twelve feet up the wall, and you can’t even read the titles of the ones on the top shelf without a ladder.
But enough of the written description: you can see a view of the shop here.
Among the books I bought was the autobiography of Peter Carter-Ruck, the famous libel lawyer, and of that more when I’ve read it. But I also saw (without buying) a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron, a book which I have been meaning to write about for a while.
For the benefit of those who have suffered from a modern education, I suppose I had better describe what the Decameron is, though once upon a time everyone likely to read the book page of a magazine or newspaper, or a blog such as this, would have absorbed it along with the two-times table.
Boccaccio was an Italian, a citizen of Florence, who lived in the fourteenth century. The Decameron is a work of fiction, and in it he describes how, in 1348, ten young people leave Florence in order to escape the plague. They go out into the countryside, and while they wait for it to be safe to return home they amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days that they are required to remain there. This gives us, in effect, 100 short stories.
The stories tell of love, adventure and surprising twists of fate. They are frequently anticlerical, describing the monks and nuns of the day as lecherous, greedy, and lazy -- which was probably a pretty fair description. Overall, the Decameron is generally reckoned to be one of the masterpieces of European literature, matching, for instance, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
I have already mentioned once in this blog that, in 1954, magistrates in Swindon, Wiltshire (hardly a stronghold of culture) ordered the confiscation and destruction of copies of this book, on the grounds that it was obscene.
Well, obscene is putting it a bit strong. Racy, certainly. And the magistrates may have been misled, poor innocent and trusting souls, by the illustrations. Some editions of the book have provided rather ‘stronger’ illustrations than others, but naked ladies have been known to appear.
Which is really what I meant to write about. When I was a lad, all those years ago, I was an assistant to the Librarian at Queens’ College, Cambridge, a post which gave me access to the inner sanctum of the library. This was a room where particularly rare and valuable books were stored; and there, tucked away on a shelf, well out of sight of the impressionable young gentlemen, was a nineteenth-century edition of the Decameron. It came in two volumes, and was enhanced by some particularly saucy engravings. The pictures were all good clean fun, and pretty mild even by the standards of the 1950s, but some earlier librarian had felt it his moral duty (a) to buy a copy and read it, but (b) to hide it from those less able than himself to cope with the moral temptations which it embodied. It may have been a copy of this edition, complete with naughty pictures, which the magistrates of Swindon considered far too dangerous to be viewed by society at large.
Anyway, forty years later I wandered into a pub here in darkest Wiltshire, and I noticed that some new pictures had been placed on the walls. I approached closer, and found, to my amusement, that some enterprising interior decorator, intent upon giving the pub a little atmosphere, had sliced several of these very same Decameron pictures out of some tatty copy of the book (probably abandoned in a skip) and had had them prettily framed before popping them on to the walls. And very nice they were too. Perhaps one customer in 10,000 would recognise them for what they were.
Pasolini directed a film based on the Decameron in 1970, using, as I recall, amateur actors drawn from the rural backwaters. I don’t remember finding it all that striking a film, and my chief memory of it is that the actors all seemed to have remarkably bad teeth. Perhaps Pasolini was making a point of some kind.
Camilla’s (probably no relation) is one of the more extraordinary shops of its kind. You enter on the ground floor (obviously), and then you can go either down to a basement or up to another floor. But you move only with great difficulty, and at considerable risk to life and limb. Each floor is packed and stacked with books. I can’t imagine how it has escaped the attentions of the health and safety people, not to mention the fire authorities. On the ground floor the books must go twelve feet up the wall, and you can’t even read the titles of the ones on the top shelf without a ladder.
But enough of the written description: you can see a view of the shop here.
Among the books I bought was the autobiography of Peter Carter-Ruck, the famous libel lawyer, and of that more when I’ve read it. But I also saw (without buying) a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron, a book which I have been meaning to write about for a while.
For the benefit of those who have suffered from a modern education, I suppose I had better describe what the Decameron is, though once upon a time everyone likely to read the book page of a magazine or newspaper, or a blog such as this, would have absorbed it along with the two-times table.
Boccaccio was an Italian, a citizen of Florence, who lived in the fourteenth century. The Decameron is a work of fiction, and in it he describes how, in 1348, ten young people leave Florence in order to escape the plague. They go out into the countryside, and while they wait for it to be safe to return home they amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days that they are required to remain there. This gives us, in effect, 100 short stories.
The stories tell of love, adventure and surprising twists of fate. They are frequently anticlerical, describing the monks and nuns of the day as lecherous, greedy, and lazy -- which was probably a pretty fair description. Overall, the Decameron is generally reckoned to be one of the masterpieces of European literature, matching, for instance, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
I have already mentioned once in this blog that, in 1954, magistrates in Swindon, Wiltshire (hardly a stronghold of culture) ordered the confiscation and destruction of copies of this book, on the grounds that it was obscene.
Well, obscene is putting it a bit strong. Racy, certainly. And the magistrates may have been misled, poor innocent and trusting souls, by the illustrations. Some editions of the book have provided rather ‘stronger’ illustrations than others, but naked ladies have been known to appear.
Which is really what I meant to write about. When I was a lad, all those years ago, I was an assistant to the Librarian at Queens’ College, Cambridge, a post which gave me access to the inner sanctum of the library. This was a room where particularly rare and valuable books were stored; and there, tucked away on a shelf, well out of sight of the impressionable young gentlemen, was a nineteenth-century edition of the Decameron. It came in two volumes, and was enhanced by some particularly saucy engravings. The pictures were all good clean fun, and pretty mild even by the standards of the 1950s, but some earlier librarian had felt it his moral duty (a) to buy a copy and read it, but (b) to hide it from those less able than himself to cope with the moral temptations which it embodied. It may have been a copy of this edition, complete with naughty pictures, which the magistrates of Swindon considered far too dangerous to be viewed by society at large.
Anyway, forty years later I wandered into a pub here in darkest Wiltshire, and I noticed that some new pictures had been placed on the walls. I approached closer, and found, to my amusement, that some enterprising interior decorator, intent upon giving the pub a little atmosphere, had sliced several of these very same Decameron pictures out of some tatty copy of the book (probably abandoned in a skip) and had had them prettily framed before popping them on to the walls. And very nice they were too. Perhaps one customer in 10,000 would recognise them for what they were.
Pasolini directed a film based on the Decameron in 1970, using, as I recall, amateur actors drawn from the rural backwaters. I don’t remember finding it all that striking a film, and my chief memory of it is that the actors all seemed to have remarkably bad teeth. Perhaps Pasolini was making a point of some kind.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Educayshun for beginners
Yesterday I happened to be reading Margery Allingham’s last book (of which more later). It was published in 1965, and she describes, in passing, the post-war rebirth of London. Round the city’s knees, she says, ‘the educated children shot up like towers, full of the future.’ The general tenor of this passage is that the young are no longer ignorant like what they used to was, and that henceforth enlightenment will brighten all our paths.
Well, I guess in 1965 it was still just about possible to believe in education. There were still grammar schools, for instance. As a matter of fact, I was teaching in one in that year. Now, however, such faith is much harder to justify.
Margery’s comment struck a chord with me because in Monday’s post about bitterness (see below) I referred to Santham Sanghera. Before mentioning his name I was obliged to do a Google search to establish Santham’s gender (a matter on which, it turns out, it is easy to become confused), and I came across a post by Heath Row on Fast Company.
Heath Row took young Santham to task for admitting that he had never heard of Tom Peters, and offered the following advice: ‘You work for the Financial Times. A respected international business newspaper. If you don't know who someone like Peters is, you might not want to admit it in print.’
I must say I had to agree with that. Hell, even I know who Tom Peters is, and I don’t even work in industry or commerce. (You can’t class publishing as either; it’s more in the nature of a fiasco). But I wasn’t remotely surprised by Santham’s ignorance. It is not too long since I had reason to speak to the chief public-relations officer of a major city council, located at a point rather less than a thousand miles from where I sit. In the course of our discussion I discovered that this young lady (a university graduate, naturally) had no idea what an alderman was.
Both these young people, Santham and the p.r. person, are victims of what these days passes for an education. Come to think of it, they probably both read Eng. Lit. At Oxford.
If it’s any comfort -- and I suspect it isn’t much -- the position is no better in the United States. In his book on scriptwriting, Michael Straczynski describes how in one TV script he made passing reference to a certain Ahab. The producer wanted to know who this Ahab guy was. Straczynski explained, patiently, that this was a literary reference, and that Captain Ahab was a character in quite a well known novel, Moby Dick.
The producer was unimpressed. ‘Well, I’ve got an MBA, and I’ve never heard of Ahab, and if I’ve never heard of him, nobody else has either, so take it out.’
And so, says Straczynski, it went.
Not, I hasten to add, that I have read Moby Dick either, or have any plans to do so, but you take, I hope, my point. There is no longer any common frame of reference, not even for people who have undergone a so-called education.
Well, I guess in 1965 it was still just about possible to believe in education. There were still grammar schools, for instance. As a matter of fact, I was teaching in one in that year. Now, however, such faith is much harder to justify.
Margery’s comment struck a chord with me because in Monday’s post about bitterness (see below) I referred to Santham Sanghera. Before mentioning his name I was obliged to do a Google search to establish Santham’s gender (a matter on which, it turns out, it is easy to become confused), and I came across a post by Heath Row on Fast Company.
Heath Row took young Santham to task for admitting that he had never heard of Tom Peters, and offered the following advice: ‘You work for the Financial Times. A respected international business newspaper. If you don't know who someone like Peters is, you might not want to admit it in print.’
I must say I had to agree with that. Hell, even I know who Tom Peters is, and I don’t even work in industry or commerce. (You can’t class publishing as either; it’s more in the nature of a fiasco). But I wasn’t remotely surprised by Santham’s ignorance. It is not too long since I had reason to speak to the chief public-relations officer of a major city council, located at a point rather less than a thousand miles from where I sit. In the course of our discussion I discovered that this young lady (a university graduate, naturally) had no idea what an alderman was.
Both these young people, Santham and the p.r. person, are victims of what these days passes for an education. Come to think of it, they probably both read Eng. Lit. At Oxford.
If it’s any comfort -- and I suspect it isn’t much -- the position is no better in the United States. In his book on scriptwriting, Michael Straczynski describes how in one TV script he made passing reference to a certain Ahab. The producer wanted to know who this Ahab guy was. Straczynski explained, patiently, that this was a literary reference, and that Captain Ahab was a character in quite a well known novel, Moby Dick.
The producer was unimpressed. ‘Well, I’ve got an MBA, and I’ve never heard of Ahab, and if I’ve never heard of him, nobody else has either, so take it out.’
And so, says Straczynski, it went.
Not, I hasten to add, that I have read Moby Dick either, or have any plans to do so, but you take, I hope, my point. There is no longer any common frame of reference, not even for people who have undergone a so-called education.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Possession
I finally got around to seeing the film Possession. The movie is adapted from the novel of the same name by A.S. Byatt.
It was Al Zuckerman who originally recommended the novel Possession to me, back in 1994, and Al is absolutely no slouch when it comes to identifying a good book. So I bought a copy at JFK and started to read it on the flight home.
For those who haven't come across it, Possession tells a tale of two academics (Eng. Lit. specialists, God help us all) who are researching the secret love life of two fictional Victorian poets. And our two protagonists, one being male and one female, naturally proceed to have a love affair all of their own. The drama, such as it is, arises from wondering whether the two protagonists will beat another group of academics (baddies to the core) in a race to find out the truth about what really happened, all those years ago.
Now, theoretically, this book ought to have interested me, because the Victorian period is my favourite era, and I am very interested in at least one Victorian poet, namely Algernon Charles Swinburne. Why then was I not more enthusiastic?
The clue lies in the fact that Possession won the Booker prize in 1990. It is highly unlikely, other things being equal, that I am going to be overwhelmed by anything with that sort of literary pedigree.
The book runs to some 500 pages and I found it rather hard going. Judging by the comments on Amazon, I am not alone. Even those readers who gave it 5 stars were forced to admit that it 'can be a bit heavy at times.' Another Amazon critic only gave it one star and described it as 'dull, pretentious, and not half as clever as it thinks it is.' Hmm, well, it wasn't as bad as all that.
Anyway, I was sufficiently interested in the book to want to see the movie, which originally came out in 2002. It is directed by Neil LaBute and stars Gwyneth Paltrow, among others.
Well, the movie held my attention, for what that's worth, but I did wonder how it ever came to be made. Surely no one in Hollywood could possibly have mistaken this for a money-spinner? OK, it's romantic, up to a point: there are two parallel love stories running through it, one which ends tragically and one which ends on a hopeful note. But, er, that's about it. It's well written and well acted. I doubt, however, that it took more than tuppence ha'penny at the box office. About the time it came out, I found myself in conversation with one of the staff at the production company involved, and this person wondered aloud to me just who exactly was going to see the film. That's a good question, but surely it's the sort of thing you think about before you invest a few million dollars rather than after?
Anyway, there it is. The film is something of a departure for Neil LaBute, I would guess. LaBute is an American, and previously he had only come to my attention as a playwright. He wrote a play called The Distance from Here, which I saw at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It was supposed to be the latest hot thing, the new Shopping and Fucking, so to speak, but it attracted an audience of about 30 in a theatre which holds about 900.
The Distance from Here features characters who are about as far removed from Eng. Lit. academics and Victorian poets as it is possible to imagine, namely a group of moronic misfits living in an inner city US slum. (I seem to remember it was Brooklyn.) The language, as one reviewer put it, was American youthspeak. Oh, and the big dramatic moment was when one or two of these moronic youths murdered a baby.
Well, I'm sorry, but I remained resolutely unshocked and unmoved by this scene. To make us care about characters like that you need actors of the calibre of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh (you will recall, no doubt, A Streetcar name Desire). And on the night when I saw Mr LaBute's play his cast was competent but not in the Brando/Leigh league.
So, Possession, whether in Ms Byatt's version or Mr LaBute's, does not fill me with astonishment and joy. And what really depressed me, of course, was the reminder that there really are academics who fill their day by researching the lives of Victorian poets. Now there's nothing wrong with that per se. I myself have done some minor research on Swinburne, and I am thanked for it on the acknowledgements page of the poet's latest biography. But I did it all in my spare time, as an amateur, and not as a full-time academic, paid (as they so often are in the UK) very largely at the taxpayers' expense.
What is even more depressing, of course, is the thought that there are lots of young people who have been brainwashed into thinking that studying Eng. Lit. at a university, for three or four of the best years of their lives, is a useful and productive way to spend their time. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very process of reading novels is about as adult as sucking your thumb, and studying them full-time is unproductive to say the least. The only more futile form of study that I can think of is spending a year (and lots of money) on a creative-writing course.
It was Al Zuckerman who originally recommended the novel Possession to me, back in 1994, and Al is absolutely no slouch when it comes to identifying a good book. So I bought a copy at JFK and started to read it on the flight home.
For those who haven't come across it, Possession tells a tale of two academics (Eng. Lit. specialists, God help us all) who are researching the secret love life of two fictional Victorian poets. And our two protagonists, one being male and one female, naturally proceed to have a love affair all of their own. The drama, such as it is, arises from wondering whether the two protagonists will beat another group of academics (baddies to the core) in a race to find out the truth about what really happened, all those years ago.
Now, theoretically, this book ought to have interested me, because the Victorian period is my favourite era, and I am very interested in at least one Victorian poet, namely Algernon Charles Swinburne. Why then was I not more enthusiastic?
The clue lies in the fact that Possession won the Booker prize in 1990. It is highly unlikely, other things being equal, that I am going to be overwhelmed by anything with that sort of literary pedigree.
The book runs to some 500 pages and I found it rather hard going. Judging by the comments on Amazon, I am not alone. Even those readers who gave it 5 stars were forced to admit that it 'can be a bit heavy at times.' Another Amazon critic only gave it one star and described it as 'dull, pretentious, and not half as clever as it thinks it is.' Hmm, well, it wasn't as bad as all that.
Anyway, I was sufficiently interested in the book to want to see the movie, which originally came out in 2002. It is directed by Neil LaBute and stars Gwyneth Paltrow, among others.
Well, the movie held my attention, for what that's worth, but I did wonder how it ever came to be made. Surely no one in Hollywood could possibly have mistaken this for a money-spinner? OK, it's romantic, up to a point: there are two parallel love stories running through it, one which ends tragically and one which ends on a hopeful note. But, er, that's about it. It's well written and well acted. I doubt, however, that it took more than tuppence ha'penny at the box office. About the time it came out, I found myself in conversation with one of the staff at the production company involved, and this person wondered aloud to me just who exactly was going to see the film. That's a good question, but surely it's the sort of thing you think about before you invest a few million dollars rather than after?
Anyway, there it is. The film is something of a departure for Neil LaBute, I would guess. LaBute is an American, and previously he had only come to my attention as a playwright. He wrote a play called The Distance from Here, which I saw at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It was supposed to be the latest hot thing, the new Shopping and Fucking, so to speak, but it attracted an audience of about 30 in a theatre which holds about 900.
The Distance from Here features characters who are about as far removed from Eng. Lit. academics and Victorian poets as it is possible to imagine, namely a group of moronic misfits living in an inner city US slum. (I seem to remember it was Brooklyn.) The language, as one reviewer put it, was American youthspeak. Oh, and the big dramatic moment was when one or two of these moronic youths murdered a baby.
Well, I'm sorry, but I remained resolutely unshocked and unmoved by this scene. To make us care about characters like that you need actors of the calibre of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh (you will recall, no doubt, A Streetcar name Desire). And on the night when I saw Mr LaBute's play his cast was competent but not in the Brando/Leigh league.
So, Possession, whether in Ms Byatt's version or Mr LaBute's, does not fill me with astonishment and joy. And what really depressed me, of course, was the reminder that there really are academics who fill their day by researching the lives of Victorian poets. Now there's nothing wrong with that per se. I myself have done some minor research on Swinburne, and I am thanked for it on the acknowledgements page of the poet's latest biography. But I did it all in my spare time, as an amateur, and not as a full-time academic, paid (as they so often are in the UK) very largely at the taxpayers' expense.
What is even more depressing, of course, is the thought that there are lots of young people who have been brainwashed into thinking that studying Eng. Lit. at a university, for three or four of the best years of their lives, is a useful and productive way to spend their time. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very process of reading novels is about as adult as sucking your thumb, and studying them full-time is unproductive to say the least. The only more futile form of study that I can think of is spending a year (and lots of money) on a creative-writing course.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Bitter coincidence
Last Friday I wrote a piece about copyright problems (see immediately below), and I ended up by pointing out that a writing 'career' can all too easily lead to anger, bitterness, and frustration. By pure coincidence, the next day's Financial Times featured an article by Sathnam Sanghera which dealt extensively with the psychological and physiological complications which can arise from a state of bitterness. (I would normally have provided a direct link to this article, but you have to register on the FT site, and frankly it's so much goddamn trouble -- I've just tried -- that it isn't worth the effort. But the article is on there somewhere and you can get to the FT home page here if you really want to.)
Sanghera had noted, during four years of interviewing for the FT, that although he had often come across well-known people who had every right to feel bitter, he had never once found that they were. Nick Leeson, for instance, who had been banged up in jail for over four years, and had colon cancer as well, was not bitter at all.
So when Sanghera wanted to write an article about bitterness, he was hard put to find anyone in the public eye who suffered from this condition. But then -- of course! -- he turned to the book world, and he found, not surprisingly, that bitter authors are not too difficult to stumble across.
Take Leon Arden, for instance. In 1981 Leon wrote a novel called One Fine Day. It told the story of a man who finds himself living the same day over and over again. The movie companies were interested, and Disney bought the film rights. But while Disney was still thinking about how to handle the project, Columbia Pictures brought out a film about -- er -- a man who finds himself living the same day over and over again. Called Groundhog Day. And it was, as you may recall, quite a nice little hit. Grossed $70m.
So, Arden sued. As you would expect. For $15m. And lost. As you would expect. 'I can appreciate Arden's frustration,' said the Judge. 'However, ideas are not copyrightable.'
Is Arden bitter? 'Oh Christ, yes, I'm bitter.' And he goes on, at some length. As does Sanghera, who comments that bitterness is 'more unrelenting than hate, more painful than unhappiness, more paralysing than depression.' It is 'one of the worst things that can happen to you.' And for good measure, a medical expert on the psychological effects of bitterness adds, 'It is impossible to be happy or healthy while you carry a grudge.'
The following day, the Sunday Times carried an interview with Colin Wilson. The name won't mean much to you unless you are (a) over 60, and (b) English, but in the late 1950s Colin Wilson was as famous in England as a writer can possibly get. In fact, more famous than you can imagine, because in those days there were far fewer media to read, view and listen to. Everybody read and watched the same things. So the interviewer, Jasper Gerard, rightly points out that 'it is inconceivable that a writer could now acquire similar celebrity.'
Wilson's fame soon faded from that astonishing peak, for a variety of reasons, but since his debut he has written over 100 books and has just produced his autobiography. And, as Gerard points out, he is angry, bitter and depressed. He is particularly bitter about being shunned by the literary establishment; the English, apparently, refuse to take men of ideas seriously.
I hope that by now you have got the message that even a 'successful' writer can have a pretty grim time. But wait. There is more.
Today's book2book provides a link to an article in The Independent by Simon Trewin, who is an agent at Curtis Brown. Trewin describes, in pretty blunt terms, the painful truth about being a young (or new) writer in today's publishing. 'It is a sobering thought,' he says, 'that the majority of debut novels will be published to deafening silence.'
If the publisher wants to sign you up, you are treated like a celebrity. At least until the sales figures come in. 'When I signed my publishing deal,' says one author bitterly (Trewin's adverb), 'it was all champagne and lunch, but when they dropped me it was by email to my agent.... That hurt like crazy.' A promising career, concludes Trewin, 'can be over before it starts.'
Listen, my friends. I have said it before and I say it again. Think hard before you invest the huge amount of time and effort which is involved in writing a novel. And think hard before you wish for a career as a writer. Who knows, your wish might come true. And then where would you be?
Sanghera had noted, during four years of interviewing for the FT, that although he had often come across well-known people who had every right to feel bitter, he had never once found that they were. Nick Leeson, for instance, who had been banged up in jail for over four years, and had colon cancer as well, was not bitter at all.
So when Sanghera wanted to write an article about bitterness, he was hard put to find anyone in the public eye who suffered from this condition. But then -- of course! -- he turned to the book world, and he found, not surprisingly, that bitter authors are not too difficult to stumble across.
Take Leon Arden, for instance. In 1981 Leon wrote a novel called One Fine Day. It told the story of a man who finds himself living the same day over and over again. The movie companies were interested, and Disney bought the film rights. But while Disney was still thinking about how to handle the project, Columbia Pictures brought out a film about -- er -- a man who finds himself living the same day over and over again. Called Groundhog Day. And it was, as you may recall, quite a nice little hit. Grossed $70m.
So, Arden sued. As you would expect. For $15m. And lost. As you would expect. 'I can appreciate Arden's frustration,' said the Judge. 'However, ideas are not copyrightable.'
Is Arden bitter? 'Oh Christ, yes, I'm bitter.' And he goes on, at some length. As does Sanghera, who comments that bitterness is 'more unrelenting than hate, more painful than unhappiness, more paralysing than depression.' It is 'one of the worst things that can happen to you.' And for good measure, a medical expert on the psychological effects of bitterness adds, 'It is impossible to be happy or healthy while you carry a grudge.'
The following day, the Sunday Times carried an interview with Colin Wilson. The name won't mean much to you unless you are (a) over 60, and (b) English, but in the late 1950s Colin Wilson was as famous in England as a writer can possibly get. In fact, more famous than you can imagine, because in those days there were far fewer media to read, view and listen to. Everybody read and watched the same things. So the interviewer, Jasper Gerard, rightly points out that 'it is inconceivable that a writer could now acquire similar celebrity.'
Wilson's fame soon faded from that astonishing peak, for a variety of reasons, but since his debut he has written over 100 books and has just produced his autobiography. And, as Gerard points out, he is angry, bitter and depressed. He is particularly bitter about being shunned by the literary establishment; the English, apparently, refuse to take men of ideas seriously.
I hope that by now you have got the message that even a 'successful' writer can have a pretty grim time. But wait. There is more.
Today's book2book provides a link to an article in The Independent by Simon Trewin, who is an agent at Curtis Brown. Trewin describes, in pretty blunt terms, the painful truth about being a young (or new) writer in today's publishing. 'It is a sobering thought,' he says, 'that the majority of debut novels will be published to deafening silence.'
If the publisher wants to sign you up, you are treated like a celebrity. At least until the sales figures come in. 'When I signed my publishing deal,' says one author bitterly (Trewin's adverb), 'it was all champagne and lunch, but when they dropped me it was by email to my agent.... That hurt like crazy.' A promising career, concludes Trewin, 'can be over before it starts.'
Listen, my friends. I have said it before and I say it again. Think hard before you invest the huge amount of time and effort which is involved in writing a novel. And think hard before you wish for a career as a writer. Who knows, your wish might come true. And then where would you be?
Friday, June 18, 2004
More on copywrong
Yesterday brought news of two more aggrieved parties who believe that their copyright has been breached, stolen, or otherwise abused.
First, a report from Los Angeles. Diana Locke has written two books on cosmetic surgery. Some time ago, she thought up an idea for a TV show, focusing on the emotional and psychological aspects of plastic surgery. She 'pitched' this show (as they say) to a producer friend in August 2001. He is turn discussed it with his agent. An attempt was then made to sell the idea to a cable network, but the attempt failed and everyone abandoned the project.
Then -- goodness me, what a surprise -- the agent who had been involved sold a very similar idea to ABC, who turned it into a show called 'Extreme Makeover'.
And now Ms Locke is suing everyone in sight, claiming breach of confidence, conspiracy, and unjust enrichment. She seeks damages of $10 million. At least.
Yeah, well, good luck to everyone is all I can say. The only people likely to benefit, in my estimation, are the lawyers.
The case will presumably be tried under Californian law, and who knows what peculiarities are embedded there. In English law, however, it is mighty difficult to protect an 'idea'. In fact there is no copyright in 'ideas' unless they are developed into a detailed draft of a book or TV programme.
In his book Publishing Law, Hugh Jones has this to say. 'It is not at all easy to protect original ideas as such.... Good ideas have a habit of re-appearing later in different forms, and rejected authors might easily suspect that their ideas have simply been stolen.... There is probably not a lot that can be done about this.'
It is likely that Diana Locke's case will hinge on the extent to which the idea was 'developed', and the extent to which discussions of it were recognised as confidential by the parties involved. I would not personally bet any money on Ms Locke coming out a winner, but perhaps an insurance company may pay her a little money to shut up and go away -- though without admitting any liability, of course.
Meanwhile the Publishers Lunch newsletter reported a case heard in Germany, where a Harvard University professor is claiming that the writer and director of the movie The Day After Tomorrow plagiarised his book. Ubaldo DiBenedetto (77) alleges that Roland Emmerich's film stole parts of his 1993 novel Polar Day 9, which he had written under the pseudonym Kyle Donner. Amazing what these Harvard men get up to in their spare time, isn't it?
Once again, I would not bet money on the author's chances of proving his case. The judge has already said that, although there are similarities between book and film, they do not appear to amount to plagiarism. A ruling is expected on 7 July.
These two cases constitute yet further evidence -- not that any is needed -- that being a writer is a pretty thankless business, and one, furthermore, which is likely to lead to anger, bitterness, and frustration.
First, a report from Los Angeles. Diana Locke has written two books on cosmetic surgery. Some time ago, she thought up an idea for a TV show, focusing on the emotional and psychological aspects of plastic surgery. She 'pitched' this show (as they say) to a producer friend in August 2001. He is turn discussed it with his agent. An attempt was then made to sell the idea to a cable network, but the attempt failed and everyone abandoned the project.
Then -- goodness me, what a surprise -- the agent who had been involved sold a very similar idea to ABC, who turned it into a show called 'Extreme Makeover'.
And now Ms Locke is suing everyone in sight, claiming breach of confidence, conspiracy, and unjust enrichment. She seeks damages of $10 million. At least.
Yeah, well, good luck to everyone is all I can say. The only people likely to benefit, in my estimation, are the lawyers.
The case will presumably be tried under Californian law, and who knows what peculiarities are embedded there. In English law, however, it is mighty difficult to protect an 'idea'. In fact there is no copyright in 'ideas' unless they are developed into a detailed draft of a book or TV programme.
In his book Publishing Law, Hugh Jones has this to say. 'It is not at all easy to protect original ideas as such.... Good ideas have a habit of re-appearing later in different forms, and rejected authors might easily suspect that their ideas have simply been stolen.... There is probably not a lot that can be done about this.'
It is likely that Diana Locke's case will hinge on the extent to which the idea was 'developed', and the extent to which discussions of it were recognised as confidential by the parties involved. I would not personally bet any money on Ms Locke coming out a winner, but perhaps an insurance company may pay her a little money to shut up and go away -- though without admitting any liability, of course.
Meanwhile the Publishers Lunch newsletter reported a case heard in Germany, where a Harvard University professor is claiming that the writer and director of the movie The Day After Tomorrow plagiarised his book. Ubaldo DiBenedetto (77) alleges that Roland Emmerich's film stole parts of his 1993 novel Polar Day 9, which he had written under the pseudonym Kyle Donner. Amazing what these Harvard men get up to in their spare time, isn't it?
Once again, I would not bet money on the author's chances of proving his case. The judge has already said that, although there are similarities between book and film, they do not appear to amount to plagiarism. A ruling is expected on 7 July.
These two cases constitute yet further evidence -- not that any is needed -- that being a writer is a pretty thankless business, and one, furthermore, which is likely to lead to anger, bitterness, and frustration.
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