Dragon Tamers -- part 93

In writing about Dragon Tamers yet again I recognise that I am in some danger of making a mountain out of a molehill. But there have been several readers of this blog who have not only shown an interest in past discussion of this book, but have followed up aspects of the story on their own. Furthermore, there is perhaps at least one point of principle buried beneath a pile of trivia, and I might be able to dig it out. So I think it is at least appropriate to discuss the matter one more time, and then perhaps we can leave it in peace.

The story so far is this. In December 2004, Aultbea Publishing, a Scottish firm which had previously specialised in publishing scientific and technical journals, published a book called Dragon Tamers by a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Emma Maree Urquhart.

In February, the Times published an article about this book in which various claims were made about sales, film rights et cetera. I wrote about the Times article on 7 February; I made the point that some of these claims seemed to me to be more likely to be publisher's hype than established fact, and I wondered aloud why a paper of the Times's standard should be publishing a press release apparently verbatim and without asking any obvious questions.

By the way, some of the links in my posts to old newspaper articles may no longer work.

Later in February, a similar article appeared in the Independent, repeating most of the earlier claims and carrying a headline to the effect that 'Schoolgirl's tale about dragons becomes hot stuff in Hollywood.' I wrote about this article on 18 February, saying, among other things, that, since there was no evidence that anyone had even bought an option on the film rights, this headline seemed, shall we say, a trifle premature.

The Independent published yet another piece (written, like the first, by the paper's Scotland correspondent, Paul Kelbie) on 21 June. This June piece offered nothing new. I commented on it in my post of 24 June.

By that time I was getting a little tired of what was, after all, a relatively trivial matter, but various readers pursued various aspects of the story (see the comments on my post of 21 June), so I decided to try to establish a few facts instead of groping in the dark.

Earlier this week, I sent an email to Charles Faulkner, who is the owner of Aultbea Publishing, and he has now replied. I shall reproduce my own email, and his reply, below, after which I shall make a few comments. And that, I hope, will be that.

I would like to say at the outset that I am grateful to Charles Faulkner for sending me a very civil and reasonable reply. In the circumstances he might have been forgiven for being a little testy. He could also have legitimately claimed that the questions that I asked were matters of commercial confidence and essentially none of my business. It is to his credit that he has replied as fully as he has.

Here then is what I wrote to Charles Faulkner of Aultbea on 27 June.

Dear Mr Faulkner

I run a daily book blog, the Grumpy Old Bookman (link below), which reports on and comments on the UK book business. Earlier this year, the GOB blog was listed by the Guardian as one of the top ten literary blogs worldwide.

The first press reports about Emma Maree Urquhart's Dragon Tamers appeared in February. On 7 February I wrote an article on my blog about the report in the Times.

I began by saying this: 'If Emma Maree and her publisher have managed to sell a decent number of copies of her book, congratulations to them. I am delighted. I am always pleased when anyone achieves even a modest degree of success in the book world, because God knows it doesn't happen very often.'

However, I noted that the Times report contained little in the way of hard fact, and I was sceptical that a publisher with virtually no previous experience in book publishing could have sold 50,000 copies in six weeks.

On 18 February I noted that a similar report had appeared in the Independent with a headline which was patently absurd.

Last week (24 June) I noted that there was a further lengthy report in the Independent which repeated some of the earlier claims but added nothing new.

It is not, of course, uncommon for publishers and commercial enterprises generally to sing the praises of their product, and to give optimistic assessments of how well those products are performing in the marketplace. However, in my blog reports I have expressed some dismay that newspapers of the quality and standing of the Times and the Independent should have accepted a publisher's publicity statements at face value, without asking some obvious questions.

That being the case, I would like to put to you some questions which would occur to anyone with a reasonable working knowledge of the UK book trade. I hope you will feel able to reply, and if you do the answers will be reported on my blog.

I would like to address three issues: sales of Dragon Tamers in the home market; sale of film rights; translation deals.

1. Sales of Dragon Tamers in the home market

Were sales and distribution of the book handled entirely by Aultbea, or did you use the services of some other organisation?

Was the quoted sales figure of 50,000 made up of many individual orders from high-street booksellers, Amazon etc., or was it, in part or in full, a bulk purchase by one company?

Can you give an indication of total sales to date? By 'sales' I mean the number of copies actually bought by readers, and recorded independently by Nielsen Bookscan; I do not mean the number held in stock by booksellers or in your warehouse.

2. Film rights

Have you succeeded in selling the film rights of Dragon Tamers outright?

Or have you sold on option on the film rights?

In either case, can you name the purchaser, and the price paid? A broad indication would suffice: e.g. a four figure sum (i.e. £1000 to £9,999 range), five-figure sum, etc.

3. Translation deals

Have you succeeded in selling any foreign rights in Dragon Tamers? If so, can you name the companies, languages, and give a broad indication of the price paid?

As one who has had practical experience of publishing in the past (and I still run a small press today), I am well aware of how difficult it is to sell books. To repeat: I admire anyone who can achieve even a modest degree of success in today's market. And I understand full well that, in order to attract attention to a book, it is necessary to plug it hard. However,unless you can provide me with more evidence than has been made public so far, I shall remain of the view that the success of Dragon Tamers has been overstated.

Michael Allen

As noted above, Charles Faulkner has now replied to my email, and here is what he had to say:

Dear Michael

Re: Dragon Tamers

Thank you for your interest in our young authoress Emma Marie Urquhart and her book Dragon Tamers.

I note from your letter that you are listed by the Guardian as 'one of the top ten literary blogs worldwide.' I am sure that you have worked hard to achieve this accolade with 'Grumpy Old Bookman' which I really enjoyed reading.

I thought that it might be a good idea for me to set the record straight and answer your questions as there has been a lot written about Aultbea and our young authors. To some extent I think that you are right in pointing out that the hard questions have not been asked yet.

The main thrusts of your various articles were, I think based on the quoted 'sales' figure of 50,000 copies. What I said at the time was that we had printed 50,000 copies and that I expected to have them sold quickly as the sales trend was encouraging. The press have used that figure and connotation since.

I will briefly cover your other points. There was a film contract that was at final stages of negotiation for a US Corp. to take an option. We pulled out. There is another multimedia deal that is in late stages of negotiation but I cannot give details until it is signed.

We have succeeded in selling the foreign rights to Dragon Tamers and again, once the deals have been signed, this information will be made public.

I want to hear what people think of our young author's tales and stories. Once we have read all of the critics, once we have given these young people a fair chance, then maybe we can look at the commercial aspects of this. The time for talking about numbers is not now; it is confusing the issue as was evident by the graphic definitions and explanations in your questionnaire.

[Paragraph omitted in which he gives me his private phone number.]

Do call me if you have any questions whatsoever.

Once again, thank you for your interest in Aultbea Publishing and our authors.

Kind regards

Charles Faulkner, Aultbea Publishing, Inverness

In addition to writing to Charles Faulkner, I also sent an email to Paul Kelbie, Scotland correspondent of the Independent, with the following covering note:

Dear Mr Kelbie

Set out below is the text of an email that I have today sent to Charles Faulkner, owner of Aultbea Publishing Company, about the novel Dragon Tamers. If you have any comment to make I shall be pleased to hear from you.

So far I have had no reply from Mr Kelbie. Well, he's probably on holiday. It's that time of year.

Finally (at last! I hear you sigh; if you have read this far), let us make a few concluding comments.

What we have here, not unexpectedly, is a publisher banging the drum for his book. Why not? It's what he's supposed to do. Authors complain loud enough when their publishers don't do it. And, OK, so he exaggerated a little here and there. It is hard to complain about that, when we have a Government that does the self-same thing.

What irked me originally, and irks me now, is that two newspapers (at least) should have printed what was clearly an overly rosy version of the facts. What, I think it is reasonable to ask, did they think they were up to?

Either the reporters who wrote these stories weren't doing a very good job, or else they knew full well that they were printing unsubstantiated claims, and were just desperate for something to fill up the white space. Which, in a quality newspaper, is deplorable.

Well, as I say, it's all essentially trivial, apart from the point of principle about what appears in the press. I do hope that Emma Maree Urquhart, and the other young writers who are now published by Aultbea, have been told that you shouldn't believe everything that the newspapers tell you.

Perhaps now we can all turn to something else.

The Doctorow system

Cory Doctorow is a high-tech sort of guy and I have sung his praises more than once on this blog. See, for instance, his brilliant analysis of why digital-rights management systems don't work.

Doctorow is also a novelist, and as such he puts, so to speak, his money where his mouth is. On 19 June, he announced on his blog (boingboing.net) that his third novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, had just been published by Tor Books.

More to the point, perhaps, than this 'so what?' news, is the fact that the text of this book, like the text of his two previous novels, is available for free online under copyright terms that allow the 'unlimited, noncommercial redistribution of the text.'

Major publishing houses, as we have noted before, are sweating bullets over the danger of having their stuff ripped off digitally, but Doctorow has managed to persuade his publishers that they can relax.

This particular writer invites his readers to send his digital book file to their friends, paste it into a chat, beam it to a friend's PDA, or print out a chapter to hand out in the university common room. What is more, through the terms of Doctorow’s Creative Commons licence, people in developing nations are free to sell print versions of the book for their own profit! As long as they sell them only in developing nations.

Now here is some original thinking. I was going to say at last; but it isn't at last at all, because Cory Doctorow has been preaching this gospel for a while now.

The story comes (via booktrade.info) from the Book Standard, where you can read more about it and follow various links to a lot more good stuff as well.

There is much in this story to digest and think about. But one does wonder somehow whether anyone in the big-time publishers is really prepared to do any original thinking. Or at any rate to act upon such thoughts. It's a bit like politicians and the reform of the welfare state. It is, after all, so much safer to go on doing the same old thing. Trying something new could go horribly wrong. A chap might end up out of a job! Oh, calamity!

The Old Pals Act of 1898

This is a piece about doing favours for your friends. In other words, it's about operating under the terms of the Old Pals Act of 1898.

In fact, the relevant legislation goes back far further than 1898. There was a medieval statute, which was based on Roman law; and before that there were cavemen who had the stone-age equivalent. But it is recent manifestations of this ancient piece of legislation which will concern us today.

Back in 1962, the UK Sunday Times stopped being just a black and white newspaper and introduced a magazine-style colour supplement. The main purpose of this supplement was to enable advertisers to place full-colour glossy ads, for which the ST could charge oodles of money.

In journalistic terms, the colour supplement was a pretty high-class publication, with some good reporting and excellent photography. It seldom published fiction. But one day, in the mid 1970s, I opened the ST supplement and found that it was serialising a novel. It was a novel about the mafia by one Norman Lewis. (You can read an enormous article about Norman Lewis if you wish, and it is certainly interesting, but let us not get distracted.)

In the 1970s I will still a relatively young man, and still very naive and ignorant about the UK book trade. And so when I saw that the ST was serialising a thriller about the mafia -- and remember please that they seldom published any fiction at all -- I thought to myself Wow! This must be one hell of a book.

So I sat down to read the extracts. And you know what? I didn't think it was a very good book at all. Rather boring in fact. Run of the mill.

I puzzled over this phenomenon for some time. It worried me. Other people obviously thought that the book was brilliant, otherwise it wouldn't have been picked out from a thousand others. What was there in the book that I was missing?

The answer, as you will have guessed, is that I was missing nothing. The novel was indeed a pretty run of the mill thriller. What I had overlooked was the previously existing relationship between the author and the Sunday Times.

About ten years later, I read a reference in Private Eye, to the effect that Norman Lewis was a long-standing member of the ST staff; and it was then that the penny finally dropped. (I know, I know, I'm slow.)

In order get his novel serialised in the ST colour supplement, Norman didn't have to write the thriller of the century. All he had to do was wander down the corridor to see his friend the editor and say, 'By the way, George, I've written this novel that's coming out in a couple of months. Any chance of running a couple of extracts in the old ST?'

And George would have said, 'Certainly, old boy. No problem. How much do you want?'

And that, you see, is a deal done under the terms of the Old Pals Act of 1898.

Furthermore, as you may already have observed, the UK Act has its counterparts in almost every other part of the world which is known to man. And recent press reports suggest that there is a particularly powerful form of it in the state of Florida. Where it was probably enacted by that bloke Bush.

The story is told (link provided by booktrade.info) in the Miami New Times, which revels in the problems experienced by its (presumed) rival, the Miami Herald.

What happened was this: the management of the Herald decided to serialise, and plug hard, a book written by six local women, at least one of whom was connected with the paper. So far so normal. But some of the staff took a dim view. The Herald's internal computer bulletin board lit up with staff demanding to know 'Why are we publishing this absolute drivel?'

Well, the bosses could hardly say, 'We're doing it under the terms of the latest Florida mutual back-scratching enactment, with which you all ought to be thoroughly familiar.' No. They wriggled and squirmed and talked about policy.

What is more, they pointed out that 'newspapers using material written by their staffers that is also a book is common.' Which indeed it is. The Act requires it.

And so on. Like many blazing rows, this one is terrific fun to read about, so long as you aren't in the middle of it. The Miami New Times enjoyed it immensely. The headline was 'The Miami Herald's shamelessly extravagant promotion of a lousy book sets the newsroom aflame.'

Meanwhile, there is a similar sort of ding-dong afoot in France (reported in the Guardian). The French government's anti-corruption squad has looked at the way in which big literary prizes are awarded and has found that it is all very incestuous, with a complete lack of transparency, extensive interlocking membership between jury members, literary critics, novelists, mistresses, catamites, hangers-on, brothel-keepers, fancy restaurant owners, et cetera. And really, in the eyes of said government watchdog, it is not good enough.

One small French publisher is quoted as saying, 'French publishing, and particularly the whole prize charade, is all about mutual back-scratching. It's scandalous really, and if it gets cleaned up that can only be a good thing.'

But just a minute. It was only at the end of March that we reported that, more than 150 years ago, Honore de Balzac was clearly stating that the French literary scene was corrupt. It was, according to Balzac, a world in which talent counted for nothing, and bribery, intrigue and unscrupulousness were the key factors in success.

So, if anyone is looking forward to the French version of the Old Pals Act being repealed, I fear they are in for a long wait. And ditto for everywhere else.

Authors' money

Last week I suggested that the supermarkets, among other market forces, would gradually bring about a reduction in the overall remuneration of writers -- however that remuneration was calculated, whether on a royalty basis or as a percentage of net receipts.

Well, some writers, pointing to their scars and bruises, would ruefully argue that such reductions have already been made, and I would not disagree. What I would say is that there is probably more to come.

Joel Rickett's latest missive on the current news from the publishing world (in the Guardian, via booktrade.info), reports that Tesco is running an ad campaign boasting about how it has driven book prices steadily downwards. (Tesco is, I think, the biggest UK supermarket chain and certainly makes massive profits.)

Tesco will runs ads in women's magazines saying the following: 'Books. Once upon a time they seemed pricey. So we decided to sell them cheaply. Er - the end.'

Lovely, isn't it? So short. So to the point. So, no doubt, effective.

The remaining small independent booksellers will not be pleased. In the UK (unlike the USA, I believe), publishers can give different discount deals to different customers. Thus the supermarkets are able to negotiate massive discounts on the retail price in return for massive purchases. Small bookshops, which buy perhaps six copies, can't get anything like as good a deal.

What this means is that it is sometimes cheaper (and quicker) for a small bookseller to buy stock from the local supermarket than it is for him to go through the usual trade channels.

Isn't the book trade fun? Who would want to work anywhere else?

Digital prisoners

Giles Foden is deputy literary editor of the Guardian and also a novelist. His book The Last King of Scotland is being filmed in Uganda. (Which makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Obvious place for it.)

Anyway, Giles is as well placed as anyone, one would think, to spot trends in such matters as copyright, film contracts, digitalisation, and all like that. And Giles's view, expressed in an article on Friday last, is that things are changing, rapidly; and not to the writer's advantage.

His view, generally, is gloomy. He tells us the he has 'a vague presentiment of doom, a feeling that new technologies and those who control the information they carry are in danger of making prisoners of us [i.e. creative people such as writers]. Some time in the future, there could even be revolutions about such things.'

Well, I'm not sure that I'm as gloomy as all that. As I have remarked before, it is often a grossly optimistic error on the part of writers to assume that their work has any serious commercial value at all. Hence, it may not be a disaster if, on those rare occasions when someone actually offers to pay for your stuff, you sign one of those contracts which Giles thinks are objectionable and much too far-reaching.

According to Giles, typical media contracts now give the purchaser the right to publish your work, sell it, et cetera, 'in any and all media and by any and all means now known or hereafter invented, throughout the world and all parts of the universe, in any and all languages.' Without any payment beyond the original fee.

Well, in my opinion the loss that you suffer will often be theoretical rather than actual.

But we can all dream.

Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days

A while back I had an email from the internet marketing co-ordinator of Holtzbrinck Publishers in New York. She said that she had been checking out the GOB and thought that Michael Cunningham's new novel might be of interest to me.

Well, if she had checked out the GOB in much depth, she would have discovered that might is very definitely the word, because I don't usually enjoy literary fiction. And boy is Cunningham literary.

You can find lots of info about him on his own web site, but briefly his last novel, The Hours, won both the Pulitzer prize and the PEN/Faulkner award. His new book is entitled Specimen Days.

Here is the publisher's description of the book:

In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. 'In the Machine' is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. 'The Children's Crusade', set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, 'Like Beauty', evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth.

I was invited to download a pdf version of the text, which I did, but I was warned that I must not, under any circumstances, post the URL where any ordinary folk might notice it, and I must certainly not pass on the file to any other Tom Dick or Harry when I was done with it. We wouldn't want anyone reading the pdf and going Wow! and passing it on to a friend, now would we? Actually there isn't much likelihood of that, but more on that topic in a moment.

Well, I did read Specimen Days, and, as expected, I really didn't like it at all. It is not a book that I could recommend to anyone -- unless, of course, they happen to be keen fans of literary fiction.

In the first section, the writing struck me as self-consciously stylish. And if it is indeed true, as the Comte de Buffon said, that le style est l'homme meme, then I suspect that Cunningham is a bit of a poser.

The second and third sections of the book were much better, in my opinion, because to a large extent the narrative is conveyed to us through dialogue, a technique which I do endorse.

Part two is also an improvement in that it reads rather more like a regular non-literary techno-thriller, which seems to me to be an advantage. But then, as you will recall, the author is here 'playing with the conventions of the noir thriller'.

The poet Walt Whitman is in some way or other a common theme in each of the three sections of the novel.

As for the stories which these three sections of the novel relate: well, I'm sorry to say that they seemed to me to be incomplete. Each section had the glimmerings of a good plot, but they all petered out into nothing very much. Only the third had anything approaching what I would call a proper ending.

Overall, I'm sorry to say that the novel seemed to me to be rather an ordinary piece of whimsical fantasy rather than scifi, and fantasy of a kind that I don't like very much at that.

But can we say anything more useful than that? After all, what I have said so far merely reflects my own rather peculiar tastes in fiction.

Well, let's try this. Adherents of 'serious literature' as the fans of that genre like to call it, would insist, to a man and a woman, that serious literature is somehow inherently superior to crime fiction or science fiction. So how, I ask myself, could this book conceivably be regarded as superior to good work (not even the best) in either of those genres?

I am unable to come up with an answer. It isn't better plotted. It isn't better written (despite the fancypants flourishes). It isn't better in any way at all. From many technical points of view it's no sort of improvement on Tess Gerritsen's The Sinner, a flat-out commercial novel which, if you remember, I didn't like either.

That said, Specimen Days does seem to me to have a great deal in common with genres that are generally thought of as 'commercial'. It is carefully constructed to achieve a particular purpose.

I am quite sure that every literary writer lies awake at night dreaming of prizes, front-page reviews in the New York Times thingie, and all like that. To achieve such eminence, there are doubtless various devices and elements in a novel which are more or less compulsory: crime fiction has to have a crime, for example. And literary fiction has to have something that the present or prospective PhD students can get their teeth into. Which in this instance is the Walt Whitman theme and the 'same group of characters' as the publisher calls them, running through each of the separate parts of the book. And there is probably a deeper metaphor in the thing somewhere, because the lit lot absolutely orgasm over metaphors writ large.

Don't ask me to explain what the Whitman thing is all about, or what the metaphor stroke deeper theme is, because it's beyond me. But that, of course, is the whole point. You're supposed to sit around in the coffee shop or the senior common room, arguing long into the night about the significance of these devices.

Cunningham's publisher says that he is one of the most original and daring writers at work today, but I'm afraid I couldn't find anything to justify either adjective.

But hey, you know what? On reflection, I do feel that Cunningham may secretly be the most ruthlessly scheming novelist that I've come across since, oooh, Alexander McCall Smith. In Cunningham's case, his aim is to achieve lengthy, thoughtful reviews, bestseller lists, and literary prizes. What he wants, in short, is to outsell the crude commercial fiction and, at the same time, to be thought intellectually superior to it. And, in his cold-blooded calculating way, plus his previous track record, he may just have put together the right package.

Follow-ups

A couple of commenters have recently pointed me in the direction of web sites which have proved to be more than usually interesting (to me, at any rate).

'Interesting', by the way, is a word that I seem to be typing more and more often these days. I suppose it is redundant. If a topic wasn't interesting (to me) I wouldn't be mentioning it. However, the word will probably continue to appear from time to time.

And, also by the way, one should not, I suppose, be worried about repeating a word if it is in fact the most appropriate word for one's purpose. It was the great Fowler who, in a famous essay of 1926, deplored attempts on the part of 'second-rate writers' to avoid using the same word twice in the same sentence. Fowler referred to this as the 'elegant variation' error. (And there is a rather good book blog named after the essay.) Given what Fowler says, I probably shouldn't worry about using 'interesting' in more than one post.

But I digress. As usual. Back to the follow-ups.

I was advised by a commenter to have a look at a relatively new blog, Short Term Memory Loss, and indeed it is worth a look. It will probably get added to the blogroll (on the right) shortly, but the roll is beginning to look mighty long and I don't suppose one can list every book blog in the known universe. Never mind.

If the author of Short Term Memory Loss has given his name, it has escaped my notice. But one of the books that he mentions is John Preston's Hustling: a Gentleman's Guide to the Fine Art of Homosexual Prostitution. Which is, at the very least, an intriguing title.

So I followed it up. And Google led me to a site called Topman. This is dedicated to the life and work of John Preston, who, as you would expect, was a writer. He was also, by sexual inclination, a homosexual sadist (hence Topman, in the jargon of that world), and he died of AIDS complications in 1994.

During his lifetime, in fact during a period of fifteen years, Preston authored or edited some 49 books. A short introduction to the man, on the Topman site, says that he 'brought pornography to the literary world, [and] he also fought over the years to bring literature to the world of pornography.'

Now that is interesting. It may not be too everyone's taste -- won't be, in fact -- but once again I have come across a writer that I've never heard of before but who clearly had some talent, a great deal of determination, and some success.

In particular, Preston was the author of an essay called 'The right to write', which I would like to read but I have not yet been able to locate an online copy. The Topman site/archive evidently has a scanned copy, but if it's accessible I ain't found it yet. (Note the elegant variation.)

Another commenter made reference to fan fiction, and this led me to a truly astonishing site: the home of Harry Potter fan fiction.

Fan fiction is a phenomenon that I had kind of heard of before but never really come across, much less studied. As its name suggests, fan fiction is fiction written by those who are great enthusiasts for a particular writer's work, and have borrowed his or her characters and contexts to write fiction of their own.

The Harry Potter fan fiction site has no less than 14714 stories, 68032 chapters, and 7482 authors. Now that is serious productivity.

The issue which immediately came to my mind, on encountering this site, was that of copyright. If there are 7482 writers (so far) cheerfully and passionately churning out stories featuring Harry and his friends, what is the copyright position?

I used the site's search facility to see what the organisers/owners have to say about copyright. The answer is nothing much. But there is a short statement at the foot of the search page:

All stories remain the property of their authors and must not be copied in any form without their consent. This is an unofficial, non profit site, and is in no way connected with J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books or Bloomsbury Publishing or Warner Bros. It is not endorsed by any of the aforementioned parties. Rights to characters and their images is neither claimed nor implied. Although we provide links to other websites, we are not responsible for any material at these sites. You acknowledge that you link to these other websites at your own risk. All original administrative content is copyright of the site owner and must not be copied in any form (electronic or otherwise) without the prior consent of the owner.

In other words, the issue of whether or not these fans, and the site, are systematically breaching J.K. Rowling's copyright on a substantial scale is neatly sidestepped. But the owners of the site make it clear that they will sure as hell defend their own copyright! Mess with them and the heavy mob will call round and break both your legs.

The technical term for this kind of thing is naughty.

Should you be intrigued by the fan-fiction phenomenon, there is an interesting starting point for further investigation on the wikipedia site (a site which, incidentally, is become not merely useful but almost the first port of call for reliable and extensive information). And it is here that you will find a most valuable discussion of the legal aspects of the practice.

In the wikipedia article you will find it stated that writers and copyright holders vary greatly in their attitude towards this stuff. Some take a firm stand against it: Lucasfilm (Star Wars) and Anne Rice, for example. Others tolerate it, in order to avoid alienating their most frequent buyers of product; and some even encourage it. J.K. Rowling is said to be relaxed about the matter, though she is troubled by 'adult-themed' Harry Potter stories. Whatever they are. Harry Gets Laid?

In order to shed some light on the position under UK law, I went poking through various archive boxes in my study. I was, as usual when I do this exercise, somewhat appalled to note the amazing amount of work that I did in the past, much of it abortive, but I eventually found what I was looking for.

The item in question was a 1994 article by Nicola Solomon, entitled 'Sequel Opportunities'. And, very much to my surprise, it turns out to be available online. It is posted (as one might have guessed) by the indefatigable Andrew Malcolm on his AKME site. (Andrew Malcolm's online law library, by the way, is a massive resource, and not just for UK writers; he offer it for free.)

Nicola Solomon is described by Malcolm as a leading literary lawyer, a Deputy District Judge and Partner of Finers Stephens Innocent. Her article makes startling reading, and I remember being taken aback by some of the statements which appeared in it when I first read it; they are still pretty jaw-dropping today.

Nicola begins by saying this: 'One might assume that it would be an infringement of copyright to use characters and style developed by another person. Not so; copyright protects the words and form in which ideas are expressed, not the ideas or characters themselves. The type of copying envisaged by the law, taking large chunks of original text, is unlikely in the case of sequels which aim to develop an original story, not replicate it.'

Well bugger me, I thought. And still I do think. I find that legal advice very surprising.

Nicola suggests various precautions for the writer of a sequel, such getting an endorsement from the original author or making it absolutely clear that the sequel is not endorsed by the original author; and also ensuring that your publisher does not land you in hot water by suggesting (falsely) that there is a connection with the original author. But apart from that, open house seems to be the order of the day.

At least, it is under English law. As for elsewhere, Nicola says: 'In the US, copyright in characters is far more established and the rules preventing unauthorised use may be more restrictive.' So writers would be well advised to take separate advice on the legal position there.

As ever, it is staggering to be be given proof of what a vast resource the internet is. And virtually none of it was available ten years ago.

William Donaldson

The Times seems to be back online. And although I have the impression that Times obituaries are not often made available online, or at any rate not for long, you can today find an obituary of William Donaldson; which I read over breakfast.

It's an entertaining reminder of a man whose work is familiar to me although I've never read it.

Donaldson was educated at Winchester and Magdalene College Cambridge, and you will not convince me that a man can get a better education anywhere in the world -- either in Donaldson's day or now.

Born into a privileged background, he proceeded to lose several fortunes (inherited), and went through whatever he managed to earn (considerable at times) at a rapid rate of knots.

He went through women at a rapid rate of knots too, blaming his sexual immaturity on the single-sex culture of Winchester. On the whole he seems to have preferred call-girls, but he had a couple of marriages (at least) and numerous affairs, including Sarah Miles and Carly Simon.

He dumped the lovely Carly while she was in the US arranging for their wedding. But years later she described him, nevertheless, as 'a wonderful, wonderful person: the funniest man I have ever met.' Not everyone, the Times notes, held him in such high regard.

Donaldson was also an enthusiastic user of illegal drugs, first cannabis and then crack cocaine. This habit seems to have bankrupted him fairly regularly, and on one occasion he found a temporary home with an old girlfriend who had taken to running a brothel on the Fulham Road.

From our point of view, the thing to note is that Donaldson was the writer who produced the Root letters. Posing as 'Henry Root', wet-fish merchant and eccentric right-wing bigot, Donaldson 'wrote to prominent public figures offering comment, advice and support -- often in the form of a one pound note. His outrageous yet deadpan missives succeeded in provoking a range of often embarrassingly positive responses from the likes of Esther Rantzen, Larry Lamb, Lord Grade, Sir David McNee (the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police), and Root’s personal and political heroine, Margaret Thatcher. The resulting book, The Henry Root Letters (1980), was a bestseller for months.'

I didn't read the Root output when it first appeared, and I suspect it may have dated horribly. It is certainly unlikely to be of interest to US readers. However, Donaldson wrote other stuff too, including a novel: Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen, 1975. And an autobiography, of which he remarked that the lawyer's libel report was longer than the book.

Donaldson's obituary makes one thing absolutely clear. He followed the first rule for writers, and one which, as I remarked the other day, is often broken by the young. First, get a life.

Dragon Tamers revisited

Many thanks to those who read my Roundup post from last Friday and did some detective work thereafter (see the comments on the post). If and when I can find the time and energy this week, I will Make Further Enquiries about Dragon Tamers and its publisher, Aultbea, and report back.

Roundup

Here are a few bits and pieces that have accumulated during the week.

For those who are interested in reading more about what the Archbishop of Canterbury had to say, Dylan Kinnett has a longish comment on his No Categories blog. Yes, I probably was a bit quick to criticise, as Dylan says, but I do think the Archbishop has enough to deal with without antagonising the media as well.

Cathy Wald, author of The Resilient Writer, was interviewed on the Leonard Lopate (radio) Show on 17 June. You can, if you wish, download an MP3 recording of this conversation, which included the novelist Edmund White.

The recording runs for about 16 minutes. If you have broadband this should be no problem, but at 6.3 MB it will take a while to download on steam radio so to speak. The conversation will tell you nothing startlingly new, but it is, I believe, what is known as a podcast, so you will be able to boast to your friends about being at the absolute cutting edge of technology. Or some such.

For those who care, and I hope I am not being too ungracious when I say that I am not one of them, there was a further instalment this week of the Aultbea publishing saga, about which I have already written twice, on 7 February and 18 February. When I say another instalment, what I mean is that the firm have issued another press release, which has been reprinted without any serious questioning by another newspaper, this time the Independent.

I repeat -- if Aultbea and their young authors can make any serious money or build a reputation out of all this, then good luck to them. But the newspaper stories about Aultbea and their various young authors are quite remarkable for a complete absence of verifiable facts. This latest one refers (again) to 'overseas print runs' (whatever they are) and translation deals (which languages, and which firms? No one says.). Dragon Tamers is referred to, on the basis of no information whatever, as an 'international bestseller'. What does that mean? Amazon sold three copies in the Isle of Man?

'Talks on a Hollywood film are in the pipeline,' we are told. But have they even sold an option? To whom? Or are these 'talks' just the publisher chatting to his wife about it over breakfast?

This is the second time that the Independent's Scottish correspondent, Paul Kelbie, has dealt with this matter, and he hasn't added any more facts than he had the first time.

Oh, I beg Kelbie's pardon. First time around, 18 February, Kelbie quoted the publisher as being confident that 'more than one million copies of the book will be sold worldwide before the end of the year.' Now, 21 June, the publisher is predicting that 'by the end of the year the number of copies sold will be well into six figures.'

I remain sceptical. And I am not the only one. See what the Alien Online has to say about it (both on 21 June, and in his February post, which he links to).

Now if you want to read an article which actually contains some useful information, nip over to the (US) Book Standard and read what the publisher Doug Seibold has to say about trade paperbacks. If you were exceptionally fussy you might say that the article is just a tad short on hard numbers. But hey -- let us not complain about finding, at last, a piece of writing which, if printed out, you could do more with than just wipe your bum.