#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
Lee Goldberg Author Alison Kent tipped me to this terrific blog post from Jennifer Jackson, her agent:
Just in case there is someone out there reading this who doesn't already know: Reputable agents work on commission. Commissions are based on selling your work. They make money if you make money. It's a motivational system.
This is something every aspiring author needs to know. Any agent who asks for a reading fee, a submission fee, or any other kind of fee is a fraud.
Brien Jones is at it again…the vanity press huckster is offering to sell your self-published book to Hollywood using all of his amazing connections (which, translated, means he's going to attend "The Great American Pitchfest" like hundreds of other wanna-bes). Victoria Strauss at Writer's Beware has the scoop on Brien's pitch, which sounds an awful lot like the scams run by Bookman/Airleaf, his former employer, which I first blogged about back in 2005.. Airleaf has since been shut down by the Indiana Attorney General.
I am currently proof-reading the galleys for the paperback edition of MR. MONK IS MISERABLE. If you have spotted any typos/missing words, etc. in the hardcover edition, please let me know by February 7th so I can prevent the mistakes from being repeated.
My interview with legendary TV writer/producer Glen Larson for the Archive of American Television, which I mentioned on my blog this morning, has been postponed until next week.
The New York Times reports that print-0n-demand publishers are flourishing…even if their customers are not.
As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs.
[…]“It used to be an elite few,” said Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company whose revenue has grown to $30 million, from $1 million, in just two years and which published more than 300,000 titles last year. Many of those were personal books bought only by the author. “Now anyone can make a book, and it looks just like a book that you buy at the bookstore.”
[…]Author Solutions estimates that the average number of copies sold of titles published through one of its brands is just 150.
Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.
Fox has reshuffled the creative team behind it's big screen theatrical remake of THE A-TEAM. Director John Singleton, who previously bungled the SHAFT remake, is out and Joe Carnahan is in. Ridley Scott is now on board as producer, along with Stephen J. Cannell, who created the original hit series.
Carnahan will also team up with screenwriter Brian Bloom to rewrite Skip Woods' current draft of the script. The studio hopes to get the movie into production in June for a Summer 2010 release. Variety reports that some tweaks are being made to the series concept:
In the original, four Vietnam vets convicted of armed robbery escape from military prison and became do-gooder mercenaries.
The Middle East will replace Vietnam as the place the four did their tour of duty, but Carnahan said the origin story is the jumping-off point.
"This was a coveted property, and reimagining a show that I remembered as a kid was tough to turn down," Carnahan said. "Fox hired me to make it as emotional, real and accessible as possible without cheesing it up."
French journalist & critic Thierry Attard raves about MR. MONK IS MISERABLE in a lengthy and detailed review. He says, in part:
Mr. Monk is Miserable, his latest Monk tie-in novel, is a perfect sample of the art of this master storyteller. Should you be a fan of the Monk tv series or not, as the show itself regularly flirts with the self-conscious formulaic Tony Shalhoub one-man show. But the talent of Lee Goldberg is to build totally original novels with familiar figures. His reinventions of Adrian Monk's frustrations and anxieties are so wonderfully and joyfully crafted that many of his readers already wish an adaptation of his new Monk Book for the television series.
[…]Mr. Monk is Miserable is a wonderful and fun book with an intrigue devised like a clockwork mechanism. Lee Goldberg's vision of Paris and of the French is sharply realistic.
[…]It's a mystery story with a difference, and all the wit (there are shades of Mark Twain in Paris with Monk's exploration of the City of Light), the humor and the writing skills of a master novelist.
Hot on the heels of THE BIONIC WOMAN and KNIGHT RIDER, ABC has greenlighted a pilot for a "reimagined" version of V, the NBC alien invasion series that starred Mark Singer, Robert Englund and Jane Badler (pictured on the left). Variety reports:
The new "V" centers on Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent with an aimless son. When the aliens arrive, her son gloms on to them — causing tension within the family.
Like the original, show centers on visitors who say they've come to help the Earth — but their motives are nefarious.
V writer/creator Kenneth Johnson isn't involved in this version, which will be written and produced by Scott Peters from THE 4400.
No sooner did Publishers Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson write in her weekly column that she was feeling hopeful that the wave of industry firings was over than she got laid off herself. Reed Publications, parent company of PW, announced that all three of their publishing industry trade magazines will now be run by one editor, Brian Kenney. Meanwhile, Reed also announced that thirty staffers were pink slipped today at Variety, their entertainment industry trade publication.