Books

Recession a boon for books?

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According to the Telegraph in London, some publishers see opportunity in these dark financial times.

Publishing is not immune to tough times. This week Random House announced 5 per cent redundancies. Agents are shaking their heads over the reduced advances. Paper costs have risen. Books are being delayed from 2009 to 2010 to stretch budgets. Booksellers are cautious about almost anything without a TV tie-in. But publishers aren't, like ITV, dependent on advertisers. And readers are addicts. They will not stop reading to stare at the telly. Indeed, publishing can benefit from recession.

"At staff presentations, if people are looking gloomy," says John Makinson, chief executive of Penguin, "I tell them that the 1930s were the golden age of publishing in Britain. Many major publishing houses started then and Allen Lane, who launched paperbacks for sixpence, vastly expanded the market.

"Book sales correlate well with the market for takeaway pizzas," says Makinson. The idea – born out by industry-wide figures showing a rise in sales since this time last year – is that staying in is the new going out. Paperbacks cost less than a cinema ticket and provide many more hours of amusement.

Mr. Monk and the Blogs

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I've been catching up on everything I missed while I was out-of-town and discovered some bloggers had some very nice things to say about my MONK books last week. The William-To-Jose blog liked MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY:

What a pleasant surprise it turned out to be. This is a funny, funny book! Goldberg has a fantastic grasp of the characters and reading this was almost like watching the show. […]The book also has it's serious moments, however, especially when Monk has to confront certain truths he'd rather not. This grounds the book so it doesn't come off as pure fluff.

I agree with him about the importance of grounding Monk…of finding something with emotional stakes for him in every story…otherwise he'd just be a cartoon character.

Author Bill Crider enjoyed Monk's adventures in Germany, too.

The book reads smoothly and quickly, with plenty of laughs and a smile on every page. Which is quite an achievement, considering that Monk is in reality a sad case, a slave to his phobias and compulsions. Even Natalie loses control in this one, but to good effect. And at the end, well, she pulls quite a stunt. […] Sitting in hospital waiting rooms is no fun at all, but Mr. Monk Goes to Germany brightened my time in them this week, and it might brighten your day, too.

I don't think there's any greater compliment that a writer could get than hearing that his stories have made someone's day brighter…and helped them forget whatever woes they have, if only for a while. Thank you so much, Bill…and I hope your wife is feeling better.

Karen Rainey draws a distinction between between "derivative" books, which she doesn't like much, and tie-ins which, in the case of Monk, she likes a lot.

A derivative book is NOT a tie-in book such as Lee Goldberg’s Monk books. He’s contracted to write those books based on the television series. (By the way, he goes way beyond the television character arc in his books and they’re really good.)

She defines "derivative books" as ones in which an author continues the work of another, using the same characters, the same world, etc, like sequels to Jane Austen's books or "Gone with the Wind." She says:

A book ends when it ends. A book ends when the author thinks it’s right to end it. Would I like a different ending to Gone with the Wind? It’s not my call. It’s Margaret Mitchell’s work, not Karen Ranney’s. It’s my opinion that no one else has the right to come along and “borrow” those characters.

I'm sure there are plenty of fanfiction writers out there don't agree with her and they've probably let her know in the strongest possible terms. In their minds, tie-in writing is simply "paid fanfic." I'm not sure whether they truly don't understand the significant differences between tie-ins (which are the equivalent of being a freelance writer of an episode of a TV series) and fanfic (which is the equivalent of stealing someone else's work and putting your own name on it) or if they simply don't want to acknowledge it. But I've talked enough about that already.

Night and Day

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NIGHT AND DAY, the new Jesse Stone novel, is so slight, you almost expect the words to evaporate from the white pages. I noticed the white because there's so much of it. I doubt there has ever been so much white space in a book before. The story is barely a sketch with a plot so thin it's practically non-existent. There isn't even a murder in the book…or a real mystery, as such. If anything, it's more of a vignette about Jesse, because the crimes, such as they are, aren't mysterious, involving, or interesting on their own. They aren't even felonies. The story doesn't even feel long or substantial enough to qualify as a novel, so think of it as a extended short story padded with lots of re-stating of information we already know and pages of rapid-fire banter, some of it clever, most of it quite familiar and tired (especially if you've read the Spenser novels). Which all leaves enough white space on the pages to write your own novel in the margins.

It was a pleasant diversion for a couple of hours, certainly not the worst Jesse Stone book (or the worst Parker), but far from the best. It was interesting, though, to contrast the book with the new, and wholly original, Jesse Stone movie that aired the other night. The movie was far better than any Stone novel in the last few years. Selleck and his team have the Parker voice down and managed to craft a much more interesting plot that felt true to the spirit of the early Stone novels. Parker remarked in a recent interview that he doesn't do any rewriting. It shows. 

The Mail I Get

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Barbara Early sent me this amusing email

I thought you'd like to know what Amazon is recommending to readers of your books. I'm not sure what make of it. 

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse by Lee Goldberg have also purchased Inside Animal Hoarding: The Case of Barbara Erickson and her 552 Dogs by Arnold Arluke. For this reason, you might like to know that Inside Animal Hoarding: The Case of Barbara Erickson and her 552 Dogs will be released on March 15, 2009. 

The book is described as an indepth look at "one of the largest and most intriguing cases of animal hoarding in recent history." Why that story would be of interest to Monk readers is beyond me. But it does give me an interesting idea for a character that Monk can encounter in the next book…

Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy

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That’s the title of my friend HelenKay Dimon‘s widely-acclaimed romance novel, now out in a mass-market edition. If the title alone doesn’t make you pick up the book, the punchy back-cover copy will:

Annie Parks came to Hawaii to gather information and settle a score, not spend time handcuffed to a sexy stranger’s bed. Okay, so this particular stranger saved her from drowning after she was pitched overboard by some goons. And he’s about six feet of hard, Hawaiian muscle and gorgeous cool that’s making forgotten parts of her say, “A-lo-ha!” She needs to stay focused, but a side dish of Kane Travers is awfully tempting.
Kauai Police Chief Kane Travers is not a vacation kind of guy. So it figures that when Internal Affairs suspended him, he’d end up rescuing a sarcastic, dishonest, extremely hot redhead who is clearly hiding something. Amnesia? Yeah, right. Kane’s got half a mind to give Miss Whoever She Is something she’ll never forget. His cop senses tell him that the lady’s in deep and needs his protection. But how can he get her to tell him anything when his mouth won’t stop covering hers?

If YOUR MOUTH DRIVES ME CRAZY is half as much fun as the jacket copy, you’re in for a treat. You can win a free copy at Alison Kent’s blog just by telling her something about your mouth…but you’d better hurry, the drawing ends on Monday, March 2 at 8 p.m. CST.

Mr. Monk Gets Another Nice Review

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Gary Mugford at Mugshots gives MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE a thumbs-up. He says, in part:

Goldberg has lots of fun at the expense of the typical SF convention-goer, but there seems be a respect deep down. […]But it’s really almost an Ambrose book. It’s Ambrose who provides the needed insight into the TV series, since he’s an expert on the show. It’s little insights into Ambrose that makes this something different rather than the same old, same old. That’s why this book gets a thumbs up. Goldberg continues to expand the tight little world that is Adrian Monk. As we head to the eighth and final TV season, it’s going to get harder and harder to find new sides to the mystery that is Monk. But for the time being, Goldberg continues to deliver solid entertainment in new and surprising ways.

Thanks, Gary!

Tie-ins: The Final Frontier

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Author Vonda McIntyre blogs about breaking-in as a tie-in writer with her STAR TREK novels and the snobbery she encountered.

Back in the 1980s, I wrote a bunch of Star Trek novels. I thoroughly enjoyed writing them. Pretty much the only drawback was that some of my colleagues took exception to my polluting my precious bodily fluids with evil tie-in novels. You’d’ve thought they believed they had to save my soul, blathering about the improvement in my moral character that would result if instead I took an honest job as a waitress.

But mostly she shares a lot of amusing and interesting anecdotes about her tie-in days in the post and subsequent comments. Her post sparked a debate over at Metafilter and at John Scalzi's blog. He writes, in part:

With very few exceptions, media tie-in SF outsells original SF, often by a significant amount. Now, we can argue about why this is and whether this is a good thing for the genre or not, but at the end of the day, it’s a fact and it’s something authors give serious consideration to, in terms of its value to their overall career. […]I don’t write tie-in SF for my own reasons, but it’s not to say I wouldn’t if the right project came along. I have quite a number of friends who do or have written tie-ins, and you know what, when all is said and done they’re generally getting paid well to do work they love in universes they’re fans of, for audiences who well appreciate their efforts. Maybe some people want to crap all over that and call them hacks. I heartily raise a middle finger at them.

Obviously, I agree. I read some of the comments on Scalzi's blog and at Metafilter and the argument some folks are making against tie-ins is that they are so successful that they are squeezing better, original books off the shelves. It's a disingenuous and dumb argument. The fact is if the non-tie-in is selling well, it won't be pushed off the shelf by the latest STAR TREK novel. The reason the tie-ins are on the shelf in the first place is because people are buying them. If there wasn't a voracious market for them, they wouldn't exist.

You’ll Thank Me Later

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David Breckman, a writer-producer-director on MONK, has started blogging. 

My new blog. Question: Can I possibly keep this going? Answer: If the entries are brief enough, I think I have a shot. Toward that end I am determined to keep each post down to 350 words or less.

One thing you can count on is an inside look at the making of MONK, like this post about a recent visit to the New Jersy writers room by Tony Shalhoub, USA chief Jeff Wachtel, and co-exec producer Randy Zisk:

We were mainly in the writers' room, all of us sitting around the big table as Andy Breckman (my brother and, as MONK's creator and showrunner, also my boss) walked the three of them through most of the upcoming episodes of our eighth and final season. Andy gave them a detailed description of the first nine shows, thumbnail summaries of five or six more — the ones we haven't "broken" yet — and not so much as a peep about the finale. […] Andy held forth. We writers chimed in occasionally. And Randy, Tony and Jeff all scribbled continuousy in their legal pads, asking good questions and (bless their hearts) laughing in all the right places. […] Andy joked that because this was to be MONK's final season it was also surely Jeff Wachtel's last visit to New Jersey ever. Jeff laughed as hard as the rest of us but did not contradict him.

You should visit his blog regularly. You'll thank me later.