Current Affairs

The Dollars and Cents of Writing II

by

Author SL Viehl shares the royalty statement on her latest paperback.  The book is doing well and she has every reason to be thrilled and proud.  But if you’re an aspiring writer, the numbers will be an important reality check for you about the kind earnings/sales a successful (as opposed to bestselling) author can expect. You should also check out the nitty-gritty of novelist Alison Kent’s recent royalty statement and author Ian Irvine’s excellent article on how publishing works. The chart below, which I posted back in February,  is from his article:

Table 1: What you get in your hand after agents’ cuts, per book

                                                             

COUNTRY   HARDCOVER**   TRADE PAPERBACK**   MASS MARKET PAPERBACK
Pre-tax Price Your share ($A) Pre-taxp Price Your share ($A) Pre-tax Price Your share ($A)
Australia $A40.50 $3.44 $A27.33 2.32 $A18.13 1.54
Britain £17.99 3.21 £12.99 2.32 £7.99* 1.07
USA $US25.95 2.52 US14.95 1.45 $US7.99# 0.62

* Exch. Rate 0.38, royalty 7.5% to 20K, Aust publisher 20%, Aust agent 15%

# Exch. Rate 0.70, royalty 8% to 100K, Aust publisher 20%, Aust agent 15%

** Trade paperback and hardcover royalties 10%

 

No Oral for My Boys

by

Over on my brother’s blog, he’s talking about the lynch mob that’s going after Paul Ruditis for his book RAINBOY PARTY (and he quotes a column from a wacko at Jewish World Review, which sure as hell isn’t this Jew’s world. This is the same nutcake who wrote "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror" Need I say more?).

RAINBOW PARTY takes its title from high school parties where girls compete to give the most blowjobs to boys…and the boys compete to get the most head that they can.  Clearly, this isn’t the latest Nancy Drew, though if a guy is gonna win this, he’s got to be a pretty Hardy Boy.  I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say how graphic it is, or if its age-appropriate for teenagers. Be that as it may, I was struck by the Amazon review that Tod quotes:

Don’t buy it unless you’re going to burn it, May 25, 2005

Reviewer: PAUL C. FRY (Cleveland, OH USA) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

One reason that I’m giving this a lousy review because I’m a parent.
I’ve got two boys so far; I don’t want either of them giving or getting
oral sex when they’re teenagers. Or ever for that matter.

He doesn’t want his kid to ever have oral sex? And never  give it? Makes you wonder what poor Mrs. Fry’s sex life has been like (let me say here and now that when my daughter is an adult, I want her to have as much oral sex from her lover or husband as she would like. You go girl!). But Tod talks all about  the evils of oral sex, so I won’t belabor the point. What Tod didn’t do, and what I’ve done, is check out Mr. Fry’s Amazon wish list.  Most of the titles are right-wing political stuff and bible-related books like Scripture Matters: Essays on Reading the Bible from the Heart of the Church, They Think You’re Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, Swear to God : The Promise and Power of the Sacraments,  Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, and Lord Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession. But he’d also like you to get him the  CD Sonic Bullets: 13 From the Hip by Bambi Molesters (I kid you not!).

Is it any wonder he  wants to buy a book to burn it…and prays that his boys never have to endure a blowjob?  Or, God forbid (literally, I suppose), that they should ever have to orally pleasure their wives’ milky womanhoods?

The Name is Goldberg, Lee Goldberg

by

AvtakThe James Bond site MI6 is celebrating the 20th anniversary of A VIEW TO A KILL by giving my old articles about the movie (written for Starlog and the LA Times Syndicate among others) a slick, new presentation. First up is an interview I did with Roger Moore. Soon they’ll be posting my visit to the set… as well as some of my other 007 coverage.

My God, has it really been 20 years? I can’t believe I’m old enough to have written anything 20 years ago.

A Warehouse Signing

by

For his novel WHISKY SOUR, author Joe Konrath did over a hundred drive-by signings last year (that’s bookstore-speak for dropping in to sign stock without an official booksigning event scheduled)   In some cases, he found himself driving for hours to sign three copies. Not the best use of his time. So, for his new mystery, he visited an Indiana book distribution warehouse and "handsigned" 3000 copies books.  He tells the story today on his blog. Was this four-hour warehouse signing a better use of his time than visiting one-on-one with various booksellers? Who knows. He’s certainly getting more signed books  into the marketplace than he would have personally visiting stores on a book tour…but is it the signed books that count, or the personal interaction with sellers and customers?

The Evil Jedi

by

SciFi author Orson Scott Card angered a lot of Trekkies a few weeks back by writing that STAR TREK sucked. Not just ENTERPRISE, the whole Roddenberry franchise. Unsatisfied with alienating that huge percentage of scifi fans, now he’s probably infuriating legions of STAR WARS talifans by saying the Jedi, and their ideals, are extremely screwed up…even evil.

The Jedi may claim to be in favor of democracy, but in fact they function as a ruling elite, making their decisions among themselves. They occasionally submit to the authority of the legislature, and they seem to respect the rule of law, though whose law it’s hard to say. By and large, however, they decide among themselves what they’re going to do and when it’s OK to break the law and defy the civilian authority.

They are, in fact, utterly anti-democratic, like a militia that owes nothing to civilian authority…

…So instead of looking at the storyline of Episode III as a conflict between good and evil, you could read it as a conflict between the entrenched aristocracy trying to preserve their monopoly on power, and an ambitious upstart, who is determined to break that monopoly and take control for himself. The only reason we don’t see it that way is because the other side is so
much more evil.  But the body count left behind by Jedi knights is — or should be — disturbing.

He’s not the first person I’ve heard say this. I was stuck in traffic the other day and heard a commentator on NPR make a very persuasive argument that the Jedi were the true villains of REVENGE OF THE SITH  ("The flawed despotism of the Empire is better than the aristocratic smugness of the Jedi.")

As I watched REVENGE OF THE SITH, I might have paid more attention to the values of Jedi vs those of the Sith if the movie wasn’t so dull. Somewhere between STAR WARS and REVENGE OF THE SITH George Lucas forgot how to be funny, entertaining and lively. God, I missed Han Solo. Sure, the effects are astounding…it’s a shame the rest of the movie has all the drama, emotion, and humor of an HOA meeting.

(Thanks to S.L Viehl for pointing me to Orson Scott Card’s essay)

“Not Ready For Publication” Authors

by

Novelist Karin Gillespie keeps running into a self-published author on the bookselling/hyping circuit and it’s pissing her off. 

Writing a book doesn’t make someone an author anymore than applying
a Band-Aid to a skinned knee makes someone a doctor. Reviewers of large
newspapers, publishing people and most media outlets can spot these
so-called “authors” fairly readily, but how can the average Joe tell
the difference between a real writer and a dilettante?

I know
I sound petty, but as a writer who went through a great deal of trouble
to learn my craft, I’m annoyed that my efforts and other authors’
efforts are diluted by not-ready-for-publication authors.

After
all, the public is deluged with plenty of traditionally published
books; it shouldn’t have to sort through the efforts of amateurs as
well.

Yikes.  I hope she owns a Kevlar vest.  My sister-in-law Wendy apparently hasn’t learned anything watching all the trouble her husband and brother-in-law get into expressing their opinions on self-publishing, fanfic, and well, just about everything. She dives head-first into the controversy with:

I can say I agree with the sentiment that self publishing, well, doesn’t count as being published.  Printed yes, published no.

Boo hiss. Tar and feather me. I am not a friend of the artist. I’m elitist; a cog in corporate America’s machine to destroy fresh, young voices. Oh, grow up.

I have this theory: not everyone deserves to be published. It’s not like kindergarten where every kid gets a gold star for showing up. It’s more like high school where not every graduating senior has the academic chops to gain admittance to Harvard. A harsh reality for anyone with a dream, but a reality nonetheless.

They are both echoing the fine advice that Richard Wheeler left on this blog the other day. Even so, I’m sure these posts are bound to create a firestorm of anger among the PublishAmerica an iUniverse customers who call themselves published authors.

The Hazards of Emmy Voting

by

It’s Emmy time… that’s the glorious time of year when members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences get inundated with DVDs  of all the best TV shows (sitcoms and dramas), MOWs and miniseries that have aired on network, cable, and pay cable in the last year. (Fellow scribe Paul Guyot lists on his blog today  some of the goodies we’ve already received).

The great thing about Emmy time is that you get to see all the stuff you missed during the season… the very best episodes of every show on the air…in beautiful DVD transfers with no commericals.

The bad news is… there are a LOT of shows on each season. HUNDREDS.  Every year.  Which raises the question: What the hell are you supposed to do with all those DVDs when you’re done?

Used to be you could donate them to your local library (for their collection, NOT for re-selling), give them to friends,  tape over them (back in the days of VHS), or simply throw them out.

But you can’t do that any more. Things have become  so Orwellian in the fight against piracy that all the DVDs (and the occasional VHS) are encoded with some digital marker that can be traced right back to you. Which means if you toss your DVDs, and your  friendly trash man digs’em up and rips 1500o bootleg copies to sell on the streets, you could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, drummed out of the ATAS, perhaps even go to prison, just for emptying your garbage.

This is a serious problem for us big-shot Hollywood  Emmy voters. Those DVDs and tapes really stack up. So what’s the answer? An AMPTP exec recently joked that you should smash your DVDs with a sledgehammer and run your car over your tapes. Come to think of it…maybe he wasn’t joking.