Current Affairs

The Numbers Game

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I’ve been doing some catching up on my favorite blogs today. There have been some fascinating posts on author blogs over the last few weeks about the writing life.  For example, Tess Gerritsen talks from experience about the pros and cons of big print runs…

The larger the print run, the better the chance the book will hit
national bestseller lists.  Part of it is just the visual impact of
seeing huge stacks of BIG GAMBLE in  a bookstore — customers see those
stacks, assume the book must be important, and are inclined to check it
out.  (Seeing only one or two copies of a new novel, conversely, may
make the customer think it must not be a very popular book.)  To sell a
lot of books, you have to display a lot of books, just to catch the
customers’ attention.  Also, if Borders has taken delivery of 30,000
copies, then their sales force will have an incentive to push that
title even harder and will offer deeper discounts to move the copies. 

If the simple secret to hitting the bestseller list is just to print
a ton of copies, why doesn’t a publisher do it with every book?

Because they’d go out of business fast.  That way lies disaster.

Meanwhile, Sandra Scoppettone talks about how good novels aren’t getting published because of the obsession with those numbers and the evaporation of the mid-list. Her musings were  prompted by a rejection letter that an author-friend of hers got:

“This
is a fine piece of work, as you no doubt are painfully aware, but I’m
not sure that we could convince the big stores to buy thousands and
thousands of copies.  And that is my mandate these days.”

It
just makes me feel all warm and cozy.  And it definitely makes me want
to sit down in front of my computer and hit those keys.  Not that I
intend to write a book that will make those big fat stores buy
thousands and thousands of copies.  And that’s just the point.

Who
is going to publish the books I write…the books that you write?  I know
the mid-list category for fiction is nonexistent but I didn’t think it
was happening in the crime genre.

The editor’s mandate.
Discouraging and depressing.  I’ve never sold thousands and thousands
of copies to the chains.  Most of us don’t.  We all know who does.
Ten, twenty at most.  And they’re the people who get major reviews and
big time ads.  Over and over again.

And Sandra has had it with the Numbers Game…she’s not going to play anymore. She’s just going to write. Or not.

I know the breakthrough book isn’t going to happen for me.  That’s
okay.  I had my chance.  Now, despite my wishes, which, by the way, are
for the forty year old me, I don’t have any idea if I’ll publish
again.  Or write again.  I’m inclined to think I’ll write, but that
doesn’t mean I’ll be published. That’s not okay.  But there’s not a
damn thing I can do about it.

I hope the next book I write
is good.  Still, it won’t be the kind of book that’ll make me a
household name or bring in loads of money.  That’s okay, too.  I want
whatever I write to see the light of day and make back the money I was
paid. At this point in my writing life that’s all that’s important.

On the other side of the coin, John Connolly seems to be one of those  authors on the verge of his big breakthrough. He is half-way through his international book tour and it’s catching up with him.

This week marked the halfway point on the tour – 29 days down, 29 more
to go – and the shift from the US to Australia. The first half has been
an interesting experiment in how much travel, etc. a body can take
before it begins to exhibit signs of distress. The answer, it appears,
is roughly 28 days, because meltdown has begun.

[…]Too many flights, and too many 16- and 17-hour days. My body is
starting to rebel. I have managed to tear something in my neck hauling
my bags from hotel room to car to check in desk, and from baggage claim
to car to hotel room. I felt it rip the way paper rips. At the moment,
I’m freezing it with spray, but the spray wears off, and at night I
don’t sleep as well as I’d like. I’m not much good for anything after
about nine o’clock, and this weekend had to bow out of meeting some
nice people for a bite to eat in Melbourne. I went to bed instead. I
feel like an old person.

 

“I Don’t Think We’re in Los Angeles anymore, Toto.”

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The New York  Times reports that fat is sexy is Mauritania, where women force feed themselves to put on pounds.

A 2001 government survey of 68,000 women found that one in five between ages 15 and 49 had been deliberately overfed. And nearly 70 percent – and even more among teenagers – said they did not regret it.

[…]Other cultures prize corpulent women. But Mauritania may be unique in the lengths it has gone to achieve its vision of female beauty. For decades, the Mauritanian version of a Western teenager’s crash diet was a crash feeding program, designed to create girls obese enough to display family wealth and epitomize the Mauritanian ideal.

Centuries-old poems glorify women immobilized by fat, moving so slowly they seemed to stand still, unable to hoist themselves onto camels without the aid of men’s willing hands…

Bond Gets Bold

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Variety reports that  Marc Forster, director of MONSTER’S BALL and FINDING NEVERLAND, has been hired to helm the next James Bond film, which will star Daniel Craig. This is an unusually edgy choice for the  legendarily conservative Bond producers and shows how dedicated  they are to continue redefining 007 for a new generation (these are the same producers who stuck with director John Glenn for several Bond films and  turned  away overtures from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg). CASINO ROYALE scriptors Paul Haggis, Neil Purvis & Robert Wade are once again teaming up on the script. Purvis & Wade are Bond veterans… they also wrote the last few Pierce Brosnan 007 films.

The Verdict is In

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Variety reports today that the jury has delivered their verdict in the Clive Cussler SAHARA case. They’ve awarded the author $5 million in damages and ruled that the producers have to pay him $8.5 million for the rights to the second book that they’d originally licensed to film…but that now won’t ever be shot. The jury decided that Cussler is owed the film rights back because, under the terms of his contract,  principal
photography on SAHARA did not start on time.

On the other hand, the jury also determined that Cussler falsely and intentionally miss-represented the sales figures of his books, which means the Judge could throw out the jury’s award for the additional fee for the second book. The Judge will schedule a hearing to deal with that issue.

Naturally, both sides are claiming victory.

"We’re $3.5 million ahead and Clive got his rights back," said
veteran showbiz litigator Bert Fields, who represented Cussler. Fields
added that because of the jury’s finding that Cussler intentionally
misrepresented book sales, he would not rule out an appeal.

Putnam
maintained that Crusader was vindicated because of the findings of
Cussler’s intentional misconduct and the fact that the only damages
definitely awarded at this point were the $5 million to Crusader.

"We
consider it a great victory," Putnam said. He added that the disparity
between the findings of misrepresentation and the damages would make
him consider an appeal, particularly if the court finds Cussler is owed
for the second book.

Cussler, 75, said he was pleased with the verdict but wasn’t ready to gamble again on turning one of his many books into a film.

"There won’t be another Clive Cussler film, at least not during my lifetime," he said.

I Can Finally Stop Running from Police For a Crime I didn’t Commit…

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From the Times-Herald Record in Middletown, NY…

Man surrenders in break-ins, copper pipe thefts

Over the winter, Lee Goldberg, 24, broke into 23 bungalows at the former Lake House Hotel on Lake House Road in Woodridge, said Fallsburg police.

Cops say Goldberg ripped out copper piping from each on the bungalows, doing between $80,000 and $100,000 in damage. They say he got between 300 and 400 pounds of pipe, which he sold at Weinert Recycling in Liberty for a total of about $2,000.

Police say Goldberg also broke into another colony nearby, taking about 50 pounds of copper pipe, which he also sold.

Police said they’ve been looking for Goldberg for a while, and on Tuesday he turned himself in at the Fallsburg police station.

He was charged with 24 counts of third-degree burglary and single counts of third-degree grand larceny and second-degree criminal mischief, felonies. He was also charged with 23 counts of petty larceny, a misdemeanor. Goldberg was arraigned and sent to Sullivan County Jail without bail, pending an appearance in Fallsburg Town Court.

Police said more arrests are expected.

It’s going to be nice not to have to live in fear any longer.

I’ve Sold 150 Million Copies of My Books

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Saharabk Okay, maybe I haven’t. But according to Clive Cussler, the number doesn’t matter anyway.

Cussler is on the witness stand here in L.A. in a clash of lawsuits over the failure of the movie SAHARA, based on one of his Dirk Pitt novels. He claims the movie-makers breached a contract that gave him total control over the script.  Based on accounts I’ve read of the producer’s testimony, it seems to me that he’s right.

The producers claim he fraudulently inflated the number of books he sold to get more money out of them for the movie rights. Based on Cussler’s testimony, reported today in the L.A. Times, it seems to me that they are probably right, too.

On Friday, Cussler offered myriad explanations for his accounting of the "Sahara" numbers. Asked if he pulled the numbers out of thin air, Cussler said, "Pretty much." He added: "I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to me."

[…]Cussler previously testified in a deposition that his agent admonished him in the late 1990s never to say how many books he sold because the amount was not known. Instead, Cussler said, he was advised to use the phrase "books in print."

Asked why he continued to use the 100 million estimate anyway, Cussler testified on Friday, "I slipped up…. I forgot."

[…]In June 1999, Cussler described his frustration with the entertainment industry in a handwritten letter. "Over a hundred million books sold worldwide now, and still Hollywood doesn’t get it," he wrote.

In August 2000, Cussler’s website stated that he had sold more than 100 million books. The number was updated to 125 million in April 2003. That same month, Cussler said on a "Sahara" promotional video, "They tell me now they’ve sold over 130 million."

The remark "meant nothing," Cussler testified Friday.

The actual sales of his books from 1973-2000, according to an audit by a forensic accountant, is about 42 million copes. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty impressive number of books. You’d think Cussler would have been happy trumping that figure…without having to inflate it to 130 million. Then again, according to Cussler, it means nothing. If that’s so, why does he keep jacking up the number?

The reporting on the trial over the last few weeks has been fascinating and informative reading. We’re learning just how much people unapologetically and blatantly lie to each other in the movie business (as if we didn’t know already). We were also treated to a line-by-line dissection of the movie’s budget, right down to how much was spent on bribes.

As far as I’m concerned, both parties are at fault here. The only winners are the public, who are being treated to a trial that’s a lot more entertaining than SAHARA was.

National Treasure

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National Mark Evanier reports that the Mann National in Westwood is closing. I remember how wowed I was by that theater when I first came to Los Angeles in 1980 to go to school at UCLA. To me, the Mann National epitomized everything that was Hollywood. It was huge (this was the era before stadium seating), it was plush, it was gaudy, and it was glitzy. Every time a big movie opened at the theater, they’d paint a three-story reproduction of the one-sheet on the side of the building. And it wasn’t uncommon to bump into stars like Neil Simon, Dustin Hoffman, and Sean Connery at the popcorn counter. I once nearly collided with Woody Allen on my way out of theater…because I was busy staring up at one of those  big movie poster paintings. I saw hundreds of movies at that theater while I was in college…and every time I’ve driven past the building since, I’ve thought about those movie poster reproductions. I’m sorry to see the theater go…but given the value of real estate these days, I’m not surprised.

Call’em as you See’em

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Karen Scott talks on her blog about how much she likes sex scenes that tell it like it is:

I love good sex scenes in my books. I love books that call a cock, a cock, and a pussy, a pussy…

That’s certainly what I try to do in all my DIAGNOSIS MURDER books. Karen believes that sex scenes are required in a good romance novel. 

If the love scenes are well written, then I’m likely to buy, if not, I’ll
probably leave it on the shelf. Does that confirm every stereo-type out there
about romance readers? Probably, but I’m not here to promote respect for the
genre, so I couldn’t really care less.

[…]It
bemuses me to think that there are hundreds of thousands of romance readers out
there who pretend that sex in books don’t matter to them, when in reality, it’s
probably what they’re secretly looking for.

Secretly? All you have to do is look at the covers to know what the books are selling and what the readers are buying.