Current Affairs

The Runaway Train

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Corey Miller, a story editor on CSI: MIAMI, has an excellent post on his CBS blog this week about the pressures of series production.

Our shooting schedule lasts ten months out of the year. The writers
work eleven. The writers spend the month of June spitballing stories,
thinking about possible character arcs, and honing in on breaking the
first few episodes. We try to get as ahead as we can during this
period, because once shooting starts, there’s no turning back. We have
to have a new script completed every eight working days until the end
of the season. And we’re doing twenty-five.

As far as when the episodes air in relation to when they were shot, there is no pat
answer. It really depends on a number of things. This season, we began
filming our first episode on July 18. But it didn’t air until September
19. So there were two months in between. The episode that I’m doing
that shoots on December 7th is tentatively scheduled to air on January
30th. So you can see how that window has shrunk a bit, the deeper we
get into the season.

It’s all due to that pesky train, because once it is in motion, it’s a runaway.

He uses the runaway train metaphor and for good reason.  When I’m producing a series, I inevitably have the nightmare that I’m on a train, shoveling scripts into the boiler to keep the engine going…and that I just can’t keep up.

…And in other news, Michael Jackson is launching a program to help parents protect their children from pedophiles.

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From today’s news:

DENVER (AP) — Former FEMA
Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to
Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help
clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

”If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their
homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to
the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way,” Brown told
the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.

(Thanks to Ed Gorman for the heads-up)

ALIAS Axed

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Thanksgiving was death day in TV land.  TVSquad reports that ALIAS has been cancelled.

UPDATE: USA Today confirms the news. The series will end with a "big finish" in May.

"Alias is not going to wind down as it comes to an
end, it’s going to rev up, and we’re going to make it the event it deserves to
be," ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson said in a statement.

CBS Reaches Threshold of Patience

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TVSquad reports that CBS has cancelled THRESHOLD, one of the three alien invasion dramas launched this season (SURFACE and INVASION have both been picked up for the back nine).  Carla Gugino was terrific  in KAREN SISKO, but her talents were wasted in THRESHOLD, which tended to be the same episode every week.  Let’s hope she gets a third shot at a TV series…and that the next one works.

Nippletastic!

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Sarah Weinman stumbled on this hilarious review of George R. R. Martin’s new book A FEAST FOR CROWS. Apparently, it should have been titled A FEAST OF NIPPLES.

A FEAST FOR CROWS has to be the most nippletastic book I’ve read
since, oh, Candy. It felt like not a page went by that a pair wasn’t
being pinched, suckled, eyed, prized, fondled, lopped off (seriously) or
otherwise palpated. Boys’ nipples, girls’ nipples, big brown nipples, fulsome
nipples, nipples like black diamonds, lactating nipples, male pepperoni-style
nipples. All kinds of nipples. It makes me wonder if a retread of Lord of
the Rings isn’t in order, with 100% more detail on the hobbit nipples.

Doubling Up on Mediums?

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Variety reports that Lifetime has shelled out $1.3 million an episode for MEDIUM reruns, which is interesting, considering the network pays  only a little more than that for new episodes of MISSING, their first-run show about an FBI agent/medium who finds missing persons. In fact, MISSING is their only remaining first-run series. So the question I have for psychics out there, crime-solving and otherwise:…will Lifetime double up on mediums and keep MISSING, or does this pricey rerun deal spell doom for the show?

Still More Dollars and Sense

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Authors everywhere are getting their royalty statements in the mail, sparking a lot of blog talk about money. Bestselling novelist Tess Gerritsen says you don’t need to look at an author’s royalty statement to figure out how much he’s probably making:

If you follow the announced deals in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY or the
online website PUBLISHERS MARKETPLACE, you’ll start to get an inkling
of what multi-published authors are getting. But you can also guess,
knowing typical royalty rates, what an author is probably worth in real
dollars. With major publishers, hardcover royalties tend to run around
12 – 15% and paperback royalties tend to be around 6- 10% of cover
price. So a writer who’s sold 25,000 hardcover copies has earned
$75,000 in royalties in hardcover sales alone, and his next book deal
should certainly reflect that. His next advance should be, at a bare
minimum, $75,000. (And we’re not even talking about paperback earnings
yet, which will be on top of that.) More likely, the next advance will
take into account continued growth, and will probably reach well into
six figures.

But once you get into the stratosphere of NYT-bestselling authors, the
numbers may no longer be anchored to real sales figures, but may soar
much much higher. From my own observations of the business, authors who
consistently place in the bottom third of the NYT list (Positions # 11
– 15) are worth at least a million dollars a book, North American
rights. We’re talking combined hard/soft deals here, since most
publishers now retain paperback rights. If you consistently place
#6-10, your deals go even higher, into multi-million dollar range. Once
your books consistently place in the top third, the deals become wildly
unpredictable, because now we’re talking Harry Potter and Dan Brown
territory. Eight-figure book deals are not out of the question.

Of course, what you get really depends on how good your agent is. Novelist Laurie King left this comment on my post about author Sara Donati’s royalty chat:

[A] typical royalty division (for regularly discounted books sold in the US
market) is along the lines of 10 percent for the author on the first
5000 books sold, 12 1/2 percent on the next 5000, and after that 15
percent. Or more if, as you say, your numbers mean you can dictate to
your publisher what you want. Then 7 1/2 percent on trade paperback, 10
percent on mass market.

More Dollars and Sense

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There’s a lot of great inside-knowledge on the business of being a novelist from pros to be found on blogs lately, all of it pure gold for aspiring authors. Not so long ago, Alison Kent shared her latest royalty statement with the world. Now author Sara Donati explains  in simple terms how royalties and advances work.

I’m always surprised that many aspiring authors don’t understand how
the money works. A publisher offers you a contract, and an advance. The
amount of the advance doesn’t have to do with how good the novel is, or
how much they like it. A million dollars does not equal an A+. The
advance is their best guess on how many copies of the book they can
sell. No matter how much the acquiring editor loves your novel, the
publishing house does not want to overpay you. End of story.

Not exactly the end. She has a few more interesting observations to share in that post and in another one on the subject as well (UPDATE:  Sara made an error in her figures in her original post, which she has corrected and so have I:).

If you’re talking about a hardcover book, the author generally gets
10% on the first 1 to 25,000 copies sold, 12% on the next 25,000 and
15% on anything sold above 50,000 copies — after the advance is paid
out, of course. And these figures are negotiable. I would guess Stephen
King’s numbers are better.

For softcover, the range is much greater, usually someplace between
6% and 10% of the cover price, again with increases as the number of
sales climbs.

This probably is pretty sobering for those who are hoping to make a living writing fiction.

When Harry Met Ed

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Ed Gorman is talking today on his blog about Harry Whittington, one of my favorite writers. He wonders why the work suddenly dried up for this prolific and successful writer.

Harry was a pro’s pro. He did it all. I can understand how he stopped hitting
the top markets in the mid-60s. The market was changing, his kind of lean, mean
sex-and-murder book was no longer in fashion. But Harry could write anything.
And all his agent could get was flat-fee work for hire? Harry Whittington?

Dear Mr. Teriyaki, The Blowback

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Here are some of the reactions in the blogosphere to Dean Koontz’s "Mr. Teriyaki" speech.

From It’s Matt’s World:

It should be kept in mind that Koontz isn’t some anonymous man wearing
a white sheet over his head. He is a mainstream American author, whose
books have sold in the (probable) millions…
Koontz didn’t utter the words "chink" or "jap." Yet can it be disputed
that his speech was racist? It’s important to realize and understand
this, and not shy away from labeling it what it is. This is the only
way we can move forward and progress as a society.

There are
those who would argue that racism exists today only in the form of the
occasional march of men in white sheets, or whenever the "n" word is
uttered, or some member of a minority is dragged from the back of a
moving vehicle. But all that does is insulate us from the reality that
still exists. Racism is not dead, it is simply more insidious than it
used to be. It comes in the form of kids beating up on other kids
because "the Asians are smarter." It comes in the form of a popular
novelist stirring the pot of racial tensions and the bitter past. It
comes from comedians making jokes based upon racial stereoypes and bad
impressions of various ethnic accents. To ignore all of this and not
call it what it is, is to be complicit in the racism of the 21st
century. Surely, we can do better?

From Amy Ridenour:

Get a clue!  Black people were victims of slavery.  Jews were victims of the Holocaust.  Japan conducted the Bataan Death March.  Personally,
I’m not one for Bataan Death March humor. Doesn’t strike me as funny,
but not because I would fear offending the perpetrators, but because I
would not wish to make light of the horrors experienced by the victims.  The
difference between a victim and a perpetrator is a very clear one. It’s
odd, and rather worrisome, that some people don’t seem to see it.

From LAist:

Koontz doesn’t see anything wrong with his personal story of writing to
a Japanese movie executive and addressing him as Mr. Teriyaki while also
referencing low points in Japanese history to try to get his point across. He calls it George Carlin-esque. The difference may be though that a comedian
is just making jokes while, if Koontz’s anecdote is to be taken at face value,
Koontz really engaged in this behavior.

From Galleycat:

Steven Barrie-Anthony reports that "Koontz blames the brouhaha on
‘some sort of an agenda,’" and dutifully records the author’s
explanantion that he can’t be a racist because "I was a poor kid with a
Jewish grandmother and a great-grandmother who was black, [and] I grew
up in a dirt-poor family." Koontz also describes the letters that
prompted the controversy: "There’s some political incorrectness in it,
but nothing mean." 

Right. "We could have a few sake and reminisce about the Bataan
Death March" is absolutely not a mean thing to say to a Japanese
executive, just good-humored political incorrectness.