The Mail I Get

Wheeler Life

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I received this email today from Phil Hawley:

Having learned about Richard S. Wheeler during a visit to your blog, and after reading some of his wonderfully rich and vivid stories of the West, I wanted to write and find out if you k51ip53amuql__ss500_new about his recently published literary memoir—An Accidental Novelist If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest that you order a copy (the publisher is Sunstone Press).  Mr. Wheeler’s memoir is a gem.  In fact, I’ll send you a check for the cover price if you’re not delighted by his  noble story.  He is candid in his portrayal of personal failures; ironically, it’s these stories that put his courage and insight on vivid display for the reader (though I’m certain he wouldn’t use these words to describe himself).  His earnest and humble nature are evident in every anecdote, but it’s his incredible fortitude in the face of wrenching setbacks that pulled me into this book (while I should have been working!).  His insights and perspectives about the writer’s life, the publishing industry, and genre fiction are fascinating for fledgling novelists like myself, but I suspect all writers will enjoy reading the remarkable story of this man’s literary career.

I didn’t know that Richard Wheeler had written a memoir. But now that I do, and being a big fan of both the man and his work, I’m ordering a copy right away.

Writer Beware!

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I got this email today from an aspiring screenwriter. I’ve removed the names:

My name is X. I am a writer.  Producer Z has been corresponding with me via email concerning one of my screenplays.  He asked me to email to him the first 10 pages of my script.  Before sending it I Googled him and found that he appeared to be legit.  After receiving the 1st 10 pages he emailed his phone number and asked me to call him.  During our conversation he said that he liked the script but because I am a new writer it would take a lot of time, effort and phone calls to get it produced. He then asked for $1, 500 up front or whatever I could afford.  I said to him that even though I am a novice writer, a producer asking for money upfront is a red flag and that I didn’t expect that from someone with his credentials.  He seemed a little embarrassed and backtracked on his request saying maybe I could pay him 15% of the sale.  He asked me to send the entire script to him via email and fedex because he is interested.  Please inform me of any encounters that you have had with Mr. Z.  Is he legit?  I am EXTREMELY hesitant.

You’re right to be uneasy. Producer Z is a notorious scumbag — don’t be fooled by the fact that he has some legitimate credits in his distant past. Asking you for money is highly unprofessional and tremendously sleazy. Do not send him your script or communicate with him any further. And you should register your script immediately with the WGA just to be on the safe side.

I Say What Happens

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I got this comment from Christie yesterday on a three-year-old post about someone I met at a mystery convention who wanted me to produce her great TV series idea.

For the sake of argument- assume you do have an excellent idea/script/series planned out. How would you, going from nothing, get to the point of having that on the air? Is it possible for a person to just hand it over to a producer and let them take the lead? Or is it completely necessary to do everything you did? Would it be possible to pass up the producing/directing/writing part, and just become the voice behind the show. The show-runner, as one may call it. As in "I say what happens" and "You make it happen".

I love these people who want a short-cut to becoming a showrunner that doesn’t involve any actual talent or experience. Clearly, Christie didn’t read my post very closely. I wrote, in part:

[…]television is a writers’ medium. The majority of TV producers are writers first and producers second. Every one of us wants to sell a TV series of our own. It’s the dream. It’s the chance to articulate your own creative vision instead of someone else’s. It’s the chance to not only write scripts and produce episodes, but also have a piece of the syndication, merchandizing, and all the other revenue streams that come from being an owner and not an employee.

[…]Getting to the point in your career that networks are interested in being in the series business with you isn’t easy. You have to write hundreds of scripts, work on dozens of series, and build a reputation as an experienced and responsible producer (Or you have to write and produce a huge hit movie, which often leads to an invitation to work your same magic in television). The point is, you don’t work that hard just to share the success with someone else who didn’t have to work for it.

What is the incentive to do all the hard work but give someone else all the money and control? There is none.

But don’t despair, Christie, it’s still possible to be someone who has never written, produced or directed a TV show and yet can still come up with an idea, hands it off to someone else to produce, and still gets to call all the shots and collect the money. All you have to do to is to earn the respect and power elsewhere …perhaps as a former network or studio president, or as a movie star, or as a bestselling novelist or successful screenwriter. 

Oh, wait, that would take some talent, hard work, and experience….and you don’t want to bother with any of that silly, unnecessary stuff. So I guess the answer is no, there isn’t a way you can be the person "who says what happens."

More Flops?

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I got this email from Antonio Lopez today:

I am a huge fan of your books on Unsold TV Pilots. I have found it so fascinating that when I finished Vol. 2, I was left wanting more. When do you plan on releasing another volume that brings us up to date to today’s unaired pilots. This seems like a project that could be updated every five years. Please let me know if you plan on bringing us future volumes.

People ask me this a lot. I started writing the original UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS book when I was nine years old and finished it in 1989, when I was in my 20s. I sold it to McFarland & Co, a small publisher in North Carolina, which brought the book out as an expensive, library-edition hard-cover. The book got lots of publicity and stayed in print for over a decade. When it finally fell out of print, I brought it out again (at no cost to myself) as a two-volume paperback  edition through the Authors Guild’s Back-in-Print program with iUniverse. I also produced two hour-long, primetime specials based on the book — one for ABC and one for CBS.

Over the years I’ve continued to casually gather data on unsold pilots for a future volume or TV special, but I doubt either will happen. I don’t have the time to write another book and there isn’t enough money in it for me to make it worthwhile. Besides, the world has changed since 1989 and the data on unsold pilots is now readily available to TV professionals through paid, on-line databases, which renders the need for my book obsolete. The "clip show" special has become extinct on primetime for the time being due to the success of reality shows and the skyrocketing costs of licensing TV and movie clips.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying no, Antonio, I don’t think I’ll be writing another volume of UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS any time soon…but I hope that someday I’ll have a chance to do another TV special. Thanks for your interest, though.

Hey, Did You Know That if Fanfiction Went Away, There Would Be No More Gays or Lesbians? What would we watch late at night on Cinemax?

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I got a long email the other day. It turns out it’s from the same blogger who thinks I’m a sad little man who longs to write fanfiction.  She writes, in part:

I am a fanfiction writer, a slash fanfiction writer at that, I am not as illustrious or ambitious or zealous as some but I am glad to be one. I am as proud to be a slash fanfiction writer as I am to a lesbian and let me tell you it is very much the same feeling.

[…]At fifteen I bumped into my very first piece of fanfiction and it was like a bolt of lightening and then a few weeks later when I read my first piece of slash- its was very much like the first time I ever consider that I might be gay. It’s that monumental feeling of freedom, of knowledge; you finally know why the world seems a little off.

[…]My point is that fanfiction to you and (I’ll be presumptuous and say) I get the impression writing is too, nothing more than a hobby or a job and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to understand that for a lot of fans this writing helps shape who they are.

[…]Do you hate gay people Mr. Goldberg? I don’t think that you do, even if you just objected to slash fanfiction, I still would not think that. But what is the difference between what you do and a father who tells his 15 year old son it’s not okay to be gay? If there is one I can’t see it and you can hide behind all the copyright laws that you wish, but I assure you it will be no different then how the church hides behind over-zealously translated bible script.

Why is it that the people who write & publish fanfic feel that if I oppose what they are doing I must be either homophobic or have no passion for writing myself?

I love writing and am passionate about it.  I’m extremely fortunate that it’s also how I make my living and support my family, too. But believe it or not, loving to write…and making money doing it…aren’t mutually exclusive. 

But now by opposing fanfiction, I’m not just a passionless hack who writes only for the money…I am also preventing people from discovering their sexuality.

Call me crazy, but I think there are lots of ways you can discover and explore your sexuality without taking  characters you didn’t create or own, writing stories about them, and publishing them on the web without the author’s permission. It’s one thing to write fanfic for yourself to fantastize about or as a writing exercise, it’s another when you publish and/or post the stories on the web without the original authors’ consent. 

I believe it’s theoretically possible that women will still discover that they are lesbians without writing and publishing/posting stories about Buffy and Xena exploring the joys of sapphic love together…and that men might continue to discover their gay selves without writing and publishing/posting stories about Harry Potter giving Ron blowjobs…

A Sweet Guy

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I got this email a couple of weeks ago and My brother Tod got one very much like it from the same guy:

Take
your slanders about me off your blog now, Goldberg.  You thought it was cool
and you could destroy someone with your filth.  Take it off, I beg you.  I don’t
really know what I’m capable of, but this force is getting beyond the inertia
phase, and if you don’t silently retract this shit against me, I might
have to spend a lot of time and money convincing you that this was not a right
transaction.  I don’t know you and don’t want to.  Just take all
reference to me off your blog or I might get the idea to buy some people to make your life difficult.  You had
a good laugh at my expense in cyberspace and you think you can just get away
with it without any consequences but that’s not how it works.  If I have
to come to where you live and beat the shit out of you or hire others to do so,
well, then, what did you expect?  Get this stuff about me off your internet
sites or pay the price.  I’m really fed up with your idiocy and am
convinced that you need to be taught a lesson, asshole.

I didn’t respond to this one. Instead, I called a friend at the LAPD, we filed a police report, and got a restraining order against the guy who, as it turns out, still lives at home with his mother.

Writing for The Snake Guy

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From my mailbox this week:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

I have written a story that would make a great movie. The actor XYZ has read it and he thinks it’s really good. He would love to see it as a screenplay, but here is the problem: I have never done that before and have no experiences in turning a script into a screenplay. Can you please help me with this? You can take the credits for the screenplay, if it is made into a movie. It would mean so much to me. I hope to hear from you soon.

I declined her kind offer and suggested that it probably isn’t a good idea to be pitching movies when you admittedly have no skill as a screenwriter and no experience in movie making.  The actor she mentioned, by the way, is nobody I’ve ever heard of. So I looked him up. His major roles recently include "Short Order Cook," "Instructor," "Snake Guy," and "Trucker #1" in several movies that I also have never heard of. I can see why she’d be excited by his interest in her movie idea.

Go After The Scammers

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I received this email from Phillip R. Dolan, who got the rights to his manuscript and his money back from PublishAmerica. Rather than paraphrase his email, I am reposting it in its entirety:

Some scam publishers can be stopped. Publish
America’s contract has an arbitration clause to prevent authors from suing them.
To me, it seems to be a mistake because lawsuits are expensive and time
consuming. Arbitration under their contract requires that the American
Arbitration Association rules be followed. Those rules are user friendly and
inexpensive, especially when the prevailing party is reimbursed for all fees and
expenses. Even attorney fees if one uses an attorney. Anyone with a high school
education can handle an arbitration if they are so inclined.

Anyway, I filed for arbitration against PA and won. It took
eight months and I did it without an attorney. My contract was rescinded (not
just terminated) to the date it was signed and I received damages and expenses.
I thought this would be but the first of many arbitrations and that PA might be
driven out of business. It cost them quite a bit.

To help other authors complete arbitrations I posted how I
had done it, including my mistakes, at Arbitration And How To Do It (PublishAmerica, Publish
America)

http://p208.ezboard.com/bedandsootswritersguild

I had a forensic accountant examine PA’s sales records and
posted that info. I had an intellectual property attorney analyze the whole
thing and I posted excerpts of that. Together it is a blueprint of how to know
when PA breaches the contract and how to make them pay for it and get author’s
rights returned.

In about six months there have been 4,691 views just of the
accountant’s report so I know a lot of people have looked at the arbitration
material. But not one author, other than me, has filed
for arbitration. Two other anti-scam sites even offered to pay all the costs
attendant to arbitration. Not one PA author took them up on it.

I think that any author who feels they were scammed by
PublishAmerica and refuses to take any action other than complaining is right
where they should be.

Phillip R. Dolan

I Wrote a Book and it’s Up for the Nobel Prize in Literature

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I’m not a book critic, but even so every-so-often I get hit up by authors or publishers who’d like to send me a review copy of a new crime novel. I received a solicitation today from an author, and his pitch included the following publicity material (the names have been deleted to protect the innocent):

[The Book] has been blurbed by Famous Author #1, Famous Author #2, Famous Author #3 and Famous Author #4.  It’s up for the 2006 Edgar Award for Best First Novel – Famous Author #1 seems to believe it’s a shoo-in to win.

First off, the 2006 Edgars were announced last year and his book wasn’t one of them. He’s actually referring to the 2007 Edgars for books published in 2006. Fine. But it appears that he’s implying that his book has been nominated for an Edgar…which it hasn’t. At least not yet. The nominations won’t be announced until February.

So what he’s bragging about is that his book has been submitted for Edgar consideration. That’s hardly an achievement. Anybody with a crime novel published in 2006 could submit their book for consideration…and probably did. We’re talking about hundreds of submissions.

I  explained this to him as politely as I could and, to reinforce my point, I included the list of about 100 other authors who were "up for an Edgar" in the same category as him. I suggested that he drop the frivolous Edgar reference from his pitch.  What I didn’t say was that bragging that he was "up for an Edgar"  made him look ridiculous. He replied:

thanks for catching that about the Edgars, wasn’t trying to be squirrely — i’d best change it to "it’s in submission for the Edgars."

I cringed from head-to-toe in embarrassment for the guy. I probably should have dropped it there, but I wrote him back and told him that submitting your book for Edgar consideration isn’t an achievement, either. Any author with some postage stamps and a book out in 2006 could do that. What I didn’t tell him was that bragging about sending his book to the Edgar committee would make him look even more ridiculous than what he’d already written.

He may be a great writer but he has a lot to learn about self-promotion.

UPDATE  (Jan 19, 2007) He wasn’t nominated.  So much for being a shoo-in.

The Airleaf Morons

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Today, I picked up a letter sent to me in care of Mysteries To Die For, a bookstore in Thousand Oaks, California. The letter was from Airleaf Publishing, the vanity press company formerly known as Bookman Marketing, and they were offering to "sell MY GUN HAS BULLETS to a national audience!"  for the low, low price of $3000.

I wrote about these parasites back in November… when this same "opportunity" to flush your money down a toilet cost a whopping $7000. Since then, it appears that they’ve become a shade less greedy but monumentally more stupid.

The incompetence represented by this letter is so extreme, I almost don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with them sending this pitch to a successful, published author who has castigated them publicly for their business practices before.

And where do these idiots send their letter? They send it to me in care of a bookstore that’s already selling my books.

The folks at Airleaf Publishing are obviously trolling the catalogs at  iUniverse and other competing vanity presses,
figuring if the aspiring authors could be suckered once, they could be
suckered again.

But the dimwit who is doing the trolling apparently
doesn’t know when he’s picking books that are part of either Mystery Writers of America Presents or Authors
Guild’s Back-in-Print programs (both of which reprint
previously published books through iUniverse as a free service for their members).

The dimwit doesn’t realize that when he picks books from the MWA Presents or Back-In-Print authors,  he’s
dealing with experienced professionals who haven’t paid to be published and who know
better than to be suckered by an insanely pricey vanity press come-on.

The Airleaf Publishing corporate policy must be to hire people who are "mentally challenged" or born with only a brain stem…and to hope whoever gets their letters are just as stupid and have high credit lines on their Visa cards.