The Mail I Get

My Pool Man is Probably a Producer, Too

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I got this email the other day from a publishing exec I know:

I have an author in Minnesota who is working with a production company to produce a movie from one of her books, but the production company is a little stuck. They are looking for funding and distribution but don’t know for sure where to begin. Do you have any advise on where they might start?

Of course they’re stuck. They don’t know what the hell they are doing. A real production company, which this company clearly isn’t, would know how to finance and distribute films. Clearly, the author  optioned her book to amateurs and wanna-bes (or worse, complete frauds) who know nothing about the business they claim to be in.  If it’s not too late, back out of the deal and run screaming from these people. Anybody can call himself a movie producer, that doesn’t mean he is one.

 

Tie Me Up

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I got this email today from my brother Tod about my buddy James Kosub, worldwide President of the Lee Goldberg Fan Club:

You’ll be happy to know that the man who once lambasted you for writing
tie-ins, is now trying to get a job…writing tie-ins. I fucking love that guy!

I had to check this out for myself. Sure enough, Jim is sniffing around for tie-in work:                         

I sent an email to a gentleman at Black Flame
today, inquiring about possible work on the media tie-ins his imprint
produces… The way I figure it is this: go where the work is… It’ll be a challenge, I’m sure. It’s always easier to work with
wholly original material than with licensed properties, but it’s a
credit and a paycheck, and that’s what matters.                           

This struck me as an odd switcheroo, coming from a man who once described me as follows:

"For a man who makes his living writing television show
pastiches for those who cannot summon the intellectual wherewithal to tackle
original mystery fiction, he’s painfully full of himself…"

I wish Jim the best of luck in his endeavors to become as painfully full of himself as I am.  If you would like to find out more about the tie-in field,  I invite you to visit the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and browse through their wealth of articles on the subject.

Tit for Tate

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For some reason, I've received lots of emails lately asking about Tate Publishing. Here's one:

My daughter (14 years old) recently submitted (through her school) a children’s book that she wrote.   Surprisingly, she received a contract to publish her book from Tate Publishing.  However, they are asking us to invest almost $4,000.  I am simply trying to determine if Tate is a vanity publisher, POD publisher, or what?  I want to support my daughter, but I want to be educated first.  I cannot find much on the internet about Tate Publishing.  Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

I can't imagine why any school or responsible teacher would submit student work to a vanity press, but that issue aside, here's what I told her (which will be familiar to any of you who read this blog on a regular basis):  Legitimate publishers pay YOU, not the other way around. Any publisher that asks you for money in return for "publishing" your book is a vanity press.  If you are intent on publishing your daughter's work in book form yourself, go to Lulu, you won't have to pay a penny out-0f-pocket, or you can create an ebook edition for the Kindle and sell it on Amazon absolutely free.

Here's another email I received about Tate:

What can you tell me about Tate Publishing Co? Unfortunately, I have already invested almost $ 8,000 in 2 books, both of which are now published. I visited their offices twice, met the staff and felt they were legit Christian organization.

I don't know what being Christian has to do with anything. What makes him think that a Christian won't rip him off? I guess he 's unfamiliar with most TV evangelists and their "send me your cash" brand of faith and spirituality. But that's a different issue. 

As far as Tate goes, I told him basically the same thing I told the other person: Tate is a vanity press. They make their money selling books to desperate, naive, and gullible authors, not to readers. You can self-publish your book, for now cash out-of-pocket, elsewhere. But if you are intent on throwing your money away, I'm sure you can find some Christians at another, far less predatory, vanity press who will print your manuscript in book form for much, much less money.  

Updated 2/10/2010

UPDATE 6/1/2012: Those lovely people at Tate are in the news again, this time for firing 25 employees and threatening others who dared to speak about the company's plans to outsource their sleazy vanity press operation to the Phillipines.

Tate Publishing President Ryan Tate said the company is opening an office in the Philippines, but denies there are any layoffs planned. He said the 25 workers who lost their jobs Thursday were terminated for breaching confidentiality agreements in their employment contracts after leaking rumors about the outsourcing.

[…]In a recording of an employee meeting held this week obtained from a Tate employee by The Journal Record, Ryan Tate threatened to sue staff members and file liens against their houses and cars if they violated their employee contracts by talking to the media or sharing information about the company on Facebook and Twitter.

In the recording, Ryan Tate said he would fire 25 production workers after no one came forward to take responsibility for the anonymous email sent out to employees on Sunday that decried the rumored layoffs.

“Good people are going to lose their jobs – it’s not fair,” Ryan Tate said in the recording. “It’s not right, but that’s the reality of the situation. Jesus himself is the perfect mix of mercy, grace and justice. I have probably failed you in that I have been a little too lenient and a little too on the side of mercy and grace and not on the side of justice.”

At the meeting, Ryan Tate then went on to say several employees had already been named as defendants in a $7.8 million lawsuit for breaching their employee confidentiality agreements. A search of state and federal court filings revealed that no such litigation has been filed as of Thursday, a fact Ryan Tate later confirmed. 

Punishing Yourself

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I leave the country for just a couple of days and the nation falls into anarchy. I got this email while I was away:


Your friend James Kosub has posted some damn fine — and damn patriotic —
PUNISHER fan fiction on his blog. I’ve read it and, well, it made me think
and it moved me on an emotional level.  And, of course, he mentions you in
the premamble to the post…

Jim is, afterall, the President of my fan club. So I took a peek at his introductory comments:

It isn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever dumped out of my brain and onto
paper, but it’s still a solid, post-9/11 action/commentary story.

[…]Coupled with my very positive
experience playing The Punisher on the Xbox, and finally seeing the new movie with Thomas Jane, I figured now was as good a time as any to share.

And already the critical raves are coming in…from his wife.

Still a powerful and effective piece, and it could easily be expanded beyond the "Punisher" main character.

I haven’t read the fanfic, but I doubt anything could capture the enormous cultural, political, and emotional impact of 9-11 quite as well as some of James Kosub’s fanfic stylings. But I’m with Jim’s wife on this one. It’s a crying shame that he chose The Punisher as his muse instead of Willy Wonka. 

Do My Homework For Me, Please

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I got this email today:

Dear Mr.Goldberg:
I am rather interested in learning English through reading, and recently I came upon a text entitled "They Stole Our Childhood", which was probably written by you a long time ago, I guess. I enjoyed reading the text, especially your humorous style, but I found that I could not understand two sentences very well: 1.  when our long-pressed childish side rears its playful head; 2. We can start by realizing that this   generation, which may have it together intellectually, paid with its adolescence.  I am wondering if you could explain to me what you mean by saying these? Thank you very much, and looking forward to hearing from you.

I wrote the essay as a "My Turn" column for Newsweek back in the early 1980s.  The piece has since been republished in a number of textbooks, including "Marraige and the Family Experience" , "Writing Talk: Paragraphs and Short Essays With Readings," and "Designing Ideas: An Anthology for Writers."  What amused me about her email was that she went to the trouble of hunting me down… just so she could ask me to do her homework assignment for her.

Yes, that’s right, the questions she asked me were two essay assignments from her textbook. I admire her chutzpah — but I wonder why she didn’t put the same effort and creativity into actually doing her home work.

Speccing for an Agent

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I got this email from an aspiring TV writer today:

I’ve written a few solid spec teleplays and one good feature, and moved to LA and tried to make contacts and all the other things you’re supposed to do. I am, however, a teacher and not a PA or writer’s assistant, so making the right contacts is a little difficult for me.

My main interest is in television. A friend who works at a managment firm that rarely deals with TV writers recently told me I should start querying agents with my TV specs. How do I do that? I could write a feature query cold, for all the good it does anybody, but how do you write one for television? You can’t exactly use a logline to generate interest since you didn’t come up with the stories. Is my friend right? Would an agent even be interested in reading teleplays? Thanks for any advice you could give.

I honestly didn’t know how to answer her, so I asked a few TV writer friends of mine for their opinions.  One of them said:

I would tell her to get a list of ALL the agencies (available through
the WGA) and send out a letter of introduction to each one stating her
objective.  I would also include in the letter that she has several
specs available which sends the message she’s serious about this. 
Obviously if there’s anything in her background that can set her apart
(awards, short film produced, Jim Brooks read and liked my script,
etc.) that would be a plus.  If she sends to forty agencies and three
reply she’s ahead of the game.

Another TV writer/producer suggested much the same thing:

My best advice would be to show your TV specs (assuming they’re well-written
and not outdated) to anybody who will read them, including your friend at
the management agency that doesn’t do television.  If the work is really
good, it will be passed along to managers and agents who are looking for TV
clients – especially hungry junior agents.

Also, send out the dreaded cold letters, but target them well.  Find out who
represents the writers who currently work on the shows you like.  The WGA
will tell you if you ask.  Then send a letter to that person’s agent,
describing how you aspire to follow in the path of great writers like
(insert successful client here), and have two fabulous specs which will make
it easy for the agent to sell you.  I did this when I first started looking
for an agent – didn’t work, but I did get some reads.

But another writer/producer friend disagreed:

it’s hard for me to imagine a good agent would read a spec TV script unless s/he
  knew the writer personally or the script was recommended.

As for networking, one of my writer/producer buddies suggested:

Start attending WGA events, stay for the reception
afterwards and mingle your heart out.  Ask other writers who represents them
and how they got signed.  And don’t overlook my favorite: UCLA Extension
classes. 

Believe it or not, hanging out with other aspiring writers is actually a good way to make contacts in the business. Many of my producer-friends today are people I hung out with at TV show tapings and Museum of Broadcasting events twenty years ago. I’ll give you another example, One of the writers we hired on MISSING, who had no previous produced credits or script sales (but a killer spec and a great personality) was part of a screenwriting group at a Barnes & Noble.  When she got on staff of our show, all those people in the group suddenly had a "friend in the business," someone who could tell them, from first-hand experience, what the dynamics of a writers room were like, what kinds of specs the producers were reading, etc.

If you’re interested in attending a UCLA Extension class, my friend Matt Witten, a writer/producer on HOUSE, is teaching an introductory TV writing class this spring and I’ll be teaching one this summer.

Coincidence…or an in-joke?

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Someone wrote to me today:

Last night on GREY’S ANATOMY, Dr. McDreamy’s former best friend, the plastic surgeon who had an affair with McDreamy’s wife, showed up. Guess what his name  is? Dr. Mark Sloan.

I wonder if he solves crimes, too, and has a 40 year old son who still hasn’t left home. I haven’t seen the episode yet — it’s waiting on my Tivo.

How NOT To Get a Freelance Assignment, II

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I got this follow-up email from the guy who wanted me to pass along his "15 page episode" to the producers of MONK.

At great risk to her own life Queen Esther sought an audience with the king. He could have easily had her head chopped off but decided to listen to her. Not only did the king have Mordecai, enemy of the Jews, killed, but in doing so, he probably prevented his own murder. Esther’s actions were not based on her own ego but on the compassion she held for her people, the Jewish nation.

Although I could not hope to touch her majestic slippers, I tried to approach the network towers to suggest a new episodic teleplay, only to be told that I was arogant (sic). It was out of my compassion for my five kids and wife that I would even dare to dream. Not interested in becoming a network writer, I only wanted to make a little money to pay some of my mortgage and groceries. Now, how egotistical is that. As far as distinguishing between reruns and newly aired shows, I was at fault. But shouldn’t they be of the same caliber? I am a consumer. Don’t I have a right to voice my opinion? Not all the episodic teleplays can be stellar.
I just thought mine could be considered. But in order to do that, I would have to be talking with one would needed to be more like the king who was willing to listen.

How NOT To Get a Freelance Assignment

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I got this email today:

I know Tom Scarpling wrote the last episode of Monk, Mr. Monk and the Kid, which aired on Friday last. I was well dissapointed in it. It failed to show any real cleverness on Mr. Monk’s part. I don’t mean to be critical. I don’t watch the show all that much, only when I can come home from working 69 hours a week!
The acting was great, the human experience intriguing and endearing. But the sagacity and creativity was wanting.

I still have the 15 page episode which might shed  new light on Monk’s abilities. I have written two novels already. I am not a  professional but I can’t believe that true talent and creativity are relegated  only to the experienced.

I’ll alert the MONK writing staff to stop whatever they are doing until your "15 page episode" arrives. I’m sure there’s a lot they can learn from it.

"True talent and creativity" are not relegated only to the experienced — but experience, and a smidgen of knowledge, might have taught you that there’s no such thing as a "15 page episode." Hour-long, episodic teleplays are roughly 58 pages. Experience might also have taught you that telling the creators, producers, and writers of a show that you,  whose only connection to the program is infrequent viewing, can "shed new light" on their characters is outrageously arrogrant and probably not likely to win their favor.   Oh, one other thing…the episode you saw last Friday was a rerun from last season. A little research  doesn’t hurt, either.

UPDATE:  After I posted this message, something he wrote still nagged at me:  "I still have the 15 page episode," as if it was something I should be familiar with.  So I did a quick scan of the emails I’ve received over the last year to see if I have heard from this man before. Sure enough, I got an email from him last month:

Read more

Mr. Monk and the Fan Letter

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I got the following email about my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

I have finished reading your book. I was really excited to read it since I enjoy reading mysteries as much as watching them. I was disappointed to discover that despite the number of people who read it for you before you published it, there are still mistakes in the book.  For example, I read this on page two:

"If that’s the price of genius, them I’m glad I’m not one of them."

I winced when I read that. I believe the "them" should be a "then" instead.  Then, on page ninety-two:

"Mr. Monk came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk."

Reality check. Monk would not be with a glass of milk. He’s afraid of milk. One of his top 10 phobias if I remember correctly. What would he be doing with a glass of milk? The milk is never gone into further detail to explain why he would be with a glass of milk and not  freaking out at the same time.

That’s it for technical errors. On page one-eighty-eight Monk starts going through confidential case files for homicide, and lists the  culprits as if reading from a shopping list. Even for Monk, that is just too much. That embarasses the police department. It sounded cheap and tactless. It wasn’t necessary to stick that in there.  Otherwise, I thought your book was good. I’m looking forward to the
next one.  I hope there won’t be any mistakes in it.

Best Regards,

XYZ

P.S. My mother also read your book. She thought it could do without Natalie going on and on about Firefighter Joe as if it were a tacky romance paperback novel. In addition, Julie was a real brat.

I’m assuming the author of the note is a kid, so I went easy on her. I wrote back that the milk error escaped both me and MONK creator Andy Breckman and that occasionally some typographical errors slip by even the sharpest of authors and copyeditors. I didn’t comment on her other objections. I warned her that since I am human and so are my editors, there will probably be some mistakes in the next book, too, but that I’m hoping she will remain vigilant and catch them for us.