My Blog
Lazy Monday
I woke up at 6 a.m. on Monday…I would have liked to sleep more after a day without sleep, but that's jet-lag for you. I say in bed for an hour, trying to sleep, then got up, had breakfast at a nice little cafe, and spent an hour or so making notes on a feature rewrite that I am up for. Then I roamed around London as it woke up, too.
Stephen and his wife shared some fascinating stories about life in South Africa. They also shot a documentary in Africa…I didn't quite get what it was about, but part of it involved taking tribesmen up in a hot air balloon to see their land from the sky for the first time. Another actor, who I gathered is also a director, regaled us with tales about his time on location in India on SHARPE'S PERIL.
Anyway, I had a great time chatting while stuffing myself with Shaun's delicious steak & oyster pie, roast potatos, and all sorts of tasty dishes laid out buffet-style on a big table in the kitchen. I learned that the TV business in the UK is going through a rough patch, too. Shows are being asked to significantly trim their budgets or face cancellation. I was told that two hit shows, LEWIS and WIRE IN THE BLOOD, were cancelled over costs and that one of the networks is on shaky financial footing. I'm sure I will learn more about that when I have breakfast with my UK agent and head off together for some studio meetings.
London Calling
Just a few days ago I was in Cape Girardeau Missouri and today I am in London. The contrast is pretty jarring. I haven’t slept in over 24 hours so I am seeing the city through a Zombie’s eyes. It’s Sunday, all the stores are closed, but the streets are jammed with people. I don’t know if this is normal for London or not…but it looks odd to these bloodshot eyes. It’s 3 pm here…time for me to take a quick nap…then I will try to stay up until 10 pm to try to get a step ahead of my jet lag. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…
I am off to Europe in a few minutes for two and a half days in London and two and a half days in Munich. In London, I'll spend Easter Monday with actor Shaun Prendergast and his family (Shaun was one of the stars of my film FAST TRACK). On Tuesday, I'll be meeting my UK agent for the first time face-to-face for breakfast and then he's got meetings set up for me with some studios. Then I am jetting off to Munich, where I will be joining my good friends at Action Concept to pitch some projects to broadcasters. It's going to be a whirlwind week but I am really looking forward to it. It's been a year since I've been to Europe but it feels like much longer, especially after spending so many months working there in 2006 & 2007.
Revised Thinking
I watched the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA finale again tonight. Don't ask me why. Procrastination, maybe? Anway, I liked it much more the second time around. It's a better finale than I initially thought it was.
The Mail I Get
This one came today from Amazon Customer Service and the subject was "Your Amazon Inquiry." But I didn't make an inquiry. Here's what it said:
My name is Janet; I am a senior member of our Connect team, a part of my job
consists of deciding if AmazonConnect postings adhere to our guidelines. As
such, your account was brought to my attention.Some of your posts have been found to be spiteful. In order to facilitate
customer buying choices, we encourage authors to discuss their work and
information related to it, however posts that are spiteful will be removed.If this continues, we will remove your posting privileges from your
AmazonConnect account in accordance with our Conditions of Use.
My Amazon blog is a mirror of this one. I was curious which posts troubled Amazon (if it's really Amazon, of course… it's probably a ruse) and sent this note:
Spiteful? Oh my. Please indicate to me which specific posts of mine you believe are "spiteful" and why so I can better understand Amazon's thinking in this regard.
I'll let you know what they say.
Huh?
Fox is yanking DOLLHOUSE after episode 12 and will not air the 13th episode. Now, on the surface, that would scream "The Show is Cancelled." But the folks at DOLLHOUSE are spinning this news in a very odd way. See if you can follow this explanation from producer Tim Minnear:
Okay. So maybe I can help clarify this somewhat. Because we scrapped the original pilot — and in fact cannibalized some of its parts for other eps — we really ended up with 12 episodes. But the studio makes DVD and other deals based on the original 13 number. So we created a standalone kind of coda episode. Which is the mythical new episode 13. The network had already paid for 13 episodes, and this included the one they agreed to let us scrap for parts. It does not include the one we made to bring the number back up to 13 for the studio side and its obligations. We always knew it would be for the DVD for sure, but we also think Fox should air it because it's awesome.
If I understand this correctly, and I'm not entirely sure that I do, he's saying that the Fox Network ordered 13 episodes, which included the pilot, which was scrapped and cannibalized in subsequent epoisodes. But the Fox Studios made commitments to networks overseas and to a DVD distributor for thirteen episodes. So, since they were one episode short after dumping the pilot, the studio alone bore the cost of shooting an extra episode that the network doesn't feel like airing.
Keep in mind that the studio and the network are owned by the same people…Fox. They are simply moving cash from one pocket to another.
So here's the bottom line: Fox Studios paid to produce an episode that The Fox Network doesn't want to air (in other words, they don't want to pay a $3 million license fee for a show that's delivering terrible ratings). What does that tell you about the network's confidence in the show?
A lot.
More Vanity Press Kool Aid
Every time a major magazine or new outlet does a story touting self-publishing, in this case a piece on the CNN tech website, I get inundated by readers asking me what I think. So does Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware...only she probably gets it ten times worse than I do. She's written a post on the formula most of these articles usually follow. She says, in part, that they:
1. Pick a rare instance of self-publishing success–in this case, Lisa Genova, whose iUniverse-published novel Still Alice garnered a major publishing deal. Make sure not to tell the whole story–omit, for instance, the fact that Genova hired PR firm Kelly & Hall–the same firm that propelled self-published Brunonia Barry to success–to publicize her book, and acquired a literary agent as a result of the attention Kelly & Hall was able to generate.
2. Segue to the growth of self-publishing and the great possibilities it offers for budding authors, while taking a swipe at the commercial publishing industry. Totally ignore the contradiction inherent in the fact the success of the self-published author just discussed hinged on her transition to a commercial publisher.
3. Toss out a few random facts about self-publishing (not all of them necessarily relevant–Khatami notes that the self-published author "retains the copyright to his or her book," as if this were not the case with commercial publishing), while ignoring the issue of low sales (the average self-published book sells fewer than 200 copies) and limited distribution (most self-pubbed books are not distributed beyond the Internet).
These articles never mention the tens of thousands of dollars that these "successful" self-published authors had to spend…and how extraordinarily rare it is for vanity press authors jump to a real publisher, which despite their hoo-hawing for vanity presses is what they all want.
The CNN website story mentions that Lulu has published 820,000 titles since 2002 but they don't say how many of those authors actually sold more than a few dozen copies of their work. A real reporter might have asked that question…and posted the answer as a reality-check. But this was nothing more than a vanity press puff piece…the last thing anyone was interested in doing was shining a light on the ugly truth.
AuthorHouse's online Fact Sheet, updated in September 2008, reported 36,823 authors and 45,993 titles. According to the New York Times, AuthorHouse reports selling more than 2.5 million books in 2008, which sounds like a lot, but averages out to around 54 sales per title.
iUniverse's 2005 Facts and Figures sheet reports that the company published 22,265 titles through the end of that year, with sales of 3.7 million: an average of 166 sales per title. Obviously some titles can boast better sales (Amy Fisher's If I Knew Then sold over 32,000 copies)–but not many. According to a 2004 article in Publishers Weekly, only 83 of more than 18,000 iUniverse titles published during that year sold at least 500 copies. And in a 2008 article in The New York Times, iUniverse's VP, Susan Driscoll, admitted that most iUniverse authors sell fewer than 200 books.
The vanity presses make their money selling books to authors, not selling books to readers.
There are three more items on Victoria's list and I'm going to refer people to it every time they email me a mindless article like this one.
Goodbye, Starlog
Starlog Magazine is no more — at least not in print. This is very sad news for me because I put myself through school writing for the magazine (among others) and it had an enormous impact on my life that I am still feeling today.
On assignment for Starlog, I visited hundreds of movie and TV sets and interviewed so many actors, screenwriters, directors…people like Tom Cruise, Robert Zemeckis, Roy Scheider, Paul Verhoeven, Roger Moore, Michael J. Fox, Michael Crichton, William Friedkin, Sigourney Weaver, Richard Donner, Timothy Hutton, Gene Roddenberry, Richard Maibaum, Dan O'Bannon, Tom Selleck, Wes Craven, Kurt Russell, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Marquand, Tobe Hooper, Johnny Depp, George Lucas, and Lorenzo Semple Jr., to name just a few. And I learned a lot about the movie and TV business along the way.
I collected some of those interviews, along with articles by my friends (and fellow Starlog writers) William Rabkin and Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, in two books — Science Fiction Film-Making in the 1980s and Dreamweavers: Fantasy Film-making in the 1980s.
Perhaps the highlight of my time as a reporter for Starlog was when they flew me to London to cover the premiere of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, the first James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton.
All the journalists were invited by the studio to the premiere, which Prince Charles and Lady Diana were attending as well. We had to wear tuxedos and were driven to the event in limos. There were huge crowds being held back behind barracades in front of the Odeon Theatre as we pulled up. I got out of the limo just as a short young lady was emerging from the limo in front of me, so we walked in together. People were going nuts, taking pictures of us and waving. I leaned over and whispered to her: "Makes you wish you were famous, doesn't it?"
She laughed, patted my arm, and we parted in the lobby. Almost immediately I was swarmed by my fellow reporters. One of them asked "Do you know who you were walking with?"
I had no idea. I figured she was another reporter. He told me it was Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. I still had no idea who she was. So either she thought my remark was clever or that I was a complete dolt for not knowing who she was. But I like to think that somewhere out there is a photo from that event with a caption like "Chrissie Hynde with unidentified lover."
But, most of all, I am thankful to Starlog for my family. If not for the magazine, I might never have met the charming Lofficiers, which would have been a terrible thing…since they introduced me to my wife Valerie. We've been married for 19 years and have a 13-year-old daughter, Madison.
So for me, Starlog was more than a magazine that covered science fiction and fantasy movies, books and TV shows. It changed my life.
Good-bye, Starlog. I will miss you.
UPDATE: Starlog is gathering some of the reactions to the bad news. My good friend Dave McDonnell, long-time editor of the magazine, posted this:
"Lee Goldberg is an old friend of mine. His unsolicited interview "The Man who Killed Spock" (WRATH OF KHAN writer Jack Sowards) was on my desk the day I started. I lobbied to buy it and he wrote countless pieces for us."
It was my first national magazine sale and I was totally thrilled. That sale, along with tearsheets from some of my subsequent Starlog articles, led to me writing for Newsweek, United Press International, American Film, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times syndicate, among many others. But you never forget your "first."
UPDATE 4-15-2009: More reactions to the news from Entertainment Weekly, SFSignal, Bob Greenberger, Mark Evanier, John Kenneth Muir and my cousin Danny Barer.
An Unpleasant Word
The Winepress Group's print-on-demand vanity press Pleasant Word, which calls itself "a leading light in Christian self-publishing," is threatening to sue author Mark Levine for criticizing their business practices and proclaiming them "a publisher to avoid" in his book "The Fine Print of Self-Publishing" (which I favorably reviewed). Winepress/Pleasant Word sent out a press release through the Christian Communications Network that reads, in part:
His review of Pleasant Word closes with the statement that "there are plenty of honest Christian publishers. Find one."
In the book, Mr. Levine asserts that he holds publishers "who cloak their services around religion to a higher standard." However, he ranks another Christian publisher as "Outstanding," despite comparing poorly on many of the same criteria he used to judge Pleasant Word.
The Winepress Group has been a leading light in Christian self-publishing since 1991 and enjoys a reputation for integrity and quality within the industry. The company is also a member of the Better Business Bureau with an excellent record.
"This is not about a bad review," said Malcolm Fraser, the Executive Officer at WinePress, "Mr. Levine's research was certainly poor and his conclusions are totally inconsistent, but he's entitled to his opinion. However, he has misrepresented the facts and published statements that are blatantly untrue. His accusations of dishonesty cross the line into slander and break the law. It's potentially very damaging to our reputation and harmful to everyone connected with the company."
What Levine has done is scrutinize Pleasant Word's contract and fee structure in detail and comes to the conclusion that company is not very author friendly. For instance, Pleasant Word claims they give their authors, excuse me customers, 100% of the net profits, which Levine says is not the case:
The author makes 100% of the profits after Pleasant Word nearly doubles the printing price and adds a handling fee
For a book priced at $17.99 and sold on Amazon, Levine calculates that the author's royalty is a mere fifty cents…while Pleasant Word pockets $3.60. Praise the Lord. Levine writes:
I believe it's a compromise of Christian values (and just about every other moral value I can think of) when a publisher leads authors to believe that its printing costs are 100% higher than they actually are.
[…]When a publisher choose to make religion a central focus of its service and writes copy that suggests that due to strong Christian principles authors "know they can trust us," the publisher has a duty to be over-the-top honest. Being less than forthright about the real printing costs, while advertising how honest and Christian it is, instantly makes Pleasant Word a publisher to avoid.
[…]There are simply no pleasant words to describe the business practices of this publisher.
For the record, Levine also lists Tate, another "Christian" vanity press, among the self-publishers to avoid. But he praises Xulon Press as "hands down […] the best exclusively Christian self-publishing company out there."