My Blog

Run Away Screaming from Hilliard & Harris

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I got this email today:

I am thinking about submitting my mystery/romance/thriller to Hilliard & Harris. What can you tell me about them?

In my opinion, Hilliard & Harris are essentially a Print-On-Demand vanity press that gets you to pay on the backend rather than upfront (if you don’t include what you pay to buy copies of your own books). Here’s how they do it:  they load their contract with an enormous number of egregious charges against royalties so that in the highly unlikely event that your book does make money, you won’t see much of it.

For example, they deduct from your sales the cost of returns, cost of printing, cost of shipping, sales transaction costs, cost of insurance, commissions, discounts, cost of promotion, collection costs, taxes, as well as "other reasonable costs,"  just in case they left anything out, like maybe their electric bill and the pizzas they had for lunch.

None of their listed costs, with the exception of returns, are "reasonable" charges against royalties. But since they are primarily a POD publisher, the cost of returns is a moot point anyway. No reputable, legitimate publisher charges authors for printing, shipping, insurance, collections, promotion, commissions, taxes and "sales transaction costs" (whatever the hell those are)…but vanity presses do.

That’s only one example of the many objectionable terms in their loathsome contract, which an author would have to be insane to sign. Run away screaming.

My Brother Gets BURNED

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Today, my brother Tod talks about his new, three-book deal to write original novels based on the USA Network series BURN NOTICE:

How this came about is how many things come about when you’re not
expecting them — your brother calls you from a scratchy phone in
Germany and says, "Hey, do you like the show Burn Notice?" You reply,
"Yeah, I love it. It’s like an Elmore Leonard novel crossed with Steven
Soderbergh’s direction and a dash of Albert Brooks’ mother issues for
good measure. Why?" And then twenty minutes later you’re on the phone
with your agent, 36 hours later you’re making demands of the publisher,
72 hours later you’re sitting down with Matt Nix […]and you’re discussing the show he created, Burn Notice, and then, about
100 hours later, you’re figuring out just how on Earth you’re going to
meet your first deadline — February — without getting hooked on crank
(again)

Chuck Norris Jokes

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I’m a sucker for Chuck Norris jokes. I heard a few today that I hadn’t heard before…

Chuck Norris once walked down the street with an erection. There were no survivors.

Chuck Norris isn’t hung like a horse… Horses are hung like Chuck Norris.

If you misspell "Chuck Norris" on Google, it doesn’t ask, "Did you mean
Chuck Norris?" It just says, "Run while you still think you have a
chance."

Chuck Norris challenged Lance Armstrong to a "Who has more testicles contest"…Chuck Norris won by 3.

Variety Survey

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Variety is doing a survey of its readers. Here’s most of it (there were a couple of questions that I didn’t correctly copy-and-paste…but the
browser wouldn’t let me go back to get’em. If I recall correctly, one asked if I belonged to a
Guild and, if so, which one and the other asked me if I was Hispanic):

Read more

A Song for Spenser

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Like a white knight
strong and hopeful
lives by his code
proud and noble
Spenser For Hire
Rough and Tumble
He’d gladly risk his life to save humanity
he still believes in chivalry
on ABC

Those are just some of the cringe-inducing lyrics of this inane song cooked up by ABC to promote the premiere of SPENSER FOR HIRE…

Who Says There’s Anything Wrong with a Network Affiliate Owning a City’s Only Newspaper?

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I liked Ken Levine’s observation about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the WGA Strike:

Good news! The LA TIMES has begun its Oscar coverage with a weekly
special section called THE ENVELOPE. Meanwhile, strike coverage has
been relegated to the Business Section. I somehow can’t see THE DETROIT
FREE-PRESS not running stories about an auto strike on page one. But
then again GM doesn’t own the DETROIT FREE-PRESS.

The Times is owned by Tribune, which also owns KTLA, one of the major affiliates of CW, one of the TV networks hit by the strike.

Is Variety Publishing Lies?

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Nikki Finke posts a brutal analysis of Variety’s strike coverage, accusing the trade publication and its reporters of printing total falsehoods.

The trade’s Jason Blairs — oh, excuse me, Josef Adalian and Dave McNary — keep inventing stories which purport to show that less than 2 weeks into the strike wither the WGA’s resolve is withering, and/or its writers are going back to work, and/or even its late show iconic hosts are going to double-cross their teams of scribes. Just one problem: those stories are either totally fabricated or highly exaggerated.

[…]First, there was McNary’s article wrongly claiming the WGA was backing off its position on changing on Reality TV. (See my previous,  WGAW Says Variety Scoop Has No Reality). Then, there was Adalian’s and McNary’s fabricated story about The Young And The Restless soap opera writers returning to work by opting for "financial core" status with the WGA.

Both stories turned out to be totally false. Variety’s tiny correction on the soap opera story was buried in the back pages a few days later.

My take on this is that Variety’s so-called "reporters" are so used to retyping press releases and passing them off as "reporting" that they have no idea how to actually report a story. So they are simply publishing whatever their studio and networks sources feed them without bothering to do the basic work of a reporter.

But they also have no incentive to do any actual reporting. I know what I am talking about. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter for a trade publication. I know the pressure the advertising side exerts on the editorial side. The wall between the two in the trade publication world is very, very thin. By nature, trade publication rely entirely on advertising by the industry they are reporting on, which raises all kinds of ethical issues every single day. The fact is that the editors are under enormous pressure not to piss off the people who keep them in business…and those people aren’t screenwriters.

On the Yellow Brick Road

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Here are some pictures from the NBC picket line this morning. I’m the yellow munchkin.

A woman writer asked me if it was true that John Edwards was coming to the NBC picket line later in the afternoon. I said that it was. She beamed.Pb150079

"I love him so much," she said. "I think it’s great that he can talk to the dead."

"That’s John Edward," I said. "This is John Edwards."
"There’s only one  famous John Edward," she said. "And he talks to dead people."
"This John Edwards is running for President," I said.
She gave me a long look. "Does he talk to dead people, too?"

That was an honest-to-God conversation I had. On a picket line with elderly munchkins handing out donut holes. This is a strange world we live in.

Live from the picket line

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I am at NBC in Burbank this morning, nearing the end of my shift. At about 8, a guy parked across the street and came over to us. His hands were in his pockets and he looked uneasy.. 
He told us he was an editor and that he, and many other IATSE members, were embarrassed and outraged by the conduct of their exec director, especially by the letter that was released today. I didn’t know anything about the letter…I slipped out of the house without reading the paper. He wanted us to know that the editors were with us in spirit and we thanked him.
An hour later, a van pulled up and out spilled three original munchkins, one in her costume from The Wizard of Oz. The three of them must have been in their late 80s and sang the lollipop guild song as they walked with us.

"The lollipop guild is with you," said the lollipop kid and he handed me a donut hole.

John Edwards is coming by later but I doubt that he can top that.  Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T