My Blog

Death By Committee

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Sarah Weinman is discussing the long road to the bookshelves for Sam Lipsyte’s HOME LAND, which ended up being published in the UK before finally showing up here as a trade paperback.

And furthermore, the growing trend of many
houses to vote by committee — something that can be lethal to a
satirical novel like HOME LAND. One
editor who tried to buy it, only to have his editor in chief kill the
sale, argued that the decision-making by editorial committee at most
major houses around the city "tends to flatten out the aesthetic."

I’ve been there, more times than I’d like to admit.  My upcoming novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE made the rounds all over New York. I got excited every time my agent called to tell me that an editor absolutely loved it. Inevitably, the book was killed in committee every time. I finally told her not to tell me anymore if an editor was enthusiastic about the book…I only want to hear about it if it made it out of committee. I never got that call.

After two years of bouncing all over NY,  the book finally ended up at Five Star, which will be publishing it in hard cover in November. Five Star has become known in mystery circles as the home for "published authors’ unpublished manuscripts"…the book gathering dust in the drawer… and I am thankful for them (they also published my novel THE WALK). They’ve picked up quite a few midlist series/authors that have been dumped by their publishers.  Lately, Five Star has been making noise, and raising its profile considerably in the publishing biz, with critically-acclaimed books like Harry Shannon’s MEMORIAL DAY and Bob Levinson‘s ASK A DEAD MAN, which got a starred review in PW and hit the LA Times bestseller list this week.

The imprint is run by famed book packager/editor Marty Greenberg and author/editor  Ed Gorman. They don’t buy books by committee… they do it the old-fashioned way.  Their editors read manuscript and, if they like’em, they buy’em. They also do something else the old-fashioned way — they treat their authors with respect, pay them promptly, publish quickly,  and put out handsome books.

You’d Think Anybody Who Has Read This Blog Would Know Better Than to Send Me This Shit…

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Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of junkmail solicitations from con artists who prey on aspiring authors.  Here are two of the latest. One is from a guy who is offering to interview me on his radio show… for a price.

ATTN: Lee G – Want to be a radio Star? I can make you a  bestseller by advertising on my radio show Call me 781/860-9548. My name is Stu Taylor. I provide a unique service for publicly traded and private companies.  I am the host of two nationally syndicated, weekly radio shows, both entitled Equity Strategies that are broadcast on Radio America Network and the Business Talk Radio Network. For a modest fee, I will serve as a host and  interview a member of your management team to achieve whichever goals matter to you. Stu Taylor will also assist your company with public relations and media relations. Your success in business is Stu Taylor’s success.

That’s because your money will be going into his pocket. Don’t you just love people who refer to themselves in the third person? Well, let me tell you, Lee Goldberg won’t be calling Stu Taylor any time soon. Lee Goldberg urges you not to, either. If your book is any good, and if have any promotional skills at all, you should be able to score some free radio interviews on your own.

The next piece of junk mail was posted here as a comment (which I deleted because my blog isn’t a bulletin board for Internet scam artists).  It came from Randy Gilbert & Peggy McColl, who run a "get rich quick" scheme for writers called the "Zero Cost Bestseller Formula" (which they are also selling as "The Bestseller Mentoring Program")

Authors & Publishers – Tired of
  fighting for bookstore distribution? Even if you’re a complete computer
  novice and have no marketing expertise, we’ll coach you to follow our
  proven formula and . . .
We’ll Help You Make Your  Book An Amazon.com Bestseller  in Just 48 Hours … Guaranteed!

They say it’s the same formula that’s turned folks like Robin Sharma, George McKenzie, Rick Frishman, and Andre Lara into household names. What? You’ve never heard of them? How can that be?  The gist of their scheme, which they are offering for "a $385 discount" from their usual price (whatever the hell it is), is:

In short, the formula involves  getting people with big email lists to send out an announcement asking  people to buy your book on a given day at Amazon. This method isn’t “spamming” because only “opt-in” email lists are used.   To motivate people to purchase  the book, you promise them a lot of  digitally-downloadable “bonus gifts” for  when they submitted their Amazon email receipt.  For instance, buy a $20  book and you could get $500 of more of extra bonuses – a tremendous   incentive to buy the book. Even better, because the formula uses email,  it  costs nothing to promote the book!

Their scheme is directed, of course, at self-published authors desperate for a short-cut to becoming the next John Grisham. ..and all too ready to hand their  credit cards  over to people like Randy & Peggy, whose come-on is:

Just think…for the rest of your life, people will hear the phrase “bestselling author” whenever you’re being introduced.

Randy & Peggy have several self-published books to their credit, including the  "Proactive Success – The Amazing New Science of Personal Achievement," "On Being a Dog With A Bone," "Success Bound: Breaking Free of Mediocrity" and "The Eight Proven Secrets to Smart Success." They also have a company called "Bargain Publishing Inc." Hmm.

Randy, who likes to call himself  "Dr. Proactive," also hosts  "The Inside Success Show" Internet radio program and, get this, he actually managed to score an interview with  Peggy! Wow.  On his website, he says he was "priviledged" to interview her and he offers you this fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:

Gold  Member Mania!  Click here and learn how to become a Gold Member  so you can hear all our shows, plus
download convenient MP3’s,  plus get discounts on other products,  and  get much much more.  (All shows are now valued at over   $2,000, plus  you get two other Gold Memberships and Mega-Bonuses.)

Such a deal! But I’ve got to wonder…  how good can their advice be if their idea of a brilliant promotional move is  to post their get-rich-quick come-ons on my blog? Here’s my key to success and I’ll give it to you absolutely free (you don’t even have to be a Gold Member) — stay away from get-rich-quick schemers and Internet scammers who say they’ll make you a bestselling author.  Spend your money instead on some good creative writing courses from established authors (like my brother Tod). Work on making your writing better and learning your craft.  You become a bestselling author by writing great books — not by writing checks.

The Quill Awards or the Shill Awards?

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The book industry is trying to sex itself up with a new award show called The Quills. As the LA Times described it a few days ago…

the book industry is taking a page, so to speak, from Hollywood, and backing the
Quills, a new national award event that would be a conflation of the Oscars and
the People’s Choice Awards. But instead of movies, TV or pop music, it would be
a "consumer-driven celebration of the written word."

While the Oscars are chosen by members of the Motion Picture Academy, and the Emmy’s by members of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Quills will be selected by  6,000 booksellers and librarians drawn
from the subscription list of Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine, which is also sponsoring the awards with major NY Publishers. 

In a nod to the People’s Choice Awards, after the booksellers and librarians come up with five finalists in 15
categories from best romance to best religion/spirituality book, winners will be
chosen by regular folks who will vote  online or at Borders and
other selected bookstores.  The awards ceremony will be aired on the NBC owned-and-operated stations.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s David Kipen sees huge ethical problems with the Quill Awards, for obvious reasons.

What NBC Universal gets out of all this isn’t hard to guess. By wrapping itself
in the ermine mantle of literature for a couple of hours a year, it temporarily
inoculates itself against any future Nipplegate-like FCC imbroglios. But NBC U’s
upside is small beer compared with what’s in it for Reed Business International… in co-administering an
annual awards ceremony honoring the very industry PW covers, the magazine’s
conflicts of interest are, not to put too fine a point on it, ripe for the
plucking. For a suitable analogy, just imagine if, instead of the motion picture
academy, Daily Variety gave out the Oscars…. Variety must make easily half its
ad revenue just during Oscar season. If anybody thinks PW doesn’t see the Quill
Awards as a potentially comparable generator of humongous ad revenue from
publishers, I’ve got a short-story collection by a homely writer over 50 I’d
like to sell you."

Even with his reservations, Kipen is glad to see books getting more attention… even if that attention is the equivalent of an infomercial and an excuse  for PW to shill for advertising and subscription sales.

The TV Writers Social Contract

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What is it, exactly?

The folks at TVGasm believe it’s this:

We watch their shows and make them
rich. In return, they promise to work hard and prevent that show from
sucking.

But my writing/producing partner William Rabkin is confused.

I thought our social contract with the viewer required us to write
whatever storylines the "real" fans demand… to slavishly adhere to
the "rules" they set down in their fanzines… and to realize that
their fanfic is infinitely better than our produced work, because we’re
just doing it for money and they’re doing it for love. How many damn social contracts do we have with our fans?

So which is it? Hurry up and tell me, okay? Because I need to know before we start writing/producing another TV show.

Straight Guys Don’t Watch Queer As Folk…

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…but they’ll watch THE L WORD.  Gee, I wonder why. The show’s creator Ilene Chaiken, in an interview in the NY Times this weekend, makes passing mention about how popular her show is with straight guys who fast-forward pass the yak-yak-yak and the whine-whine-whine to the hot girl-girl action.

LwordBut if everyone agrees that the sex looks good, some have objected
that it looks, well, too good. With classically beautiful actresses
like Jennifer Beals, Pam Grier and Mia Kirschner, Ms. Chaiken
diplomatically said, "There are those viewers who perhaps rightly take
issue with the attractiveness of the cast."

The underlying
accusation is that she is playing to men, a charge she says she finds
mildly annoying since she is, after all, creating a show about sexy
young women in Los Angeles, not a documentary about asthmatic mill
workers in Pittsburgh.

I suspect most guys would watch female asthmatic mill workers getting it on…  if they all looked as good as Jennifer Beals. What’s wrong with playing to men, too? Ratings are ratings.  Of course, Chaikin’s comments imply that lesbians aren’t interested in watching attractive women having sex.  I suspect lesbians would watch female asthmatic mill workers going at it, too, if  Halle Berry was one of them.

(Shockingly, the wide-ranging discussion didn’t make any mention of the strident demands made by the "Save Karina Lombard" campaign  last June.  Could it be because nobody is going to miss her?)

LA Times Book Review Reviewed

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The Elegant Variations reviewed this week’s LA Times Book Review and managed to succinctly sum up everything that’s wrong with it:

Well, there’s a bit too much of the wrong lessons learned from the NYTBR – lots of space given over to policy and politics titles that will probably only attract the smallest of audiences. We know Book Review Editor Steve Wasserman wants to feel important and
all East-Coast-smartypants and we suppose overlong, dull reviews of
weighty titles is one way to do that.

And this week’s issue wasn’t even as dull as usual. C’mon, Steve, I know you want to educate all pf us unsophisticated, superficial, uneducated, DaVinci Code-swilling, L.A. boobs… but can you puh-lease  give us a thought-provoking, intelligent, inspiring, and relevant Book Review that doesn’t read like a software manual?

No, He’s Not Talking about LOST…

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From TVGasm:

What the hell was that? Seriously. Aren’t we in some sort of social
contract with television writers? We watch their shows and make them
rich. In return, they promise to work hard and prevent that show from
sucking. Yes, eventually all shows wear out their welcome and plod
along with uninteresting storylines. I understand that sometimes things
are going to seem repetitive and even overly staged. But that shit
isn’t supposed to happen until at least the third season. I’d rather be
performing on stage at a Tijuana donkey show than watch another
episode of…

I don’t really care what show he’s talking about… I just liked his bit about the social contract we writers have with our audience. I think he’s right.

LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL EDGAR UNIT

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The Edgar Nominations just came out… and LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT got four out of the five "Best Teleplay" nods.  It’s astonishing to me that the judges could do that when there are so many great mystery shows out there…  THE WIRE, THE SHIELD, THE SOPRANOS, LAW AND ORDER SVU, CSI, WITHOUT A TRACE, NYPD BLUE, NCIS, THE PRACTICE, 24  and COLD CASE to name just a few.  We are enjoying a bounty of crimes shows on TV today… but you wouldn’t know that looking at the narrow nominations. Instead of celebrating the wonderful diversity and quality of  crime shows on TV today, we nominate L&O:CI four times.

It’s no mystery why it happened: the committee didn’t reach out beyond what was sent to them. Rene Balcer, the executive producer of L&O:CI, inundates the committee with cassettes of every single episode. No other show, or producer, is as diligent about submitting work as he is. He makes it easy for them.

I’m not saying L&O:CI isn’t deserving of nomination ( it certainly is) or that Rene was wrong to submit as many episodes as he could (I would, too!)  but giving the show four out of the five slots? That’s just wrong. Did the committee members actually watch any television this year?

When I’ve served on the best movie committee, we didn’t wait for the films to be officially submitted…we went out and watched every mystery/crime movie that was released on our own.  We took some initiative (otherwise the only nominees would have been the two producers who sent us their movies). Clearly the committee this year didn’t take the initiative… and it’s a shame. The Edgars, at least in TV, are less relevant because of it.

By the way, here’s a list of the shows that submitted episodes/screeners to the committee…you’ll notice more than half of the 55 submissions came from L&O:CI (16) and L&O:SVU (14).