IAMTW

I stumbled onto an interesting  interview, conducted about seven years ago, with novelist Mel Odom on tie-in writing. He says, among other things:

"A lot of ‘regular’ authors look down on media tie-in authors because they figure ‘You’re not doing real work. You’re not really being a writer. You’re doing knock-off stuff.’ There have been a lot of ‘regular’ writers who try to do what Chris Golden and I do, and they can’t because they don’t assimilate the world enough, or they’re trying to bring too much of their own stuff to it. Media tie-in writing is really tough, because you have to be strong writer, and walk-in there and tell the best story you can, while at the same time you have to set your ego aside and do it ‘their way’ to a degree, as far as ‘Buffy would never do this.’ ‘But, when I was a kid, I would do that…’

He wants to make sure that his books are more than just a screenplay in book form:

I feel that a lot of people, why they try to do novelizations, they squeeze the dialogue in between text descriptions. You know, ‘They were sitting in a restaurant. He had pancakes, and she had a milkshake, and he said…’ You know, and there’s a lot of novelizations that read that way. I don’t want mine to read that way if I can. I want to give them a book that has legs. If you do a really nice book, it may have legs and be out there longer than the movie is. The movie will come and go in a month or two, but if you write the book really well, there will still be people ordering it for a long time after the film has left theatres. There’s something about a book."

Yes, there certainly is.

Yeah, I have no idea what that headline means, either. But it’s the title of a post about the IAMTW on the Cross-Media+Transmedia Entertainment Blog,  which is run by Christy Dena, who describes herself as  a "universe creator and transmodiologist." She writes, in part:

One of the reasons for the paradigmatic change to cross-media world-creation is the emergence of transliterate creators

[…]One of the problems has been that each of these adaptations and extensions has been seen by the creators as isolated, as paratextual to the original work. The primary work (which can be the contemporary adaptation of an old literary peice), is the center of the creative universe…and all other mediums are satellites and inconsequential. This is a mono-medium-logic that is gradually giving way to a different paradigm of creations across media.

[…]The point I’ve been championing is that tie-ins are not always conceived as exterior to the storyworld to those experiencing it. […] If tie-in writers think that the expansion across mediums means the work should be assessed and experienced differently then we have problems. It is perhaps another reason why transliterate creators and taking care of all of the points-of-entry in different mediums themselves. The mono-medium logic of tie-in writers is best evidenced in their logo:

I’m not saying that all writers have to become transliterate…just the ones that work in the business of creating cross-media worlds.

I like to think of myself as reasonably intelligent…but I have no idea what the hell she is talking about. Could someone please translate it into English for me?

When you think of tie-ins, you probably imagine one movie novelization or one of the hundreds of STAR TREK original novels. But now tie-ins are going up-market. Publisher’s Weekly reports that HBO is aggressively developing it’s TV tie-in publishing program. They are hoping to repeat the success of cleverly-packaged and hugely successful books like SEX AND THE CITY: KISS AND TELL, which was sold in a fake alligator shoebox.

HBO v-p of licensing and retail James Costos, who joined the company
in July 2006, said he has a mandate to “raise awareness for all of our
licensed merchandise, which certainly includes books.” Costos said the
cable channel is looking to highlight the HBO book line by taking
advantage of its midtown New York retail store, Web site and
newsletters, as well as through its broadcasts.

Almost all of the HBO titles come from Melcher Media and the distinctive packaging of their tie-ins come with a hefty price-tag for consumers. But that hasn’t slowed sales. In fact, it’s a selling point.

Melcher Media president Charles Melcher contends that HBO titles
“reinvented the TV tie-in, which used to be priced under $20 and mostly
filled with old scripts.” HBO titles like Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills or Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Book,
said Melcher, can sometimes feature scholarly research but, most
importantly, they all have the complete involvement of the shows’ casts
of actors.

“HBO wants the books to be more than just a way to make
money,” Melcher said. “They want their creative people to be happy.
Like the TV shows, these aren’t just books; they’re HBO books.”

Upcoming HBO tie-in titles getting the "high-end" treatment are The Sopranos: The Complete Book, ‘ Entourage: A Lifestyle Is a Terrible Thing to Waste, and Rome.

“The books are an extension of the
shows and a natural must-have for fans and viewers. The revenue will
follow if we continue to deliver quality books,” said Costos.

There’s a great interview at UKSFBookNews with IAMTW member Steve Saville about his nomination for a Scribe Award. Here’s a short excerpt: 

UKSFBN: Do you think these awards are going to help raise the
profile and respectability of tie-in novels and boost sales, or is it
more of an intra-industry back-slapping exercise?

SAVILLE: Sorry, I can’t help but chuckle at the idea of the awards existing
to boost sales when as a general rule of thumb most media tie-ins
outsell traditional SF and Fantasy novels quite considerably – and I
don’t mean one or two thousand more copies, I mean twenty or thirty or
fifty thousand copies and often more.
 

I find it quite interesting, but tie-in writing is often seen as the
‘ghetto within the ghetto’, which is just absurd when you consider %

The friendly folks over at Bookgasm conducted a terrific interview with IAMTW member Greg Cox about writing comic book tie-ins and movie novelizations (most recently, the tie-in for the comic-turned-movie GHOST RIDER). It’s a revealing peek into the creative obstacles a tie-in writer often faces:

BOOKGASM: What do you find attractive about writing novelizations? And what’s not-so-attractive?

COX: On the positive side, you get to let someone else worry about the plotting and dialogue for once. It’s also just neat, on a fannish level, to be privy to the inside scoop on some upcoming new movie. The challenge is trying to describe a movie you haven’t actually seen; I’m always desperate for any sort of visual reference material I can get from the studio. Getting photos of the supporting characters tends to be difficult sometimes. The deadlines can be pretty tight, too.

BOOKGASM: When you finally see a film you earlier wrote a novelization for, what’s that experience like?

COX: Usually, it takes a couple of viewings before I can appreciate the movie on its own terms. The first time through, I’m too busy wincing at all the differences between the book and the movie. “Hey, what happened to the barn scene? That chase doesn’t go there. Ohmigod, they changed the dialogue. Wait a second, nobody told me that character was a woman!”

Would you like to receive the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers’ newsletter? We’re going to have an
on-going contest:  Each month we’re going to give away a free tie-in novel to two lucky winners drawn randomly from among our newsletter subscribers.  To sign up,  click here.

We’ve also launched our own blog. You can visit it here.

Read more

Publisher’s Weekly reports that the #2 bestselling trade paperback in the nation is HALO: GHOSTS OF THE ONYX by Eric Nylund…outselling Amy Tan, Lisa See, Paula Coelho, Nicholas Sparks, Clive Cussler, Jodi Picoult, Jan Karon and Elizabeth Kostova to name a few. The book is in its second printing with 180,000 copies in print so far. Not bad for a tie-in novel based on a video game. While critics may sneer at tie-ins, they are wildly popular with readers and publishers are increasingly depending on them to prop up their bottom-lines.