I Knew This Was Coming

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Victoria Strauss reports that BookWise has gone — surprise! surprise! — into the vanity press business, a natural extension of their multi-level marketing scheme. They are charging gullible aspiring writers $6000 to "publish" their books and for "intensive training" at their WriteWise (aka PublishStupid) seminars taught by "Industry Experts" who, outside of BookWise founders author Richard Paul Evans and get-rich-quick huckster Robert G. Allen, have no actual industry experience.

Their "expert" faculty consists of the teacher of the Info-Preneuring Teleclass for the Enlightened Wealth Institute, a self-published cookbook author, and three authors who write fiction exclusively for the "LDS market"  ("work consistent with the standards and principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ").  I guess Lori Prokop, Michael Drew, and Brien Jones were unavailable.

You will also get such amazing benefits as "an official BookWise review" and your photograph taken  with BookWise founders Evans and Allen. Wow! Where do I sign up?

BookWise thinks that "anyone who is a serious writer" would gladly pay $20-30,000 for all of this,   so six grand is a bargain. But "serious" writers know better than to take seminars from vanity press publishers and industry know-nothings who have a clear profit motive and glaring conflict-of-interest behind their "teaching."

This is no ordinary vanity press scheme. To lure in as many suckers as possible, BookWise is offering a $1000 bounty for every paying sucker their multilevel marketing associates can bring in. Prepare to be spammed. But wait, there’s more, as Victoria reports:

There’s another twist to the story. For writers accepted into
WriteWise, Richard Paul Evans and Robert G. Allen will become their
literary agents, receiving, according to the WriteWise brochure, "the
standard agency fee [of] 15% of the royalties that an author receives
from the publisher." The brochure makes it clear, however, that not
every book will be shopped: "…depending upon circumstances, BookWise
Publishing may also present your book to other major publishers." In
this arrangement, most of the benefit is on the agents’ side: they
don’t actually have to do anything for you (unlike in a normal
author-agent relationship), but if they do, they get paid twice.

These guys are taking the vanity press scam to a whole new, and truly sleazy, level.

Goldman Shakes Down a Great Review from PW

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Shakedown
Congratulations to my buddy Joel Goldman on the rave review in today’s Publishers Weekly for his new novel SHAKEDOWN. They say, in part:

A killer identified via a fleeting facial expression and behavioral cues turns a middle-aged FBI agent dealing with a disruptive disability into an unexpected hero in Goldman’s latest terrific thriller […]Goldman’s surefooted plotting […] make this a fascinating, compelling read.

“We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat”

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Seaquest
Roy Scheider died today at the age 0f 75. I worked with him briefly on the NBC series SEAQUEST and one of the things I remember most about him was how he’d sit on a folding chair outside of his trailer, soaking up the sun wearing nothing but a g-string sized Speedo.  Apparently, Richard Dreyfuss has similar memories:

Dreyfuss recalled Sunday a time during the filming of ‘Jaws’
when Scheider disappeared from the set. As the filming was on hold
because of the weather, Scheider "called me up and said, ‘You
don’t know where I am if they call.’

"He’d gone to get a tan. He was really very tan-addicted. That
was due to a childhood affliction where he was in bed for a long
time. For him being tan was being healthy," Dreyfuss said.

Do Unto Others

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I wonder if "The Insider" will take the same glee in their host Pat O’Brien checking into rehab (again) that they enjoy when Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, Lindsay Lohan, or any other Hollywood star does the same thing. I don’t like to see people suffer, but I have to admit I feel a certain poetic justice when evangelists (like Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart etc.) political commentators (like Rush Limbaugh), politicians (like Larry Craig, Tom DeLay, etc.), and tabloid reporters (like O’Brien) are caught doing exactly the same things they rail against….adultery, drug abuse, tax evasion, corruption, gay sex, etc.

Strike Ends, Awards Given

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In an odd bit of timing, the strike ended (more or less officially) on the same day that the WGA awards for excellence in screenwriting were announced. I am pleased to say that three of my friends earned awards….Terence Winter won Best Episodic Drama script for his SOPRANOS episode "The Second Coming" (he also shared an award for Best Episodic Drama Series writing) and Bryce & Jackie Zabel won the Best Original Miniseries screenplay statuette for PANDEMIC. Congratulations to them all!

Who Says that Crime Doesn’t Pay?

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In counter-point to my previous post about what some bestselling crime writers are earning, here’s what author John Scalzi says he has earned strictly from his science fiction writing:

1999: About $400, from Agent readers
2000: About $1000, from Agent readers
2001: About $1100, from Agent readers and a short story sale at Strange Horizons
2002: About $1000, from Agent readers
2003: About $6000, from Agent readers and from first part of advance for Old Man’s War
2004: About $5000, from Agent readers and from first part of advance for The Android’s Dream
2005: About $15,000, from second part of OMW advance, first part of The Ghost BrigadesAgent to the Stars hardcover, and short story sale to Subterranean Press.
2006: About $67,000.

Scalzi has other sources of writing income outside of his SF genre work, but this gives you a view of what earnings are like for a successful and acclaimed author in a particular genre who is not a megastar.

(Note: Agent refers to Agent of the Stars, a book that Scalzi offered online)

Bob Won’t Die

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Newhartcastphotocreditmtmenterpri_2
The TV Series Finales site charts the many reunions of the THE BOB NEWHART SHOW characters in other sitcoms and specials in the years since the series ended. Everybody knows about Bob & Emily’s surprise reappearance in the finale episode of NEWHART…but did you know that Bob and his secretary Carol showed up in  MURPHY BROWN episode?

Murphy Brown – “Anything But Cured” episode from March 14, 1994.
A regular joke of the sitcom is that the title character (played by
Candice Bergen) had to endure a long line of incompetent and strange
secretaries. In one episode, her secretary turns out to be Carol and
she’s the perfect aide. Unfortunately for Murphy, Bob appears at the
end of the episode and begs Carol to come back. He says that the office
is a mess; Jerry’s got his files all messed up and Mr. Carlin thinks
the temp is out to kill him. After getting into a bidding war and
trading barbs with Murphy, Bob wins out. As Bob and Carol leave in the
elevator, Bob is cornered by insecure Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) who
is looking for some free psychological advice. Bonerz was a frequent
director on Murphy Brown but didn’t direct this particular episode. Wallace was nominated for an Emmy Award for her appearance.

Why Isn’t My Name on the List?

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The Shots Magazine blog reports that some authors are making lots of money writing crime novels:

Figures recently released show that earnings through the trade in 2007
for crime writers looked pretty healthy. Figures are shown as GBP MILLIONS

James Patterson  10.3
Ian Rankin  5.2
Martina Cole  4.8
Jed Rubenfeld  4.7
Alexander McCall Smith 4.4
Antony Horowitz  4.3
Patricia Cornwell 4.1
John Grisham  3.9
Lee Child  3.7
Tess Gerritsen  3.5
Clive Cussler  3.5
Andy McNab  3.3
C.J. Sansom  2.8