Where Books Sell

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Paul Levine tipped me off to this interesting blog post by James Grippando, who was on a panel with James Patterson at a marketing seminar. Some interesting facts came out at the seminar about where the most books are sold…

Can you name the two main outlets for hardcover bestsellers? Are you guessing Barnes and Noble and Borders? Wrong. It’s Costco and Walmart. The key to my question is the word bestsellers. Costco and Walmart sell fewer titles, but they sell more bestsellers. Their share of the book market overall, says Deighton, is 12%, but their share of the “bestseller” market is 34%. Here’s something else I found interesting: In 2004 Amazon.com had only a 2% share of the bestseller market—a number that Deighton regards as “relatively insignificant.”

Just goes to show that authors and self-promotion gurus who fixate on Amazon stats are wasting their time.

LAT FLAT

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The LA Times Book Review has been slightly more readable and a lot less snooty under editor David Ulin, but it’s still dull, uninspiring, and a bore to look at. And the advertisers are bored, too. Like most readers, the advertisers are ignoring the section entirely. Publishers Weekly notes that there were only two ads in the Feb 25 issues — one for a ghostwriting service, the other an announcement of a David Mamet signing at Borders.

Both LAT editor James O’Shea and book editor David Ulin said the paper is committed to providing extensive book coverage, including reviews. But while O’Shea said he had rejected a suggestion from his predecessor that he kill the Sunday book review, he hinted that it may not remain a stand-alone section.

Whenever I left town on business, I used to have my wife save the Book Review sections so I could read them when I got back. A few months ago I told her not to bother. I don’t even read the section when I’m in town anymore.

(Since Ulin took over, the blog critics of the Book Review have been notably silent. Perhaps because Ulin is, I am told, a more likable guy than his predecessor and shrewdly hired several of the bloggers as freelance reviewers, effectively silencing them. Another former critic of the Book Review just sold his first novel and, perhaps, doesn’t want to upset any reviewers. All I know is that they’ve shut up…and the Book Review isn’t much better than it was before)

I’m all for radical change at the Book Review, because as it stands now, the Fry’s ads are more fun to read and more interesting to look at. They need to make it livelier, more relevant, and a lot more visually appealing. If that means bundling the reviews with an existing section (like Calender), then so be it. I think the only thing that has kept the throwaway Book Review alive this long is that killing it would have reflected badly on hugely the successful (and wonderful!) Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and the prestige of the Times book awards.

Breaking In

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I’ve been looking at my stats and I’ve noticed that there are some posts that people are repeatedly searching out. I’ll start reposting some of them for those of you who only started following this blog in the last year or so. This one is from November 2005 and is also available as an article on the Writers University website…

How do I become a television writer if I don’t have any contacts?

I get asked this question a lot…but it’s disingenuous, since I’m a TV writer/producer and whoever is asking me that is really asking me to either read their script or to invite them in to pitch. So, theoretically, they already know somebody in the business.

They’re luckier than I was when I got started. I didn’t know anybody in the TV industry. But I got in. How did I do it? Everybody’s story is unique. Most of those stories, however, share one common element. You have to put yourself in the right place to get your lucky break. And it’s easier than you think.

The first thing you have to do is learn your craft. Take classes, preferably taught by people who have had some success as TV writers. There’s no point taking a class from someone who isn’t an experienced TV writer themselves.

You’d think that would be common sense, but you’d be astonished how many TV courses are taught by people who don’t know the first thing about writing for television or who, through a fluke, sold a story to Manimal twenty years ago and think that qualifies them to take your hundred bucks. Even more surprising is how many desperate people shell out money to take courses from instructors who should be taking TV writing courses themselves.

There’s another reason to take a TV writing course besides learning the basics of the craft. If you’re the least bit likeable, you’ll make a few friends among the other classmates. This is good, because you’ll have other people you can show your work to. This is also good because somebody in the class may sell his or her first script before you do… and suddenly you’ll have a friend in the business.

Many of my writer/producer friends today are writers I knew back when I was in college, when we were all dreaming of breaking into TV some day.

A writer we hired on staff on the first season of Missing was in a Santa Monica screenwriters group… and was the first member of her class to get a paying writing gig. Now her friends in the class suddenly had a friend on a network TV show who could share her knowledge, give them practical advice and even recommend them to her new agent and the writer/producers she was working with.

Another route is to try and get a job as a writer/producer’s assistant on an hour-long drama. Now only will you get a meager salary, but you will see how a show works from the inside. You’ll read lots of scripts and revisions and, simply by observation, get a graduate course in TV writing. More important, you’ll establish relationships with the writers on the show and the freelancers who come through the door. Many of today’s top TV producers were writer/producer assistants once. All of the assistants I’ve had have gone on to become working TV writers themselves… and not because I gave them a script assignment or recommended them for one. I didn’t do either.

The first step towards getting into pitch a TV producer for an episodic writing assignment is to write an episodic teleplay on spec.

By that I mean, a pick a show and write an episode for it.

Although there are some producers who prefer to read screenplays, most showrunners, agents, and network executives want to read an episodic teleplay. Even if your spec feature script has acceptable levels of dialogue, characterization, and structure, people thinking of hiring you will still wonder “yes, but can he handle my characters? Does he understand the four act structure?” An original piece can demonstrate that you have a strong voice, but it doesn’t show whether or not you blend that voice with ours. Can you write what we need without losing whatever it is that makes you unique? That’s why we need to see your talents applied to a TV episode. To someone else’s characters. To someone else’s voice.

How do you pick a show to spec? Easy. Pick a show you like. Odds are, if you’re thinking about trying to become a TV writer, you already know what show you want to spec — you just don’t know you know. It’s the one you watch every week, and when it’s over, you find yourself thinking: That was pretty good, but wouldn’t it be cool if —"
 
Don’t worry about what’s hot and what’s not – choose a show you feel a connection to, one that you “get.” With some exceptions:

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Fast Track

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One of the reasons I have been jetting back-and-forth to Europe a lot lately is because I’m writing and producing a two-hour movie/pilot for Action Concept that will be shot in Berlin in May for  broadcast on ProSieben (a big German network) and worldwide in international syndication. I’ve waited until we got the firm greenlight before sharing the news with you (I’m superstitious that way).

The project is called FAST TRACK and is about urban street racing (yes, I’m being intentionally vague). The movie will be packed with amazing, street-racing action (check out the Action Concept website to see what these guys can do!) and shot entirely in English. The leading roles are being cast in Los Angeles by Burrows/Boland,  who did LORD OF THE RINGS, KING KONG, CAST AWAY, 21 JUMP STREET, CONTACT, A-TEAM, DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW, to name a few.

I’ll bring you reports from the set as production moves along.

Is a Story Really Necessary?

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I got an email from a reader asking for a copy of this post from February 2005, so I thought I share it again with everyone…

Today,
I spoke at the San Francisco Writers Conference about screenwriting and
breaking into television. Afterwards, I was cornered by a senior
citizen who showed me his scrapbook from his days in Hollywood and
rambled on endlessly about all the stars he met. I don’t know why he
wanted to share this with me…but we had to go through every single
page, clipping and photo. Then I mingled with the attendees,  got asked
some incredibly stupid questions and had some bizarre conversations.
Here’s a sampling…

"I’ve written a novel and everyone tells me it’s a script," one woman said. "How do I turn it into a script?"

"Well, you write a script." I said.

She stared at me. "How do I do that?"

"You get a book or take a course, learn the principles of screenwriting, and then you write a script."

"That’s too much work," she said. "Isn’t there software that can do all of that for me?"

"Yeah," I said. "The same way Microsoft Word wrote your book for you."

* * * * * *

Another person came up to me and asked me if I wrote for television. I said yes.  She then asked, "How do you do that?"

"You mean, how do I write for television?"

"Yes," she said.

"I write screenplays," I said.

"Which is what, exactly?"

"The story, the action, the words that the characters say," I replied.

She stared at me. "Somebody writes that?"

"Yes," I said, resisting the urge to strangle her. "It’s like a
writing a play, only for the camera instead of a theatre audience."

She shook her head.  "No, it’s not."

* * * * * *
"I’ve written  a book but everyone tells me it s a TV series," the man said.  "How do I make it into a TV series."

"You can’t, " I said, and gave my standard speech about how ideas
are cheap and execution is everything, how networks go to people with
TV experience, or who have written hit movies, or who have written
bestselling novels, blah blah blah.  And when I got done, he stared at
me. I got stared at a lot today.

Hee said:  "How can I get around that?"

"You can’t," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because you haven’t established yourself  as a writer in any
field," I said. "Why would a network, studio or producer buy a TV
series idea from you?"

"Because I’m smarter and more talented than they are," he said.

"It’s not going to happen," I said.

"Is it because I’m black?" he said. "That’s it, isn’t it. It’s because I’m black."

* * * * * *

"Did you have to sleep with a lot of people to get into TV?" a woman asked me.

"Just my wife," I said.

"You were lucky it wasn’t someone else," she said and walked away.

* * * * * *
"I have a great idea for a movie," a woman said to
me. "What’s the market like for true stories about black lesbians in
the 1880s?"

"I don’t think studios are looking for scripts to fill that
particular niche," I said, "but there’s always a market for good
stories that are told well."

"Oh," she said. "That’s going to make it a lot harder to sell."

* * * * * *
"Mysteries are hard work,"  a man said to me. "Could
I write an episode of a mystery show but leave out the mystery for
someone else to do?"

"No," I said.

"But my talent is character and I’m brilliant with dialogue," he said. "I really don’t know how to plot a mystery."

"Then don’t write a mystery," I said.

"But that’s what’s selling," he said.

"Don’t try to write what’s selling," I said. "Write what you enjoy. Write the story you want to tell."

"The thing is, I don’t know how to tell stories," he said. "But I write killer dialogue. Is a story really necessary?"

"Yes," I said.

"You people in Hollywood don’t make it easy, do you? That’s  the
problem with the Industry. They are constantly creating obstacles so
people can’t get in."

TV Main Title of the Week

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I have a real sentimental attachment to this main title from SPENSER FOR HIRE. This is the show that began my television career. Bill Rabkin and I wrote a SPENSER spec script and — to our surprise and delight — they bought it, shot it, and hired us to write several more scripts. I can’t believe it’s been twenty years already…

Vicious Lies…and more than a little truth

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I just stumbled on this old Las Vegas Mercury column my brother Tod wrote about the time I dragged him and my sister Linda to a science fiction convention in a horribly misguided attempt to sell copies of my book .357 VIGILANTE. A lot of his column is, um, fictionalized…but it doesn’t matter because it’s very funny:

  "It takes place in a futuristic L.A.," I said to the man in the "V" uniform who’d stopped to handle the book.

  "Yeah? Are there aliens?"

  "Only illegal ones," I said. When I was 14, I thought this was a pretty funny thing to say.

  "I only read books with real aliens in them," he said, setting the book down.

  "You’re an idiot," my sister said from behind her magazine. It was the first time Linda had spoken for at least an hour.

  "Pardon me?" the man said.

  "You said you only read books with `real aliens’ in them and I said that you’re an idiot," Linda said, still not looking up.

  "You’re very rude," he said.

  "’V’  was canceled," Linda said, "just FYI."

He forgot to mention in the column that both he and Linda contracted chicken pox at the convention. I came out unscathed. My brother and sister, sadly, were emotionally scarred for life.

High Profile

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I read HIGH PROFILE, Robert B. Parker’s new Jesse Stone novel, today in about three hours.  The book has got to be maybe 50,000 words, tops. No wonder he can write four books a year. It barely qualifies, word count wise, as a novel and they’ve got guts asking $25 for it.

Even so, there’s a rhythm to Parker’s writing that I enjoy, even in his bad books. This wasn’t one of the bad ones but it wasn’t one of the good ones, either. The plotting was weak, the description sparse, and the dialog less punchy that usual. But at least Jesse Stone was more or less the character he once was before Parker emasculated him in BLUE SCREEN, the last Sunny Randall novel that is, perhaps, the author’s worst book ever. 

I really enjoyed the last three standalones Parker wrote — GUNMAN’S RHAPSODY, DOUBLE PLAY and APPALOOSA — but his last few  "series" novels have been disappointments.  The last good one was STONE COLD, a Jesse Stone novel.  I wonder if he wouldn’t do himself, his readers, and his regular characters a big favor by resting his various series for a while (and forgetting about Sunny Randall altogether) and doing a few more standalones.

Interview with Roy Huggins

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My six-hour Archive of American Television video interview with legendary writer/producer Roy Huggins is now up on Google Video. The interview was conducted back in 1998, not long before Roy’s death.

Roy created and produced such series as MAVERICK, 77 SUNSET STRIP, THE FUGITIVE and THE ROCKFORD FILES…and was Stephen J. Cannell’s mentor in the business.  He was a mentor of mine, too.

I put myself through college as a freelance journalist. I snagged an assignment from a magazine to do an article on the complete history of the TV series MAVERICK. So I tracked Roy down at Warner Brothers, where he’d just been fired as showrunner of the BLUE THUNDER TV series. His misfortune was my good luck — he had time on his hands.  He invited me down to the studio and, over the next several weeks, screened every single episode of MAVERICK for me, giving me a running commentary. And each day he’d take me to lunch and tell me stories about his days in TV. I was  in TV heaven. I couldn’t believe it. 

A few years later, I interviewed him again at length for Electronic Media magazine (now known as Television Age). He was the showrunner of HUNTER at the time, working for apprentice Steve Cannell. And not long after  that, I became a TV  writer and actually ended up as a story editor on HUNTER. The first thing I did was give Roy a call to share with him my pleasure (and astonishment) that I’d gone from being a "Roy Huggins fan" to writing on a show that he’d  produced. He was very happy for me and gave me some good advice about dealing with the various people he knew who were still working on the show. I told him I hoped we’d get a chance to work together some day. Sadly, that day never came.

But we stayed in touch and I was thrilled to have the chance to interview him for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television.

Mystery Lady

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A reader tipped me to the Mystery Lady, who posts her reviews on YouTube. Apparently this post has been up a while…she reviews my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIRE HOUSE  and Paul Levine’s SOLOMAN AND LORD.