Off to Madison

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Tomorrow I’m heading off to Madison, WI and Bouchercon 2006, the world mystery convention, where I will be moderating a panel with Stephen J. Cannell, Robert Ward, Donald Bain and Raymond Benson. That’s also where I’ll find out if I’ve won the Shamus  for THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE… though I think there’s little chance of that up against the likes of Connelly, Crais and Mosley. I’ll be gone until Monday, but I’ll try to send in a few reports from the convention floor.

The Comedy Pitch

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Today Ken Levine, the Emmy-award winning writer/producer and all-around nice guy, gives you the inside scoop on what happens when you go in to pitch a sitcom pilot. Of course, he shares some great anecdotes, too.

Our PA on CHEERS who used to get us lunch became the VP of comedy at a
major network. We had to pitch our PA. (No sale. But we were offered
drinks.)

The comedy VP (who later became the president of that
network) once asked us “What is the opening episode of the seventh
season?” Huh??? How the fuck do you answer that? We said “the clip
show, featuring all the highlights of the many Emmy winning episodes.”
(No sale)

Giddy Up.. or Giddy Down?

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I received this email from Chuck:

I read on your blog some comments about Westerns going the
way of the buffalo. However, I’ve come across some data that
indicate otherwise. Nielsen BookScan, which covers about 70% of U.S.
book sales, says Western sales have increased by 9% in 2005 and 10% thus far in
2006. Books in Print says the number of Western titles produced
has increased from 543 in 1995 to 901 in 2005. Would you or your knowledgeable readers have any idea
why these numbers contradict the prevailing opinion that the market for Western
literature is dying?

Good question. So I asked three western writers I know. Here are their responses:

"My understanding is that all but two or three publishers have folded
their western lines. I assume this is because that westerns don’t sell
well enough to make them worth the trouble.
"

"This contradicts all I’ve heard. Does Books in
Print include vanity-press titles? I believe it does. I do know that a flood of
self-published and vanity westerns have been pouring out of XLibris, iUniverse,
etc. (Spur Award judges are telling me that they’re getting mostly vanity press
westerns now.) This also says nothing about sales per title. Are
more books slicing a thinner market? I do know that most western lines have died
off, or have radically cut back. Even Forge is cutting its western line to the
bone. I would need a lot more data than raw numbers of
titles before coming to any conclusions."

"This is interesting, but I think those numbers are
deceptive.  Kensington has been pumping out the William W. Johnstone
reprints by the truckload, and they’ve been selling very well. Throw in
the continued popularity of L’Amour, the Ralph Compton books actually written by
other authors, Leisure’s reprints of Brand, Flynn, Horton, and other pulp
authors, and I still think the market is pretty bad for living Western authors
who want to publish under their own names.  I know two or three guys who
were publishing regularly under their names a few years ago who are now just
doing house-name books because those are the only contracts they can get. 
And with only four house-name series left and sales on those dwindling,
prospects don’t look good for any of us."

To Be Or Not To Be A Writer’s Assistant

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I got this email the other day:

I realize that I don’t have the
experience or knowledge to land a job in the industry.  Therefore, it seems
reasonable to me that I should try to break in as a writer’s assistant. I  know it is an unglamorous job, but I also know it will expose me to the production process by allowing me to observe the daily workings of whatever show I’m working on.   So the question is, obviously, how do I do it? How do I break in, and whom do I contact?

Here’s what I told him. The best advice I can offer you isn’t that revolutionary….you need
to send your resume to the personnel offices at the various studios and
production companies, big and small. You can start by getting getting
copies of VARIETY and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, the weekly issues with
the TV and Movie Production reports,  jot down the names of every production company you see
and send them your resume.  Familiarity
with Microsoft Word, Excel, and the various screenwriting programs
(Movie Magic and Final Draft) will be essential.  You might also try Variety Careers and searching for openings for writer’s assistants.

He wrote back to me right away:

If my long-term goal is
to direct, is writer’s assistant the best path, in your opinion?  Or should
I be focusing on a Production Assistant position?  I ask because I want to
take the best approach, before I go around papering the town with my resume as a
Writer’s Assistant.  Someone made an interesting point in a book that I
read, that it’s very easy to become pigeonholed as a "PA" or as an "Assistant"
if you don’t map out your plan for your long-term career ahead of
time.

I don’t know much about becoming a director, but being a PA would give you more "on the set" experience, even if you are just fetching bottled water for people. That said, I’d recommend taking some directing classes and learning the essentials of the craft.

Where I Can Go?

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I got this comment here today:

hi i have sent in my manuscript to tate. i also got a contract. Im only
15 and at first before the price it looked like a good place to get a
book published. But now that i’ve seen the 4000 investment pay it
doesnt seem to good. I took a look at iuniverse but it dosent publish
childrens books. Do you have any sugestions on were i can go? Thanks

The important thing now is to keep writing. Never, I repeat NEVER, pay to have your book published. If someone offers to publish your book in return for money, that should be a big warning sign to you that they are not a real publisher but rather a "vanity press" or worse, an out-right scam.

If you really feel you’re ready to submit your book for publication, only approach reputable publishers. You can start by looking at who published the books that you enjoy reading, then look them up in the Writers Market and see if they are accepting  unsolicited submissions (meaning not from agent).

But I would say that, at this point, you are better off concentrating more on refining your skills than getting published.  Take some writing courses and read as much as you can. But the most important thing of all is to just keep writing!

Tico Changes Course

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Tico Publishing  is no longer pitching themselves as both "a publisher and literary agent,"  limiting manuscript submissions  to "non-agented" writers, or selling reviews and editorial services. The publisher, Arnold Tijerino, took this action today in response to criticisms leveled against his company here  and on other forums. In his comments to me, he wrote, in part:

I appreciate the positions and assumptions that are being made about TICO Publishing, based on the "services" we offer, both here and the aforementioned thread on another website. I assure you, had we been aware that by offering such services, we would be lumped in with "scammers" and "vanity presses", we would never have offered them in the first place. TICO has never accepted, nor will it accept, any money to publish a book we’ve contracted. […]I also understand that perception is reality. While we don’t agree that offering those services was wrong, we do now see how it could lead people to the wrong impression about our organization.

Some of the other services we offered have led to misperceptions about Tico’s philosophy, and thrown our reputation into question.  As a result, we’ve cancelled those other services. Our exclusive focus will be on receiving submissions from aspiring authors and finding the best new voices to put into print.

All publishing companies were small at some point in time. We’re just the new guy on the block.

He also concedes that he has no previous experience whatsoever as either a publisher or literary agent. His background is in sales and marketing. Even so, I would think that experience would have taught Mr. Tijerino that it’s necessary to learn about the ethical standards and accepted business practices in your field before starting to do business.  That said, I applaud his efforts to make things right at Tico and to repair the negative image of the company that presently exists. It’s honorable and encouraging.

Score one for Lew

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My friend Lewis Perdue, who lost a lawsuit against Dan Brown for allegedly lifting  significant portions of THE DAVINCI CODE from his work,  reports that he’s off-the-hook for Brown’s $310,000 in legal fees:

Judge Daniels ruled that, "…Perdue’s claim was not objectively
unreasonable, and there was no evidence that Perdue pursued his
claims with an improper motive and/or in bad faith. " — page 2, line
8 of
http://www.davincilegacy.com/Infringement/AttorneysFees/Attorneys-Fees-Judges-Order.pdf.

The magistrate’s report on which Daniels based his decision is far
more detailed and spends a fair amount of time to support his opinion
that I was not the money-grubbing, gold-digging opportunist that
Random House claimed in its legal papers and which Dan Brown alleged
on the Today Show.

The magistrate’s report is at:
http://www/davincilegacy.com/Infringement/AttorneysFees/Magistrate-Report-and-Recommendation.pdf

These two documents also do a very thorough job of describing the
circumstances of the litigation that Random House started.

My petition for a writ of certiorari still remains for consideration
before the Supreme Court.

Am I a Fanficcer?

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I received this comment from "GMW:"

If we take the published author view then I hate to say it but Mr. Lee
Goldberg, according to this you have no talent for writing because you
are using a preset universe and characters. You do write fanficiton
with legal ability to get it published for money. In my mind that is
the only thing separating you from a fanficiton writer. Has writing the
‘DM’ and ‘Monk’ novels helped you in writing your other novels? If yes
then why can’t it help others? If no, then why do you write them?

1) I didn’t just wake up one morning, burning with the need to write DIAGNOSIS MURDER fanfic and then sent it out a
publisher, hoping to sell it. They came to me. I would never consider writing a book about characters I didn’t
create unless the creator/rights holder asked me to. Why? Because the
characters aren’t mine.

2) I was an executive producer and principal writer of the DIAGNOSIS
MURDER TV series for many years and was approached by the studio and
publisher to write the books. In many ways, I shaped, guided, and
"controlled" the characters long before I started writing books about
them.  This makes me a rarity among tie-in writers. As far as I know, there isn’t anyone out there writing fanfic about the shows they wrote and produced.

3) I was writing for the TV series MONK for several seasons when the
creator/executive producer of the show approached me to write the
books.  I not only continue to write episodes of the show, but I write
the books with the executive producer’s full consent and creative input. How many fanficcers are also writing for the TV shows they are ripping off?

4) To date, I have only written tie-ins based on TV shows that I also wrote and/or produced. Again, that makes me a rarity among tie-in writers.

5) These are licensed tie-in novels, written under the contract with
the rights holders, who have full control over how their characters and
"worlds" are used. This is true of all tie-in writers…and no fanficcers.

6) I wrote my own, published novels long before I was approached to
write any tie-ins (in fact, they got me the tie-ins) and continue to do
so. My recent book THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which got a starred
review from Kirkus and was favorably compared to Hammett and Chandler,
is currently nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Novel.

What I do isn’t comparable to fanfiction — which is using someone
else’s work without their consent or involvement and distributing on
the Internet. I don’t do it as my personal artistic expression — it’s
a job, one that I do to the best of my ability.

Like a fanficcer,  I am writing about characters I didn’t create and that are not my own. But, as I said before, unless approached to do so, I would have absolutely no interest or desire to write about someone else’s characters. Why? Because…and let me repeat this…
the characters aren’t mine. I didn’t create them. They don’t belong to me. I much prefer to write totally original work and if I could make my living only doing that, I would.

Write all the fanfiction you want to for practice — just don’t post
it on the Internet or publish it. Or if you do want to post it, ask the
creator/right’s holder for permission to do so first. How hard is that?

What I have yet to see any fanficcer explain why they
won’t to ask the creator or rights holder for permission before posting
and distributing their work. Or why fanficcers adamantly refuse to
follow the expressed wishes of creator/rights holders (for example,
Rowling has approved fanfiction based on Harry Potter as long as it’s
not sexually explicit…but that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from writing and posting Potter slash, disrespecting her and her wishes ).

I know the answer, of course. Fanficcers are terrified of officially being told NO… and identifying themselves in case they decide to blithely violate the author’s wishes anyway.