#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
Bill Rabkin and I wrote Sunday night's episode of the hit summer series THE GLADES on A&E. Our episode is called "The Girlfriend Experience" and I hope you enjoy it. Our next episode, "Booty," is shooting now and will air sometime in September.
My brother Tod, Bill Rabkin, and I had a terrific time signing our new books today at Mysteries To Die For in Thousand Oaks and, as pictured here, at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood. Signed copies are still available at both stores if you want to snag one.
Tomorrow Tod and I are signing at 1 pm at Mystery Ink in Huntington Beach, CA.
If you are a book reviewer/book blogger and would like a review copy, either in trade paperback or as PDF file, of TIED IN: THE BUSINESS, HISTORY AND CRAFT OF MEDIA TIE-IN WRITING, please email me at lee@leegoldberg.com with your name and email address (for the PDF) or your snail-mail address (for the paperback) and a link to your blog….
Publishers' Weekly reports that Dorchester is getting out of the paperback book business and shifting to an e-book and POD model.
Mass market romance publisher Dorchester Publishing has dropped its traditional print publishing business in favor of an e-book/print-on-demand model effective with its September titles that are “shipping” now. President John Prebich said after retail sales fell by 25% in 2009, the company knew that 2010 “would be a defining year,” but rather than show improvement, “sales have been worse.”
[…]Dorchester will continue to do print copies for its book club business and has signed a deal with Ingram Publisher Service for IPS to do print-on-demand copies for selected titles. According to Prebich, some e-books that are doing well in the digital marketplace will be released as trade paperbacks with IPS fulfilling orders; the company, however, will not do any more mass market paperbacks for retail distribution.
I am running out the door, so I haven't had a chance to give this development much thought. I'll probably post more about it later. But I wonder what this means for their Hard Case Crime imprint?
UPDATE – Apparently, the Wall Street Journal was wondering the same thing:
Hard Case Crime, an imprint owned by closely held Winterfall LLC, said it may seek to move its mystery books from Dorchester to another publishing house.
"It's been a good run, but if they aren't publishing mass market paperbacks, we'll have to decide what to do. I'm a believer in the mass format, but I do understand the reality of the marketplace," said Charles Ardai, who owns Hard Case Crime.
The country's largest consumer book publisher, Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc., said it continues to be a strong believer in mass paperbacks. One of the country's most successful mystery writers, the late John D. MacDonald, is available from Random House exclusively in mass paperback.
"It's still a viable, popular, lower-priced alternative to the other reading formats," said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House. "It also has a committed readership. Will that commitment be forever in a transformative marketplace? We'll have to wait and see.
UPDATE: And Charles Ardai elaborated in a comment he left here, that says:
It means that future Hard Case Crime titles will most likely be published by a company other than Dorchester (although Dorchester may still distribute them to their book club members).
Interesting times. More info to come as things ripen…
There was a very nice article in today's Waynesboro News-Leader about author & IAMTW member Elizabeth Massie winning the Scribe award for her brilliant novelization of THE TUDORS.
A two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Massie is an accomplished writer of original horror stories, as well as historical fiction. She has had numerous short stories, novels and anthologies published since 1984. Her "Tudors" novelizations of seasons two and three were published in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The show aired for four seasons and ended in June. As a writer of original works, Massie's "Tudors" projects presented her with some unique challenges.
Massie, 56, was sent scripts for each episode and then wrote the season into one book at the same time it was being filmed in Ireland.
The books had to be loyal to the show, but the scripts, as they tend to be, were scant in details and description.
So Massie had to conduct historical research to bring the story alive on the page.
"The script would say something like, 'King Henry enters the room. He sits on a chair. He starts to talk,'" she said. "I had to fill in details of the way things looked, what they ate, how long did it take to get from London to Hever Castle (by horse and carriage). Things like that."
[…]Goldberg said Massie's "Tudors" work is especially unique because she wrote an entire season into one book.
"She managed to make the book read like a literary novel," he said. "She gave it this classy patina that these books don't often have…"
You can find out more about the challenges she faced in her chapter on novelizing THE TUDORS in TIED IN: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Novels, which is available in a Kindle edition and in a trade paperback edition.
This Chinese "straddling bus" looks super-cool and super-smart and ec0-friendly. They ought to think about it in Los Angeles. The bus "straddles" the roadway and passes over traffic and is far cheaper to produce than a subway.
What is best TV private eye show? For me, it's a tie between David Janssen's HARRY O and James Garner's THE ROCKFORD FILES… with Darren McGavin's THE OUTSIDER coming in a close second. The plots on HARRY O were often lousy, but the pleasure of watching Janssen's portrayal and listening to the crisp dialogue (and, in the first season, the voice-overs) more than made up for it. HARRY O is definitely the most "literary" of the three …by that I mean that it was the show that came closest to capturing the feeling of reading a detective novel. Perhaps that's why I was so disappointed in the HARRY O tie-in novels, one of which is reviewed today over on the Vintage Hardboiled Reads blog. He says, in part:
This "Harry O" paperback is far from being a great crime novel, but as a huge fan of the series I did enjoy it. I would say that the characterization of Harry Orwell in the story is fairly close to the TV one. The spoken narrative on the show is definitely much better. And the book didn't capture that lonely, somber persona that David Janssen was able to deliver. I'll chalk that up as something that is difficult for a tie-in author to do. The writing is straightforward and the plot though interesting, wasn't too difficult to figure out. Even with the similarities of Hammett's Casper Gutman, I would of liked to have seen more of the Sydney Jerome character. He came off as the most colorful of all in the story. All-in-all, it still was a fun quick read for me. If you were a fan of the TV series, I'm sure you would get a kick out of this novel also.
And, just for the fun of it, here's the HARRY O main title from the second half of season one (I'll use any excuse to watch it again).
Lady Sybilla, the dimwit who tried to sell her own TWILIGHT sequels on eBay, is back. Now's she's self-published RUSSET NOON through CreateSpace and is offering her swill on Amazon as a "parody" in a pathetic and transparent attempt not to get slapped with a cease-and-desist order. The product description of her craptastic opus clearly indicates that it's not a parody…but a lame attempt to sell a sequel to a book, and characters, she doesn't own. This delusional fanficcer must have studied at the feet of the master, Lori Jareo.
(Thanks to C.S. Winchester for the heads-up)
UPDATE 8-10-2010: No surprise: Faster than you can say "Lori Jareo, " delusional fanficcer Lady Sybilla's self-published TWILIGHT sequel RUSSET NOON has been yanked off of Amazon. It's also now "on hold" on CreateSpace.
REMAINDERED was the good news/bright side in an article in today's Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer about the unfortunate cancellation of the NDX Film Festival. The article said, in part:
Though the festival has been canceled, a short movie will still be filmed in Owensboro in September.
"Remaindered" was written and will be directed by Lee Goldberg, a veteran TV writer, author and member of the Mystery Writers of America. The film was set to premiere during the NDX Film Festival.
"Remaindered" is about a once famous and successful author who is on a downward spiral in his career and in the midst of a self-funded book tour. The movie takes its name from the term for a book being relegated to a store's bargain bin. Students taking classes in the recently created theater arts degree program will have the chance to participate in the filming.
Newton said he and Goldberg hope to show "Remaindered" and "Murder in Kentucky," a short movie filmed during the 2009 International Mystery Writers Festival, in October at the RiverPark Center. A round-table discussion about filmmaking and what filmmakers learned from the two movies would then be held, Newton said.
Roxi Witt, general manager of the RiverPark Center, wrote in an e-mail that RiverPark staff members need to discuss the possible showings with its board of directors at this month's meeting."