Do crime books make you a criminal?  And if so, do spiritual books make you a saint?

Both questions came up in two articles we came across on the same day.  The first, a New York Times piece by William Glaberson, Prison Books Bring Plot Twist to Cheshire Killings, described the trial of a man charged in a triple-homicide that took place after he and two other men broke into a home in Connecticut, a heinous butchery that drew comparisons to the one described in Truman Capote’s groundbreaking “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. In fact, the similarity was the point of the article.

It seems that the prosecutors had tried to enter into the official court record the names of books that one of the accused checked out of a prison library before the killings. The plots of those books were  “criminally malevolent in the extreme.” The defense wanted the list thrown out. Writes Glaberson: “The defense lawyers’ suggestion that prison library books could have shaped the crime, or that knowing Mr. Hayes read them could turn jurors against him, has created a strange kind of guessing game about the literary interests” of the accused.

Glaberson raises the question why a prison library would possess the kinds of books that might stimulate – or educate – a potential criminal and push him over the line between intellectual and perpetrator, between art for its own sake and art in the service of a murderer.

At this writing the titles have not been revealed, and as there is a huge First Amendment issue riding on the question, we hope all players in this drama will consider the implications.  We’ve seen this issue before in the form of efforts to use the Patriot Act to seize library records of suspected terrorists.  Here’s a report on that controversy by an attorney whose leanings are obvious and suggest how loaded the issue is.

Balance this story with this one reported by Anna Barker in The Guardian about a man who faced a 60-year prison sentence for drug offenses but who was instead granted probation and sentenced to read. Writes Barker: “With one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and the death penalty, the US state of Texas seems the last place to embrace a liberal-minded alternative to prison. But when Mitchell Rouse was convicted of two drug offenses in Houston, the former x-ray technician who faced a 60-year prison sentence – reduced to 30 years if he pleaded guilty – was instead put on probation and sentenced to read.”

In this case we’re allowed to know what he read. His reading list included To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bell Jar and Of Mice and Men.  “I particularly liked some of the ideas in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty,” says Rouse. As well he might, having tasted liberty’s sweetest gifts.

“Five years on,” Barker reports, “he is free from drugs, holding down a job as a building contractor, and reunited with his family. He describes being sentenced to a reading group as ‘a miracle’ and says the six-week reading course ‘changed the way I look at life.’”

Did books in the first story impel a man to kill?  Did they, in the second, impel a man to reform?  Can we the jury accept the first as true but reject the second as false, or vice-versa?  Some stimulating thought for jurists and philosophers.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times and The Guardian.

The smart money is on the jackal

Revolutions produce unlikely heroes, and the Digital Revolution has produced a very unlikely one in the form of a man that many believe is so wanting in ethical principles that he is nicknamed The Jackal. Yet it is on literary agent Andrew Wylie’s fangs and claws that the populist dream of a fair e-book royalty rests as he dares the world’s highest profile trade book publisher to do something about the slap he has administered to its face.

The smart money is on The Jackal, and to understand why you have to think like a jackal.  While pundits debate contract law and publishing ethics, the real war is being conducted on a less visible battlefield. But it is one on which Wylie holds the high ground.

To understand Random House’s reluctance to protect its rights from Wylie and other marauders you need to understand a number of not so obvious factors.  The most salient of them is this: Publishers are loath to sue authors (or the widows and children of authors).

Let’s see how these factors play out in the power struggle unfolding before our eyes.

Random House not confident of its legal position

In 2001 Random House sued Rosetta, an e-book startup that acquired directly from authors the digital rights to books by such Random House lions as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Robert B. Parker and William Styron, books that were still in print in paper format under Random House imprints. Random had published them before there was such a thing as e-books, but nevertheless considered a book is a book is a book whether in tangible or digital form. The courts however rejected Random’s position, denying their request for an injunction against Rosetta. Random filed an appeal and the court turned it down. A second appeal was rejected too, forcing Random to work out a settlement with Rosetta. The critical issue – what is a book? – remained unlitigated and left Random uncertain about its legal position.

Random Backs off from Open Road Threat

When publishing superstar Jane Friedman launched her Open Road e-book venture she declared her intention to start with several works by Styron including Sophie’s Choice and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Confessions of Nat Turner. The problem was, Random House claimed it owned those rights (presumably having recovered them from Rosetta as part of the settlement) and it issued a stern warning to all “third parties” without naming Friedman specifically. Authors, stated CEO Marcus Dohle, are “precluded from granting publishing rights to third parties that would compromise the rights for which Random House has bargained.” By drawing a line in the sand, Random expected Friedman and other potential interlopers to back off or face the full wrath of the publisher’s litigators. (see Random House Serves Notice on Would-Be E-Interlopers)

It is  a fundamental business principle that you don’t make threats you aren’t prepared to act on. And that is why we were flabbergasted four months later to learn that Random House had released e-rights to the Styron estate (See Random Returns Sabre to Scabbard in Styron E-Book Standoff). What was that about?

“The decision of the Styron estate is an exception,” Random executive Stuart Applebaum explained. “Our understanding is that this is a unique family situation.”

Why, after rattling its saber so truculently, did Random give in? In our estimation it’s because ultimately, to make good on their threat, they would have had to sue Styron’s widow and children. And that would be a public relations disaster.

Whether Styron was truly an exception or Random blinked, one thing was clear to publishing professionals: sooner or later there would be further tests of the publisher’s determination. How would Random react the next time?

We’re about to find out.

Don’t Bother Suing Agents

Claiming that he hates the low e-book royalties paid by traditional publishers (see Random House Changes E-Book Royalty Policy), agent Wylie, representing hundreds of distinguished authors such as Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and the late John Updike, announced that he is starting his own e-book publishing venture and intends to launch it with books published by Random House and other trade book publishers.

Does he have the right to do that? Wylie says he does: “The fact remains that backlist digital rights were not conveyed to publishers, and so there’s an opportunity to do something with those rights,” he declares.

Despite what happened with Open Road, some industry observers expected Random House to threaten to sue Wylie’s ass into pebble-sized pieces. But Wylie knows they won’t, because, generally speaking, agents are not legally liable for breaches of contract committed by their clients. A lawsuit against Wylie would in all likelihood be thrown out of court, and the judge would tell Random that if they have a beef it’s with Wylie’s authors, they’ll have to sue Wylie’s authors. Which brings us back to our thesis: Publishers are loath to sue authors (or the widows and children of authors).

So? How does Random intend to punish Wylie? “Regrettably,” Applebaum declared, “Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved.”

This is known as the We’ll Cut Off Our Nose to Spite Your Face ploy, and it will avail Random nothing. Wylie’s clients are so coveted by Random’s rivals that if Random made good on its threat you’d see the greatest migration since the Aleuts crossed the Bering Land Bridge.  Jackals are standing by!

Buyer? Seller?

Though legal threats won’t faze Andrew Wylie, handling the challenge of being both an agent and an e-book publisher might. A number of knowledgeable people like Macmillan’s John Sargent have not only deplored Wylie’s decision to put all his authors’ eggs in Amazon’s basket but have questioned whether it’s in the best interests of his authors. There is arguably more money to be made selling not just to Amazon but to Sony, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and other retailers.

Navigating the shoals of conflict of interest between buyer and seller is another daunting task. Even if he is able to build a “Chinese wall” insulating the two functions from short-circuiting each other, Wylie’s own clients will reasonably want to know how it’s going to work: “If my agent is now my publisher, who am I supposed hire to negotiate with him?”

Will Wylie’s stratagem succeed in forcing publishers to raise their royalty rate?  Not a chance.  E-book royalties will eventually go up, but it will be no thanks to Crusader Wylie. But we thank him for articulating the dissatisfaction of authors and agents with low royalty rates and for so fearlessly acting on his convictions.

Richard Curtis

If you read a blurb that began as follows would you rush out and buy the book?

“Not since Pericles has such eloquence…”

or…

“In a debut novel that beggars Tolstoy, Balzac and Dickens…”

or…

“Once in a millennium an author brings forth a work so exquisitely wrought…”

You may scoff but, according to one publisher, no matter how absurdly hyperbolic blurbs may be, up to 62% of readers are sufficiently influenced by them to purchase the book.

This factoid was produced by Laura Miller, senior writer and co-founder of Salon, in an analysis of blurbs inspired by one so extravagant – for a book by David Grossman – that it could easily be mistaken for a parody. It begins “Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling, of existence itself, has opened in you that was not there before.” It ends “To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence; it is to be turned back, as if after a long absence, into a human being.”

Miller’s disquisition on blurbing may shed some light on the process for civilians who have never thought about where these quotes come from.  Among other points of interest:

• “Blurb” is sometimes mistakenly used for the publisher-generated description printed on a book’s dust jacket — that’s actually the flap copy. “Blurb” really only applies to bylined endorsements by other authors or cultural figures.
• Prominent authors are inundated with far more requests for blurbs than they can handle. They turn down most of them, but “might do it for a good friend or a former student, or as a favor to their editor or agent.
• Positive reviews are hard to write. Authors who aren’t used to writing them write them badly.
• “So why is it done at all? Because you, dear reading public, persist in giving credence to it.”

After reading the Grossman blurb you could not be blamed for believing that nothing more absurd could ever be written. How wrong you would be. Inspired by that blurb, The Guardian has held a contest for the worst one its readers can come up, using a Dan Brown novel as the basis for their sendups.  For some laugh-out-loud There’ll Always Be An England wit read the contest entries in the Comments section of The Guardian’s article. They are, without a shadow of the doubt, the sublimest works ever produced by the human imagination since our emergence from the primordial muck…

Richard Curtis

“Next time you visit London,” we wrote about a year ago, “if you have an hour or two after visiting London Bridge, Westminster Palace and Big Ben, drop by a solicitor’s office and sue someone for libel. It will more than pay for the cost of your vacation. When you do, you’ll be participating in the blood sport known as libel tourism, a legal ploy so appalling that victims have described it as a form of terrorism.” (See Can’t Sue for Libel In US? Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World.)

Apparently Americans aren’t the only people bothered by this barbaric legal practice, which is founded on the presumption of guilt. Some 10,000 Britons signed petitions sponsored by reform groups urging the government to overturn the law.

Calling it “an archaic and unbalanced body of law,” the new coalition government picked up the groundswell of protest and has encouraged parliament to fix the statute. “Freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy,” said the government’s justice minister, “We need investigative journalism and scientific research to be able to flourish without the fear of unfounded, lengthy and costly defamation and libel cases being brought against them. We are committed to reforming the law on defamation and want to focus on ensuring that a right and a fair balance is struck between freedom of expression and the protection of reputation.”

Details in UK government plans major review of libel law

Richard Curtis

Cover design by Nathan Fernald

As books pass from the Tangible to the Digital Age the value of cover design is being called into question.  At least by Ben East, blogging on TheNational.ae in an article called Cover story.

Riffing on the cliche “You can’t tell a book by its cover,” East wonders whether cover design means anything any more. His conclusion? “The future of good book design looks decidedly bleak.”

East likens the state of book jackets to record albums. “Not long ago, a good looking album cover was a vital part of the image of a band and its fans; unsubtly leaving beautiful, sought-after records around your living room was like a window into your cooler-than-thou world. Now, such designs are hidden away in hard drives.”

Cover design by Nathan Fernald

If you no longer display your books in your library or living room, or even on a bus or park bench (see Can You Tell a Book Reader From its Cover?), is there any point for publishers to labor over designing striking covers? It’s tempting to say no, especially because all e-book covers show in black, white and grayscale on the E Ink screens of Kindle, Sony, Nook and their lesser kin.

But remember that that was the first generation of e-book reading devices. The next one, led by Apple’s iPad, sports full color screens.  Your e-book’s text will still be black and white but the cover will be fully saturated color, and it will definitely make a difference when you’re deciding whether to buy that e-book. Obviously e-book covers won’t employ foil and embossing but any publisher that believe consumers don’t choose e-books by what’s displayed on the screen is probably losing business.

Cover design by Andy Ross

E-Reads’ designers put a lot of creative thought into producing selling covers.  Embedded in this posting are a few recent ones. We’re revisiting our early covers and plan to replace them in due time.

So – who cares if you can’t tell a book by its cover?

We do.

By the way, did you figure out where .ae is?  Uh-uh – no fair googling!*

Richard Curtis

* .ae is The Arab Emirates

Whatever the common impression may be, literary agents take no pleasure whatever in rejecting books. Nor does our skin get thicker the longer we do it. Nathan Bransford, an agent, author and blogger expresses his distaste articulately:

“Every day I have to pass on the life’s work of cancer survivors and abuse victims and war heroes and many more people who spent hours upon hours of their life writing a novel in the faint hope that it would someday find publication. I don’t enjoy sending these rejection letters, and I never forget that on the other end of the letter there’s a person out there whose day I’m probably ruining and whose dreams I’m chipping away at.”

Until the digital era most of those rejected authors would have put their books in a drawer.  Or perhaps a few who could afford it arranged for a vanity press to publish them for many thousands of dollars. That all changed with the advent of digital technology. Today those rejectees are able to produce handsome e-book and print on demand editions for next to nothing. And agent Bransford says that should be music to the ears of every agent. Why?

For one thing, it eases our conscience, shifting the crushing burden of judgment from the shoulders of the few – agents, editor, critics and other so-called gatekeepers – to the larger public. But it’s even bigger than that, for this new way of evaluating literary quality symptomizes the emerging paradigm of proleterianism replacing the elitist value system that has dominated literature for centuries.  Bransford describes the process as “The Print Funnel.”

“What’s changing” he writes, “is that the funnel is in the process of inverting – from a top down publishing process to one that’s bottom up. Yes, many (if not most) of the books that will see publication in the new era will only be read by a handful of people. Rather than a rejection letter from an agent, authors will be met with the silence of a trickle of sales. And that’s okay!! Even if a book is only purchased by a few friends and family members — what’s the harm?”

Okay, maybe no harm.  But what about good? Do we care what the masses think are good books? Will their opinion influence us?

Before you answer, take your trusty Zagat restaurant guide down from the shelf.  On whose recommendation do you decide where you’re going to dine? The fact is, Zagat’s restaurant reviewers are your anonymous next-door neighbors. They are anybodies; they are nobodies.  But when they give a restaurant’s food, service and ambiance a high rating, you say “Let’s go!

Still looking down your nose at the masses? Perhaps a visit to Amazon.com will change your mind. Amazon boasts a cadre of reviewers who regularly cover specific genres. If you read enough coverage by the same reviewer you may conclude that this person’s judgment is reliable and enlightening and may actually motivate you to buy a book. (See Do Amazon Reviews Count?)

Amazon.com reviews are Bransford’s inverted funnel at work. We think he’s onto something.  Read The Rejection Letter of the Future Will Be Silence (And Why This is a Good Thing) and judge for yourself.

Richard Curtis

Was Fatal Attraction's Glenn Close your typical editor?

An agent friend of mine wrote to me as follows:

“Her eyes were crystal blue and she looked at me across the table with withering candor.  ‘I just don’t think she would climax that fast,’  she said.  ‘She’s the kind of woman who needs to take it up slowly.’ Her gaze never unlocked from mine as she spoke to me.

“Had I been the brooding hero of a novel I’d have responded with a seductive rejoinder.  But I’m not the hero of a novel.  I’m a literary agent. The stunning woman opposite me was an editor, and we were discussing a sex scene in a romance novel by an author I represented. Whatever repartee I might have thought of, there was only one appropriate – if wimpy – response:  ‘I’ll discuss it with my client.’”

Exchanges like that one take place every day in the book industry, and Russell Smith, writing in the Globe and Mail about a prominent publishing executive recently caught up in a sexual harassment scandal, reminds us that the publishing business is saturated in sexuality.

“It’s an unusual industry,” Smith writes, “one dominated by highly educated and intelligent women, many of them young. Most of the high-up executives on the commercial side of publishing are still men. The literary side is female. Most of the editors-in-chief of the major publishing houses are women; most of the publicists are women; almost all the agents are women; the powerful CBC Radio programs that discuss books are hosted by women; most of the readers are women; the single powerful bookstore chain in the country is run by a woman. And it is a highly social industry, because social events promote books: Anyone who works for a publishing house must attend, as part of work, frequent evening book launches, book fairs and literary festivals, and they are all soaked in booze. So are most of the writers.

“Furthermore, if you’re involved with fiction, or even with memoir and biography, you’re discussing sex and romance the whole time – because most novels still have relationships at their core. So you spend a lot of genuine professional work time, as a straight male talking to straight females, answering questions like, ‘Why would she let him take her top off right then?’ It becomes difficult to define exactly what flirting is in this environment.”

So – why aren’t there more sex scandals in publishing?  A key reason is professionalism.  Fatal Attraction notwithstanding, lust and lechery do not mix with representing or publishing authors.  “I need these people working at their best and most relaxed,” says Smith. “They make me look good. If I made any of my colleagues nervous about talking to me or seeing me then I would only be damaging myself. They wouldn’t want to help me. So you could say it’s a selfish self-control. Hell, even a consensual relationship would be idiotic: I need my colleagues to be objective and unemotional. And I need my career more than I need the ego-boost of impressing a lady. Perhaps I’m getting old, but believe it or not, I actually value my colleagues’ professional abilities more than their beauty.”

Publishing people are commendably restrained when it comes to surrendering to sexual temptation with their professional colleagues.  Most of us are content to enjoy hot sex vicariously through the vehicle of a well crafted (what I call a Three Cold Shower) fictional sex scene.  And some people I know have confided that seeing a book they’re involved in hit the bestseller list is better than sex.

Call it weird. Call it perverse.  Call it publishing.

Read The truth about publishing: It’s full of hotties

Richard Curtis

Mummified remains of literary agent, Jurassic Period

A fierce debate about the role of literary agents has burst into flames. Agent Victoria Strauss has summed it up in a posting in Writer Beware entitled Are agents underpaid?

Those who are sympathetic towards the agents’ plight point out that “agents’ job descriptions have expanded over the past couple of decades, and that they must now do much more for the same 15% they earned twenty years ago.” writes Strauss. “They also get no payment at all for a good portion of what they do on a regular basis–reading queries and manuscripts, editing, submitting books that never sell. In a highly competitive environment, with shrinking advances (at the midlist level, anyway) and cautious publishers, it’s getting harder and harder to make a living.” (That’s putting it mildly.  See What Your Agent Has Done for You Lately.”)

A variety of remedies for suffering agents is being promulgated. One is to shift their compensation from a contingency basis to charging for billable hours the way lawyers do.  Another is charging for specific services that are now freely offered, such as editing, lecture and tour arrangements, marketing, promotional activities, website management, and social networking. Still others are setting up publication programs for clients who contemplate self-publication. Another answer is for agents to raise their commissions. About this option Strauss reminds us that “During the 1980s and 1990s, US agents raised their commissions from 10% to 15%; it seems to me that an increase to 20% could be undertaken with relatively minimal pain on all sides. This would acknowledge the ways in which agenting has changed and expanded, but wouldn’t unfairly burden writers.” (Strauss does not seem to have confirmed that with any authors.)

These are all viable alternatives, and some of them are being implemented as agents urgently strive to redefine themselves. Many of them will work. But will agents still be defined as agents as we know them today? Or are we witnessing the birth of a new species?

Years ago, in anticipation of the changing identity of authors in a digital paradigm, I asked the question “Author?  What’s an Author?” Implied in that question was another question: “Agent? What’s an Agent?” As the nature of authorship evolves, so will the nature of agentship. But a day will come when agents are unrecognizably transformed from the fearsome breed that tramped the Earth in the late 20th century. Which leads me to wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. It’s not “Are agents underpaid?” but rather, Are agents doomed?

The inescapable fact is that agents are intermediaries in a disintermediating world, and digital technology is remorseless in its dissolution of those who stand between buyer and seller. The chasm between writers and publishers, for so long occupied by literary agents, has narrowed as authors realize that they are but one touch of their Send key away from their readers.

That depressing but inescapable truth should be borne in mind as you read Strauss’s Are Agents Underpaid? and the equally thought-provoking response by Jane Friedman, Director of Content & Community Development at Writer’s Digest, entitled Agents Need to Develop Alternative Models.

Richard Curtis

The Bulwer-Lytton prize for the worst opening sentence of a novel has been given annually since 1982 by San Jose State University.  This year’s recipient is Molly Ringle, according to The Guardian’s website.

The first line of her novel The Ghost Downstairs reads:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

The prize is named after the first line of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford, published in1830. It started “It was a dark and stormy night…”  Though it may have seemed vaguely fresh at the time, it has become the standard for quintessentially cliched story openings.

Recipient Ringle took it with good humor and stands by her gerbil metaphor, which was inspired by her nursing child: “There are definitely worse ways to get 15 minutes of fame,” she commented. Nevertheless, authors who seek immortality may want to skirt this particular honor.

It’s all here, including a doozy of a runner-up: Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing goes to ‘inappropriate’ gerbil sentence

Richard Curtis

The Huffington Post published a blog by independent publisher Jennifer Havenner with what she calls a “magical solution” to the book industry’s woes:  eliminate book returns.  Here’s how she framed it:

“In a desperate industry trying to scramble together 1% growth after being smacked with the Great Recession, the idea of saving the average publisher $40,000 every year should be a popular one. Add to that a 40% reduction of the industry’s carbon footprint, amounting to the carbon output equivalent of 2 million mid-sized cars, the saving of 60,000 acres worth of trees every year, and an additional $3 billion in profit industry-wide. What is this mystery magical solution?

“The elimination of book returns….By flipping one switch, the industry could make billions, and begin to reverse the environmental damage caused by wasteful practices. The whole industry needs to be on board for a true financial and environmental impact. Looking at the numbers, I see no reason why bookstores and publishers alike wouldn’t jump at the chance.”

Flipping a switch. It is indeed a magical solution, and a brilliant one.  It was brilliant when it was proposed thirty years ago. It was brilliant when it was proposed twenty years ago, ten years ago, and last year too. Everyone in the publishing industry thinks it’s brilliant.  But no one has lifted a finger to do anything about it, even though the returns model has driven countless publishers into merger, acquisition or bankruptcy and left the survivors no wiser or better able to control the hemorrhaging of cash.

And now it doesn’t matter, because a new on-demand business model has begun to replace the old one and in time will prevail. You can read about it in Publishing 3.0: A World Without Inventory Part 1 and Part 2

The time for magic is gone.  The old world of publishing is addicted to returns, and its wise heads never found the courage to break the addiction.  End returns?  A great idea whose time has gone.

Richard Curtis