In republishing some of my articles I’ve been struck by how little has changed in the decade or two since they first saw the light of day. In some cases I’ve scarcely had to change a word. However, I’m afraid that the following piece will not stand the test of time. When you come to the end you’ll see why the sacred ritual known as the publishing lunch date may be doomed.
RC
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When the time comes for me to lay down my sword and armor and cross into the Great Beyond after a lifetime of combat with venal publishers, crooked movie producers, treacherous lawyers, and kvetchy authors, it is my fondest hope that the gods will reward me with perpetual publishing luncheons. What fardels would I not bear knowing that such a treat awaited me on the other side! Some agents and editors feel lunches are tedious obligations at best and duck out of them whenever they can. I find them incredibly exciting, frequently dramatic, and always enlightening: I have never come away from one without having learned something useful. And, if everything comes together perfectly, the occasion can be a transcendental experience both culinarily and literarily, a sublime blend of art, commerce, and hedonism.

Most outsiders (such as authors) have a dim or distorted idea of what is involved in publishing lunches. To them, these affairs are as mysterious as royalty statements and discount schedules. So come perch on the right lobe of my brain, which in agents is the segment devoted to luncheon dates, and observe the process from the ringing of the phone (which automatically makes me salivate) to the final, discreet burp.

First, you should know that it is usually the editor who extends the invitation, selects the restaurant, and pays the check. Exactly why that is, I’m not sure, for it is clear that both parties stand to benefit equally from the occasion. (Mind you, I’m not complaining!)

Because it’s the editor who proposes and disposes, any agent who reverses roles and offers to take an editor to lunch is apt to earn many bonus points on the editor’s scorecard. When I worked for my first boss, literary agent Scott Meredith, he never permitted his staff to allow editors to treat them to lunch, I think because it implied a dependency that tarnished the agency’s image. I thought that was great, and I still do, but few agents can afford a steady diet (pardon the pun) of paying for editors, and if letting an editor pick up the tab suggests that the agent is dependent on him – well, in truth he is.

Editorial calendars tend to be filled for weeks and even months ahead with other lunches, editorial meetings, business trips, vacations, conferences, and conventions. So it is by no means unusual for lunch dates to be made far in advance, with the parties exploring dates for fifteen minutes before finding an open one. This practice makes one keenly and often disconcertingly aware of the rapid passage of time. A flip of your calendar, as you and your would-be luncheon partner seek an agreeable date, and you realize that another season has passed, another year. Here it is August, blazingly hot and swelteringly humid, and you are contemplating warm, heavy food, sweaters and furs, and talk of ski trips and Christmas books; in February, as bitter winds whistle past your windowpanes, you set a lunch date for a day when cherry and magnolia blossoms will strew the selfsame streets now carpeted with yard-high snowdrifts. It’s a strange feeling. Red-letter days in the publishing calendar signal another year fled from our lives: “I can’t make it in October, that’s the Frankfurt Book Fair”; “November’s no good, we have sales conference”; “Forget the last week in May – I have to get ready for the BEA convention.” The seasons cycle inexorably and you wax philosophical about the rolling years. Have I achieved anything important? Have I fulfilled my youthful goals? God grant me just one DaVinci Code before He takes me away!

Although your luncheon may be on some absurdly far-off day, the restaurant and precise hour are seldom selected until that very morning. Then, sometime around ten-thirty or eleven, your host or hostess calls you with the traditional phrase, “Are we on for today?” The time and place are then agreed upon. But not always easily. To wit:
“How does Italian sound to you?”
“Had it last night. Mexican?”
“I’m on a diet. There’s a great fish place around the corner from my office.”
“But that’s all the way on the other side of town from me. Well, okay, but can we make it twelve-thirty? I have an author coming up to my office at two.”
“That’s bad for me. I’ll be in a meeting all morning.”
And so it goes.

Sometimes there is more to these negotiations than two busy people trying to find common ground. Nothing serious, just a subtle game of chicken, like waiting till twelve-fifteen before phoning to confirm the lunch date, or jockeying for who is going to come to whose side of town: I am more powerful than you because I made you come to my side of town at an inconvenient hour and eat a cuisine that gives you heartburn.

Occasionally lunch dates are canceled, and canceled at the last minute. The reasons range from “I forgot to mark it in my calendar” to “I have pneumonia.” One morning, after waiting till noon, I phoned an editor to see if we were still on for lunch. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I was just fired.” I told her I thought that was a very poor excuse for canceling a date and I took her to lunch myself.

As the cancelee of today may be the canceler of tomorrow, we all accept cancellations with a certain degree of equanimity. They can, however, prove frustrating. I can all but guarantee that on the day I don my best suit and most expensive silk tie in anticipation of a Lucullan orgy at a four-star restaurant with an editorial kingpin I’ve been wooing for months, the date will be canceled and I’ll end up glomming a ham and Swiss on rye at my desk – and getting mustard on my tie to boot. Conversely, the days one wears jeans and tee-shirt to the office are inevitably the days one gets an impromptu invitation to Grenouille or Le Cirque.

Your luncheon companions range from the most eminent and powerful editor to the callow rookie who has just been given a title and expense account and told to go meet agents. Some agents, particularly the more prominent ones, disdain invitations from freshman editors. Why waste time with subalterns without clout when you can pick up the phone anytime and get the head of the company? I personally find that attitude shortsighted. New editors are often the most enthusiastic, ambitious, and industrious, best attuned to trends to which the older guard may be oblivious – new music, hot electronic games, rising young film stars, embryonic fads, and so forth. There’s another reason for cultivating young editors: In this turbulent age of musical chairs and sudden upward mobility, the green kid I dine with in March may be a department head in April.

Where you eat is a function of many factors: the age, seniority, and expense account of the editor; location; the amount of time available; dietary considerations; the importance of the host; the importance of the guest; the importance of the business at hand. Obviously, for example, young editors must entertain more modestly than senior ones. Yet many senior editors, having seen the inside of every restaurant in New York City after decades on the luncheon circuit, are just as happy to grab a burger at a coffee shop or munch a sandwich in the park. One of the most memorable lunches I ever had was with Robert Gottlieb, then editor in chief of the distinguished house of Alfred Knopf. It consisted of vanilla yogurt, nuts and raisins, and an orange, eaten in his office – eaten, indeed, on the floor of his office, for every horizontal surface including the couch was covered with manuscripts. Gottlieb had courageously taken himself out of the luncheon game, professing it to be too time-consuming, expensive, and fattening. All of which is true, agents and editors remind each other as they study their menus and debate trading off the appetizer for dessert.

When a senior editor is courting an agent in the hopes of capturing a big-name author, you can expect a Drop Dead, Pull Out All the Stops, No Prisoners Taken luncheon, the kind most authors think occurs every day but which in fact happens quite rarely. Such affairs reverberate in memory till the end of time. I remember one laid on for a major client and myself at the Four Seasons. Every course from the quail egg appetizer to the ethereal flan dessert had been prearranged by our publisher-host. Captains and waiters, obviously tipped off to the preeminence of the guests, attended us with obsequies usually reserved for caliphs and maharajahs. Our host had but to nod and the staff was galvanized into action. And, as the presentation of a check would have been a base intrusion of crass mercantilism into so elevated an occasion, it was never brought out. I assume it was simply forwarded to the publisher’s accounting department for review at some later date.

While sumptuous repasts are certainly incomparably exciting, and the author unaccustomed to “the treatment” may well feed off the memories till he’s old and gray, I am far from convinced that they make much difference in influencing authors and agents. Such feasts seem much more appropriate for celebrating the closing of a major deal than for softening up reluctant objects of a publisher’s affections. Which is not to say they should stop trying.

Authors have a misconception that lunches are the time when deals are made. In my experience most deals are made on the phone; the lunches are devoted more to getting acquainted with editors and their companies. Although I used to feel that some kind of business should be accomplished during lunch or a short time afterward, I’ve come to realize that friendships struck at lunch may not pay off for years. Nevertheless, there is something theatrical about presenting an editor with a manuscript at the luncheon table. I remember one occasion when I brought a bulky manila envelope with me to a restaurant. Throughout lunch, the editor cast intrigued glances at it, and at last, toward dessert, she ran a covetous hand over it. “Is this something for me?”
“Oh Lord, no,” I said with a gulp, realizing I had inadvertently led her on. “These are shirts going back to Bloomingdale’s!”

Another common belief is that publishing lunches are rather boozy affairs. In truth, the dominant beverages for the last ten years or so have been wine, juice and sparkling soda water, and even the hallowed Marys are as apt to be Virgin as Bloody. On occasion, hard liquor is ordered, but sipped in moderation. As for the fabled two-martini lunch, I can truthfully say that in the last decade I can recall only one luncheon companion who ordered martinis, but since he was a confirmed alcoholic, the more he drank the more coherent he became. Because drunkenness is, among other things, a breach of manners (and manners are largely what publishing lunches are all about), editors and agents are extremely careful not to drink too much. I have seldom seen an editor become so much as tipsy at lunch. I wish I could say as much about authors, though in mitigation it must be said that they are usually a little nervous, unaccustomed to banquets on so lavish a scale.

Just what is ordered depends on the circumstances. Almost every editor in town has a diet book on his or her list and is experimenting with its advice. So there has been a distinct trend toward simple, highly nutritious cuisine, even in the elegant watering places where high-rolling publishing potentates hang out – all those places beginning with La and Le and Il. Exotic cuisines are usually avoided unless the editor and agent are old lunching companions and are willing to drop their guards a bit. With them I hit the Mexican, Brazilian, Thai, and Indian joints, drink beer (straight from the bottle) instead of wine, relax protocol and manners, and exchange confidences seldom heard at high table.

Although the agent-guest is encouraged to order anything he wants, if the editor is decidedly junior it is an act of cruelty to order the most expensive items on the menu, but I do know some agents who, if they are mad at a publisher, will take their petty revenge by hitting the company up for a five-course extravaganza with champagne, brandy, and cigars elaborate desserts.

Not all foods are suitable for business luncheons. Though I adore sloppy items like lobster and ribs, it is usually inappropriate to order them, for there is no way one can be cool and nonchalant while sucking the liquid out of a lobster claw or picking a spare rib clean with fingernails and incisors.

Like those in other industries, publishing luncheons have a rhythm and flow that follow Aristotelian dramaturgical principles, from the quiet exposition through the developmental passages and on to the stirring climax. While the talk at the outset is small – the weather, the latest Big Apple catastrophe, your life story, “How I Got into Publishing” – it is seldom unrevealing to one alert for clues to one’s companion’s literary interests, status in the company, industry clout, negotiating skill, and other traits that may prove useful in future intercourse. Above all, there is gossip.

New York trade publishing is a very small town. Although Literary Market Place, the industry’s directory, contains thousands of names, my own short list of key contacts contain no more than three hundred names or so, and anything that happens to one of them is bound to affect my clients’ interests. Promotions, firings, resignations, romances, divorces – all are grist for the agent’s information mill in the perpetual process of assessing who’s got the power, who’s spending money, which way the market’s going, what the next hot trend is.

Thus, in due time talk drifts toward serious business. What good authors and projects is the agent handling? What’s the editor looking for? There is scarcely anything you can say that doesn’t serve as a springboard. The birth of my son inspired luncheon discussions leading to at least three books my agency subsequently developed; let that be a lesson to anyone asking me to produce wallet photos of my family.

Here, then, is what I love best of all about luncheons, for within seconds the conversation can shift from idle chatter to immense profundities, only moments later to shift again to money talk as the parties try to place a dollar value on the ideas under discussion.

Listen:

Agent: Whew! Have you ever seen weather like this?
Editor: This is the third mild winter in a row. Do you think the climate is permanently moderating or something?
Agent: Possibly. This meteorologist I’ve been corresponding with thinks the pollutants in the air are seriously affecting world climate. The planet is overheating. The ice caps are melting.
Editor: Really? This meteorologist – um, is he writing a book perchance?
Agent: Funny you should ask. He’s halfway through one. He’s got great credentials and he’s promotable as hell. Looks a little like Brad Pitt.
Editor: I’d be interested in a book like that.
Agent: Would you be interested one hundred thousand worth?
Editor: Fifty thousand worth, maybe.
Agent: Fifty! The guy’s been on Oprah twice, for crying out loud!

Lunch is over. The editor pantomimes a scribble toward the captain, the time-honored gesture of summoning the check. There is no quarreling. The inviter pays, the invitee says thank you, and that’s usually that.

Goodness, it’s five minutes before three! Got to get back to the office. Loved every minute of it. Let’s do business. Let’s stay in touch. Let’s have lunch again soon!

- Richard Curtis

PS: For a bitter post script to the above article, read Publishing Bigshots Told to Open Canned Tuna, Eat at Desk by Leon Neyfakh.

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Let’s Have Lunch! was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in How to be Your Own Literary Agent, published by Houghton Mifflin, Copyright © 1983, 1984, 1996, 2003 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

Okay, copyright mavens, it’s time to play Steal From The Stars. For a chance to beat the other couple and go to the playoff round, all you have to do is correctly rule on the following case:

Michel Houellebecq is a bestselling French novelist whose just-published thriller, La Carte et le Territoire, is “a runaway favorite to win the most prestigious of French literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt, this autumn,” according to John Lichfield writing in The Independent. However, Houellebecq has been accused of lifting verbatim several lengthy passages from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the collaborative Internet encyclopedia, using anonymous contributors, that has virally grown into a proleterian alternative to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

But here’s the wrinkle: Houellebecq freely admits that he lifted the passages,which include a word for 200-word Wiki piece about the sex life of flies. Furthermore, he does not consider what he did to be plagiarism. And neither does his publisher, the distinguished house of Flammarion. The author says the accusations are “ridiculous” and his use of the material was “artistic”; his publisher says Houellebecq’s lifted texts are stylistic eccentricities but not theft.

To understand their rationales you can read Lichfield’s article here. But don’t peek yet – you haven’t answered the quiz, remember?

The question is, did Houellebecq plagiarize?  Can Wikipedia sue him?

The answer is no and no. What he did may have been immoral, unethical or reprehensible. Or for all we know it was indeed artistic.  But it was not illegal.

The content published in Wikipedia is not copyrighted in the usual sense – that is, it is not covered by the US Copyright statutes designed to protect intellectual property.  That is because contributors are required to leave their claim to copyright ownership at the door, as it were, when their text is accepted for inclusion in the Wiki “book”.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes your right to use texts published on its website:

The licenses Wikipedia uses grant free access to our content in the same sense that free software is licensed freely. Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included (a link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement; see below for more details)*. Copied Wikipedia content will therefore remain free under appropriate license and can continue to be used by anyone subject to certain restrictions, most of which aim to ensure that freedom. This principle is known as copyleft in contrast to typical copyright licenses.

* In compliance with the terms of Wikipedia’s license I am hereby linking back to the source of the above quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Contributions to Wikipedia do however come under the provisions of another body of copyright law known as the Berne Convention, but it is “formally licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses including something called the “Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike”. You can look it up on Wikipedia but for a clear-as-crystal exposition you can read this essay by Cory Doctorow.

Finally, here in its entirety is Wikipedia’s statement on copyright. We’re not sure Monsieur Houllebecq and his publisher read it before undertaking to use Wikipedia texts because they did not attribute their source.  So, technically they violated their Creative Commons license. Do you know a good avocat?

Richard Curtis

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Important note: The Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on Wikipedia article texts and illustrations. It is therefore pointless to email our contact addresses asking for permission to reproduce articles or images, even if rules at your company or school or organization mandate that you ask web site operators before copying their content.

The only WP content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about is the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission.

Permission to reproduce and modify text on Wikipedia has already been granted to anyone anywhere by the authors of individual articles as long as such reproduction and modification complies with licensing terms (see below and Wikipedia: Mirrors and forks for specific terms). Images may or may not permit reuse and modification; the conditions for reproduction of each image should be individually checked. The only exceptions are those cases in which editors have violated Wikipedia policy by uploading copyrighted material without authorization, or with copyright licensing terms which are incompatible with those Wikipedia authors have applied to the rest of Wikipedia content. While such material is present on the Wikipedia (before it is detected and removed), it will be a copyright violation to copy it. For permission to use it, one must contact the owner of the copyright of the text or illustration in question; often, but not always, this will be the original author.

If you wish to reuse content from Wikipedia, first read the Reusers’ rights and obligations section. You should then read the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.

With attendance at Book Expo America sagging, we proposed last May to replace the annual publishing industry convocation with a virtual one.  “Technology and bandwidth have advanced to the point where it is entirely feasible to mount a virtual trade conference,” we wrote, “one that would be fully participatory for traditional and e-book publishers, booksellers, librarians, educators, literary agents, authors, book-related exhibitors and their technology counterparts – plus the most important attendee of them all, readers; all from the comfort of their homes, offices or commute.” (See A Book Conference You Can Attend in Your Bathrobe )

Two recent news items may bring us closer to the day you’ll be able to participate in a book fair without setting foot outside your bedroom.

The first is an item in Publishers Weekly reporting that Reed Exhibitions, which bills itself as the world’s leading events organizer, is looking to putting BEA under the aegis of the American Library Association and possibly moving the event out of New York. “If a deal is reached,”writes PW’s Jim Milliott, “Reed is believed to favor locating BEA and the ALA annual meeting in 2012 in Chicago, creating in effect two shows under one roof. It wasn’t clear if the shows would move around the country.”

But now we learn that the mother of all book industry events, the Frankfurt Book Fair, is struggling too. Though it still attracts some 300,000 visitors annually, the 2010 edition scheduled for October will have five percent fewer exhibitors than 2009.  Furthermore, this year the Buchmesse will “focus on the digital sector,” according to an AFP news item. “With smartphones and electronic books all the rage,’reading is undergoing a revolution’ the fair’s director Juergen Boos told reporters.”

So? What about taking these book fairs virtual? Here’s how we imagined it:

While the main event itself could be of short duration, it could easily morph into a 24/7/365 marketplace centered around books and authors, publishers, booksellers, bloggers AND readers; a kind of “Second Life” for the book publishing industry. It could be a combination website, bazaar, and social gaming environment where real business is done, books are bought and sold, but with a high fun quotient limited only by the technical skills of art departments, web designers and graphic artists, and the boundless imagination of the publishing industry.

We think it’s going to happen.  How about you?

Richard Curtis

When Barnes & Noble acquired Fictionwise  (See Barnes & Noble Levels the E-Book Playing Field), at that time the world’s leading e-book store and still the leader in multiformat, we knew it was only a matter of time before the parent company instituted some changes.

Today we learned that a big shoe has dropped: Fictionwise will be closing its so-called branded stores.  These are store-fronts hosted by Fictionwise enabling customers to view only the publishers’ own titles rather than the comprehensive list of all books retailed by Fictionwise.

The dedicated publisher pages will be terminated at the end of September, and publishers have been invited to redirect customer visits and purchases to the main Fictionwise website www.fictionwise.com.

The company, founded at the dawn of the e-book era by pioneers Steve and Scott Pendergrast, e-tails e-books published by some 500 publishers. The list may be viewed here. Each publisher has its own dedicated page which includes listings of the publisher’s current bestsellers and titles rated highest by fans. E-Reads is among them, and we too will be repointing our website to adapt to the new circumstances. We do not expect the change to negatively impact our business or Fictionwise’s but we’re sorry to see it happen. Fictionwise was founded around the same time as E-Reads and we consider them our close companions on our journey to the digital future.

Branded store closings notwithstanding, Fictionwise will continue to function as one of the world’s most successful e-book retailers and, as far as we’re concerned, one that is unsurpassed both in customer- and author-friendliness.

Richard Curtis

In The Dark Place, Aaron Elkins’ second Gideon Oliver thriller, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered deep in the primeval rain forest of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last ten thousand years. And whoever—or whatever—hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot “sightings” immediately crop up, but Gideon isn’t buying them.

But something is continuing to kill people, and Gideon, helped by forest ranger Julie Tendler and FBI special agent John Lau, plunges into the dark heart of an unexplored wilderness to uncover the bizarre, astonishing explanation.

*********
Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and anthropology professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist-detective Gideon Oliver, “the Skeleton Detective.” There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC-TV series and have been selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.

Elkins won the 1988 Edgar best mystery award for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his co-writer and wife Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award. Elkins has also won a Nero Wolfe Award.

His website is http://www.aaronelkins.com/

Fellowship of Fear introduces award-winning Aaron Elkins’ protagonist, anthropologist professor Gideon Oliver.

When Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at U.S. military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. Stimulating courses to teach, a decent stipend, all expenses paid, plenty of interesting European travel . . . what’s not to like?

It doesn’t take him long to find out. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there’s the little matter of a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention—such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.

From there it’s all downhill. Gideon finds himself the target in an unfamiliar game for which no one has bothered to give him the rules. What he does have, however, is his own considerable intellect and his remarkable forensic skills. He will need them, for he is playing for some fairly high stakes. Like the security of Western Europe . . .

And his own life.

**********

Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and anthropology professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist-detective Gideon Oliver, “the Skeleton Detective.” There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC-TV series and have been selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.

Elkins won the 1988 Edgar best mystery award for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his co-writer and wife Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award.  Elkins has also won a Nero Wolfe Award.

His website is http://www.aaronelkins.com/

We trust you were hooked by Piers Anthony’s Cluster, because we’ve just released Chaining the Lady, the second novel in the young adult science fiction adventure series. And there are more to come.

The “Cluster” adventures are set in a future focused on colonization of distant planets. Sphere Sol is about 100 light years in diameter, centered on the Earth’s sun. Surrounding this sphere are similar ones centered on another star such as Polaris or Canopus. Colonization is accomplished by instantaneous teleportation, called matter transmission or mattermission. Cryonically preserved colonists are sent out in “freezer” ships.

Because of the difficulty of colonization and the smaller population bases, all spheres suffer spherical regression– that is, the greater the distance from source star to colony, the lower the level of technology that survives. Social organizations regress backward to historical periods of the home planet’s past. Outworld, Sphere Sol’s farthest colony, is populated by paleolithic tribes who hunt with flint spears and make fire. Colonists know about the interstellar empire and the home worlds “mattermit” government and security personnel to all colony worlds.

Every living thing has a Kirlian aura that can be measured. Through transfer, a refinement of mattermission technology, the mind and personality of individuals with high aura can be sent to animate a body physically distant but a hosted aura fades at the rate of about 1 unit per Earth day and higher-Kirlian individuals last longer and thus have more freedom of movement.

The first three novels in the sequence, Cluster, Chaining the Lady and Kirlian Quest form a linked trilogy. Thousandstar and Viscous Circle come later and take place in the time sequence between the second and third volumes of the original trilogy.

In Chaining the Lady, Melody, a product of Flint and the Andromedan’s mating in Cluster, must save the Milky Way Galaxy and create a place where creatures can transfer without limitations. Melody must survive in worlds unknown and alien to her and she does that where others fail when her aura augments her skills and abilities. The book opens with the discovery that Andromeda, the enemy galaxy of the first novel, has discovered the secret of involuntary hosting: a Kirlian aura that is sufficiently stronger than that of an individual can take possession of that individual. Andromeda has secretly infiltrated the highest levels of government in Sphere Sol and its allies and resurrect its plot to steal the energy of the Milky Way.

Look for all five titles on the Piers Anthony page of the E-Reads website. And visit Piers Anthony’s website.
RC

She does it on her back, he on his  stomach. He’s an E, she’s a P.  Can this marriage be saved?

To marital tensions over sleeping with the window open vs. closed, watching a ball game vs. a political program, and going out to dinner vs. ordering in, you can now add who prefers to read a print book vs. who likes an e-book. You may not think it’s a big deal but some couples do, and marriages have broken up over far less.

In the New York Times Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller have reported P vs. E as a domestic issue fraught with potential conflict. One husband spoke of his wife’s reverence for paper with some disdain. “She talks about the smell of the paper and the feeling of holding it in your hands. She uses the word ‘real.’ ”

Real? Before the digital era we never questioned the reality of books, but e-books have introduced an element of doubt as we examine the philosophical question of What is real, the medium or the message, the vessel (print on paper bound between covers) or the intellectual content contained in it?

Regardless of the fact that the argument is at least as old as Plato (and Mrs. Plato), the smug certainty that your paper reading device is superior to your partner’s electronic one or vice-versa could lead to hard feelings.  They say you’re not supposed to go to sleep mad at your spouse, but it’s hard not to when one turns out the lamp and puts her book down on the night table while he continues reading by the glow of a backlit screen.  I know of at least one wife who banished her husband from the bedroom because the CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click of his page-turn feature was driving her mad.

For couples whose idea of togetherness is lying side by side reading old-fashioned book-books, a switch by one to e-book can feel like a betrayal, the literary equivalent of cheating on your spouse. Richtel and Miller cite one wife whose rude awakening came after the honeymoon. “We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, but he had an iPad, and it was almost distracting because it didn’t feel like he was reading with me.”

Clearly the key to marital concord is to include reading device preferences in the prenuptial agreement.  And don’t forget a provision for how you’re going to bring up your children. “The battle over reading tastes has skipped to a new generation,” the Times reporters tell us. “He reads Winnie the Pooh to the child on a screen. She reads it in old-fashioned paperback form.”

We’re not sure if it’s pre-nup-worthy but added to device preferences is reading positions. Are you a tummier, a sitter, a backer or a sider? An AbeBooks blog raised the question in a posting called Positions in Bed.  When reading in bed, the blogger lies “stretched out flat on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, with the book in front of me, between my hands.” A survey of co-workers disclosed several who read on their side, head propped up on one hand. Sitters pile pillows up against the headboard, while backers use them to prop up pinkie-bending hardcovers. Nobody surveyed said they read standing up, but it might be good to find that weird fact out before you tie the marital knot. Discovering your spouse likes to read standing up might be like finding a stash of porn under the bed.

If marital strains become overwhelming, contact a counselor, but when you make the appointment it might be a good idea to ask the therapist whether she reads paper or digital, and in what position.

Richard Curtis

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

Why don’t books carry advertising?

Maybe a better question is, When will books start carrying advertising?

A discomfiting scenario of what the world would look like with ads in books, or embedded in e-books, was painted in the Wall Street Journal by Ron Adner, a professor of business, and William Vincent, a former book editor. “With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business,” they write, “what room is left for publishers’ profits? The surprising answer: ads. They’re coming soon to a book near you.”

Barbarians at the Gate?

For those of us who who regard books as cultural temples whose thresholds will never be muddied by the boots of barbarian admen, this prognostication is like a dagger to the throat.  Books are an immersive medium; we lose ourselves in them expressly to escape from the ambient blare of ads and commercials assaulting us in the real world. Isn’t that why even the ad-pushers have hesitated to tread on our precious books?

Adner and Vincent don’t think so. “Historically, the lack of advertising in books has had less to do with the sanctity of the product and more to do with the fact that books are a lousy medium for ads. Ads depend on volume and timeliness to work, and books don’t provide an opportunity for either.”

Warning: Paperbacks May be Harmful to Your Health

Actually that isn’t completely true. The capability for placing ads in books has existed for decades, but thanks to a populist revolt against them staged by authors in the 1970s the practice was ended. John R. Douglas, a former science fiction editor (and now acquisitions editor for E-Reads), remembers The Great Cigarette Ad Rebellion. It happens that some paperback publishers started inserting cigarette ads into books just around the time researchers were starting to uncover the health risks of smoking and Surgeon General warnings began appearing on cigarette boxes. Horrified authors and their agents begin pressing publishers to discontinue the ads.  “As a result,” writes Douglas, “many paperback book contracts now include clauses forbidding any advertising other than the back-of-the-book ads for other books and authors from the same publisher.”

That seemed to settle the matter – until now.  Until the E-book Era.  But now all bets are off. Ads on, in and around e-books are on the way and this time no opposition by authors short of a Constitutional amendment is going to reverse the juggernaut, say Adner and Vincent.  “Physical books can’t compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.”

The scenario reaches nightmare velocity when the writers talk about the effects on authors. “Authors are likely to be concerned [!!!!!] not only with the idea of ads, but with what particular ads are placed in their books. Imagine the value—and controversy—of placing pharmaceutical ads in healthy-living guides, or partisan attacks in political memoirs.”

The I-Word to the Rescue

But wait, authors – belay those cyanide capsules. It’s Paul Carr to the rescue.  Blogging in TechCrunch, Carr declares Adner’s and Vincent’s prophecies “bullshit” and invokes the I-word: “A book is a fully immersive experience in which the readers expects to be transported completely to another world.” He draws a parallel between watching a movie and reading a book: “People go to the cinema, or slip in a DVD, to escape from the commercially saturated real world; much the same reason as they crack open a good book. Putting an ad in the middle of a book is a great way to kill a reader’s enjoyment of the product, and ensure they won’t buy another one.”

Green Eggs and Oscar Mayer Honey Ham Cold Cuts

Relieved?  Not so fast…

Carr sees a more insidious plot to take over your brain. It’s called product placement, which he defines as “bribing filmmakers to ensure that their heroes and heroines are seen drinking a particular brand of beer or getting married wearing a particular designer’s dress.” Carr cites a number of instances of products subtly placed in the pages of recent fiction, particularly novels aimed at young readers – “presumably because it’s easier to slip Pepsi into a book about modern teenagers than it is to wedge Burger King into Oryx and Crake,” a literary novel by Margaret Atwood.

So, Carr rescues us from the frying pan only to deposit us in the fire, and if you think Adner and Vincent painted an apocalyptic picture, read  Forget Ads In Books, Lit-Lovers Face An Even More Hideous Prospect.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal.

At the World Science Science Fiction Convention in Australia, HarperCollins announced that its science fiction imprint Eos has joined forces with Voyager UK/Australia/New Zealand to become Harper Voyager, “the first global imprint for HarperCollins Publishers world-wide” according to Eos’s Executive Editor Diana Gill.

“We are already globally publishing some of the biggest names in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, and horror, including Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Kim Harrison, and Sara Douglass,” said Brian Murray, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Worldwide. “Uniting our sister companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia/New Zealand allows readers globally unparalleled access to books and authors.”

You can read the complete press release here.

Richard Curtis