Graph by Silicon Alley Insider

Years ago it became clear to us that we were heading for a Gillette Event.  That day may be only months away.

The Gillette Event is the day that the price of e-readers drops to $0.00.  The above chart shows that since 2007 the price of a Kindle has slid sharply from $399 to its current $79 (at least for one model). The slope is so steep it’s hard to avoid any other conclusion than that Free is inevitable.

The Gillette Event is named after King Gillette, the inventor of the safety razor and marketing genius who conceived the scheme of giving away the razor and selling the blades.  The analogy to e-readers is clear: give away the device and sell the content.

I’ve never believed that information wants to be free but it looks like the devices that provide it are just begging for gratis status.

Does it make sense for Amazon to go on charging anything at all for the Kindle?  There are compelling arguments in favor of taking the ball across the Zero goal line.

The first is that Amazon has never been afraid to sell the Kindle at a loss in order to undercut the competition. Some observers say that low-end models of the device are breaking even.  So, going into deficit to gain a competitive advantage would not plunge the company into trouble by any means. A million Kindles at $79 per is $79 million – hardly a ding in Amazon’s revenue armor. A free Kindle would give Amazon a decisive lead in the e-reader arms race from which rivals might never recover.

The second argument for free Kindles is that the amount of paid content carried on the e-reader has soared to the point where critical mass sustained by media sales is within reach. As an inducement to consumers the device would come pre-loaded with a starter set of rich content. No charge for your first set of razor blades.

These speculations were prompted by an interesting article by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in Business Insider Research, How Amazon Makes Money From The Kindle.

The author discusses the larger Kindle environment he calls the Kindle Ecosystem. At the headwaters of that ecosystem is the device itself.  A free Kindle could create a flood of business that would dominate the marketplace for the foreseeable future.

By the way, the Gillette strategy isn’t limited to Amazon.  Are you listening, Barnes & Noble?

Richard Curtis

I happen to have more than a passing acquaintance with Halloween because I was commissioned by Bantam Books to write the paperback tie-in of John Carpenter’s blockbuster movie Halloween under the pen-name of “Curtis Richards.” It was a pretty good novel if I do say so myself. Out of curiosity I checked it out on amazon.com and was gratified to read that one reviewer described it as, “A near classic of its kind.” (Near? Why just near?)

If you’re interested in learning how I dealt with the challenge, and the fascinating process of movie, television and game novelizations, I’ve detailed it in a piece called Movies Into Books.

Incidentally, I hold an orange belt in pumpkin carving, and above is an example. In the dark you can’t see the bloodstain where my filleting knife penetrated the palm of my left hand.

- Richard Curtis

Novelizations of movies and television shows are among the most intriguing subspecies of commercial fiction. I say subspecies because they obviously cannot be spoken of in the same breath as The Magic Mountain or Portrait of a Lady; indeed, even commercial novelists look down their noses at novelizations as possessing not a shred of redeeming social value, as the literary equivalent of painting by numbers. On the spectrum of the written word, tie-ins are as close to merchandise as they are to literature.

Tie-ins are kin to souvenirs, and in some ways are not vastly different from the dolls, toys, games, calendars, clothes, and other paraphernalia generated by successful motion pictures and television shows. Those who write them usually dismiss them with embarrassment or contempt, or brag about how much money they made for so little work. Yet, when pressed they will speak with pride about the skill and craftsmanship that went into the books and assure you that the work is deceptively easy. And if you press them yet further, many will puff out their chests and boast that tie-in writers constitute a select inner circle of artisans capable of getting an extremely demanding job done promptly, reliably, and effectively, a kind of typewriter-armed S.W.A.T. team whose motto is, “My book is better than the movie.”

How are tie-ins created? Their birthplace of course is the original screenplay. The Writers Guild of America Basic Agreement entitles the screenwriter to ownership of literary rights to his screenplay. When he sells his screenplay he may retain the novelization rights or include them, at terms to be negotiated, in the screenplay deal. Most of the time the screenwriter sells his novelization rights to the buyer—the film’s producer or a studio. The new owner of these rights now tries to line up a publication deal for the tie-in. He contacts paperback publishers and pitches the forthcoming film.

If the film has a big budget, terrific story, bankable actors, unique special effects, or other highly promotable features that promise a hit, publishers will bid for the publication rights, (In the case of television tie-ins, the producers almost always wait till a series is a hit before arranging for tie-ins. And one-shot movies of the week seldom trigger novelizations because of the brief period—one evening—in which they are exposed to the public.) A deal is then struck, the publisher paying an advance against royalties to the producer or studio.

The publisher then engages a writer to adapt the screenplay. It should be readily apparent that if the movie is indeed shaping up to be a hit, or the television show is already a hit, the publisher will be forced to pay such a high advance and royalty to the producer or studio that little will be left for the writer. That’s why novelizations are generally low-paying affairs, with modest advances and nominal royalties of 1 or 2 percent. Flat fees are by no means unheard of. And, because the competition among writers for novelizations is intense, few writers are in any position to bargain. But if the pay scale is so miserable, why do authors seek novelization assignments so ardently? Because they think it’s easy money. Sometimes it is. But it’s not like falling off a log, as we shall soon see.

Publishers are nowhere near as enamored of movie tie-ins as authors are, and they weigh the profit potential of such books as critically as they do that of the thousands of other manuscripts submitted to them annually. They know that most movies do not translate well into books. There are also technical and timing problems with tie-ins that are daunting to publishers. For instance, the screenplay may undergo alterations, some of them radical, right up to or even during the shooting of the film. By the time filming is complete there is insufficient time before the release of the movie for a writer to write the novel and the publisher to publish it.

A notable instance of the timing problem occurred in the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Stanley Kubrick insisted on complete control over the writing and publication scheduling of the novelization. The author of that novelization was a chap named Arthur C. Clarke, and since Kubrick kept changing the script as he went along, particularly the wild and mystical ending, Clarke had to keep changing the novel. His publishers bit their fingernails to the quick as the days rolled inexorably toward the release date of the movie. Worst of all, the book tie-in deal was for publication of a hardcover first, then paperback. It had been assumed that the hardcover would be brought out before the movie was released, then the paperback would be issued to coincide with the release of the film. But because of the delays there was no lead time whatsoever for the hardcover. The publisher wanted to drop the hardcover and go straight into paperback, but Kubrick insisted on hardcover. Thus we had a case, unprecedented in anyone’s experience, of a hardcover novelization. The publisher did get his paperback edition out soon thereafter, but the situation was a mess and the book didn’t do anywhere as well as it might have if the timing had been better.

Kubrick, incidentally, plays a role in one of the more bizarre movie tie-in stories I have ever heard. It seems that a novelist named Peter Bryan George wrote a nuclear apocalypse novel called Red Alert. It was acquired for the movies by a producer who couldn’t put a deal together, so he laid it off on Kubrick. Kubrick adapted it, and rather broadly to say the least. Red Alert was a very solemn book; the adaptation was blackly humorous. He called it Dr. Strangelove. In fact, so different was the movie from the book that the producers decided to hire somebody to write the novelization. They hired Peter Bryan George, the author of Red Alert. So George novelized the movie version of his own novel! His novel had been published by Ace under the name of Peter Bryant; his novelization was published by Bantam under the name Peter George.

Another problem for publishers is the greed that has set in at the studios. Originally, tie-ins were regarded as free publicity for movies, and publishers regarded them as little more than list-fillers. For a modest payment to the studio a publisher would get the screenplay, stills, cover photo, and promotional material, and everybody was happy. Then the studios began to smell profit, and arranging tie-ins became a little less complex than building a space shuttle.

The first big breakout tie-in was Last Tango in Paris, according to novelist and publishing columnist Leonore Fleischer, who has been dubbed Queen of the Paperback Novelizers for the fifty-odd tie-ins she has written. Last Tango was followed by a number of other hits (tie-inwise as well as box officewise) like The Omen and Star Wars. The bidding began to spiral, and the studios started charging publishers for all the material they’d formerly give away as part of the tie-in package.

The climax came with the bidding for a tie-in of F.I.S.T., the Sylvester Stallone film following Stallone’s smash hit, Rocky. Dell paid a $400,000 advance for the novelization rights, and, needless to say, took what is known in Spanish as El Batho. Soon afterward the tie-in market collapsed – “F.I.S.T was your ultimate South Sea Bubble,” Fleischer told me – and it never quite recovered. It has revived somewhat, principally in the area of special effects-type films such as Alien, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but publishers have become too cautious and sensible ever to get quite so hysterical again.

Anyone who thinks that tie-in writing is a mere matter of adding he-saids and she-saids to the screenplay dialogue has certainly never attempted such an adaptation. For one thing, most screenplays are too short to convert page for page into book manuscripts. Therefore, even if you are following the script scene by scene, you are required to amplify on character, action, and location descriptions. Any good novelist can translate a terse screenplay direction (“EXTERIOR, OLD MACDONALD’S FARM, A STORMY NIGHT”) into a few pages of descriptive prose (“A bitter, shrieking north wind lashed the trees and hurled sheet after sheet of icy rain against the clapboard siding of Old MacDonald’s farmhouse . . .” etc.). The problem is that when you analyze screenplays you realize that most of them don’t lend themselves comfortably to scene-for-scene conversion. In fact, many of them present nightmarish challenges.

The reason is that movies are seen with one lobe of the brain, and books read with another. If you’ll take the trouble to compare a novel with its film adaptation, you’ll immediately realize that whole chapters have been cut or reduced to takes that last a few seconds on the screen; or that, conversely, a sentence or paragraph has been dramatized into a full-dress scene that consumes five or ten minutes of movie time. This is because some material in books is distinctly more cinematic than other material. (It also explains why few novelists make good screenwriters, and most screenwriters are dreadful novelists.)

By the same token, owing to the demands of the book reader’s imagination, elaborate scenes in a movie may seem far too long to merit the same expansive treatment in a novelization; fast transitional scenes, flashbacks, establishing shots, short takes, and the like may require a novelizer to build them into whole chapters. Some years ago I was hired by Bantam to novelize John Carpenter’s horror film Halloween. The film had already been released and was showing at only a few small theaters around the country, but the Bantam editor felt the movie was a sleeper, and he was right; It became one of the most profitable independently made films of all time.

It was most fortunate for me that the movie has already made, for in many cases the novelizer has only the screenplay to go by, or perhaps a rough cut of the film, and therefore has little visual material to aid him as he attempts to translate screenplay into book. After seeing the movie, however, I was troubled by some serious technical problems in adapting one medium into another. The movie opens with a five-year-old boy who, on Halloween, slashes his teenage sister to death with a long kitchen knife. We then jump some twenty years to show the little boy, now a grown man, escaping from a mental institution in which he has been confined, stealing a car, and returning to his hometown to go on another bloody rampage.

One of the great things about movies is that they move so fast, you don’t have time to think about logic. Novels are a more reflective medium, however; at any time you can put a book down and think about what you’ve read. And it worried me, for instance, that my readers would put my book down and wonder how the hell someone who’d been institutionalized since he was five would know how to drive a car. So I had to concoct a whole chapter describing the fellow’s stay in the asylum (which was okay, since I needed the five thousand words anyway) and showing that because he’d been a model inmate and trusty, he’d been taught to drive a truck and use it to run errands on the asylum grounds.

Even more serious was the fact that at the climax of the film, this malevolent individual is shot half a dozen times at point-blank range by a .357 magnum, yet steals way into the darkness leaving not a drop of blood where he fell to the ground, apparently dead; leaving, in fact, only the distinctive aroma of a sequel film. Now, all this is well and good for the moviegoer seeking a good scare, but for a book reader it raises some disturbing questions: Did the man who shot the guy from three feet away actually miss? Did he accidentally use blank cartridges? Did he simply graze him, or fail to hit any vital parts, or shoot him in such a way as to draw no blood? (Three fifty-seven magnums are so powerful they draw blood even when they miss!)

Or—was this maniac actually a supernatural entity invulnerable to high-calibre death-dealing sidearms?

There was no indication whatever in the movie that he was. Yet, in order to make sense out of it at all, I had to endow him with supernatural characteristics and invent a rationale, which went like this: ever since his execution during a Druid harvest ritual (whence Halloween is derived), this monster returned to earth every few years on Halloween to seek blood vengeance. My invention strained credulity to the limit, but at least it unified the book and brought me another seventy-five hundred badly needed words.

Every tie-in writer talking shop will tell you how he or she overcame such challenges, challenges complicated by the insistence of the producer on approval of the novel or a run-in with some middle-management studio exec who demanded that whatever was in the movie must go into the book, and whatever wasn’t in the movie must not go into the book. The fact that novelizations may take only a few weeks does not mean that many, many hours of thought and years of writing experience did not go into them. Novelizers earn every penny, and for all but the biggest books, pennies are what they make. Leonore Fleischer, one of the genre’s top authors, earned a total of some $45,000 in royalties for a labor of less than a week on the film tie-in of Annie, but that is exceptional. Joan Vinge, who wrote The Jedi Story Book, a juvenile tie-in to The Return of the Jedi, did it for a modest flat fee for Random House. The movie was a phenomenal success, and so was the book, but Vinge was not entitled to a penny of royalty. Only by the goodness of Random House’s heart, tinged perhaps with a dollop of guilt plus a healthy measure of pushing by her agent, was she awarded a $10,000 bonus.

The best advice I can give prospective tie-in writers is, if possible never write one for a flat fee, no matter how dumb the movie, no matter how quick and simple the job. Years ago, Ace hired me to write a tie-in for a perfectly dreadful and quite disgusting horror movie called Squirm, which portrayed in all its graphic revoltingness what happened when a small town was invaded by millions of bloodsucking earthworms. Ace offered me a flat fee of $2,500, and, seeing the prospect of earning $250 a day, I grabbed the deal. The movie came and, blessedly, went. But my book went through numerous editions for Ace, and was sold to English and other foreign publishers where it endured for years.

My book was better than the movie. Big deal! That and a good agent would have earned me a nice profit. Unfortunately, I don’t have an agent. I don’t trust them.

- Copyright 1996 by Richard Curtis, All Rights Reserved.

If you laughed at the question you obviously haven’t heard that Warner Bros. banned a Harry Potter theme dinner in London because  the studio considered it an infringement of copyright.

Telegraph.co.uk‘s Amy Willis writes that “The not-for-profit event, which has been renamed ‘Generic Wizard Night’, was to have a menu of dandelion wine, pumpkin soup and Dumbledore’s favourite – mint humbugs. Guests would have been led down ‘Diagon Alley’ by the side of the house and been met by a portrait of the ‘Fat Lady’ who would have demanded a password before they could be let in.”

It can be argued that J. K. Rowling’s lawsuit against the person who produced The Harry Potter Lexicon had some merit. But Warner’s action is hard to understand and almost impossible for reasonable people to condone. Does Rowling even know about the studio’s grinchy* pettiness?

Whether she does or not, parents had better start rethinking their children’s Halloween costume and trading those Dumbledore outfits for pirate and fairy princess garb.

Trick or Treat, Tiffany and Johnny! You have thirty days to answer this subpoena.

Read about it here.

*And be careful about saying “Grinch” publicly – you may be infringing MGM’s copyright.

RC

Start 'em young

The following article was originally published in October 2010.
**********************

The ability of the human mind to rationalize is extraordinary. Take piracy. Among the many comments we have received in response to our postings on the subject, we have heard every rationalization under the sun, ranging from “I didn’t know it was copyrighted” to “I don’t know what copyright is” to “DRM sucks” to “The e-book wasn’t available on legitimate retail sites” to “Information wants to be free” to “I’m not reselling, just sharing with friends” to “The percentage of pirated books is an insignificant fraction of sales through legitimate channels” etc. etc.

Piracy is something that other people do. When we do it there’s always a good excuse. When other people do it, it’s as heinous as grand theft auto.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the phenomenon of rampant piracy and the scarcity of perpetrators, and the reason seems to be semantic. If we can develop better definitions we may be able to develop better solutions.

Towards that end we offer the following categories of pirate:

1. The Innocent

Young children, technologically inexperienced individuals and others who know nothing about copyright law or Internet etiquette and don’t realize they may be stealing when they download music or e-books. People who simply don’t know better.

2.The Ignorant

These are downloaders who know enough about copyright law to understand the difference between right and wrong, but choose to ignore or flout it.

Though many who fall into this category are young, the classification includes adults, some of whom are highly educated – business people, computer engineers and other professionals who should know better.

We’re giving Innocents/Ignorants the benefit of the doubt by describing their acts of downloading as “inadvertent” or “improper” rather than “illegal.” But if nothing else they must be aware of the legal principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse. If an aggrieved publisher decides to sue you for illegally downloading e-books – as has been done in the music and movie fields – your case will not be automatically dismissed because you didn’t know it was against the law.

3. The Customer

These are people who paid for one version of a book and feel entitled to acquire other versions without paying for them. A good example is the case of a consumer who buys a hardcover edition of a bestselling novel and feels justified in downloading a pirated e-book because the publisher’s legitimate e-book version has not yet been released. No less a personage than the New York Times‘s own ethical arbiter felt that a customer has the right to do this. (See NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-Books). In other cases, consumers impatient with DRM restrictions will download a ripped off version of a file instead of paying for it and dealing with customer support.

4. The Philosopher

The Internet era has spawned a generation possessing a strong sense of entitlement, including entitlement to online content whether is is copyright-protected or not. Some members of this generation have rationalized their sense of entitlement and promote it not merely as an abstract concept but as a template for action. (See When Did “Free” Become a Four Letter Word?)

These philosophers collectively march under the banner “Information Wants To Be Free.” Others, taking Robin Hood as their role model, deliberately and defiantly hack protected files or download pirated content to get around the law, asserting their right to liberate it from capitalist exploiters.

What these philosopher-pirates don’t seem to understand is that, in capitalism as in Newtonian physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you’re getting something free, someone else is paying for it.

5. The Recreational Thief

For some people acquiring and sharing files is more of a sport than a business or criminal activity. Since filesharing is technically not illegal, it’s a way of belonging to a community. Recreational pirates gain acceptance from peers and notoriety from sharing files. Some forums even have a “thank you” module where other members encourage sharing,. Thank-You’s are displayed like battle ribbons by prolific uploaders.

Another form of recreational pirating is file-hoarding. Like hoarders of material things, digital hoarders collect and save terabytes of pirated files. Their motivation? “Hey, you never know when you’ll need 10,000 fonts.”

6. The Facilitator

This type is analogous to the owner of a head shop that sells bongs, cigarette papers and drug paraphernalia – everything but the drugs themselves – and thus skirt the law. Similarly, many IT professionals knowingly link to pirated material for a variety of reasons that fall short of hardcore criminality.

A common example are webmasters seeking to boost traffic for their websites. They attract traffic from customers looking for stolen files or seeking links to hot pirate sites. Savvy webmasters load up on as many ads as possible to cash in on that traffic. They are well versed in the ways of piracy but aren’t active in file sharing.

7. The Professional

Professional pirates don’t merely steal and sell software. They use pirated files as bait to smuggle phishing software into the computers of their victims. These programs then steal personal information like credit card numbers and bank account logins. Some of these pirates have been linked to organized crime groups. They employ software hackers to crack DRM, program key generators and penetrate security systems.

You can always tell who the professional pirates are: they’re the only ones who don’t mind being called pirates.

Like any community, the ecology of piracy is complex and interwoven, but it’s clear from a glance that the activities of innocents and amateurs enable the sharks to feast on stolen material and prey on the public. By defining each type we can immediately see what sanctions are in order – who needs a tap on the wrists, who needs to be educated and who needs to be tried in civil or criminal court.

For more postings about piracy visit E-Reads’ Pirate Central.

Richard Curtis and Anthony Damasco

To put you into an appropriately squeamish mood for Halloween, E-Reads offers a selection of horror fiction designed to traumatize you for life or at least make your night’s sleep a living torment. Among our featured authors for the season are:

Sean Costello: In Eden’s Eyes, The Cartoonist and Captain Quad, Costello demonstrates the full range of terror, rage, anger and madness that the horror genre can encompass. In the process, he also creates memorable characters while blending the real and the supernatural in ways uniquely his own.

Rex Miller: Miller’s bestial antagonist, Chaingang, is four hundred pounds of brute rage who feasts on fresh hearts and is not too delicate about how he extracts them from his victims. Miller’s genius is that he makes Chaingang sympathetic, a villain you hate to love, unless you happen to be with him in a pitch-dark room.

Ray Garton: A Grand Master of Horror, Garton’s characters populate a Grand Guignol of depravity. Live Girls, his masterpiece, portrays ravishing pleasure girls who seduce a lovesick man into a world of irresistible fantasy and ecstasy.

David Wellington: Monster Island trilogy. Welcome to New York City, Population Zero? The power grid has collapsed. There is no running water, no light, no heat. The massive neon signs of Times Square are dark now, and the subway trains crouch silent in their tunnels, waiting for commuters who will never return. An epidemic of staggering lethality has passed over the city and left nothing living in its wake. And yet the city is not deserted. The dead have returned to life, and they’re hungry.

Poppy Z. Brite: Are You Loathsome Tonight? Join horror master Brite as she explores the outermost regions of murder, passion, death and religion in twelve extraordinary short stories.

Dan Simmons: Song of Kali. Blood will curdle in Calcutta! In the most crime-ridden city, nightmares become real and evil is defined by frightening occurrences. When an American family finds themselves encircled by the terrors of this land, lurid events befall them and life takes on a new meaning–-death.

- Richard Curtis

Among the many ways that copyrighted texts are misappropriated, none is more prevalent than peer-to-peer file sharing.  Nor is any more pernicious, for it flagrantly flouts the law without appearing to break it.

Though P2P (as it is called) started in the music and video businesses it has spread to e-books.  While pundits scoff at the notion that the e-book industry could be plundered as thoroughly as the music industry, the extent of the outlawry is staggering and is the Number 1 threat to the growth of this nascent field. (See A Bootleg E-Book Bazaar Operates in Plain Sight)

The concept of peer-to-peer file sharing was developed around the turn of the 20th century by a number of brilliant programmers determined to get their hands on the treasure of music that had become abundantly available when the record industry went digital.  The Internet offered a powerful tool for sharing musical files if only a path around copyright laws could be found. Perhaps these enterprising people were inspired by head shop owners who sold the wherewithal for drug use but not the drugs themselves. There was nothing technically illegal about selling cigarette papers, roach clips, bongs and the like. By the same token, a computer through which friends exchanged files should not be considered unlawful, they contended.

By the end of the 1990s the music industry was being ravaged by file-sharing, fueled in some measure by popular anger against a recording industry that was thought to be gouging customers.

The principle is simple: a computer is used as a conduit for persons to share music, video, or texts with each other free of charge.  The downloaders cannot be said to be infringing because they are for all intents and purposes friends sharing content they like, and there is nothing illegal about that.  Nor can the computer owner be said to infringe because he does not possess the property; he is simply introducing friends or managing a channel between them and facilitating their sharing activities.

The forerunner of the file sharing movement was Napster, and for several years it seemed unstoppable. According to Wikipedia, “Napster users relayed search requests through a central server owned by Napster (the Napster central server also maintained an index of users and files available on the network at any given time).”

The centralized computer was Napster’s Achilles heel, because it meant that the company was in a position to block access or remove infringing material when a copyright owner complained. When it would not or could not do so under court pressure, the company went out of business.

The creators of Napster’s successor, Grokster, found a way around the problem of a centralized repository for files and user information. In a 2003 article by Chris Sprigman, the scheme was described thus:

When a user boots the software, his computer is directed to sign on to a “root supernode” …which then directs the user to a “local supernode.” The “local supernode” is some user’s computer, which has been temporarily designated to route file-sharing requests among a large number of other users. (A particular user’s computer may function as a local supernode one day but not the next; the process is largely invisible to the user).

Suppose a Grokster user requests a certain file – it could be a song, a movie clip, a video game, or an e-book. His search request is relayed among a large number of local supernodes and on to individual users. Once the requested file is found, it is transferred directly between the users.

Subsequent programmers engineered the user-to-user concept until it was almost impossible to find a computer, or operator, responsible for disseminating unauthorized files. Nevertheless, a lawsuit was brought against Grokster by MGM Studios. The battle that raged through the court system is well worth reading in Wikpedia’s account, especially because lower courts and appeals supported Grokster.  Finally the US Supreme Court ruled against Grokster and the company ceased operations.

Today if you visit the company’s website you will find the following message:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files
using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

Napster and Grokster were driven out of business because angry rights holders took legal action and had the time, money and determination to press their case to the limit.  Those cases dealt with music and videos.  No parallel case has yet been brought against book infringers. Should one be?

Richard Curtis

For a full archive of E-Reads postings about piracy, visit Pirate Central.

This week is  National Magic Week throughout the United States and Canada. For more than forty years  the Society of American Magicians has recognized the anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini with a special “week” of events to highlight the charitable work of the Society throughout the year.

To celebrate it, we’re reissuing Tom Lalicki’s Houdini, The Ultimate Spellbinder .

Houdini was born Ehrich Weiss but, at an early age, he chose another name for himself. He wanted a name to suit his career of magic and entertainment and he chose a name that paid homage to one of the legendary magicians of all time: Robert Houdin. His illusions and escapes were more astonishing and more challenging than anyone had ever done before and he eclipsed the names of all other magicians as his fame reached around the world, made him famous and made him the most famous illusionist ever.

Houdini disappeared through brick walls. He escaped from straitjackets and then straitjackets immersed in water. He performed escapes in public places and from jail cells in major cities–and the crowds flocked to his performances.

In Houdini, The Ultimate Spellbinder Tom Lalicki tells Houdini’s story with a fascinating mix of text and images, revealing the facts and juxtaposing them with startling images of a master entertainer performing masterfully and mysteriously, mesmerizing his audiences and mystifying experts with his skill and his invention.

“Authors are like mushrooms,” a writer once told me. “They’re fed a lot of horseshit and kept in the dark”

That observation served as my slogan when I launched a campaign in the 1980s to make royalty statements more transparent.  Authors today take for granted that their publishers’ royalty statements will provide vital details such as the number of copies returned or royalties withheld as a reserve against returns.

But thirty years ago that information was not provided unless an author or his agent or lawyer made a colossal pest of himself. A typical statement simply reported that you had sold, say, 1000 copies and here’s a check for $1,000.  When you asked how the publisher arrived at that figure you were given no explanation.  I likened it to being told that a baseball player had 150 hits without being told how many times he had been at bat.

After other agents joined in the assault on publishers’ accounting practices the barriers finally crumbled and publishers at last started telling authors what they needed to know in order to assess the performance of their books.

I am telling you this because we are about to enter a new phase of transparency in royalty reporting.  To their great credit, Simon & Schuster,Random House and Hachette Book Group announced initiatives to open their sales database to authors and agents, who will be able to access the publishers’ websites and view recent and cumulative activity in their account.

You would imagine that I greet this new as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Yet I wonder if it’s such a hot idea. I’m thinking of the burden it puts on the publishers.

Authors as a whole are more enlightened about royalty accounting than the mushroom people of a few decades ago.  Nevertheless there is a great deal of data to understand, and if an author cannot penetrate such mysteries as reserves against returns, net-price versus list-price royalty rates, or the effects of high discounts on royalty calculations, he or she is going to  hit the phones or emails and demand answers.  Multiply that by hundreds if not thousands of perplexed authors and you can imagine that the bookkeeping departments of publishers could be besieged.

This is a Law of Unintended Consequences just waiting to happen.

Publishers should not be punished for the good deed of offering transparency, but before they lift the veil on their accounting they must make sure that their statements are crystal-clear and every term unambiguously defined. That said, we wish Simon & Schuster Random House and Hachette the very best of success in this commendable initiative.

Read Authors to Get Sales Data Online From 3 Big Publishers by Julie Bosman in the New York Times.

Richard Curtis

Life has imitated art in the terrifying release of dozens of lions, tigers and other wild animals into the Ohio countryside by the crazed owner of an exotic animal menagerie who then did away with himself, according to a story that broke this past week.

For a tense 24 hours several of the beasts including bengal tigers were on the loose, stalking the countryside. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because you read the blurb for Jack Warner’s edge-of-your-chair thriller Maneater.  In Maneater a wild tiger has escaped its cargo truck and now roams the dense forests of the Appalachian Mountains. When deer and wild boar run out, the tiger turns its growing hunger towards man. Now it has a taste for easy prey. With a body-count on the rise and the media coming in, Sheriff Grady Brickhouse calls upon Jim Graham, a tiger hunter trained in India to end the man-eater’s killing spree.

However, Graham is retired, and at 73 his body isn’t as fast as it used to be. The only edge Graham holds now is a nine-year-old boy who has somehow bonded with the tiger. But, it’s a bond that makes him protective of the beast, even as it circles ever closer to hurting the ones he loves. This hunt will probably be Graham’s last. The question is, will it end with the tiger’s death or his own?

In Maneater, Jack Warner crafts a tightly suspenseful adventure novel, where death hides in the shadows of small town life. It will have you straining to hear the low growl of the wild before it’s too late…