The following email was forwarded to me by an author.

Richard Curtis

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My Dear Miss Klimstrock,

I’m writing to tender an apology for my intemperate outburst in response to your email greeting me as “Hey, Pat.”  I have been aware for some time that the Internet tends to dissolve formalities but I did not realize that things had progressed quite so far.

I assure you that I usually have far better control over my impulses but perhaps you can appreciate that, given my title and social position, I am accustomed to being addressed Milord or Sir. In the circles in which I was raised, familiarity by peers and indeed even intimate friends is considered shockingly vulgar. Thus, to be addressed “Hey” by a perfect stranger was so alien to my fundamental sense of respect and dignity that I momentarily forgot that the civilized ladies and gentlemen who once populated the publishing profession have been replaced by ignorant and uncouth ragamuffins who speak to one another in grunts, slang and monosyllabic code and send texts in incomprehensible shorthand. I would not have guessed, however, that such liberties are now extended to authors and perfect strangers.

I hasten to assure you that these derogatory remarks are not directed at you specifically, Miss Klimstrock. I also wish to make it clear that I am not reacting spitefully to your rejection of my submission, though I confess that the crudeness of your expression and illiteracy of your spelling and grammar did fuel the rage that compelled me to write my regrettably childish outburst of spleen before I could gain control of my emotions.

Hard as it is, I know I must reconcile myself to the common parlance of the modern world. I realize that we no longer live in an age when we saluted our correspondents with such phrases as “Your Excellency” and Esteemed Madame” or even “Dear Author” and I will endeavor to adjust to the usages of the 21 century, however offensive they may be to the well-bred.

I will remit a cheque for the return of my manuscript.

Believe me to be very truly yours,

Patrick Marley-Clockbridge, Third Earl of Crumfleath

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This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as The Decline and Fall of the English Salutation

No no no, you dimwit, not those loins!

A confession.

Like anybody else launching a writing career, I was not very particular about what I wrote as long as I got paid for it.  That is why I wrote half a dozen sex novels. They were a great way to learn fictional skills, they paid well, the publisher never asked for editorial fixes, and as long as I did not cross certain lines of taste the publisher would accept everything I produced. In those days that line was No Explicit Body Parts, No Clinical Terms for Intercourse, and No Dirty Words. That’s why sex novels in those days were weak tea compared to the hot erotica in even the average romance published today.  I was so good at writing sex scenes that I was occasionally asked by the publisher to “sex up” a drab and unimaginative scene written by another author.

For that reason, I feel confident that it will be no loss for me to pass up the opportunity to attend the Creative Writing in the 21st Century conference  this coming weekend in Toronto, where one of the presentations is entitled “He put his what, where? Or: How to teach students to write plausible sex scenes, prevent them from winning the Bad Sex Fiction Award, while not suffering from fear, alarm, dread, or embarrassment in the process.”.

Quill & Quire interviewed the pair (both female) of creative writing teachers conducting the course, and you will find the Q&A candid and refreshingly funny.

For instance, asked what inspired them to broach the delicate topic of scx scenes in their class, they replied “I think the trigger for us was the contest for the worst sex scene. There are so many writers that I admire who write terrible sex scenes. A lot of them, even if they’re not violent or offensive, are just really boring: he put his thing there, and she stroked this, he moaned, and he said, ‘Oh baby, baby.’”

For the complete interview click on Creative writing Q&A: Nicole Markotic on the delicate art of teaching sex scenes.

And if you don’t remember what contest they’re talking about, read Bad Sex Award Is Coming.  Oh God Oh God Yes Yes Yes It’s Coming!

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as Are Your Loins Churning Yet?

Unlike its Big Six colleague Macmillan, HarperCollins elected to settle with the Department of Justice over the controversial Agency business model, rather than go through a trial. (For a full backgrounder read Apple Promoting a New (and Radical!) Business Model for Selling E-Books? and Publishing’s Weekend War: 48 Hours That Changed an Industry)

Harper’s press release below.
Richard Curtis
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Contact:
Erin Crum
Vice President, Corporate Communications
HarperCollins Publishers
(212) 207-7223
Erin.Crum@harpercollins.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HarperCollins Publishers Settles e-Book Pricing Dispute with the Department of Justice
New York, NY (April 11, 2012) — HarperCollins Publishers today announced that it has reached an agreement with the United States Department of Justice to end its investigation into HarperCollins’ contracts for the distribution of e-books. HarperCollins did not violate any anti-trust laws and will comply with its obligations under the agreement. HarperCollins’ business terms and policies have been, and continue to be, designed to give readers the greatest choice of formats, features, value, platforms and partners – for both print and digital.
After HarperCollins adopted the agency model in 2010, the e-book market exploded, giving consumers more choices of devices, formats and prices that would never have existed but for the agency model. Some examples include:
 The iBookstore, which offers iTunes customers a storefront to buy HarperCollins’ books
 The launch of Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Book Store, which grew faster than any other platform for HarperCollins’ titles over the last two years
 Prices for dedicated e-readers declined from almost $400 to under $100, and competition exploded in the device market, making the e-book reading experience less expensive
 Dynamic pricing of HarperCollins’ e-books, including some titles priced under $2, was introduced to maximize the sales and reach of our authors and their books
 The introduction of color tablets with native e-book stores led by Apple and Barnes & Noble, which are now the fastest selling devices for e-book consumers
 The introduction and rapid development of enhanced e-books with audio, video and interactivity, which are a fast-growing digital format for HarperCollins
HarperCollins faced legal challenges on five separate fronts, including the DOJ investigation which was resolved today. The e-book market has grown over the last two years from a small e-ink market, dominated by one platform, to a $1B market with several competing platforms. HarperCollins made a business decision to settle the DOJ investigation in order to end a potentially protracted legal battle.
About HarperCollins Publishers
HarperCollins, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world, is a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing groups around the world including the HarperCollins General Books Group, HarperCollins Children’s Books Group, Zondervan, HarperCollins UK, HarperCollins Canada, HarperCollins Australia/New Zealand and HarperCollins India. HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children’s books, cookbooks, mystery, romance, reference, religious and spiritual books. With nearly 200 years of history HarperCollins has published some of the world’s foremost authors and has won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott. Consistently at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement, HarperCollins is the first publisher to digitize its content and create a global digital warehouse to protect the rights of its authors, meet consumer demand and generate additional business opportunities. You can visit HarperCollins Publishers on the Internet at http://www.harpercollins.com.
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John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, has circulated an open email to the author, illustrator and agent community informing them of a civil lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice. Sargent stands by his firm’s position on the so-called Agency sales model that is the government’s grounds for the suit, vows to fight it unlike some other publishers that have settled with the DOJ, and expressed confidence in vindication. The full text is below. (For a full backgrounder read Apple Promoting a New (and Radical!) Business Model for Selling E-Books? and Publishing’s Weekend War: 48 Hours That Changed an Industry):
Richard Curtis
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Dear authors, illustrators and agents:

Today the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Macmillan’s US trade publishing operation, charging us with collusion in the implementation of the agency model for e-book pricing. The charge is civil, not criminal. Let me start by saying that Macmillan did not act illegally. Macmillan did not collude.

We have been in discussions with the Department of Justice for months. It is always better if possible to settle these matters before a case is brought. The costs of continuing–in time, distraction, and expense– are truly daunting.

But the terms the DOJ demanded were too onerous. After careful consideration, we came to the conclusion that the terms could have allowed Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building before our switch to the agency model. We also felt the settlement the DOJ wanted to impose would have a very negative and long term impact on those who sell books for a living, from the largest chain stores to the smallest independents.

When Macmillan changed to the agency model we did so knowing we would make less money on our e book business. We made the change to support an open and competitive market for the future, and it worked. We still believe in that future and we still believe the agency model is the only way to get there.

It is also hard to settle a lawsuit when you know you have done no wrong. The government’s charge is that Macmillan’s CEO colluded with other CEO’s in changing to the agency model. I am Macmillan’s CEO and I made the decision to move Macmillan to the agency model. After days of thought and worry, I made the decision on January 22nd, 2010 a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement. It remains the loneliest decision I have ever made, and I see no reason to go back on it now.

Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court. Because others have settled, there may well be a preponderance of references to Macmillan, and to me personally, in the Justice Department’s papers – often without regard to context. So be it.

I hope you will agree with our stance, and with Scott Turow, the president of the Author’s Guild, who stated, “The irony of this bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition. This would be tragic for all of us who value books and the culture they support”.

Since we are now in litigation, I may not be able to comment much going forward. We remain dedicated to finding the best long term outcome for the book business, for Macmillan and for the work you have entrusted to our care.

Thanks.

John

The war on women seems to be invading their fiction. For the second time in a few weeks chick lit has come under attack.

A few weeks ago we picked up on a piece in The Awl  suggesting that romance is the lowest form of literature. Now, in Salon, we’re told that chick lit may be dead altogether. Coincidentally or otherwise, both charges were leveled by women.

“Less than a decade after commentators clucked at bookstore shelves lined with cartoon high-heels and pink cocktail glasses,” writes Laura Miller in this latest sally, “the only debate that the once-flourishing genre inspires now is over when to run its obituary.”

To Miller’s credit, she realizes it might be a good idea to define her terms. She seems to be referring to the spate of shopping-and-screwing novels published at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. This variant reflected an overheated economy whose excesses were exemplified by glam fashionistas and their Masters of the Universe lovers. ”As the first species of popular fiction to treat its heroines’ professional aspirations as seriously as their romantic prospects, chick lit flourished at a time when ambitious young women poured into a robust job market, seeking both love and success, often with a heaping serving of pricey commodities on the side.”

This trend, says Miller, “smells decidedly off in the face of 8.3 percent unemployment.” That may be true to a degree, but the mutual attractions and sexual tensions between gorgeous, ambitious women and alpha males are not ever going to give way to commonplace characters, shabby settings and humdrum sex.

No matter how you define them, the themes and formulas that have sustained popular women’s fiction for centuries have varied only slightly and will not vary in the foreseeable future. Romance continues to thrive as a genre and sustains the trade book publishing industry to the tune of 25% of its sales.  Survey the lists of such romance powerhouses as Harlequin or Kensington and you’ll see that chick lit is alive and well, thank you very much.

Perhaps Laura Miller is looking for love stories in all the wrong places?

Richard Curtis
Note to readers: Digital Book World has invited me to post my blogs initially on its website before releasing them on E-Reads, and this content is re-published with DBW’s permission. Click here to view the original posting.

I don’t know why the presidential candidates haven’t thought of it, but if I were running their campaigns I have a sure-fire plank for their platform: keep local post offices open. Every one that closes is a dagger in the heart of a community. Who would not vote for the politician who rescued one from oblivion?

Last fall I offered a whole suite of reasons to for keeping the US Postal Service in business. Wedding invitations, holiday cards, letters of recommendation, love letters and condolence notes touch the heart in ways that emails cannot possibly achieve, I pointed out. Add junk mail and parcel post and you will realize how heavily you depend on the USPS. (See Have You Kissed a Snail Today?)

Now there is another reason: to facilitate correspondence between authors and their readers.It seems that a website called The Rumpus has started an epistolary initiative called Letters in the Mail. The founder, author Stephen Elliot, had been getting such positive responses to personalized email greetings he’d been sending out that he decided to try sending letters via snail mail. He was heartened to receive some 50 responses. A number of other high-profile authors followed suit, and the program has begun to thrive.

“When you write a letter,” reports Huffington Post’s Melissa Jeltsen, “it’s such an incredibly personal exchange between two people. It’s really intimate, even if you’re writing a letter to 2,000 people, which is what we are doing. The person gets your letter and opens it and reads it and takes time with it. You never do that with an email.”

“I did not, in a million years, imagine the kind of reception it’s gotten,” Elliot told the reporter. “Clearly, we hit some nerve. I had this idea on a Monday, I was still thinking about it on Tuesday morning and so I launched it. And it was immediate – we had 200 subscribers in the first couple of hours.”

Ready to try it? For an interview with Elliot, read Letters In The Mail: The Rumpus Starts New Print Subscription.

One of my most cherished possessions is an autograph by my literary idol Henry James. It is nothing more than the closing of a letter, the contents of which I have often speculated about. It says, simply, “Believe me truly yours, Henry James.” I cannot gaze at it without believing it was personally directed to me. And this is why I think Letters in the Mail is such a heartwarming idea, and why our government must find the funds to keep post offices in business.

Richard Curtis
Note to readers: Digital Book World has invited me to post my blogs initially on its website before releasing them on E-Reads, and this content is re-published with DBW’s permission. Click here to view the original posting.

Years ago the late Evan Hunter lamented to me that his pseudonym was more famous than he was.

Under his own name* he had written some pretty famous novels several of which, like The Blackboard Jungle and Strangers When We Meet, had been made into movies. But The 87th Precinct, the detective series he created under the name Ed McBain, was a huge hit. The irony that his nom de plume eclipsed his vrai nom drove Hunter to distraction. It reached a point where the normally clean-shaven author had to grow a beard for the author photo of “Ed McBain” for which fans clamored.

This is just one of countless stories I could tell you about pseudonyms. They came flooding back to mind when I read how agent Esther Newberg urged her author Patricia O’Brien to use a pen name on the manuscript of her latest novel because publishers, citing poor sales of her previous book, were turning the new one down on grounds that had nothing to do with merits of the work. O’Brien took her agent’s advice. Newberg sold it to Doubleday in three days. With 35,000 copies of her new book in print, the author (now “Kate Alcott”) has a new lease on life complete with a new biography and author photo.  Author and agent became anxious when the ploy was revealed, but the editor was cool with it. (For the full story read Book Is Judged by the Name on Its Cover) By Julie Bosman)

If you can relate to Hunter’s and O’Brien’s stories, you’ll want to read Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms by Carmela Ciuraru.

In an excerpt published in Salon she touched on the psychological stress that might have tormented these authors. “The merging of an author and an alter ego is an unpredictable thing. It can become a marriage, like a faithful and sturdy partnership, or it can prove a swift, intoxicating affair. A clandestine literary self can be tried on temporarily, to produce a single work, then dropped like a robe; or the guise might exist as something to be guarded at all costs. The attraction is obvious and undeniable. Entering another body (figuratively, ecstatically) is almost an erotic impulse.”

In Hunter’s case it became a kind of addiction that his fans would not let him break. But I have also known authors who loved their alter identity so much more than their own that they had their names officially changed. I have known authors whose careers were rescued by writing under a false name, and others whose careers were ruined by it.

For prolific authors pseudonyms are a must. Too-frequent publication cheapens the product, so publishers are loath to schedule books less than six months apart, and for significant authors it’s twelve. Writers capable of writing two or three books a year will fall further and further behind waiting for their publisher’s green light. Thus a pen name liberates them to write for other publishers or even to double-up for their own publisher. Both Nora Roberts and her pen name J. D. Robb are published by Putnam, for instance.

But there are other reasons besides fecundity for employing a pseudonym. As in the case of O’Brien, authors whose sales are weak will write under a pen name to get out from under the onus of poor numbers. The problem with this ruse is that the newly christened author is unknown, and stores may order modestly. What’s worse, the author cannot easily promote the book under his or her pen name.

Roberts is an obvious exception. So is Stephen King, whose prolificness spawned a successful new identity, Richard Bachman. But King eventually gave the name up. “The author,” writes Ciuraru, “subsequently issued a press release announcing Bachman’s death from ‘cancer of the pseudonym.’ King dedicated his 1989 novel The Dark Half (about a pen name that assumes a sinister life of its own) to ‘the late Richard Bachman.’”

Before becoming a literary agent your faithful correspondent wrote dozens of books. The most successful was the novelization of the John Carpenter movie Halloween. It garnered rave reviews, which you can read on Amazon. But don’t look it up under the name Richard Curtis. I wrote it as “Curtis Richards”.

Read all about pennames in The decline of the pseudonym.

*Actually Hunter’s birth name was Salvatore Lombino but he had it legally changed.

Richard Curtis (a.k.a. Curtis Richards)

Note to readers: Digital Book World has invited me to post my blogs initially on its website before releasing them on E-Reads, and this content is re-published with DBW’s permission. Click here to view the original posting.

S&S Royalty Statements - Before

S&S Royalty Statements - After

In September of last year we took Simon & Schuster to task for its overweight and excessively detailed royalty statements. “Bloated” was the term we used. “The weight of the package has been known to induce hernias in even the stoutest of mail room clerks,” we observed, urging the publisher to reform its profligate ways. (See Simon & Schuster’s War on Trees)

What a difference one semi-annual royalty period makes. Our criticisms, reinforced by those of authors and literary agents including a committee of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, inspired Simon & Schuster to review its reporting practices and overhaul them from top to bottom. In the first week of March the publisher has opened its “Author Portal,” a dedicated, password-activated website containing PDFs of all statements and offering download and printing options. Furthermore, the statements have been “substantially redesigned” and streamlined.

One author’s statement shrank from 41 pages to 8, and an agent praised the new format as “concise, comprehensive, uncluttered, and easy to understand.” Our agency’s own statements slimmed down from 977 pages – two reams of paper – to 323. But we now have the option to print out any given page or produce a compact digital file to archive and/or email to authors. And because so many of those statements have had zero activity for years, the savings on our resources – and the environment – are tremendous.

Credit should be given where credit is due, and we take our hats off to Simon & Schuster for responding so thoroughly and swiftly to our challenge.

Richard Curtis

Note to readers: Digital Book World has invited me to post my blogs initially on its website before releasing them on E-Reads, and this content is re-published with DBW’s permission. Click here to view the original posting.

As digital technology evolves, the practice of bundling – packaging physical books with their e-book counterparts – is now coming into focus as a commercial option for publishers.  Though the goal of one-click delivery is far harder than advocates wish – as Rachel Deahl makes clear in a recent Publishers Weekly article Is the Time Right for Bundling?, the technical and commercial challenges will eventually be overcome.  When they are, we will be faced with the question, How much to charge for a print/e-book bundle?  In an effort to start the dialogue, one industry leader, Bloomsbury USA’s Evan Schnittman (describing the bundle as an “enhanced hardcover”), suggests a price of 25% over the price of the hardcover.  “The consumer wins,” he says.

We’re far from sure about that, and we also wonder if anyone else wins, either. In the summer of 2010 we raised the question in Bundling: Publishing’s Next Battleground.  We re-post it here to push the dialogue where publishers may not want to go.

Richard Curtis

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The following question is deceptively simple, and we urge you to take your time responding. How much time? Three or four months. You’ll need that much. A lot rides on your answer.

Here’s the question:

When you purchase a print book you should be able to get the e-book for…

• a) the full combined retail prices of print and e-book editions
• b) an additional 50% of the retail price of the print edition
• c) an additional 25% of the retail price of the print edition
• d) $1.00 more than the retail price of the print edition
• e) free

The subject of this little quiz is bundling, a common marketing tactic in which two or more products are packaged and sold at a single price. In this case the package is a printed book plus its e-book iteration.

As simple as it sounds, bundling is shaping up to be the battleground for clashing publishing philosophies, and the time will soon come when publishers will have to choose one of the above strategies and put it into effect. Misjudging consumer attitudes could prove to be a big mistake and possibly a ruinous one.

The essence of bundling is to offer customers a discount for selecting the combo instead of the individually priced components, so choice a) above is a non-starter. But choices b), c) and d) reflect just how aggressive a discounter wants to be and the various thresholds at which consumer resistance is expected to melt. A good argument can be made for each and as the bundling issue warms up you can expect to hear them all endlessly debated.

Yet even the cheapest package – a dollar or even less than a dollar over the cost of the print edition – may not suffice to capture the consumer’s fancy. Why? Because many people believe they’re entitled to get the e-book free with purchase of the print book. How large is public support for that position? We need to take a poll to find out, but if anecdotal reports are any indication, they may be in the overwhelming majority and they are unquestionably the most vocal. You will certainly hear their outpouring of joy when one publisher steps up to offer a print and e-book combo for the price of the print edition alone. Our own prediction? Free will become the standard, and even ten cents above free will be a competitive disadvantage.

Economic factors aside, consumer negativity toward double-charging is a contributor to piracy. Comments sent to us in response to postings about piracy strongly suggest that the public expects digital versions of books to be tossed in for nothing when a printed book is sold, and if it isn’t tossed in, many of those customers will feel no compunctions about downloading an unauthorized copy. They simply feel entitled to it. Libertarian spokespeople like Cory Doctorow have articulated this sense of entitlement, and though some feel that their arguments go too far, there is a solid core of realism in their position. We can condemn the immorality of consumer attitudes ’til the cows come home; and we can (quite reasonably) complain that if people were willing to wait for the paperback reprint they should be willing to wait for the e-book reprint. It makes no difference: the public’s sense of entitlement creates an environment susceptible to the allure of piracy.

With so many sound arguments in support of heavily discounted bundles, why have we seen so little of it in book marketing? The answer is that it is harder to assemble print/e-book packages than it looks. Publishers that control both formats are in the best position to do it but the technology is not yet in place. Customers purchasing the latest James Patterson or Nora Roberts novel in a bookstore have no simple way to download the e-book in the same transaction. The publisher might offer a discount coupon but that requires a number of steps and clicks that discourage a quick and easy procedure.

What is wanted is a one-click experience: “Click here to order the print and e-book.” Such a deal might best be offered by a publisher on its website. However, the price of that bundle might undercut the prices offered by retailers or e-tailers for the individual components, and for publishers to compete with their own retailers is to cut their own throats.

Amazon is in a good position to offer print/e-book bundles but hasn’t done so yet, probably because it recognizes the complexity of the issues. Book pricing is already fraught with so much angst that adding bundling to the debate will undoubtedly induce cardiac infarction among book people already near apoplectic with worry.

For the record, we at E-Reads strongly support the position that the e-book version should be included free of charge with the purchase of one of our print editions and are working to overcome the technical obstacles to implementing our conviction.

We invite your comments and look forward to seeing the debate over bundling heat up on the next stretch of road to the future of books.

Richard Curtis