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You Ought To Be in Pictures

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Los Angeles from the Griffith Observatory. Image – iStockphoto: Trek and Shoot

Is Your Film Treatment Ready?

In the run-up to Writer’s Digest’s Annual Conference at the Manhattan Hilton in New York (August 10-12), it’s been interesting to note the presence of some screenwriting sessions on the schedule. On the Thursday pre-show day of standalone events, for example, there’s a daylong seminar on “Screenwriting for Newbies and Novelists” with Jacob Krueger–who runs a studio series of training programs year-’round.

And on the Saturday of the conference, Jeanne Bowerman, longtime editor of Script Magazine (and a vivacious personality whose energy may be running half of Los Angeles’ power grid), is giving a session called “Introduction to Screenwriting,” one of the types of sessions she has frequently offered in California iterations of Writers Digest’s conferences.

While elements of screenwriting programming aren’t entirely new to writers’ conferences, they tend to stand out a bit more in “the age of Netflix.” A new emphasis on storytelling in fine television work and cinema has been part of many discussions recently, something I touched on in April here at Writer Unboxed.

One of the most compelling exercises arrived about 10 days ago, when the Publishers Association–the UK counterpart to the Association of American Publishers in the States–released a major study (PDF) it had commissioned, the big message being that film, TV, and stage productions likely to do best on the market are the ones that start with a book.

As we’ve reported at Publishing Perspectives, when compared to original scripts and screenplays, the Publishers Association is announcing that book adaptations attract, on average:

  • 44 percent more in UK film box office revenue (and 53 percent more globally)
  • 58 percent higher viewership of “high-end” television productions
  • Nearly three times more ticket sales for theater productions

A point of interest to those following the Brexit saga in the UK: the Publishers Association’s report is both clever and important to the British publishing industry, which is working very hard this year to display its importance among the “creative industries” (entertainment) in the country’s economy as the break with Europe approaches. Those industries are going to need robust support in the development of trade treaties for export and other arrangements that for decades have been covered by European Union rules.

So the impetus for the association is a wise one, but it also gives us a chance to look at a rarely quantified view of the industry.

Whether you subscribe to the idea that the “storytelling imprimatur” may be shifting somewhat from books to screen (meaning not as many film and TV works are based on them), we’re clearly in a “golden age,” as some are calling it, with film and television gaining traction in the attention economy. Production is booming at Amazon Studios, HBO, Hulu, Showtime, and the ubiquitous Netflix, which now originates many of its finest shows in non-English markets first before bringing them into the US system.

I can recommend, for example, the system’s first French-produced outing, Dan Franck’s political thriller Marseille with Gerard Depardieu, an impeccable production from a French company called Federation Entertainment.) I’ll give you a break from my palaver: check out the trailer here.

Parlez-vous Screenplay?

Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh

Here’s a little secret: When I was on a three-city tour of German publishing houses in June with 15 publishers and editors from the UK and the US, some of us got into what might be called a “guilty” discussion. Several of the group admitted–to lots of sympathetic nods–that they’re not reading as much as they used to, because, as one put it, “TV is getting so good.”

This is unnerving to many in the group. They’re worried because they’re the pros in the business and they expect themselves to be utterly dedicated reader. And yet they, too, feel the siren call of the Roku box, right?

So here’s my provocation for you, and I’m sure I’ll need Don Maass’ help on one factor I’m going to toss in. I’d seriously like to have your responses, when you can tear yourself away from Jill Soloway’s I Love Dick:

  • Do you do film treatments of your books?
  • If not, are you learning screenwriting?
  • Do you think it would make sense? The rationale here would be that you know best what your book needs in terms of at least initial film development and making it shoppable in Century City can’t hurt.
  • Is it unthinkable because it would only distract you from your usual writing?
  • Don, this is where I need your input, and James Scott Bell, are you here? Is it possible that working on a screenplay of, let’s say, your third draft of that latest novel could open up new ways of seeing and understanding your book? If, for example, you bring the filmmaker’s eye to your story, does it give you a better look at where to cut, tighten, refine, and hone the impact of your story?
  • So could it be a good move for your craft as a novelist to learn some elements of screenwriting and apply them to your work in progress (or regress, as the case may be)?
  • Or does this whole line of questioning just make you fat on popcorn?

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Authors Guild: Solitude and Solidarity

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Image – iStockphoto: Katharina 13

Writers, among some of the most solitary workers in the world, can find growing support and services in a newly redirected Authors Guild that favors the majority, not the few.

Writing Alone, Working Together

To quote the immortal Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre, “Last time, as you’ll remember …” I was going on here about author advocacy. In the comments that followed, I discovered that everyone isn’t up to date on the Authors Guild, which is the States’ leading author advocacy organization, in business since 1912.

In the month since my last column here, in fact, the guild has made a series of moves that help define its developing role in the writer community and so this is a good time to back up and do a bit of groundwork on what the guild is, how it has changed since the start of 2015, and why authors may want to consider joining the 10,000 or so members already in place.

I’ll bullet out some talking points:

While you can see the organization’s member benefits laid out for yourself, here, I’ve chosen these recent points because they give you a look at the guild’s quickly developing proactive stance in six important areas:

  • Retail conflict mediation on behalf of authors
  • Legal action in defense of writers’ right to free expression
  • Outreach in a first wave of regional hubs, each chapter with two guild “ambassadors” guiding programming
  • Career training and strategy in the form of those traveling workshops for authors
  • Pro-diversity support for efforts like the gender-balanced coverage of books that VIDA has promoted for years
  • Fact-finding data collection and professional interpretation to get a grip on author economics today

As a point of disclosure, I’m not a member of the guild because I report on the guild’s work frequently as a journalist and have followed and commented on its changes and development since 2014. And my message today is more recommendation than provocation. If you don’t know the Authors Guild and its work–or if you have ideas about it that you haven’t revisited in some time–this is a good moment to give it a look.

Remembrance of Dings Past

Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh

By the summer of 2014, the Authors Guild already had begun to change, but the going was slow and the effort was hobbled by the raging Amazon-Hachette negotiations. The debate around that situation had given rise to the Authors United collective of writers, many of them marquee bestsellers, who sided against Amazon. The group was led by Douglas Preston and counted Richard Russo, then the guild’s vice-president, among its supporters. Scott Turow’s presidency of the guild had concretized an anti-Amazonian perception of the group in many minds.

As I wrote in July 2014, “Even beyond issues of Amazonian ardor or otherwise, the most general, overarching, abiding complaint about the Turow-led guild has been, in a word, elitism.”

But Turow was on the way out. Author Roxana Robinson would succeed him as president. And the most important change would be the arrival at the beginning of 2015 of Mary Rasenberger, an attorney, as executive director.

Rasenberger would quickly begin turning things around in May 2015 by launching the guild’s Fair Contract Initiative, enumerating for publishers in a series of uncompromising white papers its new demands for contract reform. By October of that year, the guild would make common cause with the UK’s Society of Authors in demanding better pay practices from publishers for authors.

The advocacy efforts were growing smarter, leaner, more professional, and were expertly articulated in such concise articles as the guild’s Publishers’ Payment and Accounting Practices Need To Keep Up With The Times.

Publishers were “sitting up,” and so were authors. Rolling out its contract position papers, opening its membership to self-publishing writers as well as trade authors, and learning to re-engage with readers in its blog posts (rather than shutting down unpleasant comment threads), the guild was shaking off criticisms of advantages for elite names in the business and speaking up for the overall community of writers in an increasingly challenging environment.

Two weeks ago at BookExpo in New York City, Rasenberger was on a panel staged by the Association of American Publishers on copyright challenges, and she spoke (‘It’s the Author Who Suffers’) to the dangers faced by writers when copyright protection is under fire. She’s a former policy planning advisor for the US Copyright Office in Washington and she and her team have been to the Hill this year to lobby for streamlined and less expensive copyright registration for writers of small pieces. You can keep up with news from the organization here.

While many more instances of engagement, contact, program development, and outreach are occurring, the main point I’d like to commend to you today is this: the guild has a dedicated team and strong support for Rasenberger’s turnaround efforts, starting with Robinson as president and now with the presidency of James Gleick. The Authors Guild is not your father’s old boys’ (or girls’) club.

However fair or unfair criticism of the organization was in the past–like Bible-verse fights, you can find an anecdotal contradiction to any point–the Authors Guild has been pressing forward for more than three years now, and a lot of hard work is starting to pay off in new programs and an accelerating national vision–not an NYC hunker-down.

In case you haven’t seen any news reports lately, writers in the States have probably never had more reason to stand together for the indispensable freedom of expression that their work requires. One of the proudest factors about the guild is that it has journalists as members, as well as novelists, poets, historians, literary agents and representatives of writers’ estates. Our sisters and brothers in journalism are being called “the enemy of the people,” just this week again, by a president who also tried to use prior restraint–a cease-and-desist letter–to stop Macmillan from publishing author Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury.

Beyond the political crisis of the moment, the inherently non-aligned nature of the author workforce means that collective demands are more critical than ever–for better pay, better contracts, better treatment by the industry, the courts, and the government.

While no membership is for everyone, I submit that this is a great moment for authors to check out the Authors Guild and consider adding their voices to its growing choir of support.

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Advocacy and Authors

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‘The Spirit of the Printed Word’ is one of Arthur Crisp’s murals in the reading room of Canada’s Parliament Building. Image: Parliament of Canada, House of Commons

Torching for It

Murals are among some of the West’s most interesting public art.

This one is The Spirit of the Printed Word by Arthur Crisp, 1921. It’s in the reading room at the Canadian House of Commons. I came across it during our coverage at Publishing Perspectives of the Canadian Parliament’s hearings on the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act–which has led to terrible losses (some $50 million annually) for authors and their publishers.

Crisp’s Spirit shows us the allegorical figure lifting high her “torch of knowledge” and her mirror, which the curators’ commentary tells us “reflects the news of the world.”

No fool she, Spirit has engaged, as you can see, two small boys to do all the work. I readily join her in commending this labor approach to you. The guys appear to be slogging through the business of lugging stacks of paper and handling typesetting. These kids need Kindles.

There’s a deco-sleek pigeon gliding by near Spirit’s torch on the right, a bird said to represent the transmission of information. On the left, there’s a more fluttery dove, symbolizing good tidings.

Notice that a mural is work of aesthetic advocacy. And in his testimony to the Canadian parliament committee, John Degen, who heads the Writers’ Union, said that some Canadian authors have stopped writing because the copyright exceptions assigned to education have simply gutted their copyright-revenue earnings.

That’s a case in which trade- and textbook authors are watching their publishers get nothing for the use of their titles in close to 100 school districts and ministerial areas of Canada. It’s an obvious moment in which author advocacy is critical. Degen is up to the mark, too.

“Fully 80 percent of our licensing income has simply disappeared,” Degen told the legislators, “because schools now copy for free what they used to pay for. Each year in Canada more than 600 million pages of published work are copied for use in educational course packs, both print and digital, and the education sector is essentially claiming all of that work for free. The world’s authors are also watching this process with great interest and considerable anxiety.”

If anything, what the Canadian copyright crisis reminds us is how loosely an author corps is formed in a national setting, and how vulnerable it can be to unthinkable policy blunders like the Copyright Modernization Act of 2012.

And that gets us to our provocation today.

Who’s on Your Advocacy Mural?

Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh

In terms of industry players on the policy level, authors are the ones from whom we hear the least frequently. Publishers are better organized and in Canada were integral to the development of the copyright revenue agency that’s now under attack in that country. The publishers association’s folks speak eloquently to the issue, they’re terrific advocates, actually, for themselves and their authors.

But one of the defining factors in any picture of the publishing business has been that it’s an industry based on the voluntary submission of its fundamental product, the content, by people it does not know (until they turn up with a manuscript) and do not employ (until they get into a contractual arrangement). It’s a peculiar business model. I always like to compare it to the auto industry. Imagine those folks sitting around waiting for someone they’ve never heard of to turn up with their next bestselling car design.

What this does mean is that authors, at the broadest level, have trouble with organized advocacy because they’re all working as individual operatives out in the deep field, often far from the centers of publishing power. That, of course, is where organizations like the Authors Guild in the States and the Society of Authors in the UK come into play, both with rapidly growing and effective programs.

Yes, authors are also busy and most of them may well be happier working on the writing than the business of advocacy. But in a political dynamic as unstable as the American system is today, if a run were made at copyright regimes as has occurred in Canada, what kind of advocacy could you count on? Who would lobby for your interests?

Beyond the important services of a good literary agent–if you don’t have one, don’t stop until you get one–where’s your advocacy? I’m asking more than telling today.

Do you think that authors, as a class of the trade publishing workforce, need more advocacy for their interests and concerns? Are you a member of the Author’s Guild or Society of Authors? Do you know their projects? Do they fulfill your needs? What part of an author’s life and work needs more and better advocacy most?

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The Attention Economy: Shorter

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Image – iStockphoto: Kristina Jovanovic

Hemming in the Tension

When I tweeted up the author Anne R. Allen for writing that “Word count guidelines have been trending down in the last decade,” I found our colleague Hugh Howey checking in from a galaxy far, far away to say, “Slaughterhouse Five, Frankenstein, and Fahrenheit 451 are three of my favorite sci-fi works of all-time, and each is around 50K. The problem part of most novels is the boring middle bit. Best to just leave that part out.”

He’s right, of course, as is Anne Allen, and we went on to discuss (briefly!) the problem some big-name authors run into in this regard, too. I call it the Clancy effect. Once they’re established as a publishing house’s majors, the editorial touch gets lighter, often more pixie dust than anything else. Typos are caught, we have to hope, but developmental work (“structural” edits to your British neighbors) goes out the window.

That can go to anybody’s head, and many of us can name an icon whose work got leggier and sadly shapeless as the big career flabbed on.

Too Much Entertainment

Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh

At London Book Fair last week, another element of this issue came into sharper focus as I moderated a panel for the Byte the Book organization, which looks at the industry from the digital vantage point.

While the session was titled “Publishers Go Prospecting: Finding Hidden Treasure in Your Content,” I’d worked out with our four fine panelists (from the BBC, Penguin Random House, Vodafone, and Hodder Education) an approach that would take us past the obvious issues of spelunking for good backlist titles. (Bring Up the Bodies, as Hilary Mantel might say.)

We looked at today’s mushrooming level of competition for reading time from really fine television and film. After all, you may have felt the first really deep tremor of storytelling’s new cinematic leadership in February when Amazon Publishing created its Topple Books imprint in direct collaboration with Amazon Studios and the activist-filmmaker Jill Soloway (Transparent, I Love Dick, Six Feet Under).

Tom Goodwin

As the futurist and corporate strategist Tom Goodwin told me, “Book publishing is not in the ‘text industry.’ It’s not in the ‘reading industry.’ It’s in the ‘what do people want to spend their time doing? industry.’”

And that’s where the rubber is going to increasingly meet the shortest road possible.

[Read more…]

Delhi and the Diversity of Diversity

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At Qutb Minar. Image – iStockphoto: Train Arrival
Because Diversity Is So…Diverse

If you’ve ever flown to New Delhi, you’ll have encountered one of the more peculiar time-zone anomalies in world travel: The mighty capital of India is not just 10 hours ahead of Eastern time, it’s 10 hours and 30 minutes ahead. Like Tehran, New Delhi has a half-hour time change atop the usual whole-zone adjustments.

And when I was in New Delhi this week for the International Publishers Association’s (IPA) biennial world congress, an interesting situation developed. As I wrote it up at Publishing Perspectives, the stage was busy with many publishing and intellectual property players, most of them rightly energized and newly sensitized by the political realities around us today.

In a nutshell:

  • Copyright protection is being gravely threatened in many parts of the world; Canada, of all markets, is the reluctant poster child for “fair use” expansions in education that leave authors and publishers unpaid
  • The freedom to publish, our industry’s evocation of free speech, is being brazenly challenged by the rise of autocratic and rightist movements in the States and elsewhere, as when Donald Trump challenges Macmillan for publishing Fire and Fury and China re-detains publisher Gui Minhai, winner of this year’s Prix Voltaire as a champion of such freedom
  • And then there’s diversity, a concept that can be confused from person to person, organization to organization, moment to moment, let alone country to country.

As many as 70 national associations’ representatives were at the conference, which was designed as three days of intensive, relentless presentations, debates, and discussions around the key issues impacting the world industry. The event drew close to 400 people–with probably 400 views of what we mean when we say “diversity.”

In my congress-closing article, it fell to me to point out that the concept of gender diversity in publishing’s leadership had gotten away from the planners. We watched as waves of talented, intelligent men moved across the stage, but the organization fell short of its goal of gender parity in these presentations. Even some of the most prominent women publishers in India, well known to many of us in the international business, were oddly missing from programming. The local organizers had focused elsewhere and surely felt they were entertaining a fabulously diverse audience with as many as 60 nations’ delegates in place.

The international association has handled this criticism extremely well, without defensiveness. This is very much to the IPA’s credit, how constructive.

And what’s important to recognize, of course, is that an outfit like the IPA has the interesting dilemma of occasionally competing constituencies. In a congress cycle that’s hosted by a market like India still laboring with a major overhang of traditional male domination, the dynamic of the wider, multinational group can end up in conflict with the interests of the local hosting body.

The next IPA congress is set in Norway, and it’s logical to expect a very different reality there; the Nordic and Scandinavian publishing markets have long reflected their societies’ more even-handed gender relations.

Nevertheless, the experience in New Delhi–on the whole, an important congress and filled with collegial grace and collaboration in many other ways–brought to mind a couple of points that we as writers need to think about just as carefully as we’d ask conference planners or employers to do.

[Read more…]

 

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