August BASIC Issue
|
BooksBeat
|
|
Pen Name Mightier
Price was unable to comment on the utter blandness of his pseudonym, or why he chose to reveal his identity before he even cloaked it.
"This, God save me, should be fun," he said in a statement.
Fun for the author, yes. But to a reader, this kind of bestseller boondoggle may come off as vain and childish, and contrary to the literary heritage of the truly deceptive pen name. Price's announcement was akin to a magician pulling a rabbit out of a see-through hat.
"The transparent pseudonym is very modern," says Carmela Ciuraru, a Brooklyn-based author and editor whose book "Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms" comes out next year. "It's getting to have it both ways: exploiting the popularity and safety of your own established brand while using the protective cloak of a pen name. . . . It's an easy way to show off how versatile they are as a performer. . . . If a critic bashes them for taking on a different genre or prose style, they've always got their own wildly successful, established name to fall back on."
Vampire maven Anne Rice wrote erotica as A.N. Roquelaure in the '80s to avoid confusing readers and scandalizing her father. The ruse didn't last long, and Rice didn't try to keep it a secret.
"It can be very liberating to step away from your body of work, but very quickly I embraced all of it under name of Anne Rice," she says from her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Using an open pseudonym "strikes me as a sophisticated way to brand and introduce a particular type of work. The name is almost part of the title of the book, a part of the brand, signaling that the author's writing in a slightly different style and voice."
Stephen King, who wrote seven books as Richard Bachman, kept up the charade for years before being officially outed in 1985 by Stephen P. Brown, a District writer and sci-fi expert who pulled Bachman's copyright records from the Library of Congress (they were under King's name and his agent's name). For prolific genre writers like King, a pen name is a way to produce more than one book a year without saturating the market. It's also a gimmick to limber the mind.
Wylie Agency Opens Own eBook Can of Worms
Wylie, who is on vacation through the end of the month and thus could not be reached for direct comment, told the NYT that Odyssey would focus on older titles whose digital rights are not owned by traditional publishers. "The fact remains that backlist digital rights were not conveyed to publishers, and so there's an opportunity to do something with those rights," said Wylie, even though from many a publisher standpoint, the digital backlist issue for print editions released prior to 1994 is up for debate.
Wylie didn't disclose financial terms of the deal or what the royalty rate would be on these titles, but he did say "they were more favorable than the terms that other publishers were offering." He also didn't illuminate who represent the interests of the authors and their estates while his companies serve as both publisher and agent. (He holds the title of president of Odyssey Editions.) In previous exclusive deals with Rosetta, Amazon has provided promotion rather than additional financial considerations. There was no indication of why, when other players including Barnes & Noble, Apple's iBookstore, and Sony are growing market share and Google Editions, Blio and others are waiting in the wings, these titles are best served through a two-year exclusive.
A large portion of the 20 titles Odyssey Editions will distribute via Kindle are available in print editions from Random House, and especially from Knopf and/or its paperback arm Vintage. Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told us this morning, "We are disappointed by Mr. Wylie's actions, which we dispute. Last night, we sent a letter to Amazon disputing their rights to legally sell these titles, which are subject to active Random House publishing agreements. Upon assessing our business options, we will be taking appropriate action."
The Bookseller reports that in the UK, Penguin appears to be the most affected by the launch of Odyssey Editions, as its UK arm publishes seven writers (a spokesperson for Penguin said "the company is not commenting.") Meanwhile, Waterstone's head of e-commerce David Kohn expressed his displeasure: "It's incredibly important to the health and growth of the e-book market that our biggest and most important writers are available to download, and it is very disappointing to see that some of our best writers' work is to be only available in such a limited fashion. It does not help build the market, nor does it serve readers well," he told the Bookseller. VP of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti said in Amazon's release calls it "another great step" towards the company's overall goal even though it is for just 20 titles.
A number of literary agencies have been formulating plans for ebook publishing ventures, with goals that range from ebook editions of older works to publication of new works electronically (including Scott Waxman's recently-launched Diversion Books.) As for Odyssey Editions, its roots appear to stretch back to earlier in the spring: a corporate filing search reveals that Odyssey Editions LLC was incorporated on May 11 in the state of Delaware (where the Wylie Agency established itself as a limited liability company in 2008), while a domain registration search reveals that the Wylie Agency - and not the "completely separate company" - bought and registered the name on May 17 (and only paid for a one-year registration).
Some publishers we spoke to in advance of the announcement were more concerned with attempts by agents to bifurcate print rights and digital rights to new books than negotiations over older works. In a variety of conferences this year, many of the largest publishers have said plainly they will refuse to acquire new books if only the print rights are available.
Trident Media Group President Robert Gottlieb identified a key issue raised by agent-directed ebook publishing ventures: possible conflicts of interest between agents and authors. "It is one thing to advise a client as a traditional agent it is another to be in business with the client where their can be a conflict in interest. I can envision litigation between author and agent/publishers down the road. It is the nature of the times we live in today." Gottlieb also doesn't think "giving any publisher/retailer exclusive rights to books serves the authors interest."
Sarah Barracuda: America by Heart
HarperCollins, which also published Palin's million-selling "Going Rogue," revealed the cover design in late July.
Industry Appalled at Wylie Move
In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Random House has indicated that The Wylie Agency's decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon through its new Odyssey Books company "undermines [Random House's] longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this Agency as our direct competitor." As a result, "Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved."
The NYT managed to reach a vacationing Wylie for a response when no other outlet was able to do so, finding that the agent was "taken by surprise" by Random House's decision. "I'm going to think about it a little bit," he said, adding that he had not spoken with Random House on Thursday. "We take it seriously, as do the authors we represent. This area of discussion and negotiation needs to be resolved."
What makes Random House's decision even more striking is that the agency has at least two auctions scheduled for next week, and no doubt they will be watched with much more than the usual interest a Wylie client tends to generate.
Macmillan CEO John Sargent, in a blog post on the company's website, said he was "appalled" by Wylie's decision to sell only through Amazon: "A basic tenet of publishing is that our function is to reach as many readers as we can. We disseminate our books and the ideas within them as broadly as possible." Sargent understands why Wylie would make this deal, since it is "smart retailing, and a great deal for Amazon," which has also asked for exclusive product from Macmillan "as has every major retailer we deal with." But the deal is "extraordinarly bad" for "writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible. This deal advantages Amazon, which already has the dominant share in this market."
Comment from Wylie-represented authors whose e-books will be distributed via Odyssey Editions has been scant, though Susan Cheever did tell the AP she thought her father, John Cheever, "would have been torn" by the e-publication of his collected stories. "He was a tremendously loyal man who famously stayed at The New Yorker even when they weren't doing right by him. He had very good feelings about Knopf and Random house, with good reason....But in principle, I'm all for writers getting the largest percentage possible for their work."
The Ansel Adams Affair
Herda, who interviewed the world renowned photographer by telephone years ago, has been fascinated with the growth of the man's legend since his death at 82 in 1984. He stumbled across this story, which set him off on a fictionalized version of the tale by the AP's Christina Hoag:
Beverly Hills, Calif. - It's an antique collector's dream: buying an old box at a garage sale and discovering it contains famous lost works worth a fortune.
That's what Rick Norsigian said happened to him. Ten years ago, the Fresno painter stumbled upon a trove of 65 old glass negatives that he says have been authenticated as the work of famed nature photographer Ansel Adams, possibly worth $200 million.
"This is absolutely beyond what I thought," the 64-year-old said at a press conference held at a Beverly Hills art gallery on Tuesday. "I'm very lucky."
Norsigian's lawyer Arnold Peter said a team of experts who studied the negatives over the past six months concluded "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the photos were Adams' early work, and they were believed to have been destroyed in a 1937 fire at his Yosemite National Park studio.
"These photographs are really the missing link," he said. "They really fill the void in Ansel Adams' early career."
Adams is renown for his timeless black-and-white photographs of the American West, which were produced with darkroom techniques that heightened shadows and contrasts to create mood-filled landscape portraits. He died in 1984 at 82.
His photographs today are widely reproduced on calendars, posters and in coffee-table books. His prints are coveted by collectors.
Yosemite National Park fetched $722,500 for Ansel print "Clearing Winter Storm" at an auction last month in New York, a record for 20th century photography.
Norsigian, who works for the Fresno Unified School District, is already planning to capitalize on his discovery. He's set up a website to sell prints made from 17 negatives from $45 for a poster to $7,500 for a darkroom print with a certificate of authenticity. A documentary on his quest to have the negatives authenticated is in the works, as well as a touring exhibition that will debut at Fresno State University in October.
Representatives of Adams, however, said they're not buying Norsigian's claims.
"It's an unfortunate fraud," said Bill Turnage, managing director of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. "It's very distressing."
Turnage said he's consulting lawyers about possibly suing Norsigian for using a copyrighted name for commercial purposes. He described Norsigian as on an "obsessive quest." "We've been dealing with him for a decade," he said. "I can't tell you how many times he's called me."
Adams' grandson, Matthew Adams, who heads the Ansel Adams Gallery in San Francisco, said he reviewed Norsigian's authentications last fall and thinks they're stretches. Many photographers took pictures of the same places Adams did in that era, he said.
"There is no real hard evidence," he said. "I'm skeptical."
Norsigian bought the negatives from a man who said he had purchased the box from a Los Angeles salvage warehouse in the 1940s, bargaining the price down from $70 to $45. He saw they were of views of Yosemite but never suspected they might be Adams' works until someone mentioned they resembled the famed photographer's shots. "We got a laugh out of that," Norsigian said.
But the idea stuck with Norsigian and he started researching the photographer, eventually concluding they were Adams' works.
The shots are of places Adams frequented and photographed. Several shots contain people identified as Adams associates. Adams taught at the Pasadena Art Center in the early 1940s, which would account for the negatives being in Los Angeles. The negatives are the size Adams used in the 1920s and 30s and several have charred edges, possibly indicating the 1937 fire. "You keep adding bits and pieces," Norsigian said.
For years, he tried to get them officially verified, taking them to experts at the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Center and others, but no one would venture to authenticate them. Three years ago, he met Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer Peter, who assembled a team of experts to review the negatives.
The key evidence came from two handwriting experts, who identified the writing on the negative sleeves as that of Adams' wife Virginia.
But Matthew Adams said there were inconsistencies in the handwriting and a lot of misspelled Yosemite place names. "She grew up in Yosemite. She was an intelligent, well read woman. I find it hard to believe she would misspell those names," he said.
Amish Novels Continue To Sizzle
For many readers today, it's all about the bonnet. In our sex-soaked society, nothing seems to inflame the imagination quite like the chaste.
In popular series such as Beverly Lewis' Seasons of Grace, Wanda Brunstetter's Indiana Cousins and Cindy Woodsmall's Sisters of the Quilt,the Amish fall in love while grappling with religious taboos and forbidden temptations.
And it all happens in über-quaint settings brimming with hand-sewn quilts, horse-drawn buggies and made-from-scratch Pennsylvania Dutch specialties such as shoofly pie.
"It's a huge, huge, huge trend," says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels.
Who are the Amish? In a 21st-century world, the strictest among them live a 19th-century lifestyle. They are a religious, Christian-based farming community that shuns most modern conveniences such as phones and TVs, and they travel by horse and buggy. They marry among their own faith; the women wear bonnets and modest, drab clothing, the men wear brimmed hats and grow their beards. Children are taught in one-room schoolhouses, and education ends in the eighth grade. Traditional courtship rituals include "Sunday evening singing" group gatherings, where boys and girls can meet. Premarital sex is verboten.
So what is their appeal to modern readers? Remember when Kelly McGillis' modest Amish beauty enraptured Harrison Ford's homicide detective in the 1985 hit Witness? His tough contemporary cop, who pretended to be Amish to protect the widow Rachel Lapp and her young son, saw a whole new world when he lived amid the closed community of barn-raisers and farmers.
With Amish inspirationals, which are shelved under "religious fiction" in bookstores like Barnes & Noble, "readers get to peer inside the Amish community, and it is not like our own community," says McDaniel College English professor Pamela Regis, author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel. "Simplicity is a hallmark of that community, and simplicity is powerful."
Bowker To Present Publishers Online Book Proposals
BowkerManuscriptSubmissions.com was initiated as a cooperative effort between Bowker and the Publishing community for Publishers looking for new authors and desiring an efficient way to review unsolicited manuscripts.
Upon registration, publishers will obtain password access to our online database of manuscript proposals. You are able to login to the system at any time to search, sort, and review the proposals that may fit your publishing interest. You are then able to contact the writer directly.
Potential authors place their manuscript proposals online. Each proposal includes subject, topic, the writer’s background and publishing history, a book synopsis and full-chapter writing sample. Proposals can also include table of contents, marketing plan, whether the author is working with an agent, if the manuscript is professionally reviewed and intended audience. Each proposal is active for 6 months.
Bowker's site explains further: "We have a number of author recruitment initiatives in place to ensure you’ll have a plentiful and changing selection of proposals to review." Specific author-recruitment will consist of
ISBN Agency co-promotion - As the exclusive U.S. ISBN and SAN Agency, Bowker Manuscript Submissions will be co-promoted with ISBN.org and MyIdentifiers.org Writing Conference Partnerships – providing resources to conference attendees and promotional offerings
Author Guild Partnerships – co-branding and promoting with trusted Author guilds
Social Media – using popular Social Networking sites to connect with authors where they work and play
Author Services Organizations – partnering with organizations that provide services to authors, like those offering author website builds and help building author brands
Agent Partnerships – working with agents to identify proposals for this service
Publisher materials – providing publishers with information to share with authors when unsolicited manuscripts are received
India Introduces World's Most Affordable Laptop
India's human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, recently unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production.
"We have reached a [developmental] stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference in New Delhi.
He said the touch-screen gadget was packed with Web browers, PDF reader, and video conferencing facilities, and its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement.
Sibal said the Linux-based device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 and the aim was to drop the price further to $20, and ultimately to $10. The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology, and the Indian Institute of Science.
India spends about 3% of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64% of its population of 1.2 billion. However, studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities.
Lindsay Shopping Cell Notes?
TMZ
We're told Lohan wrote about everything from her relationships to her family -- and even scribbled about her dreams.
It's not the first time Lindsay's tried to get her writing published.
Bits & Bytes For thousands of additional listings, become an AmSAW Professional Member Today
FICTION Mystery/Crime Donna Fletcher Crow's A MID SUMMER'S EVE NIGHTMARE, to Aaron Patterson at Stone, by Janet Benrey at Benrey Literary Agency.
Paranormal #1 NYT bestselling author Christine Feehan's new volume in her Dark series, a volume in her GhostWalkers series, a volume in her Leopard series and a volume in her new Sisters of the Heart series, to Cindy Hwang at Penguin, in a major deal, by Steven Axelrod of The Axelrod Agency (world).
Thriller Vincent Zandri's THE REMAINS, in which a woman is still haunted by a kidnapping that happened to her thirty years ago; the monster who attacked her and her sister is not dead but very much alive and he's sending her strange text messages; only now he means to do more than just haunt her; he wants her dead, to Aaron Patterson at Stone, by Janet Benrey at Benrey Literary Agency.
Women's/Romance NYT bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz's next two contemporary romantic suspense novels in her bestselling Arcane Society (a secret organization devoted to paranormal research) series, to Leslie Gelbman at Penguin, in a major deal, by Steven Axelrod at The Axelrod Agency (NA).
TV Julie Klausner's I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR BAND: WHAT I LEARNED FROM INDIE ROCKERS, TRUST FUNDERS, PORNOGRAPHERS, FELONS, FAUX-SENSITIVE HIPSTERS, AND OTHER GUYS I'VE DATED, to Will Ferrell and Adam McKay at Gary Sanchez Productions, producing for HBO, and with actor Lizzy Caplan attached to star as the author, by Scott Mendel at the Mendel Media Group. UK and Translation:
NONFICTION Cooking Raghavan Iyer's introductory book to Indian cooking for the inexperienced home chef, to Suzanne Rafer at Workman, by Jane Dystel at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World).
History/Politics/Current Affairs Max Hastings's 1914, a dramatic look at Europe in the tumultuous year of 1914, from the glamour of Edwardian London and the intrigues in Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg to the tragedy on the fields of Flanders and the onset of World War I, to Andrew Miller at Knopf, in a good deal, for publication in Winter 2012, by Peter Matson at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).
Sports ICE TIME and PARADISE ROAD author Jay Atkinson's MEMOIRS OF A RUGBY-PLAYING MAN, a narrative of the author's life as an amateur rugby player, spanning three decades and all corners of the globe, from Boston to Belfast to Bali and back, with broader discussion of the game and its history along the way, to Pete Wolverton at Thomas Dunne Books, for publication in 2011, by Jake Elwell at Harold Ober Associates (World English).
|
More Breaking Book News
The following book-industry
news appears in real-time as it becomes
available in order to meet your ever-expanding need to know
what's happening (and to whom) on Publisher's Row.
| Books & Authors - MagPortal.com |
|
|