William C. Dietz's Words for Hire #1 - Game Tie-Ins

Over the course of these columns I plan to drill down on the business end of work-for-hire by examining the way gaming companies view tie-in novels, the way TV/Film companies approach them, and the important role publishers and agents play in the process. That includes why companies commission tie-ins, what they look for in writers, and how the selection process works.

In order to obtain background information for this column I interviewed Sony Senior Producer Frank Simon, who works with Insomniac Games. A group known for best selling games like Resistance: The Fall of Man 1 & 2, Ratchet & Clank, and Spyro the Dragon.

I also interviewed Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor who works for Bungie, which continues to partner with Microsoft, the company that owns the Halo franchise/intellectual property.*

More on the interviews in a moment. First let’s take a look at some market statistics: According to data provided by the NPD Group, which specializes in providing consumer and retail marketing research data, the total market for video game consoles and portables (PC games are measured separately) topped $11.82 billion in the U.S. alone through September ‘08. A 26% increase over the same time period last year. Total 2007 sales reached $18.82 billion vs. $12.5 billion in 2006.

According to NPD's consumer panel (2.5 million consumers, with an average of 40K surveyed per week on various topics), 25% of Americans "…play video games daily or at least several times per week," while close to 31% game one time per week or less often, but still play video games. All of which points to a healthy and growing market for not only the games themselves, but related tie-in items including books. That’s in marked contrast to a declining tie-in market where the TV and Film industries are concerned. A phenomena I plan to address in my next column.

I asked Simon and O’Connor a series of nearly identical questions regarding the process by which tie-in projects come into being and the results were interesting. When asked if the Insomniac/Sony team was thinking about tie-in books while working on the first Resistance game Simon said, “Yes, definitely. It was discussed at the beginning of the process. But it was never discussed what the tie-ins would be. It’s not only a way of generating additional revenue,” Simon added, “but how to get the message out to the players. If you build quality tie-in items, they can lead new buyers to the game.”

Does that mean Simon believes that tie-ins can bring customers to the company’s products—as well as working the other way around? Yes, it does… A counter intuitive philosophy that makes the process of commissioning tie-in novels and choosing authors to write them that much more important.

When I asked O’Connor if the Bungie/Microsoft team was thinking about tie-ins while creating the first Halo game he answered this way: “It wasn’t even a tertiary thought honestly…. The launch of Halo involved a console launch as well, so with that to deal with, the team was entirely focused on the game.”

He went on to say, “When we make those decisions (commissioning a tie-in) it is to satisfy the fans first.” By which O’Connor means that Halo fans demanded certain kinds of tie-in items which the company felt an obligation to produce in order to please them. However, “The books have been so successful,” O’Connor adds, “that they are quite profitable in and of themselves.”
Having written one of those books I can attest to that. HALO fans are so hungry for HALO related tie-in books that my novelization of the second game sold more than 500,000 copies. Again, that’s a novelization rather than new novel, which means that half-a-million people were willing to read a narrative of a game most of them had already played.

Still, like Simon, O’Connor insists that tie-ins are about more than money. “Believe it or not revenue is kind of a secondary consideration,” he says. “An example would be Kotobukiya. They are a high-end Japanese toy manufacturer that produces sculpture rather than playful action figures. They make so few, and the margins are so tight, that we do it to service the market. That translates to trying to please customers who want Halo stuff. Especially high-end Halo stuff.”

When asked to describe the payoff from tie-ins Simon puts it this way. “I would say the first criteria is are the people who are working on the project enjoying the process? Is it cool? We need to be fiscally responsible,” he adds, “but it’s rarely a problem. That’s usually the least concern.”

Taken together the responses from both men convey a very important point about gaming related tie-in projects. Ultimately tie-in writers are dealing with teams of people who don’t look at the universe in “take the money and run” terms. They want to make money, yes, but they are also focused on producing “cool” stuff. And that includes ancillary materials like tie-in novels. So if you agree to write one be warned…. Your ideas will be judged according to what a group of people think is “cool” rather than an opinion rendered by a single editor. So in order to succeed it’s necessary to immerse yourself in the game, become a member of the creative team to whatever extent that’s possible, and participate in a consensus style of management that may seem foreign to those used to working in a word-cave by themselves.

Given how much they care about what they’re doing, it isn’t too surprising that when companies like Bungie/Microsoft and Insomniac/Sony go shopping for a publisher they’re looking for more than a quick buck. O’Connor indicated that the primary criteria for choosing a publisher can be summed up as, “Are you at the top of your game in a particular market? That’s why we’re with Tor. (Tor is Bungie/Microsoft’s current publisher.) The sit down meetings we have them are truly collaborative.”

And Simon responded to the question by saying, “We traditionally look for partners. We’re not looking for someone to take the ball and run. We’re looking for someone to partner with.” To which he added that initiative is a good thing, but it’s imperative to retain overall creative control, lest bad things happen.

So if that’s the way publishers are chosen, how about tie-in writers themselves? Are they chosen by the publishers? Or do the gaming companies play a role? O’Connor had this to say: “No, it’s a joint choice. We look at a list of suitable people.”

When asked to define “we” O’Connor replied that, “It’s a small core group within Bungie/Microsoft. You’re unlikely to be talking to more than two Bungie, or two Microsoft people at any given time.”

Simon gave a similar answer. “The team was (referring to a recently commissioned novel) actively involved in the decision. We put together a list of people that we thought would be good—and asked Del Rey for their opinion. It came down to a consensus decision between Insomniac/Sony and Del Rey.”

What I found interesting about these comments was the fact that gaming companies often approach publishers with a list of preferred tie-in writers and participate in making the final decision. So what are they looking for? O’Connor’s response was brief and to the point. “Availability and suitability. Is their writing good, would it fit, and can we get them quickly?”
Simon responded by asking, “What have they written? What kind of expertise do they have? How easy is it to work with them? You don’t know going in—but you find out quickly! That’s where you rely on the publisher. They work with the authors so they know. They (the authors) have to be flexible, opinionated when they need to be opinionated, but always for a good reason.”

In other words when a licensor sits down with a publisher to discuss which writer they want to work with the reputation each one of us has knowingly or unknowingly established becomes quite important. Simply put if you’re pleasant to deal with, willing to work as part of a team, and capable of meeting what are often short deadlines then game related offers are more likely to come your way. And, given the fact that the game market continues to expand, there will be more and more opportunities to go around. Remember to be cool though…. There’s no substitute for that!

My next column will focus on TV/Film licensors, their perspective on tie-ins, and market trends. If you would like to provide feedback regarding my column, or make suggestions regarding future columns, please send them to bill@williamcdietz.com.

* Disclosure: William C. Dietz has written tie-ins for both Bungie/Microsoft and Insomniac/Sony through Del Rey.

William C. Dietz's Words for Hire #2 - Television and Movie Tie-Ins

Traditionally most tie-in novels have been based on movies and television programs. A quick check of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) website provides dozens of examples including Maverick, Murder She Wrote, James Bond, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, STAR WARS, Diagnosis Murder, Highlander and many more. But how do these deals get done? Who initiates them? And how are writers chosen?

In order to answer those questions and more I interviewed two experts and asked them a set of identical questions. I found their comments to be instructive--if not very encouraging. So it looks like my plan to support myself by writing Brady Bunch tie-ins isn’t going to work. (Yes, there were some.)

Lee Goldberg is a two-time "Edgar" nominee whose many TV writing and/or producing credits include Martial Law, Spenser: For Hire, Diagnosis Murder, The Cosby Mysteries, Hunter, Nero Wolfe, Missing and Monk. He's also the author of many books, including My Gun Has Bullets, Beyond the Beyond, Unsold TV Pilots, Successful Television Writing, The Walk, The Man With The Iron-On Badge, as well as the Diagnosis Murder and Monk series of paperback originals.

Goldberg is also a co-founder of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
Paula M. Block is Senior Director of Product Development and oversees the publishing division of CBS Consumer Products (formerly Viacom Consumer Products), which includes the Star Trek titles published by Pocket Books. She was the co-editor and judge of the annual Strange New Worlds series, and contributed the story "The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly's Feet" in volume I. She has also worked on Where No One has Gone Before, The Paramount Story, The Tribble Handbook, and The 4400—The Official Companion. With husband Terry J. Erdmann, Block co-wrote Star Trek: Action!, The Secrets of Star Trek: Insurrection, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, Monk, the Official Episode Guide, the recently released Star Trek 101 and the introduction of the Prophecy and Change anthology. I would like to thank both for Lee and Paula for agreeing to be interviewed.

Dietz: “Do TV/film production companies think about tie-in books and other merchandise before they go into production—or is that a follow-on activity?”

Goldberg: “It’s usually an after-thought. It’s so far at the bottom of their list after trying to get eyeballs onto their screens…. It’s less about the content of the books than the promotional value. The show has to be up and running for awhile before publishers become interested.”

Block: “Actually, the production companies/producers seldom think about tie-in books and merch. It’s the rare exception that do—like George Lucas, whose interest in such products really made licensing into the industry it is today.

It’s typically the consumer products (CP) department of a studio that thinks about tie-ins before the shooting on a film or TV show begins—that’s what they’re there for, after all. They help contribute to the bottom line of a studio’s revenue.

The CP department keeps in touch with studio execs to find out what films have been green-lighted, or what pilots are a go for the coming season. The CP folks discuss internally and decide which projects have the most potential for spin-off products. Certain genres are better than others at lending themselves to adaptation and are the most successful—say science fiction, fantasy, action, and teenagers doing what teenagers do. After that the CP department reviews their prospects with legal to see if merch is even possible. Some actors and/or producers have zero interest in merch, some love it—(this is sometimes addressed in their contracts) and then typically CP will initiate communication with the production company.”

Dietz: “At what point during the process is the decision made to commission a tie-in novel?”

Goldberg: “I was the Executive Producer of Diagnosis Murder for many years--and nobody came to us looking to do tie-ins. That program skewed too old…. After Murder She Wrote went off the air, Penguin/Putnam started doing Murder She Wrote tie-in novels, and they have been a tremendous success. They’re up to thirty some titles in the Murder She Wrote series.

"So Penguin looked at the success of the Murder She Wrote book and said we need to do something else like that. And looking at the demographics that’s how they came to do Diagnosis Murder. For Paramount that was found money. So they were licensed, I wrote eight of them, and they were successful….”

Block: “….If the film or TV show is based on an existing book, obviously a tie-in novel is out of the question, although you may be able to do other ‘merch,’ like toys or t-shirts. You may even be able to do a behind-the-scenes making of a book about the film. But if a movie/TV show is licensable, and it’s not based on an existing book, doing a novelization tends to be a given, and plans for that are initiated immediately, since a book tends to take longer to produce than a t-shirt.”

Dietz: “Why do production companies license tie-in novels?”

Goldberg: “Eyeballs on screens, royalties to lots of people, and there’s some ego involved. The creator of a show likes to be able to walk into a book store and see books on the shelves. And sometimes they see it as an opportunity to tell stories or explore characters in a way they can’t on the TV show. Others find it to be a total irritant and they hate it. That’s why there’s been one Law and Order book—and one Jag book.”

Block: “On the most basic level, a tie-in novel serves as good publicity for a film or TV show. That’s the studio’s point of view. And it brings in a bit of revenue although not very much unless you’re talking about a blockbuster production or the hottest TV show of the year….”

Dietz: “When the typical production company goes to choose/cut a deal with a publisher what criteria come into play? And which are the most important?”

Goldberg: “The production companies don’t have much to do with it. The studios like Paramount, Disney, Sony, Universal all have big licensing departments. And when a show begins to break out like Burn Notice, if publishers haven’t already started to court them, they go out to find a publisher…. The criteria the execs use may not be solely financial, it may have to do with personal relationships, corporate relationships, and which writers the publisher might be able to bring to the project.”

Block: “Well, not to sound crass but money has a lot to do with it. Everybody wants to cut a good deal, right? But a publisher doesn’t necessarily want to pay what the studio wants. So there’s a lot of give and take in that area.

"But beyond mercenary reasons, there are people in our CP department who have enough experience to know which publisher is going to do the best job on a tie-in. Company ‘A’ may have an amazing production department that will create the most beautiful book you can imagine—but they can’t afford a big licensing fee. In that case, the CP department may accept a lower bid because they are concerned about the quality of the end product.

"Novelizations are different—the publisher is almost always locked into using some kind of approved key art (one-sheet art) for the cover, so there’s not much room for creativity, other than who the publisher chooses as the author. But more often than not, the CP department doesn’t know in advance who the publisher will choose to use, so that doesn’t tend to be much of a criteria. Speed may be a more important criterion—can they find an author who can turn in a manuscript in a month? That may be the most important thing to the publisher and the studio. You just have to hope that somebody who can write fast is also a good author!”

Dietz: “When it comes time to hire a tie-in writer is that decision left to the publisher? Or does the production company team typically get involved?”

Goldberg: “It depends on the deal that the show runner (the Executive Producer and/or creator) has. Sometimes they have approval rights and sometimes they don’t. It really depends on the deal that the creator struck. Any deal I pitch always gives me control over what tie-in writer will be hired if I get a deal.

"One of things IAMTW is trying to change is the perception that tie-in writers are hacks. Unfortunately some tie-in writers are hacks. And that gives everyone a bad name.”
Block: “That decision is almost always left to the publisher. On an extremely high profile movie, a producer may want to be involved, but that’s not always a good thing. They may want an author who they’ve heard is hot, but who charges a huge fee. That’s not so good for the publisher, who may know of an equally good author, good in the particular genre, who will cost them less.

"Fortunately, not too many want to get involved. As for veto power, they only have that if the deal they made with the studio says they have it. Very few have thought ahead to request such power. Novelizations are not exactly the top thing they’re thinking about when they cut a multi-million dollar deal with a studio.

"I know that may disappoint the writers out there. To them I say: ‘Write screenplays.’ The producer still won’t think much about you, and you still won’t have much power--but you’ll have more money to keep you warm at night!”

Dietz: “What sort of qualities/background are production companies typically looking for, assuming that they participate in the choice of an author?”

Goldberg: “They want to be wowed by the writer. They want someone with a serious history. They want someone with some success besides writing tie-ins. They want someone with a track record of success. It says this isn’t just a tie-in—it’s a book! It says something if the writer has been a success on his own.”

Block: “I think I covered that above. There are occasional happy exceptions. Every now and then a producer will actually know what he or she is looking for, beyond a big name. Some producers actually read! My husband (Terry Erdmann) had the rare experience of being requested for a tie-in book because the producer had read an earlier book of Terry’s and really liked it. But that doesn’t happen very often.”

Dietz: “When it comes to dealing with tie-in writers what sort of virtues are production companies looking for?”

Goldberg: “They expect the tie-in writer to be not that much different from a freelance television writer. They expect the tie-in writer to be someone who can work with the room (the writer’s room) and the creator to capture the voice and color of the show and to, as we say in TV, articulate the franchise. Capture what makes the show unique and sets it apart from other shows in the same genre.”

Block: “Depends on the type of book. Timeliness is always next to godliness in everyone’s mind. With a behind-the-scenes book, someone with good communication skills is a blessing, because he/she must have a professional demeanor in addressing/interviewing the actors and other people in addition to skill at putting the manuscript together. The author of a novelization generally doesn’t have to worry about that.”

Dietz: “What’s the worst sin a tie-in writer can commit from a production company point of view?”

Goldberg: “Not capturing the show…. Where the book would actually do the show harm. It doesn’t feel like the show—a badly written book that reads like a hack job. It has to stand on its own as a book. The last thing they want is published fanfic.”

Block: “Two sins come to mind. Publishers need to remind their writers about ‘pecking order’ so to speak. If the writer says he/she needs something, say photos for reference or an updated script, that request should go to the editor, who will then contact the CP department, which has the authority to request such things from personnel at the studio. Some writers get a little too proactive and start making phone calls on their own to the production people and invariably this gets back to the CP department—generally in the form of complaints from the higher ups. ‘Why is so-and-so calling and asking me for a script? Who the hell is he?’ At that point, the author has muddied some strategic waters and now it becomes more difficult for the CP department to get what he and the publisher needs.

"The other sin would be to change too much in translation from the script to the book. That would include changing dialogue because the author feels the screenwriter’s words ‘didn’t flow…’ or adding too many of the author’s own inventions including extra characters, extra scenes, plot changes. As someone who reviews the manuscripts for the books, I’ve developed my own policies in this regard. I do allow authors to add things by extending scenes, and sometimes filling in missing gaps that don’t mess with the main plot. I know that readers enjoy that kind of thing. But I don’t let them run wild with the story and make it theirs. Consistency with the movie is the cardinal rule.”

Dietz: “If a writer has been involved with other tie-in related projects is that good or bad?”

Goldberg: “The publishers like experienced tie-in writers because they know what they’re going to get. Producers approach it differently. They want to be impressed. Who are you getting for my show? Producers want to be seduced. We got you an author who is a best selling author of romance novels. Or he’s a Spur winning author of westerns. Or something like that. Of course there are some shows that just don’t care.”

Block: “Experience is almost always a good thing--so long as the writer doesn’t assume that each experience will be the same. Sometimes it’s clear sailing for him, so the writer may assume that the liberties he/she took in the previous tie-in will apply here as well. But it ain’t necessarily so. This particular time, the studio or the producers may insist on doing things a different way, maybe a more restrictive way, and the writer’s attitude will rub them the wrong way.”

Dietz: “How does the future look where TV/film related tie-ins are concerned?”

Goldberg: “My limited experience is that the midlist is shrinking. The great attractiveness of tie-ins is that they bring with them the great promotional machine of TV shows. Using my Monk books as an example, my books come out the same week as the new season, so my books have the advantage of all the bill boards and the show itself…

"That said there are fewer and fewer shows that can support tie-ins. Few shows are lasting long enough to generate that kind of viewer loyalty, much less reader loyalty, and how many people read? Are Knight Rider people going to pick up Knight Rider books? I don’t know.
This year the number of viewers for network television is at an all-time low. The TV audience is becoming fragmented. It’s getting harder and harder to get a show on the air that can sustain an audience much less a readership. Book sales are down…. People are reading less.”

Block: “The Sixties, Seventies and Eighties were good for tie-ins. These days, it’s the rare tie-in that does exceptionally well. That’s why you see fewer of them. They were a novelty for quite a while, and it wasn’t a surprise to see long-running series of books based on one property. Star Trek is probably the most successful tie-in ever (with over 500 novels in print!), and STAR WARS is certainly popular, but The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and even Sabrina, The Teenage Witch had their day in the sun, with more than 20 titles each. But all good things… You know the saying. I think the existence of the internet and interactive gaming has taken the place of the desire to read adaptations, at least for younger readers.”

Dietz: “Do production companies expect to make substantial sums of money from the tie-ins they license?”

Goldberg: “They know there isn’t a lot of money to made from books. But it is one more way to sustain viewer loyalty. All of the combined stuff makes some money—but it’s mostly about promotion.”

Block: “As I mentioned above, to the studio the publicity value is the premium. To them, it’s a good way to actually get paid a bit to have a publisher put your key art on a book and splash it around. But sadly, substantial sums are a thing of the past except for true blockbusters, like adaptations of Spiderman, Indiana Jones, and so forth. Publishing used to be one of the top sources of revenue for consumer products departments. Sadly, that’s not true anymore.”

All of which means that the process by which media related tie-ins are commissioned will continue to be inaccessible to most of us. However, once a book has been commissioned, it’s clear that publishers usually get to decide who they will approach. How does that work? What are they looking for? And how is the tie-in market doing? I’ll tackle those questions in my next column.

In the meantime here’s something to think about…. Did Paula Block say something about turning out a manuscript in a month? Yes, I believe she did. And, amazingly enough, there are quite a few authors capable of such a feat. (Many of them belong to IAMTW.) Still, it’s a daunting thought for most of us…. And one of the things that makes work for hire so challenging.

My next column will focus on publishers, their perspective on tie-ins, and market trends. If you would like to provide feedback regarding my column, or make suggestions regarding future columns, please send them to bill@williamcdietz.com.

William C. Dietz's Words for Hire #3 - Publishers

My last two columns were focused on the ultimate source of most tie-in work: the film, television and gaming industries which typically create and produce the properties that novelizations and tie-ins are based on. Now it’s time to consider the publishers who purchase the rights and produce the actual books.

And who better to talk to on that subject than Betsy Mitchell, VP/Editor in Chief of Del Rey Books, and Ginjer Buchanan, Editor in Chief of, ACE/ROC Books. Both being very well known to the SFWA community because of their long time involvement with Science Fiction and Fantasy.* As with previous columns, I asked the interviewees a series of nearly identical questions and in some cases summarized their answers.

My first question focused on the overall size of the market. Mitchell replied by saying that Del Rey had published 85 fiction books, 25 of which were tie-ins during 2008.

Buchanan explained that “The ACE list consists of 5 mass market titles per month, and 2 or 3 HC (hardcover) or trade. The ROC list consists of 3 mass per month, and 1 or 2 HC or trade. Some of the mass markets are reprints from the previous year’s HC/Trade list, of course.”
Where tie-ins are concerned she said, “We have a media related imprint named Boulevard, which publishes all kinds of things, including media related science fiction/fantasy. It’s generic to the mass market division, by which I mean that a book can be Berkley Boulevard or NAL (New American Library) Boulevard. The big tie-in last year was The Dark Knight novelization (by Dennis O’Neil), which was done as Berkley Boulevard.

“There was only one ACE tie-in in 2008. It was the novelization of the animated film Gotham Knight, which was released on DVD the month before Dark Knight.”

I asked both Mitchell and Buchanan what percentage of total revenues were derived from their imprints and from tie-ins. Not surprisingly both declined to answer citing the proprietary nature of such information, although Buchanan was willing to say that, “The science fiction and fantasy imprints are contributing significantly to the company, particularly over the last five years with the rise of urban fantasy.”

The question, and their answers, served to remind me of the fact that the publishers we work for are competing with each other. And nowhere is that more visible than with the realm of properties like the Dark Knight where it isn’t unusual for the licensor to receive numerous bids. Typically the highest bid wins but other factors play a part in the outcome as well.

When asked why ACE/ROC went after Dark Knight in particular Buchanan said, “It was going to be a big movie and it was offered. One of the reasons we got it, I think, was that Warner Bros. insisted that the novel not be put on sale prior to the movie’s release and we agreed to do that. Others may have been reluctant to do so. As a result we were able to get the rights for a reasonable price.”

As for how that business decision turned out Buchanan said: “It made the NY Times Best Seller list, which made both us and DC (Comics) very happy!”

The decision to go ahead in this case worked extremely well—but had the movie bombed sales for the novelization could have tanked as well. The point being that each time a publisher buys the rights to publish a tie-in novel they are rolling the dice. A reality that most authors understand but may not think about much.

After twenty years at a major corporation I know companies tend to measure the things they consider to be most important--so I asked both Mitchell and Buchanan if tie-in related revenues are totaled and tracked for corporate accounting purposes. Both responded by saying that while their companies track individual books they don’t track tie-ins as a group.

I think that’s interesting because it runs contrary to the theory that a tidal wave of tie-ins is sweeping original novels off the shelves. Were that the case I believe publishers would measure the performance of the category as well as individual books.

And when I asked Mitchell if she could provide me with the average profit margin for a mass media tie-in novel she responded by saying “I have no clue. I can say they have the same chance of failure or success as other projects.”

Buchanan answered the question this way. “It wouldn’t be any different than for a regular novel. We do a profit and loss calculation for every book., thus you have to do a P&L on a tie-in…”

One of the perennial questions we authors ask our agents and each other has to do with the size of an average midlist print-run. What is it anyway? Fifteen thousand? Twenty-five thousand? Most of us want to know. And for good reason. Because if we knew what the average is it would be easier to locate ourselves on the publishing food chain and figure out whether we should keep writing or look for a real job. (Not that there are many right now.) And it might come in handy during negotiations too!

That’s why I put the question to Mitchell and Buchanan. But it turns out that there’s no such thing as an average tie-in. Each project is associated with a franchise--and some franchises pack more marketing punch than others do. That means each license is acquired for a different price and will incur a different level of expense depending on the print run, the cost of hiring an author, and related factors. All of which makes it difficult if not impossible to generalize.
Here’s what Mitchell had to say: “Without using actual numbers, we don’t sign up a tie-in unless we expect it to result in a significant print run. We don’t publish “midlist” tie-ins, in other words. Our goal is not just to fill a space on the list; it’s to bring in sales.”
That’s an important point. Because there are critics (you know who you are), who see tie-ins as midlist dreck that publishers put on shelves because they’re too lazy or too stupid to buy original novels.

But what Mitchell is saying is that “no,” publishers don’t produce tie-ins because they’re lazy, they’re trying to put a book on the New York Times best seller list ala Buchanan’s Dark Knight anecdote. They aren’t casting about for a way to plug a midlist slot, they’re trying to hit the ball out of the park, and that’s what they have in mind when they hire you. They aren’t looking for some hack to grind out 350 pages worth of filler, they’re looking for a true professional who can capture a universe, and deliver a satisfying experience to hundreds of thousands of readers.

Of course not all of the properties publishers buy become runaway hits. But many do extremely well even if they don’t achieve formal best seller status as Buchanan points out: “There’s tie-ins and novelizations. Most of the tie-ins that are done here are NAL mystery titles like Murder She Wrote, Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice. They’re doing quite well—and they’re genuine tie-ins--original novels, not novelizations. Monk and Murder She Wrote are done in hardcover, in fact.”
By the same token there are those who assume that tie-ins must be less costly to produce since novelizations are clearly derivative, and when an author writes a tie-in they have the advantage of an already fleshed-out universe, and an existing cast of characters. That perception simply isn’t true as Mitchell pointed out when she told me that tie-ins can be more expensive--since both the licensor and a writer-for-hire must be paid.

And Buchanan agreed, adding, “Depending on the level of oversight exercised by the licensor they can be more time consuming. So if time is money, I guess they can be more expensive…”
So, what about shelf life? Ahhh, there’s the rub, as a best selling author with one heck of a strong back list once said. “In general tie-ins have a shorter shelf life,” Mitchell observed, “since once the property had had its time in the public eye readers often move on. Licensors also will restrict the time a book publisher can keep the books in print—a typical license term would be five to seven years. That said, if a publisher has term of copyright in a book and the license is allowed to continue, some tie-ins can remain in print for years. One example is our Dark Angel titles, which keep going back to press years after the show went off the air.”

Buchanan agreed: “I think tie-ins are pretty ephemeral because of the nature of what they are.” Later she added, “A successful original novel is going to stay in print longer. Tie-ins aren’t bought with the notion that you’re going to make money over the long run.”

And here’s why you should care…. Even though the typical work-for-hire contract involves a fixed fee paid in one, two, or three payments some tie-in authors ask for and get a small back-end royalty. Usually one-percent but sometimes more. Although the trade-off for the royalty might be a smaller advance. So if the book earns out, and remains on the bookshelves for a long time, there is an opportunity to make more money.

Plus, every book that has your name on it constitutes an advertisement of sorts, and the more eyeballs that see it the better. So while it isn’t the most important deal point, potential shelf life is a legitimate criteria.

Based on what these two industry experts have said so far, choosing the right property is key to making a profit. With that in mind I asked both interviewees about the criteria they use while shopping for tie-in rights. Mitchell answered this way: “Advance buzz, pedigree of the property (for example, do the creators have bestsellers in their backgrounds?), and the history of the brand.”

“I think that the most successful books aren’t tied to heavily-arced series,” Buchanan observed, “where you have to watch every week in order to know what is going on. Lost and Heroes being the current prime examples. On the other hand, Eureka, while it has some thru-story elements, is a series in which every episode is a stand-alone. Thus, every book can be stand-alone too. That’s at least partly why the mystery show tie-ins have been so successful, I think. Neither Monk nor Jessica Fletcher change all that much from one week to the next.”

Of course every business has to deal with competition, and from the perspective of a flinty-eyed tie-in writer, the companies that Del Rey and ACE/ROC see as competitors are potential clients! Mitchell identified Harper as “….a big buyer.”

And Buchanan pointed to Mitchell’s operation. “Del Rey has more of a program—and so does Simon Shuster. The assumption is that if there’s something hot they’ll be in there—but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily get it or that they will be the only other bidders. I’ve lost projects to Harper and TOR, too.”

In a follow-up question I asked Buchanan why ACE/ROC puts out less tie-ins than other publishers do. “Two reasons,” she answered. “First, other publishers are paying more money for them. There have been several things I went after but I was outbid. Del Rey and Simon Schuster, for instance, have tie-in programs more or less, so their incentive to acquire projects is perhaps higher.

“Second, we used to do more when we were owned by MCA which also owned Universal Studios and Television. We would get first look at whatever was being developed, like the film ET, and all of the Spielberg television projects. That's how I came to do fifteen Quantum Leap novels.

“Now, since there aren’t that many publishing companies that share parentage with movie studios or television networks, things tend to be shopped more.

“Currently, other than the NAL mystery tie-ins the only license we have going is Eureka novels. They will probably be done in Berkley Boulevard.”

Then, as in previous columns, I asked both interviewees to address the question of what they’re looking for where tie-in writers are concerned. Mitchell replied by saying that the most important criteria are, “Their love of the property, ability to meet deadlines, and lack of ego.”
Each element of Mitchell’s comment is worth consideration. If you’re interested in tie-in work it’s important to realize that the licensors be they film/television producers or game developers all eat, sleep, and drink their franchise. It’s everything to them and they are looking for people who understand the property and love it as much as they do. And editors have their favorites too… Ginjer Buchanan wrote Highlander: White Silence for Aspect.

So any writer who shows up for work hoping to simply churn out some words for a pay check should be warned: If you can’t find something you genuinely like about the project you should probably pass, because the principals including your publisher are likely to sense your lack of enthusiasm and never invite you back. Oh yeah, and they might generalize to your original work, so why take the chance?

Meeting deadlines is always important, regardless of what kind of project you’re working on, but it’s usually absolutely critical where novelizations and tie-ins are concerned, because they are typically tied to the release of a movie or a game. So to miss a deadline is to miss the opportunity to leverage the marketing effort, and for the purposes of a work for hire project, the author is part of a team that’s depending on him or her to deliver the goods.

And there is no room for ego where work for hire is concerned. For example if you are invited to write a novel tied into a game, you will typically be expected to not only work with whatever editor is in charge of the project, but a team of people who work for the licensor. They tend to have flat reporting structures and pride themselves on very egalitarian cultures. Which means everybody gets to question your assumptions, comment on your outline, and suggest changes. And this process may require you to participate in meetings where you’ll need to look out for your publisher’s interests as well, because your editor won’t be able to participate in all of them, not given all the other projects they are responsible for.

Interestingly enough you may be asked to provide input that won’t impact your book. I happen to enjoy that process, and find it to be a wonderful counterpoint to my solo writing, but it isn’t for everyone. In fact some critics are of the opinion that the process is potentially usurious since the group might adopt one or more of your ideas without paying you for them. So if that possibility troubles you don’t do it.

Here’s what Buchanan is looking for where authors are concerned and it tracks with the points that Mitchell made. “Reliability. That’s number one, two, and three! Also I would say that if you’re writing a tie-in you need to know that you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox. You can’t be adverse to taking input from someone other than an editor. And you can’t be contentious about that input. It takes a certain mindset, a certain way of viewing one’s own writing, to be able to do that.”

One of the things that usually comes up during any discussion of work for hire is the extent to which writing tie-ins might help or impede a particular author where his or her original fiction is concerned. With that in mind I asked both interviewees the following question: “Would Del Rey/ACE/ROC be more or less likely to buy an original novel from someone who has written tie-in novels for them (or others)—or would it make no difference at all?”

Mitchell indicated that, “Writing a tie-in can give a publisher a good sense of an author’s personality under fire, as it were. A good experience on a tie-in project can certainly cast a good light on an author’s future prospects.”

And Buchanan agreed. “Well, if someone had proved to be reliable we would be more likely. It would depend on what the project was. From my point of view as an editor if someone has written a tie-in novel for us it would make me more willing to consider their original work.”
I thought both responses were interesting since some members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy community seem to believe that once an author soils him or herself by accepting work-for-hire they will never be taken seriously again! Apparently this isn’t so…. Not where publishers are concerned anyway.

Finally, I asked both interviewees about the recession, and whether they were going to cut their lists. Mitchell responded by saying that Del Rey is “holding steady” and does not plan to reduce the number of tie-in slots.

And Buchanan said, “Nope. None of the lists here are being cut. We had a terrific year last year—including the final quarter—and for as far as it goes, this year seems to be starting out well. Of course, the fact that accounts—particularly the brick and mortar stores—are cutting initial orders pretty much across the board will have an impact. But we will see how things develop.”
My next column will focus on the art of the tie-in deal featuring interviews with two prominent agents. If you would like to provide feedback regarding my column, or make suggestions regarding future columns, please send them to bill@williamcdietz.com. *Disclosure: William C. Dietz has written tie-ins for ACE/ROC and Del Rey, as well as original novels for ACE/ROC.

Any Bonds Today?

Any Bonds Today?

As I write this I’m recalling a tune I haven’t heard since childhood.

Any bonds today?
Bonds of freedom,
That’s what I’m selling.
Any bonds today?

The ditty was written by Irving Berlin early in World War II to promote the National Defense Savings Program and sell Series E “War Bonds” to the American public. It was introduced in a short Looney Tunes cartoon by Bugs Bunny accompanied by Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd. Before long the Andrew Sisters picked it up.

The song was just one initiative in a huge government effort to raise money for the war. Movie stars like Rita Hayworth and Bette Davis performed in bond rallies; indeed, every segment of American society got into the act. For instance, Norman Rockwell spearheaded an art campaign with a series of illustrations. Even school children did their bit, selling war savings stamps to those who could not afford bonds. Overall, the effort was a huge success, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars from citizens, who purchased, at 75% of face value, bonds ranging in value from $25.00 to $10,000, which matured in ten years and yielded 2.9 percent.

As I look at the current administration’s efforts to restart our economy I wonder if such a campaign might succeed today to defray the cost of the recovery. The same passion and enthusiasm that swept Barack Obama into office could be channeled into boosting a bond sale effort. However drained the nation’s finances may be there are still many wealthy or at least comfortable people who might be persuaded to invest in a bond to help turn their nation’s finances around. And perhaps those who are less well heeled might be willing to set a little bit of money aside to save for a bond. Musicians, artists, movie and television celebrities would undoubtedly pitch in as they pitched into the election campaign. School children and college students are particularly resourceful in raising funds for patriotic causes. Obviously we wouldn’t call them “War” Bonds but there is no end of talent to coin the appropriate name.

We don’t have to do anything but repackage the existing Series EE bond, which sells for half face value and doubles in twenty years. Interest earned is exempt from state and local income taxes, and federal income tax can be deferred until the bond is redeemed. Currently, EE’s earn interest for thirty years.

Given all the complaints about foreign ownership of our nation’s assets, one especially appealing aspect of this proposal is that it would help restore ownership of our country back into the hands of its citizens. So –

Scrape up the most you can.
Here comes the freedom man
Asking you to buy a share of freedom today.

Richard Curtis

Neil Gaiman's Introduction to Harlan Ellison's The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

I've been reading Harlan Ellison since I was a boy. I have known him as long, although by no means as well, as his wife, Susan--we met in Glasgow in 1985 at the same convention at which he first met and wooed his better half.

I interviewed him then for Space Voyager, a magazine for which I had written the previous two years, and which had, until that point, appeared perfectly healthy. The issue of the magazine that was to contain my interview with Harlan went to press ... and the publisher pulled the plug on it, with the magazine half-printed, and fired the editor. I took the interview to an editor at another magazine. He paid me for it ... and was fired the following day.

I decided at that point that it was unhealthy to write about Harlan, and retired the interview to a filing cabinet, in which it will sit until the end of the world. I cannot be responsible for the firing of any more editors, the closing of any more magazines.

There is no one in the world in any way like Harlan. This has been observed before, by wiser and abler people than I. This is true; and it is quite beside the point.

It has, from time to time, occurred to me that Harlan Ellison is engaged on a Gutzon Borglum-sized work of performance art--something huge and enduring. It's called Harlan Ellison: a corpus of anecdotes and tales and adversaries and performances and friends and articles and opinions and rumours and explosions and treasures and echoes and downright lies. People talk about Harlan Ellison, and they write about Harlan, and some of them would burn him at the stake if they could do it without getting into too much trouble; and some of them would probably worship at his feet if it weren't for the fact he'd say something that would make them go away feeling very small and very stupid. People tell stories in Harlan's wake, and some of them are true and some of them aren't, and some of them are to his credit and some of them aren't.

And that is also quite beside the point.

When I was ten I had a lisp, and was sent to an elocution teacher named Miss Webster who, for the next six years, taught me a great deal about drama and public speaking and, incidentally, got rid of the lisp somewhere in year one. She must have had a first name, but I've forgotten it now. She was magnificent--a stumpy, white-haired old theatrical lesbian (or so her pupils assumed) who smoked black cigarillos and was surrounded at all times by a legion of amiable but rather stupid Scottie dogs. She had huge bosoms, which she would rest on the table while she watched me recite the tongue-twisters and dramatic pieces I had been assigned. Miss Webster died about fifteen years ago, or so I was told by another ex-pupil of hers I met at a party some years back.

She is one of the very small number of people who have told me things for my own good that I've paid attention to. (There is, needless to say, a very large number of people--including, now I come to think of it, Harlan--who've told me perfectly sensible things for my own good that I've, for one reason or another, ignored completely.)

Anyway: I got to be fourteen years old and, one day, after a particularly imaginative interpretation of a Caliban speech, Miss Webster leaned back in her chair, lit a cigarillo with a flourish, and said, "Neil, dear. I think there's something you ought to know. Listen: to be eccentric, you must first know your circle."

Neil Gaiman

Harlan Ellison's Introduction to Strange Wine

Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look so Terrific Yourself.

It's all about drinking strange wine.

It seems disjointed and jumps around like water on a griddle, but it all comes together, so be patient.

At 9:38 A.M. on July 15th, 1974, about eight minutes into Suncoast Digest, a variety show on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, anchorwoman Chris Chubbuck, 30, looked straight at the camera and said, "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts in living color, you're going to see another first-an attempt at suicide."

Whereupon she pulled a gun out of a shopping bag and blew her brains out, on camera.

Paragraph 3, preceding, was taken verbatim from an article written by Daniel Schorr for Rolling Stone. I'd heard about the Chubbuck incident, of course, and I admit to filching Mr. Schorr's sixty concise words because they are concise, and why should I try to improve on precision? As the artist Mark Rothko once put it: "Silence is so accurate."

Further, Mr. Schorr perceived in the bizarre death of Chris Chubbuck exactly what I got out of it when I heard the news broadcast the day it happened. She was making a statement about television ... on television!

The art-imitating-life resemblance to Paddy Chayefsky's film Network should not escape us. I'm sure it wouldn't have escaped Chris Chubbuck's attention. Obvious cliché; onward.

I used to know Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza. He was a wise and a kind man, and there are tens of dozens of people I would much rather see dead than Dan. One time, around lunch-break at Paramount, when I was goofing off on writing a treatment for a Joe Levine film that never got made, and Dan was resting his ass from some dumb horsey number he'd been reshooting all morning, we sat on the steps of the weathered saloon that probably in no way resembled any saloon that had ever existed in Virginia City, Nevada, and we talked about reality versus fantasy. The reality of getting up at five in the morning to get to the studio in time for makeup call and the reality of how bloody much FICA tax they took out of our paychecks and the reality of one of his kids being down with something or other ... and the fantasy of not being Dan Blocker, but of being Hoss Cartwright.

And he told me a scary story. He laughed about it, but it was the laugh of butchers in a slaughterhouse who have to swing the mauls that brain the beeves; who then go home to wash the stink out of their hair from the spattering.

Authors Guild Statement re Kindle and Audio for Print-Disabled Readers

Authors want everyone to read their books. That's why the Authors Guild, and authors generally, are strong advocates for making all books, including e-books, accessible to everyone. This is not a new position for us. For decades, we've informed new authors that the expected and proper thing to do is to donate rights so that their works can be accessible to the blind and others. In October, we were praised by the National Federation of the Blind for the settlement of our lawsuit against Google, which promises "to revolutionize blind people's access to books," according to the Federation's press release.

E-books do not come bundled with audio rights. So we proposed to the Federation several weeks ago the only lawful and speedy path to make e-books accessible to the print disabled on Amazon's Kindle:

1. The first step is to take advantage of a special exception to the Copyright Act known as the Chafee Amendment, which permits the blind and others with certified physical print disabilities access to special versions, including audio versions, of copyrighted books. Technology makes this step easy: certified users of existing Kindles could activate their devices online to enable access to voice-output versions of all e-books. This process could be ready to go within weeks.

2. Since step one would help only those with sufficient eyesight to navigate the current Kindle, we encourage Amazon or another e-book device manufacturer to make an e-book device with voice output capability that would be truly blind-accessible, with a Braille keyboard and audible menu commands.

3. Finally, we need to amend existing book contracts to allow voice-output access to others, including those with learning disabilities, that don't qualify for special treatment under the Chafee Amendment. There's no getting around the need to amend contracts: for the past 16 years, standard publishing contracts with most major trade publishers do not permit publishers to sell e-books bundled with audio rights. Fortunately, publishing contracts are amendable, and can (once terms have been negotiated) be handled in a systematic fashion.

The Authors Guild will gladly be a forceful advocate for amending contracts to provide access to voice-output technology to everyone. We will not, however, surrender our members' economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can't afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights.

Knowing how difficult the road ahead is for the already fragile economics of authorship, we are particularly troubled at how all this arose, with Amazon attempting to use authors' audio rights to lengthen its lead in the fledgling e-book industry. We could not allow this rights grab to happen. Audio books are a billion dollar market, the rights for which are packaged separately from -- and are far more valuable than -- e-book rights.

That said, our support for access by all disabled readers is steadfast, and we know how to make it happen. The Federation rightly heralded the settlement in Authors Guild v. Google. That class-action settlement represents a quantum leap in accessibility to books for the disabled. It will, if approved, make far more books than ever before, potentially tens of millions of out-of-print books, accessible to not only the blind, but to people with any type of print disability.

Through the Google settlement, we have a solution for out-of-print book accessibility. We're confident we can arrive at a solution for in-print books as well.

Today's protest is unfortunate and unnecessary. We stand by our offer, first made to the Federation's lawyer a month ago and repeated several times since, to negotiate in good faith to reach a solution for making in-print e-books accessible to everyone. We extend that same offer to any group representing the disabled.

Author? What's an Author?

This was written in the mid-1990s and except for a few dated references like CD-ROM, which I'm going to leave in for the fun of it, it seems to be completely relevant to what is happening in the media this very day.

******************************
How can you possibly call yourself an author if you can't process digitized full-motion video signals on your computer, accelerate your image-compression manager to thirty frames per second, and enhance your video with full stereo sound?

The day is coming—and much sooner than you may think—when authors will no longer be able to define themselves simply as creators of literary works. As electronic technology hurtles too fast for even futurists to keep up with, a generation of readers is emerging that will not accept text unless it is interactively married to other media. The twenty-first century's definition of "author" will be as far from today's definition as you are from the town scribe of yore.

The evolution of authors from unimedium creators to multimedia producers has been gaining momentum since the replacement of manual typewriters with electric ones, a phenomenon that any living soul in his or her mid-thirties or older has witnessed. The addition of computerized memory converted these dumb and passive typing machines into utilities possessing the potential for genuine partnership with writers. Each refinement in memory capacity, miniaturization, automation, and audiovisual display exponentially accelerated the typewriter's curve away from mere laborsaving device and toward a purely organic extension of the writer's mind.

At this point in time, we are at a place on the curve where typewriting has been supplanted by word processing, and word processing, in turn, has advanced into desktop publishing. This means that writers are capable of assuming the role of publishers in every function except distribution of their works to the consumer, and even this condition is on the way to being satisfied with the ongoing creation of electronic networks delivering intellectual creations directly to users.

The closer writers come to realizing that potential, the greater will be the pressure on them to expand their skills beyond effectively delivering the written word in print mode. It will be incumbent on them to navigate, and enable computer users to navigate, through a world of sights, sounds, colors, action, information, and special effects. The introduction of the optical disk, with its almost unimaginable memory and versatility, into the writers repertoire, makes their ascent to the next rung of evolution a foregone conclusion. But what is that rung, and how many others loom above it?

In order to answer those questions, one must have some general understanding of the technological environment confronting today's authors. The current device of choice is the word-processing function of the computer. However, the definition of word processing has been pushed further and further with each improvement in our ability to store and manipulate text. Color monitors, for example, have replaced the early monochrome models, enabling us to employ an incredible array of graphics to supplement and illustrate text. With each refinement, writers have found themselves blessed with options that were almost inconceivable a decade ago.

Technological growth is seldom achieved without a price, however. The same refinements that liberated writers from some kinds of concerns have saddled them with others. Our relationship with text has become complicated, if not obscured, by our need to master new writing tools. More and more of our creative energy has become dedicated to the selection of hardware, software, peripherals, and options. Each improvement challenges us not to become better writers but to become better engineers.

The introduction of the optical disk has only accelerated our momentum in this direction. The vast amounts of information necessary to produce moving images and sound in a computer are digitally encoded by laser and compressed, just as purely audio data is captured on compact discs. The nearly miraculous storage capacity of computer hard drives, floppy disks, and CD-ROMs (compact disc read-only memory) has added to the writer's toolbox two options of staggering power and versatility: interactivity and multimedia capability. Personal computer owners now have the ability to produce not just text, or text accompanied by still graphics, but fully realized audiovisual works. And thanks to the interactive properties of computers, users may now journey through a variety of links that make them active participants in the audiovisual experience.

The problem is, you can't take those journeys with conventional word-processing hardware and software. You can only get there from here by using an "authoring system." An authoring system enables a computer operator to incorporate video and sound into the presentation of creative ideas. Such creations are interactive, allowing the user to cut (nonsequentially if so desired) back and forth from movie scenes to animated graphics to straight text to still graphics to excerpts from documentaries and back again, all accompanied by speech, music, or sound effects.

Authoring systems were created in response to the fiendishly difficult task of programming graphical interfaces into word-processing systems. "Without having to write a single line of computer code, a person can design an endless variety of relatively simple yet functional multimedia programs," says the head of a New York-based multimedia production company. "Technically, the task of designing a multimedia work can now be performed by the average computer operator with nearly as much ease as operating a desktop-publishing program. However, multimedia also offers up a new and unique set of design problems to contend with."

Using an authoring program, you can develop virtually any fully functional application you wish to create. As of this writing, you must still be somewhat computer literate to flesh out your prototype program, but as the systems evolve, using them will become easier and easier.
You'll notice that I am judiciously avoiding the use of the word "author" in referring to creators of such works. That is because the act of creating computerized, interactive, multimedia works is not a function that must of necessity be performed by an author. It's closer to what movie producers do, transforming a variety of media into an integrated audiovisual experience for the viewer. Notice, too, that I say "viewer" and not "reader." For the same reason, the relationship of a user to such works is no longer that of a reader, but is closer to that of a moviegoer, television watcher, or player of interactive video games. Yes, reading may be required when text is involved, but experiencing multimedia goes as far beyond reading text as three-dimensional chess goes beyond the game that is played on a conventional chessboard.

As I acclimate myself to the rich atmosphere of computer technology, I hear the word "author" used less and less and "producer" used more and more to describe those who assemble, integrate, and purvey multimedia software packages to consumers. As the trend toward multimedia accelerates, as I predict it will, the role of the author must, without question, become subordinated to that of the producer. Authors will become scenarists, creating story lines for or textual supplements to full-motion video films for personal computers. The real creative stars will be those who can produce brilliant and stimulating programs for display on home entertainment systems.

Perhaps such individuals should be called "auteurs," the term used for artistic filmmakers who involve themselves in all aspects of making their movies, including writing the scripts, casting talent, directing, and editing. Says one futurist I talked to, "Those who have the vision to incorporate all the elements, and the skill to blend them harmoniously, will be the creative forces in the coming generation of media products."

The application of modern technology to the traditional tools of authorship is going to alter the way fiction is written, and is eventually going to alter it radically. Indeed, one can visualize a day when the term "written" will no longer adequately express the act of creation that conveys an author's vision to the mind of a reader.

An "authoring system" is the generic term for the software used to render these compositions on computers. These systems tie story elements, text, sound, still pictures, moving pictures, animation, and other media elements into a single multimedia package, a piece of software called a "title." The story's scenes and episodes may be linked together in the form of ever-expanding branches, or woven together in something closer to a web. The elements may be mixed and matched, presented sequentially or nonsequentially, separately or simultaneously. Authors can build into the programs a multitude of options for the user to link the elements, alter sounds and graphics (or even create new ones), and influence the direction that the story takes.

The fluidity and spontaneity with which the user navigates around the program resembles the human thinking and decision-making process. For this reason, such programs are referred to as hypermedia rather than multimedia. The content on a movie reel is presented linearly; it can move only forward in time; the viewer's attention is guided by the creator, whose decisions about what happens next are arbitrary and unalterable. In a hypermedia program, the user can access the content in a nonlinear, random way. He can, in other words, elect to go forward, backward, or sideways in time and space, starting anywhere and voyaging as far in any direction or dimension as the imagination of the program's creator, or the technical limits of hardware and software, can take him.

If you're beginning to realize that this changes the relationship between reader and story, you're right. It alters it profoundly. Geri Gay of Cornell University, in an article in The Hypertext and Hypermedia Handbook, a McGraw-Hill book, points out that hypermedia "has the potential to allow the reader to become an author of an interactive story." In short, the time is coming when you will not merely "read" a fictional work in hypermedia form, you will be able to collaborate with the author in its creation.

There are a number of systems from which today's would-be hypermedia authors can choose. Because things are moving so fast that these systems may be obsolete by the time you read this, I thought I would create a composite to give you a general idea of how twenty-first-century authors will be telling stories.

Suppose you had an idea for a science fiction story; a tale of two lovers cruelly separated in time and space. Betty has been abducted by time-warp pirates called Zomboids, and her beloved Edward must search the past, present, and future universe to find her. When he finally gets there, he discovers she has been carried off again, and so on and so on.

The first thing you'll have to do is write a story treatment and screenplay. In fact, if your program is to be interactive, you'll have to write a multitude of scenes branching off from the main story. You'll then have to design settings and sketch visualizations of your characters. As Huk the Hostile, the Zomboid emperor, and his alien buddies are rather protoplasmic (looking like spotted, half-deflated beach balls), you'll use a draw-and-paint package to design them, then animation tools to bring them to life. If you'd like Betty and Edward to resemble your favorite movie stars, you will be able to re-create them identically and three-dimensionally to make it seem as if you captured living actors on film. Or you can film or videotape actual actors. And if, like Alfred Hitchcock, you want to play a bit part in your own movie, you can film or tape yourself, or your kids, or your mother-in-law. Using your movie "toolbox," you'll employ an image scanner to convert still photographs of scenery or interiors into backgrounds, and from your digitized video file you'll be able to splice in some footage from a documentary or feature film, so that it looks like Edward's quest for Betty takes him to third-century Rome, twentieth-century New York, or twenty-third-century Moonbase.

You'll have written some dialogue to depict the bad guys plotting their evil deeds. You'll now record it, using a synthesizer to alter the pitch and timbre of your voice for each character so that you can play all the parts. You can also synthesize the sound effects. The hum of the cruising spacecraft, the howl of entry into Earth's atmosphere, the explosions of warfare, all are reproducible on a synthesizer. Or you can integrate recordings of real sounds into your audio track. The same goes for music.

Although most of these tasks today must be performed on a computer keyboard, or with a mouse, or both, it won't be long before the entire process will be voice activated and you'll simply tell your computer what to do: "Yo, computer. Lights! Camera! Action!"

Now that you've got all your components together, it's just a matter of creating as many scenes as you wish of past or future, so that the user can branch out interactively as Edward chases Huk the Hostile and Betty from one time and place to another. Your program will be so flexible that the user may substitute his own face and voice for those of the characters or enter other elements to individualize the movie. John Markoff, in the New York Times, reported a demonstration of a set of Apple multimedia extensions to the Macintosh operating system, in which a user took a video of himself riding a bicycle, then edited it into the final sprint of the Tour de France. In his version, he won the race.

The current state of authoring system art is not as advanced as I have portrayed it. Take the inclusion of video, for instance. Aside from crude home videos, the incorporation of professional-looking video into a hypermedia program is beyond the skill level of today's authors. And even if the technology were closer at hand than it is, you would still need to assemble a movie crew to make a studio-quality video for your title. And the technology is still in a relatively primitive stage. Scientists and engineers have not yet overcome the difficulty of compressing onto disks the immense amount of information necessary to display an abundancy of visual images, especially moving ones. Thus, most hypermedia titles today are heavily text oriented, or "hypertext," to use the phrase coined by computer guru Ted Nelson. Animation is currently the "motion picture" of choice, as it is more manipulable than video for the purpose of interactivity. But extensive animation also requires a digital density that is, at present, beyond the reach of most home "auteurs."

You can see from this brief tour that there is practically no resemblance between the activities of conventional writers and those of the individuals producing works of hypermedia. Let's look at the distinctions a bit more closely.

As you begin to design your scenario and screenplay, you'll immediately be struck by a profound realization: you no longer need the narrative skills you depended on when you wrote books. Although the first crude CD-ROM adaptations of fiction were narrated stories illustrated with still pictures or short segments of video or animation, it was quickly realized that a new art form had been born. Because you are in effect making movies the descriptive powers you used to call upon to create vivid prose images for your readers are of practically no value at all. You have become a screenwriter: those vivid images will not be portrayed in words but in pictures. And because it's much harder for a viewer to juggle a lot of expository information than it is for a novel reader, the stories you develop for your hypermedia programs are probably not very elaborate or subtle.

It won't be long before you realize that your storytelling expertise is of far less importance than your engineering abilities. Good novelists often talk about the way their books play like movies in their heads, and how they construct their scenes in their novels the way screenwriters construct scenes in films. Well, now you novelists will have a golden opportunity to convert those mental images literally into motion pictures. But the technical challenge may be far beyond your capabilities. Even more importantly, it may be far beyond your interest. Many of you facing these options will say to yourselves, If I'd wanted to be a screenwriter, I'd have gone to Hollywood, or, If I'd wanted to be an engineer, I'd have gone to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. You wanted to be a novelist.

Many writers must be wondering if there will be any market for their skills in the hypermedia age. I believe there will be. Students of technology are fond of pointing out that the advent of movies didn't destroy our taste for reading, and the advent of television didn't destroy our taste for movies. The advent of hypermedia will not strike a fatal blow to conventional literature written and published in the conventional way. "The technology to create hypermedia is available to authors who want to use it," one multimedia producer said to me. "I don't, however, think that in the near future, someone lacking the skill to create hypermedia fiction is going to be out of work." However, future authors who are not hypermedia/multimedia literate may well be at a disadvantage.

The prospects for readers may be brighter than they are for writers. With information presented in such graphic, colorful, and entertaining forms, the rewards of reading for pleasure may well give way to the joys of navigating through a multimedia program, experiencing fantastic audiovisual effects that readers never got out of old-fashioned books or even old-fashioned movies. And scholarship has become more fun now that, instead of having to trudge to a library and drudge at a desk, the library can be summoned by the touch of one's finger on a key or mouse, or by voice command to one's computer. And all that scholarly information is being presented in ways that are a delight to the eye and ear.

The revolution will not stop with the eye and ear. In a more distant future, the development and refinement of virtual reality technology will eventually tie in with hypermedia, bathing all of our senses in experiences that are all but indistinguishable from reality. From there it is not inconceivable that we will tap directly into the human brain, realizing a vision long cherished—and dreaded—by science-fiction writers.

Returning from the sublime to the mundane, we realize that the advent of hypermedia presents some genuine challenges to the traditional ways that intellectual property has been protected. What, for instance, happens to your copyright when a computer user creates a new ending for your story? Does it become a new work? Is it possible that this new work could be copyrighted as a collaboration between yourself and the user? And remember how you used the faces of a pair of famous movie stars when you created Edward and Betty? Did you have the right to do that? Whose faces are they, anyway, the stars' or the re-creator's?

Clearly, copyright in the twenty-first century will be a minefield. Thus, for authors who fear being thrown out of work by the electronic publishing revolution, I have good news: there will be lots and lots of job opportunities in the field of copyright law. Although you will, of course, first have to get a law degree, I can guarantee no end of challenging cases, protracted litigation, and chances to write new law. The seven-league strides made by scientists and technologists in electronic information have left lawyers in their dust. If they don't catch up, the protection of intellectual property will be a shambles. It is already dangerously unstable.

Among other purposes, copyright law was designed to protect the creations generated by the minds of authors, at least for enough time so that they and their heirs may profit from its dissemination.

Until the 1960s, the device commonly used to reproduce those creations was the printing press. The printing press is a large, cumbersome, and expensive machine that is beyond the means of most people to own and operate, even if they were inclined to do so. But that is what you would have had to do if you wished to make a copy of a book or story instead of purchasing it in the marketplace. A pirate, such as a publisher in a foreign land that was not a signatory to various international copyright conventions, could profit from running off a lot of copies of someone's book, but it made no sense for private individuals to do so. Oh, there was the mimeograph, the poor man's version of the printing press, but it required you to retype the item you wanted to reproduce. If you actually wanted to copy a literary work or document, you had to take it to a photostat shop where it was photographed one page at a time. The resulting product was white type on a black background on shiny, stiff photographic paper. It was easier and cheaper just to go out and buy the book or magazine than to go to such enormous trouble. Either that or steal it from the library.

The advent of the photocopier changed all that, bringing the capability for private reproduction of literary work into every home. The first such machines, made by Xerox—I wish I'd saved mine as it will be a valuable collectible one day—were primitive variants on the photostat, using light-sensitive coated paper to reproduce a page placed over a lighted screen. Although it was too crude to run off reproductions of any quality, and too slow to run them off in any quantity, the machine did bring copiers into the home.

The rapid refinement of "xerography" created an industry of local photocopy shops that can run off infinite copies of literary works of a quality equal to that of the originals. Most customers did not realize there were laws protecting the works they brought to the copy shops, and if the operators of such shops were aware they might be violating copyright statutes, they certainly didn't take any measures to locate or compensate the copyright owners. They probably didn't think it was their responsibility. Publishers became more and more alarmed, however, as copy shops brazenly reproduced work that those publishers had licensed on an exclusive basis. Though they eventually succeeded in compelling the largest chain of copy shops to observe proper copyright clearance procedures, the ignoring of copyright law is still widespread in the copy shop industry.

I suppose it could be brought under control through more assiduous monitoring. But the copyright problems created by another technology, personal computers (PCs), make copy shop operators look like Talmudic scribes by comparison. This time, the perpetrators are you. If you own a computer, you may be breaking the law, perhaps flagrantly.

In a nutshell, the problem is that for a modest outlay of money, you can acquire the technological means to copy any image or text without permission of the creator or copyright owner. You may then alter it on your video display screen as if it were a work that you yourself had created. And you may then print, publish, broadcast, or otherwise disseminate it. And make money doing so.

Scanners, for instance, capture published text and transmit it digitally into the memory storage of your computer. Another invention, compact optical disks, enables you to edit, change, or otherwise manipulate that text. Other technologies exist for storing or generating pictorial material and for retouching it or blending it with other pictures into a composite, thus changing the meaning of the original. Advances in the compression of information on disks via lasers make it possible for you to stock your PC library with literature you did not get permission to copy, possibly making you a thief, and to make and sell copies of those works, possibly making you a pirate. You may transmit those works electronically across interstate and international telephone lines, possibly making you a larcenist.

Of course, we rebel against such characterizations. Why? Because the means to capture, store, and manipulate information electronically have become so easy for computer owners that it feels like a natural right, like the right to breathe air. And indeed, this sense of entitlement taps into another aspect of copyright law, the public's need for easy access to creative and intellectual works. Because the doctrine of "fair use" for educational and related purposes supports a degree of free access to otherwise protected texts, we feel few qualms about photocopying a copyrighted article, story, poem, or book excerpt at a copy shop, duplicating a movie on our home VCR, or taping a favorite tune and running off recordings for our friends.

Even those of us in the authoring, agenting, and publishing business who would howl if someone pirated our copyrighted text scarcely give a thought to the legal and moral implications of these deeds when we commit them ourselves. But many others have begun to think and talk about them, and to try to formulate rules and standards that reassert control over a body of statutes that grows more irrelevant with each day.

The heart of the problem is that, because of the difficulty of distinguishing between content and the modes of display, the media have become harder and harder to define. Are you stealing somebody's story by simply displaying it on the screen of your personal computer? Are you publishing that story by transmitting it over a computer network onto somebody else's screen? Do you become a co-author when you alter someone else's text?

The copyright law only confuses the issues further. A work of authorship is protected as long as it is "fixed" in a "tangible medium." A book is, of course, a tangible medium that is fixed on paper, but can we say the same about the image of a book on a computer monitor? And though the law states that a copyright owner has the exclusive right to "reproduce the work in copies," the law also makes it clear that displaying a work does not amount to reproducing it, even though it might well be said that the work is fixed in the program of your computer. In 1980, the Copyright Act was amended to make sure that we understand the difference, defining a computer program as "a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result." In other words, the medium is not the same as the message. Yet, the blurry line between the two is creating no end of vexations for those trying to apply old rules to unprecedented situations. This explains why legislation redefining copyright (as well as trademark) in the computer/Internet era has been stalled in Congress. And the explosive growth of the Internet combining a deluge of text with one-click copying and disseminating capabilities has made the problem absolutely nightmarish.

Private use of copyright information is one thing, but deliberate and methodical theft is another, and the impossibility of policing abuses has severely damaged the economic value of intellectual assets by as much $60 billion by some estimates. Illegal publication of books overseas, for instance, costs American publishers about $1 billion annually. Pirated videotapes of Hollywood films may be costing the movie industry as much as $6 billion a year. Because it is fruitless to go after individual users, particularly in light of allegations that some foreign perpetrators are protected by their governments, the burden of restriction has fallen on the manufacturers and distributors of hardware and software. This takes the form of antitheft devices built into computer hardware and antipiracy instructions programmed into software. The increased costs of such protection have been passed along to consumers.

The computer software industry has also called on patent law and trade secrecy statutes. The so-called shrink-wrap license treats software as a trade secret: the act of opening a package of software is supposed to legally commit you to maintaining the secrecy of the program. The literature that accompanies the package presumably binds you to a pledge not to "use, copy, modify, merge, translate, or transfer" the software without the express agreement of the manufacturer. These oaths are commonly ignored by most consumers and gleefully flouted by hackers.

Concerned observers have created organizations dedicated to addressing these issues and formulating new standards. New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (NYU/ITP), for instance, established a Division on Copyright and the New Technologies aimed at defining the problems and creating sensible and effective copyright policies that balance reward for creative work with the widest possible dissemination of these works.

Donna Demac, former director of the NYU/ITP division, wrote in its prospectus of her concern that we may soon be unable to differentiate between "impermissible clones and legitimate derivative works," and that "the issues of ownership and originality are pivotal to the future development and profitability of new services." But many, she warns, "believe the technology to be on the side of unbridled access."

A number of organizations are trying to address the concerns created by the new media, developing programs of research and education, producing archives in various media, and conducting workshops, seminars, and other forums for the airing of the issues, and bringing them to the attention of Congress, industry, schools, and other institutions. Hopefully, these efforts will result in a new set of standards that will restore our feet on firm ground in this exhilarating, awe-inspiring, frightening, new electronic world.

- Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It's reprinted in This Business of Publishing: An Insider's View of Current Trends and Tactics Copyright © 1998 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

Mike Shatzkin on DRM, Interoperability, and Free Books

As regular readers of these pages know, we're big fans of Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant speaker and commentator whose oracular pronouncements about the future of media qualify him for the title of guru.

He recently launched a blog called "The Shatzkin Files" and has kindly agreed to let us run some of his articles from time to time. Here is one, as rich and idea-filled as your grandma's cinnamon raisin babka.

RC

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A few thoughts, some near heretical, about DRM

I got a call today from Laura Sydell of NPR in San Francisco to have a conversation about DRM. I found myself telling the story this way.

From the beginning, there were multiple ebook formats, the leading ones being Adobe, Palm, and Microsoft Dot Lit for a time, with Mobi originally intended to be the format that bridged the gap (at that time) between devices. Then Amazon smartly took Mobi out of play, blocking anybody else from peddling a device-agnostic solution. And now we have e-readers…

From the beginning, there has been a reluctance of people to read BOOKS (goodness knows they read many other things) on screens, or at least on the screens that were presented to them for the purpose. This distinctly separates the book business from the music business, which I know I wrote about last week, but which also applies here. Your ears don’t care whether the speakers or headphones got the sound from a download or a record. It all works the same to you. But, as we all know, reading a screen for most people is a sufficiently different experience than reading on paper that they’re likely to have an opinion about it (often whether they’ve actually tried it or not).

From the beginning, some people in the book business (mostly, I suspect, agents for very big authors and their publishers, who have the most at stake) have been concerned that there would be a spread of unauthorized digital copies if they didn’t “protect” them. They were apparently learning a lesson from the music business. But the music business was “stuck.” The format they sold music in was a “gold master.” They distributed digital copies.

From the beginning, there has been a romantic notion called “interoperability”, which says it is a wonderful thing if the same file can work on lots of different devices. So you should be able to read the book on your PC, or on your Sony- or Kindle-like device, and on your iPhone and/or Blackberry and your Sony Play Station, for that matter. Believe it or not, there are not only quite a few of the publishing digerati who think this is very important, there are many who actually blame the slow growth of the ebook market on the fact that the industry hasn’t accomplished the ability to deliver it. (Seems preposterous to me.)

The multitude of formats presented costs and hassles to the publishers. They had to do more work to put each book in shape for each format, and they had to do pretty meticulous quality control because a lot could go wrong. With ebooks not selling much at all, the difference between spending $250 to convert to one format, say (starting with a PDF print file), and then adding $50 or $100 more for additional formats created a whole decision-making cascade. This all choked off books from the ebook stream, on one format or another or at all, as publishers needed to “decide” to publish each book in one or more formats.

The multiple systems also prevented interoperability and restrained piracy. The DRM was actually a bit of window dressing; even unprotected files wouldn’t have traveled very far.

But then the industry, through the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) developed the epub standard, which was code that could be read by many different systems and/or converted inexpensively to other systems. So the publishers could provide just one file, the epub file, and the distribution channels could do the conversion to different formats. A giant step toward interoperability (and efficiency.)

So now DRM is the one barrier to interoperability and so the drumbeat to get rid of it gets louder and louder.

Also from the beginning, people have noticed that, in most cases, the more of a book you give away digitally, the more you sell. This would almost certainly not be the right strategy with high-value scientific reference, or a directory, but it is the experience of many people over a long period of time. Tim O’Reilly has famously pointed out that obscurity is a much more prevalent problem for books and authors than theft through piracy. Cory Doctorow is certainly the most vociferous and among the most eloquent expressing contempt for the whole idea of DRM, the insult it constitutes to the audience of book readers, and its self-defeating nature. He has given away huge amounts of digital content and he credits doing so with growing his sales as a novelist.

My officemate and colleague Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media has been doing an ongoing study of the effects of free distribution with O’Reilly Media and Random House. They are documenting both the fact that there is no significant piracy of ebooks and that free distribution, even the limited piracy, seems to have a stimulative effect on sales.

We are at a moment where publishers are noticing this and taking it on board. O’Reilly and Thomas Nelson are the first I’ve noticed to start offering ebooks in multiple formats, with Nelson doing so to any buyer of a print book who registers on their site for it. (A nice way to capture names, too.) Others, notably Hachette’s unit Orbit, and Random House, have started giving away ebooks (for free or, in Orbit’s case, a buck or near-free) to promote books and authors. The ROI on these is close to infinity if it sells one more book!

I hope that this is an accurate summary of events so far, except that I left out the Kindle (on purpose). Now I’d like to offer some forward-thinking and observe an enormous irony.

1. Forward-thinking. This notion of giving away ebooks has a tragedy of the commons built into it. It’s free and it works. So everybody’s going to do it. The choice of ebooks you can legitimately download for free or under a buck will grow by leaps and bounds (it already has.) At just the moment that the ebook market is growing, and lots of new people are coming into it, many people will be able to form the habit of choosing from what is free or near-free. Ultimately, this will have two negative effects. One is that it will depress the pricing across all titles. And the other is that the giveaways will lose their stimulative effect.

I would not suggest that anybody voluntarily try to save the commons. It would not be in their own best interests to do that and they would not succeed.

2. Because there is going to be a culture of free or almost-free, piracy might well become an issue for the most popular ebooks as takeup of ebooks grows. It clearly has never been a problem, but that doesn’t mean it never will. Things change. (See number 1.)

3. The Kindle. Amazon not only steered clear of the epub collaboration, they are aggressively blocking people from selling content that would be compatible with the Kindle. Everything about what they do is closed. The problem is that they’re defying history so far: growing faster with a closed system than all their competitors for ebook eyeballs combined.

That’s ironic.

But it’s not what’s most ironic.

I personally never got the thing about interoperability until now, when I am reading the great new biography of Abraham Lincoln by by Ronald White on both my Kindle and my iPhone. Whenever I switch over from one to the other, it knows my place and asks me if I want to advance to it. This is great! I love interoperability. I have no use for it between any other two devices, but between my Kindle and my iPhone? Terrific!

Of course, Amazon is probably able to deliver this functionality so seamlessly partially thanks to the fact that they have a closed system and more control.

That’s really ironic.

Mike Shatkin