Scribd Author Joe Quirk Exults in His Choice of Publisher

The Revolution Will Not Be Printed
by Joe Quirk
Author of Exult (Scribd)

I’ve fantasized about Scribd.com since 1996, well before its founders reached puberty, when I wrote an essay about the coming “Revolution in Publishing” that no publisher would publish. I had to wait to publish my first novel, which gave me the opportunity to provoke an argument with my publisher during my first book tour. I held up my hardcover book and declared to my horrorstruck editor, publicist, and assistants that soon we won’t need this hunk of tree pulp any more. I announced that the substance of a novel is not in the book but the words, which were easily digitized, and the next generation will be about about as sentimental about the smells and textures of books as we were about the smells and textures of LPs.

My entourage ganged up on me. Nobody wants to read on a screen, they said. I prophesied that eventually a screen would look better than a paper book. Once computers are cheap and portable, and “digital books” (a term I thought I made up) cost two bucks, young people will buy it. Only sentimental old fogies will buy this expensive, tree-hating, cumbersome brick of paper. I threw my newly published hardcover on the table with a satisfying bang!

They made me promise not to mention this during any media appearances they’d scheduled. I folded my arms and said fine. But I declared in my best Nostradamus voice that the infrastructure that gave them jobs would be threatened by “digital books” within fifteen years, reminding them that geniuses are never recognized in their own time.

Ten years later, the economy crashed. This was great news for me. The Paperback Revolution occurred during the Great Depression. Time to get the Digital Revolution started.

I told every writer I knew I wanted to start our own author-owned digital publishing company. I wanted to call it luvlit.com. I talked to my author friend Tamim Ansary about it. He asked me if I stole this idea from Kemble Scott, a third author friend. I said no. He said I better talk to Kemble Scott.

Kemble and I got together at his house for lunch and we hashed out the business plan in a half hour. I still have the piece of paper where I scribbled it out:

“Digital books. $2 each. 80/20 split. Author 80%. Luvlit 20%. First chapters available free on-line. No agents. No advances. No paper used-- green publishing! No professional reviewers. Only customer reviews. Create Independent Author's Youtube channel: call it YourBook. Launch with bestselling and award-winning authors from mainstream publishing. Then anybody can upload. Writers retain all rights.”

At the bottom of the piece of paper, I wrote a spontaneous manifesto that was only slightly less embarrassing than the one I wrote in 1996:

“We are smashing the great bottleneck between our art and our audience that takes 90% of the reader's payment. We're establishing a true meritocracy … ”

Manifestos are embarrassing to read but invigorating to write. As soon as I finished scribbling and smiling, I was hit in the face with the obstacles ahead. The software engineering! The credit card payments! The lawyers! The logo! How long would it take to get this started? Who would invest in it?

As I dejectedly ate dessert, Kemble Scott let me know he was meeting tomorrow with some recent graduates from Harvard and Stanford business schools who started some kind of document-sharing site. Great, I said. Maybe these whippersnappers would contribute their wisdom and experience to the venture.

Kemble called me the next day.

“It was like they had an electronic bug in my kitchen,” he said. “They recited everything we had in our business plan, right down to the 80/20 split. All the engineering is done. They already have at least 50 million unique viewers, several millions in start-up money. They want to sell original novels.”

Kemble and I realized all they needed was clout. They wanted bestselling mainstream authors to publish their first editions with them.

“How many writers do they want?”
“Three.”
Kemble, Tamim, and me. Done.
“Can we call it luvlit?”
“It already has a name. Scribd.”
“How do you spell that?”

Since then, half the writers I know have ganged up on me with the same arguments I got eleven years ago. These purists want to pay an extra twenty bucks for smells and textures, and nobody wants to read literature on a—yuck!-- screen.

Oh yeah? Go to my novel on Scribd, click the little box on the upper right corner of the document to make it big. Then, if you have a PC, go to View on your browser and click Full Screen.

Tell me that’s not a pleasant way to read a novel. Personally, I prefer to read ebooks with my laptop on my lap and both hands free. I’m too lazy to hold four ounces of paperback up to my face and laboriously heft that page. I just want to look at my lap and click.

http://www.scribd.com/joequirk

Two bucks. Welcome to the Revolution.
JQ
Author photo by Craig Merrill

Reading Rights Coalition Statement on Random House and Kindle Text-to-Speech

NEW YORK, May 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

The Reading Rights Coalition, representing more than 15 million print-disabled Americans, has denounced publishing giant Random House, which has turned off text-to-speech on all of its e-books available for Amazon's Kindle 2 reading service.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "When Random House turned off the text-to-speech function on all of its e-books for the Kindle 2, it turned off access to this service for more than 15 million print-disabled Americans. The blind and other print-disabled readers have the right to purchase e-books using this service with text-to-speech enabled. Blocking text-to-speech prohibits access for print-disabled readers and is both reprehensible and discriminatory. We urge President Obama, whose e-books are now being blocked from over 15 million Americans, to either demand that access be restored or to move to a publisher who does not engage in discrimination."

Dr. Cynthia Stuen, Senior Vice President of Policy and Evaluation for Lighthouse International, said: "Having the technology available to give people with impaired vision and other print disabilities equal and timely access to the printed word should be celebrated and encouraged in a civil and just society for all."

Andrew Imparato, President and Chief Executive Officer for the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), said: "Random House is callously disregarding the right of American consumers with disabilities to get access to the same content at the same price at the same time as everyone else. Random House's decision to turn off the feature that makes this content accessible to millions of print-disabled Americans is a bad business decision with real human consequences and it must be corrected immediately."

Mitch Pomerantz, President of the American Council of the Blind, said: "The recent action by Random House disabling text-to-speech on e-books is the latest and most egregious discriminatory action against the nation's 15 million print-disabled individuals. Random House either doesn't care or doesn't understand the impact this will have on those who would otherwise have equal access to books and other printed materials in the same manner as our non-disabled peers. We must work collaboratively to do everything possible to assure such access for this growing constituency."

James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), said: "KEI is disappointed that Random House is turning off text-to-speech on its Kindle 2 e-books. In a world where access to knowledge is central to everything, Random House certainly understands this action will isolate and marginalize many persons with reading disabilities."

K. Eric Larson, Executive Director and CEO of National Spinal Cord Injury Association, said: "All Americans have the right to equal access and many people living with paralysis use text-to-speech capabilities in order to gain that access. Our members are also consumers and 'turning off' text-to-speech means that some will not buy books they would otherwise purchase."

John R. Sheehan, Chairman of the Xavier Society for the Blind, said: "The Xavier Society for the Blind is committed to the notion that ALL books should be accessible to all people. When a book about Mother Teresa is among those whose text-to-speech functions have been disabled, we fear that we are seeing the beginning of a blanket cut-off of a function that should be open and available to all, especially (but not exclusively) to those with visual impairments or other problems that limit access to printed materials."

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 e-book reading service on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would be able to read e-books aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2 service. Random House is the first publisher to turn off text-to-speech on all of its e-books and thus deny the rights of print-disabled people across America.

The Reading Rights Coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promises for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 270,000 books.

For more information about the Reading Rights Coalition, please visit www.readingrights.org. To sign our petition, go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/We-Want-To-Read. If you are an author who supports our cause, please send your contact information to readingrights@nfb.org.


SOURCE National Federation of the Blind

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Tristan Jones and Me

Every reader cherishes a fantasy of meeting a beloved author. Few ever realize this dream except, perhaps, to shake the author's hand at a rushed and crowded bookstore autograph session. Yet, even such ephemeral encounters are forever replayed in our mind's eye as we lovingly recall the pressure of the hand, the smile of appreciation, the inflection of the voice, the two or three words uttered by our idol's lips, directed exclusively at us and no one else. We gaze and gaze and gaze at the inscription as if it were on the verge of quickening.

Imagine, then, what it must feel like to write a fan letter to an author and have him contact you to tell you he would like you to become his literary agent. But in fact, that is precisely how I came to represent Tristan Jones.

It happens that when I was younger I developed a passionate but totally incomprehensible love for books about the sea. I say incomprehensible because my only relationship to oceans has been to bathe in them. I have never taken an ocean voyage, am a lousy swimmer, have spent a total of two hours in sailboats, and my only attempt to learn sailing ended in a preposterous debacle when I snagged the keelboard of a rented Sunfish on the rope perimeter of a kiddie swim area in St. Thomas, capsized, and had to be rescued before a crowd of hundreds including my young son who up to that point considered me his hero.

Yet the lure of the sea, however vicariously satisfied in books, has held an immense power for me. I've read countless novels and true accounts of men locked in mortal combat against this most formidable of elements, and as a result of this obsession I daresay l can speak as knowledgeably about ships and sailing as any landbound man alive. Put me on the bridge of a British ship of the line and I know I could gain the wind over that clumsy tub of a galleon and blast her to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay.

It was this passion that led me to purchase Tristan Jones's original trilogy of seagoing adventures, Saga of a Wayward Sailor, Ice! and The Incredible Voyage. And it was the experience of immersing myself in his astonishing adventures, narrated in his ravishing and lilting prose, that caused me to write him a fan letter, in care of his publisher. You must understand that fan letters written by literary agents are not always as pure-hearted as billets-doux penned by the garden variety of enamored readers. After expressing intense admiration, such letters often end with a delicately worded expression of curiosity as to whether the author is - ahem - represented by an agent. It is a matter of great pride fur me that my letter included no such solicitation. (All right, it was written on my company letterhead.)

A few days later my secretary announced that Tristan Tones was on the phone. I wondered from what exotic locale this ship-to-shore communication came. The caller identified his position as a pay phone at latitude Seventh Avenue, longitude 8th Street, in Greenwich Village on the sun-drenched isle of Manhattan. My hero was a fifteen minute taxi ride from my office! By the end of that fifteenth minute, he was sitting across my desk from me.

He told me that after selling his trilogy to Andrews McMeel Publishers without benefit of representation, he had engaged a literary agent to handle subsequent books. But he was no longer satisfied and had decided seek a new one. My letter had arrived at just the right time, and of course, how could he not be represented by an agent who appreciated him so completely? We shook hands, and my fifteen year voyage with Tristan Jones was launched. Naturally, as with the launching of any other vessel, a bottle of spirits was broken to celebrate, not over a boat's hull, but rather over two glasses at a bar around the corner from my office.

Limitations of space prevent me from describing in detail our relationship over the ensuing years. If you want to know what Tristan did during that span of time, you need only to read the accounts of his adventures that he published, many of which are available in Sheridan House editions and now as E-Reads e-books.

The volumes Tristan produced are wide- and free- ranging accounts of his encounters with denizens both of the deep and of the earth's surface, and he makes no bones about which species he respects more. All of his observations are infused with the patented Jones irony, the mordant wit of a survivor who long ago used up his government issue of lifetimes.

It was during my tenure as his agent that Tristan underwent the amputation of first one leg and then the other as a result of the slow deterioration of his limbs due to World War II injuries. I knew him to feel sorry for himself only once, after the first amputation. That emotion lasted only a few weeks before he concluded that self-pity was a stupid emotion, and his energy would be far better spent planning new voyages, mobilizing and motivating crews, and directing his literary agent to find the wherewithal to make it all happen.

It was my privilege to find the wherewithal to help finance some challenges that would daunt, and indeed had daunted, men possessed of two legs, including the conquest of a river that had never been navigated before, on a boat manned by a crew of handicapped youth. Those who scoffed at this latter mad scheme had mistakenly gazed at the stumps of Tristan's legs. They should have looked into his heart of oak, his will of carborundum steel, his irresistibly charming grin, and his resourceful mind of a million brilliant facets.

Tristan's correspondence with me over the course of our association is characterized by constant worry about money, by visions of new and improbable ventures, and by complaints: complaints about publishers, complaints about creditors, complaints about governments, complaints about everything and everybody including me. He was wise enough to complain only about things he could do something about, and to be stoical about those beyond his control. All of the former were eventually resolved, while the latter dissipated like storm clouds before Tristan's good-humored resignation, But there was one sorrow to which he never became reconciled: the failure of the world to recognize him in his time. It ate at his heart like a lamprey.

It ate at mine, too, and does to this day. I spent a great deal of time seeking ways to publicize Tristan's accomplishments in the media. But though he was (and still is) a legend in every port of call around the globe, honored by his peers of the Explorers Club and celebrated by all who ply the seas in small crafts, the glory he deserves has never been accorded to him. After his death a book debunking some of his claims, Wayward Sailor: In Search of the Real Tristan Jones by Anthony Dalton was published. Yet despite its reasoned and researched claims, fans of Jones prefer to believe his heroic and entertaining stories. We expect sailors to aggrandize themselves and in this, Tristan Jones was the equal of any yarn-spinning salt.

It is nothing short of tragic that Jones, whose spirit is one with the likes of Burton, Speke, and Gordon, should not occupy a niche beside those immortals in the pantheon of human valor,
He died of a stroke on June 21, 1995. He had lived out his last years in a cottage in Phuket, Thailand, where he had rigged up a number or ingenious inventions for the accommodation of a legless sailor. He requested the following inscription on his tombstone:

TRISTAN JONES, SEAMAN, AUTHOR, AND EXPLORER
HE LOVED LIFE AND PAID HIS WAY

In accordance with his will, his body was to be cremated, his ashes scattered at sea, and a good bottle of dark rum poured after them. I am told that his last wishes were honored.

But it is for us the living to honor his most heartfelt wish: to keep his memory alive for future generations. We must not permit Tristan Jones to sink out of our consciousness "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

Richard Curtis
July 1995

Article 203 of Copyright Act of 1978 ("Widows and Orphans Provision")

§ 203. Termination of transfers and licenses granted by the author3

(a) Conditions for Termination. — In the case of any work other than a work made for hire, the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright or of any right under a copyright, executed by the author on or after January 1, 1978, otherwise than by will, is subject to termination under the following conditions:

(1) In the case of a grant executed by one author, termination of the grant may be effected by that author or, if the author is dead, by the person or persons who, under clause (2) of this subsection, own and are entitled to exercise a total of more than one-half of that author's termination interest. In the case of a grant executed by two or more authors of a joint work, termination of the grant may be effected by a majority of the authors who executed it; if any of such authors is dead, the termination interest of any such author may be exercised as a unit by the person or persons who, under clause (2) of this subsection, own and are entitled to exercise a total of more than one-half of that author's interest.

(2) Where an author is dead, his or her termination interest is owned, and may be exercised, as follows:

(A) The widow or widower owns the author's entire termination interest unless there are any surviving children or grandchildren of the author, in which case the widow or widower owns one-half of the author's interest.

(B) The author's surviving children, and the surviving children of any dead child of the author, own the author's entire termination interest unless there is a widow or widower, in which case the ownership of one-half of the author's interest is divided among them.

(C) The rights of the author's children and grandchildren are in all cases divided among them and exercised on a per stirpes basis according to the number of such author's children represented; the share of the children of a dead child in a termination interest can be exercised only by the action of a majority of them.

(D) In the event that the author's widow or widower, children, and grandchildren are not living, the author's executor, administrator, personal representative, or trustee shall own the author's entire termination interest.

(3) Termination of the grant may be effected at any time during a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years from the date of execution of the grant; or, if the grant covers the right of publication of the work, the period begins at the end of thirty-five years from the date of publication of the work under the grant or at the end of forty years from the date of execution of the grant, whichever term ends earlier.

(4) The termination shall be effected by serving an advance notice in writing, signed by the number and proportion of owners of termination interests required under clauses (1) and (2) of this subsection, or by their duly authorized agents, upon the grantee or the grantee's successor in title.

(A) The notice shall state the effective date of the termination, which shall fall within the five-year period specified by clause (3) of this subsection, and the notice shall be served not less than two or more than ten years before that date. A copy of the notice shall be recorded in the Copyright Office before the effective date of termination, as a condition to its taking effect.

(B) The notice shall comply, in form, content, and manner of service, with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation.

(5) Termination of the grant may be effected notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make any future grant.

(b) Effect of Termination. — Upon the effective date of termination, all rights under this title that were covered by the terminated grants revert to the author, authors, and other persons owning termination interests under clauses (1) and (2) of subsection (a), including those owners who did not join in signing the notice of termination under clause (4) of subsection (a), but with the following limitations:

(1) A derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after its termination, but this privilege does not extend to the preparation after the termination of other derivative works based upon the copyrighted work covered by the terminated grant.

(2) The future rights that will revert upon termination of the grant become vested on the date the notice of termination has been served as provided by clause (4) of subsection (a). The rights vest in the author, authors, and other persons named in, and in the proportionate shares provided by, clauses (1) and (2) of subsection (a).

(3) Subject to the provisions of clause (4) of this subsection, a further grant, or agreement to make a further grant, of any right covered by a terminated grant is valid only if it is signed by the same number and proportion of the owners, in whom the right has vested under clause (2) of this subsection, as are required to terminate the grant under clauses (1) and (2) of subsection (a). Such further grant or agreement is effective with respect to all of the persons in whom the right it covers has vested under clause (2) of this subsection, including those who did not join in signing it. If any person dies after rights under a terminated grant have vested in him or her, that person's legal representatives, legatees, or heirs at law represent him or her for purposes of this clause.

(4) A further grant, or agreement to make a further grant, of any right covered by a terminated grant is valid only if it is made after the effective date of the termination. As an exception, however, an agreement for such a further grant may be made between the persons provided by clause (3) of this subsection and the original grantee or such grantee's successor in title, after the notice of termination has been served as provided by clause (4) of subsection (a).

(5) Termination of a grant under this section affects only those rights covered by the grants that arise under this title, and in no way affects rights arising under any other Federal, State, or foreign laws.

(6) Unless and until termination is effected under this section, the grant, if it does not provide otherwise, continues in effect for the term of copyright provided by this title.

Journalism Online Press Release

NEW YORK, April 14, 2009 – Citing “the urgent need” for a comprehensive, immediate plan to address the downward spiral in the business of publishing original, quality journalism, experienced journalism and media industry executives Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery today announced the formation of Journalism Online, a company that will quickly facilitate the ability of newspaper, magazine and online publishers to realize revenue from the digital distribution of the original journalism they produce.

“We have formed Journalism Online, because we think this is a special moment in time when there is an urgent need for a business model that allows quality journalism to be the beneficiary of the Internet’s efficient delivery mechanism rather than its victim,” said co-founder Steven Brill. “We believe we have developed a strategy and a set of services that will establish that model by restoring a stream of circulation revenue to supplement advertising revenue, while taking advantage of the savings to be gained from producing and delivering content electronically.”

The company will offer four key services to publishers.

First, Journalism Online will develop a password-protected website with one easy-to-use account through which consumers will be able to purchase annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers. The password-enabled payment system will be integrated into all of the member-publishers’ websites, and the publishers will have sole discretion over which content to charge for, how much to charge, and the manner of charge.

“The website will provide a way for publishers of quality journalism to charge whatever they believe is a reasonable amount for their content in ways that are seamlessly convenient for readers,” explained co-founder Leo Hindery. “The only condition of participation is that the publishers have to charge for some portion of their content,” he explained. “They can do this while also offering the first portion of all articles for free, or by making a certain number of articles free each month for potential customers to sample, or by employing any other strategy they choose to balance the prospect of online circulation revenue with the need to maintain traffic and advertising revenue.”

Second, Journalism Online will aggressively market all-inclusive annual or monthly subscriptions for those consumers who want to pay one fee to access all of the JOI-member publishers’ content. Revenues will be shared among publishers.

“This will allow readers the option of one simple subscription to a full range of quality content, while offering publishers a new revenue stream to support journalism, supplementing online advertising revenues,” said co-founder Gordon Crovitz. “This way, when a story from a publisher that is not one that a consumer usually reads ‘pops’ in popularity and becomes prominent, that publisher will benefit from all of the interest in it in a way that would not happen if the reader had to have a separate subscription to that paper.”

“We will market this feature aggressively, and proudly, because we believe that quality journalism is something that people understand must be supported,” Brill added. “We’ve all heard some people say that Internet journalism needs to be free because other less-valuable content is free,” Brill continued. “But we believe Americans know that advertising alone can’t support quality journalism – and the truth is that it never has.” The irony is that by using the Internet publishers of newspapers and magazines have dramatically improved the quality and breadth of their journalism with online updates, video reports, blogs, data analyses, and specialized beat coverage. The problem is that, with rare exceptions, they are getting paid nothing for it.”

Third, a key initiative of Journalism Online will be to negotiate wholesale licensing and royalty fees with intermediaries such as search engines and other websites that currently base much of their business models on referrals of readers to the original content on newspaper, magazine and online news websites.

The company has appointed to its board of advisors New York attorney David Boies and Washington, D.C. attorney Theodore B. Olson, who is also former Solicitor General of the U.S. The law firm of Boies Schiller has been retained to assist in negotiations, as well as to counsel the venture and its publisher members on other legal and regulatory issues.

“We intend to help establish a more stable relationship between referral intermediaries and those who produce, at great cost, the content that is so important in ensuring that the Internet remains a powerful way for people to access the most important news and information,” explained Crovitz. “Whether it’s traditional news people or online-only journalists and bloggers doing the work, there are real costs associated with the quality journalism that helps create enormous value to search engines and other online services that don’t incur these expenses. Journalism Online will enable news publishers to negotiate from a position of strength. Consumers will benefit because they will have greater choice, and search engines and other intermediaries will benefit because they will have access to more journalism.”

Fourth, Journalism Online will provide reports to member publishers on which strategies and tactics are achieving the best results in building circulation revenue while maintaining the traffic necessary to support advertising revenue. “Our members will be engaged in a bold new effort to recreate the journalism business model,” Hindery said. “We’ll be sharing reports and metrics from the front lines of that battle and, if asked, even consult with members on how to maximize the value for the journalism they invest in.”

“We’re convinced that publishers are ready to take this step and that the journalists who work with them are anxious for them to do so,” Hindery added. “Both groups now believe that they can and must receive fair value for their online work. Whether it’s the smaller newspapers or online news sites with their unique local content, larger-city publications with their strong regional content, or national publications, all of them will be able finally to realize the value of the unique, original stories their journalists work so hard to produce.”

“We’re also convinced,” Brill added, “that readers, who have been paying billions of dollars a year for print journalism, will continue to support journalists by paying a modest, fair price for original, independent, professional work distributed online. They realize—as we do—that quality journalism is a vital component of a functioning democracy and free market.”

“My experience with The Wall Street Journal taught me that people will pay a reasonable price to access exclusive, differentiated and essential journalism, whether delivered in print or online,” Crovitz explained. “News publishers, including digital-only operations, need to find ways to attract revenues from readers as well as from advertisers. Viable journalism enterprises need both, and we believe the solution must include state-of-the-art technology, smart pricing options and creative, aggressive marketing based on best practices for monetizing online content and services.”

“We have had initial talks, and in many cases longer follow-up discussions, with most of the major newspaper and magazine publishers, as well as many online journalism enterprises,” Brill said. “They have all been extremely encouraging and expressed strong interest. It’s clear that this is exactly the right time for us to proceed as quickly as possible. It’s equally clear,” he concluded, “that our multi-faceted approach is what publishers are looking for, and that the combination of services we are offering—one password account and payment processing system for multiple publishers, an equally-simple subscription alternative for all content from all members, engagement from a position of strength with intermediary users of original content, and a clearinghouse for information on best practices—presents the best way for consumers and publishers alike to preserve quality journalism.”

Brill, the founder of Court TV, The American Lawyer, and Brill’s Content, most recently founded and was CEO of Clear, the airport biometric fast-pass security card. He also founded the Yale Journalism Initiative.

As publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Crovitz grew WSJ.com to become the largest paid news site on the Web, with more than one million paying subscribers. Crovitz, who founded the news-database Factiva and is a member of the board of directors of ProQuest and an advisor to several early-stage technology and online media companies, has long experience in using digital technologies to help news publishers generate significant and highly profitable revenues from readers and users.

Hindery, a longtime media executive whose positions have included being CEO of cable giants TCI and AT&T Broadband, is managing partner of InterMedia Partners, a media industry private equity firm. He currently sits on the board of advisors of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

From Seagulls in My Soup

A Long Time Ago

"Ai say ... Tristan dahling! Yoo-hoo!" I stirred under my blanket and listened for a moment to the patter of rain on Cresswell's deck overhead. Autumn nights and early mornings in the western Mediterranean can be quite chilly to ordinary mortals, but Cecilia (Sissie) Saint John, the Bishop of Southchester's sister, was always awake and astir at the crack of dawn, no matter what the weather.

Again she screeched, "Skippah ... Yoo-hoo, dahling!"

I stretched one trousered and seabooted leg out of my berth. Nelson bumped his tail on the cabin sole, stared up at Sissie with his one eye, and glowered. I, too, glared up at her. She was leaning her oilskin-bedecked upper torso down through the companionway hatch. Under her yellow sou'wester hat, her hair, as usual in damp weather, was the color of a dead aspidistra leaf. Her Saxon-blue eyes gleamed with that peculiar kind of benevolent madness only seen among the English.

"Wazzup now?" I growled. I glared at the ship's clock. Sissie had polished its brass casing the previous night, before retiring to her ritual of Bible and Booth's London Dry Gin in the tiny, low, kennel-like forepeak which she called home. "Six-thirty. God."

I didn't at all like to be disturbed, while the boat was in harbor, much before eight o'clock, especially when it was raining and few chores could be done, and while the ones that could be done, Sissie did.

Sissie spread her rosy apple cheeks all over her chubby face in a wide grin. "Theah's a boat coming alongside, dahling!" she announced. "It's a, er ... catamaran." She raised herself up above the cover of the companionway hatch and stared ahead, the rainwater streaming down her face into the soggy towel she had wrapped around her neck. Her eyes slitted almost closed against the drizzle. Then again she grinned. "Ai say," she howled, to no one in particular. "What a marvelous name ... Bellerophon of Bosham ... how simply spiffing." Nelson growled softly. "And dahling ... Tristan dahling ... she's English!"

"With a name like that she could hardly be bloody French," I observed petulantly. "At this time in the morning I don't give a fish's tit if she's Chinese."

Sissie looked down at me. Her face fell into apologetic sympathy. "Oh ... you poor dahling," she murmured. "Half a mo', I'll make the tea ... No, Ai'd bettah help this jolly old boat moor stern-to-the-jetty first." Turning, she scrambled over Cresswell's whalebacked poop, showing a dimpled thigh under her yellow oilskin jacket and above her British Army socks and Irish ditchdigger's brogue boots. Agilely, she leaped over the five-foot gap between the rudder and the jetty wall. Nelson again bumped his tail, pounding it softly against the cabin table leg, pleased that his main competitor for my affection had once more gone ashore and left his master entirely for himself to watch and guard with his limitless canine loyalty.

I turned over again, wrapped the blanket around me, and settled to doze away another precious hour or so. I was still thawing out and catching up on sleep lost during the Arctic voyage five years ago.

There were the usual shouts and hollers as the arriving boat's crew heaved mooring lines at Sissie out in the now-pouring rain. Sissie's voice pierced through the drumming downpour on deck. "Ai say ... welcome to Ibiza!"

A masculine English voice, almost as awf'ly English as Sissie's, but not quite (there were undertones of Surbiton) called back, "Nice boat you have there! Wonderful weather for ducks, eh?"

"Yes," replied Cresswell's mate, with a girlish giggle.

It's a wonder how sound carries over water and through the sides of a wooden boat. As I reflected on this, and listened to the alternating roar and purr of the catamaran's outboard motor, Cresswell gently jiggled, jingled, and pulsated with the myriad sounds of a sailboat's waking day. "Oh, Christ," I said to myself, and, heaving myself up against the cabin table, staggered over to the galley, filled the kettle up from the freshwater hand pump, lit the gently oscillating kerosene stove, slammed the kettle down on the flame, and sat down again to rustle Nelson's head and murmur to him--a diurnal liturgy in Cresswell.

There was another sudden commotion outside. First the splash of a rope falling into the harbor water--filthy with black, slimy oil, dead fish, plastic bags and other impedimenta deleterious to cleanliness and pilotage--then the sound of a man's voice, again from the arriving vessel, called in fruity tones, "Oh, dash ... what rotten luck!"

"Yes, isn't it?" I heard Sissie reply. "But hang on a jolly tick--Ai'll get a boathook."

Then there were the sounds of Sissie hefting her 170 pounds back over the gap 'twixt rudder and wall, and scrabbling for the boathook tied to the handrail below Cresswell's mizzenmast. All the while the boat pitched slightly up and down as it was first burdened with, then relieved of Sissie's dumpling thighs, Michelin waist, boxer's arms, heavy oilskin jacket, and ditchdigger's boots.

I quickly donned my Shetland jersey and slid my black oilskin around my shoulders. I clambered up the companionway ladder. I stared around through the misty rain to see one of the ugliest sailing vessels I ever clapped eyes on. She was a catamaran, but obviously home-made. She had slab sides to the hulls, far too high, and the cabin stuck up above the two hulls, box-like and shoddy, with great windows all around it. The whole boat was painted black, and the top paint had worn away in places, exposing the previous white paint in obscene-looking patches. The total effect was that of a greatly enlarged praying mantis with a skin complaint.

She was about thirty-two feet long and at least eighteen feet wide. Two figures, squat and heavy in their yellow oilskins and yellow seaboots, with the flaps of their jackets buttoned up around their chins, stood in the pouring rain on the catamaran's afterdeck, looking nonplused and rather forlorn as their vessel was slowly pulled away from the jetty again by the weight of their anchor line, which was streamed out forward. The rain drizzled down implacably on this cheerful scene.

I turned around to peer through the rain toward the jetty. There was Sissie, stretched out fully on her belly on the muddy, fish-scales-littered pavement of the town quay, leaning right out over the filthy harbor water, reaching with our boathook toward the fallen mooring line, now floating in the midst of a particularly noisome pool of slime and garbage. She was grasping the boathook by its blunt very-end, attempting to hook the line and failing to do it by a mere three inches or so.

I turned again to the catamaran. One of the figures stared at me for a moment in seeming puzzlement and confusion, then hailed me. "Morning, old chap," it called in a gruff, manly voice. "Nice weather, what?" It wore a rope belt, from which dangled a seaman's knife.

"Why don't you throw me a line?" I replied. "I'm much closer to you than is the jetty."

"Damned good idea," called the other figure, in far less gruff tones. He sounded like a choirboy whose voice was just about to break. He wore spectacles, and I imagined him regretting that, with this downpour, they were not fitted with windshield wipers. Even as he addressed me the spectacles were pointed some five yards away to my left.

By now the Knife had run over to the catamaran's guardrails and was grinning at me. "Pleased to meet you. Billy Rankin's the name, and this is my brother Tony."

Spectacles now spoke to a point three yards to my right. "What ho?"

"Throw me a line," I shouted. "Your boat is sliding away over your anchor rode, and if you don't get a line to me soon you'll have to restart your motor and do the whole exercise again ... And anyway, your anchor is probably fouled up with mine in the middle of the harbor."

Tony the Specs turned and desperately peered through the pouring rain while Billy the Knife calmly and methodically bent down, grabbed a line, held the coil in his left hand, and heaved the fag-end with his right. The knot in the end hit me in the eye with a wallop so bitter I could taste it, just as a loud splash came from the direction of the jetty. Cursing as I recovered the rope's end from Cresswell's deck, my eye smarting with pain, I turned to see poor Sissie's yellow oilskin jacket just below the oily, slimy surface, rising to float, flailing, in the muck-bestrewn, turdflotilla'd, dog-corpse-littered waters of Ibiza harbor. Then her head appeared, her whisky-colored hair now black and shiny with petroleum by-products and her face and body besmeared with flecks of effluent from a thousand fishermen, ten thousand black-clad, bereted peasants, four thousand well-fed tourists, and five or six impecunious yachties--two of whom were now haring along the town quay to Sissie's rescue, despite the early hour and the effects of the previous night's festivities.

Soon the yachties, one a Frenchman, as gallant as ever; the other a Finn, as hung-over as ever, had Sissie's arms in their calloused hands and were slowly dragging her, dripping like a dipped sheep, out of the murky basin, she still gripping faithfully onto our one-and-only boathook, spluttering all the while