The perils of comics publishing

Two articles in Publishers Weekly highlight the challenges faced by today’s comic book publishers when seeking an audience.

First, distribution giant Diamond’s new minimum wholesale order ($2,500, up from $1,500) is creating hardship for smaller independent houses. Last month, Hollywood-based Asylum Press received 1200 orders for Fearless Dawn (which PW describes as a “tongue-in-cheek adventure comic”) – a significant number for an independent comic, but one that failed to meet Diamond’s minimum, says PW.

So… the press is offering the issue ($2.95 cover price) directly to retailers at a 60% discount ($1.18). Asylum pays for shipping and offers a 30 day payment schedule and no minimum order.

Second, in a reversal of the recent (and increasingly commonplace) practice of acquiring webcomics and turning them into print books, Hachette’s graphic novel imprint, Yen Press, plans on serializing its upcoming translation of French cartoonist David Ratte’s Toxic Planet online.

Hassler said the book was created in a comic strip style – short full-color 4-panel comics strips that lampoon a future-society so awash in pollution that people take wearing a gas mask for granted – and will work well as an online serial. And Hassler said that the book is perfect for the web – a funny and unusual comics [sic] strip by an author that is being published in English for the first time.

Walter the Farting Dog goes to Hollywood

Remember Walter the Farting Dog, the hit series of kids’ picture books co-created by New Brunswick author Glenn Murray? (Q&Q has covered it a fair bit.) Alert the Academy: a movie adaptation is set to begin production next year, according to Canadian Press. And for readers who’ve asked themselves, “What would make Walter’s saga even better?” and answered themselves, “The Jonas Brothers,” it’s a banner day.

This bit caught Quillblog’s attention:

The screenplay will be written by Alec Sokolow (Toy Story, Garfield) and Joel Cohen (No Country For Old Men, Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?).

But before we got too excited – imagining Walter caught up in a convoluted kidnapping-and-revenge plot, complete with bowling and a few surprise gory deaths – we remembered that there’s no h in Coen. Sadly, CP is probably mixing up the Oscar-winning auteur with this guy.

Cellist vs. Cellist

Seems there’s a bit of controversy brewing around Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, which was published a few months back by Knopf Canada. (Read Q&Q‘s review here.) According to the CBC, the real-life cellist Vedran Smailovic, who served as the inspiration for the book’s title character, is now demanding compensation for it, claiming that Galloway never contacted him to seek permission to be included in the novel.

With a stool and his cello, Smailovic once played on top of the rubble from a deadly mortar attack in Sarajevo. In plain view of snipers, he played for 22 days straight — one day for each person killed during the mortar attack.

So does the character in Steven Galloway’s book, published this year. It’s a war tale woven around three characters in Sarajevo and their reaction to a cellist character inspired by Smailovic, whose story has travelled around the globe.

[...]

Smailovic said that if people are making money off tales from his past, he is entitled to a share of it.

“They put my picture, my face, on the front, on the cover with no permission. They don’t ask me — they use my name advertising their product. I don’t care about fiction, I care about reality.”

Whichever way you look at it, this is a pretty sticky situation with no clear-cut answers. It’s hard not to sympathize with Smailovic, but based on the info in the CBC piece, it sounds as if Galloway only ever meant to pay homage to the man, and that he did so in a fairly respectful fashion. The Smailovic character is prominently featured only in the first five pages of the book, he never speaks, and he is mostly used as a thematic device to link the other three characters. Galloway even sent Smailovic an autographed copy of the book, which suggests that he expected Smailovic would like it.

Our guess is that Smailovic probably doesn’t have a very good understanding of how the publishing business works, and is under a false impression that there are Hollywood-style profits coming Galloway’s way. And we kind of wonder if maybe the CBC doesn’t have the best understanding of publishing either, as the piece implies at one point that Galloway should (or could) have offered compensation to Smailovic or the other 25 people he interviewed in researching the book. First of all, it was just background research for a work of fiction, not non-fiction, and second, the CBC would presumably be much more outraged if they discovered Galloway had paid people for the stories, which is one of the age-old ethical taboos of journalism.

As for Smailovic’s concern about being put on the book’s cover, he has more of a case there, but even that is not so cut-and-dried. The cover (which you can see here) is indeed a photo of him, but it’s oriented so that his face and most of his body are cut from the image, as if the cameraman was wandering away from the nominal subject to take in the devastated surroundings instead. In fact, it could be argued that the cover is attempting to show, in visual terms, that the cellist is not the book’s real subject at all, which only helps Galloway’s case.

Knighton heading to Sundance

The Hollywood Reporter has announced the 13 projects chosen for the Sundance Film Festival’s highly competitive January Screenwriters Lab, and among the lucky winners is Vancouver author Ryan Knighton. Knighton has fashioned his 2006 memoir Cockeyed – about his gradual descent into blindness during his teen years – into a screenplay, and now he’ll be spending Jan. 11 to 16 at the Sundance Resort in Utah, being tutored by big-name Hollywood screenwriters like Scott Frank (Get Shorty, The Lookout), Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects), Paul Attanasio (Donnie Brasco, The Good German), and Doug Wright (Quills).

Many scripts that get put through the Screenwriters Lab go on to be made into actual films, so here’s hoping that Knighton’s turns out to be one of them.

Great moments in Canadian publishing

A little-known Canadian publisher has made news by announcing that it, ah, might be interested in publishing the confessional O.J. Simpson book that HarperCollins canned last fall. The company in question is the entertainment firm Barclay Road, based in Montreal but counting among its holdings a book imprint, Lifetime Books, that appears to be located in Hollywood.

In its press release, Barclay takes the high, er, road.

Although those at Barclay Road were disgusted by the initial information surrounding the book, representatives decided that in order to do justice in the name of free speech, giving the manuscript a read might just prove that the press did not have all the facts.

But in a followup story on Bloomberg.com, Barclay executive Steve Meyers offers a far more telling quote: “We are looking for the book to put us back in the marketplace.”

The Bloomberg story also quotes Simpson’s attorney as saying that a number of publishers are interested, without divulging any of their names.

Give Barclay credit for one thing – this has to be the cheapest publicity stunt ever. (“That’s right, we’re thinking about it. And it’s B-a-r-c….”) But it will also put to the test as never before the old “any publicity is good publicity” adage.

Horton: the movie

Dr. Seuss is sacred. Who doesn’t remember the unmistakable illustrations and wonderfully offbeat plots of childhood classics such as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and so many more?

In recent years, Hollywood has been seizing on the enduring popularity of the books and reinterpreting Seuss for film. First came How the Grinch Stole Christmas — in live action with Jim Carrey in the title role and lots of prosthetic make-up. Then, a live-action Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers.

So what title from the Seuss canon will Hollywood disfigure next? Why, Horton Hears a Who, of course. As the Book Standard reports, Horton will star Jim Carrey and Steve Carell as the voices of the CGI-animated Horton and the mayor of Whoville, respectively.

Quillblog does not deny that Steve Carell has his moments of comedic brilliance, but still.

The problem is determining how to reconcile an adult appreciation for the fine talents of Steve Carell with nostalgia for the faded Seuss-illustrated pages of childhood. Any suggestions?

Related links:
More details on Horton at the Book Standard

Amazon: ready for its close-up

After the Starbucks-financed Akeelah and the Bee fizzled in movie theatres last spring, you’d think that other non-Hollywood companies would now be more hesitant to throw their hats into the moviemaking arena. But the L.A. Times is reporting today that Amazon.com has just optioned author Keith Donohue’s fantasy novel The Stolen Child, about a young boy who is spirited away by fairies and replaced by a changeling.

According to the L.A. Times article, Amazon doesn’t plan to actually finance the movie themselves, or even co-finance it. The internet retailer is simply hoping to be — in the words of Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener — “an extremely valuable partner in the development, marketing and distribution of this film.” Translation: Amazon won’t take on any of the financial risk themselves, but they’ll provide a crazy amount of marketing for the film’s theatrical and DVD releases on its website.

Related links:
Click here for the L.A. Times article

Bulte and sold

A number of bloggers who watch both politics and cultural matters closely have taken a keen interest in a fundraiser for Toronto Liberal MP Sarmite (Sam) Bulte, who has chaired the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Interim Report on Copyright Reform. The $250-per-person event (which features a performance by Cowboy Junkies singer Margo Timmins) at Toronto’s Drake Hotel on Jan. 19 is being sponsored by a group that includes Canadian Publishers’ Council executive director Jackie Hushion. (Many of the other names, like Doug Firth, who heads the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, are similarly involved in cultural industry associations.)

Not surprisingly, some people have taken exception to this rather blatant endorsement. On his blog, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who has criticized Bulte before for accepting donations from groups with a keen interest in the copyright issue, points out that everyone is acting within the rules of the Election Act and then lets her have it: “[W]ith the public’s cynicism about elected officials at an all-time high and Canadians increasingly frustrated by a copyright policy process that is seemingly solely about satisfying rights holder demands, is it possible to send a worse signal about the impartiality of the copyright reform process? At $250 a person, I have my doubts that many of the artists that Ms. Bulte claims to represent will be present. Instead, it will lobbyists and lobby groups, eagerly handing over their money with the expectation that the real value of the evening will come long after Margo Timmins has finished her set.”

In 2004, as Geist points out, Bulte’s riding association received donations from the CPC, the Association of Canadian Publishers, and Access Copyright. A couple of publishers, McArthur & Company and McGraw-Hill Ryerson, also chipped in some cash. The riding association for the Conservative Party’s Canadian Heritage critic, Bev Oda, also shows donations from the likes of Ted Rogers and Leonard Asper.

None of this is surprising, but it’s still problematic. Jack Kapica, blogging for The Globe and Mail – one of an increasing number of mainstream outlets, including the Hollywood Reporter, of all things, to write about this – offers a solution: “Should the outcome of the election be favourable for the morally besieged Liberal Party, perhaps leader Paul Martin should consider rewarding Ms. Bulte’s hard work and loyalty with a different portfolio entirely, if only to show that Canadians won’t dance to every tune the Americans wish to play and charge us for.”

Related links:
Click here for all of Michael Geist’s posts on this topic
Click here for a brief on this issue in the Hollywood Reporter
Click here for Jack Kapica’s blog (scroll down for item)

This is just too easy

The New York Daily News reported yesterday on a smirk-inducing literary phenomenon: the celebrity novel. Starting as a discussion on Nicole Richie’s thinly veiled roman à clef and gossip rag of a novel, The Truth About Diamonds, it examines the popularity of the phenomenon among both wannabe writers with Hollywood addresses (including everyone from Ethan Hawke to Joan Collins, Ivana Trump, and Pamela Anderson) and, predictably, among readers. And to be fair, the article even points out how many people — critics and literary snobs among them — want to see celebrities’ books fail. But reading through an excerpt of Richie’s novel about a spoiled, rich girl and her spoiled, rich friends, one gets the impression that snobs don’t have to will books like hers to fail. They do so of their own accord.

Related links:
Click here for the New York Daily News article
Click here for an excerpt from The Truth About Diamonds

Working for the Yankee dollar

A new report posted on the federal government’s Team Trade Canada site has some good news for authors hoping to land film deals for their works. The report — called “Summary: Database of U.S. Produced Films Based on Literary Source Material, 1998-2003″ — provides Canadian book publishers and authors with statistics on the literary adaptation market in the U.S., and the news is all good. Most notably, the report notes a trend in Hollywood toward favouring scripts based on books, with an increase in the total number of rights purchased from 120 in 1999 to 143 in 2003. The report also provides advice and statistics for Canadian film producers who specialize in literary adaptations.

Related links:
Read the Trade Team Canada report