Daily book biz round-up, March 16

Another day, another news round-up:

• British Airways doesn’t care about book people
• A sneak preview of the new titles publishers are taking to the London Book Fair
• Colin Thatcher ordered to hand over book profits
• Pride and Prejudice and Overkill: the new book trailer
• British publisher Arden manages to wring one more play out of William Shakespeare
• Your daily Martin Amis WTF: “I wish my sister had converted to Islam”
• John Grisham joins the e-book revolution
• Demand for iPad tapers off after boffo first-day sales

Should literary agents be afraid of Amazon?

While Amazon is keeping quiet about the meetings it held last week with top U.S. agents, several commentators have begun to speculate about their significance. Crain’s reports that the talks were “freewheeling, frank, and contentious,” with e-books and aggressive discounting being the main topics under discussion. Meanwhile, MobyLives comments that the meetings are “one of the first signs that major agents are worried about the survival of the current system of author advances and royalties.”

Taking the argument one step further, GalleyCat asks the provocative question, “Literary agents … Who needs them?”

One published author who asks to be unnamed disagrees [that agents still serve a useful purpose], “What do you need an agent for anymore, really? Why? To negotiate a meager advance? You can’t get them on the phone anyway. You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham. I don’t see the whole point when I can hire an attorney to negotiate my publishing contract for a flat fee or just upload the book to Kindle myself.”

Bookmarks: offensive books, William Golding, and Alice Munro country

Some book-related links:

• Where the Brooklyn Public Library hides the offensive books
• William Golding was not the lord of his own fly
• Travels in Alice Munro country
• How John Grisham helped free the Norfolk Four
• Five sci-fi and fantasy books that never should have been written

How you know you’re in a recession, Part MMCXIIV

Quillblog is well aware that hard economic times have a disproportionate effect on writers (who aren’t usually in the top earning brackets to begin with) but it’s a sign that things have become untenable when authors are auctioning off characters in their upcoming books. It sounds unbelievable, but that’s exactly what Nathan Tyree is doing. The author of Zombie Lust and the New Flesh and How to Make Love Like a Zombie is offering some lucky bidder the opportunity to appear as “a major character” in an upcoming novel.

This is not the first time an author has auctioned off a character in a novel. Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, and John Grisham did so for charity back in 2005, as did Margaret Atwood in a 2007 fundraiser (that one went to Rebecca Eckler, who worried that Atwood might turn her “into a crack-whore-murderer”). But, to Quillblog’s knowledge, this is the first time an author has offered a chance to appear as a major character in a novel, complete with physical description and character traits.

According to Tyree’s seller’s description on eBay:

The winner will have to provide me with their name, a photo of themselves, a description of their personality and mannerisms, a bio (background info and such). I will write the novel and guarantee publication within one year of the end of the auction. Then they will also receive a free copy of the book.

No word as to whether the character will be a hero or a villain (or a zombie), or will survive to the end of the book without being viciously decapitated.

As of this morning, the top bid was $40.

Bookmarks – book reviews needed, book reviewers hated, Dostoevsky big in Japan, and more

Some book-related links:

• Book reviews are important after all (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Author calls reviewer “old,” “bitter,” and “confused” – as if those are bad things (Porochista Khakpour’s blog)
• Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov bestseller in Japan (The Asahi Shimbun)
• John Grisham sued (CBC.ca)
• Stephen King on short stories (The New York Times)
• Speaking of Stephen King, why are most of the films of his books such crap? (Popmatters)
• A new site for Toronto book events (Toronto Literati)

Copyright: Forever and ever, amen?

Last Sunday, author Mark Helprin wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that writers and their descendents should own the rights to their works in perpetuity, not just for 70 years after their deaths. The article has attracted a lot of online debate in the days since, and yesterday Gawker posted an “Ask an Expert” interview with Maud Newton, in which Newton haughtily dismisses most of Helprin’s assertions. The gist of her position is as follows:

Authors hold copyright for life plus 70 years, meaning that their heirs reap the benefits of exclusive rights for seven full decades after they die. But the purpose of exclusive rights like copyright and patent — both of which flow from the same twenty-seven words of the Constitution — is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” not to fund vacations for John Grisham’s great-great-grandchildren.

While we understand the grossness of celebrity spawn leeching off their parents’ life work, we have to wonder why authors should be treated any different from real estate moguls, say, or corporate bigwigs. Why do they get to pass on the benefits of their life’s work in perpetuity and not lowly artists?

One of the best counter-arguments we’ve seen was made by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and copyright expert. He has created a wiki-style page for the express purpose of rebutting Helprin’s argument, and in it he makes this fairly convincing point:

Physical property, such as real estate, is a finite resource that operates as a zero sum game. And the laws regarding physical property treat it as such. Intellectual works are abstract concepts and do not naturally operate as zero sum games.

(Thanks to the Chronicle of Higher Education for the Lessig link.)

Undercover reading

Stephen King is the U.K.’s favourite guilty pleasure read, as reported in The Guardian. In a survey conducted for the Costa Book Awards 2006, King topped a list that included J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, and Dan Brown (the latter two tied).

The article includes a quote from Simon Trewin, a contributing author to The Encyclopaedia of Guilty Pleasures: 1001 Things You Hate to Love, noting that in general we prefer to read a book in public “that makes us look good.” And Quillblog noticed that Guardian reporter Peter Bradshaw’s own blog included a New Year’s resolution to finish reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and a future goal of tackling Hermann Broch.

But if guilty reading pleasures are ruling the day, perhaps it’s Bradshaw who will need to mask his high-brow literary tastes with the faux book covers Costa provided for download.

Man keeps expensive Stephen King habit

Stephen King fans around the world watched as the right to name a zombie in his forthcoming novel was auctioned off on eBay. The auction was held to raise money for the First Amendment Project, a non-profit that defends writers’ and artists’ right to freedom of speech. eBay’s most-watched item at the time, the auction was won by Florida resident Pam Alexander. Paying $25,100, she beat out the bid’s next contender, Paul Stegman of Nebraska, who was ready to mortgage his home to cough up the needed funds. “How many times do you have the opportunity to purchase immortality?” said Stegman, who owns 300 King books.

King was just one of many authors donating the right to name a character in this first round of auctions for the Oakland-based not-for-profit. The second round of auctions continues on through Sept. 26 and offers the right to name a character from books by John Grisham, Dave Eggers, and Neil Gaiman to respective highest bidders.

Related links:
Click here for the full story from the Chicago Tribune
Click here to for a list of participating authors and links to their auctions
Click here for more information on the First Amendment Project