The Admission Price for Authorship

In last week's The Week, Francis Wilkinson asked, "Is writing for the rich?" Which is to say, does writing pay so poorly in today's economy that the only people who can afford to go into the profession will be independently wealthy?

It’s not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can’t spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They’ll starve. Meantime, freelance rates for non-fluff magazine writing have barely risen in the past 15 years. And the chances of getting a job at a quality newspaper or a serious magazine are fast approaching zero.

There are exceptions, I know. There always are. But on the whole, the writing game seems likely to become even more a province of the upper middle class and flat-out wealthy than it is already. The offspring of the affluent, branded college degrees in hand, can afford to give it a go.

I've already been contemplating that prospect in regard to what respected children's-book editor Stephen Roxburgh has been saying about his new editorial service, namelos. He told Cynthia Leitich Smith, "The namelos model shifts the initial financial burden to authors and illustrators. Many will deplore this. We lament it, but see it as inevitable."

If the "namelos model" takes hold in publishing, companies will stop paying for the vetting and editing of books, and instead expect new authors to arrive with their manuscripts already professionally shaped and polished for the market. And unless authors have experience or exceptional instincts about those things, they'll have to pay the right people to provide that guidance.

That's an even higher price than what Wilkinson foresees in the journalism world. A new book author would not only have to have enough money to support herself while writing, but also enough to pay an editor: "the initial financial burden," in Roxburgh's words. As Wilkinson suggests, a larger percentage of the people who could break through those barriers will be wealthy to start with.

We've seen a culture like that before. A hundred years ago, most book writers paid many of their costs of publication. Education was largely confined to the top ranks of society, so more writers (and readers) came from those tiers. There were fewer books published, and they reflected the dominant upper-class.

“All We Had Was Supercar.”

Back here I quoted Neil Gaiman's childhood impressions of America from comic books, particularly pizza, fire hydrants, and superheroes. At the time I didn't realize that he'd put those observations into the mouth of the Alan Moore-created character John Constantine.

Here are the relevant panels from The Books of Magic, this portion illustrated by Scott Hampton.

And here's information on Supercar.

Scans_Daily No More

Occasionally I've mentioned the LiveJournal group scans_daily as one of my sources of comic-book background knowledge, commentary, and unusual images.

That's no longer available. Last weekend LiveJournal suspended the group due to copyright complaints. This was big news in the comics-discussion community, with reports on the major news websites and various creators being quizzed about their opinions. Brigid Alvorsen provided a good overview of the situation and people's reactions.

The discussion largely boils down to two positions. On one side, scans_daily's defenders argue that it was an enthusiastic fan community, sharing samples of work members liked and disliked. The law allows folks to reproduce a limited amount of copyrighted material in the context of critical commentary.

What's more, those fans argue, comics creators and publishers should welcome such sharing because it publicizes new products. (This is, of course, the same argument people have made about sharing music without payment to its creators.)

The opposing view is that people on scans_daily were using "fair use" and anonymity as a mask for widespread copyright violations. Every Wednesday members uploaded pages and pages of the latest comics, revealing major twists in storylines. The group's guidelines about not scanning too much of any one magazine didn't keep large chunks from appearing, and entire stories from the "Golden Age."

And as for such a community's effect on the market, this view holds, the free availability of that material ultimately makes people less likely to buy it. One of the most vehement voices from this side was Kevin Church at Beaucoup Kevin.

But by the time that debate took place, scans_daily was shut down, its members scattered like refugees from Gotham at the start of the "No Man's Land" arc.
So was scans_daily a large-scale copyright violation, cheating comics copyright-holders? Or was it a community for perceptive, funny, and impassioned discussion of comic books? In my experience, it was both.

When I started looking into American comics again, after a gap of twenty years, scans_daily was one of the most helpful resources I found. It offered glimpses of both the latest developments and stories long out of print. About half the panels illustrating my weekly Robin posts are extracted from scans_daily scans. I learned to spot the icons of knowledgeable Robin fans and follow their postings. (Otherwise, I'd never have been able to use that "No Man's Land" metaphor.)

Furthermore, I bought comics because of what I saw on scans_daily, comics both new (such as Nightwing: Freefall and The Brave and the Bold, #15, which makes the case that Dick Grayson is the most trusted man in the DC Universe) and secondhand (Robin, #10; Impulse, #50; Superboy, #85; etc.). As soon as a member posted panels from Mouse Guard, I put in a request to my library.

At the same time, I was troubled by how often scans_daily postings included many pages from new magazines, frequently with no credits for the writers or artists. As for the critical commentary that excuses reproductions, some members did indeed offer insights on character development, graphic techniques, or creators' careers. There were lots of jokes. But too many of the remarks were of the order of "I hate Dan DiDio cuz he hates Blue Beetle," which makes no sense and hardly justifies scanning half of the latest Blue Beetle magazine.

Given that situation, I agree with the many observers who've said it was only a matter of time before scans_daily got shut down. The copyright doctrine of "fair use" is misty, but many postings were clearly beyond its bounds, and big web services like LiveJournal are antsy.

Some folks blamed comics scripter Peter David for complaining about one post, but he and Marvel Comics were perfectly within their rights to do so. Furthermore, just as my comics research made me appreciate scans_daily, so I'm grateful to David. His Young Justice of a decade ago offered a fun take on Tim Drake as Robin, and his book on comics scripting is a fine how-to guide.

The scans_daily shutdown has produced some interesting commentary. Leigh Walton at Picture Poetry raised the issue of gender:

A friend...grumbled today about the dismissive attitude of certain commenters (”oh well, it was full of bitching and slash anyway”), declaring that reaction to be part of a broader discomfort that many male fans have with the feminine form of fandom. In response, she more or less said “a man in S_D feels like a woman in a comic shop.” . . .

I remember being pretty shocked at the culture of S_D when I first discovered it years ago. It was a thriving community of fans interacting with superhero comics in an entirely different manner than I was used to. But it didn’t feel like “this is how they do it on the internet,” it felt like “this is how they do it when women are in charge.”

Which was the first time I realized that (a) scans_daily had women in charge, or (b) there's such a deep split within comics fandom. Lisa Fortuner at Robot 6 added more remarks while drawing a line between reasons for the shutdown itself and reasons for different fans' responses to it.
Another interesting reaction came from comics scripter Gail Simone, who herself came out of the female fan ranks:

I sympathize with any creators who felt their work was spoiled. I JUST this week had the ending of my latest issue of Wonder Woman spoiled.

Simone laments some comics-sharing on artistic rather than commercial grounds, because it can interfere with readers' enjoyment. I find that attitude very interesting. Even so, Simone makes clear, she's ready to live with spoilers in such communities as scans_daily if they're a reflection of reader enthusiasm.

Everybody acknowledges that LiveJournal's shutdown has simply pushed the same behavior elsewhere. Now there's a noscans_daily on LiveJournal for former members to keep up the conversation, and a reconstituted scans_daily on another service. (I haven't joined because I'm too busy right now to sign up for anything that includes the word "insane." It would be redundant.) And of course the internet contains torrents of files reproducing nearly every comic book ever published, hidden deeper than scans_daily was and thus not available to new fans.

Meanwhile, the comic-book publishers still face shrinking magazine sales, and the pitfalls and potential of new digital formats. How do they please established readers and cultivate new ones? Keep characters fresh yet familiar? Price material economically but profitably? No one knows which challenge to attack first. But scans_daily had its head up.

Twilight Goes Academic

Melissa Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Lissa Behm-Morawitz are soliciting proposals for chapters of 6000 to 8000 words to go into a book tentatively titled Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Twilight Saga.

Their call for papers says:

The editors seek essays that explore Stephenie Meyer's wildly popular Twilight series. We are particularly interested in essays that explore the cultural significance of the Twilight phenomenon and its impact on youth culture.

The collection will feature scholarly work from a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including: analyses of the series' messages, production and marketing processes, and audiences. We welcome work from a wide variety of disciplines, including: communication, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, religious studies, and gender studies.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Representations of gender, race, class and sexuality
• Religion, morality, and values
• Feminist and anti-feminist themes in Twilight
• Intended and unintended audiences
• Fans and anti-fans
• Genre and vampire/werewolf folklore
• Relationship models (romantic, friendship, and familial)
• Space and place in Twilight
• Celebrity culture and Stephenie Meyer, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart
• Translation of the series for the screen
• The Twilight franchise

This collection will be proposed to Peter Lang's "Mediated Youth" series.

People interested in contributing should email a 250-word proposal, short bibliography, brief author's bio, and contact information to Melissa Click by 10 Apr 2009. The editors plan to notify contributors of acceptances by 15 May, and first drafts of chapters will be due in early fall 2009.

(I note that all the titles in the series published by Peter Lang are about girls, despite the more inclusive series title and description. Would this book change that pattern? Probably not.)

Huffing and Puffing about the Blagojevich Deal

Michael Viner's essay at the Huffington Post about making a deal--supposedly a headline-grabbing six-figure deal--for a book from former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is a masterpiece in avoiding unflattering facts.

From his high horse, Viner writes:

When Harper Collins decided to pay $3 million to O.J. Simpson there was no public outcry until the book turned out to be a great hoax.

That's selective on several counts. First, there was an outcry as soon as the news got out; eventually Rupert Murdoch canned the book's editor. Second, the book wasn't a hoax--the deal was, with money going to Simpson even though he claimed it wasn't.

More important, in pointing to HarperCollins, Viner manages to avoid mentioning which publisher is most notorious for exploiting the O. J. Simpson trial. That's none other than Michael Viner, who then called his firm Dove Entertainment. He published a book by one victim's sister, a book by dismissed jurors, a parody of Simpson's own book at the time, and more. Viner now argues that we must presume Blagojevich is innocent until proven guilty; he showed little interest in that presumption back in 1996.

Among Dove's other titles were The Private Diary of Lyle Menendez, which wasn't actually a diary by that murderer, and a memoir of Hollywood prostitutes. The latter led to a lawsuit by authors claiming their text had been changed without their approval and that Viner harrassed them sexually. Viner sued Heidi Fleiss for saying he'd slept with two of those women, and the jury returned a verdict in her favor.

Then Viner came up with New Millennium Press. Among its authors was Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who made things up. Viner's strategy for building frontlist titles is to go after people who are already household names because of controversies in the news. He's obviously trying the same strategy with Blagojevich, rushing a manuscript into print to take advantage of public attention during the trial.

Viner is also notorious for packaging books and audiotapes to exploit authors' names with old or minor material. That's produced complaints from such authors as David Baldacci and Stephen Hawking.

The reason Viner's present company is called Phoenix Books is because it was his route out of the bankruptcy of his earlier firm. A jury awarded author/editor Otto Penzler $2.8 million from New Millennium, so Viner put the firm into bankruptcy to avoid paying. He then left the company in the hands of a trustee but returned to buy its assets for this new outfit called Phoenix. Among its titles now is another memoir of Hollywood prostitutes.

All I can say is that Viner and Blagojevich seem like a good match. They have every right to go into business together, at whatever terms they choose. For those of us who dislike such behavior, the best response is not to buy their book.

A Paean to Beautiful Words

AlphaDictionary has just posted Dr. Robert Beard's 100 Most Beautiful Words in English. As is often the case with these sorts of lists, Beard couldn't really stick to his numerical parameter and make the last few cuts, so the list is really 110 words.

"Verisimilitudinous" doesn't make the list, alas. It has all the requisite soft consonants, and is probably as common and more useful for writers than "potamophilous" or "inspissate." But this is Dr. Beard's list, not mine.

For some of the words, the definition is obviously part of the beauty. The list defines "offing" as "That part of the sea between the horizon and the offshore," which sounds lovely and, I suppose, produced the metaphorical phrase "in the offing."

But of course the same word has a practical meaning, as in, "I was interrupted in the middle of offing Jimmy the Frogman, so I ended up offing two other guys and a cat as well." That "offing" doesn't sound nearly as beautiful.

Other words' definitions are apparently obscure enough not to interfere with our enjoyment of their beauty. "Moiety" sounds nice, but its prosaic meaning doesn't match up. "Pyrrhic" can be quite bloody, as in the British military's Pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill. And "surreptitious" and "plethora" overcome their negative connotations with their cascades of soft syllables.

“What It Is That I’ve Done, What It Is That I Do”

Here are some of Neil Gaiman's thought-provoking remarks about his storytelling and writing process from Roger Sutton's interview of the recent Newbery Medalist for the School Library Journal:

I was in Bologna a few years ago, in 2003, listening to a speech being given at the university about my work. It was an incredibly perceptive speech by a Bolognese professor of children’s literature. What fascinated me and troubled and worried me was I thought that I was so clever. I thought that everything I did was so different. And in this speech, the lady was talking about what it is that I’ve done, what it is that I do. And I realized with a sort of horrible sinking feeling that she was describing my next two books. . . . And it was a really major sinking feeling. It was like, Oh, my God. I’m actually doing the same thing over and over. . . .

The Graveyard Book was the longest in gestation of anything I’ve done. And it also was kind of the book that I was working towards writing for a very long time. It began in 1986, maybe early ’87. . . . I was a working journalist at this point. I’d written a few short stories. And I wrote an attempted first page and then read what I’d written and thought, You know, I’m not good enough for this. This is a really good idea, and it’s much better than I am as a writer. I will put it aside until I’m good enough. And once, maybe twice after that in the intervening years, I would go back and try writing a bit more. I’d definitely given up on it by 1989. . . .

Somewhere in 2004, after I’d finished writing Anansi Boys, it occurred to me that technically I was no longer getting better in terms of, you know, just the sheer skill of putting a sentence together, the ability to say whatever it was that I wanted to say. Whether I was any good or not, I didn’t know. But I was definitely no longer seeing the kinds of year-to-year improvement that I had previously been aware of. I was now going, “OK, this is basically whoever I am.” And I no longer had any excuse for putting off writing the story.

I had a notebook with the words, “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” That was definitely going to be the first line. I had begun and given up on the opening many times, and suddenly I thought, I can start in the middle. So I did.

Whole interview here.

Passing of a Generation

Clarence Swensen, who played one of the Munchkin soldiers in the MGM Wizard of Oz, died on 25 February at the age of 91. This picture of flowers in his memory on the Munchkins' star in Hollywood's Walk of Fame comes from Karen Owen of Storyland Collectables.

I wrote about Swensen back here:

Those surviving Munchkin performers tend to have been in their late teens in 1938, when they shot their scene. That means they were about twenty years old when the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into World War 2. The young men therefore faced the question of how to serve their country. But because of their height, they were all classified as 4-F, ineligible for military service.

If there's a Q&A session at a convention [about Oz], I ask the men about their experiences of the war, and the answers are usually quite interesting. . . .

Texan Clarence Swenson worked on repairing the radar equipment in planes at airbases in the US. He found that his small size gave him an advantage in reaching inside the nosecones, letting his crew avoid the delay of having another team come out to remove those cowlings and thus to cut the planes' time out of service.

Swensen was the last of the men who played Munchkin soldiers, I believe--certainly the last making public appearances.

The Pitfalls of Picking an Official State Children’s Book

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting on an Ohio legislator's proposal to make Robert McCloskey's Lentil the official children's book of Ohio. McCloskey was a native of Hamilton, Ohio, and Lentil's fictional setting of Alto, Ohio, rather resembles that town. Which, not by coincidence, is the area that the act's sponsor represents. The town already has a Lentil statue, as I reported back here.

Curiously, this proposal wasn't initiated by a set of schoolkids cajoled into proposing a state symbol as part of a unit on government, the way the "third grade class at the Dean S. Luce Elementary School in Canton" made McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings into Massachusetts's official state children's book. According to StateSymbolsUSA.org, Massachusetts is the only state to have designated an official book of any kind.

Aside from lack of such grass-roots support, the major problem for the Lentil proposal is that Ohio, being a large state, has produced other important children's authors and illustrators: Natalie Babbitt, Virginia Hamilton, Lois Lenski, R. L. Stine. Here in Massachusetts we've addressed that problem by dubbing Dr. Seuss our official state children's author-illustrator so his partisans don't feel left out.

Another problem is that, with all due deference to Lentil, McCloskey's greatest Ohioana are the Homer Price books. Nothing else can compare.

(Thanks to Publishers Weekly for the pointer.)

Scott Beatty on Robin

Scott Beatty posted his introduction for a new Spanish edition of Robin: Year One, which introduction begins: "Without question, Dick Grayson is the most compelling comic book character ever created."

So naturally the weekly Robin had to link to that. To be sure, Beatty has an interest in putting the first Robin on top of the heap. Beatty and Chuck Dixon scripted that look at Dick Grayson's early days, as well as Batgirl: Year One and Nightwing: Year One. Beatty's also author of Batman: The Ultimate Guide to the Dark Knight and other DC Comics reference titles. And the purpose of such collected-edition introductions is usually to hype the books you've bought, to put you in the proper frame of mind for reading them.

Nonetheless, Beatty makes an interesting case for the drama behind Dick Grayson. Since going to his blog makes your computer play early-'90s pop while slowing down all its other operations, here's the gist:

Now, in the annals of comics, there is no greater loner than the Caped Crusader. . . . Swearing vengeance on not just his parents’ murderer but CRIME itself, Bruce Wayne pledged to wage an unrelenting war against injustice. And in his mind, nothing mattered but THE WAR. Not his personal safety. Not close relationships (except for faithful valet Alfred Pennyworth, of course). Nothing.

And then this kid came along. Yeah, Dick Grayson. . . . Maybe Batman saw something familiar in the stoic face of Dick Grayson, a boy who needed justice also in a cruel and unjust world. And thus, the Dark Knight made one of his best decisions, or worst mistakes--depending on your perspective--particularly where child endangerment issues are concerned. . . .

Here, Chuck Dixon and I write a tale that shows just what it means to be entrusted with the secrets of the World’s Greatest Detective, and what it means when the Boy Wonder finds his wings summarily clipped for failing to live up to the Batman’s sometimes impossible standards.

And that’s what this is all about. Dick Grayson is the best comics character in the world not because he got to live in stately Wayne Manor, nor because he got to play in the Batcave and drive Batmobiles and Batcycles and Batboats. Of all the kids in comics (a veritable schoolyard of orphans and waifs and naifs), Dick Grayson was the first to be given Batman’s TRUST.

Beatty doesn't address Dick's next major passage, leaving Batman for the Titans. Presumably he's saving that for Nightwing: Año Uno.