Tod Goldberg

Don't Call It A Comeback

Pat Holt is about as OG as it comes in terms of delivering book industry news, so it's nice that she's returned to the fold with Holt Uncensored after a long hiatus. I first started reading her missives on the industry in 1999 after I sold Fake Liar Cheat and now, nearly ten years later, she's still teaching me things. Today, she asks a pretty important question: What the fuck is up with royalty statements? (She says it's a bit more elegantly):

If you were an author, wouldn’t it be great if your publisher gave you a password to your own royalty account?

This would be an online, frequently updated, always accessible, entirely confidential page on your publisher’s website that would replace the current system.

As frequently as you wish, you could check sales of your book, the rate of returns, the percentage taken out for reserves and varying royalty rates for bulk sales, special sales, premium sales, electronic sales, and so forth.

As it is now, most authors have to wait six months for a printed, snail-mailed royalty statement that’s filled with outdated information that’s mired in financial gobbledygook their own agents can’t decipher.

But if your royalty statement were online and you didn’t understand the accounting – and this has been the most frequent complaint I’ve heard no matter who publishes the book - a pull-down Help box would provide a virtual tour of royalty statements in general so you can learn as you go. Specific questions could be emailed directly to the royalty department and answered within days.

Pat tells you how this would work, why publishers don't want it, and more at her new blog home.

Three Percent Of Nothing

Fucktards, as I think we all know, come in many shapes and sizes. This weekend I found one who purports to be a literary agent. The lovely BK Nelson agency was brought to my attention recently because they happen to have an office in Palm Springs and were one of Writer Beware's list of 20 Super Awesome Fucktard Agents (I'm paraphrasing the actual name of the list, but it was something very close to that...), so I had to take a look at their website to see just how inept they were. Evidence was found right on the front page of their website:

The founder and president of the agency, BK Nelson, has launched more first time writers than any other literary agency. Only ten percent of authors are supported solely by their writing careers. BK Nelson represented 3% of successful nonfiction writers prior to opening a motion picture office in Beverly Hills, California. The BK Nelson Agency is effective, efficient and ready to super charge great talent into a dynamic future. Please take the time to explore our web site and become better acquainted with our services and mission.

So, just to confirm here, BK Nelson represents 3 percent of all successful nonfiction writers. 3%. I know a lot of very successful nonfiction writers, maybe 100, so it would reason that out of that 100, then, that 3 would be represented by BK Nelson. So, I decided to do just what she said and explored her website to see who she represents, which friends of mine, or if it's just, you know, Deepak Chopra and Dave Eggers, since they must represent a pretty significant portion of that 10% of writers she represents 3% of (yeah, do the math there...she's really saying that she represents 3 in 10 successful non fiction authors...).

The list is here.

Oddly, I didn't see anyone I knew or recognized. Any of you familiar with Herman Estate Holtz, author of How To Succeed As An Independent Consultant? How about Jornada del Muerto, author Cattle War? Or Sidi Slimane, author of Padre Island? I'm sure you haven't heard of those last two authors, because they don't exist. In fact, those two authors are actually the names of self-published books by one Richard Merril Dalton, the titles of the books (I know, the math is getting complicated here) are actually two other titles by Dalton. Oddly, Dalton is not listed as one of the agency's authors. I'm going to make a wild assumption that he's not part of that 3%. Or 10%.

So who is the BK Nelson agency? Well, you can read all about them here, but I think the most salient reason you should sign on with BK can be found in the bio of the agency's namesake:

She eventually became Assistant to the President of the oldest literary agency in the United States. Subsequently, she was associated with the firm of noted entertainment attorney Lee Eastman, (father of the late Linda Eastman McCartney, who married Beatle Paul McCartney), where she handled backers' auditions.

I can't think of a better reason to sign with BK Nelson other than she was associated with a law firm that, uh, had a partner whose daughter married Paul McCartney. If anyone can think of a stranger biographical note in an agent's bio, please, forward it to me. It's pretty much the equivalent of me saying you should buy my books because I once worked at a staffing service that sent temps to Disney (which was founded by Walt Disney). There is a tremendous amount of fucktardery to be found on the BK Nelson website, including a book on how to find a literary agent written by Nelson, published by Nelson and for sale by Nelson on the front page of her website. I wonder if in the book it suggests that you should look for a fee-charging literary agent named BK Nelson to handle all of your self-publishing needs...

 

 

 

Please Stop Swearing...But Don't Stop Shooting People

While foolishly procrastinating this evening by looking at reviews of my books on Goodreads, I came across one on The Fix by an entity known only as Blackcat69:

As much as I love Burn Notice, the book was not that exciting. Sure the story was somewhat interesting and I could see it happening on BN, but I just didn't like the book. The language was a big factor for me though. You just don't hear words like that on television. I would have to say that the usage of swear words really ruined the story for me. I would much rather watch BN on television.

Now I don't mind that Blackcat69 didn't care for the book -- that's absolutely Blackcat69's right and I have no issue there in the least. What I found fascinating, however, is that the big turn off was the swear words. Just for fun, I did a count. The word shit appears 6 times. Fuck or derivations thereof (motherfucker, fucked, fucking) 16 times. Most of the fucks end up occurring in one scene...a scene where a person gets shot in the leg, another gets punched in the face with a gun and loses all of his teeh and another still thinks he's about to die because he's just witnessed his friends getting beaten pretty badly. So why is the word fuck more objectionable than someone getting shot in the fucking leg? This is something I've never understood. You can kill as many people as you like, but don't swear while doing it. I'm not sure I'd call Burn Notice wholesome family entertainment generally so I guess I wonder what Blackcat69 thinks when someone on the show gets, you know, blown up. It is an odd world we live in, isn't it, where violence is okay but language is what we quibble about. Very odd indeed.

(The other thing, I suppose, is that I'm concerned that Blackcat69 doesn't realize he (she?) isn't watching television when she's (he's?) reading a book.)

Pool Reading 2.0

Come learn with me.

LL A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You

A Conversation I Had With A Fucktard

I'm beginning to sense that maybe the fucktard problem I have -- as in, I encounter a lot of fucktards -- might not be caused by a proliferance of fucktards in the world (though there certainly are quite a few of them) but that I somehow attract them to me. I don't know how this happens precisely. I am, I suppose, nominally a public figure and therefore have to deal with the nominal public at times, but there are times when I'm not even the main nominal public figure in the room and yet I still have interaction with fucktards.

This week provided a fine example. Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Angels in America, came and spoke on campus this past Thursday evening as part of our Arts & Letters series -- and I must say, he was great; I had the opportunity to spend some time with him before and after the show and he was funny and interesting and then, in what was really cool, he spent a good five minutes talking to every single person who bought his book, which is about as classy as it comes -- and during the course of his conversation on stage with Chuck Evered noted that he thought getting an undergraduate degree in playwriting was a bad idea, that you should instead get a liberal arts degree and learn about all sorts of things, live a little, and don't waste time writing until you can really write. He made a compelling argument. Anyway, after the program, I was standing around chatting with different people (there were about 300 there for the conversation), when I found myself cornered by a man of about 70.

Man: I'll tell you one thing, I think creative writing programs are a travesty. The worst are those MFA programs.

Me: Why is that?

Man: Well, not for what Kushner said. I think it's just a way for universities to make money.

Me: As opposed to football?

Man: You don't like football?

Me: Oh, no, I love football. College football. Pro football. Arena. But if you want to look at money making operations, college football pulls in a lot more than say an MFA in Poetry program does.

Man: Different thing.

Me: How so?

Man: Football builds character. MFA programs, creative writing programs, what do they build?

Me: Uh, professional writers. Hopefully, anyway.

Man: That guy who got up before Kushner, you ever heard of him?

Me: [not noting that I was the guy who got up before Kushner] Yes.

Man: I haven't. And he runs the MFA program here. What does that tell you? You want to look at a great writer, take a look at Clive Cussler.

Me:  He doesn't even write his own books anymore. I think his son writes them.

Man: Dirk Pitt, right?

Me: No, that's his character.

Man: You take a look at Cussler or James Patterson and that's where you see how these programs are a travesty.

Me: I'm not sure I follow you.

Man: Have you ever read Clive Cussler?

Me: Not in years.

Man: His plots are so intricate. He thinks of stuff no one has ever thought of.

Me: Like finding the Titanic?

Man: RIght. James Patterson is the same way.

Me: Like the one with the serial killer?

Man: Yeah. Yeah. You think that Kushner comes up with those? Or any of these MFA students? [here he points to the students, or at least who he presumes are students...which are, well, the students] You know who I also like?

Me: John Grisham.

Man: That's right.

Me: I like the one about the guy who has to fight against the crooked lawyers.

Man [thnking] Yes, that is a good one.

Me: So, what are you doing here, if I may ask?

Man: My wife brought me here. She's a fan, I guess. And you?

Me: I direct the MFA program.

Man:

Me:

Man: Here?

Me: Yes.

Man:

Me:

Man: You were up on the stage.

Me: For a little bit, yes. I was the one who stood up and talked about the MFA program.

Man:

Me:

Man: I better find my wife.

My Annotated Trip To Las Vegas

Even though I write for Las Vegas City Life, a weekly paper in Las Vegas, I hadn't actually visited the city in two years, which is the equivalent of about 20 years in any other city. Things get torn down, rebuilt and torn down again so quickly that I hardly recognized the place when I returned last week for the Vegas Valley Book Festival -- plus, since the architectural aesthetic in most of suburban Las Vegas is sprawling stucco shopping centers, if you close your eyes for just a second, you don't know where the fuck you are when you open your eyes back up.

It's also a notoriously strange book town. I wrote about it once before in Post Road, so I won't belabor the point, but the folks at the Vegas Valley Book Festival always bring in top notch talent and the people just don't turn out like they should. It's not just Las Vegas, of course. Palm Springs has a book festival that attracts scads of big names and is the worst book festival I've ever attended. (This year, the highlight of the Palm Springs book festival for me was when a dust devil swept through an open field and then into a row of booths featuring mostly self-published authors selling their Christian mysteries -- a woman sitting underneath a huge, framed-in-glass copy of her iUniverse book cover had the frame crash down on top of her her head and, somehow, didn't get cut. There was glass everywhere, huge shards, and not a scratch on her, even though it broke on her head. She said it was her faith in Jesus. It was more like that scene in Pulp Fiction, really, where Samuel L doesn't get shot...) It's too bad, really, because I'd like to think that a city like Las Vegas, with two alt. weeklies, two newspapers, a large university and lots of young people would be craving a really great festival. (They did get big crowds, I understand, for Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon, both who did evening readings/talks.)

Anyway, I still had a great time. And that means some weird shit:

1. At the Peppermill, where I ate on Friday with my friends and fellow Las Vegas Noir contributers Vu Tran, Lori Kozlowski and Todd James Pierce, we were served our food by an 18 year old girl who was 8 months pregnant and who filled all of us with guilt each time she walked by -- I mean, she was so pregnant, you could pretty much see the kid's beating heart through her low cut outfit and her service was pretty sketchy, which I suppose might be the case when you're carrying around cheeseburgers and a living entity in your womb. Our cocktail waitress, on the other hand, was not pregnant, but she had a black eye and bruises up and down her forearm, which made me want to give up drinking all together. In the bathroom, I had a conversation with a man who started talking to me while I pissed, which is always very, very comfortable:

Him: You ever eat here?

Me: I'm eating here now.

Him: They got one of these in Mesquite. It's amazing.

Me: The last time I ate here was about 7 years ago. It wasn't amazing then.

Him: What are you getting this time?

Me: Mushroom swiss burger.

Him: How is it?

Me: Well, I don't know. I feel guilty for making my server bring it to me.

Him: In Mesquite, you want to get the steak.

Me: (flushing)

Him: Where you seated?

Me: (zipping)

Him: (staring)

Me: In the back.

Him: All right. Have a good meal. It's awesome. Get the steak. I'll stop by and check on you later.

Me:

Him:

Me: Yeah, we're leaving pretty quick.

2. I stayed at the Artisan Hotel, which used to be a Travelodge underneath I-15, but which is now either a very cool or exceptionally tacky hotel underneath I-15. All the guest rooms are named for artists and are actually appointed really well...apart from the huge painting of a naked woman with her hairy bush on the wall just adjacent to my bed in the August Macke room (#523 if you'd like to sleep in the same bed as me at some point in your life).  But the real surprise came when I was flipping through the channels on the huge flat screen in the room and came across channel 69, which, when I landed on it, featured a woman covered in cum screaming for "more dick, more dick!" At first I thought I must have hit a button on the remote and was now being changed $49.95 for hot dp action. But no, the Artisan offers free hardcore porn on channel 69 to all visitors. I was stunned and watched for another 5 hours in order to study the screen writing.

3. Fuckards follow me to all booksignings. As I sat a signing table with Charles Bock and Christopher Coake, a man walked up and stared at me.

Man: Who are you people?

Me: Just your average carbon-based life forms.

Man: What are you doing sitting here?

Me: Taking questions.

Man: What's going on at this place?

Me: it's a book festival.

Man: I've got a couple books. None in print.

Me: That's great.

Man: Who is your publisher?

Me: Why?

Man: I'm really interested in publishers.

Me: Why?

Man: Tells me a lot about the writer.

Me: Why?

Man: Well, you know, you can't get published anymore. It's impossible.

Me: Clearly that's not the case.

Man: Who are your publishers?

Me (I rattle them off)

Man: Who is your agent?

Me: You realize you haven't asked me my name?

Man: What's your name.

Me: Tod Goldberg

Man: You write anything I've heard of?

Me: I don't know, you ever hear of Tod Goldberg?

Man: No. Is he popular?

4. I visited a great bookstore in Henderson called Cheesecake & Crime. Here's the deal. I don't actually like cheesecake. The only cheesecake I've ever liked I had in NY at about 3am and it might have been the result of dire hunger. But when in Rome and all that, I took a piece when offered. And it was fucking remarkable. It was the kind of cheesecake that made me think that maybe I really do like cheesecake but that for all of these years, I've told myself that I don't and have therefore missed out on some excellent desserts. It's also a great little mystery bookshop, the kind you really don't see much of anymore when you travel around on a book tour, where the people behind the counter actually know and love books and genre fiction in particular. If you get to Las Vegas and have some money left, you should at least go for the cheesecake.

5. On Friday night, I ended up at this street fair thing in Las Vegas called First Friday. It's mostly kids dressed like they robbed a Hot Topic attempting to look cool, but failing miserably because it's hard to look cool wearing girl's jeans and eating a funnel cake. (The funnel cakes were, incidentally, quite good.) This is true of girls and boys. There was a poetry stage being hosted by my friend Jarret Keene and I'm afraid I couldn't listen to much of what was being said because it was being said in poet voice. There are two voices that make me insane: Poet voice and Michael Silverblatt's voice. Silverblatt is far more tolerable because it's broken up with the occasional comment from the authors on Book Worm as well. For example, if I were ever on the show (something I, uh, tend to think won't happen as long as I do these sorts of things, but, really, I'm sure Michael has a good sense of humor...so: dude, my new story collection comes out in the fall of 09...I'd love to be on...):

Silverblatt: Tod, I am struck by the power in your prose, the way words tumble from the page like mercury, like Jupiter, like Pluto, once a planet, but no more a planet, now just a bit of stardust, like your words, floating, inexorably, through, time. And yet, I find that your words are also like play-dough, in that when I eat them I find them at first...salty...yet...plain...and I found myself yearning for...bite...verve...only found in the works of people like Rilke, like Rick Springfield, whose girl, while Jessie's, was, in fact, no longer, like Pluto. Yes?

Me: I'm just happy to be on the show, Mike.

Poet voice, however, is a freight train of fucktardism leaving the station at a terrifyingly slow pace. Where...every...word...gets...it's...own....pause...except whenwordsareputtogetherreallyquicklyforaddedemphasis...and...then...frozen...like...the...the Hoth...planet.  Anyway. One line of poetry did stick in my head. It was uttered by a woman who must be famous, because she was dressed very well and had a shaved head, which fairly screamed to me "Tenured Faculty". It was something like, "My mother discovered her uterus was missing." Then there was a poet who is also a cop and he got up and yelled at the "grazing cows" who wouldn't stop to listen to his poetry, which consisted of a lot of screaming about, uh, well, I couldn't really make that part out. But a lot of screaming, in poet voice. The cows just kept grazing.

Vegas, Baby

For those of you in lovely Southern Nevada, I'll be doing three different events in Las Vegas today and Saturday. Today, I'll be on a panel discussing Las Vegas Noir, both the book and the form, at the Vegas Valley Book Festival.  The panel begins at 3:45 at the Historic Fifth Street School. Also on the panel will be Lori Kozlowski, Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce, moderated by Steve Grogan (I'm really hoping it's the same Steve Grogan who was the QB for the Patriots in the early 80s...). On Saturday at 11:15, also at the Fifth Street School, I'll be on a panel about Las Vegas literature with Charles Bock, Doug Unger and Chris Coake, followed by a reading and signing at Cheesecake & Crime in Henderson at 1:15.

And then I get back on a plane, fly home and hope that no one finds the trail of dead hookers I've left in my wake.

Top 5 Things I'll Miss About The Election Season

1. Seeing my oldest and dearest friend Todd Harris every night in my living room doing his pundit thing on Hardball. Now, granted, we don't agree on things like, you know, politics, but it was great to see him every day.

2. Putting off actual work in order to read fivethirtyeight.com in a futile attempt to quell my anxiety.

3. Downloading photoshopped pictures of Sarah Palin having sex on top of a dead bear.

4. Pondering when, exactly, John McCain decided he would sell his soul for the presidency. It would have been helpful if the people at fivethirtyeight.com could have just worked out a metric to measure this confounding turn.

5. Having this conversation with Wendy:

Me: These fucktards who support Palin couldn't accurately name 35 states on the map.

Wendy: Neither could you.

Me: Sure I could.

Wendy: One moment please. [Scurries off to the office, comes back a few minutes later with an empty map for each of us.] Okay. Have at it, smart guy.

Me: [I hit the west coast without a problem, but the stumbling begins just to the right of Utah. I move to Florida and handle the gulf states without a problem, but when I try to move above Texas, things get a little murky. I begin placing names on northern states based mostly on where I've seen a lot of snow-bound football games on television, but can't say with any accuracy if Green Bay actually sits on a bay and if there is anything north of North Dakota. I move to the eastern seaboard and realize that I pretty much have no idea what those little states up there on the right are -- well, I know what they are, I just don't know where they are. I realize that though I've been to North Carolina, I have no idea where South Carolina might be. Same with Nebraska, though I know it's next to Iowa because when you land in Omaha, you have to briefly drive into Iowa for a moment to go towards Nebraska City. I ponder Wyoming. I ponder how many state capitals I know, knowing that once, as a child, I knew them all by heart, like some kind of idiot savant. I start scribbling abbreviations and name several states MN.] Okay. I've completed the map of America and it is good.

Wendy: [Looking at my map and hers and comparing it to a map with all the correct names.]

Me: How did I do?

Wendy: What is COH?

Me: Oh. Uh. It's either Colorado or it's Ohio.

Wendy: You did it twice.

Me: Right.

Wendy: [Marking the maps and shaking her head.] Did you go to school?

Me: My map skills are tight.

Wendy: Ever heard of West Virginia?

Me: That's commie country.

Wendy:

Me: Who needs West Virginia, really?

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, they fuck you up by calling states "west" when they are in the east.

Wendy: You got 30 right. By luck.

Me: How many did you get?

Wendy: 47

Me:  That's because you lived in the South and the West.

Wendy: No, it's because I'm smart and paid attention in school.

Me: You give me a RISK board, I'll name all those fucking territories.

Wendy:

Me: Could you find Kamchatka?

Wendy:

Me: Irkutsk? Ural? I think not.

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, what I'm saying, really, is that there are no red states, there are no blue states, just the United States.

Wendy:

Me: I am all about the hope. So. Yeah.

Wendy: You're an idiot.

Please