The Publishing Contrarian

I hadn’t even intended to go to any of the movies being shown at the 14^th Hamptons International Film Festival. Like a lot of the people who own homes out here, when the Friday night cars stream into town and the Jitney and Luxury Liner buses disgorge the weekenders from the city, we head for deep water. (Oh, wait, I forgot, I had just gotten out here myself on Thursday from the city. That’s right, I was disgorged too, just a bit earlier than the others!) Eleven thousand additional people were expected in East Hampton for the festival! Dive, Dive!

My neighbor, Katy, had miraculously cadged two free tickets to the film 1:1 from a friend who had been doing volunteer work at the festival. Katy invited me, and after last week’s posting with its subsequent vitriolic, finger pointing, name calling (You’re a racist! No, you’re a racist!), email slug-fest around the blogosphere, I needed to sit in a dark theater and regain my sanity. So Katy and I fought for a parking space in town, and joined cinephiles who had trekked in from all over the United States and maybe even the world. The very honest Katy bought a gigantic, butter-soaked bag of popcorn while the opportunistic Wicked Witch dropped down on all fours and sneaked past the overpriced concession with her large diet-coke and stash of oatmeal cookies purchased down the street.   
 
1:1 started and within minutes I had caught the film festival bug—and caught it bad. I knew I would try to snag a press pass in the morning. And, yes, I hoped that some of these films originated as literary fiction or nonfiction books or memoirs so that I could tie the movies I saw to my publishing blog and keep one step ahead of the “tend to your knitting” crowd. (You know who you are!)
 
How to Grift a Press Pass to an international  film festival: Up at dawn I knew the challenge would be to convince someone (it would turn out to be the very handsome D’Arcy Drollinger from Springer Associates in New York City) that I was, indeed, worthy of a press pass. How was I going to pull this off, simple blogger that I am?  Here’s how I did it:   (more…)

“Greetings, my name is [–] and I’m the director of [–], you are slated to do a book signing with us…. I want to know if you are a black/African American person.”

The above is an email message posted by author Millenia Black on her blog Millenia Black—Taking Care of Business. Click on the link above and scroll down to March 13th to see the entire posting.

This blunt email message sent Black into paroxisms of indignation. She felt her race was nobody’s business when it came to book promotion and she was incensed that the director of the bookstore would even dare ask such a question. So insulted was Black that she canceled her appearance and left the director in the lurch, forced to locate an alternative author to make an appearance. And 25 out of 26 commentors joined the rage-in:

“The frickin’ nerve of some people! I’d make sure this idiot looks like the dumb shit he is.” – Lynn Ray Harris

“I think I would call the store and ask to speak to the manager. I would try to get the person who did that FIRED!!!” —Anonymous

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I loved making money while I slept. Every time someone bought one of my nonfiction books, I was probably sleeping or reading on the beach on Block Island, Rhode Island or in East Hampton, New York, or lounging somewhere with a margarita in my hand, humming “Girl from Ipanema.” (”Tall and tan and young and lovely….”

I once went to Yankee Stadium (seating capacity 56,937), looked at all those people, and thought: “Whoa, look at that sea of faces. If each one of them would just buy a single copy of my book I’d make some good money.” And, in fact, several hundred thousand people over the years would indeed buy my books, but I never made great money, certainly not the kind of money I had envisioned when my books started to sell well. But that was then and this is now and I’m not writing books to make money anymore because I have learned that book royalties are just too hard to earn in quantity—even when I’m sleeping, tanning or carousing—and there are too many tricks in book publishing contracts designed to make certain that my share of the profits ends up the smallest share.

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