Charles Dickens: Get Your Cotton Pickin' Hands Off My Copyright, Pardner

Why is protecting copyright important? Who can say it better than Charles Dickens, a colossally bestselling writer in his day whose works were shamelessly pirated in a developing country with scant respect for intellectual property: the United States.


Many of you are probably aware that Dickens's celebrated American tour of 1842 was prompted in no small part by his desire to make some money in the American market. His works were hugely popular here, but he earned not a nickel (or farthing) from their sale. By coming to the States he at least made some lucrative speaking fees. While he was here, he spoke out loudly in favor of an international copyright agreement--a topic that was not warmly received by his hosts. Then, as now, Americans considered themselves a specially moral nation; we really hate to have it pointed out when we don't live up to our ideals.

I spoke [Dickens wrote to a friend], as you know, of international copyright, at Boston; and I spoke of it again at Hartford. My friends were paralysed with wonder at such audacious daring. The notion that I, a man alone by himself, in America, should venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb! Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Washington Allston -- every man who writes in this country is devoted to the question, and not one of them dares to raise his voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. It is nothing that of all men living I am the greatest loser by it. It is nothing that I have a claim to speak and be heard. The wonder is that a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their having done wrong. I wish you could have seen the faces that I saw, down both sides of the table at Hartford, when I began to talk about Scott [Sir Walter, also hugely popular and widely bootlegged]...

I had no sooner made that second speech than such an outcry began (for the purpose of deterring me from doing the like in this city) as an Englishman can form no notion of. Anonymous letters; verbal dissuasions; newspaper attacks making Colt (a murderer who is attracting great attention here) an angel by comparison with me; assertions that I was no gentleman, but a mere mercenary scoundrel....

Dickens got as far west as St. Louis. But I was delighted to discover recently that, in the imagination of one screenwriter, he made it to Nevada. On a 1963 episode of the TV Western series Bonanza, Dickens read in Carson City--where he found the audience had his work memorized already--and in one remarkable scene, gave Hoss Cartwright an impassioned defense of intellectual property. 





Yes, that's Jonathan Harris--better known as Dr. Smith of Lost in Space--as the great novelist. You can see him read from Oliver Twist here. To judge by Mark Twain's review of Dickens reading in New York, Harris may be better at the job than the great man himself. 


Update: it is both ironic and probably inevitable that the YouTube clip of Dickens defending copyright has been removed because of copyright infringement! I recently saw it posted, however, on another YouTube page. Rather than give you another link that may go out of date, I suggest you search for the TV show under "Bonanza Charles Dickens" or the episode's title, "A Passion for Justice." 

(Hat tip to the excellent Charles Dickens Page for these quotations.) 

Amazon "Fires Missile" at Book Publishers--But Is the Target Really Apple?

I had hoped to avoid writing about e-books for a while, not because I don't think they are interesting but because I'm reluctant to have one topic monopolize this page. But  developments are coming fast and furious in this quarter of publishing so you can expect to see a lot more about this here for the foreseeable future.  Witness two events of the last couple of days: First, we learned that Apple has been in discussion with the "Big Six" publishers about terms for making e-books available on their much-bruited new tablet computer. According to Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch, these discussions center around an "agency model" in which--unlike other e-tailers (notably Amazon)--publishers will own their book files and set prices while Apple will in effect take a commission on those sales rather than buy and resell the books to consumers. Although the functional difference between "reselling" and "licensing" is trivial, as Cader points out, it's huge to publishers because it gives them control over pricing and allows them to experiment in this area, instead of acceding in Amazon's attempt to commodify all titles at $9.99 or less. 

Almost simultaneously with this news, Amazon announced a new e-book model for publishers and authors, offering a 70 percent royalty (a big improvement on their usual terms) with certain key conditions--including a) the e-book must be priced no higher than $9.99 and b) it must be at least 20 percent lower than the printed book price.  

There seems to be some confusion about what this announcement means. Henry Blodget, at The Industry Insider, hollers that this move "fires a missile at the book industry" and will force publishers to cut their prices for e-books; also that it " should also solidify Amazon's already tremendous dominance of the ebook business" by enhancing the popularity of the Kindle. 

I think Blodget has it backward: Amazon is staring at the possibility, even likelihood, that a host of new e-readers--numerous models have been announced--will rapidly grab much of its share of the e-book market. Many readers, me included, actually prefer buying e-books via the Kindle store, then reading them on iPhones with their crisper more responsive display. When we can read them on a large-screen Apple tablet--and buy them via an elegant, simple Apple-designed e-book store (or through iTunes), we won't need either Amazon or Kindle. 

In other words, Amazon is trying to compete on price while Apple and others compete on quality and features. So far, Apple has been highly successful at that kind of contest. In short, I see this as a would-be preemptive strike by Amazon in anticipation of the Apple tablet. Amazon is going to be a major player in this market for the foreseeable future, but rather than being the game-changing "missile," their current move seems like an admission that they will no longer be a sole 600-pound gorilla. 

So far these events seem like good news for publishers. With several players competing to sell e-books to the public, we're less likely to be bullied by one of them, and with these differerent business models in effect we may be able to accelerate the necessary process of trial and error regarding pricing, timing and so on. 

Still, one aspect of the new Amazon pitch has the potential to further destabilize the marketplace and threaten publishers. The 70-percent royalty is surely meant to attract authors to make direct deals with Amazon, cutting out publishing houses altogether. Amazon may well offer even better terms to carry a certain e-book exclusively. This has already happened with one bestselling author, as I've discussed here. If this becomes a major trend, it could really damage publishers' profits and they can't afford to take this threat lightly. 

Where Do Authors Come From?

One question editors are frequently asked at cocktail parties is, "where do you find the books you publish? Do they all come from agents?"  Some editors, probably wiser ones than I, simply answer, "Yep." My answer is, you never know where you are going to find a publishable book or a promising author. True, the vast majority of titles I publish (probably 95 percent) come from literary agents. But a few come from other sources. When I was at Oxford University Press, many of our authors submitted their work directly, and an important part of an academic editor's job is maintaining relationships with important people in the field (whose graduate students may be the star authors of the future). I still, happily, publish some scholars whom I deal with directly.

I also believe that a good editor will create his own books: instead of sitting at a desk waiting for someone to send you something, you think of an idea for a book and go looking for the right author. Very often, that author has an agent, but creating a book this way is different from, and sometimes more satisfying than, leaving it to other people to bring you stuff.  I have published several titles, from how-to books to award-winning works of history, that came from me pitching ideas to authors.

Another happy occurrence is when authors refer their friends or colleagues to you. Some of my best authors have come to me through authors I've worked with who suggested a friend or colleague contact me. Again, often this connection involves an agent, but it's not quite the same as the agent flipping through her Rolodex and putting my name on a list. I always take referrals from an author very seriously whether or not an agent makes the submission.

But as I say, you might find an author anywhere. Many years ago, before internet shopping existed, I was an impecunious editorial assistant who bought shoes from mail-order catalogues. One day I phoned an order in to Land's End and found myself having a longer conversation than usual with the customer service rep. Hearing that my shipping address was "Persea Books," he said, "Oh, are you a publisher? I'm just learning about the publishing business now, because I'm writing a novel." This aspiring writer was working at Land's End to pay the bills, and while he actually had an agent, he wasn't going to miss an opportunity.  My shoes arrived promptly, with a literary fiction manuscript as a free bonus.

This story might be funnier if the manuscript were lousy, but on the contrary, it was quite well written. In fact, I thought it was too quiet and literary to sell, and turned it down--but a couple of years later, I saw the same manuscript was published by Simon & Schuster. Where do you find authors--or publishers? You never know.




P.S. This story is not meant to suggest I yearn for unsolicited and unagented manuscripts. I will write at another time about the slush pile, and why I don't read it any more.

E-Books: Do I Smell Another Rights Battle Brewing?

I don't know about you, but I can hardly bear to hear any more about e-books for a while, after a couple of weeks of hearing various experts' predictions for the future of publishing; hearing about the cornucopia of new e-readers being shown at the Consumer Electronics Show; and the incessant drumbeat of rumors about the Apple tablet, aka Unicorn. But a new wrinkle in the e-book rights tussle occurred to me as I was pondering Jonathan Galassi's New York Times op-ed that argued why e-book rights to backlist titles like William Styron's Sophie's Choice should remain with Styron's hardcover publisher, Random House, even though their contracts were written before e-books existed.

As I have written here before, there is legitimate (and spirited) debate about that assertion. But what I'm wondering about now is books whose contracts were drafted more recently. In the early 1990s, when the internet was starting to happen and books on CD-ROM were the hot new thing, publishers sensibly began revising their contract boilerplate to include electronic book publication among the rights granted by the author.  However, this new language drew a distinction between what's usually called "verbatim text"--i.e. the display of the author's words via some electronic device--and what was often called "multimedia"--i.e. something that included video, sound, or interactive elements (John Waters' Odoroma, perhaps) along with the written text. And in a large majority of contracts--I'd guess almost all contracts where agents were involved--multimedia rights were reserved by the author.

Most agents back then concurred with the general notion that the publisher ought to control any version of the book that involves reading it as you would the print edition. But most all of us, agents and publishers alike, thought of "multimedia" as something different from "book." (As I said in my last post, it is different from a conventional book and requires a different level of investment in content and editing.) Several agents also maintained that movie studios--agents had wrested movie rights from book publishers decades earlier--would refuse to acquire book properties unless they hoovered up anything multimedia-ish in the deal.

So from that day right up until now, most book contracts  grant "verbatim text" rights to the publisher and reserve multimedia versions to the author.

Are you seeing the problem here? Today, publishers are eager to publish "enhanced" e-books, and the enhancements include, say, author interviews on video. One company, Vook, has launched a business specifically to create versions of print books that include pictures, film clips, hyperlinks and so on.

This may not be an issue for new titles, where the enhanced edition is conceived when or before the contract is drawn.  But it's going to be very tricky for the last 15 years' worth of books. Unlike the situation with authors from the 50s or 60s, where publishers can argue the author's general grant of book rights included a form not yet invented, we're talking about contracts that explicitly do give the publisher the right to a Kindle-type, text-only e-book, but not to a Vook-type, text-plus-video/audio/Odorama version.  Even if the "enhancement" is a two-minute Q&A with the author, filmed with a Flip cam, one could argue that's multimedia.

I still believe e-book rights should stay with the original publisher, but we will have to revise our definitions of e-books and our boilerplate language to avoid a situation where the publisher could find his author issuing a competing e-edition on the grounds it's a "multimedia adaptation."

It won't be the main theater of operations, but this could be a new front in the e-book wars.