Richard Curtis

Site Seeing: Richard Curtis | E-Reads.com

December 15, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

What is there to say about Richard Curtis that hasn’t already been said? If you’re interested in books, publishing, agents, writers, ethics, and the money that holds them all in a gravitational embrace, you have to read Curtis’ posts at E-Reads.com.

You have to. (You don’t always have to agree.)

I first learned of Curtis decades ago when I was trying to get a fix on the book business, to see if I wanted to move toward writing novels. Curtis’ books on the publishing industry — including How To Be Your Own Literary Agent and Beyond The Bestseller — demystified a world that many power brokers would still prefer clouded in cigar smoke.

(There is a revised 3rd edition of How To Be from 2003; Beyond doesn’t seem to have been updated, but I suspect much of the content is still relevant despite the pace of change in the industry.)

— Mark Barrett

The New Money Flow

December 1, 2009 By Mark 39 Comments

Recently, while reading a write-up of a self-publishing nightmare, I ran across mention of something called Yog’s Law, attributed to one James D. Macdonald. Having never heard of Yog’s Law before, I clicked through and learned the following:

Macdonald is well known for his work in educating aspiring authors, particularly for his advice on avoiding literary scams. Early in his career he was asked by such an author how much he had paid to have his books published, and in response began a campaign of educating other writers about the problems of vanity publishers. As part of this campaign, he coined Yog’s Law, which states “Money should flow toward the author,” which is often quoted by professional authors when giving advice on getting published.

Less than a day later, I read this in a blog post by Richard Curtis:

The line that once sharply separated traditional publishing (“We pay you”) and vanity publishing (“You pay us”) has all but dissolved in this corrosive environment of fabulous riches.

Mere hours later I found Yog’s Law quoted a third time, in a Jane Friedman blog post analyzing the Harlequin Horizons debacle:

People like to say (and I’ve said too) that money should flow TO the writer, not AWAY from the writer.

But I can see a business model emerging where publishers work with authors in more diverse ways. What we’ve held to be sacred—that a writer should NEVER pay to publish—may change.

To be clear: there are a lot of literary scams out there, and a lot of naive writers who get taken to the cleaners as a result. Whatever work James Macdonald has done to protect writers from predatory service providers who peddle false promises is a good thing.

Understanding Yog’s Law
As maxims go, Yog’s Law is not bad. In a moment I will speak to the fallacy of Yog’s Law, and to the convenience of revisiting the rule when the publishing industry decides it wants to get in on the writer-servicing business, but as a general guideline I think Yog’s Law does what it needs to do. It tells writers that anyone asking them for money should be viewed with suspicion, and that’s correct. That this core tenet could be expanded to cover most aspects of anyone’s life does not detract from its effectiveness as a general rule for aspiring writers. [ Read more ]

Richard Curtis Observes Hypocrisy

November 23, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Last Thursday, in a post about the Harlequin Horizons debacle, I wrote this:

The idea that all of these novice, amateur and un-published professional writers are suddenly going to take advantage of self-publishing tools has got to be making traditional publishers both mental and green with greed.

Today, Richard Curtis writes this:

With so much money being thrown at subsidy publishers, and with the blessing of mainstream publishing, the evolution of vanity from the margins to the center of the publishing universe is complete. The erosion of traditional gatekeepers like reviewers, critics, newspaper book editors, and other refined literary tastemakers makes it clear why even a conservative publisher might lose its head over the prospect of all that money – and be tempted to go into another racket.

Publishers go where the money is. For a long time the money was in gatekeeping, and particularly in gatekeeping the content-distribution process. The internet ended the ability of publishers to dominate distribution, so they are looking for new revenue sources, including partnering with (or getting in bed with, or joining in abusive practices with) the very vanity and subsidy publishers they used to decry.

The idea that publishers are victims of anything is now dead.

— Mark Barrett