Scott Turow, the Chicago lawyer who wrote the megahit novel ”Presumed Innocent,” was taken aback last week. He got a letter from a publisher in Argentina that was perfectly clear on how many Spanish-language copies of his book had been sold there.
The document, known as a royalty statement, was in Spanish and English. It disclosed the current exchange rate and was, he said, ”far more comprehensible than most American royalty statements.”
Indeed, fuzzy accounting is one reason that scores of authors, including Chicagoans Turow and Studs Terkel, are joining the National Writers Union in openly challenging the publishing industry to improve the lot of authors.
Turow, the former prosecutor now with a Loop law firm, is not oppressed. He hit gold with ”Presumed Innocent,” which will be a movie starring Harrison Ford, and loves his publisher, Farrar Straus & Giroux. But he remembers indignities faced as an unknown trying to hawk his first book, the non-fiction ”One L,” and supports the union`s proposed changes.
An open letter from the New York-based union to the board of the Association of American Publishers notes that the $14 billion industry is on a ”roller-coaster ride.” Budget-cutting by big corporations is rampant;
select authors are signed to million-dollar deals while others get pennies.
”Publishers` fortunes may rise and fall, but for the majority of authors the hard times are constant,” the letter says. Most authors can`t support themselves, it maintains, with the average full-time published author earning about $10,000 a year from writing, often needing a second job or help from a spouse`s earnings.
Most such writers get advances of $5,000 to $25,000 for efforts that may take years to complete. A writer`s median annual income is as low as $5,000, according to one survey. Other realities include:
– Royalties: An advance is normally paid in installments: a chunk upon signing, a second chunk when handing in the manuscript, and the rest on publication. Royalties come after book sales have repaid the advance, with publishers often banking an author`s money for months and taking the interest. Royalties tend to be 10 percent of the first 5,000 books sold after repaying the advance, 12.5 percent on the next 5,000 and 15 percent for everything above.
– Subsidiary rights: Contracts usually let publishers market rights to a book in paperback, audiocassete, film or TV. Those proceeds are usually split equally by publisher and author.
– Royalty statements: Contracts mandate publishers to send two reports a year to authors on copies sold. If book sales exceed the advance, the statement should include a check.
– Reserves against returns: Publishers let stores return unsold copies for full credit up to 12 months after they`re received. They can withhold royalties as a ”reserve against returns.”
The union seeks four reforms:
– Royalty payments within 30 days of the closing of a royalty period. Money held as a reserve against returns should be limited.
– Easier-to-understand royalty statements: The union says many are incomprehensible and should be standardized to include basic facts, such as how many copies were printed and remain in stock.
– Non-returnable advances: Authors should not be forced to return any portion already paid, even if the book isn`t published.
– Arbitraton: If an author thinks he`s getting the contractual shaft, this option, less costly than litigation, is urged.
Turow recalls that when G.P. Putnam published his 1977 non-fiction account of Harvard Law School, ”One L,” he got a $4,000 advance and then gagged when realizing that many stores didn`t have it. Putnam had somehow lost 8,500 copies in a warehouse.
The experience taught him that publishing is ”the classic model of unequal bargaining power.”
Lawrence Hughes, the association chairman, was unmoved by the union missive. ”Author agreements are matters for individual negotiations between individual publishers and individual authors or their paid representatives.” Gay Talese went home again last week-and felt like a kid at the circus.
Newspapers are rarely surprising, but Wednesday`s New York Times had a pleasant curiosity on Page 1: A report on the 25th anniversary of a historic civil rights march in Selma, Ala., by Talese, a onetime Times star who left the paper, soon after covering the march, for a bigtime career as magazine writer and author.
Talese, 58, had written book reviews and a few magazine pieces for the paper since splitting. But his byline hadn`t surfaced in the news pages of the paper he chronicled in ”The Kingdom and the Power” for 25 years.
Talese was dining with former Times Editor A.H. Rosenthal two weeks ago and suggested that Rosenthal, who writes a column of modest impact, go to Selma for the anniversary. Rosenthal said Talese would be the better choice.
Soon, Talese was talking to the Times hierarchy and then was heading south.
He rented a typewriter in Selma, snooped around, heard of an interracial marriage about to take place, and used the affair as centerpiece for his tale. He banged it out-he still works on typewriters, not computers-and smiled when he saw the result on a newsstand as he arrived back at New York`s LaGuardia Airport.
”I loved the whole thing,” said Talese, who trekked about Selma with a Chicagoan and new Times photographer, Michelle Agins, former official photographer for Mayor Harold Washington.
”The happiest time of my life was as a newspaper reporter,” Talese said. ”In Selma, I felt young again. I`m finishing a book on my Italian background. It`s taken eight years. It`s been miserable. Writing a book is hardly exhilarating.”
”But coming to the airport and seeing my story on Page 1! Talk about instant gratification. You can`t beat that. To hell with book writing.”
WGN-Radio may make a distinction without a real difference in refusing an ad for a treatment center aimed at those suffering from male sexual dysfunction, or impotence. An ad for Chicago`s Thorek Hospital and Medical Center starts like this:
Female Voice: ”Sweetheart.”
Male Voice: ”I used to cringe when she said that. I was impotent . . . and it meant something I didn`t want to face. So I found excuses-too tired, too busy, too late, too early, whatever I could think up. I was too scared to see what I was doing to my life. I actually convinced myself it was incurable. . . . I talked to our family doctor . . . made an appointment (at Thorek). They listened, and they understood, and most importantly they helped me.”
Two similar, seemingly understated ads were given to six stations. Five accepted-WNIB-FM, WNUA-FM, WJJD-AM, WJMK-FM and WLIT-FM-but not the king of Chicago radio.
WGN`s Lori Brayer, manager of broadcast services, informed the hospital,
”We feel it is our responsibility to cover sensitive or controversial topics, not as commercials, but as full-length feature programs.”
Brayer said the station strays from anything that might be considered
”sensitive and distressing,” including incontinence and cancer. It would have been fine to briefly mention that impotence was treated, but not dwell on it in a 30-second spot.
So, one can catch the ads between Chopin and Liszt on classical WNIB. But not between Collins and Leonard on WGN.
Impotence of another sort is playing out in St. Louis where the frustrated Newspaper Guild unit at the Post-Dispatch turned to a well-worn form of protest last week, while management decided that a dispute with workers was too sensitive and controversial for its columns.
The contract between the Pulitzer-owned paper and the union, which represents editorial employees, expired March 1. Starting Wednesday, union members exercised their right to withhold their names from stories.
A tiny group, notably star gossip columnist Jerry Berger, quit the union and kept bylines. The pro-union majority included two columnists, Elaine Viets and Bill McClellan, who broached the subject of the talks in columns the paper refused to run.
The columns are far from incendiary. Viets penned a heartfelt recollection of her grandfather, a working-class backer of union principles, who reminded her never to forget where she came from.
McClellan, a Royko-esque sort, harkened back to working for a non-union Phoenix paper owned by Eugene Pulliam, Vice President Dan Quayle`s granddad, while ”Quayle was hitting four-irons for the Indiana National Guard.” The Pulliams hated unions but at least were upfront about it, he wrote. At the politically liberal Post-Dispatch, ”things are a bit fuzzier.”
WLS-TV sportscaster Jim Rose, best known not so much for covering Michael Jordan as for journalistically caressing him, last week turned basketball into softball.
Amid ABC News allegations of payoffs to King High School basketball coach Landon Cox for steering players to certain colleges, Rose got Cox for the station`s Sunday night ”Sports Final.”
”Those at the top of the hill are always being dug at by those at the bottom,” declared Rose to Cox. Later, referring to his journalistic confreres, Rose said, ”Where do these guys get these sort of allegations from?”
Cox did not appear to be sweating under Rose`s soothing interrogation.
