Tuesday News: Advice from the Authors Guild; the state of scientific research; movie, tv, and book adaptations
Authors Guild warns authors over contributing online articles for free – So does each new president of the Author’s Guild undergo some kind of organizational mind-meld program? Because the main tune seems to be eerily similar from year to year (and president to president). Google is evil, Amazon is evil, and, by the way, authors shouldn’t provide free content to venues like The Huffington Post because it contributes to the devaluation of writing, according to this interview with current AG President Roxana Robinson. I did do a particularly painful eyeroll at Robinson’s insistence that “other” types of writers are making more money and having their work protected so much more than book authors, though.
Robinson said The Authors Guild would not advise any author to stop writing for publications, but argued that an article by an author on a website may not lead to book sales. “I don’t know that anyone has figures on sales that result from this kind of writing (for free),” she said. “Everyone says, ‘get your name out there’, but does that really translate to connecting to the hard mental presence of the book? We want writers to recognise what is happening, to be aware of this trend, that writers themselves are contributing to the idea that their writing doesn’t deserve to be paid for.”
Robinson said there was “definitely a difference between how authors and other people are viewed”, adding: “The idea that software writers be well compensated and that their work should be protected but book writers’ should not . . . that’s a real problem.” The Authors Guild seeks to “protect and support” all authors, Robinson said, including independently and traditionally published writers. –The Bookseller
Editor In Chief Of World’s Best Known Medical Journal: Half Of All The Literature Is False – Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of Lancet, tells us that things are even worse than we thought when it comes to faked research results. This article from Collective Evolution quotes Horton and Marcia Angell, editor-in-chief of the New England Medical Journal, both of whom are not optimistic about much of the research being reported on today, although Horton suggests that journal editors are culpable to some degree, too. All in all, a depressing but important discussion that clearly needs to be happening more widely.
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” (source)
This is quite distrubing, given the fact that all of these studies (which are industry sponsored) are used to develop drugs/vaccines to supposedly help people, train medical staff, educate medical students and more.
It’s common for many to dismiss a lot of great work by experts and researchers at various institutions around the globe which isn’t “peer-reviewed” and doesn’t appear in a “credible” medical journal, but as we can see, “peer-reviewed” doesn’t really mean much anymore. “Credible” medical journals continue to lose their tenability in the eyes of experts and employees of the journals themselves, like Dr. Horton. –Collective Evolution
The 10 Types of Book-to-Film Adaptations – Genre fiction, especially Romance, gets accused of being “formulaic” all the time, as it formula were a bad thing, or unique to certain types of stories. Well, check out this top ten list from Newsweek on the types of books that get adapted to film. Beyond the obvious categories like the Bible and Shakespeare are genres like Romance and thrillers, and, in what may be the every possible category rolled into one…
STEPHEN KING
Did you know that in 1982 King published a collection of four novellas called Different Seasons, and that three of them—“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” “The Body,” and “Apt Pupil”—were adapted into films you’re probably familiar with. (“The Body” became Stand By Me; you should be able to figure out the other two.) So yes, the man deserves his own category. If you’re wondering how to make money as a fiction writer, just follow King’s example and have over 50 of your books developed into major motion pictures. Bow down. –Newsweek
‘Once Upon a Time’ Reveals Cover for ‘Red’s Untold Tale’ Novel (Exclusive) – I lost interest in the tv series Once Upon A Time a few seasons ago, but I’m kind of interested in way this series has fostered so much tv-to-book adaptation. I like that it’s going from television and to book form, although I’d be curious to know the constitution of the audience. Is it primarily fans of the tv series, and if so, what is the demographic these books are aiming for? I know this isn’t an entirely new concept, but it seems an interesting example of the extent to which the fan base is still being cultivated, despite the end of the series.
Red’s Untold Tale (written by Wendy Toliver) is the latest title to join Once Upon a Time’s growing collection of books and graphic novels. Hyperion released Reawakened: A Once Upon a Time Tale in 2013. Marvel released its own graphic novel backstory collection for the Rumple (Robert Carlyle)-Belle (Emilie de Ravin) pairing that also stars Jefferson (Sebastian Stan), Killian (Colin O’Donoghue) and the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) — which included an exploration into her relationship with the Huntsman (Jamie Dornan). –Hollywood Reporter
I can certainly think of three authors, off the top of my head, who had free content translate into book sales to me. That said, all were providing it on their own blog and one of them has cautioned writers about contributing just for the promise of getting your name out there.
I’m really hoping the medical one is overestimating the problem.
I am still hoping that unless they can do it right, that the IT remake and the Dark Tower wont be made into big screen movies. There is not a way to do either with just one 1.5 hour movie.
Maybe only authors with the group think mindset are elected to the leadership of the Author’s Guild.
Y’know, I actually wrote and submitted an sf short story for publication about five years ago with the exact premise of that article about dodgy research, but it was rejected as “too implausible.”
I’d like to feel vindicated, but I just feel scared.