Friday, June 5, 2009
Books The Next Pirate Hostage Will Only Get $550 and a Handjob
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 4:29 PM
Hyperion just agreed to publish a book by Richard Phillips, the captain of the ship that was taken hostage by pirates. They allegedly paid him $500,000 for the rights to publish his story. These kind of book deals astound me: People will only want to read the three chapters that deal with the hostage situation, and he'll probably talk all about that on Oprah anyway. Why spend half a million bucks for it?
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1
You don't have to sell many copies to make back $500,000. At $20 a pop, that's just 25K. If he goes on Oprah, it's guaranteed to sell that many. In the grand scheme of things, $500,000 is peanuts.
2
You don't know that. I bet the chapter on his childhood will have all sorts of insight into what made him the man who kicked pirate booty from all the way to the shores of Tripoli.
Have you ever read one of these memoirs of an everyday hero like Phillips, or that brave newspaper editor who smuggled a gun into the mayor's office? It's all about what make them tick.
Have you ever read one of these memoirs of an everyday hero like Phillips, or that brave newspaper editor who smuggled a gun into the mayor's office? It's all about what make them tick.
3
If he goes on Oprah, he'll probably make the NY Times bestseller list.
In the grand scheme of things $200 trillion is peanuts. We waste that on black box ops and subsidies for British and French firms when we bail them out for their gambling losses on "insurance" (aka CDOs) for fake mortgages packaged up in pretty bows.
Besides, I'm looking forward to chapter 7, where he goes into his deviant sexual urges towards Pygmies ...
In the grand scheme of things $200 trillion is peanuts. We waste that on black box ops and subsidies for British and French firms when we bail them out for their gambling losses on "insurance" (aka CDOs) for fake mortgages packaged up in pretty bows.
Besides, I'm looking forward to chapter 7, where he goes into his deviant sexual urges towards Pygmies ...
6
@1: If the bool sells for $20, Hyperion
gets like $9 from the distributor. And the $500K for the author is only one of many expenses associated with publication.
So, your figures are a little off.
I agree with you about WiS, though.
gets like $9 from the distributor. And the $500K for the author is only one of many expenses associated with publication.
So, your figures are a little off.
I agree with you about WiS, though.
8
I suspect the publisher is paying for exclusivity--he'll be contractually bound to promote but not to scoop his own book.
9
Wow. Let me try to explain.
The value is that this is the story of a hero -- sacrifice, leadership, male authority, duty, bravery, patriotism, etc., against a bunch of dangerous evil types. You know, "good guys" versus "bad guys"?
Um, you can find this "meme" in lots of American stories and movies ... in fact it is sort of universal. Indeed, stories of bravery on the sea, pirates, etc. well let's just say this is a proven archetype.
This hero-stuff might be viewed as inscrutably astounding, if your idea of a good read is the utopian land of Zot and its "harmless adventures." (Harmless adventures? WTF??) I hear those stories really, really sell a lot. Like what, maybe a few thousand?
There's also probably movie rights in there somewhere in this hero v. pirates thang.
Anyway, if that doesn't help I can probably rewrite it using much bigger, overblown words and hyper abstractions, like saying "dramaturgical marrative" instead of "story," etc.
Ahoy==
The value is that this is the story of a hero -- sacrifice, leadership, male authority, duty, bravery, patriotism, etc., against a bunch of dangerous evil types. You know, "good guys" versus "bad guys"?
Um, you can find this "meme" in lots of American stories and movies ... in fact it is sort of universal. Indeed, stories of bravery on the sea, pirates, etc. well let's just say this is a proven archetype.
This hero-stuff might be viewed as inscrutably astounding, if your idea of a good read is the utopian land of Zot and its "harmless adventures." (Harmless adventures? WTF??) I hear those stories really, really sell a lot. Like what, maybe a few thousand?
There's also probably movie rights in there somewhere in this hero v. pirates thang.
Anyway, if that doesn't help I can probably rewrite it using much bigger, overblown words and hyper abstractions, like saying "dramaturgical marrative" instead of "story," etc.
Ahoy==
10
Would it still be "book" if it went straight to audio book?
Like you think people would "read" his story?
Like you think people would "read" his story?
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