A Political Football in A Teacup

I’m off writing a long way from the internet right now, but just learned I’m being used – for, I’m pretty sure, the first time – as a political football, with Questions Being Asked and everything.

So. To bring everybody up to speed:

About a month ago I was asked if I’d go and talk in Stillwater Library on a Sunday afternoon. The request came in from Greater Talent Agency, who book my speaking engagements. I was asked to give an hour-long talk, which would also be broadcast on Public Radio. This would the first in a series of talks by local authors in libraries outside of the Twin Cities.

As anyone who’s read the FAQ (which was written in 2002, thus the Clinton reference) or has been reading this blog for a while knows, if you want to hire me to come and talk somewhere, and people do, I’m expensive. Not just a bit pricy. Really expensive.

The main reason I got a speaking agency, ten years ago, was because too many requests for me to come and speak were coming in. And the speaking requests were, and are, a distraction from what I ought to be doing, which is writing. So rather than say no, we’ve always priced me high. Not Tony Blair high, or Sarah Palin high (last time I read about them, they’re about $400,000 and $150,000 respectively). But I’m at the top end of what it costs to bring an author who should be home writing and does not really want a second career as a public speaker to your event.

So if you want to pay me to come in and talk, it’s expensive.

The vast majority of the events I do and of the talks, lectures or readings I give are done for free, often as charity fundraisers. (For example: the night before the Stillwater event I spent the day in Chicago, speaking to 1600 people who had paid up to $250 a ticket, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/04/18/neil-gaiman-at-c2e2/ is a description of the event.)

So. I was asked if I’d come and talk at Stillwater, and be paid $40,000. I said, “That’s an awful lot of money for a little library.”

“It’s not from the library. It’s from the Legacy Fund, a Minnesota tax allocation that allows the library to pay market rates to bring authors to suburban libraries who otherwise wouldn’t be able to bring them in. They have to use the money now as it won’t roll over to next year and expires next month.”

“Ah.”

Well, that seemed fairly simple. They’d already booked a number of other authors. They had the money sitting there and were happy to pay me my rack rate. Either they gave the money to me or it went away – it couldn’t be used for anything else. And, most importantly, the dates worked. Another week and I would have had to say no, as I would have been away writing. But I got in from Chicago that morning. I said yes.

I figure money like that, sort of out-of-the-blue windfall money, is best used for Good Deeds, so I let a couple of small and needy charities (one doing social work, the other library/book based) know that I would be passing the money on to them, after agents had taken their commission, and did not think twice about it.

(I don’t like talking about how much money I make, because I spent enough years as a starving journalist to know what it’s like not to have money, and to envy or resent those who do. But if you’re wondering how I can afford to blithely wave goodbye to a fee like that: I make my money writing. I sell a lot of books, in dozens of countries around the world, every year. I write and occasionally co-produce movies, and I sell the film rights to my books and stories. The Graveyard Book spent over a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. Instructions came out this week, and went straight in at #4. There were months last year when I had four different books on the New York Times Bestseller Lists at the same time. Like I said, I’m a writer, and I get paid for my writing.)

The day was fun, the auditorium, which held about 500 people was full, and it felt a lot more intimate than the Big City events I’d done for 1600 and 1500 people the previous nights. I gave an hour’s talk. I did an hour’s Q&A with the people there. I stuck around for two hours after that, saying hullo to everyone, posing for photos, generally trying to meet everyone who was there, and then, when everyone was done and had gone, I went home.

The Legacy Fund, from which the money to pay me came, is used for Minnesota’s Parks, Museums, Arts, and comes from a sales tax allocation. It is a Big Political Deal. Which meant Paying An Author Lots of Money From That Fund was going to become a Big Political Deal.

I saw a mention of it on the School Library Journal blog, and responded to there:

Obviously I do a lot of speaking for free. The night before I'd done a pro bono 3 hour reading/Q&A as a benefit for the CBLDF in Chicago, in front of 1600 people, who had paid up to $250 a ticket to attend.

Four days before I'd done "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" internet talk with the Jessamine Public Library for nothing, because they asked me to, and because it was National Library Week (although they sent me a wonderful Kentucky nibbles gift basket as a thank you).

In fact most of the talks and appearances I do are for free.

But if you want to hire me to come in and talk, it's expensive.

My speaking fees are high. I keep them that way intentionally. Here's what it says on my website's Frequently asked questions:

"Q. How can I get Neil Gaiman to make an appearance at my school/convention/event?

A. Contact Lisa Bransdorf at the Greater Talent Network. Tell her you want Neil to appear somewhere. Have her tell you how much it costs. Have her say it again in case you misheard it the first time. Tell her you could get Bill Clinton for that money. Have her tell you that you couldn't even get ten minutes of Bill Clinton for that money but it's true, he's not cheap.

On the other hand, I'm really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn't say 'no' a lot."

For this event, nobody asked my representatives if I would do it for less than a normal speaking fee. (I do sometimes. Normally only for libraries.) I was assured before I agreed to sign on that this money was not coming from the library system, but from the 200 million sales tax Legacy Fund. It was a wonderful afternoon. And yesterday Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the entire one hour talk (although not the Q&A).

And, although I'm not sure that it's anyone's business, when I get money like this, I put it back out again. In this case, 25% of what I get goes to a social/abuse charity, and the other 75% goes to an author/literature/library related charity program.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1010000101/post/1620054162.html

And I figured that was that.

But since then the story has embiggened. It made it onto the front page of the city section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Nobody from the Star Tribune tried to contact me or my assistant or agent for any quotes on this, which I find a bit depressing, given that they have my email and phone number from dozens of previous interviews.)

(Apparently the Star Tribune is against the Legacy Fund, and feels the money should go to fund a $790 million dollar stadium instead, per http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/05/neil_gaimans_sp.php and http://www.minnpost.com/artsarena/2010/05/07/18007/in_defense_of_libraries_both_home_and_public)

So, to answer all the sorts of comments I’m seeing on these articles in one place:

How can you justify asking for $45,000 to come and speak?

The scary thing is that if you are (to pick a couple of real-life examples from the last few years) an advertising congress or the R&D department of a multinational car company, I charge a lot more than that to come and speak. And people pay it very happily.

When you came and talked at our library you charged a lot less than that.

Yeah, I do that. Greater Talent Agency knows that I’ll often lower prices for libraries. In this case, no-one asked if I’d do it for less.

Why wasn’t this money being used to fund a little library somewhere? Or pay a librarian? Or buy books for people? Or Do Good? Aren’t you ripping off libraries by accepting it?

The money came from a specific fund that was allocated to this purpose. As Boing Boing explains http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html:

“The money comes from a grant for programs like this. It can't be used to buy books or pay salaries. The money was only allocated in October, 2009 and had to be spent by June, 2010 or it would be taken back. This was a big-ticket, inaugural event to generate interest in the program.”

Yes, but this is public money.

It definitely is. The idea was to get authors in to talk, and to pay them for it. And to get people talking about books, authors and libraries. It seems to be working.

Me? I think these things should be organised in a way that permits unspent Legacy money for libraries from one year to roll over into the following years.

But you only brought in 500 people!

Sure. If we’d done the event on a Friday night in Minneapolis I’m sure I would have been talking to a few thousand people (I did the last time I did one there). But the whole point of an event like this is to get authors out to the suburbs, not to bring more events to the Cities. About 500 people in an auditorium that held about 500 people on the first sunny Sunday afternoon of summer was pretty good by Stillwater standards. (More and they wouldn’t have had anywhere to sit.) As it was the talk was broadcast by, and is still up on MPR and has been listened to by many thousands of people all over the state and all over the world.

(It's up here at MPR, where there's also some interesting comments: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/05/second_takes_on_gaimans_fee.shtml

You’re not even a local author. You live 230 miles away from Stillwater in Green Lake Wisconsin! It says so in the blog that broke the story.

I’ve never been to Green Lake. Actually I live about half an hour away from Stillwater. Apparently people start lying when they want to use you as a political football.

$45,000? For a Sci Fi Author? I’ve never heard of you.

That’s okay. I’ve never heard of you either.

....

Also of interest, Cory Doctorow’s comments on the Boing Boing thread: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html#comment-784346

And seeing you are here anyway, the review of Instructions from Publishers Weekly, which makes me happy because it says such good things about Charles Vess's art, and it ends "All Ages":

Instructions
Neil Gaiman, illus. by Charles Vess, Harper, $14.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-196030-7

"Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before," invites Gaiman's poem, first published in A Wolf at the Door (2000), reborn as a lavishly illustrated small-format picture book. A bipedal, bushy-tailed cat, wearing attire befitting Robin Hood, enters a fairy tale landscape filled with subtle and obvious allusions to familiar characters and stories. A cottage door leads him into a hallway of dramatic arches where a cat with an injured paw becomes his companion ("if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it. If it tells you that it is dirty, clean it"). The wanderers press on, encountering a castle containing three sequestered princesses ("Do not trust the youngest. Walk on"), a ghostly ferryman, and other creatures. Recalling his work on Gaiman's Blueberry Girl, Vess's compositions are distinguished by elegant, winding lines--gnarled vines, plumes of smoke, dragon tails--and intimate frames that evoke moments of gentle wisdom. Young readers should relish the chimerical vision while older Gaiman fans should grasp the underlying suggestion that the compass used to navigate fairy tales can also guide us in the real world. All ages. (May)

Labels: Instructions, Legacy Fund, stillwater, why it can be dangerous to talk to authors

Stopgap

This isn't actually the next blog entry. Well, it is, but it's just by way of a stopgap until I get an hour's downtime to actually write the next entry, the one that takes me from Chicago and the CBLDF to Stillwater and the UK, with volcanoes and suchlike on the way.

I'm on deadlines right now, which means that there's been nothing much happening except writing, and burning food. I'm getting to be really good at burning food. Baked apples mostly, which are things I can pop into the Aga (a big metal always-on oven out where I am staying on my own right now) and forget about until they've turned into black things that have to be soaked and scraped off the inside of the cookware.

The episode of Doctor Who I've written finished its No Longer at the End of Eleven Season One But Now Near the Start of Eleven Season Two rewrite last night and has gone off to the powers that be.

The Graveyard Book has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. It's also nominated for a Kate Greenway Medal for illustration, for Chris Riddell, which makes it the first book in 30 years to be nominated for both the Greenway and the Carnegie. (To make matters more tense, Chris is up against Dave McKean for the Greenaway -- Dave was nominated for our book CRAZY HAIR.)

Here's the Carnegie Medal nominations and judges' comments: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=press_carnegie_2010_shortlistcomments.htm

and the Greenaway nominations comments: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=press_greenaway_2010_shortlistcomments.htm

I've also started to get good at chasing sheep out of the garden.

In other news, the One Book One Twitter voting finished:

Jeff Howe of Crowdsourcing explains the idea here, on the voting page:

For anyone just joining us, One Book, One Twitter (#1b1t) is an effort to get everyone on Twitter to read the same book this summer. Usually such “Big Read” programs are organized around geography. Seattle started the trend for collective reading in 1998 when zillions of Seattlites all read Russell Banks’ book, Sweet Hereafter. Chicago followed suit with To Kill a Mockingbird a few years later.

This Big Read is organized around Twitter, and says to hell with physical limitations. Over the last few weeks, thousands of people from around the world nominated six books to include on the list of finalists.

He explains it further over at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-howe/what-if-everyone-on-twitt_b_545080.html.

I've been keeping semi-quiet about it, because the first time I twittered about it people started suggesting I was flooding the votes (although American Gods was in the lead then), and I decided to make sure people understood I wasn't stumping for votes, either on the nomination or the voting process. But I think One Book One Twitter is a great idea -- a sort of worldwide book club.

The voting concluded a few hours ago, and American Gods won, and now I can talk about it. As an author, I'm half-pleased and half-not, mostly because American Gods is such a divisive sort of book. Some people love it, some sort of like it, and some people hate it. (As contrasted with, say, The Graveyard Book, which some people love, some like, and a statistically insignificant number of people hate.) It's not a book I'd hand out to everyone, because the people who don't know anything about what I've written and who hate it -- who might have loved Stardust, or Neverwhere, or The Graveyard Book or Sandman -- probably won't go and look any further.

(On Amazon.com, American Gods has 535 4 and 5 star reviews, to 128 1 or 2 star reviews: four people like it for each one that really doesn't. The Graveyard Book, for contrast, has 321 4 or 5 star reviews and 31 1 or 2 stars -- ten to one people like it.)

But it's happened, I'm kind of thrilled that I get to help kick off something this new, and I'm going to do all I can to help. Which, today, will consist of making sure I let all the publishers around the world who have AMERICAN GODS in print know about this, and, over the next few months, sending helpful or apologetic tweets to people who are stuck, offended, or very, very confused.

And possibly at the end of the reading period, if Crowdsourcing and the readers want, I could do some kind of Twitter Interview, answering as many of the questions as I can in 140 characters.

And Two Days Ago INSTRUCTIONS was published.

And, in case you missed it, here's a link to a site with the wonderful video that HarperChildrens and Brady Hall made from Charles Vess's pencils and finished art, and my reading of it from the Fragile Things Audiobook.

Okay. Back to work. Proper blog soon. With questions and answers and everything.

Labels: bigger on the inside, burning food, Carnegie Medal, Greenaway Medal, Instructions, One Book One Twitter

Just Happiness

This is an animation of Charles Vess's art, turning Pencils into Paintings, with me saying the poem over it, to promote the book of INSTRUCTIONS we've done. And it is so beautiful. I am really proud of the job that the Harper's team did on this. I want to make everyone watch it.



For those having RSS problems, or who cannot see an embedded video here, the direct YouTube link is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWRvqO1MjIs. You can also go to http://www.mousecircus.com/extras.aspx and click on it there. And there are other goodies on that page too.

Labels: Charles Vess, happy posts, Instructions

Four Hives Of Bees and things on my kitchen table...

I'm home.

When I left, it was winter. I've come home to the kind of Spring that means that Summer is just rumbling around like someone shuffling his feet waiting to be invited into a room: temperatures in the 70s, everything green and warm and welcoming.

The best news is that all four hives of bees survived the winter. I wasn't sure that they would -- was pretty certain that the red hive (which swarmed last year) would be empty (it wasn't), but all the lessons from the previous year had been learned, and luck was with us. (Sharon Stiteler wrote about the bees here, while I was on the road.)

My dog and my daughter were both very happy to see me home again. One of them has started driver's ed. and has a driving permit.

(I didn't put up the picture of me and Neil Jordan far above London on Tuesday. Here it is...)

There were many amazing things waiting for me when I got home. I haven't even finished opening the mail from when I was away -- there are two large tubs sitting in the kitchen, not to mention random boxes, envelopes and just things. Things I have discovered in the mail so far include:

THE SORCERER'S HOUSE, by Gene Wolfe.

A proof copy of STORIES, edited by Al Sarrantonio and me. The US edition looks like this:

(I am so very proud of this book, from Tom Gauld's wonderful cover on. Contributors are, in story order, Roddy Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanne Harris, Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith, Joe R. Lansdale, Walter Mosley, Richard Adams, Jodi Picoult, Michael Swanwick, Peter Straub, Lawrence Block, Jeffrey Ford, Chuck Palahniuk, Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan, Gene Wolfe, Carolyn Parkhurst, Kat Howard, Jonathan Carroll, Jeffrey Deaver, Tim Powers, Al Sarrantonio, Kurt Andersen, Michael Moorcock, Elizabeth Hand, and Joe Hill. And the stories are remarkable.)

An advance copy of Instructions, my poem illustrated by Charles Vess.

My Dalek from WETA. Here seen in my kitchen, not entirely assembled:

And here seen with my dog, all assembled and plotting to take over the world.

More kitchen table things tomorrow...

....

Over at Neverwear, there's a 24 hour preorder on Molly Crabapple's print of my poem DESERT WIND, during which time it's on sale for $28 rather than $38. It's really lovely

Click on it to see it bigger:

Molly blogs about it at http://mollycrabapple.com/2010/04/01/my-poster-for-neil-gaiman/ while Nicola Black, who designed it, talks about the design process at http://nicolablack.com/2010/04/neil-gaiman-desert-wind-poster/.

Cat Mihos, who owns, runs and is the presiding genius of Neverwear.net, has the print up for sale, along with an interview with Molly, at http://neverwear.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=44. To repeat, it'll be $28 until 4.00pm PST tomorrow, when it goes up to $38. (And then, judging from previous prints, it will stay $38 until Cat notices they are running very low at which point it will go up to $75.)

(I don't know if it's a limited print, like the Jim Lee 100 Words one, or the all but sold-out Jouni Koponen The Day The Saucers Came, or not.)

...

Just found that I am a contender on the ranking of influentialness on TIME Magazine Most Influential Person of 2010 list. I do not think I am very influential, but here's the link, to vote for me or for anyone else. Or, more importantly, just to see a picture of me with a TARDIS pin on the Time Magazine Website.

Labels: bees, I am a Dalek, Instructions, Stories collection, Time Magazine

From the Department of Only In Fiction

Strange moments of juxtaposition that make you feel like you're living in a novel:

It had been the kind of day that meant I never quite got to look at the post. After dinner I opened the various packages on the kitchen table.

The first thing I opened was a secondhand copy of "The Inner Hebrides and their Legends" by Otta F. Swire, and I opened it to a random page and read,

"...the third of May, when the Devil and his angels were cast out of heaven (and therefore 3rd May is a day on which no important undertaking should be begun and on which it is unpardonable to commit a crime)..."

That's interesting, I thought. I could put that in a story, the next time I need a date of ill-omen. I put the book down.

I opened the next envelope. It was huge, and came from Bloomsbury books in the UK, and contained -- well, what it contained was on the note accompanying it, which said, in tidy handwriting,

Dear Neil

I'm delighted to enclose proofs of the Bloomsbury edition of "Instructions" (to be published on 3rd May).

With best wishes,

Madeleine

That's a bit heavy-handed, I thought. If I were writing this, I'd drop the 3rd May date in on something that happened tomorrow, to give everyone reading a chance to forget.

Real life is so strangely written, sometimes.

Right. Back to work. I think tomorrow I may do a "These books have arrived here and are currently sitting on my kitchen table and extremely interesting," post, complete with photos. You need to know about Charles Vess's Drawing Down the Moon, for a start.

...

Also, while I think of it -- the Bela Fleck Danse Macabre that I gave an iTunes link to last week, is also available on Amazon.com.

And I'm honoured to be nominated for the The ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award

The 2010 nominees for the ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award:
o Neil Gaiman
o Steve Geppi
o Paul Levitz
o Dave Sim
o Bob Wayne

The 2010 nominees in the posthumous category for the ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award:
o Will Eisner
o Carol Kalish
o Phil Seuling
o Julius Schwartz

If I had a vote (I don't, not being a comics retailer) I'd probably vote for Paul Levitz, by a hair, with me in last place, on the living-people list, and, um, choosing between those last four names..? Ow. Not easy. Four giants who made the world of comics what it is. I am glad I am not a voting comics retailer.

Labels: Do people in books ever feel like this? 3rd May, Instructions

Your Instructions, should you choose to accept them...

When Blueberry Girl was published, and, much to our relief, people loved it, many of us had the same idea at the same time... my poem "Instructions", wouldn't that be rather wonderful illustrated by Charles?

I asked Charles what he thought, and he liked the idea, and Elise Howard, our editor, liked the idea too. We'd made, in Blueberry Girl, a picture book aimed not really at kids at all (although lots of kids seem to love it) but at mums and mothers to be, and daughters, and despite Borders initially refusing to stock or sell it, it had still made the NYT list, and, more importantly, it had made people happy. Could we do something like that aimed at everyone? And could we do it in less than the three years it took Charles to do Blueberry Girl?

I wasn't sure. I did know that the problem wasn't mine, though. It was Charles's. And Charles Vess is a remarkable man, and an amazing artist...

Over at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/447 Charles tells the story of how he evolved the main character (boy? girl?) and shows the evolution of some pages from pencils to finished art.

There are more pictures up at Irene Gallo's blog, http://igallo.blogspot.com/2009/08/charles-vess-at-work-on-neil-gaimans.html.

And here's one posted by me...

The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's realm;

there is another land at the bottom of it.

If you turn around here, you can walk back, safely;

you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

It won't be out until 2010 -- Charles is still drawing madly, and painting like a wild thing.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Charles Vess, how books happen, Instructions

American Gods Blog, Post 72

So I spent today, as I will spend tomorrow, working on writing a circus. Something I've always wanted to do, which is why I'm currently writing it. (The young lady who runs the circus in question spent a year or so not taking no for an answer from me, and her persistance seems to have paid off. I spent most of today saying things to her like "Can you do this...?" and "What about this...?" and at one point phoning an expert and getting a hasty lecture on the fluorescent qualities of laser beams for something I started wondering about.)

Seeing I plugged a lot of other people's stuff yesterday, I thought I'd point out that The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish makes a really cool Fathers Day present. (Yay! to Amazon.com for featuring it on their kids page.)

And yay! to Morrow for getting out the American Gods newsletter.

Incidentally, if you've received the newsletter with the extract from American Gods in it, I should point out that in that extract, in the phrase "the titter skin-crawling horror" the word "titter" should be "utter", and for that matter that the sentence "He practiced coin tricks from a book lie found in the wasteland of the prison library; and lie worked out;" reads better if you replace the word "lie" with the word "he".

(I hope when they put up the www.americangods.com/excerpt page that they'll put it up from a clean text.)

....

More reviews today -- an enthusiastic one from the Barnes and Noble Explorations magazine, a nice mention from the NY Post, and one from Booklist, where the reviewer, who had loved Neverwhere and Stardust, hated it -- the kind of complete and entire hate where the reviewer doesn't even stop to point out the things he liked about the book, if there were any. He just seemed to wish it was another book entirely, a kind of "this is spinach and I don't like spinach" review: I think Coraline (which comes out next May) will be to his taste.

...

Also brought home several boxes of books, notebooks and such from the office, to compile a sort of core of references I used writing American Gods for NeilGaiman.com. It'll be incomplete, but a good place to start. (The single most useful reference work was probably A Dictionary of Northern Mythology, by Rudolf Simek.)

And I copy-edited a poster of my poem INSTRUCTIONS with art by Brian and Wendy Froud, which will be coming out this summer in a signed, limited edition, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I think it's going to be popular, on the basis that my assistant and my daughter have both extracted a promise from me that they can get one when they come out, from the proof knocking around the office.

(if it's sucessful, we might do a poem I wrote for my goddaughter, as a benefit for RAINN...)

....

Ah, the Chapter One excerpt is up at www.americangods.com/excerpt.html (they left off the html on the newsletter). It's kind of odd -- all the italics have fallen out as well. I'll see if we can get a cleaner copy up...

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, Blueberry Girl, book reviews, Brian and Wendy Froud, circuses, Coraline, Instructions, Neverwhere, Stardust, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish