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James Othmer, the Adman and The Futurist
From: www.writerswrite.com

" James Othmer discusses his debut novel, The Futurist, a satire about the meltdown of a professional trend-spotter or futurist. Othmer talks about his life as an adman who really wanted to be a novelist.

James Othmer was sitting as his desk at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in New York when the call came that would save him from yet another round of changes on a deodorant commercial. Three publishers were bidding on the rights to his first novel and Doubleday was willing to pay a sum that he wouldn't name, other than to say it let him quit his day job five months later.

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"For years I had tried to crack the code, but couldn't find a topic or a voice and hadn't written anything publication worthy" the 45-year-old author said in a recent phone interview from his home in suburban New York State. "I used to begrudge the advertising side of it, thinking it was robbing my creative soul. The irony was that it was finally all the absurdities, all the personalities... the politics that came together and fuelled The Futurist."

The Harry Potter creator whose stories of the young wizard have sold over 300 million copies worldwide received nearly three times as many votes as Discworld author Terry Pratchett in second place. Third in The Book Magazine poll was Ian McEwan, author of titles including "Amsterdam" and "Atonement," followed by "Satanic Verses" and "Midnight's Children" author Salman Rushdie.

Kazuo Ishiguro, who was awarded the OBE in 1995 for services to literature was fifth and Philip Pullman, author of "Northern Lights" was sixth. Nick Hornby, whose most recent novel "A Long Way Down" was short-listed for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award was eighth followed by AS Byatt. Jonathan Coe was joint tenth with spy novelist John Le Carr?. The magazine suggested 45 authors' names and its readers were invited to vote online.

Zadie Smith, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction with her novel On Beauty, trailed in 33rd. Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, also featured on the list. And there were votes for children's favourite Jacqueline Wilson and Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding. "Our survey provides a fascinating insight into what the British public thinks makes a 'great' writer," said the magazine's editor, Christine Kidney. "It shows how a writer can connect with us, as if we were the only reader in the world, and it's why books prove to be such enduringly popular objects."

Vanity Fair, in its July issue out Wednesday, raises new questions about "striking similarities" between Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and other writings. Brown has been acquitted of copyright infringement in U.S. and British courts.

Most of the article deals with novelist Lewis Perdue's unsuccessful legal claims that Brown stole the plot of Perdue's 2000 novel, Daughter of God. On Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Seth Mnookin called Perdue's accusations part of "a snowball effect. Perhaps each similarity can be explained or excused, but in totality they raise questions that haven't been answered." The article also says that Brown's description of "Leonardo's lost robot" appears to be copied from a 1996 academic paper. "If I did that as a journalist," Mnookin says, "I'd be fired." Brown's publisher, Doubleday, cited the court opinions in his favor, saying they "carry a lot more weight than those of Mr. Mnookin and Mr. Perdue."

"Straight to paperback," once considered the ignominious fate of romance novels and second-tier thrillers, is becoming an increasingly popular business model. Hoping to reach readers wary of investing $20 or more in an author they haven't tried before, publishers are releasing so-called paperback originals.

The tactic is mostly being used with titles by promising -- but not yet blockbuster -- authors. In 2004, Random House published "Cloud Atlas," by then little-known British writer David Mitchell as a $14.95 paperback original in the U.S. Today there are an estimated 90,000 copies in print, a much bigger audience than Mr. Mitchell had previously garnered in the U.S.

Some publishers are tweaking the formula further with a strategy that evokes the serialized "pulp" publishing of decades past. They're commissioning two or more books at a time from an author and then releasing them within months of each other to get readers hooked. And they're publishing them as "rack sized" paperbacks -- small, inexpensive editions sold on newsstands and at airport bookstores.

CBS Corp.'s Pocket Books imprint published three romance novels by Liz Carlyle titled "One Little Sin," "Two Little Lies," and "Three Little Secrets" each four months apart. "Momentum built from one book to the next, and the last did the best of all," says Louise Burke, the imprint's publisher. It's a strategy that appears to work best for "addictive" genres such as mysteries, where readers often gobble up several books at a time.

BookScan, a Nielsen service started in January 2001, tallies retail sales from chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, from Amazon.com, and from stores like Costco (but not Wal-Mart). James King, vice president for sales and service at BookScan, suggests that the database captures about 70 percent of sales for a typical hardcover book. As such, BookScan has emerged as a powerful tool for the editors and agents whose employers pay several thousand dollars a year to subscribe. But in the hands of journalists and polemicists, BookScan data has becomes a blunt instrument to humiliate, minimize accomplishments, and express joy at the misfortune of other writers.

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On occasion, as in this essay in the New York Times Book Review by Rachel Donadio, which flagged the impressive sales of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (412,000, according to BookScan), flattering figures are presented. Generally, however, when a book is a smash hit, publishers will gladly leak numbers to reporters so they don't have to use BookScan. More frequently, BookScan figures, which undercount actual sales, are an excellent conveyor of schadenfreude. They're used to show how the vulgar prosper, as in this article which shows how many books James Frey sold (subscription required) after Oprah recommended them. Or to show how the mighty have fallen: In February 2005, Josh Benson noted in the New York Times that sales of former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's book were even more moderate than her politics, having sold "just over 4,000 copies since its release in late January."

Edward Wyatt of the New York Times has been a connoisseur of disappointing BookScan figures. Last December, he gleefully noted that Martha Stewart's The Martha Rules, which had garnered a $2 million advance, sold a not-very-good 37,000 copies, and he cited even smaller figures for Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown ("just 26,000 copies") and Myla Goldberg's Wickett's Remedy ("only 9,000"). In November 2004, he cited BookScan figures to show that the finalists for the fiction category of the National Book Award were a bunch of poorly selling obscurities.

BookScan data also become cudgels wielded in political and ideological debates. Last week, Andrew Sullivan joyfully posted on the market failure of Mary Cheney's memoir: "She got a reported $1 million advance. She has had a blitzkrieg of publicity. And according to BookScan's data yesterday, she sold a total of 1,633 books last week. Her year-to-date sales are 4,091." Take that!

Since launching last month, Mochila has already established relationships with several prominent publishing companies, including Hachette Filipacchi Media and Metro International, to offer up their content for sale to publishers large and small. To that end, the company has built an Amazon.com-like Web site where individual newspapers, magazines or Web sites can enter specific criteria, such as subject matter and author, and purchase individual articles to run as they wish.

The idea behind the open marketplace is to open up content syndication to a wider pool of publishers, including those which may be unable to pony up full subscription fees for other content syndication services.

By landing Hearst, and particularly The Associated Press, Mochila stands to see its appeal, as well as its legitimacy increase in the eyes of publishers. Meanwhile, executives say that demand for the recently launched service has already been strong.

In the niche-driven magazine business, it's rare when a new title seeks to cross categories and demographics. Also a challenge. Shock Magazine does that.

Shock also aims to be the first truly multimedia magazine, spanning print and the internet, with a web site but also a digital edition and mobile content.

Shock, which debuts next Tuesday, May 30, from Hachette Filipacchi, is an unusual magazine in other ways. While written for Americans, it's European in its look and feel, as a spinoff of a French title of the same name. It's a picture magazine, arriving decades after the picture magazine era. In this age of free information, Shock looks to generate much of its revenue from subscribers, not advertising.

Shock promises what its name suggests: pictures that arrest the imagination, a gritty, graphic look at international news, celebrity worship, pop culture and amateur photography.