GROSS INEQUITIES

On Friday I’m flying to Florida to give the keynote address at the Ancient City Romance Writers Boot Camp on the Beach retreat. Because I have to fly through Atlanta to connect to Jacksonville, I’m going to spend a week visiting family outside of Atlanta before returning home. The difference in the cost of the flight to do this on Delta was approximately $75.

The end of January I’ll once again be in Florida, speaking at the Space Coast Writers’ Guild Conference. Once again, I have to switch planes in Atlanta. Only this time Delta wants to charge me an additional $277 to stay in Atlanta instead of immediately hopping on my connecting flight coming home. If I were to fly roundtrip to Melbourne, FL without staying over in Atlanta, the flight would be $206.80. Spending time in Atlanta increases the flight to $483.80, even though I HAVE TO SWITCH PLANES IN ATLANTA ANYWAY!

Where is the sense in this? On any given day on any flight, the person to my left may have paid half what I paid for my seat, and the person to my right may have paid three times what I paid. The seats are the same. The person who paid three times what I paid isn’t getting three times the service. He’s getting the same non-service I’m getting.

And why am I telling you about this, given Inkspot is a writing blog? I’m about to draw a parallel here that brings this all back to writing.

Just the other day I read an article in the New York Times about Amazon’s new publishing division.  According to the article, Amazon purportedly paid actress/director Penny Marshall an $800,000 advance for a memoir. I know several people who recently sold books to  Amazon’s new fiction lines. They're not getting a dime in the away of an advance. See where I’m going here? On any given day in any given bookstore, the book to the left of mine may have received half the advance I received for my book, while the book to the right of mine may have received ten, twenty, or even 100 times the advance I received for my book. The book to my left might wind up selling better than my book, and my book might wind up selling better than the one to my book’s right.

A huge advance is no guarantee of huge sales. More often than not, the books that receive six, seven, and eight figure advances wind up never earning out those advances. I saw one statistic a few years ago that claimed 80% of celebrity memoirs and fiction “written” by celebrities (We all know they’re actually ghost written. You really didn’t think Snooki actually wrote A Shore Thing, did you?) wind up on the remainders table.

Seems to me Penny Marshall makes plenty of money already. Does she really need another $800,000? Why not give her half of that $800,000 and spread the other half around to the authors not being offered any advance? I know my friends would certainly appreciate that. They might even buy  copies of Penny’s memoir as a way of saying thanks.

As for me, I’m looking forward to February 12^th. That’s the date Southwest begins service between Newark Liberty and Atlanta.

Lois Winston writes the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. The first book, Assault With A Deadly Glue Gun, was a January 2011 release and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Death by Killer Mop Doll will be a January 2012 release. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT A MILLIONAIRE?

Thanks to the media obsession with celebrities, most people think that authors are rolling in dough. I’m here to tell you that although most authors may occasionally plunge into a bowl of cookie dough ice cream, they are definitely not cavorting around in Olympic sized pools filled with the likes of Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin. (Okay, so maybe JK Rowling, James Patterson, and Stephanie Meyer are, but there are exceptions to every rule.)

It seems a week doesn’t go by that we don’t read about another celebrity -- or parent, spouse, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin or next-door-neighbor of a celebrity -- being handed a huge chunk of money to write anything and everything from tell-alls to memoirs to diet to exercise to fiction to kids’ books. Even fantasy. What else would you call a parenting book by the mother of Britney and Jamie Lyn Spears?

The latest celebrity -- and I use that term loosely -- to land a book deal is Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, one of the stars -- and I use that term loosely, as well -- of Jersey Shore. Snooki, who has admitted she’s read all of TWO books in her life (Twilight and Dear John) is writing a romance novel. Title of the book? A Shore Thing. According to Simon and Schuster, the book will include “big hair, dark tans and fights galore.”

Of course, celebrities really don’t write their books themselves. That’s what ghost writers are for. But the only items that make the gossip pages are the 6 or 7 figure advances the celebrities are getting. Someone told me Snooki’s receiving over half a million dollars in advance for her literary masterpiece (or should that be messterpiece?), but I can’t verify that.

So it’s understandable, I suppose, that the vast majority of the population would think the rest of us writers are doing equally well. After all, we’ve written real books. They come complete with covers and pages with words, and they’re sitting on the shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores across the country. So of course, we’re making gobs of money -- NOT. At least not most of us.

I know authors who have made it to the NY Times bestseller list. Most of them can’t afford to quit their day jobs, but few people are aware of that fact and even fewer believe it when you tell them. (“Oh, I thought you still worked at the diner because you love being on your feet eight hours a day, serving burgers, fries, and shakes to your adoring public!”)

So every time I read about someone like Snooki being handed a fortune for “writing” a book, I get a little steamed. Can you blame me? And just to add insult to injury, she and her Jersey Shore cohorts -- only one of which is actually from New Jersey -- are adding to the stereotype of my state. You should come visit sometime. We’re really nothing like what you saw on The Sopranos or see on Jersey Shore. Well…at least not most of us. There are those Real Housewives of New Jersey, but they’re probably not really from New Jersey, either. At least, I hope not.