--Terrill Lankford:
>
. Smarter than most
> writers, Westlake wisely put clauses in his
contracts when Hollywood (and
> France) came a callin' allowing the producers to buy
the stories of the
> various Parker novels they were interested in, but
not allowing them to
own
> the character. Writers who write series
characters
> and get courted by the movies should emulate
Westlake's business savvy
> whenever possible, otherwise a producer can tie up
two or more books just
by
> optioning the rights to one. It's happened to some
pretty smart people out
> there.
>
Terrill, Doesn't it work the other way also? IIRC, John
Jakes' very successful series that began with the Bastard was
thought up an commmisioned by a prominent agent/editor whose
name escapes me now (could it be Lyle Wagoner?) who made a
mistake by letting Jakes' name appear as the author. When the
series became successful Jakes was able to control it, but he
would have been unable to if the author was given a house
name. Mark
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 31 Mar 2002 EST