He was a big man with a bigger smile. Great athlete. Better person. A cool jazzman who was maybe the best slap bass guitarist of his era. A man of faith. Deeply committed to his family.
Having lived a few years in Tulsa, I knew he and his family cast a huge shadow over that city. His father was pastor of the Friendship Church for 28 years. When he passed away in 1997, one of the local expressways was renamed the L.L. Tisdale Parkway. Wayman's older brother, Weldon, is now senior pastor at Friendship.
A high school basketball star at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Wayman went on to Oklahoma University where he was the first college basketball player to be named first team All American his freshman, sophomore, and junior years. He still holds the records at OU for points and rebounds. He played with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and other luminaries on the 1984 US Olympic team that was dubbed the 'Dream Team.' The 6' 9", 240 pound power forward played 12 seasons in the NBA, averaging more than 15 points per game. His music career began while he was still in the NBA with a Motown record called, appropriately, Power Forward. He recorded seven more albums, including Face to Face, which hit number one in sales for the contemporary jazz chart. His final album was Rebound and reflected his belief that he was not going to be defeated by cancer.
Wayman was diagnosed with cancer on the knee in February 2007, when he fell down the stairs at his house and broke his leg. Chemotherapy that spring didn't work and in August 2008 he had his right leg amputated. Tisdale kept his strong faith and never lost his trademark smile.
Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma said of Tisdale:
“Oklahoma has lost one of its most beloved sons. Wayman Tisdale was a hero both on and off the basketball court. Even in the most challenging of times, he had a smile for people, and he had the rare ability to make everyone around him smile. He was one of the most inspirational people I have ever known.”
As a c-jazz lover, I was a bigger fan of Tisdale's music than I was of him as a basketball player - he never played for 'my' team. But most of all I'm a fan of him as a man of persevering faith and and as an example of a resilient joy and hope exhibited and proven under all circumstances.
Anytime someone dies 'before his time' it is a sad story. Particularly for his wife, Regina, and their four children, along with a loving extended family. But his music is a joyful reminder of a life well lived and where he is now. Perhaps it's no coincidence that his number one hit was his take on the standard, Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.
M.K. Gilroy Banner
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Q: How well do book publishers and retailers work together?
A: Publishers and retailers work together well in some areas - but there is a huge disconnect based on competing self-interests that make it difficult to help each other succeed.
What makes for a successful retailer? More revenue than expenses, of course, but not just a simple profit and loss reckoning, but profitability within a biz model that includes a positive monthly cash flow. Healthy cash flow is achieved through healthy inventory turns. What are turns? For a bookstore that mean ordering copies of a title on payment terms (often 60- and more often 90-days to pay) and then hopefully selling those copies and getting money for them at the cash register before writing a check to the publisher. How likely is that to happen if you are stocking 200 thousand inventory items in a big box national chain? Not likely. But hot selling titles will hopefully push overall performance numbers up. But what happens if there's no new Harry Potter or vampire title to average in with the laggers (and even help them move more briskly because of increased consumer traffic) on the aggregate? What if you are a retailer and your inventory piles up to the point that you don't have the funds to buy new books (referred to as 'open to buy dollars')? Simple. You return slow-moving titles, of course. Store buyers place their orders with publishers (and/or distributors) based on projections of how many copies of a book his or her stores will sell in the first four to six weeks. How does the buyer come up with those projections? He listens to the publisher's sales rep give the key selling points, comparable titles, and publicity plans. He then combines the sales rep's projections with what his reports on the comps and his own gut tells him, and then places his order a couple weeks or months later. With the large chains the buyer will get a personal report card based on how well his titles met those projections. He has the further accountability of a finite dollar number in his corporate check book. Once that number nears zero without being replenished, his 'open to buy dollars' are done. So not only will he return books if they are not coming close to meeting forecasts, but he may be forced to return some borderline performing titles in order to have more dollars available to purchase a hot-selling title. To the publisher this feels like the retailer is paying his bills with returns.
The preceding paragraph sums up what is in a book retailer's best interests - and what their challenges are. What about the publisher?
A publisher feels like she will do well on a single title when she adds up pre-press expenses (cover and interior design and editing), manufacturing expenses, direct marketing expense, overhead, a return reserve (usually an aggregate percentage applied to each title that assumes not every copy printed will actually sell and will have to be disposed of as an overstock or remainer), and royalty expenses (including advance against royalties), and then subtracts that number from sales projections - usually three-month, six-month, and 12-month projections. How does she come up with those projections? She reviews the performance of comparable titles and considers the author's ability to help promote sales of the title to come up with her own number. She then shares her thinking with sales and marketing teams who will listen and agree or disagree in some measure and come up with their own projections. Different companies settle those differences in different ways. The publisher will do well on a single title in reality when the retail buyer brings in the number of titles projected (sell-in) and consumers buy enough copies of that title off the shelf (sell-through) to generate reorders. The publisher will get her report card on the basis of meeting or exceeding the original projections. She will do particularly well when overall sales pay off any advance against royalties and re-orders are frequent enough to keep inventory levels down (books sitting in a warehouse are like bananas - they can go bad overnite!).
The common success denominator for retailers and publishers is managing inventory levels. The retailer tries not to over order in the first place and is quick to return laggers. Both dynamics hurt the publisher who saves money on higher press runs and gets killed by returns. When publisher and retailer both get too conservative in order to combat this, another negative occurs. Stock outs. What happens when a customer comes to the store and the book he is looking for isn't there? She forgets about it - or if he is persistent, he orders it online and waits for it. That kills brick and mortar retailers. Another less obvious impact of conservative buying patterns is the lack of merchandising. There was a day when you would walk into a bookstore and there would be numerous titles stacked high to capture attention and send the message that this was a book that just had to be purchased. With a few notable exceptions, like the afore-mentioned Harry Potter example, title emphasis is more subtle - and much easier to miss (or ignore).
Two relatively recent technological developments that are helping publishers more than brick and mortar retailers are print-on-demand and the e-book. Print-on-demand vendors provide a pretty high quality book (and the print quality is getting better all the time) - though without bells and whistles like foil and embossing - overnight and at a reasonable price. Not as good a price as printing 100 thousand books on an offset press, but a good enough price that beats the heck out of an excess inventory fall bonfire! An e-book is never out of print. Add those two dynamics together and any book is technically available within 24-hours to a retailer or individual consumer without the risk of large print runs.
But back to the publisher-retailer relationship. Even print-on-demand can't totally mitigate the damage to performance numbers that occurs because the two parties have conflicting interests when it comes to inventory management.
Is there a solution? If you follow the financial reports of major publishers and retailers, neither side of the equation is doing well enough to give much in the give and take of business.
The solution for the author who wonders why his or her book isn't selling like it should is to look in the mirror and ask him or herself what he or she can do to build demand. The book publishing and selling environment isn't currently emulating the Fields of Dreams. Just because you wrote it doesn't mean it will sell.
What makes for a successful retailer? More revenue than expenses, of course, but not just a simple profit and loss reckoning, but profitability within a biz model that includes a positive monthly cash flow. Healthy cash flow is achieved through healthy inventory turns. What are turns? For a bookstore that mean ordering copies of a title on payment terms (often 60- and more often 90-days to pay) and then hopefully selling those copies and getting money for them at the cash register before writing a check to the publisher. How likely is that to happen if you are stocking 200 thousand inventory items in a big box national chain? Not likely. But hot selling titles will hopefully push overall performance numbers up. But what happens if there's no new Harry Potter or vampire title to average in with the laggers (and even help them move more briskly because of increased consumer traffic) on the aggregate? What if you are a retailer and your inventory piles up to the point that you don't have the funds to buy new books (referred to as 'open to buy dollars')? Simple. You return slow-moving titles, of course. Store buyers place their orders with publishers (and/or distributors) based on projections of how many copies of a book his or her stores will sell in the first four to six weeks. How does the buyer come up with those projections? He listens to the publisher's sales rep give the key selling points, comparable titles, and publicity plans. He then combines the sales rep's projections with what his reports on the comps and his own gut tells him, and then places his order a couple weeks or months later. With the large chains the buyer will get a personal report card based on how well his titles met those projections. He has the further accountability of a finite dollar number in his corporate check book. Once that number nears zero without being replenished, his 'open to buy dollars' are done. So not only will he return books if they are not coming close to meeting forecasts, but he may be forced to return some borderline performing titles in order to have more dollars available to purchase a hot-selling title. To the publisher this feels like the retailer is paying his bills with returns.The preceding paragraph sums up what is in a book retailer's best interests - and what their challenges are. What about the publisher?
A publisher feels like she will do well on a single title when she adds up pre-press expenses (cover and interior design and editing), manufacturing expenses, direct marketing expense, overhead, a return reserve (usually an aggregate percentage applied to each title that assumes not every copy printed will actually sell and will have to be disposed of as an overstock or remainer), and royalty expenses (including advance against royalties), and then subtracts that number from sales projections - usually three-month, six-month, and 12-month projections. How does she come up with those projections? She reviews the performance of comparable titles and considers the author's ability to help promote sales of the title to come up with her own number. She then shares her thinking with sales and marketing teams who will listen and agree or disagree in some measure and come up with their own projections. Different companies settle those differences in different ways. The publisher will do well on a single title in reality when the retail buyer brings in the number of titles projected (sell-in) and consumers buy enough copies of that title off the shelf (sell-through) to generate reorders. The publisher will get her report card on the basis of meeting or exceeding the original projections. She will do particularly well when overall sales pay off any advance against royalties and re-orders are frequent enough to keep inventory levels down (books sitting in a warehouse are like bananas - they can go bad overnite!).
The common success denominator for retailers and publishers is managing inventory levels. The retailer tries not to over order in the first place and is quick to return laggers. Both dynamics hurt the publisher who saves money on higher press runs and gets killed by returns. When publisher and retailer both get too conservative in order to combat this, another negative occurs. Stock outs. What happens when a customer comes to the store and the book he is looking for isn't there? She forgets about it - or if he is persistent, he orders it online and waits for it. That kills brick and mortar retailers. Another less obvious impact of conservative buying patterns is the lack of merchandising. There was a day when you would walk into a bookstore and there would be numerous titles stacked high to capture attention and send the message that this was a book that just had to be purchased. With a few notable exceptions, like the afore-mentioned Harry Potter example, title emphasis is more subtle - and much easier to miss (or ignore).
Two relatively recent technological developments that are helping publishers more than brick and mortar retailers are print-on-demand and the e-book. Print-on-demand vendors provide a pretty high quality book (and the print quality is getting better all the time) - though without bells and whistles like foil and embossing - overnight and at a reasonable price. Not as good a price as printing 100 thousand books on an offset press, but a good enough price that beats the heck out of an excess inventory fall bonfire! An e-book is never out of print. Add those two dynamics together and any book is technically available within 24-hours to a retailer or individual consumer without the risk of large print runs.
But back to the publisher-retailer relationship. Even print-on-demand can't totally mitigate the damage to performance numbers that occurs because the two parties have conflicting interests when it comes to inventory management.
Is there a solution? If you follow the financial reports of major publishers and retailers, neither side of the equation is doing well enough to give much in the give and take of business.
The solution for the author who wonders why his or her book isn't selling like it should is to look in the mirror and ask him or herself what he or she can do to build demand. The book publishing and selling environment isn't currently emulating the Fields of Dreams. Just because you wrote it doesn't mean it will sell.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Q: What must I do to copyright my writing?
A: Nothing.
The moment you write something original in idea or expression on the back of a napkin, in your journal, or any other sheet of paper (or any other textile or surface) - or input it into your computer, you own the material. Unless you sell your copyright to someone else (i.e. a Work Made for Hire Agreement).
Outside of that nebulous area called "Fair Use" no one else can publish your material without your permission. You created it; you own it. When publishers offer you a book contract (and "book" is very inadequate term to convey what they want), they are purchasing your permission to own exclusive sales, distribution, territorial, and publishing rights to your material. Publishing rights means they have all control over the printing of your work, whether on paper with ink, whether in audible voice, whether in dramatic presentation, whether in workbook form, whether in electronic medium - or in any other medium that exists now or will in the future exist in all the universe. And so forth. (Get the idea?)
But YOU will still own the copyright. It is your intellectual property. You just can't do anything with that property. Unless you reserve certain rights, you no longer are allowed to do anything with your material that is no allowed by your publisher. If you want to donate three chapters to your church for a ministry booklet, that's fine - if and only if it's fine with the publisher.
One of the classic historic battles between writers and publishers was over copyright ownership. Even into the 90s (and yes, this Century), many boilerplate contracts indicated that the publisher was acquiring ownership of the copyright and that the book would be copyrighted in the publisher's name. That battle is mostly over, with most publishers agreeing to register a book with the U.S. Copyright Office (or the country of origin) in the author's name.
But I thought I didn't have to do anything to copyright my work? Why would a publisher go to the trouble?
There are some smaller publishers who actually don't go to the trouble and in most cases, it won't be a big deal. It won't change the legal standing to the work. But registering the material is an action that conveys a publisher is going to protect the copyright, which is a huge issue.
Protecting copyright is the source of much acrimony and confusion in the world. As an example, I lived in a city where a local high school copied a university's trademarked logo (a trademark is different than a copyright, but you get the idea) for their football helmets. The university, after learning of the violation after several years of use, issued a cease and desist letter. The moral outrage and outcry by supporters of the high school team was loud and sometimes vicious - and wrong. If the university had not protected their trademark in this instance, they would lose the ability to control something essential to their identity and possibly lose millions of dollars in licensing fees in the future.
Does that mean you can't let others use your material? Of course not, but I wouldn't recommend it without requiring proper attribution, including the (c) designation with your name. In a church bulletin? Yes. As a chapter in someone else's book? Definitely. If you don't protect it that way, why would a publisher offer you money for it at a later date? Be generous all you want, but be consistent in protecting your ownership.
Bible publishers have done a good job of granting generous permission for authors and organizations to use the material from their translation, in many cases at no charge, but always with the requirement of proper attribution and copyright notification. Outside of the King James and a few other public domain translations, there will be specific guidelines set forth in the front matter of your Bible or on the publisher's website. Check it out as a good case study.
There are a host of subplots surrounding the topic of copyright. I've already mentioned Fair Use, which deserves its own blog and is still too slippery to nail down. There's subrights issues, international and U.S. differences on the term of a copyright, tricks for extending copyright beyond its expiration date, review rights, Work Made for Hire issues, serial rights, and other nuances. This blog is in no way exhaustive, but is at least highlighting one simple application for you as an aspiring published author: protect your property.
How? You don't have to put (c) Your Name on all your work. But why not do so anyway as an initial precaution. Make sure you establish when you created your work in case someone claims that you borrowed or stole from them. Let others enjoy and use your work before you are able to turn it into a payday, but only with proper attribution and notification - and any other conditions you would want to stipulate. And when you have a publisher ready to buy your work, make sure you understand exactly what you are selling. If you are a new author, the publisher is going to want to buy all rights from you to make sure he or she can "exploit" those rights in any way necessary to make your deal profitable for both parties. (Exploit sounds awful but it's not a bad word in this context!)
The small things can save you big problems later. If you think disagreements over physical property gets brutal, wait until you see a fight over something that is a product of the mind!
The moment you write something original in idea or expression on the back of a napkin, in your journal, or any other sheet of paper (or any other textile or surface) - or input it into your computer, you own the material. Unless you sell your copyright to someone else (i.e. a Work Made for Hire Agreement).
Outside of that nebulous area called "Fair Use" no one else can publish your material without your permission. You created it; you own it. When publishers offer you a book contract (and "book" is very inadequate term to convey what they want), they are purchasing your permission to own exclusive sales, distribution, territorial, and publishing rights to your material. Publishing rights means they have all control over the printing of your work, whether on paper with ink, whether in audible voice, whether in dramatic presentation, whether in workbook form, whether in electronic medium - or in any other medium that exists now or will in the future exist in all the universe. And so forth. (Get the idea?)But YOU will still own the copyright. It is your intellectual property. You just can't do anything with that property. Unless you reserve certain rights, you no longer are allowed to do anything with your material that is no allowed by your publisher. If you want to donate three chapters to your church for a ministry booklet, that's fine - if and only if it's fine with the publisher.
One of the classic historic battles between writers and publishers was over copyright ownership. Even into the 90s (and yes, this Century), many boilerplate contracts indicated that the publisher was acquiring ownership of the copyright and that the book would be copyrighted in the publisher's name. That battle is mostly over, with most publishers agreeing to register a book with the U.S. Copyright Office (or the country of origin) in the author's name.
But I thought I didn't have to do anything to copyright my work? Why would a publisher go to the trouble?
There are some smaller publishers who actually don't go to the trouble and in most cases, it won't be a big deal. It won't change the legal standing to the work. But registering the material is an action that conveys a publisher is going to protect the copyright, which is a huge issue.
Protecting copyright is the source of much acrimony and confusion in the world. As an example, I lived in a city where a local high school copied a university's trademarked logo (a trademark is different than a copyright, but you get the idea) for their football helmets. The university, after learning of the violation after several years of use, issued a cease and desist letter. The moral outrage and outcry by supporters of the high school team was loud and sometimes vicious - and wrong. If the university had not protected their trademark in this instance, they would lose the ability to control something essential to their identity and possibly lose millions of dollars in licensing fees in the future.
Does that mean you can't let others use your material? Of course not, but I wouldn't recommend it without requiring proper attribution, including the (c) designation with your name. In a church bulletin? Yes. As a chapter in someone else's book? Definitely. If you don't protect it that way, why would a publisher offer you money for it at a later date? Be generous all you want, but be consistent in protecting your ownership.
Bible publishers have done a good job of granting generous permission for authors and organizations to use the material from their translation, in many cases at no charge, but always with the requirement of proper attribution and copyright notification. Outside of the King James and a few other public domain translations, there will be specific guidelines set forth in the front matter of your Bible or on the publisher's website. Check it out as a good case study.
There are a host of subplots surrounding the topic of copyright. I've already mentioned Fair Use, which deserves its own blog and is still too slippery to nail down. There's subrights issues, international and U.S. differences on the term of a copyright, tricks for extending copyright beyond its expiration date, review rights, Work Made for Hire issues, serial rights, and other nuances. This blog is in no way exhaustive, but is at least highlighting one simple application for you as an aspiring published author: protect your property.
How? You don't have to put (c) Your Name on all your work. But why not do so anyway as an initial precaution. Make sure you establish when you created your work in case someone claims that you borrowed or stole from them. Let others enjoy and use your work before you are able to turn it into a payday, but only with proper attribution and notification - and any other conditions you would want to stipulate. And when you have a publisher ready to buy your work, make sure you understand exactly what you are selling. If you are a new author, the publisher is going to want to buy all rights from you to make sure he or she can "exploit" those rights in any way necessary to make your deal profitable for both parties. (Exploit sounds awful but it's not a bad word in this context!)
The small things can save you big problems later. If you think disagreements over physical property gets brutal, wait until you see a fight over something that is a product of the mind!
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