Scripts in Disguise; Bad News for Kindlers

I just finished a book that was not meant to be read--it was meant to be filmed.

This is a rising trend among authors and publishers, and it's a bothersome one. Readers are no longer the prime target for a lot of fiction--movie producers are. In other words, what we're often buying is not really a book in the old-fashioned sense, it's a script outline drafted in 300 pages to snare a movie deal. I don't really want to name the book or the writer. I'm not a critic, and unless I get really angry about an author's shortcomings, it's not my job to badmouth. But I do get riled by becoming a beta tester against my will.

Here's a good way to spot a hardcover movie script.

1. The protagonist's name is Rick O' Shea, or something equally evocative.
2. The lead character is patterned on an existing movie hero. If he/she walks and quacks like Indiana Jones, it's a movie script.
3. The same character has some exquisite secondary talent no one else has, and this gift has nothing to do with the plot at hand. Think Pulitzer-winning poetry, or Segovia-like guitar skills.
4. More than three deus ex machina situations in the first 100 pages.
5. The President of the United States is involved in a passing manner. He acts and talks like Morgan Freeman.
6. The fate of the free world is in question.

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Here's a little Associated Press item I found discouraging.

"Amazon.com said it would agree to sell electronic versions of Macmillan books, even at prices it considers too high.

"The retailer said Sunday in a posting online that it was in strong disagreement with Macmillan's push to charge higher p[rices. Under Macmillan's model, to be put in place in March, e-books will cost from $12.999 to $14.99 when first released and prices will change over time. Amazon wants to tamp down prices to fend off competition. But Macmillan and other publishers have criticized Amazon for charging $9.99 for best-selling books on the Kindle, a price publishers say is too low and could hurt sales of hardcovers."

There's more on this in a Washington Post story you can read at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020203910.html but none of it augurs well for Kindle owners, who will probably end up paying more than ever for their e-books.