⇒LAT reporter Geoff Boucher discusses the efforts of Philip K. Dick‘s children to make sure that movies made from their father’s work turn out more like Blade Runner and less like Screamers. One daughter involved the production company, Electric Shepherd, cites “six film projects that are in various stages of negotiation or development,” the most interesting of which is a biopic produced by and starring Paul Giamatti, which may “[blur] the lines between [Dick’s] real world and the one he created on the page.” But unfortunately not, based on the description, in the way Dick himself did in the novel Valis.
⇒James F. Reische writes for Inside Higher Ed about Ronald Reagan’s posthumous influence over university presses, which he says has made scholarly publishing “a hollow shell of its former self.” Basically, the argument runs, the adherence of university administrators to open market philosophies forced university presses to become more like trade publishers so as not to be seen as “underperforming revenue centers,” creating “a pair of contradictory missions: to produce the most advanced research for a small audience, while simultaneously earning their own way with at best a minimal subsidy.”
⇒A few weeks ago, Evan Schnittman wrote for the Oxford University Press blog with a radical suggestion: Publishers should just stop paying royalties. Instead, he proposes, “trade contracts move to a flat fee or payment for the standard rights associated with publishing a book. This fee would function just like an advance in that it would be paid on signing, delivery and acceptance, but it would be the only expected payment for the work.” He’s thought through some of the details of how that would work, including performance bonuses and length-of-term, but I can imagine it’s still going to be a pretty hard sell.