Gerard Jones, author of Ginnie Good, has been receiving threats from a Universal attorney because he posts information about how writers can contact editors. Up next: Universal lawyers rake up more billable hours by sending legal notices to Nigerian spammers.
All goes to show you that when you get down to it, big media companies are little more than lawsuit factories.
Actually Ms. Hampton does have a point; big media companies may as a general rule refuse submissions from nonagents for reasons having nothing to do with editorial judgment. Perhaps agented material is more likely to have clear ownership and less likely to be infringing (for example). But does that imply that Big Media companies have the right to shut a site down? Somehow that response doesn’t seem proportionate.
Suggestion for Carolyn: Here’s what you should have done. Write Gerard a letter. Say: “As a company policy we don’t even look an unsolicited nonagent-submitted queries. Please pass this information on to your readers.” Gerard probably would have been more than happy to oblige.
I’ve been listening to the Ginnie Good mp3s over the last few weeks (mp3s are here). It is a nice entertaining and bawdy yarn with funny moments, a little mawkish at times, but still memorable characters.
BTW, I can’t figure out why the audio mp3’s have some numbers missing.
One irony is that the book itself was a lot about lawsuits and lawyers.
Note: although the case is somewhat entertaining, I don’t wish to turn Gerard Jones into a cause celebre. (He probably should have removed their names in the first place if they wanted). This seemed as good an excuse as any to blog about Ginnie Good anyway.