Publishers Want Higher Billing in Book-Film Deals

For both big-name and obscure authors, new approaches to turning books into movies could also be very attractive. Currently, agents sell book and film rights to a manuscript separately, often at different times. But Dean Koontz, for example, sold the film rights for his latest thriller, "The Husband," to the Random House-Focus partnership because he was encouraged by the filmmaker's "courtesy and respect" in adapting his novel. "I haven't had that experience on previous adaptations of my books, to say the least," he said.

For less well-known authors, the partnership offers the chance of a deal for a small but worthy book that might otherwise be ignored by Hollywood -- and selling film rights early often boosts foreign sales as well.

Mining for Hollywood gold in a New York-made bestseller is an old quest. So is "synergy," that widely derided concept that large conglomerates with publishing, movie and TV arms could profit from sharing content across divisions. Critics of the synergy model say compelling a book publisher and a movie division to work together by corporate decree is unworkable, because they do not share the same priorities and may as well be on different planets. Others say a culture clash is inevitable: If Big Apple publishers have movie envy, their West Coast rivals are equally uncomfortable with New York literati.

"There's publishing fear in Hollywood," said Amy Schiffman, an agent who handles book-to-movie deals for the Los Angeles-based Gersh Agency. "Some people on the West Coast are intimidated by those in the New York book business. They think publishers know something that they don't know -- that they're smart, and more intellectual, that they really understand the written word better than others do."

To bridge the gap, Hollywood used to rely heavily on a small army of New York-based scouts to tip them off to books that might be turned into movies. Although scouts are still influential, the playing field has been transformed in recent years by the emergence of specialized agents like Schiffman. Based mainly in Los Angeles, they broker the sale of film rights and are equally at home in the book and movie worlds. Publishers are under no illusion that these agents will be losing power any time soon. But the new ventures coming out of New York publishing houses suggest the book world has a few cards of its own to play.