Borra Garson

Image Rights - You Own Your Face

Image Rights seems to me to be the last frontier of control when doing a deal in any media. With the proliferation of content for websites, the hunger for PR and the multiple ways companies want to exploit their bit of content, the only way you can retain control of how and when your face is used to promote something, is to retain your Image Rights. To think that a publisher can bring out an app using the content from their books and only have to pay the author the pre-agreed split strikes me as stepping over the mark. So, it’s advisable to retain your Image Rights so that they need to come back to you before launching the app with your face all over it. Of course, most people want this added exposure, I mean an app is the latest sexy accessory to have, no? But the world of apps is largely untested, and needs careful control starting with how your face is used within it. Likewise, in a TV deal, it is important to retain your Image Rights. We have a presenter on a popular TV series, and the production company now have a book of the series coming out. The deal was already done when we signed the presenter up, so the production company had already hogged the prospective book income to themselves. The problem for them though was that our presenter is the face of that show, so we were able to carve out a deal based on the fact that the production company did not have Image Rights to exploit, and the publisher wouldn’t have brought out the book without that presenter’s face on the jacket. So even though the presenter had no share of the book deal originally, controlling the Image Rights was key to getting a share retroactively. Authors, presenters and artists, take note! Control your Image Rights!

Publishing by Numbers

How does this grab you? We have:

The speedy section: Nigella Express, Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food, Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking and Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. Then we have the warm and fuzzy section: Nigella’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home, Gordon’s Cooking for Friends, Jamie at Home and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Family Cookbook. There’s the how to section: Nigella’s How to Eat, Gordon Makes it Easy, Delia’s How to Cook and Jamie’s Cook with Jamie. Then we go further afield and have the exotic section: Gordon’s foray into India, Jamie’s America, an Italian selection from Delia, and a Far Eastern Odyssey from Rick Stein. By this formula Gordon and Jamie are due to write a Christmas book each, Hugh owes us a River Cottage Quick Cookbook, Nigella should travel more and Delia needs to write about how to cook for friends.

How to Judge if an Agent is any Good or Not

Agents have a terrible reputation, and some people think they are a complete waste of time. But that’s like saying all blondes are dumb, and not taking into account that so many dumb people dye their hair blonde and then bring true blondes’ reputed average IQ below where it should be. So I will agree that certainly some agents are a waste of time, but the good ones are worth their weight in gold. But how to spot a good agent when you’re shopping around? If you’re promised the world, and they say they can make you a star, run away. Nobody can promise these things. Ask them what their strategy would be in marketing you/your book. Do they listen to you and understand your unique selling points or do they keep comparing you to existing celebrities (ie can they think outside the box?). How long have they been in business? How big or small is their list? What companies do they regularly work with? What deals have they done recently? A lot of bigger agencies will set you up to meet Mr/Ms Big Star Agent and then after you’re signed, you’re fobbed off onto his/her minions who click you into their mass marketing churn in the hopes you’ll end up with a deal. On the other hand a newer, smaller agency may not have the reputation to get your TV or book proposals to the top of the reading pile. So it’s a dilemma and you have to find the right balance between being a small fish in their big pond, or a big fish in their small pond. I am not saying that the size of the agency matters, it’s the quality of their list you should look at. Are their clients all working? Check an obscure name on their list and google them. If the last book they wrote came out 6 years ago, or you haven’t seen them on TV in ages you have to ask yourself, why is that client there on that list? Of course there is client loyalty to account for, and agents will stick by a talent they believe in, long after they have failed to sell them. Ask yourself, is this a good service to them? Could it mean they have no room for you? But after all is said and done, make sure you like them. If your career takes off, you’ll have to trust them with everything and probably spend lots of time with them and it helps if you can truly think of them as your friend.

Leaps of Faith are far too Rare in our Industry

Every now and again I manage to convince an editor that this new and exciting author is worth a punt. Or, I convince a TV Producer that this unknown talent is worth putting into development. But then we get to the sales people at the publishers and they turn a good book idea down “because so-and-so” has that area wrapped up, or “the public aren’t ready for that yet”. Likewise in TV the Channel Commissioner prefers to commission yet another 21 episodes of Blah which leaves no room for someone new. I don’t know about you, but I am quite bored by all the “me too” shows out there, and I am also patiently waiting for something exciting to hit our cookery bookshelves. All we get is more of the same and everyone is scared to take chances. Where are the new faces and new ideas? The whole world is looking for “the next Jamie” or “the next Nigella” but don’t they do a good enough job being themselves now, and in the future? What we need is simply “the next”. I’d like to see some fun back on our screens too. Food programmes have become a touch serious and I thought cooking was supposed to be enjoyable, and not always a competition. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoy competitive cookery, but who out there is having fun with food? (Not Sophie Dahl). So who will take a chance? Look how well Come Dine with Me has done. New format, yes, but I’m not sure how inspiring the food is. Heston? Is that food? Ah well, I guess I have to cruise the web for inspiration these days, until something new turns up on screen.

Micro management – why one agent is the better strategy

A real example of micro management happened today. I had to review some recipes for a client’s food product literature as we’ll be using them in a digital project I am involved with. They are all honest recipes using his various products in creative ways but among them was a recipe that called for a packet of pre made sauce. It stood out for me as a cop out as jarred sauce is a cheat and they can be awful so I emailed the brand manager asking if they shouldn’t take a second look at the recipe which they have. Really, how difficult is it to whizz up a little tomato sauce? Now, I realise it’s a small detail but it got me thinking about the value of having your agent involved in all aspects of your career. From time to time I get a request from an author who wants us to look after their TV work (and won’t leave their literary agent) or we’re approached by a TV star who wants help with getting a book published (but won’t leave their TV agent). I always resist this approach and strongly advise that all their work stay under one roof, so that we agents can do our job properly. A great example of mismanagement in this area was with a big name chef. I don’t know the exact details, but somehow one of her books, which followed a theme of summer and outdoor recipes, came out in September. Who wants a Summery book then? It allegedly had something to do with the TV series being late, or perhaps the book was late, but I see that as a prime example of the TV agent and the book agent not communicating or strategising together. Needless to say it was not her best selling book. As an agency we try to time books and TV so they help each other. We ensure that endorsements and advertising don’t clash and we never double book our clients. When someone thinks that three agents will work three times harder and better than just one, they are wrong. When a client is successful, we are successful, and if we’re it, we have to live up to their expectations, so generally speaking it works better to have one agency doing it all. I just don’t like working with half a client nor do I believe it’s in the client’s interest to split their work across multiple agencies.

E-Publishing: Should Authors and Publishers Panic or Celebrate?

I’m having an unusual experience. Over in the States, I am trying to get an iPhone app project off the ground. We’ve secured the commitment of one of their hottest chefs who has a slew of bestselling cookery books to his name. But can we get the publisher or any big media partners to invest? Not a hope. It seems the iPad has got everyone there thinking about the overall future of e-publishing, and I want to figure out what do they know that we don’t know? Because by contrast here, I am fighting off publishers to do much the same type of project with a certain client of mine. Hachette even recently sent out a big email to all their authors and in it, Tim Hely Hutchinson insists that if publishers don’t expand their remit to include apps and e-books in a big way, publishing could fail as a business going forward. These new devices certainly have more than a few authors and publishers running scared. Already the Kindle and the Sony e-reader are making waves here, and having one device with a lifetime of reading uploaded on it sure beats lugging 6 books in a suitcase every time I go on holiday. But since e-books are traditionally cheaper than hard copies, we are possibly looking at a future of lesser income, and nobody is happy about that. Happily for cookery authors, cookbooks are apparently a disaster on Kindle as they have no page numbers, so all the cross referencing one needs to use a cookbook effectively is lost. (I am not sure about other e pub devices – this is simply what I was told and I am sure Kindle will address this soon). But really, is there good reason to panic about e-publishing? The view I buy into is this: people will start to buy content in multiple ways. Like the website? Buy the app. Like the app? Download the e-book. Like the book? Buy a hardcopy, and so on. I just think we’ll consume the written word in many different ways going forward and perhaps trashy fiction will lose out in the short term whereas beautiful illustrated books will remain as collector’s items. But trashy fiction might win in the longer term –as a comparison I wonder if iTunes has created a bigger and more robust market for music? Are more singles being bought than ever before? Perhaps the ease of purchase has not been factored in to panicking publishers’ minds, and soon people will buy more books than ever before…

Product placement – Bring it on

The industry is fighting for and against product placement in TV shows. Advertising revenues and the proliferation of channels have meant that programme budgets have spiralled downwards alongside broadcaster profitability, and producers and broadcasters have had to get very imaginative about creating new revenue streams. Enter product placement. Such old news for me, as I grew up in Canada where my favourite TV characters have been slurping Coke and chewing Wrigley’s gum for decades. For me this whole argument is very… yawn… childish. We live in the real world, and TV should and can reflect that. If a dancer off SKY 1’s fabulous Pineapple Dance Studios series reaches for a Diet Coke I won’t fall off my seat, nor will I race to the fridge to glug my own. I simply don’t believe that product placement is the devil’s work, and if Diet Coke is willing to throw a few ££ SKY’s way and that money ends up on other, good quality TV shows, then I am all for it. Our gardening presenter, Alys Fowler, whose series The Edible Garden is about to hit our screens, shops for gardening equipment like anyone else, and probably favours a few brands of soil or weed killer over another. She shops at supermarkets, cleans her kitchen floor, buys jeans and uses make up. Most of her purchases will be a certain brand and I think it would be harmless to let her public know what she uses. I will say that I would object to a TV series on fashion fronted by Victoria Beckham where she only discusses her own designs. Now that’s called advertising. But having a well loved TV face munch on his favourite flavour of crisps where it suits the moment in a show – I think that should be deemed OK, and that the TV audience won’t feel duped, manipulated or insulted.

Personalities as Brands is not a Good Long Term Plan

I watched a bit of Gordon Ramsay this week and it got me thinking. He was doing his usual swearing and bad boy stuff, and I wondered if the audience has now become numb to his antics, and are they possibly bored? And then I thought wow if the audience is maybe bored, then he must be going crazy, and I felt sorry for him. So many top celebrities build their fame on a certain persona which soon becomes their brand, and when you think about it, they become trapped by that persona and can’t move on. On a similar vein we can take Gary Rhodes’ spiky hair do (or hair don’t) which at one point was intrinsic to his brand. An outline of his face with the hair became a logo that was used across a range of pots and pans, utensils and knives. This meant he was, in a sense, contractually bound to carry on looking like that long after he wanted to. Can the same be said of personalities? Did Nigella get caught having to repeat the sexy thing that rocketed her to fame in the same way that perhaps Gordon has to continue to be the bad guy because that’s what the audience wants and expects? What if they moved on? Would we watch Gordon being sweet and gentle or would we reach for the remote? This “my personality is my brand” approach also creates the problem of repetitive programmes being commissioned. Although audiences initially savour watching a new persona, those celebs who don’t move on and are trapped by what made them famous soon begin to look like one trick ponies, grow stale causing audience ratings drop, and then we look for a new face. There are exceptions to this rule and big names like Griff Rhys Jones and Alan Titchmarsh have kept their careers going because the range of shows they present has kept the interest levels high. But until Gordon takes his bad boy stuff and applies it to a domain outside the kitchen, it’s possible that his personality as brand approach could eventually fuel his demise.

Media Stars are not all Millionaires

It might surprise you know that just because someone’s mug is often on the box, it doesn’t mean they are millionaires. Not by a long shot. In fact, there’s a good chance that if it’s a jobbing presenter or a new face to television, they are living from job to job accepting small fees just to get the opportunity. It’s such a competitive industry and people have now realised that sometimes talent will work for pennies in order to get the glory of being associated with what’s perceived to be a glamorous and lucrative profession.

What are Famous Chefs Like in Person?

Over the years I have met and hung out with most of the UK’s top celebrity chefs. I am often asked what are they really like? Do they act like someone else for TV or are they true to themselves? Obviously I have different answers for different chefs, but one thing to admire across the board is their confidence in front of camera. Jamie Oliver’s first episode of The Naked Chef for the BBC was famously scrapped. That’s about £100,000 into the bin (a long time ago too). Optomen TV’s Pat Lewellyn came to the rescue and coaxed something more natural out of him during the next episode’s shoot, and a star was born. Looking at him now you’d hardly believe it, though I still detect a slight self awareness whenever a camera is pointed at him which is not a bad thing – he’s just very focussed. I think the truest to himself on screen is Rick Stein. In person he rants away about his latest food/fish gripe with genuine concern and rage. Ainsley Harriott by contrast is quite revved up and working it when he’s front of camera, because actually in real life he’s a very chilled out and philosophical man. I was pleasantly surprised by how natural and real Paul Merrett was in the recent Economy Gastronomy series. It’s not many producers who let him chatter away with his boyish enthusiasm and the ratings prove that the viewers loved it. Gordon? Well he’s an utterly charming, engaging and very polite man in person, however, like a lot of chefs, he gets worked up during service. Shouting and swearing is part of the fabric of a lot of kitchens, so as long as I am nobody’s sous chef, I don’t worry too much about that. Gary Rhodes springs to mind as one chef with a very polite and reserved camera persona, but who can really explode when things aren’t going his way! Levi Roots – now there’s a cool cat, on and off screen. Spot the pattern – isn’t it funny how the chefs who are the same people on and off screen are usually the ones with greater success and longevity?