Forry Ackerman Died

Sci-fi's grand old man, Forrest J Ackerman, dies

Print By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer John Rogers, Associated Press Writer – Fri Dec 5, 4:02 pm ETLOS ANGELES – Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi," has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

"He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror," Burns said Friday.

Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.

"My wife used to say, 'How can you let strangers into our home?' But what's the point of having a collection like this if you can't let people enjoy it?" an exuberant Ackerman told The Associated Press as he conducted a spirited tour of the mansion on his 85th birthday.

His collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science-fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film "Dracula."

His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles." Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science-fiction club he was founding and a teenage Bradbury showed up.

Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science-fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.

"I hadn't published yet, and I met a lot of these people who encouraged me and helped me get my career started, and that was all because of Forry Ackerman," the author told the AP in 2005.

Later, as a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science-fiction writers.

He said the term "sci-fi" came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word "hi-fi."

"My dear wife said, 'Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on,'" he recalled.

Soon he was using it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine he helped found in 1958 and edited for 25 years.

Ackerman himself appeared in numerous films over the years, usually in bit parts. His credits include "Queen of Blood," "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," "Amazon Women on the Moon," "Vampirella," "Transylvania Twist," "The Howling" and the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. More recently, he appeared in 2007's "The Dead Undead" and 2006's "The Boneyard Collection."

Ackerman returned briefly to Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1990s, but he quickly fell out with the publisher over creative differences. He sued and was awarded a judgment of more than $375,000.

Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science-fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life.

Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.

So What Does This All Mean?

Publishers are basically not buying any new books for the rest of the year (this happened after 9/11 too - they are bought up at least two years in advance), staff cuts will be made across the board, imprints will disappear and one of the two major book sellers may close their doors forever.

OK, so here's what I've been telling my interns and my junior agents and all my publishing pals. There are all sorts of economic trends coming to a head at the moment.

We, as a country, are in a recession and publishing is no exception. I believe we, as an industry, have priced books out of the buyer's everyday market. A paperback should cost $5, a trade paperback $10 and a hardcover no more than $20. Only exceptional illustrated books should cost more than that, and I better get pop-ups and die cuts and music, if you want me to pay more than $25. When books cease to be an impulse/feel good purchase, and are something you have to calculate and budget (I'll get the new King this month, and then I'll get the Hamilton out of the library), something is wrong.

And the profit margins in publishing are way too tight. I still find it amazing that in today's publishing economics, the author and the publisher make less on a book than the bookstore and the distributor.

Publishing is in the same transition as the movie and music industries. The younger generation of movie watchers and music listeners have already grown used to getting their movies and music cheaper and faster with downloads. If books are to compete as a source of entertainment, they have to follow course.

Bookstores will have to change too - and they already are. Last week I was pontificating that bookstores of the future will actually be big electronic information stores. And then someone told me that Barnes & Noble owns GameStop. Today I just got a flyer informing me that Best Buy is now selling books. Soon, you will go to an electronics and information store, where you can buy almost anything you can't wear or eat. And that same "store" will have an online presence, where you can download almost anything they sell.

That's not to say that the book as we know it is dead, but it does mean that for books as entertainment, it's a brave new world. In Japan, half the books sold in the country are downloaded to phones. We can't be far behind.

So, what is happening now is the beginning of the shake out that the music and movie industries experienced 5 years ago. Certain kinds of books (I guess, like certain kinds of TV shows and movies and music) just are no longer working in this age of instant information. So we just don't need to publish quite as many books, but what we do publish has to either entertain or inform.

When the shake-out is over, we'll be leaner, but stronger. Book publishing will have moved into the 21st century and will be more responsive to its readership. It won't take 18 months to go from manuscript to book, and authors will get paid on their actual sales in the same year they are made.

Bad News, Good News?

It should be no news to you that today was called "Black Wednesday" in publishing circles. Many jobs were cut at Simon & Schuster and Thomas Nelson, while the publisher of Houghton Mifflin quit and heads rolled at Harcourt. And then Random House re-organized and cut itself in half.

Meanwhile, three veteran publishing insiders have just started an epub and audio company that is buying over 400 books a year and finally pricing them at a cost that the consumer can afford, and giving the writer more than a third of the revenue.

I think the writing's on the wall. Or I hope that I'm reading it right.

So even though this is my agent blog, I realized that I owe it to you to write about just how incredibly amazing it is to be starting an epublishing company, while every print company around me appears to be imploding.

So, please visit, tell your friends, readers, family and enemies.

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Advice to a New Author

An author recently wrote to me saying he was recommended by his former agent who had sent his thriller to "less than a dozen publishers."

This was my response.

The truth is that there are only 9 major publishers left (and Harlequin is really only for women's fiction), so your book has been around the block as far as publishers who will pay decent money for it are concerned. And agents make their living off of 15% of your sale, so there are very few agents interested in selling to the small presses.

We're in a major publishing recession right now too, so it's exponentially harder to sell a first novel.

I've been in business over 20 years and have 80 clients, so I am not taking on any new clients right now.

If I were you, I'd pay for a subscription to Publisher's Lunch and make a list of agents who have recently sold books with descriptions like yours. And then I'd email them and say "I saw you recently sold xxx xxx xxx, which is similar to my novel."

But if you get a lot of no's, it's the market right now, and will be for at least the next 6 months.

You might have to write another kick-ass novel and start the whole process over again.