Source: Topix
It can take years of late-night navel gazing for a novelist to name a character – or it could come as quickly as an auction on eBay.
Next month, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, Nora Roberts, Michael Chabon and 11 other best-selling writers will auction the right to name characters in their new novels. The profits will go to the First Amendment Project, whose lawyers have repeatedly gone to court to protect the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists.
“It feels a little scary for most writers because when you’re writing, you’re completely in charge – you can say this book is all mine, it’s my world,” said Chabon. “Whether giving over some of that has any monetary value or not, we’ll see.”
But bidders beware — most of the authors are clearly retaining creative control to use the names as they see fit.
King says the highest bidder will get to name a character in a new zombie novel he describes as being “like cheap whisky…very nasty and extremely satisfying.” Cult comic author Neil Gaiman will let his top buyer select the name for a gravestone. Andrew Sean Greer promises the winner may choose the name of a “coffee shop, bar, corset company or other business in another scene,” but only “should it suit the author.”
John Grisham is one of only a handful promising to portray the top bidder’s chosen name “in a good light.”
On Sept. 1, eBay Giving Works the site’s dedicated program for charity listings, will go live with the electronic auction. For the next 25 days, anyone with an Internet connection can bid 24 hours a day to insert names into their favorite writers’ heads. The event’s organizers say they believe it will fetch well over the nonprofit First Amendment Project’s goal of $50,000.
The benefit was the brainchild of Gaiman, who approached Chabon with the idea when he heard the group was running out of money. It will now constitute the single-largest fund-raising event for the First Amendment Project, whose legal staff will gratefully leverage the goodwill of authors willing to help keep its doors open. Other writers include Dave Eggers, Dorothy Allison, Peter Straub, ZZ Packer, Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, Ayelet Waldman, and Karen Joy Fowler.
“It’s nice when people say they want to raise money for you,” said David Greene, executive director of the First Amendment Project, which was founded in 1994. “Because it was brought to us by the writers, it was even more special.”
Link to the entire article here.
Nora Roberts, one of my favorite authors.