sexiest_hero wrote:I like the implied statement that his family can't function without a woman around, to do the woman's work. Kinda creepy too.

ShumaGorath wrote:Forty Five grand is a hell of a lot more then I would think Gaimen is worth. I like some of his work, but thats an immense sum.

Andrew1975 wrote:This is so stupid! I've seen republicans getting paid much, much more for public speaking. Republicans better start trying to find a reason to be relevant. Between Trump, the worst budget bill ever, and mister "notafactualstatement" the Republicants might as well just give up and start focusing on 2016.

Frazzled wrote:
In your dreams. No President since FDR has survived a sustained downturn in the economy, much less the level of unemployment we have much less stagflation.

Frazzled wrote:
I'm just worried the Republicans are going to take over the Presidency and the Senate as well, bringing us back to a one party state. Thats not good.

Frazzled wrote:I'm just worried the Republicans are going to take over the Presidency and the Senate as well, bringing us back to a one party state.

Frazzled wrote:Who's Neil Gaiman and why the ^&%* does anyone care?

SEMI-POLITICAL BIT

Lots of my readers are Republicans, just as lots of my readers are Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Liberals, Greens, Democrats, and supporters of political parties that Americans can't quite understand, like LibDems and Tories and Monster Raving Loony Party such. I'm not a particularly political animal -- if there was a party whose main platform was being nice to people, freedom of speech and supporting libraries I'd sign up for it, but mostly I try and vote, when I vote, which is in the UK by postal ballot, for the person whose politics I dislike the least, and who does the most good for the area s/he represents. Beyond that, I work hard for things like the CBLDF, alongside people of all political hues and stripes for the common goal (in this case, supporting the First Amendment for people who make, sell, publish or read comics).

So it was with a certain amount of surprise I discovered this morning that I'm on the majority leader of the Minnesota Republicans's Hate List. His name is Matt Dean, and he has a thing about my neck.

This surprised me. Until this morning I didn't know that Matt Dean existed. I had never thought about his neck.

Matt Dean, on the other hand, has been giving a lot of thought to me. During a debate on cutting money for the arts, we learn that,
Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."


(He was referring to the events of this - http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/05/political-football-in-teacup.html. Read it first.)

I've had reporters phoning me up all morning, wanting to know what I thought about this. (Although not ones from the Star Tribune, interestingly. Although there's a great Star Tribune Blog about it.)

What I think is,

1) It's funny. Sad that this is the kind of thing that elected officials say in public, but still funny. It's the kind of thing that you expect to hear at school from fourteen-year old bullies, before they tell you that they'll be seeing you by the lockers with their friends, not what you expect to see from an adult.

2) It's kind of nice to make someone's Hate List. It reminds me of Nixon's Enemies List. If a man is known by his enemies, I think my stock just went up a little.

3) I like "pencil-necked weasel". It has "pencil" in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like "intellectual" may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people.

4) I don't like being called a thief. I'm pretty sure that I know what thieves are and do. In this case, Matt Dean's claiming that I "stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota". (I'm not sure where the $45K number comes from. I just checked: I actually received $33, 600 from the Minnesota Library System for a talk that was then broadcast and is still up [look down to second section].)

I do not know whether this man is calling me "a thief" because:

A) I charged more than he's comfortable with for a talk, or
B) People happily pay me a lot of money to come and give talks, or
C) He thinks I gave the talk wearing a stripy sweater to an audience of people who were there at gunpoint and afterwards took their wallets, or
D) He's against the principles of the Free Market, and feels that governments should regulate how much people are paid to talk in public.

But for whatever reason, it seems kind of weird, and is a lie. (Yes, I gave the money to charities - a sexual abuse one and a library/author one, long ago, when the cheque came in, well before this ever became a political football. But that seems completely irrelevant to this: I don't like the idea that a politician is telling people that charging a market wage for their services is stealing.)

5) I think that Minnesota has things it can be proud of - quality of life things, that make it really good to live in this part of the world. The things that have kept me out here for twenty years. One of the biggest things is it has really good Public Radio and a thriving, active, involved arts scene. It makes me sad to see people trying to crush or even diminish these as part of their political agenda.

And also I think that if you're a Republican in Minnesota, and you read my books or my blog, you could do worse than tell Matt Dean what you think of this kind of bullying schoolyard nonsense from someone who's meant to be representing you. Honestly, it makes you all look bad. Here's a page with his details. It has an email address, his office address, and it even has a photograph*.




* (I would not be human if I didn't admit that I looked at his neck in the photograph, to see if it was as mighty and bull-like as I felt he had implied, and that I might have been just a tiny bit disappointed.)

Mannahnin wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Who's Neil Gaiman and why the ^&%* does anyone care?

Neil Gaiman is the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Eisner, Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, Newbery, and Carnegie Medal (and others)-winning author who wrote Sandman, Books of Magic, Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods, Coraline, and a good bit of other great stuff. He also wrote the official Hitchhiker's Guide companion, and co-wrote Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. Also the movie version of Beowulf, IIRC, and the English language script for Princess Mononoke.

Many of us nerds are quite fond of him. Some of the writers of Babylon 5 were sufficiently fond to name one of their alien races as a reference to him.

Matt Dean is clearly an idiot.

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Who's Neil Gaiman and why the ^&%* does anyone care?

Neil Gaiman is the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Eisner, Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, Newbery, and Carnegie Medal (and others)-winning author who wrote Sandman, Books of Magic, Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods, Coraline, and a good bit of other great stuff. He also wrote the official Hitchhiker's Guide companion, and co-wrote Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. Also the movie version of Beowulf, IIRC, and the English language script for Princess Mononoke.

Many of us nerds are quite fond of him. Some of the writers of Babylon 5 were sufficiently fond to name one of their alien races as a reference to him.

Matt Dean is clearly an idiot.

Coolio. So what does he have to do with politics?

Kilkrazy wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Forty Five grand is a hell of a lot more then I would think Gaimen is worth. I like some of his work, but thats an immense sum.

There is certainly a point to be made there.

"He's a pencil neck and I hate him", is probably not the best structure in which to present the argument.

Some public speakers command enormous fees.

Frazzled wrote:Coolio. So what does he have to do with politics?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
A Political Football in A Teacup
Posted by Neil at 10:46 AM

I’m off writing a long way from the internet right now, but just learned I’m being used – for, I’m pretty sure, the first time – as a political football, with Questions Being Asked and everything.

So. To bring everybody up to speed:

About a month ago I was asked if I’d go and talk in Stillwater Library on a Sunday afternoon. The request came in from Greater Talent Agency, who book my speaking engagements. I was asked to give an hour-long talk, which would also be broadcast on Public Radio. This would the first in a series of talks by local authors in libraries outside of the Twin Cities.

As anyone who’sread the FAQ (which was written in 2002, thus the Clinton reference) or has been reading this blog for a while knows, if you want to hire me to come and talk somewhere, and people do, I’m expensive. Not just a bit pricy. Really expensive.

The main reason I got a speaking agency, ten years ago, was because too many requests for me to come and speak were coming in. And the speaking requests were, and are, a distraction from what I ought to be doing, which is writing. So rather than say no, we’ve always priced me high. Not Tony Blair high, or Sarah Palin high (last time I read about them, they’re about $400,000 and $150,000 respectively). But I’m at the top end of what it costs to bring an author who should be home writing and does not really want a second career as a public speaker to your event.

So if you want to pay me to come in and talk, it’s expensive.

The vast majority of the events I do and of the talks, lectures or readings I give are done for free, often as charity fundraisers. (For example: the night before the Stillwater event I spent the day in Chicago, speaking to 1600 people who had paid up to $250 a ticket, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/04/18/neil-gaiman-at-c2e2/ is a description of the event.)

So. I was asked if I’d come and talk at Stillwater, and be paid $40,000. I said, “That’s an awful lot of money for a little library.”

“It’s not from the library. It’s from the Legacy Fund, a Minnesota tax allocation that allows the library to pay market rates to bring authors to suburban libraries who otherwise wouldn’t be able to bring them in. They have to use the money now as it won’t roll over to next year and expires next month.”

“Ah.”

Well, that seemed fairly simple. They’d already booked a number of other authors. They had the money sitting there and were happy to pay me my rack rate. Either they gave the money to me or it went away – it couldn’t be used for anything else. And, most importantly, the dates worked. Another week and I would have had to say no, as I would have been away writing. But I got in from Chicago that morning. I said yes.

I figure money like that, sort of out-of-the-blue windfall money, is best used for Good Deeds, so I let a couple of small and needy charities (one doing social work, the other library/book based) know that I would be passing the money on to them, after agents had taken their commission, and did not think twice about it.

(I don’t like talking about how much money I make, because I spent enough years as a starving journalist to know what it’s like not to have money, and to envy or resent those who do. But if you’re wondering how I can afford to blithely wave goodbye to a fee like that: I make my money writing. I sell a lot of books, in dozens of countries around the world, every year. I write and occasionally co-produce movies, and I sell the film rights to my books and stories. The Graveyard Book spent over a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. Instructions came out this week, and went straight in at #4. There were months last year when I had four different books on the New York Times Bestseller Lists at the same time. Like I said, I’m a writer, and I get paid for my writing.)

The day was fun, the auditorium, which held about 500 people was full, and it felt a lot more intimate than the Big City events I’d done for 1600 and 1500 people the previous nights. I gave an hour’s talk. I did an hour’s Q&A with the people there. I stuck around for two hours after that, saying hullo to everyone, posing for photos, generally trying to meet everyone who was there, and then, when everyone was done and had gone, I went home.

The Legacy Fund, from which the money to pay me came, is used for Minnesota’s Parks, Museums, Arts, and comes from a sales tax allocation. It is a Big Political Deal. Which meant Paying An Author Lots of Money From That Fund was going to become a Big Political Deal.

I saw a mention of it on the School Library Journal blog, and responded to there:

Obviously I do a lot of speaking for free. The night before I'd done a pro bono 3 hour reading/Q&A as a benefit for the CBLDF in Chicago, in front of 1600 people, who had paid up to $250 a ticket to attend.

Four days before I'd done "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" internet talk with the Jessamine Public Library for nothing, because they asked me to, and because it was National Library Week (although they sent me a wonderful Kentucky nibbles gift basket as a thank you).

In fact most of the talks and appearances I do are for free.

But if you want to hire me to come in and talk, it's expensive.

My speaking fees are high. I keep them that way intentionally. Here's what it says on my website's Frequently asked questions:

"Q. How can I get Neil Gaiman to make an appearance at my school/convention/event?

A. Contact Lisa Bransdorf at the Greater Talent Network. Tell her you want Neil to appear somewhere. Have her tell you how much it costs. Have her say it again in case you misheard it the first time. Tell her you could get Bill Clinton for that money. Have her tell you that you couldn't even get ten minutes of Bill Clinton for that money but it's true, he's not cheap.

On the other hand, I'm really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn't say 'no' a lot."

For this event, nobody asked my representatives if I would do it for less than a normal speaking fee. (I do sometimes. Normally only for libraries.) I was assured before I agreed to sign on that this money was not coming from the library system, but from the 200 million sales tax Legacy Fund. It was a wonderful afternoon. And yesterday Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the entire one hour talk (although not the Q&A).

And, although I'm not sure that it's anyone's business, when I get money like this, I put it back out again. In this case, 25% of what I get goes to a social/abuse charity, and the other 75% goes to an author/literature/library related charity program.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1010000101/post/1620054162.html


And I figured that was that.

But since then the story has embiggened. It made it onto the front page of the city section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Nobody from the Star Tribune tried to contact me or my assistant or agent for any quotes on this, which I find a bit depressing, given that they have my email and phone number from dozens of previous interviews.)

(Apparently the Star Tribune is against the Legacy Fund, and feels the money should go to fund a $790 million dollar stadium instead, per http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/05/neil_gaimans_sp.php and http://www.minnpost.com/artsarena/2010/05/07/18007/in_defense_of_libraries_both_home_and_public)
So, to answer all the sorts of comments I’m seeing on these articles in one place:

How can you justify asking for $45,000 to come and speak?

The scary thing is that if you are (to pick a couple of real-life examples from the last few years) an advertising congress or the R&D department of a multinational car company, I charge a lot more than that to come and speak. And people pay it very happily.

When you came and talked at our library you charged a lot less than that.

Yeah, I do that. Greater Talent Agency knows that I’ll often lower prices for libraries. In this case, no-one asked if I’d do it for less.

Why wasn’t this money being used to fund a little library somewhere? Or pay a librarian? Or buy books for people? Or Do Good? Aren’t you ripping off libraries by accepting it?

The money came from a specific fund that was allocated to this purpose. As Boing Boing explains http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html:
“The money comes from a grant for programs like this. It can't be used to buy books or pay salaries. The money was only allocated in October, 2009 and had to be spent by June, 2010 or it would be taken back. This was a big-ticket, inaugural event to generate interest in the program.”


Yes, but this is public money.

It definitely is. The idea was to get authors in to talk, and to pay them for it. And to get people talking about books, authors and libraries. It seems to be working.
Me? I think these things should be organised in a way that permits unspent Legacy money for libraries from one year to roll over into the following years.

But you only brought in 500 people!

Sure. If we’d done the event on a Friday night in Minneapolis I’m sure I would have been talking to a few thousand people (I did the last time I did one there). But the whole point of an event like this is to get authors out to the suburbs, not to bring more events to the Cities. About 500 people in an auditorium that held about 500 people on the first sunny Sunday afternoon of summer was pretty good by Stillwater standards. (More and they wouldn’t have had anywhere to sit.) As it was the talk was broadcast by, and is still up on MPR and has been listened to by many thousands of people all over the state and all over the world.
(It's up here at MPR, where there's also some interesting comments: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/05/second_takes_on_gaimans_fee.shtml

You’re not even a local author. You live 230 miles away from Stillwater in Green Lake Wisconsin! It says so in the blog that broke the story.

I’ve never been to Green Lake. Actually I live about half an hour away from Stillwater. Apparently people start lying when they want to use you as a political football.

$45,000? For a Sci Fi Author? I’ve never heard of you.
That’s okay. I’ve never heard of you either.

....


Also of interest, Cory Doctorow’s comments on the Boing Boing thread: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html#comment-784346

Wiki wrote:Palin works on the speakers' circuit asking between $15,000 and $30,000 for each appearance.

Mannahnin wrote:Matty, no argument that Neil has some annoying fans and plays to them. He's also not quite as deep as people like to pretend But he's written plenty of great stuff.

I think the facebook/blog thing is an unfortunate consequence of his publishers thinking it was a good idea for him to blog while writing American Gods, and that his fans would get off on it, and that too many of them did. If you had that many fans saying they loved that crap, you might be tempted to do it too.

Frazzled wrote:Coolio. So what does he have to do with politics?

Not much, generally. As he says in the blog post Red linked, he's mostly in support of free speech, libraries, and funding for the arts.

He's lived in Minnesota for some years, and was invited to speak. The folks who booked him offered to pay his standard rates for a speaking engagement. He, as usual, donated the money to charity. Matt Dean apparently thinks a speaker being paid his agreed fee to speak, and speaking, constitutes theft. Matt Dean is apparently an idiot.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/05/political-football-in-teacup.html

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
A Political Football in A Teacup
Posted by Neil at 10:46 AM

I’m off writing a long way from the internet right now, but just learned I’m being used – for, I’m pretty sure, the first time – as a political football, with Questions Being Asked and everything.

So. To bring everybody up to speed:

About a month ago I was asked if I’d go and talk in Stillwater Library on a Sunday afternoon. The request came in from Greater Talent Agency, who book my speaking engagements. I was asked to give an hour-long talk, which would also be broadcast on Public Radio. This would the first in a series of talks by local authors in libraries outside of the Twin Cities.

As anyone who’sread the FAQ (which was written in 2002, thus the Clinton reference) or has been reading this blog for a while knows, if you want to hire me to come and talk somewhere, and people do, I’m expensive. Not just a bit pricy. Really expensive.

The main reason I got a speaking agency, ten years ago, was because too many requests for me to come and speak were coming in. And the speaking requests were, and are, a distraction from what I ought to be doing, which is writing. So rather than say no, we’ve always priced me high. Not Tony Blair high, or Sarah Palin high (last time I read about them, they’re about $400,000 and $150,000 respectively). But I’m at the top end of what it costs to bring an author who should be home writing and does not really want a second career as a public speaker to your event.

So if you want to pay me to come in and talk, it’s expensive.

The vast majority of the events I do and of the talks, lectures or readings I give are done for free, often as charity fundraisers. (For example: the night before the Stillwater event I spent the day in Chicago, speaking to 1600 people who had paid up to $250 a ticket, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/04/18/neil-gaiman-at-c2e2/ is a description of the event.)

So. I was asked if I’d come and talk at Stillwater, and be paid $40,000. I said, “That’s an awful lot of money for a little library.”

“It’s not from the library. It’s from the Legacy Fund, a Minnesota tax allocation that allows the library to pay market rates to bring authors to suburban libraries who otherwise wouldn’t be able to bring them in. They have to use the money now as it won’t roll over to next year and expires next month.”

“Ah.”

Well, that seemed fairly simple. They’d already booked a number of other authors. They had the money sitting there and were happy to pay me my rack rate. Either they gave the money to me or it went away – it couldn’t be used for anything else. And, most importantly, the dates worked. Another week and I would have had to say no, as I would have been away writing. But I got in from Chicago that morning. I said yes.

I figure money like that, sort of out-of-the-blue windfall money, is best used for Good Deeds, so I let a couple of small and needy charities (one doing social work, the other library/book based) know that I would be passing the money on to them, after agents had taken their commission, and did not think twice about it.

(I don’t like talking about how much money I make, because I spent enough years as a starving journalist to know what it’s like not to have money, and to envy or resent those who do. But if you’re wondering how I can afford to blithely wave goodbye to a fee like that: I make my money writing. I sell a lot of books, in dozens of countries around the world, every year. I write and occasionally co-produce movies, and I sell the film rights to my books and stories. The Graveyard Book spent over a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. Instructions came out this week, and went straight in at #4. There were months last year when I had four different books on the New York Times Bestseller Lists at the same time. Like I said, I’m a writer, and I get paid for my writing.)

The day was fun, the auditorium, which held about 500 people was full, and it felt a lot more intimate than the Big City events I’d done for 1600 and 1500 people the previous nights. I gave an hour’s talk. I did an hour’s Q&A with the people there. I stuck around for two hours after that, saying hullo to everyone, posing for photos, generally trying to meet everyone who was there, and then, when everyone was done and had gone, I went home.

The Legacy Fund, from which the money to pay me came, is used for Minnesota’s Parks, Museums, Arts, and comes from a sales tax allocation. It is a Big Political Deal. Which meant Paying An Author Lots of Money From That Fund was going to become a Big Political Deal.

I saw a mention of it on the School Library Journal blog, and responded to there:

Obviously I do a lot of speaking for free. The night before I'd done a pro bono 3 hour reading/Q&A as a benefit for the CBLDF in Chicago, in front of 1600 people, who had paid up to $250 a ticket to attend.

Four days before I'd done "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" internet talk with the Jessamine Public Library for nothing, because they asked me to, and because it was National Library Week (although they sent me a wonderful Kentucky nibbles gift basket as a thank you).

In fact most of the talks and appearances I do are for free.

But if you want to hire me to come in and talk, it's expensive.

My speaking fees are high. I keep them that way intentionally. Here's what it says on my website's Frequently asked questions:

"Q. How can I get Neil Gaiman to make an appearance at my school/convention/event?

A. Contact Lisa Bransdorf at the Greater Talent Network. Tell her you want Neil to appear somewhere. Have her tell you how much it costs. Have her say it again in case you misheard it the first time. Tell her you could get Bill Clinton for that money. Have her tell you that you couldn't even get ten minutes of Bill Clinton for that money but it's true, he's not cheap.

On the other hand, I'm really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn't say 'no' a lot."

For this event, nobody asked my representatives if I would do it for less than a normal speaking fee. (I do sometimes. Normally only for libraries.) I was assured before I agreed to sign on that this money was not coming from the library system, but from the 200 million sales tax Legacy Fund. It was a wonderful afternoon. And yesterday Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the entire one hour talk (although not the Q&A).

And, although I'm not sure that it's anyone's business, when I get money like this, I put it back out again. In this case, 25% of what I get goes to a social/abuse charity, and the other 75% goes to an author/literature/library related charity program.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1010000101/post/1620054162.html


And I figured that was that.

But since then the story has embiggened. It made it onto the front page of the city section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Nobody from the Star Tribune tried to contact me or my assistant or agent for any quotes on this, which I find a bit depressing, given that they have my email and phone number from dozens of previous interviews.)

(Apparently the Star Tribune is against the Legacy Fund, and feels the money should go to fund a $790 million dollar stadium instead, per http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/05/neil_gaimans_sp.php and http://www.minnpost.com/artsarena/2010/05/07/18007/in_defense_of_libraries_both_home_and_public)
So, to answer all the sorts of comments I’m seeing on these articles in one place:

How can you justify asking for $45,000 to come and speak?

The scary thing is that if you are (to pick a couple of real-life examples from the last few years) an advertising congress or the R&D department of a multinational car company, I charge a lot more than that to come and speak. And people pay it very happily.

When you came and talked at our library you charged a lot less than that.

Yeah, I do that. Greater Talent Agency knows that I’ll often lower prices for libraries. In this case, no-one asked if I’d do it for less.

Why wasn’t this money being used to fund a little library somewhere? Or pay a librarian? Or buy books for people? Or Do Good? Aren’t you ripping off libraries by accepting it?

The money came from a specific fund that was allocated to this purpose. As Boing Boing explains http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html:
“The money comes from a grant for programs like this. It can't be used to buy books or pay salaries. The money was only allocated in October, 2009 and had to be spent by June, 2010 or it would be taken back. This was a big-ticket, inaugural event to generate interest in the program.”


Yes, but this is public money.

It definitely is. The idea was to get authors in to talk, and to pay them for it. And to get people talking about books, authors and libraries. It seems to be working.
Me? I think these things should be organised in a way that permits unspent Legacy money for libraries from one year to roll over into the following years.

But you only brought in 500 people!

Sure. If we’d done the event on a Friday night in Minneapolis I’m sure I would have been talking to a few thousand people (I did the last time I did one there). But the whole point of an event like this is to get authors out to the suburbs, not to bring more events to the Cities. About 500 people in an auditorium that held about 500 people on the first sunny Sunday afternoon of summer was pretty good by Stillwater standards. (More and they wouldn’t have had anywhere to sit.) As it was the talk was broadcast by, and is still up on MPR and has been listened to by many thousands of people all over the state and all over the world.
(It's up here at MPR, where there's also some interesting comments: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/05/second_takes_on_gaimans_fee.shtml

You’re not even a local author. You live 230 miles away from Stillwater in Green Lake Wisconsin! It says so in the blog that broke the story.

I’ve never been to Green Lake. Actually I live about half an hour away from Stillwater. Apparently people start lying when they want to use you as a political football.

$45,000? For a Sci Fi Author? I’ve never heard of you.
That’s okay. I’ve never heard of you either.

....


Also of interest, Cory Doctorow’s comments on the Boing Boing thread: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/10/neil-gaimans-awesome.html#comment-784346

biccat wrote:There's no way that any of the groups I've worked with would pay $45k for Neil Gaiman. Maybe $20-30k, but even that is pushing it for a reasonably well-known author like Gaiman.

Of course, those groups are private charities that have to worry about earning their money from private donors, and they don't get a big check from the government every year.

There's good reason to criticize the agency that spends that kind of money on a speaker, but there's no reason to call names.

ShumaGorath wrote:According to Gaimen he got payed 33k.

biccat wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:According to Gaimen he got payed 33k.

He said "I actually received $33,600." Given that he had to pay his agent a commission (and ~25% isn't unreasonable), I don't see anything inconsistent between his and the state's positions.

Even if it was just $33k, for an audience of 500, that is a major waste of taxpayer money. Would you spend $70 to go see Neil Gaiman speak at a public library? I wouldn't, and I doubt you would draw a crowd of 500 for that price, even in Minneapolis.

ShumaGorath wrote:He disputes the number, I don't have the specifics of his agents commission and neither do you but regardless the man is disputing the number itself.

ShumaGorath wrote:He goes on to state that people buy 250$ tickets for speaking sessions. I've heard of them. I mean, I'm certainly not disagreeing, my first post posited that 45 grand was a ridiculous sum. Lets not paint this as something its not though. It was an inappropriate and strange venue for an incredibly successful (and highly paid) "celebrity" author from a slush fund specifically designed for bringing in celebrity speakers. It wasn't some sort of specially high price and Dean proved himself an unreliable source of information with his opening statements.