Joseph
A. Wapner, a California judge, died recently at the age of 97. Though he may have ruled on some important
cases – he was the first Jew elected presiding judge of Los Angeles; Superior Court system (in 1960), in which he supervised 200 judges. He was best known
for being the first judge on television’s wildly popular and long-standing show, The People’s Court.
He
presided over the show’s first dozen years, handling down judgments in over
2,500 cases. His success inspired
imitators, including a show that exceeded him, both in duration and style, Judge Judy.
We
all could benefit from a People’s Court. The real courts suck. It takes many months before a real small
claims court takes up your case and if you are fortunate enough to win, it’s
not so easy to collect on your judgment. Imagine how much better life would be
if, on the spot, we could just have a trained and impartial mediator available to resolve a
disagreement. How much better would life
in school, at the office, or in the home be if we can find justice without
having to look far and wide for it? What
if book publishing had a People’s Court?
The
Book publishing People’s Court could
hear cases on:
·
Publishers
who fail to market a book properly.
·
Arguments
book editors have with authors.
·
Disagreements
cover designers have with authors.
·
Determining
which book an acquisitions editor should buy.
·
Royalty
disputes between publishers and authors.
·
Securing
payments on foreign rights deals.
·
Writer
plagiarism.
·
Libel
and slander.
·
Free
speech issues.
·
Libraries
seeking an increase in government funding.
·
Whether
a book review was fair.
·
Which
books should be declared the best of the year.
·
Bookstores
looking to save their lease from a greedy landlord.
·
People
who failed to return books borrowed from a friend.
·
Amazon’s
monopolistic tendencies.
·
Whether
the book was really better than its movie version.
Okay,
so some of those matters don’t rise up to being court-worthy, but it’s obvious
there are many debates, disagreements, and fights over plenty of things related
to the writing, publishing, selling, and promoting of a book.
As a
teen-ager, I recall watching Judge Wapner on The
People’s Court. It was a huge
success. According to a New York Times obituary:
“A
poll conducted by The Washington Post
in 1989 found that while two-thirds of those surveyed could not name any of the
nine judges on the United States Supreme Court, 54% could identify Judge Wapner
as the judge of The People’s Court. That same year, a study published by the
National Center for State Courts found that caseloads for small claims court
across the country had nearly doubled and largely attributed that increase to
the show’s influence.”
Judge
Wapner, you served the court and the people well. May you continue to delve out justice
wherever you are. And may the book
industry follow suit and form The Book
Publishing People’s Court.
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Brian Feinblum’s
views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of
his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised
in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book
marketing blogs by Book Baby
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