March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Novelists who sell the film rights to their work usually get paid before Hollywood makes the movie. Author Jonathan Lethem wants to buck the trend.

Lethem, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author, said he will option his new novel ``You Don't Love Me Yet'' on May 15 to a filmmaker who agrees to give him 2 percent of the movie's budget as a fee. The sum would be paid when the finished film gets a distributor. The book will be published today by Doubleday.

Here's the other condition: In an unprecedented move, Lethem wants the filmmaker to release ``ancillary'' rights -- such as the right to distribute the novel on the Internet or make a stage play based on it -- to the public domain five years after the film's debut. Usually, novelists sell all the rights forever to the filmmaker.

``What I'm going to do is give away the option to someone who writes me a persuasive letter,'' Lethem (pronounced LEE- them) said in a phone interview today. ``The date when I promise to make up my mind and pick someone is May 15, so it's sort of a open free-for-all between now and then for filmmakers who might want to get in touch with me.''

Lethem's proposal is part of a growing trend among writers in Hollywood to retain some of the rights to their works. Advocate groups for artists, such as the not-for-profit Creative Commons Inc. in San Francisco, is encouraging authors to decide which rights they want to keep instead of relinquishing all of them.

A New Model?

``In terms of mainstream filmmaking, this is completely unprecedented, and if it actually happens it would be a groundbreaking model'' Creative Commons Creative Director Eric Steuer said in a phone interview about Lethem's proposal. ``For a writer of his clout and prominence, it's really cool that he's the one to take the charge on something like this.''

Set in the alternative music world of Los Angeles, ``You Don't Love Me Yet'' is the story of Lucinda Hoekke, a bass player who falls in love with an anonymous caller to a complaint phone line where she works.

Lethem is the author of ``Motherless Brooklyn,'' which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999, and ``Fortress of Solitude'' (Doubleday 2003). He won a $500,000 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ``genius'' award in 2005.

Lethem, a Brooklyn native, has optioned or sold rights to some of his past novels to the film industry. Actor Edward Norton will direct and produce a movie adapted from ``Motherless Brooklyn'' currently in production, Lethem said. ``Motherless'' is a detective story told by a narrator, Lionel Essrog, who has Tourette's syndrome.

Lethem said he and his wife, Amy Barrett, and Joshua Marston, the director of the 2004 Oscar-nominated film ``Maria Full of Grace,'' are co-writing the script for the movie version of ``Fortress of Solitude.''

With ``You Don't Love Me Yet,'' Lethem said he wanted to make a deal ``just for the film only'' and after the movie's release, other rights such as the re-make or sequel rights wouldn't be under his control.

``If there were for instance a playwright who saw the movie that resulted from my book -- for which I would have been paid and the filmmaker would have been paid -- we're going to declare that the theater director or playwright wouldn't actually have to pay a penny,'' he said. ``The stories and characters and situations in the book would be up for grabs, and anyone could do anything they like with them,'' he said.

Lethem said wants writers to think differently about structuring business deals with film producers.

``It's more set up as more as a kind of thought experiment but one that can play out in the real world,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 13, 2007 14:10 EDT