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I'm interested in seeing what y'all think on this rather controversial subject.....original post follows, with my comment after -- and please note, it's not her decision I disagree with, just the general smearing of fellow "content creators" who aren't even entitled to any material recompense for their work. I mean, have a little understanding here...
So.........whaddaya think?
[original post] Saying good-bye to ebooks
I keep deleting what I was going to put in this post. I've learned the more reasons listed, the more points someone has to argue with you (and not because they've thought it out and come to a better conclusion!) or, even worse, the more points they have on which to give you advice.* I know someone is going to tell me how fiction in epublishing is seeing double digit growth, while fiction sales are declining in print.
Doesn't matter -- at least not to me. What matters? 1. FREE** competing content (youtube, myspace, fanfic sites (copyright infringing), etc.) consumed without regard to quality because it's widely available, meant almost exclusively to entertain and, again, free; 2. continuous copyright infringement, e-piracy, etc.; 3. general lack of regard for content creators at all levels.***
So,**** I think that's it. I will not do ebooks as a primary means of publication. And because Ann Vremont is an ebook author, Ann Vremont's last release is January 23, 2007, from Samhain Publishing. It's an epistolary mix of meth and absinthe and pixie stix.
Pick it up, or not.
*It's the advice givers, I think, that annoy me the worst. I once visited a forum that had a very matter-of-fact advice giver. If you weren't selling a lot, well, you should just read so-and-so's article and do what they said and then you'd sell more, and you should do a contest, and you should post excerpts. Wait ... 1. why wasn't this advice giver selling more books, getting more agents to look at AG's work, etc., and 2. who the fuck said I wasn't already doing all that stuff. If I'm intelligent enough to make up a whole story, then I must be able to figure out the conventional wisdom on how to sell a book -- at least how to sell an ebook. Print is different because you're selling to the booksellers.
**I know this competes with print books, too. That is another area where the cost-benefit analysis is still ongoing.
***Far from asking that we be worshipped, I'm only shooting for common courtesy. This is not, to be fair, a problem that only exists in epublishing, but I've not experienced a print publisher first hand. And many of the epublishers I've worked with are fairly decent (but obviously not all of them). edited to add that it's not just the publishers I'm talking about, either.
****Still said too fucking much, didn't I?
[ http://annvremont.livejournal.com/88340.html ]
[My reply] Caution: bit of a dissenting opinion.....
Enh....not that anyone's getting any actual financial compensation for writing it (that would be illegal, of course...), but I think that fan fiction (and text roleplay) is one of the best areas in which one can find good writers and good character/plot ideas, and I think that some of them certainly do deserve a break. For some, it's the best way to build up a base of people who appreciate their writing style in itself so that there's a chance of having an actual audience for their own original work when they present it -- not to mention that it's often a lot more interesting and innovative than what makes it through the studio executives and onto the big screen (or the small one). I tend to say, more access/exposure equals better competition....sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but as long as there's not actual plagiarizing and misattribution of work in itself, I'm all in favour of letting the good stuff emerge and the schlock sink, no matter where it comes from or what canon. But then, I'm just a good writer who hasn't anted up a wholefinished manuscript and gotten published since college (or paid since highschool), and roleplaying off of canon is one way that I get some exposure and reassurance that what I do actually does work. Talent does need some incentive and a field of attention, if it's to make it through to the layer where one actually gets paid for one's work -- or in some remote possibility, gets hired/sanctioned by the powers-that-be of one's original field of pastiche. It's in the nature of fandoms (yeah, I'll publish a full thesis on this someday) that their maintenance as anything more than mass merchandising depends implicitly on the emergence of new talent from within the ranks of fans/system-roleplayers/actors/etc.
But if you're not involved in anything akin to a fandom, then this is really an irrelevant area of comment. Unless it's just annoying that there are all these people who already know what they like by name and seek it out or write it up themselves, and aren't willing to give a chance to universes/characters they're not familiar with. But that's always going to be the case -- 'the fans you have always with you.' If you want to get more attention than what's out there en masse, just complaining that it exists won't do any good.
I keep deleting what I was going to put in this post. I've learned the more reasons listed, the more points someone has to argue with you (and not because they've thought it out and come to a better conclusion!) or, even worse, the more points they have on which to give you advice.* I know someone is going to tell me how fiction in epublishing is seeing double digit growth, while fiction sales are declining in print.
Doesn't matter -- at least not to me. What matters? 1. FREE** competing content (youtube, myspace, fanfic sites (copyright infringing), etc.) consumed without regard to quality because it's widely available, meant almost exclusively to entertain and, again, free; 2. continuous copyright infringement, e-piracy, etc.; 3. general lack of regard for content creators at all levels.***
So,**** I think that's it. I will not do ebooks as a primary means of publication. And because Ann Vremont is an ebook author, Ann Vremont's last release is January 23, 2007, from Samhain Publishing. It's an epistolary mix of meth and absinthe and pixie stix.
Pick it up, or not.
*It's the advice givers, I think, that annoy me the worst. I once visited a forum that had a very matter-of-fact advice giver. If you weren't selling a lot, well, you should just read so-and-so's article and do what they said and then you'd sell more, and you should do a contest, and you should post excerpts. Wait ... 1. why wasn't this advice giver selling more books, getting more agents to look at AG's work, etc., and 2. who the fuck said I wasn't already doing all that stuff. If I'm intelligent enough to make up a whole story, then I must be able to figure out the conventional wisdom on how to sell a book -- at least how to sell an ebook. Print is different because you're selling to the booksellers.
**I know this competes with print books, too. That is another area where the cost-benefit analysis is still ongoing.
***Far from asking that we be worshipped, I'm only shooting for common courtesy. This is not, to be fair, a problem that only exists in epublishing, but I've not experienced a print publisher first hand. And many of the epublishers I've worked with are fairly decent (but obviously not all of them). edited to add that it's not just the publishers I'm talking about, either.
****Still said too fucking much, didn't I?
[ http://annvremont.livejournal.com/88340.html ]
[My reply] Caution: bit of a dissenting opinion.....
Enh....not that anyone's getting any actual financial compensation for writing it (that would be illegal, of course...), but I think that fan fiction (and text roleplay) is one of the best areas in which one can find good writers and good character/plot ideas, and I think that some of them certainly do deserve a break. For some, it's the best way to build up a base of people who appreciate their writing style in itself so that there's a chance of having an actual audience for their own original work when they present it -- not to mention that it's often a lot more interesting and innovative than what makes it through the studio executives and onto the big screen (or the small one). I tend to say, more access/exposure equals better competition....sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but as long as there's not actual plagiarizing and misattribution of work in itself, I'm all in favour of letting the good stuff emerge and the schlock sink, no matter where it comes from or what canon. But then, I'm just a good writer who hasn't anted up a wholefinished manuscript and gotten published since college (or paid since highschool), and roleplaying off of canon is one way that I get some exposure and reassurance that what I do actually does work. Talent does need some incentive and a field of attention, if it's to make it through to the layer where one actually gets paid for one's work -- or in some remote possibility, gets hired/sanctioned by the powers-that-be of one's original field of pastiche. It's in the nature of fandoms (yeah, I'll publish a full thesis on this someday) that their maintenance as anything more than mass merchandising depends implicitly on the emergence of new talent from within the ranks of fans/system-roleplayers/actors/etc.
But if you're not involved in anything akin to a fandom, then this is really an irrelevant area of comment. Unless it's just annoying that there are all these people who already know what they like by name and seek it out or write it up themselves, and aren't willing to give a chance to universes/characters they're not familiar with. But that's always going to be the case -- 'the fans you have always with you.' If you want to get more attention than what's out there en masse, just complaining that it exists won't do any good.
So.........whaddaya think?
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But there's only one area of fanfic that I think I'll ever approve of -- where the copyright holder has approved it (or where the copyright has expired) or the derivative writer doesn't distribute. I'm sure there's an economy of fanfic, where, in some cases, it creates a larger demand for mass marketed items. Copyright holders can decide if it benefits their economic interests to encourage fanfic.
I was surprised at the assumption in "It's in the nature of fandoms ... that their maintenance as anything more than mass merchandising depends implicitly on the emergence of new talent from within the ranks of fans/system-roleplayers/actors/etc." While fandoms may be a natural force and unstoppable in light of the Internet, they have no legal right to dictate that the franchise be anything more than maintained as mass merchandising. They don't have to buy, they can go to fanfic-friendly franchises, etc.
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I think you misread the essence of fandoms and the devotions of fanfic writers -- it's not as simple as "go to fanfic-friendly franchises", because they write because they love those particular characters, that scenario, that paricular concept or universe, and for whatever reason of arbitrary authorial choice or the end of the series/original plot, there's not enough to satisfy their liking of it, their wanting there to be more to it. Hence, fanfic -- something with no legal rights at all, but with so many valid social and psychological justifications that I think an author'd be a fool to try to quash it completely.
I am replying to your other comment in situ, as well as addressing the common assumption that whatever's free (or close to it, as I am not on an opposite side from you re ebooks) is automatically not of high-enough quality to be taken seriously. I also do give an overview of some of the salient cases that I'm aware of where fanfic is either supported or strongly discouraged by the original author, and what effect that can be assumed to have within the fan community as a whole.
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I'll add the remainder of today's topic thread from the other blog, to avoid being too redundant in too many places.....
="I responded in part on your LJ. But I was re-reading your last paragraph. There seems to be a sour grapes assumption in there. But I sincerely believe that fanfic is a copyright infringement. There is a pervasive belief that, if the fanfic writer isn't receiving money, they haven't made an infringement. Maybe you can address that, with relevant case law and legislative references, in your thesis? I'd be interested in reading it. It would also be interesting to see the original creators' opinions on the use of their creations. Most are fabulously wealthy (if they're still alive, I know LOTR has a huge fanfic and could imagine a few famous detective writers and, e.g. PK Dick, having a large volume of fanfic derived from their work) and that is directly attributable to their fanbase. They may all be of the opinion of the more the merrier."=
[my reply]--
Sour grapes as to what? I never said that I'd tried and failed at being a published writer, just that I haven't yet gotten a finished manuscript in to a place that'll pay me. I'm absentminded and life is messy -- doing what I do online in terms of roleplay (and I do have extensive original material too, just not put together for presentation yet) helps keep me reminded that this is something that I do do well, and that I ought to further it more than that. The only thing that I have a problem with in general is the automatic assumption that some people seem to make as to paid work = good quality; free-or-noncompensable work = 'amateur' quality.
I know that various authors have various opinions, and so far as the living authors themselves go, I have slightly more of a tendency to respect their opinions on fanfic and parallel works than those opposed who are A., not the original content creators but just their estate, or B., a managing studio or production company. In other words, those who are never going to either put out new work or offer a creator's critique on the farflung consequences, but are mainly interested on keeping any money/attention related to a subject solely in their own court. It also helps in those cases where an author seems to respect their own work and to have put much into it, as opposed to a lot of movies and TV shows whose flaws are never going to be redressed. Or, as is a major issue in one active fandom, the upcoming Transformers movie, whose writers-&-executives have not taken into account the strong opinions of TF fans, many of whom are roleplayers and/or fanfic writers and could have made the production a lot better and more satisfying to those who care about that universe and characters. It's really frustrating to see scripts get made crappily with a lot of money when you know that you could have written them better yourself, or (as a viewer) to see things left out that you really really wanted to have shown and explored. And I know that's what drives the best fan fiction -- honestly trying to further what you see as the virtues of a story/universe, whether or not the original content creators did it justice.
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(continued from above)
On the other hand, it is incredibly ironic that direct-and-generally-negative parody of copyright material should be protected as "fair use" (yes, I do know my A&E law) while positive exploration/improvisation on it is treated as criminally-liable as 'stealing'. Certainly there's no legal statute that can define quality in and of itself so that created material can be defended if good, suppressed if bad. All that we have legally is "originality" and "copyright holder", and there's no way to know whether the original creator/licensor either 'deserves' or will be 'fair' with all the powers that they have under the law -- these are subjective and situational things that one can only assess within context.
The main thing that does come up, though, is money -- the money to have the lawyers to protect the intellectual assets (no matter how un-"intellectual" they may be); the money that must not be lost from direct commercial competition (quite defensible); and then the money that might be lost not from actual commercial competition but from attention simply going elsewhere in a peer-to-peer community -- and that's where I think that things have a tendency to get selfish, seeing as that money in question isn't even real, nor has it ever been been proven that fanfic lessens the commercial demand for the original material. In fact, most of the time that I've seen, it seems to heighten and concentrate it, even with already mega-franchises like the Harry Potter series -- and I know that J.K. Rowling detests fan fiction of her universe.
If money is what allegedly separates "professional" from "amateur" writing and yet the designation is shrinking because of the internet and its compromises of business model (including enovels, I particularly add), then there have to be better ways to innovate and sort the field. In-fandom writing contests are one, as are the specialty archive websites where one can go straight to the quality work instead of sorting exhaustively through fanfiction.net -- though, I think that in itself that is an ideal model for many fan authors' needs, as it integrates feedback and review into the design.
I think that if you know you can get exposure and make real money with your original works, then by all means do it, but seeing as that possibility doesn't even exist in fanfic (apart from material 'zines sold at major conventions, like with Starsky & Hutch, which are technically for the item itself), it's not quite fair to pick on authors who are only getting one thing out of their labours -- a bit of attention from other people with like interests, and maybe enough admiration and moral support and in-community reputation to make them feel less sour grapes over a world where it is so hard to get attention or to make a living creatively.
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There is no clear and unambiguous dividing line between readers and writers, I suppose I must add -- enthrall or conciliate or antagonize a reader-who-writes, and you may reap the consequences with them as a fellow professional writer in open and original competition -- whether cordial or cutthroat. There's no legal protection or controls on that, not to mention it being an entirely logical course of human events.
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Re: (and again.....)
But unfortunately, many writers only seem to be in it for the money; and while wanting to make money is not a bad thing, it's always sad when it becomes the sole factor influencing an author's views and/or decisions. And that's doubly true when it clouds someone's mind so much that they treat anything as if it's going to make them lose money, no matter whether that actually makes sense.
I mean, seriously... can you imagine anyone who'd say, for example, "I'm not going to buy the latest Harry Potter novel because I've already read this fanfic"? I can't; if you're enough of a Harry Potter fan to read fanfics, you *will* buy the novels, too. It's all just paranoia really.
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Re: (and again.....) -(let's see if it's too long this time.....)
Case in point: The Mummy, and its sequel The Mummy Returns. This is an case of a badly-managed franchise where the first movie was good-though--kinda-illogical, the sequel was full-of-CGI-but-really-illogical (and had a parallel-but-not-really comic book come out at the same time, not to mention novel tie-ins for the both of them that complicate matters of canon even more), and the guy who started it is now supposedly planning a third movie set in China (with Chinese mummies--or Chinese clay warriors--or perhaps Causasian mummies that happened to be buried in China, which would really be more scholarly than this guy is capable of...), using only one or two of the original cast. But the canon characters have enough potential that they are interesting to carry on and make sense of in a medium that's not constrained by standard Hollywood plot formulae, running time, CGI budget, or the need for merchandising tie-ins. Plus, there's all the past-life/reincarnation possibilities and authentic Egyptian history and mythology that was mainly ignored or utterly mangled in the movies. Therefore, it's a major fanfic category, and it's an area where I've been roleplaying for about the past four years, playing one of the most badly-treated canon characters and giving him more range and depth and...well, actually, everything that his original actor is also brilliantly capable of bringing to the part, but was never called on to do because they mainly wanted comic relief). And I also left room for potential slash this time (we're doing a backstory rewrite before bringing in new characters), as the most popular pairing is Jonathan and Ardeth (assuming Rick and Evy to be married and Imhotep too evil to screw)--and there are plenty of moments in both movies that one can cite as support for that hypothesis, even if the movies themselves are ill-supported in logic and need a lot of shoring-up and after-the-fact excuses.
In another even more prominent and older fandom, that of Starsky & Hutch, the slash fanfics are often a lot more believable than the straight ones, because they're more tense and inventive (whereas heterosexual romance has tons of plot conventions and room for wishful self-insertion/matchmaking by the author). They also are more faithful to the way the chemistry was between the lead actors, and the way that their closeness as a team never really left room for a love interest to come between them and live to see the altar...'happy-ever-afters' with wives and kids just come off as really contrived and shoehorned, though there is a determined "gen" community. But both gen and slash writers find support for their stances in the canon, citing episode plot, chapter and verse to explain exactly how, when and why things happened according to them. So, the original TV series is certainly not obselete on account of fanfic (much to the contrary), even though its release on DVD has been uneven in quality and editing.
I have to say, if a current franchise is doing credibly and has aesthetic wholeness, I'm not that inclined to roleplay (or try fanfic)with it...like The Lord of the Rings, or The Vampire Chronicles (okay, that's more a matter of Anne Rice having her characters so obsessively written in her own mind that there's nothing left hanging over to be completed). It's the ones that are so episodic that there's a lot lost in between, or that are underappreciated in general, or that were not done justice by their own creators, that really draw me to do them better justice with my own imagination.
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Re: (and again.....) -(let's see if it's too long this time.....)
One might say that furthering culture has become an externality to most writers, in a way, and that's really sad - and a perversion of copyright, too, considering that it was originally intended as an incentive for creating works and ultimately furthering culture when they pass into the public domain.
Ah well, what can you do?
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Re: (and again.....) -(let's see if it's too long this time.....)
Yeah, I don't think that a lot of "professional" authors these days get that their entire viability and existence is implicitly based upon a culture where readers write and writers read, and to try to separate one out from the other as a class is like trying to restrict literacy itself. The way I see it, fan fiction is a way for people to teach themselves and each other how to write and to keep on enjoying writing and reading -- without the barrier of having to have a formal/fulltime education or the money to buy one, or to finance a shot-in-the-dark self-published book you have to pimp without any assistance. Fanfic, at least there's an audience already there -- you just have to show it to 'em and see how they like it.
Plus -- and this is something that hadn't come to mind to just now -- putting out all-original content online puts it at risk of being plagiarised by the wholly-unscrupulous. Posting fanfic for sharing and evaluation actually lessens the chance that a real "thief" will make off with your writing (itself being your "original content", even if the premise isn't original to you), because it is universally acknowledged that the copyright on the fandom precludes it being passed off as anyone else's wholly-proprietary material anyhow. So it's actually a safer way in which to get some critical recognition and even build up a fan base for your writing itself, until you have the means to launch an all-original project and make a decent profit because people already know your style.
If/when I have enough fiction published that people start writing fanfic around it, my approach will likely be to make contact with the writers myself and see which stories are the best/most accurate to my conception of things, and give those works 'authorization' as fitting in with my original works, thus building a meta-verse of both canon and fanfic that can be said to live together in harmony. And there may be different degree-ratings of that, because there may be some things that I wouldn't approve of as being what I'd have written or let happen, but I'd appreciate the creative premise or style nonetheless.....basically, encourage the writers who are doing a good job, and set up a mutual flow of readership and patronage between me and them.
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Re: (and again.....) -(let's see if it's too long this time.....)
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As for publishing companies that are e-based only, I think their time will come. Right now, there are so many bad e-publishing companies out there that it will take a while to seperate the 'wheat from the chafe' so to speak. I do think authors should get paid, even only on commission, by these companies. There are several 'vanity' presses, even within e-publising, that want YOU to pay THEM to publish your stuff. And you have to market it yourself.
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As you can see from my c&p'd replies above, I don't actually believe that fan fiction has any defensible legal rights against prosecution or to gain monetary compensation through that line of work. That's the way the law is, and I know it, and it's clear enough, whether I like it in all aspects or not -- and yes, authors do have the right to shut things down if they don't like them or think they're diluting their property. But I think that authors should be very careful and diplomatic in how they handle this area, because fanfic writers can often be more devoted to the author's material and world (and its full integrity) than the actual author is. Plus, it is a major insult to assume that all fanfic authors are beneath one's own level as writers/creators and will always remain so. Merely getting paid for one's work is not a reliable standard of quality, and I do hope that there is change to come both ways for that -- that all content creators, whether original or parallel, will be respected for the actual calibre of their work, and that (seeing as there is so much content that is "free" online) more people will be able to get real compensation for their work when it is selected for any special presentation or material publication, instead of the "exposure" (plus two complimentary copies) which has been held for so long to be a reasonable substitute for pay/honorarium. "Exposure" is being gotten online these days...it's the material items that need to be redistinguished as both profitable and payworthy in order to stand out from the crowd.
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I really only count original authors themselves as having any rights over whether or not fanfic should be permitted or not, seeing as they're the ones who knew what they were thinking when they created the material -- heirs and estates and trustees really can't be said to have that discretionary ability unless they were actual collaborators or very close confidantes indeed. And if an author has created something and then goes on to other things and and doesn't really care to have maintained the integrity of the franchise itself (or even given it any to start with), I think it's fair game for anyone to see if they can do better with it as a service to humanity....lol At least, that's the spirit with which I tend to roleplay and shall continue to do so -- it's salvage work.
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