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Just in case this source disappears....
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Re: (and again.....) -(let's see if it's too long this time.....)