Started as a reply to a comment, but got long;)

I’m inclined to favor independent/self-publishing in many forms, partly due to my own experience in graduating with a Cinema & Video Production degree and not being able to get hired by anyone doing anything remotely like film or video, but I’ve also seen enough of the dreck on FFN and elsewhere to know that a lower barrier to entry will mean an increase in the junk that gets produced, not just the rare gems that no one could find before.

Of course, a lot of professionally published books have been less-than-impressive, too. I’m thinking of one Mercedes Lackey paperback I have that actually misspells the queen’s name several times. Ironically, there’s one page that has her name on it three times, and it’s spelled two ways on the same page. It’s a technicality, but there are plenty of pro-books that have major plot and style issues as well. I firmly believe that scriptwriters should not try to write novels; the Andromeda spinoff novels are horrible, as are most based-on-screenplay novels that accompany certain major motion picture releases. Screenwriters can depend on the actors, directors, and art teams to create the mood and visuals of the story, so they tend to leave them out or write things that make no sense when you try to imagine how they would look.

The major thing, IMO, is that self-publishing used to be so expensive that only the truly confident (or those who had their own presses) would spend the money for it. This, of course, meant that the good ones caught the attention of the institution, and the bad ones were generally ignored, especially with the retail system the way it was. Now, though, the technology has made it possible for anyone to self-publish. Even if the would-be author doesn’t have the money for a short-run printing, there are places like CafePress or Lulu to POD, or the option of selling a PDF ebook on the web - no upfront costs at all. It’s the ultimate in ease-of-entry, which means anyone with the inclination to write can be published. In film/video, there’s CinemaNow and iTunes and MovieLink and Amazon for download sales, and CustomFlix for POD DVDs. CafePress will do POD data or music CDs, for the musicians wanting to go that route, and then there’s iTunes and Buy.com for those downloads, too.

Technology has all but eliminated the barriers of entry. Anyone who wants to try can write a book, make a CD, or create a video. As is evident on the web, though, not everyone who wants to be published is worth reading. I think PODdy Mouth or FantasyPOD commented on this - if POD and self-publishing becomes the norm, people will seek new filters to screen out the garbage. I have done this on FFN by finding a story or two I can stand, then checking that author’s favorite authors list. It works a lot better than trying to wade through the recently updated stories list. Translated to non-FFN writing, I think the web will gravitate toward genre-specific blogs recommending the best of the genre, and people will rely on them to filter the slushpile for them.

The hard part has always been getting people to buy. Even the major corporations don’t always know the best way to market their products, but the average would-be author/musician/filmmaker doesn’t want to pay anyone to help edit/market their work. This is particularly ironic considering the conventional wisdom that an independent movie must be submitted (including paying entry fees) to multiple festivals, in the unlikely hope that a major distributor will see it, like it, and put it in theatrical distribution. Such filmmakers also desperately hope that an established film company will see it and be impressed and hire them. Better to use the festivals as a marketing opportunity to find your audience (if only most of these people knew who their intended audience was) and convince them to buy your movie on DVD or download.

In terms of production, it’s still cheaper per book (T-shirt, mug, button, poster, CD, DVD, whatever) to do a massive print run like the major publishers do, but for a newcomer to the field, there’s no reason to bet the farm on an all-or-nothing like that. POD is the cheapest way to get started.

So I was checking my RSS feeds and came across Sci Fi home to NBC ‘Heroes’ - Show touted as cross between ‘Lost’ and ‘X-Men’, which puzzled me at first. NBC-Universal owns the US Scifi channel, so that was odd, until I figured out they meant UK. I had thought that the UK scifi fans only had the Sky channel, but apparently I was wrong.

Also, I thought they meant the Stan Lee “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” which finished up on the US Scifi channel a couple of weeks ago, but they mention WWTBAS at the end of the article as another show the UK Scifi channel had gotten. So what is this “Heroes” thing? NBC is taking scifi to the mainstream? I guess that’s appropriate - they’ve brought mainstream to the geeks in that new BSG :P~

There are two primary Point Problems in fiction:
1) Making No Point at All
2) Using the Moral Sledgehammer

When I was in college, I was required to take a literature class. Since I prefer novels written no earlier than the 1950s, I was less than thrilled to be limited to British Literature or American Literature, neither of which makes it into the 1950s, let alone later. Of the two, American Lit was the more recent option, so I went with that. The professor stated in class one day that all fiction makes a point of some kind. Wanting to get a good grade, I dutifully wrote that down, but in my head I rebelled, thinking of the long, complicated ramblings that people sometimes claim the author intended, even when the author in question has had a chance to state categorically that no, he’d never meant that. It wasn’t until later that I realized there was a middle ground.

The people who get carried away with creating complex messages in relatively simple stories and poems can ruin it for others, but if a story has no point at all, the reader gets to the end and thinks, ‘That’s it? Why did I read/watch this? Who cares?!’ In the case of the second problem, the author’s pet issue can get in the way of the story, beating the reader/viewer over the head until he can’t see the story for all the preaching. Aesop had a tendency to be pedantic like this - if a ten-year-old can watch it and say, “and the moral of the story is…” then you’re being too preachy. Again, the reaction tends to be ‘Why did I bother with this thing?’

At the end of your film, you want the viewer to feel something - patriotism, love, inspiration, anger, etc. If the viewer gets up and says, “Well, that was a waste of an hour and a half,” then you have failed to stir the thoughts and emotions of your audience. If you can’t name the point or theme of your story, you need to rework it until you can figure out what the point is. If you’re preaching too blantantly, you need to back off and work the message in a little more subtly. It usually works better to have a central character stand for the issue you’re promoting - have the protagonist live as an example of your “better way” without filling the dialogue with slogans and catchphrases. The only way to work preaching into a story without thoroughly annoying the audience is if the main character is a preacher.

Apple plants seeds for pic downloads - iTunes going to the movies

The main sticking point is price.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who has been personally involved in the talks, initially proposed selling all films at a flat price of $9.99 — an offer the studios flatly rejected.

“We can’t be put in a position where we lose the ability to price our most popular content higher than less popular stuff,” said a studio exec close to the negotiations.

Apple has traditionally sold digital content at a single price: 99¢ for songs, $1.99 for TV shows and musicvideos. It has recently experimented with some longer video content, however, selling the Disney Channel telepic “High School Musical” for $9.99 and the “Battlestar Galactica” miniseries for $14.99.

Apple gives TV and music companies a 70% wholesale rate and is offering the same to film providers.

Okay, I can understand the appeal of having one price for all files. It simplifies things immensely, and makes a great marketing tool. Also, every retailer should have the right to set prices as he sees fit. HOWEVER - the retailer does not have the right to dictate price to the wholesaler/producers. This is one of the major gripes I’ve been hearing about Walmart, and Apple doesn’t need the kind of bad PR that Walmart has earned through this same behavior. The film distributors should be able to set their prices as they see fit, and if Apple wants to price the downloads so low that it is essentially paying the studios to allow people to DL films, well, let ‘em. I can guarantee you that’s not what Apple wants to do.
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Microsoft developing rival to iPod

Microsoft Corp. is developing a music and video device to compete with Apple’s iPod and creating its own music service to rival Apple’s iTunes, sources familiar with the plans said on Friday.

Not surprising. Microsoft has always seemed to me like it was trying to be all things to all people. Makes for a very scattershot approach, and can be quite annoying when, say, your home computer that only you use requires username login info in order to set it up. There are certain features of XP Home that make sense on a company computer, but have no place on a one-person machine. Besides, if you bother to read the EULA of XP Home, you’re not allowed to operate a business using XP Home.
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