After I came back from DragonCon and started corresponding with the lawyer I met there, I realized I didn’t understand enough about copyright to properly discuss some of the things I wanted to discuss, so I decided I should fully read the book I got at SIGGRAPH back in 2003 – Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman. I’d only skimmed it before. I didn’t expect to really get into it, but she writes in a very conversational style, and the issue is one that interests me very much. Before I knew it, I had half the book marked with random slips of paper and old mailing envelopes – whatever was close to hand. I have written before about what I think should be done to solve the “fanfic violates copyright, and if we try to make money on it TPTB will come down on us” problem. I seem to recall that during that incident, someone posted a comment that “George Lucas is going to eat your face,” which was so amusing that someone on F_W immortalized it in icon form. But that’s neither here nor there.

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Again I started a reply to a comment and got long-winded.

The question is, are you looking for a job or starting a business?
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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.

Well, well, well. I decided to catch up on one of my (hopelessly behind on reading) RSS feeds tonight, and found myself confronted with a familiar name - the writer with whom I argued so fruitlessly over the last few weeks. Turns out the biggest brouhaha took place only a month before he decided to email me about it.

Here’s the post that caught my eye tonight at The Rejecter. That led me to Issendai’s post here on the same topic, which in turn led me back to the post that started it all.Frankly, I’d avoided mentioning his name or linking him because despite his insistence that it’s not about the publicity, it was painfully obvious that he was after publicity. Having found this now, I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. Reading through this January muddle made me want to do a F_Wesque skewering of his horrible grammar and misspelled words. My favorite was “egology” from this nonsense sentence: “And like blogland the wombwell is probably a weird egology.” It reads like a bizarre cross between “ego” and “ecology” and seems oddly appropriate in the context of his refusal to acknowledge any faults in his own work.

And as long as I’m on the subject of people who can’t take constructive criticism, I want to point out this which was linked on F_W the other day (yes, I’m reading too much F_W, but they point out some of the funniest links!)

PS - Meika, if you try what you did with Issendai’s LJ, I will certainly be screening you, and possibly deleting your posts. Fair warning.

You may or may not have noticed my penchant for writing and writing-related sites, but if you take the time to look at my userinfo, you’ll see several RSS feeds relating to writing and publishing, in its various forms. What is noteworthy today is the string of events stemming from my interaction, however slight, at FantasyPOD.

Now, I commented there because I thought I might be able to help a little. In my haste, I failed to check the blogger’s profile page, but I figured there would be no harm in leaving my comment posted. Perhaps that was a faulty assumption.

On February 2, I received an email out of the blue. I almost bounced it back, since the subject line looked like spam, but the first line after the greeting told me he’d gotten my email from FantasyPOD, so I decided to read the body of the message. It wasn’t the best email I’d ever read, but it got the point across: he wanted me to see his self-published POD book.

I was torn. I thought perhaps he had mistaken me for the FantasyPOD blogger, and I wasn’t sure anymore whether I really wanted to try to become another POD blogger. I considered ignoring it altogether, but I am by nature curious, and it was only one book.
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