Showing posts with label Google+. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google+. Show all posts

Thursday, June 15, 2023

The Internet Knows All

This week I acquired a new HP computer to replace my old Dell, which had started unpredictably freezing up at least once per day. Installing Windows 11 didn't fix it. It had reached the point where even CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't unfreeze it; I had to turn it off manually and restart every time it failed. It feels great to have a reliable machine again.

Two things struck me about the change: First, the price of the new one, bundled with a keyboard and mouse, about $500. Our first computer, an Apple II+ purchased as a gift at Christmas of 1982, cost over $2000 with, naturally, nowhere near the capabilities of today's devices. No hard drive, no Windows or Apple equivalent therof, and of course no internet. And in that year $2000 was worth a whole lot more than $2000 now. Imagine spending today's equivalent in 2023 dollars for a home electronic device. Back then, it was a serious financial decision that put us into debt for a long time. Thanks to advances in technology, despite inflation some things DO get cheaper. An amusing memory: After unveiling the wondrous machine in 1982, my husband decreed, "The kids are never going to touch this." LOL. That rule didn't last long! Nowadays, in contrast, we'd be lost if we couldn't depend on our two youngest offspring (now middle-aged) for tech support.

The second thing that struck me after our daughter set up the computer: How smoothly and, to my non-tech brain, miraculously, Windows and Google Chrome remembered all my information from the previous device. Bookmarks, passwords, document files (on One Drive), everything I needed to resume work almost as if the hardware hadn't been replaced. What a tremendous convenience. On the other hand, it's a little unsettling, too. For me, the most eerie phenomenon is the way many websites know information from other websites they have no connection to. For example, the weather page constantly shows me ads for products I've browsed on Amazon. Sometimes it seems that our future AI overlords really do see all and know all.

In response to recent warnings about the "existential threat" posed by AI, science columnist Keith Tidman champions a more optimistic view:

Dark Side to AI?

He points out the often overlooked difference between weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI, which already exists, isn't on the verge of taking over the world. Tidman, however, seems less worried about the subtle dangers of the many seductively convenient features of the current technology than most commentators are. As for strong AI, it's not here yet, and even if it eventually develops human-like intelligence, Tidman doesn't think it will try to dominate us. He reminds us, "At the moment, in some cases what’s easy for humans to do is extraordinarily hard for machines to do, while the converse is true, too." If this disparity "evens out" in the long run, he nevertheless believes, "Humans won’t be displaced, or harmed, but creative human-machine partnerships will change radically for the better."

An amusing incidental point about this article: On the two websites I found by googling for it, one page is headlined, "There Is Inevitable Dark Side to AI" and the other, "There Is No Inevitable Dark Side to AI." So even an optimistic essay can be read pessimistically! (Unless the "No" was just accidentally omitted in the first headline. But it still looks funny.)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thursday, March 30, 2023

One Bite at a Time

Cory Doctorow's column for the March 2023 issue of LOCUS, for once, asserts a position I can support without reservation:

End-to-End

Concerning the many problems involved in making the internet user-friendly, a quest for perfection may result in no improvement at all. As Doctorow summarizes the situation, "The internet succeeded where other networks failed" because it didn't try to implement a "seemingly monolithic technological project" that would require all parties to agree on an ultimate solution that would deal with all difficulties once and for all. Instead, find one small element that everyone can accept. "Build that, then do it again, finding another step that everyone can get behind." In other words, figuratively speaking, eat the elephant one bite (or byte?) at a time. To quote Doctorow again, "I want a better internet now, not years down the road. I’ll happily take a smaller bite."

The main issue to which his current column applies this approach is the end-to-end principle, an older name for what's now usually called net neutrality. In brief, "when a willing speaker wants to say something to a willing listener, our technology should be designed to make a best effort to deliver the speaker’s message to the person who asked to get it." After decades of development of the internet, why don't we have this transparently obvious, user-friendly system?

When we ask a question with Google, why does it prioritize its own search engine's results over those of others that might be more relevant to the questioner's needs? When we search for a specific book or other product on Amazon, why do several other products pop up at the top of the page ahead of the one we typed in the search box? Why do Facebook posts from people and organizations we actually want to hear from get drowned in a sea of sponsored posts? Well, yeah, money and profit (duh). But why are such practices legally permitted? Why is Facebook allowed to restrict our access to posts from users we've liked or followed by blackmailing them into "boosting" their posts—paying to have their material seen by people who've expressed a wish to see it? Suppose when we tried to telephone a local business, the phone company routed the call to a rival business that had paid for the privilege? Nobody would stand for that, yet the equivalent happens online all the time.

Doctorow suggests examples of a few modest rules that internet companies should be required to follow: E.g. “The first result for a search should be the product that most closely matches the thing I searched for” and “If I subscribe to your feed, then when you publish something, it should show up in my feed.”

For a long time I was puzzled that my posts on my Facebook author page showed such low numbers of "Reach." The page doesn't have a huge throng of followers, but it certainly has a lot more than those being "reached." It was a shock to learn that in order to be read by more than a handful of followers, those posts needed to be boosted. In other words, I would have to bribe Facebook to carry out the function it purports to perform, connecting senders with willing receivers. Likewise, it's a constant, though minor irritant that searching for a book on Amazon often connects to a page where I have to scroll halfway down to find the desired item. According to Doctorow, the volume of ads and sponsored posts is delicately designed to stay "just below the threshold where the service becomes useless to you." I fear he may be right.

Will the limited ideal of his online utopia ever become a reality? Maybe not, but it's worth discussing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Big Tech Tyranny?

Cory Doctorow's March LOCUS column discusses tech tycoons from the perspective of monopoly and world domination. Well, that phrase may be a bit exaggerated but not totally inapplicable, considering his term "commercial tyrant":

Vertically Challenged

Is meritocracy a "delusion"? Are people such as Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) unique geniuses, or did they just get lucky? One might maintain that some sort of genius is required to recognize opportunities and take advantage of the "luck," but that's beside Doctorow's point. He argues against "vertical integration" and in favor of "structural separation." Fundamental antitrust principles should forbid mega-corporations from competing with the companies to which they sell services. "Amazon could offer virtual shelf space to merchants, or it could compete with those merchants by making its own goods, but not both. Apple could have an app store, or it could make apps, but not both."

It's easy to see his point. It would be better if Google could somehow be prevented from giving preference in search results to entities in which it has a financial interest. On the other hand, more ambiguous "liminal" cases exist, a point Doctorow himself does acknowledge. For example, "Amazon might say it gives preferential search results to businesses that use its warehouses because it can be sure that those items will be delivered more efficiently and reliably, but it also benefits every time it makes that call." Granting the second half of that sentence, I'm still not sure this practice is a bad thing. Given a choice between two identical products of equal price, I DO tend to choose the one labeled "Fulfilled by Amazon" for that very reliability, as well as speed of delivery. As for splitting off Amazon's publishing services, as he advocates, I'd be dubious. I like the way Kindle self-publishing currently works.

Doctorow also brings up problems that may require "structural integration" rather than separation, to prevent Big Tech from evading its legitimate responsibilities. He tentatively calls for "a requirement that the business functions that harm the rest of us when they go wrong be kept in-house, so that the liabilities from mismanaging those operations end up where they belong." Is there a simple answer to the dilemma of maintaining the conveniences we enjoy while preventing the abuses?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Problems with Monopolies

Cory Doctorow's LOCUS article for this month delves into a lot of background about markets and monopolies that's new to me:

Free Markets

He begins by explaining that the classic threat to the free market wasn't considered to be government control, but corporate monopoly. Adam Smith in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS warns of the power of rentiers, which Doctorow defines as follows: "A rentier is someone who derives their income from 'economic rents': revenues derived from merely owning something" -- for example, a landlord. Doctorow extends this concept to companies such as Amazon and Google, "Big Tech" in general, with the power to control "access to the marketplace." A monopolist, in this view, isn't simply a corporate monolith with limited competition; it's an entity "who can set prices without regard to the market"

The primary example Doctorow focuses on is, not surprisingly, DRM. In addition to the alleged purpose of preventing copyright infringement (at which he maintains DRM utterly fails), the relevant law "felonizes removing or tampering with or bypassing DRM, even when no copyright infringement takes place." Therefore, a buyer of an e-book (such as a Kindle novel) can't read it on any device not authorized by the seller. As a result, Big Tech, not the author who owns the copyright, gets "permanent veto over how my books can be used: which devices can display them, and on what terms." However, since all e-book platforms (so far) make DRM optional, Doctorow and his publisher have the power to sell his work DRM-free.

He discusses at length the very different status of audiobooks. Amazon requires all audiobooks released through its Audible program, whether produced by Amazon itself or some other publisher, to be "wrapped in its proprietary lockware." That's something I didn't know, since I don't have any audiobooks on the market and never buy books in that medium. In response to that policy, Doctorow turned to Kickstarter to release his books in audio format, and he analyzes in detail how that project worked out. He also explains how much more complicated it is to download and play an audiobook with an independent app than to buy it through Audible. I previously had little or no awareness of the hard line the Big Tech companies take toward "noncompliant apps."

I have an ambivalent reaction toward Doctorow's stance on Amazon. In principle, I acknowledge that dominance of a market by one company isn't desirable. In practice, as a reader I love knowing I can find almost any book I've ever heard of on a single website. It's a vanishingly rare occurence when I can't find a book listed there, no matter how long out of print. I also turn to Amazon first for many items other than books, music, and visual media. I like buying from it because of its reliable, usually fast delivery and because it already has our credit card on file, so I don't have to enter the information on unfamiliar sites. As a writer, for my "orphaned" works I like the ease of self-publishing through Kindle and the fact that the vast majority of e-book buyers are likely to read the Kindle format. At least one of my publishers feels the same way, having pulled their products from all other outlets because those sales were negligible compared to Amazon sales. Yet I do understand having qualms about being at the mercy of one powerful commercial entity's whims.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thursday, September 17, 2020

On Intellectual Property

Cory Doctorow has an unusually long, information-dense post this bimonth, about the background of the concept of intellectual property:

IP

He reviews the history of open source software and the shift toward increasingly stringent restrictions, leading up to the present situation in which taking the wrapper off a box legally commits users to agreements they haven't yet had a chance to read. He discusses in great detail the principle of "interoperability," which lets all railroads run on the same tracks, all brands of lightbulbs work in lamps from different manufacturers, in general all the benefits of standardization. "Interoperability lowers 'switching costs' –- the cost of leaving behind whatever you’re using now in favor of something you think will suit you better." This advantage to consumers, naturally, is something a lot of commercial interests would like to eliminate or minimize. Doctorow analyzes how companies such as Google and Facebook make it easy for customers to start using their services but hard to get out, sometimes impossible to do so without abandoning a wide network of services and contacts. He explores the differences among copyright, patent, and trademark and how those different "creators' monopolies" became bundled together under the single term "intellectual property" -- a development he disapproves of, by the way.

Market monopolists, according to Doctorow, often strip power from the alleged "creator's monopoly." Corporate monopolists also tilt the balance of power as far as possible from the consumer to the seller. The abuse of DRM, one of Doctorow's recurrent topics, is a conspicuous example. Laws against bypassing software, as more and more devices in common use become computerized, will inevitably lead (according to him) to this result: "Software isn’t just a way to put IP into otherwise inert objects. It’s also a way to automate them, to make them into unblinking, ever-vigilant enforcers for the manufacturer/monopolist’s interests. They can detect and interdict any attempt at unauthorized interoperability, and call the appropriate authorities to punish the offenders." Furthermore, "Even where tech is challenging these monopolies, it is doing so in order to create more monopolies." He mentions the Kindle program and Amazon's dominance of the audiobook market as examples.

This article contains much to reread, digest, and debate. Is Doctorow's concluding manifesto valid? "There are no digital rights, only human rights. There is no software freedom, only human freedom."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Cookies!!!! (Google May Be The Biggest Cookie Monster Of All)

Dear Friends and Most Welcome Visitors....

European Union laws requires us (the authors of the alien romances blog hosted on Blogger) to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on our blog. In many cases, these laws also require us to obtain your consent. 

By visiting this blog, we (the aliendjinnromances authors) assume that you consent. If you don't consent, please leave a polite comment advising us of which cookies were added, so we may address the issue.

If you feel so inclined, please let us know in a comment what cookies our blog has dumped on your device, too. (We would love the traffic!!)

As a courtesy to us, Google has added a notice on our blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. 


https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6253244?p=eu_cookies_notice&hl=en&rd=1

We think that Google also adds YouTube and Googlevideo cookies.... judging by the cookies I see when I open "Preferences" in my browser.

Google tells us that we are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for our blog, and that it displays. 

If you have seen this notice, or a similar notice posted by Google on our blog, please let us know (by leaving a comment).



PS....   I am unable to leave any comments!  Is anyone else having this problem? It seems that the only people who may comment HAVE to have a Google + account (how tyrannical is that?!!)  Even then, one cannot comment.

Rowena

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Some useful links from this week

The USPTO has been discussing "orphan" works, or “Facilitating the Development of the Online Licensing Environment for Copyrighted Works.” 

There are already ways for would-be exploiters of copyrighted works to locate and seek permission from rights holders, but Google and others would rather enjoy an "opt-out" system where authors' and songwriters' must proactively search out every would-be exploiter and actively opt out of being exploited.

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2015/04/finding-authors-importance-of.html

I resorted to Wikipedia for this (below), having seen a news item about a new interactive gaming app that appears to exploit the likeness and final hours of a young man who died in a manner that made national headlines.

The discussion by Cyberguy did not clarify whether the bereaved family sold the rights, or whether they are being ripped off. 

Wikipedia:
The right of publicity, often called personality rights, is the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal aspects of one's identity. It is generally considered a property right as opposed to a personal right, and as such, the validity of the right of publicity can survive the death of the individual (to varying degrees depending on the jurisdiction).
Personality rights are generally considered to consist of two types of rights: the right of publicity, or to keep one's image and likeness from being commercially exploited without permission or contractual compensation, which is similar to the use of a trademark; and the right to privacy, or the right to be left alone and not have one's personality represented publicly without permission. In common law jurisdictions, publicity rights fall into the realm of the tort of passing offUnited States jurisprudence has substantially extended this right.
A commonly cited justification for this doctrine, from a policy standpoint, is the notion of natural rights and the idea that every individual should have a right to control how, if at all, his or her "persona" is commercialized by third parties. Usually, the motivation to engage in such commercialization is to help propel sales or visibility for a product or service, which usually amounts to some form of commercial speech (which in turn receives the lowest level of judicial scrutiny).

IMHO, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, and other genre authors should beware of assuming that just because a game app developer does something, it is safe and above board to emulate. It may not be. Rights may be involved. Permissions and contracts may be necessary.
On the other hand, there was an interesting article in an Authors Guild newsletter last year about the difficulties in copyrighting aspects of historical fiction where different authors relied on the documented life of a real historical person, that is, when one accuses the other of plagiarism for using identical historical details and events.

As a bit of a copyright enthusiast (you noticed?) I am silently cheering The Turtles for their sterling work in going after exploiters of their copyrighted musical works. 
What I do not understand is why there isn't a class action suit involving all my favorite musicians and bands (living and deceased) from the 1950's, 1960's, and early 1970's who have not been paid any royalties at all by various subscription services. 

Big tech has taught us all to call copyrighted works "content"....  as www.TheTrichordist.com puts it, it is not so much "the internet of things" as "the internet of other people's things."
Excellent quote from The Trichordist on copyright (where the British Green Party allegedly proposes to cut copyright protection to just 14 years, and redistribute authors', musicians', movie makers', photographers' and others' rights to Google:
Ask yourself this: Exactly how does technology make it any less expensive to write a novel?   Writing a novel is purely a work of intellectual labor.  I suppose it’s easier to spell check…,  the backspace key is more convenient than White-out and a brush…  But I’m not seeing any evidence it’s less expensive.   In fact I would argue that since the modern English author lives in a much richer society than Dickens, that the relative cost of his labor is much much higher. 

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Pirate site BookZa claims to be "library", financed by Doubleclick (Google subsidiary_



There are writers who feel that piracy is not a concern to them, or that piracy is beneficial. I am not one of that ilk.

How does it help me --or you-- that Disney and Norton place paid adverts on BookZa on pages illegally offering my books to anyone who wants to download them free?

I own the copyright. I did not give permission for BookZa to create illegal versions of my titles or to publish and distribute my titles.

A friend gave me a heads-up about BookZa. Here is one of the many pages sharing my stuff   http://bookza.org/g/Mate%20Forced

I was able to copy the illegal links on the page, but not the Google-placed advertisement.
Now, what is happening to tax revenues as a result of this piracy?

The pirate probably isn't paying taxes. Is the income from Norton and Disney and other advertisers paid to Google greater that the income would be if income taxes were paid at the individual rates? I have no way of knowing.

There is another site that is in my opinion a pirate site. It is Mobilism.org and although it posts a copyright page, it pays uploaders in WRZ and it does not (appear to me to) ban prolific uploaders no matter how many takedown notices are sent in.

Here's the link to the page of someone who apparently uploads an average of 4 ebooks every day, and appears to have uploaded material encouraging people to infringe the copyrights of more than TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED works.
http://forum.mobilism.org/search.php?author_id=644185&sr=posts

The ebooks that KellyKing29 has allegedly uploaded are hosted on TusFiles and on Hulkload.

Here is mobilism's "policy".  In my opinion, they would not be in business if they enforced it or followed it.


Copyright policy
Last modified: 15 April 2013

Mobilism does not condone, allow or permit copyrighted content to be uploaded to our servers. Please ensure you read and understand this policy before uploading to Mobilism servers or filing a copyright infringement notice.

DMCA
Mobilism accepts DMCA infringement notices for copyrighted material.

External infringements
To file an infringement notice for a file that is not hosted on Mobilism servers (subdomains ending in .mobilism.org), please follow the copyright infringement process of the site the file is hosted on. Mobilism does not have access to remove files on external services and therefore may not respond to copyright infringement notices relating to files on external services.

Internal infringements
Mobilism may remove pages that link to copyrighted material. To file a copyright infringement notice with Mobilism, you must provide written communication using one of two methods set forth below. By filing a copyright infringement notice you understand and accept if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing on your copyright, you will be liable for damages including costs and attorney fees. 

Option One, Email: Your notice must contain all of the following to be accepted:
  • Details of the copyrighted work that you believe is infringed upon including its location under the mobilism.org domain.
  • An email address where Mobilism can contact you.
  • Information and/or proof that you are the copyright holder or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
  • The statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
  • digital signature.

Mobilism will generally handle complaints within 48 hours of the complaint being received. The contact details for filing a copyright infringement notice can be found on our contact us page

Option Two, Registering as a Developer/Author/Other copyright holder or representitive: Alternatively to filing a copyright complaint by email, you may register on the forum and send a private message (PM) to the Section Head of the forum where the infringing content was posted. Section heads are listed on the index under the title of each section. Your first notice must include all of the following to be accepted:
  • Details of the copyrighted work that you believe is infringed upon including its location under the mobilism.org domain.
  • Information and/or proof that you are the copyright holder or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
  • The statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

Once your identity is confirmed, subsequent emails are only required to have a link to the infringing content and the statement of the last bulletpoint. Messaging section heads directly will generally result in much faster removal than emailing us.

Repeat infringers
Any users of Mobilism services who repeatedly upload copyrighted material to Mobilism servers may have a permanent ban placed on their account if they are issued with more than two infringement notices.


Piracy is big business, but not for the majority of authors who are being ripped off. Think what they could be earning if Google, PayPal, file hosting sites, major businesses that advertise on pirate sites etc had morals.

This is back to the BookZa page.


Rowena Cherry

Category: fiction

530 KB, English

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 2

Part 1 of this series was posted May 26, 2009. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Since then, Google invented Google+ which I was sucked into via the hostess of a twitter chat #litchat (which I adore).  That connected me on Google+ with a huge number of writers, and that number has grown to thousands now.

On Google+ a post flew by me (and I didn't snag the name of the poster) which pointed to this website:

http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/

This is an online business staffed by people who will, for a fee, edit your manuscript.  I don't know them, and I have no idea what exactly they do for how much of a fee, or what the value of that might be.  I hope they'll turn up and comment on this post. 

I know a number of freelance editors who do good work with copyediting detail, and with finding continuity errors, factual errors, and even pacing and structural errors (getting a climax in the wrong spot in the word-count). 

But they don't work for publishing houses.  And getting an edit from such a freelance editor doesn't lead to publication.

Last week I introduced you to Azure Boone who had a lot to say about rejection letters:

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dreaded-rejection-letter.html

So after that exchange, Azure and I got to talking about how writers 'break into print' -- and what the real role of an editor is.  She read my 7 part series on "What Is An Editor" and re-evaluated and sharpened her business model for marketing her fiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html   -- has links to previous 6 parts.

So when I saw the post about this business offering editing for a fee -- not entirely a new concept at all -- I thought about the things we've discussed here in previous posts on the changing business model for writers.

It's the entire fiction delivery system that's shifting and changing under the impact of three factors:

a) the Supreme Court decision discussed here: (which I've pointed you to previously)
http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/thor.htm

b) E-books and mostly the screen technology that makes e-readers like Kindle and Nook - iPhone, iPad, etc - feasible.

c) Accessibility of software that allows individual writers to become publishers, and the hosting of their efforts at websites like smashwords and amazon.com

I keep seeing older people -- often in ophthalmologist's offices and other waiting rooms -- reading Kindle with print set to extra-large, and happily "swiping" to turn the page.  This is very significant - especially when you factor in that you can plug in an earphone and LISTEN to the book being read to you, or buy an audiobook with the book performed by an actor.

In fact, two of my own novels, MOLT BROTHER (the sequel, CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS is being recorded) and HOUSE OF ZEOR, SIME~GEN #1 (the sequel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, SIME~GEN #2) is being recorded:

So the world changed -- and is still changing.  There's an even bigger impact brewing from internet-delivered TV style video programs, as most young people getting their own apartments are not subscribing to cable at all. 

That's a change in the structure of the delivery system that's been visible to many for 10 years at least. 

What's new between 2009 and today is the way WRITERS are changing to adapt to this new world's fiction delivery system.

Maybe it's the turning of a generation, but I haven't seen that.  I am seeing many writers in their 40's and 50's adapting and changing their business model as fast (sometimes faster) than the world is changing.

And many are just getting into publishing for the first time.

That is remarkable, but because the world has changed so fast, it's possible for someone who is barely 40 to trip over their assumptions about publishing that are obsolete.

There are two separate issues to address: story-craft itself, and marketing. 

These two issues intersect on the editor's desk. 

At that point, the imaginative ramblings of a fertile mind have to be targeted toward a specific market, a readership, a group with something in common.

All the readers who've gotten a Kindle and madly downloaded "free" books over Christmas or some other holiday promotion have learned that self-publishing has two kinds of writers -- those the reader wants to invest their scarce reading time in, and those the reader does not want to pay for, even at FREE as the price.

And it isn't just spelling, punctuation, grammar, and story-continuity errors that repel potential readers. 

All of those corrections go in at the level of the copyediting -- which takes place after EDITING itself.

I just finished editing an anthology titled VAMPIRE'S DILEMMA (doesn't have any story by me in it).  So I have this experience fresh in mind.

I recently read a blog on screenwriting about "coverage" -- a screenwriting term for what novel publishers call editing.

The screenwriting blog said what new self-publishing writers who have decided to self-publish because of the "dreaded rejection letters" they have gotten need to know.

"Coverage" you pay for, even from someone who has worked doing "coverage" for a major production company, isn't necessarily worth what you must pay for it.

"Coverage" differs from 'editing' in that it consists mostly of a form that the script-reader fills out, identifying how well certain mechanical parts of the script are done (such as dialogue, climax placement, A story characters face-time, B story, etc).  "Coverage" doesn't tell the writer what to do to fix the problems, it simply categorizes the problems.  An Editor at a major publishing house will say how to fix the problems to suit the publishing house.

What many beginning writers don't know is that Editors aren't Writing Teachers.

"Coverage" isn't for the writer, either.  "Coverage" is designed to inform a producer if this script is within X number of rewrites of the specific property the producer needs to create the film his backers (putting up money in a gamble to make money) expect.

"Coverage" is designed to sift the slush pile for a particular property that fits exacting -- pre-set -- requirements. 

So, in effect, there is no such thing as "freelance" coverage.  You can pay someone who knows basically what producers they have worked for need, and they can tell you if your script meets such needs -- and finger the points that would have to be rewritten to fit such needs.  They can't assess whether your script CONCEPT will sell.

And it's the same with freelance EDITORS.  They can copyedit -- and if you find you have a lot of copyediting errors, you should use a copyeditor before you send your manuscript for editing.  But the freelance editor can't conform your manuscript to SELL.

The freelance editor works for the writer, not a publisher.

If you can tell the freelance editor that this property is to be submitted to a particular line at a particular publishing house, and that editor has read, studied (or worked for) that line -- they can conform your work to the publisher's requirements.

If you are self-publishing, creating a "line" -- you may be able to give an accomplished and skilled freelance editor a list of your requirements and have them conform your product to your own requirements.

If you know your market and can create a set of requirements, you may find yourself founding a publishing company.

Or, as a freelance writer, you may write, then hire a company like

http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/

to do the editing, possibly another freelance editor to do the copyediting, then pay a techie to conform the manuscript to the requirements at smashwords (pretty simple these days, but still a technical challenge if you're including artwork, charts, graphs, colors, etc), and pay someone to make a cover that will look right at Kindle's thumbnail size, AND pay a publicist who will try to get your product reviewed while you write the next item.

What's happened today, though, is that the sales breakpoint above "free" is 99Cents.  People are buying books that have been through professional editors at the big publishing houses, and are "clean" of most errors for a dollar!  How will they view your product against that quality assurance item? 

Yes, 99cents is the hot-sales price for a reprint.  You'll find a lot of such books on
http://backlistebooks.com  -- along with some higher priced ones like $2.99 for longer works.


I'm a member of Backlist e-Books, but have no idea who these people at the editing shop are.

How many copies of your novel do you have to sell to make back all those costs before you make a single cent?

How many dollars per your work-hour are you going to make from your book after you've paid all these costs and fees? 

Trust me, you'd make more packing grocery bags at the supermarket or collecting grocery carts from the parking lott.

Envision this carefully, then think it all through.

The bottom line is that publishers, agents, editors, etc are worth what you pay them. 

But to pay them, to make your business model function at a profit (albeit a thin margin) you must perfect the writing craft to the point where you do not have to do much rewriting.

To achieve that, you must learn to lay out the piece (story, novel, article) in your mind before you begin to create the words.  The functional components of the story must lock into place (i.e. follow a trope of some sort, even if it's one you invented) before you start typing words.

When you're finished, you have Microsoft's spellcheck and grammar check to find most of your typos, and then a copyediting run for which you need experienced professional input, maybe two or three of those, with no more work required than to tweak some words. 

If you can write 4 books a year -- say 80,000 to 100,000 words apiece -- and make them all appeal to the same readership who will keep coming back for more, after 5 years of sustained effort, you might gross $30,000/year in a good year.

But this world isn't up to supporting that yet.

We are generating the freelance self-publishing writers, and the mechanism for distributing books via smashwords, amazon.com, createspace.com etc.  We're getting the companies that provide just editing (such as the one I'm featuring here which could be gone tomorrow, or be successful and get bought up).

And we're getting the freelance cover art creators, such as Penny Ash, who did the cover for VAMPIRE'S DILEMMA.

We've had freelance publicists working by email for a while -- but as a professional reviewer, I have to say that there are very few of them that I accept books from because of discovering discrepancies between the "pitch" for the book and the book itself.

We have a growing industry of freelance bloggers who do reviews, and many readerships have flocked to them for help in sorting the avalanche of novels pouring out of the e-publishing business. 

What are we missing to make this re-construction of the publishing industry around a new business model actually work?

We're missing the agents.

A writer needs to be able to put her head into her stories and just write -- to produce those 4 books a year (which is a common workload for working writers).  To focus like that, the writer needs an agent to manage this entire circus of other skilled professionals that waft the writer's product to the reader.

And the other thing that exists but isn't yet notched into place in the mechanism in text storytelling is the professional level writing school, or writing teacher.

From the website, I do not see how http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/  distinguishes itself from a writing school.

In my experience, beginning writers think they need an editor's attention when in fact they need a writing teacher.

That's where the bewilderment over the "The Dreaded Rejection Letter" we talked about last week comes from.  The beginner in this industry expects the editor to say what's wrong with the manuscript, not just reject it.

The screenwriting industry seems to have generated a school that is successfully doing this polish coat on the craft of screenwriters.  In fact, I know of three such --
http://www.screenwritingu.com/rewrite_conference4.html

And the Supermentors round table project of
http://www.zicree.com/ 

And blakesnyder.com and the SAVE THE CAT! seminars and books.

These are the serious, and very expensive, entrees to screenwriting (there are others of this type using similar business models).

In screenwriting, though, because there are more ambitious people trying to get into what amounts to a necessarily limited number of working slots, there are a number of very predatory organizations that purport to teach screenwriting or to provide entree to the industry, but who use a business model based on fleecing the innocent by soothing their egos rather than whipping them into shape.

On another front, we have YouTube growing us a generation of skilled videographers and storytellers exhibiting worldclass skills.  Watch the top-hit producers on YouTube and study what you're looking at.  THERE is the generation of a new industry. 

But all these writers create more than any one person could read in a lifetime. 

The next functional component of this business model has to be a replacement for what many call "the gatekeepers" -- the people who decide what will be bought, what will be invested in with the expectation of making a profit, and what will not be invested in.

These "gatekeepers" are the folks who the reader, the person who lays down their money and invests their time, depends on to narrow the choices, and spot the one item that the reader actually wants to spend their evening with.

There is, perhaps, a misconception on the part of the marketers when it comes to marketing fiction. 

If you look at the shifts in the TV cable industry, and how internet delivered TV and video are chopping up the TV market, you will see it.

There are those who market a delivery service (such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, Apple TV) by boasting "we have X hundred thousand films and TV episodes."

They are marketing to people who have free time to kill and just want a distraction.

But most of the readers I know don't read just to fill up time that's heavy on their hands.

People go after a particular product to read because of the payload they expect that specific thing to deliver.

People imbibe fiction for a personal reward -- not to waste away time.

The pace of life has picked up today to the point where people don't have time to read, or watch TV regularly.  We're just too busy and too frantic.  Movies are too expensive (Christmas weekend boxoffice was off this year).

So we see advertisements on TV for the big expensive movies (like WARHORSE), and we go "I want to see that." 

What we see advertised, what comes to us, we "want" and go after.

But what about all the rest of the stuff that we might actually like better -- but don't know exists?

Google is working on tailoring the advertising that appears beside the website you're on or beside your gmail mailbox to have some relevance to what else has captured your interest.  They haven't nailed it yet, but they're making progress.

This political season may see more progress.  I've noticed how political polls have gotten better at predicting winners -- or at least losers.

What we're seeing with advertising and polling is a technical application that may allow self-publishing or small-publishers to target readerships accurately enough to make a real living with the fiction delivery system.

Yes, I know political ads are odious in the extreme, but hold your nose and study them.

They are "romancing" the voter!  It's very aggressive stuff.  But if you penetrate that surface, you will find the "gatekeeper" model behind it all -- the very thing that new writers get so resentful of. 

There is a mathematics behind all this, predicting the behavior of large numbers of people.  It's called Public Relations now, but that's a euphemism.  The mathematics is based on games theory.  (Google "The Overton Window").

There are two sides to this.  A) doing what large numbers of people want from you B) making large numbers of people do what you want from them.

Sound familiar?  Change "large numbers" to "one person" and you could write that sex scene from a pickup in a bar to the morning after.

That's the marketing business, and it's product independent.  It doesn't matter if it's a novel or a politician, marketing works the same.

And they use social networking now -- a tool that's accessible to writers (if only they had time).

What the mathematicians doing "game theory" and the tech companies like Google are trying to figure out is how to be an agent. 

Google apparently wants to be the Agent between product producers (such as writers) and product marketers -- such as the fiction delivery system components I've been discussing here.

But there are some missing pieces to this puzzle of Marketing fiction in a changing world. 

Two things I see missing (that may turn up in 2012 or 2013) are:
A) Ultra-cheap ways of "routing" (or agenting) the right story to the right reader
B) Ultra-accurate ways of determining what will give you want you want or need  so it can be routed to you.

Right now the fiction delivery system is in chaos and thrashing around delivering product at random, trying this, trying that.

The high-budget risk takers are sticking to the old tried-and-true "remakes" and sequels to films that have been hits.  I've already heard folks on twitter complaining about that lack of originality.

Watch YouTube -- there is a new arbiter of taste emerging from the applications of "hit counters" and that Google +1 button -- by counting the responses of people at random, "they" are going to try to replicate what the author's agent has traditionally done.

If you want an image of that task in your mind -- think of what your household "router" does for your computer connection to the internet -- putting several householding devices onto the internet from your single account.

If you don't know how that works, you should learn because I suspect it will be the dominent piece of the puzzle for the next "build" of the fiction delivery system. 

Google is not fooling around here.  It's making money from a) predicting behavior and b) creating behavior  -- and interacting these two processes to "correct" behavior.  (check out Google Chrome and its battle against Windows Explorer)

The highest level tech applications and the smartest people are participating in this remake of the world. 

Every move Google makes changes the Writer's Business Model, and how you market your fiction depends on how "they" change the world. 

If you think that publishing's "gatekeepers" have been an onerous burden, you need to think about the drummers hammering out the beat that the "gatekeepers" dance to. 

Figure out what dance (fictional tropes are just like dances) comes next on the playlist, and get the right shoes (editor) for that dance.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com