Copyright. Not confined to our alien romance topic.

Reuters reported the formation of a new task force to combat copyright infringement. It's an interesting piece, and comments may be posted by those who take advantage of the free and easy Registration process.

Although this is not about the art and science of alien romance, I hope it might be helpful to clarify the most common misconceptions about what copyright laws mean for an author and a reader, and what you can and cannot do in order to stay on the right side of the law.

Copyright and Digital Files

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#p2p

---

Can I backup my computer software?

Yes, under certain conditions as provided by section 117 of the Copyright Act. Although the precise term used under section 117 is “archival” copy, not “backup” copy, these terms today are used interchangeably. This privilege extends only to computer programs and not to other types of works. 

Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an original computer program if:

• the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only;
• you are the legal owner of the copy; and
• any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred.

You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films).

It is also important to check the terms of sale or license agreement of the original copy of software in case any special conditions have been put in place by the copyright owner that might affect your ability or right under section 117 to make a backup copy. There is no other provision in the Copyright Act that specifically authorizes the making of backup copies of works other than computer programs even if those works are distributed as digital copies.


Is it legal to sell backup copies of computer software (in online auctions or on website)? Is it legal to buy and use a backup copy of software I already own?
 
No. The Copyright Act does not permit anyone to sell backup copies to third parties separately from the original copy of the software. If you lawfully own a computer program, you may sell or transfer that lawful copy together with a lawfully made backup copy of the software, but you may not sell the backup copy alone.

We have been made aware of websites that are offering to sell “backup” copies of software via download over the Internet or in a custom-burned CD-R format, under the guise that section 117 permits this. Section 117 does NOT permit the sale of backup copies. Again, section 117 does not allow you to sell backup copies to someone else except when such backup copies are sold together with the original lawfully owned copy. It does not allow anyone to solely distribute “backup” copies to the public. In addition to being a violation of the exclusive right of distribution, such activity is also likely to be a violation of the terms of the license to the software. In many cases these sites appear to be a front for distribution of illegal copies, which is copyright infringement. You should be wary of sites that offer to sell you a backup copy.

And if you do buy an illegal backup copy, you will be engaging in copyright infringement if you load that illegal copy onto your computer, i.e., the unauthorized reproduction of the infringing computer program into memory. Lesson: if you want a backup copy of a lawfully owned computer program, back it up yourself.

Can I copyright my website?
 
The original authorship appearing on a website may be protected by copyright. This includes writings, artwork, photographs, and other forms of authorship protected by copyright. Procedures for registering the contents of a website may be found in Circular 66, Copyright Registration for Online Works.

Can I copyright my domain name?
 
Copyright law does not protect domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization that has assumed the responsibility for domain name system management, administers the assignation of domain names through accredited registers.

Is it legal to download works from peer-to-peer networks and if not, what is the penalty for doing so?

Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. 

Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights.

     Whether or not a particular work is being made available under the authority of the copyright owner is a question of fact. But since any original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium (including a computer file) is protected by federal copyright law upon creation, in the absence of clear information to the contrary, most works may be assumed to be protected by federal copyright law.
     
Since the files distributed over peer-to-peer networks are primarily copyrighted works, there is a risk of liability for downloading material from these networks. To avoid these risks, there are currently many "authorized" services on the Internet that allow consumers to purchase copyrighted works online, whether music, ebooks, or motion pictures. By purchasing works through authorized services, consumers can avoid the risks of infringement liability and can limit their exposure to other potential risks, e.g., viruses, unexpected material, or spyware.

     For more information on this issue, see the Register of Copyrights' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Source:

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#p2p

Unthinkable solutions to today's problems

One of the delights of science fiction romance is that you can be as politically incorrect as you please in an alien world.

I wonder how many truly outrageous --but clever-- suggestions like this are floating around waiting to be brought to life in a fantasy novel. (This was not my idea.)

Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners. Have a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you.

SF for Teens and Academic Publishing

I just finished THE INTER-GALACTIC PLAYGROUND (McFarland, 2009), a book by Farah Mendlesohn on science fiction for children and teenagers. She has a lively, highly readable style, not something one can take for granted in academic writing. I enjoyed this study much more than, for example, a book published a couple of years ago on teen vampire fiction. That book, to my disappointment, wasn’t an overview of the subgenre but a narrowly focused discussion of a few novels that the author considered representative of various trends in YA vampire fiction. In effect, her selection bias dominated the work. Mendlesohn’s INTER-GALACTIC PLAYGROUND, in contrast, relies on her reading of over 400 novels as well as a reader survey she conducted. I got the impression that her strong opinions are based on a deep and broad knowledge of the field and a genuine love for it. No surprise there, since I’ve heard her speak several times at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, and she’s always fascinating to listen to even when I disagree with her.

One of her major premises is that the “juveniles” of the 1950s and earlier are not equivalent to the “YA” fiction of more recent decades. The crucial difference she sees is that earlier novels such as Heinlein’s and Norton’s focused on gaining knowledge, exploring, moving from home outward to the world of adult work, and accomplishing significant things. More recent SF novels for children and youth tend to focus on interpersonal relationships (on the dubious grounds, refuted by reader statements and the author’s own observation, that all teenagers want to read “issue” books about characters like themselves) rather than the actual science of science fiction. Not that both elements don’t exist in fiction at all periods, but the emphasis, she maintains, has changed. Her examples seem to support this thesis. Since almost all my reading of recent YA fiction has been in fantasy rather than SF, I didn’t notice that phenomenon until this book pointed it out. Mendlesohn doesn’t condemn relationship-oriented and home-oriented fiction as such, but she’s concerned that it doesn’t provide a “gateway” into adult science fiction the way the SF of earlier-generation writers did. In other words, young readers who like the current YA speculative fiction won’t necessarily like contemporary adult SF, since the themes and plots are so different.

Along the way, Mendlesohn questions the “boys don’t read” truism—partly on the grounds that, for the people who make public statements on such issues, the kinds of things boys like to read (e.g., genre fiction, media tie-ins, and nonfiction, and I would add graphic novels) “don’t count”—and the assumption that children aren’t a “market” because their reading experiences are supposedly under the control of parents and teachers. She challenges the dominant pedagogical cliches that children can't handle narrative complexity, don't like didactic fiction, and want "relevance" and "books about people like them." She also discusses the Reading Child, the kind of reader most of us probably were while growing up, the “extreme sport” book lover who devours the printed word constantly—a type generally ignored in studies of children's reading habits. MUCH to ponder in this book, and I’d recommend it wholeheartedly if it weren’t priced at something like $45.00 on Amazon.com. For a trade paperback—the rule rather than the exception for scholarly publications. If the subject interests you at all, try to borrow this monograph through interlibrary loan, the way I did.

The cost brings up another ponder-worthy point, which makes me gnash my teeth and scream at the monitor almost every time I search out a cool-sounding work of literary criticism on Amazon.com: Don’t these publishers WANT anyone to buy their books? Are they really content to sell only to libraries and those few academic specialists for whom a particular work is so central to their field that they have no choice but to fork over the exorbitant price to own it? Admittedly, I’m an author, not a publisher, and my only direct experience with academic presses has through been my own three overpriced scholarly books. However, I’ve had lots of nice-looking trade paperbacks of my novels released by my e-publishers through print-on-demand technology, priced at $16.00 or less, like most trade paperbacks in the chain bookstores. If the Internet equivalent of a small press, operating on a very thin budget, can produce a POD book at an affordable price, why can’t a university press even come close? I’m willing to believe editors and proofreaders at university presses and other scholarly publishers are paid more than their counterparts at e-pubs (almost anybody would be), but THAT much more? And, yes, academic books have end notes and indices, but that’s just a matter of using the right word processing software, isn’t it? Are academic presses so mired in the practices of the past that they can’t make efficient use of new technology, or is there some other factor I’m missing?

They produce short print runs on the assumption that only a few specialists will want the books enough to pay the high prices and that most copies will be sold to libraries. The short print runs (apparently—see above Re POD) lead to high prices per copy, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy, because of course nobody except libraries can afford to buy them. (And libraries' budgets are being cut.) Every year a few lit-crit books come out that I WOULD buy if they weren’t priced so ridiculously. Not to mention my own two vampire-related out-of-print books still being offered in POD editions at costs so astronomical that I’m always surprised my annual royalty statement shows two or three copies sold each year. I’d love to have them available in a form people could afford. Aargh. (No, I can’t take back the rights and reissue them myself. They were published so long ago that I don’t have the files in usable form anymore, if at all. Also, one is an anthology of articles by other people. I wish I COULD do that with my other book from that same publisher, which was my dissertation; I made what turned out to be the unwise decision of selling it to a different academic press when the original publisher switched to POD only, and I’ve never received a single check from the second publisher. They’re offering the book at something like $99.00.)

We’ve often discussed the Fiction Delivery System here. But there are also problems with the Nonfiction Delivery System, especially in academia. The required publication credits for tenure keep escalating while the available publishing outlets, for economic reasons, keep shrinking. What’s the answer? E-books? As an e-published author, I’m an enthusiastic proponent of electronic publishing as a response to niche markets, such as the tiny number of readers who might want a narrowly focused monograph on some specialized topic, yet those few people want that work very, very much. Or will there be a future solution nobody has thought of yet?

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

The TV Shows "Leverage" and "Psych"

"Leverage" is a show that could be mistaken for a USA Networks "Characters Welcome" show, but it's a TNT "We know drama" product. One revels in Intimate Adventure and the other avoids it strenuously.

Now remember from last week that the purpose of all fiction is to attract eyeballs so advertisers can warp behavior and extract money from viewers, but that purpose is strenuously resisted by all viewers/readers for a good reason.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/fix-for-publishing-business-model.html

So they're always trying to figure out "which genre" is more popular, more compelling for audiences.

The only problem is they're going about it all wrong because advertising only modifies the behavior of the younger demographic, not the elder, but the elder is more interested in fiction and has more money to spend (though not discretionary spending money, they buy bigger ticket items, but not much on impulse).

My post here last week gives a suggestion for re-thinking the advertising model.

This time let's look at a couple of TV shows designed to "leverage" the current advertising model.

According to Nielsen, these two shows are duking it out over audience share.

Here's a quote from the Nielsen's rating service Feb 4, 2010:

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/02/04/psych-plunges-from-premiere-leverage-mixed/41143

---------
Robert posted last week about the 20% ratings fall Leverage suffered against the season premiere of Psych. Last night Psych got hit hard in a post-premiere slump, and Leverage was mixed, but topped Psych in average viewers and closed the gap in adults 18-49.

Psych slid almost 35% to just 2.856 million viewers (vs. 4.367 million for the premiere). It’s A18-49 rating fell to a 1.1 from a 1.5 for the premiere. The “USA strategy of moving dramas off Friday was a success” pronouncement may have been a bit premature.

TNT might have hoped for a big rebound for Leverage, but it was effectively flat. Down 4% in viewers to 2.913 million (from 3.020 million last week). But it got a little boost in its A18-49 ratings to a 0.9 from a 0.8 last week.
-----------

Read that again and pay more attention to the thinking that produces sentences like this (never mind the numbers). What's important? What's the point that's being made? (take careful note of how boring you feel this writing is)

Also note because it's really important that there are over 330 million people in the USA alone, maybe a hundred million TV sets and households maybe more.

Only about 3 million watching a particular cable TV entertainment show?

Of course a fiction writer would be thrilled to sell 3 million copies of a book!

But the trend I've been tracing in these blog entries on Tuesdays is all about the convergence of TV, Film and text into one mammoth Fiction Delivery System.

Here is an item that supports that thesis.

http://filmnewsbriefs.com/2010/02/fnb-exclusive-fourth-floor-makes-development-deal-with-analog/?utm_source=Film+News+Briefs&utm_campaign=94ca7cee2e-TUESDAY_FEBRUARY_9_20102_8_2010&utm_medium=email

Analog Magazine - the venerable SF vehicle - made a deal with a production company named Fourth Floor. Here's a quote from that article

---------
Production company and management firm Fourth Floor Productions has closed an impressive deal with the legendary sci fi mag, “Analog,” to exclusively develop the periodical’s content for the next two years. Fourth Floor topper Jeffrey Silver told FNB that his company will have rights to the stories published in the monthly (there are usually six or seven pieces per issue), and already has writers working on several stories.
---------

But it costs less to produce a book or text magazine than a TV show. The secret to the writer's business model problem is the ratio of the size of the audience to the cost of delivery of the entertaining item. That was the business model problem the "Dime Novel" solved so elegantly, and we need to invent one of those solutions to fix our current Fiction Delivery System.

So we're talking about a niche audience for "Leverage" and "Psych." Note that these 2 shows are not SF and don't use much in the way of special effects. They are relatively cheap to make.

With a writer's eye, you can contrast/compare these two TV shows and see immediately that "Leverage" has a more dramatic beat and includes hot love affairs and crumbling love affairs, as does "White Collar" where the lead character's main motivation is to reconnect with the girl he loves (but she almost never appears onscreen).

Psych has a buddy-story but not enough really strong Romance or even an interesting love story that might become a Romance.

Love is used just as a character motivation in these "action-drama-comedy" TV offerings, a background element, or backstory element, not the main plot.

"Leverage" is a little different this season as an ex-wife incident puts emotional pressure on a very tattered main character. It's one of those impossible to resolve Situations such as "Beauty and the Beast" dealt with, or such as Ann Aguirre deals with in her second Corine Solomon novel Hell Fire.

Hell Fire (Corine Solomon, Book 2)

Hell Fire is an excellent novel, by the way, searing triangle romance, breathtaking paranormal elements, intimate adventure, mature point of view and really solid writing craft. I will review it in my print magazine column.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ -- is the index to the archive for my print column that goes back to 1993.

I talked at length about Ann Aguirre's novel Doubleblind which held my attention despite having elements I dislike in it because it's well written:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/doubleblind-by-ann-aquirre.html

Back to television.

The development of the deeper intimate relationships in a story-arc (a format that was forbidden before "Babylon 5" and "Dallas" proved it could work in prime time) glues the audience to the screen, but Hollywood still doesn't quite get that point.

Producers who make these emphasis decisions dance around the edges of the importance of Relationship, never mind the central core of Romance and its place in developing the mettle of a character. And this has something to do with the lack of esteem for the Romance Genre, though how the puzzle fits together, I'm not sure.

Like "Lois and Clark" or "Beauty And The Beast" a show's audience deserts when the romantic tension is resolved -- which means the plot-line they were following was the Relationship, not the Action.

A show like "Murder She Wrote" has a contrasting dynamic. The audience comes for the puzzle-solving and the Relationships just form momentary obstacles to the problem solving and neat tag-lines.

So television is wary of diving into a serious romantic-tension driven plot line because the audience will desert the show if the show is successful!

If you draw the story-arc out too long, people get bored (B&B) and if you do what every good writer (like Ann Aguirre) knows how to do -- "don't pull your punches" and drive that Romance right to the altar, then the show is over and the audience goes away.

If a show is pulling huge audiences, the advertisers don't want it to be "over" regardless of how that would validate the drama and the characters. If a show is losing its audience, the advertisers desert it first and there's no time for the writers to complete the story-arc. The producer gets a bad reputation.

So basically, a TV show premise has to be structured such that it doesn't HAVE an ending. Like action-drama or mystery, each week brings a new problem that is resolved in 44 minutes of air-time, and there's no end to problems you can throw at the ensemble. The story-arc is spice, not substance.

Star Trek originally was an "anthology" show - episodes that can be viewed in any order and still make sense. After Babylon 5, Star Trek reincarnations went more with the story-arc plot, series of shows to view in a particular order with major changes just once a season.

In either case, Nielsen rules story development, not the rules of good fiction construction that I've been harping on in previous posts here.

As with the cancellation of StarTrek:TOS by NBC, those Neilsen numbers still aren't accurate. The polling organization doesn't change its methods fast enough to keep up with changes in audience preferences.

Star Trek's Nielsen numbers looked non-viable to NBC because the real bulk of the audience was clustered around TV sets in college dorms -- back in the days when there was only one TV set per dorm floor and "demographics" hadn't yet been invented. Nielsen didn't have any dorm TV's wired and there wasn't technology that could measure the number of people crowded around a single TV.

Today the problem lies with online downloads and various alternative methods of time-shifting and gaining access. College dorms have wifi, people watch TV on their notebook computers. Source doesn't matter.

In between it became VHS tapes that fans would make and mail to each other -- sometimes in foreign countries (where the people would have to buy the right kind of VHS to play the kind of tape made at the source). Shows barely surviving in Britain had huge audiences in the USA via this method. Nielsen couldn't measure that.

As I pointed out in my last entry

http://filmnewsbriefs.com/2010/02/fnb-exclusive-fourth-floor-makes-development-deal-with-analog/?utm_source=Film+News+Briefs&utm_campaign=94ca7cee2e-TUESDAY_FEBRUARY_9_20102_8_2010&utm_medium=email

people will do anything (really ANYTHING) to avoid having fiction interrupted by commercials, except maybe the Commercials made for the Superbowl.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100208/media_nm/us_superbowl_advertising which is titled Alongside gags, Super Bowl ads plumb male psyche

For the Superbowl, it's almost as if people have already accepted that the point is the ads, and the broadcast itself is just to keep you busy between ads.

Here's a quote from that article:
----------
That would be a major victory for any marketer. With a national audience that could reach an estimated one-third of 300 million Americans, the National Football League's championship game is the biggest day of the year for advertisers.

Sometimes known as the Ad Bowl or Buzz Bowl, prices for 30 seconds of commercial time during CBS's broadcast topped out at more than $3 million. Most deals were done in the $2.5 million to $2.75 million range, ad executives said.
---------

1/3 of America's 300 million! Compare that to the 1/10th or 3 million who might watch "Leverage" or "Psych."

That 1/3 point hasn't happened for any fiction feature I've heard of yet.
Presidential campaign speeches don't draw like the Superbowl.

There is a huge battle behind the scenes of our fiction delivery system between those who want an advertising supported fiction delivery system and those who want a fiction delivery system supported advertising model.

So those people who sat through commercials in college dorm TV rooms (so they wouldn't lose their place to the standing room only crowd) are now older and watch TV online, streaming, bootlegged, or buying the blu-ray later.

The younger people are also watching online streaming, even on smartphones if they can.

The TV audience is not sitting in living rooms clustered around with family members, watching only what everyone in the family wants to watch. Many homes have TV's in the bedrooms, too. Larger ones. With blu-ray, wi-fi etc. People can take their notebook anywhere in the house and watch via the family wi-fi network.

Just as with the avid but changing Trek audience, Nielsen isn't keeping up.

Nielsen actually serves the advertisers who want objective measures of the number of eyes they are reaching with their commercials.

The Superbowl is watched "real time" -- fiction doesn't have to be.

The advertisers only care about the people who accept fiction with commercials. So advertisers aren't motivated to follow the ever-squirming audience that wants to get away from commercials.

Naturally Nielsen has missed another Trek sized call.

This time it's the TV show Heroes.

I've been seeing this tweeted on Twitter by crew working on Heroes -- yeah, their jobs depend on renewal, true, but these folks really understand the fiction being created here. Here's one of the posts circulated by a champion tweeter.

NathalieCaron New Blog Post!: Save #Heroes, Save the World!! http://bit.ly/8ZACx2 #SaveHeroes

That's the tweet that alerted me to this blog post about what's going on, and it's no coincidence it's on a Star Trek blog. Here's the unshortened URL unfurled:

http://insidetrekker.blogspot.com/2010/02/save-heroes.html

According to that post, it seems to me NBC is about to make the same mistake with Heroes that it made with Star Trek and possibly for the same reason, technology.

This post shows how decisions are made about what you may, or may not, be allowed to choose from as your fiction fix of the day.

The decision isn't about you. It isn't about what you need out of your fiction, nor really even about what you want out of your fiction. The fiction itself isn't important at all in this equation.

It's about how much product they can move. Or perhaps more importantly, about how much product THEY THINK they can move (it's all estimation, even though the math has become very elegant).

How can we make it about the quality of the fiction, about the satisfaction you derive from that fiction?

They failed to recognize and utilize the Romance elements in StarTrek:TOS and gave it the ax because they measured the impact of the show incorrectly.

They have failed to exploit the Romance elements implicit in Psych. They are tip-toeing around the Romance elements in Leverage, developing the angst more than the healing properties inherent in Love Conquers All. And now they want to abandon Heroes without crystallizing the incredible power of Alien Romance inherent in a bunch of The Talented in desperate need of bonding to become sane!

How can we prevent "them" from making these mistakes?

The commercial fiction marketplace needs a new philosophy and business model, such as I started playing with last week.

What we, as fiction consumers, need is a marketplace driven by the dynamic of serving a small (niche) audience that is wildly energized and supremely dedicated to getting their hands on this piece of fiction (in whatever format).

What they, as fiction purveyors, need is a marketplace that is huge and ever-growing, serving a widely diverse a demographic with little or nothing in common, maybe not even language (AVATAR being one recent example -- remember I noted how movies are made for an international market and cross-cultural understanding).

These are diametrically opposed requirements, but I think I hit on one way to serve both needs in my previous post.

The problem is that the smaller market is most desperately determined to get the most expensively produced fiction but they can't afford it.

Two solutions are obvious.

Reduce the cost (computer applications are doing that - see what scifi channel has done with "Sanctuary");

... or increase the size of the market (by using a story that appeals all across demographics)

Seems to me Alien Romance is the key to that, AVATAR being an example of a sort.

So we see a really fumbling and faltering TV fiction delivery system, making bad decisions.

Meanwhile, if you've been following this blog or almost any other writing blog, you know more than you could ever want to know about e-book publishing.

But solving the puzzle of why Romance in general lacks the respect we see that it deserves may require paying attention to publishing from yet several more angles.

Here is a blog entry where a really good Literary Agent talks about what makes her take on a client after seeing a manuscript sample:

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/02/craft-story-and-voice.html

In this blog entry Rachel Gardner says:

---------
Story refers to the page-turning factor: how compelling is your story, how unique or original, does it connect with the reader, is there that certain spark that makes it jump off the page? Is it sufficiently suspenseful or romantic (as appropriate)? Does it open with a scene that intrigues and makes the reader want to know more? Story comes from the imagination of the writer and is much more difficult to teach than craft (if it can be taught at all).
-----------

And I commented:
---------
I think the big clue is in the idea that a "story" has to "be compelling".

As if compellingness is a property of story that can be infused into words on purpose! It's not.

Whether a particular person finds a story "compelling" depends on the person not on the story at all.

It's a subjective response, not objective.

Writers who try to make their story "compelling" on purpose (rather than make the plot compelling which is just craft) will likely freeze up, stop writing, or produce something awkward.

So just write your story. Then find the audience it compels.
-----------

My advice will lead to pleasing a niche audience supremely, but not an "Avatar" sized audience.

That blog entry compelled me to post that comment, but you likely won't find my comment among the dozens instantly posted! It is a very popular blog of a very good Agent who knows the business of being an interface between publishing and writers.

To solve our problem, you have to work with the VISION of what the business of Fiction Delivery is about from the point of view of those cogs in the wheels of the system.

The Agent is the Writer's point of entry into that system, and if the Agent believes that compellingness is a property of STORY not READER then you have to look at it from that perspective in order to understand why a show like HEROES gets canceled (or not) and why shows like LEVERAGE pull only 3 million viewers.

Get a hold on this VISION and you will begin to see the convergence of these various media into a single mammoth Fiction Delivery System.

See that and you may be more effective at directing your career and re-casting the view of Romance in the eyes of the world.

Careers in Fiction Delivery

Here is a blog entry I saw mentioned on twitter

JaneFriedman Sadly prescient: Career Reinvention for Publishing Professionals: http://bit.ly/bP16EV

The link leads to an article describing Andrew R. Malkin's meteoric career spanning decades inside publishing.

Here's that link unfurled. Read this carefully:

http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=11406
This is the story of a man who can talk PUBLISHING without ever referencing a compelling story, plot, worldbuilding, background, character arc, or any of the things that matter to us readers and writers.

From Andrew R. Malkin's perspective, publishing isn't about "compelling stories" at all.

At most, he mentions one author's name - and without a word about what delicious, beloved characters this author has made famous! He never talks about the fascinating relationships among characters, the drama, the penetrating themes or pithy language as sources of the success of his own efforts to market them.

This is a description of a "characters welcome" character, a career marketer, a kind of person that a writer never, ever, encounters, but upon whom a writer's career depends!

The writer deals with the Agent, the Agent deals with the Editor, the Editor deals with her Managing Editor or Committee -- the book is contracted, edited, copy edited, designed, assigned a cover -- turned over to publicity (some writers get to know their publicist; most don't) -- and then some layers beyond that publicist, the property reaches this man's hands where it lives or dies without having been read by most of the people who packaged the product.

It doesn't matter how COMPELLING your story is or how marvelously smooth the craftsmanship when this man causes success or failure of the book.

The same multi-layered business model structure is used by TV and Film industries, eventually causing films to live or die at the box office on the expertise of a man just like this one.

This is the structure of the "Fiction Delivery System" the very existence of which is hidden from the writer. The writer is never trained in how to leverage the existence of these decision makers upon whom his/her destiny depends. The reader/viewer never hears about these people.

Read this man's career carefully:

http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=11406

Here's a quote from this career track summary:
----------
Last April, I decided to make another leap in order to expand my knowledge and experience in the book industry at a critical time. I left a trade house, Rodale, for Zinio, a digital publishing distributor known for their technology and marketing services, originating in magazines.
---------

Read that blog entry describing his history and his shift into the electronic book publishing industry and you may come to understand better "what" is happening to ebook publishing as the big guys take over, and why they do what they do despite anything we can do or be or become.

If you regard TV and Book Publishing as IDENTICAL industries, you may see the pattern I can almost discern in the shifting Fiction Delivery System structure.

Note that TV also delivers non-fiction (as do films sometimes).

The Internet and the Web, especially social networking, are bringing these two delivery channels of the identical product (entertainment -- even non-fiction is a form of entertainment) together in ways that aren't clear yet.

Andrew R. Malkin is a fellow I wish was a fan of my novels! Or my favorite TV shows. I wonder what he does read.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Homepage: http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Selective Breeding

 

Robin D. Owens graciously joined Jacquie Rogers and Sandy Lender to talk about animals in fiction (on Groundhog Day) on my Crazy Tuesday radio show this week. Our collective specialities were (and are) cats, mules, dragons and turtles, but we also discussed sex. We always do!

For instance, Jacquie Rogers pointed out that mules are the result of a male donkey having his way with a female horse. Mules are hybrids, because horses and donkeys are different species. Male mules are sterile. (Some female mules can breed, in which case, they are called Mollies.)

Because the male mule is sterile, he is an intelligent, thoughtful, reasonably good-tempered animal... which is why Jacquie's protagonist, the match-making, philosophising "Socrates" is a mule. I love that sort of logic.

We speculated about small male Donkey in "Shrek" mating, obviously successfully, with the very large female Dragon and producing five, winged and horned donkey-dragon hybrids. We did not worry about the dronkeys' ability to reproduce when they grow up. What interested me about the Donkey-Dragon issue in Shrek was that the facial structures of donkey and dragon were similar, which made their sexual relationship plausible enough for me to suspend disbelief.

The size issue wasn't too troublesome. The dragon was a cougar. He was a boy-toy. Dachshunds have impregnated Great Danes. If the sexes had been reversed, and the large, sexually aggressive dragon had been male, I might have found a great deal wrong with that relationship.

Robin's Celta world is populated with descendents of (I think she said) twenty-five noble families who fled from Earth in a space ark to escape persecution because of their psychic abilities.  Several generations aboard a space ark concentrated their psychic abilities. Twenty five families is good -- just about the right amount of inbreeding. There were 74 men and 28 women on the Mayflower.

One of the most creative novellas, in respect to breeding and future twists in our current taboos, is Ravyn Wilde's A.D. 2203: Adam & Eve (published by Ellora's Cave). Ravyn's premise was that humans would live in harmony with shapeshifters, vampires etc. However, since werewolves have special breeding needs and only fall in love permanently with one life mate, it is the law of the world that-- if a woman turns on a werewolf with her pheromonal scent while she is ovulating and he manages to find her and bite her and have sex with her-- she is legally bound to marry him.

Now, there's a twist on sexual affirmative action!

In Brave New World, humans were divided into 5 castes according to intellect, from Alphas to Deltas as I recall (it's been over 30 years). Alphas bred with alphas and rules the world. Deltas bred with deltas and did the dirty jobs.

In Mary Doria Russell's alien world of "The Sparrow" breeding rights went to the first-born in the family. Third sons had to be satisfied with sterile unions either with genetically incompatible other species or with homosexual partners.... unless they distinguished themselves.

Mostly in science fiction romance, authors don't stray too far from our current sexual mores and taboos. We avoid or gloss over bestiality, and incest, but homosexuality is as acceptable now as it was in the Greek heroic days of Achilles and Patrocles.

Over the course of various human histories, there have been many laws, taboos, prohibitions and social conventions restricting a person's choice of with whom he --and especially she-- may marry or breed.  Most have been "Thou shalt not" type laws, rather than "Thou shalt."

I wonder whether the pendulum will swing. When we were discussing one-world government, most correspondents envisaged a confederation of separate, harmonious states presumably (although this was not explicitly stated) along existing racial or national lines.

But what if the "Melting Pot" idea became formulated into law?

Conversely, what if humans followed the Brave New World model, and we were encouraged to become specialized, like ants. Teachers would breed with teachers to produce super-teachers. Warriors would breed with warriors; geeks with geeks; actors with actors.

That's not too far fetched, is it? In fact, throughout history --until modern times-- royals married royals.

Rowena Cherry

"Dollhouse" Final Episode

The series finale of DOLLHOUSE takes place in 2020, with the world reduced to a dystopia in which the personality-imprinting technology of the Dollhouse dominates society. Few "actuals," people with their original personalities, remain. The rich and powerful back up their minds as insurance against annihilation, to be downloaded into new bodies in case of the previous body's death. They keep mind-wiped dolls on hand for that purpose. Some tech-obsessed characters have multiple personalities, carried with them in what look like flash drives. Using USB-like connections on the sides of their heads, they can switch personalities at a moment's notice—again, so easy it feels more like magic than science, but raising fascinating questions about the nature of individuality.

The other situation that especially interests me comes at the end:

SPOILER


AHEAD



Echo downloads the imprint of her murdered beloved into her mind, to join the menagerie of other personalities already living in her head. Thus they can be together forever even though he no longer has a body. Previously, I don't remember any hint that the personalities inside her mind could talk directly to each other, but I don't have too much trouble accepting that premise. What this union reminds me of, actually, is the fanciful conclusion of Heinlein's I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, when brain transplant patient Johann Smith shares his consciousness with, not only Eunice, the former owner of his new body, but also the recently deceased Jacob, Johann's long-time friend and later (after Johann's brain is transferred to Eunice's body) husband. Unless we're meant to believe Johann has been delusional ever since he awoke after the operation (a hypothesis I won't entertain; for me, it would make the book into a wall-banger of "it was all a dream" proportions), Heinlein's novel conceives the mind or soul as a disembodied entity independent of the flesh. On DOLLHOUSE, the mind is a piece of software that can be transferred from one electromagnetic storage device to another, whether computer hardware or neural wetware. Fantasy (or spirituality) versus science fiction.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Susan Kearney Interview

Hi Everyone,
Although Rion came out in the stores a while ago, I thought you might like to see an interview about the book! And yes, Jordan will be out soon. It hits the online stores Feb 23rd and should be in bookstores about the same time.

Susan Kearney

A Fix For Publishing Business Model

I've hit on a new twist for fixing the Fiction Delivery System, and I don't think anyone has yet proposed this.

With imagination and dedication this idea could fix the broken business model of the freelance writer, artist, musician etc.

I also think that the USA would be the very last place it would be applied.

But I think this is the right concept to kick off a brainstorming session.

It would require inventing a totally new business and maybe inventing some professions and possibly some math, too. But the tools to do it all are "on the shelf" being ignored.

Business Model Problem

Let's start with an analysis of the problem as I see it (probably nobody else sees it this way, though).

I call the pipeline that brings us novels on bookstore shelves (or web pages), on paper or by download, on Kindle, Nook, or iPad, and films, TV shows, comics, animation, webisodes, and even fan fiction, the Fiction Delivery System.

Any method of delivering the storyteller's story to the mind of the fiction consumer is part of The Fiction Delivery System.

I have discussed on this blog various tech based developments and social evolutions that are bending, warping and re-inventing the Fiction Delivery System.

Web 2.0
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/worldbuilding-by-committee.html

And other topics a writer must pay attention to, such as the advent of Print on Demand, or Zero-Inventory, or Just In Time inventory, tax laws about inventory, ebook publishing, self-publishing, and all the rest you are familiar with because you read blogs.

If you've been following my analysis of changes in publishing, you are probably bored with it already. And everywhere you turn on the web, someone is bemoaning or embracing the changes which many young people just entering the field don't even see.

Publishers are going bankrupt (still). Distributors are going bankrupt. WRITERS are going bankrupt from "piracy" (iTunes, music torrents etc).

Recently, an article revealed that CD's are for sale on eBay containing ADVANCE REVIEW COPIES of books only in the submission or editing stage at major publishers. Pirated ARCs!

Amazon is fighting for control of ebook pricing, and just publically conceded to MacMillan -- yet, who knows where that will lead?

Meanwhile, at conventions around the country, I've been on many panels about the entire philosophical issue of Intellectual Property Rights.

This is a serious generation-gap abstract philosophical (maybe even Religious) issue that has financial repercussions, and worse reaches into the very foundation of the concept "business model."

Bewilderment and panic set in at the top of the Music Industry when pirated downloads via peer-to-peer networks first appeared.

The film industry soon followed as videos of pre-release or award-nominated films appeared everywhere. People recorded films off movie theater screens and hawked them on street corners. The Chinese and other countries grabbed feeds and distributed not just music and films, but software, complete with fancy imitation labels!

Some other countries do not share the USA's worship of Intellectual Property Rights (copyright, trademark, patent).

The older generations in the USA see "piracy" of books, DVD's, hardware, software as a crime.

Younger people and people in start-up countries with different philosophies see it as their Inalienable Right.

It's not "piracy" to them. It's "just business" and they are bewildered how anyone could object to what they do.

Worse yet, they are offended, horrified, repulsed, by the very impulse that makes us object to their behavior. How dare anyone restrict access to the product of anyone's imagination?

Really, philosophy does work like that. Emotionally, non-verbally. It really does.

A "philosophy" is not something you just espouse or learn. A philosophy is the very root of your personal Identity. It operates your emotions, motivates your actions, and provides the satisfaction when you achieve a concrete result.

Philosophy is what life is all about. But it only works when it's unconscious. Hence it is magically warded by a wall of boredom. You literally can not pay attention to a discussion of a philosophy that actually resides in your unconscious and does operate you.

Most Religions are Philosophies. What they teach you overtly is not necessarily what the religion is actually powered by. The real power (as in film scripts and books) is the subtext.

When the subtext is made into surface text, it becomes boring or ridiculous. Few people can focus the spotlight of consciousness on their personal philosophy and still espouse it consciously and subconsciously. Those few are generally regarded as "Philosophers."

After all the muttering and chattering I've done on this blog about the mechanisms within the Fiction Delivery System and about what the impact of technology and the social-networking phenomenon are changing, you can see that I like philosophy, I use it, and I inject it into fiction both on purpose and subconsciously.

If boredom didn't drive you away from all my posts on the Writer's Business Model, you should be able to see where I'm headed with this post. I didn't see it though until just last night.

We have the elements in place, we have the tools on the shelf, and we have the answer to what's wrong with the Fiction Delivery System and the writer's business model.

Pieces of this solution have been discussed all over the web on blogs, especially by Agents and publishers and writers. But pieces are now turning up in the major media (like Business Week, Forbes, The New York Times, and on and on).

Here is one article you should force your way through if you possibly can. The boredom wards are immense on this one, and I barely made it myself. Everything in me screams NO NO NO!!! But actually, this is a priceless opportunity to solve the real problem with the writer's business model.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution

That's the top of a long feature article in Wired Magazine.

Skim fast through to page 5 of this article,

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/5/

then dig in and think hard as you read the part that starts thusly:

---Quote from Wired---------
In the mid-1930s, Ronald Coase, then a recent London School of Economics graduate, was musing over what to many people might have seemed a silly question: Why do companies exist? Why do we pledge our allegiance to an institution and gather in the same building to get things done? His answer: to minimize “transaction costs.” When people share a purpose and have established roles, responsibilities, and modes of communication, it’s easy to make things happen. You simply turn to the person in the next cubicle and ask them to do their job.

But several years ago, Bill Joy, one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, revealed the flaw in Coase’s model. “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” he rightly observed. Of course, that had always been true, but before, it hardly mattered if you were in Detroit and someone better was in Dakar; you were here and they were there, and that was the end of it. But Joy’s point was that this was changing. With the Internet, you didn’t have to settle for the next cubicle. You could tap the best person out there, even if they were in Dakar.

---End Quote From Wired--------

This is the SOLUTION to the writer's business model problem, and to the publisher's problem, and to the Cable TV Operator's problem, and to Film Studio's problem, and even the Music Publisher's problem. This is the solution to structuring the advertising supported business model to apply to FICTION, but it doesn't look like it on the surface.

If you've read all my previous columns, you may be able to get ahead of me here and see the solution instantly.

Read carefully down to where it says:

---Quote from Wired--------

Let me tell you my own story. Three years ago, out on a run, I started thinking about how cheap gyroscope sensors were getting. What could you do with them? For starters, I realized, you could turn a radio-controlled model airplane into an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. It turned out that there were plenty of commercial autopilot units you could buy, all based on this principle, but the more I looked into them, the worse they appeared. They were expensive ($800 to $5,000), hard to use, and proprietary. It was clear that this was a market desperate for competition and democratization — Moore’s law was at work, making all the components dirt cheap. The hardware for a good autopilot shouldn’t cost more than $300, even including a healthy profit. Everything else was intellectual property, and it seemed the time had come to open that up, trading high margins for open innovation.

----End Quote from Wired-----

Now you have to read very very carefully all the way to the end of the article, then scan the comments (look at how many and how vehement those comments are. The emotion expressed betrays the existence of a philosophical sore point).

The Philosophical Argument in our society is OVER.

Any futurologist worth her salt will see that instantly, and the best futurologists today work in Paranormal Romance, (believe it or not).

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

All fiction is nothing but intellectual property. It has no substance. There is nobody in the next cubicle. Physical location does not matter. Couple that to the idea that intellectual property is of no value in the marketplace, and you have your solution to the business model problem posed by loss of control of copying.

A long time ago, Fred Pohl and John Campbell, two Science Fiction magazine editors of gigantic intellect and far-ranging abilities, taught us a problem solving technique to use in plotting stories. Take two insoluble problems. Put them in the same story. Let them solve each other.

The principle comes from Engineering, not fiction, and is one of those patterns you see reflected between reality and fiction that makes fiction believable.

Engineering creates concrete objects, things you can sell. Fiction does not, and therein lies the problem with the writer's business model.

Fiction is ideas. Emotions. Philosophy. Fiction is reality fabricated, warp and woof, into a rich, deep but imaginary construct that can have the power of philosophy (or even Religion) to bend and shape people's real lives.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html
is the post where I describe theme, philosophy, and the warp and woof fabric of fiction.

Worse yet, what the writer imagines and crafts into that fabric, can't even be proprietary because it's constructed "off the shelf" -- out of archetypes that can be unshelved and used by anyone, out of philosophies, pantheons, and cosmologies rooted in the ancient histories of all peoples around the world.

That's why film producers will not and can not read unsolicited manuscripts.
Ideas can't be copyrighted. Even the details can't be owned, the whole construct can't be owned. Any well trained writer could have created exactly the novel you created. And if you admit to the mystical view of the universe, it's even likely you lifted your construct out of someone else's imagination on the astral plane.

I've explained how that works in previous columns. It does work. It's happened to me. It's real. The stuff we feel so proprietary about actually drifts around in some non-material dimension, a shelf, where anyone can access it.

In fact, the most lucrative fictional fabrics are the ones MORE people have already accessed, and have possession of in their dreams and imagination. Popularity happens because more people recognize their own dreams within the fiction being offered.

I've explained that Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me that the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote (which she learned from her forebears). Everyone who reads just uses the story as a template to enjoy themselves in their own dreamscape.

Not only is fiction nothing but "intellectual property" (which this article in Wired has declared worthless in monetary terms), it is not now and never has been proprietary.

Seen that way, from a mystical dimension of archetypes and human spiriit, the entire idea that your dreams already belong to me and therefore I don't have to pay you for them makes perfect sense.

So how can we, as writers, publishers, artists, musicians, film producers, duplicate what this man has done with his drone-piloting circuit board business?

For a couple of decades (long enough for a whole generation of entreprenuers to grow up and start businesses) we have seen "open source" software leading the way. You give away free the intellectual property component.

How can we do that if the intellectual property isn't a component but the entire creation?

Newspapers led the way giving away intellectual property, radio blazed the trail, TV followed, today Newspapers are trailing the pack getting onto the web with "editions."

It's the advertising model.

But remember BBC? It was tax revenue supported, not advertising supported for decades. The ultra-conservative British are only now edging into advertising.

The world doesn't move in lockstep, but though the USA led in the advertising-supported business model, it very well may trail in the Open Source business model.

Unless, that is, the right person or persons read this blog and grab my idea of how it can be done. (I freely give it to anyone who wants to make the world safe for fiction creators!)

Now that you've read that entire article in Wired, stop and think of all the other things about "e-book piracy" you've read lately (there's been a lot of discussion on the EPIC Lists recently, too).

We're fighting to stop piracy. Theft offends our philosophy-bone.

Look again what this fellow in Wired, Chris Anderson, accomplished.

You give away the intellectual property, but you SELL the "thing itself" - a physical object.

That's how you make money in the new world. Selling physical objects cleverly assembled from off the shelf bits and open source intellectual property.

Physical objects add value to the Annual Gross Human Product.

Intellectual inventions and ideas are no longer valuable in trade, no longer add to the quality of human life and therefore have no intrinsic value.

How can a writer apply that concept?

We don't make things; we make ideas. We just arrange "off-the-shelf" components known as words using public domain templates known as archetypes.

The Advertising Model

That's it. That's the solution. But the current method is backwards.

Currently, someone has a physical object to sell. They use fiction to attract eyes to their product pitch known as a commercial or web-advertisement.

"I Love Lucy" sells toothpaste, not laughs.

Like all TV shows, it was invented to glue eyeballs to the screen during commercials, to deliver an audience to toothpaste advertisers. That's what radio and TV fiction is for, and the tradition goes back to Charles Dickens with novels serialized in newspapers to glue subscribers to a newsfeed sold at a profit.

Now look at ad supported TV fiction and think "reverse video" (like what happens when you use your mouse to highlight some text and the background and text color switch places).

It becomes fiction-supported TV ads.

Now we're getting close to applying the thinking behind that Wired Magazine article.

At present, the bits of story are almost smaller than the commercial breaks.

It's getting so hard to follow a TV episode, what with all the long breaks, that people are willing to wait and buy the DVD of the whole season, sans commercials.

People willingly pay for premium channels - but those channels are in financial difficulty as are the cable operators.

People want whole movies, not sliced and diced to fit in commercials.

Already you can buy TV's and Blu-ray boxes that are internet ready and configured to deliver a specific brand of streaming movie service (Netflix, Blockbuster -- proprietary lock on the hardware just like phone companies and cell phones!) Read about it in Consumer Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/tvs-services/tvs/index.htm

The October 2010 issue of Consumer Reports features BEST TVS, and has instructions how to connect your TV to the Internet.

This proprietary-lock business model is at odds with the Open Source business model, and a major armageddon is in progress right over our heads. Just let the problems solve each other, and don't forget "Love Conquers All" is always the solution to fear.

Just look at the magnitude of the storm of change and resistance to change sweeping through the fabric of our world when it comes to advertising.

A recent Federal Supreme Court ruling struck down a law preventing corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money in support of a political candidate or policy. That'll be fixed by a new law, but look at the TERROR that ruling evoked and remember philosophy drives our emotions.
You've never seen the like of this much terror at a Horror film's first showing!

Why? Because politicians know that the target of advertising is under 40, that we have a demographic bulge of voting age young people, and that those people will do whatever the most ads say they should. (they WILL).

The obvious solution escapes the politicians because it would prevent them from selling their own messages to those voters by being the most prevalent voice.

So nobody is even talking about training kids in how to make commercials, thereby immunizing them to flimflammery.

I know this works because I trained my children that way. Kids can be trained to be commercial-immune by age 7 or 8.

But that panic among politicians is very real. They'll make a law to fix the ridiculous imbalance again, don't worry about that. Our interest here is the whole advertising process, and especially the business model of fiction supported advertising. (not advertising supported fiction, you see?)

Look at the degree of panic among those politicians and you can see the whole philosophy-driven panic means more than is apparent on the surface.

Something is at the breaking point in advertising business model.

Politicians can see we've got an emergency on our hands and you should never waste a good emergency.

Already, it's been proven by scientific research and admitted by major advertisers and advertising creation firms that people over 40 don't change their behavior as a result of seeing an ad (no matter how many repetitions).

You can't "sell" to older people, but they're the ones with money (and credit). This even holds true online. I've filled out surveys time and again only to get to the last web page and be told they have nothing to advertise to me. Hard scientific research shows its a waste of money to advertise to a certain cut of the demographic (basically readers).

Suppose advertising could sell your product to over and under 40 demographic?

If we turn the advertising model to "reverse video" - or "negative" - we might see the solution, provided we understand the problem.

Think fiction supported advertising.

Reverse the business model. Get out of the way and let the problems solve each other. Love Conquers All.

That reversal makes our intellectual property of monetary value again.

But you'll understand this only if you understand "what" fiction is and what a person does when imbibing fiction.

Fiction is usually regarded as a luxury. It's not.

Fiction is a necessity of life.

Why is fiction a necessity?

Because fiction is the food that philosophy feeds upon. And as mentioned above and in other blog posts here, philosophy is the life's blood of fiction as it forms and shapes the theme of any story.

People need fiction to keep them in touch with their own philosophy and to keep their philosophy in touch with reality.

Fiction keeps you sane.

Fiction is never "escapist" as it is so often dismissed as. Many readers feel they are reading to "escape" but once you understand what you are escaping to, the exercise of reading a novel takes on a whole new meaning.

Life without fiction is like sleep without dreaming.

Dreaming is not an "escape" from sleeping.

Fiction is not an "escape" from life.

Dreaming completes the exercise of sleep just as fiction completes the exercise of living.

Fiction leads you to an operational and usable model of reality you can live by (or die by). Fiction does that by taking you far, far outside your own reality so you can look back on it and see it as a whole. Fiction can never let you "escape" your reality. It rubs your nose in your reality by revealing a truth you could never see while walking in your own moccasins.

However, the "advertising supported fiction" business model has distorted that process of fiction imbibing.

The very point of imbibing fiction has been blunted by the INTERRUPTIONS for ad pitches, and those ad pitches can only be worth the money it costs to deliver them if the audience is young, so TV fiction is watered down.

Films get watered down, too, because eventually they must be shown on TV with commercial interruptions.

Interruptions and distractions cause people to make mistakes.

Texting while driving can be fatal, remember, and recent studies show that making laws against it don't prevent accidents.

Studies have shown that multi-tasking workers are less efficient than those who do one thing at a time, concentrating. (I've lost the link to the most recent study but I recall that I did place it in one of my previous blog posts here.)

Distracted drivers kill themselves and others via mistakes.

Consider the psychological condition of people who are awakened from sleep each time they enter a REM sleep cycle. (Sleep apnea can do that to you.)

As you must not be distracted from your work or your dreams, likewise you must not be distracted from your fiction.

With distractions, you miss the nutrient value of the philosophy. And you miss the pleasure of imbibing your fiction.

What if you could come up with an advertising model that does not distract viewers or readers from the fiction?

What if you give up the idea of using fiction as bait for eyeballs?

What would you replace the advertising supported model with in order to prevent distractions?

What if you could train young people to be immune to commercials (so we don't need laws restricting the amounts anyone can spend on political ads -- more money circulating is good for the economy, more points argued is good for democracy) and still move product to consumers efficiently?

What if you abolished commercials totally?

How could people who create material products induce people to buy their products without commercials? Without web-ads? Without animations on YouTube? Without distracting drivers with billboards. Without intruding on one activity to induce people to engage in another activity?

Note that film producers who are swimming in pitches thrown at them from every direction become so pitch-deaf they hire interns out of school to read pitches and the interns soon become too jaded to see a great script among the dross.

Commercials are pitches. They are desperate, frantic attempts to make you do something you aren't of a mind to do, at the moment anyway.

What if pitching was to become obsolete?

The film industry is moving in that direction with online websites that vet film scripts and provide a marketplace for producers to go find the exact script they want to produce without being bombarded with irrelevant pitches.

What could possibly replace pitching toothpaste? How could the world of commerce function without commercials?

Turn that question around. Why are industries still clinging hysterically to the commercials model of advertising, even though the world has changed and advertising is less and less effective simply because people get used to it and tune it out? When was the last time you were reading a news story and clicked on a banner ad for makeup?

That frantic battering consumers are taking is why congress was considering a law to prevent cable stations and TV stations from raising the volume on the sound when commercials come on. It annoys and distracts -- but they need to raise the volume to retain your attention as everyone in the room moves and talks during the distraction of a commercial break. People just totally dismiss the commercials. But those commercial breaks are still distractions, interruptions to be endured with an ever-increasing pricetag on our health and well being.

Why are these companies with good things to sell, things we need and want, so insistent on alienating their customers?

And Here It Is -- A New Business Model

If manufacturers of goods to sell can understand that fiction is also a product, a commodity, of value to a customer only when properly assembled (as a car is of more value when all assembled than it is as a stack of boxes of parts), then they will adopt this model.

Fiction imbibing is all about emotion. Writers work hard to get the rhythm of variance of emotional pitch paced just right. Suppose you had to endure six commercial breaks during the hour you reserve for sex with your partner? There's a reason the highest praise for a book is "I couldn't put it down" or "It kept me up past bedtime."

Continuity is absolutely essential to a good fictional experience.

It's all about building an emotional reaction with depth and texture, and you can't achieve that with interruption.

Think what it's like to be adding a long column of numbers in your head, only to be interrupted by a phone call, and have to start over, to be interrupted by the doorbell, and start over, to be interrupted by having to go to the bathroom. Maybe you'll get that column of numbers added, true, but how much less time and effort would it take if there were no interruptions?

Commercial breaks cost our society more than they are worth.

Think about how "the arts" functioned before commercialization. Artists (painters, musicians, actors) had Patrons who supported them with room and board etc., then presented their Artistic Product to their closest friends, as a prestige point.

Use that old idea, together with new technology, and think about what the Wired article said that I quoted above. Here it is again:
----------Wired Quote--------
But several years ago, Bill Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, revealed the flaw in Coase’s model. “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” he rightly observed. Of course, that had always been true, but before, it hardly mattered if you were in Detroit and someone better was in Dakar; you were here and they were there, and that was the end of it. But Joy’s point was that this was changing. With the Internet, you didn’t have to settle for the next cubicle. You could tap the best person out there, even if they were in Dakar.
--------END QUOTE-------------

Proximity no longer is an issue.

That is such a startling idea. Think about it.

In Radio, and at the beginning of TV broadcast, one company would sponsor an entire show and become identified with that show.

Today "product placement" is starting to retread that concept. A Hero would drive a certain type of car, use a brand of telephone, eat a certain breakfast food.

Proximity doesn't count any more. You don't have to have your commercial inserted between scenes of a TV show. You don't even have to have your product be seen onscreen with The Hero.

Look at how people actually shop for things they need and want.

People focus on getting the shopping done NOW, and reading a book LATER.

When you're ready to buy something, you go to the store or website, use a search engine to find the best price or read the comments to find the best brands. You survey all the alternatives on the supermarket shelf, and pick a package that is either familiar (a replacement for what you used up) or pick something that looks interesting (an alternative to what you used up).

Or you have a problem in your house, and go to Home Depot to search for a solution, not even knowing if one exists. At that moment, your mind is open to suggestions, and that's when you want to see pitches for products, but only for products that address your problem.

When you want to buy something, you want to buy it. Either enjoying a leisurly shopping spree or dash in and out to get the boring chore of buying over with.

When you want to "buy" fiction, you sit down in your favorite chair and flip on the TV, DVD, DVR, or pick up a book, or flip on your Kindle and download the latest in a series you're following - whatever source, doesn't matter. Your mindset is the same. "I need a good story."

SHOPPING: "let's see what they've got" --- or "get me out of here fast."

FICTION TIME: "Now, what's been going on with my favorite character" or "Now I get to read this new vampire novel all the TWILIGHT fans are raving about."

When you're shopping, you're shopping.

When you're imbibing, you're imbibing.

Distracting you from your purpose will not win your approval, loyalty, or public support.

When you are young, and just being socialized, the first thing your parents teach you after you learn to talk is "don't interrupt your elders" -- which eventually becomes the teenager's skill of joining a knot of kids standing around the recess yard and just talking. You have to learn to join that conversation without interrupting, without diverting attention to yourself, without distracting them from the subject, without changing the subject.

What advertisers on TV do today is CHANGE THE SUBJECT.

That shows a lack of basic socialization.

Here's a blog entry I did on what business people do wrong when they try to adopt a social networking strategy, and why they do it wrong.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

Even netizens learn, first and foremost, when you join a List, you lurk for a while and find out who's who and what they're talking about. You don't post off-topic without profuse apology and explanation of why this item is important to these people.

Good grief, Romance Writers have been exemplifying this technique of how to open an acquaintance with a stranger you've fallen in love with at first sight for generations! You'd think advertisers would have learned that by now.

Don't interrupt. Don't distract. Don't change the subject.

There are some fancy multi-syllabic names for the kinds of mental abberations that cause people to be unable to learn those simple rules of behavior.

But to date, advertisers have steadfastly ignored those rules because it seems to make them a profit. Suppose they could make a bigger profit by obeying those basic social rules?

How could they possibly do it, though?

You can't answer that question. You can't solve that puzzle. There is no answer. Now. Yet.

There's no way to solve that problem now because we are missing an entire profession, an entire industry actually.

The reason we're missing this industry (that would connect fiction imbibers with companies who have concrete products to sell) is a basic American attitude -- the one the Supreme Court highlighted with the decision to allow unlimited advertising dollars to flow from corporate coffers in political campaigns.

Free Speech.

Why is Free Speech such a core value it had to be in the Bill of Rights?

Free Speech is one of the results of the dual-valued philosophy behind the Constitution -- The Majority Rules, but The Individual Has Rights that the majority can not take away.

You can say anything you want. But you can't exercise that right in my house, my private domain, without my permission.

PRIVACY is a right which manifests in the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure of property, and the protection of intellectual property under the exact same terms as that of personal property (house, land, possessions).

That attitude toward individual privacy (no wiretapping etc), make the solution to the Fiction Writer's Business Model Problem totally impossible to think, nevermind actually do.

The solution requires invasion of privacy and something akin to wiretapping your phone.

But it's already happening in the inexorable push to make a profit in an internet based, Open Source world.

Everyone you deal with has electronic records on you, and the prospects for "Big Brother Is Watching You" are not looming ahead of us any more -- they are far behind in what seems Ancient History to today's 20 year olds.

Traffic cameras, security cameras, Airport Security screening, Google, medical records, court records, media outlet file tape, ATM transaction records, bank records, cell phone records, gps on cell phones, -- you are always under surveillance and it's getting tighter and more public.

Anonymity in public and personal privacy have not existed for decades already, and a whole generation has grown up with this technology. Younger people don't see it as a problem, so it's inevitable that this solution will be implemented at some point fairly soon, when enough old folks have died off.

And here it is.

Connect the grocery checkout counter record of what you bought, of your buying patterns assembled every time you use the store discount card tab on your key chain, or make a website purchase, to your TV set or Cable Box or Sat box, or e-reading device (Kindle, Smartphone, Nook, whatever).

That's it, the whole problem is solved.

One more link in our chain of electronic records, and BOOM - no more distractions, no more interruptions.

How does it work to sell product?

Simple.

When you're ready to buy something, you are "in a place" mentally and physically where you are receptive to suggestions and ads would not be interruptions or distractions.

You walk into a brick and mortar store or click into a website. There you search for products and actively pay attention to what's pitched at you. The data gathered on you in the past allows the ads pitched at you to be chosen by characteristics you've evidenced in the past.

Already Google and especially BING customize ads and re-arrange what choices are offered to you in answer to a query according to other websites you've visited (Google is now using what sites you click on via twitter to customize responses to you).

It's getting harder, but you can still break out of your mold and explore other options. We may need laws to prevent shutting you into too small a box.

Using this fiction supported advertising model, when you are receptive to finding products that solve your problem, you are presented with options that would actually be useful to you. No distractions. No pitches. Just solid, reliable, true information about the products that solve your problem "what's for dinner?" "what sort of shoes can I afford to wear with this dress?"

As you troll through the supermarket, local mall, or websites, you choose products that suit you at prices you agree to, and you know all the alternatives.

A record is kept of what you buy, from whom, when, at what intervals.

With each product you purchase, you earn "points." (like frequent flyer miles, or credit card points -- an account is kept of what you've earned).

These points are TV SHOW POINTS (or streaming, dvd, dvr, ebook, Kindle, or even hardcopy book points).

They are worth such-and-so-many hours of commercial free viewing or reading.

Your life is totally changed from it is today -- when you're shopping, you're shopping. When you're viewing, you're viewing.

Watching the Shopping Network on TV or internet would probably count as shopping - and what you buy adds points to your Fiction Points account.

I can see two ways for this to work.

Either large companies like Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Heinz, etc would award points for buying their products that you can use to see only certain TV shows that they sponsor by paying for production (or buy certain novels from certain publishers that they sponsor by paying for production).

Or a new kind of business would be founded to award points no matter what you buy -- but maybe apportion more points today for Tide than for Arm&Hammer depending on deals with sponsors?

The new business would be a clearing house. It would contract with Proctor and Gamble (etc) to get money, apportion money to fiction-creators, and contract with consumers who establish an account, like a credit-card account, and keep track of what you buy so it can award you access to fiction via points you earn by buying certain brands.

Both these concepts would probably fight it out in the marketplace, likely with other more "proprietary" based concepts.

The stand-alone (off the shelf) technologies to do this already exist. They just have to be linked up (as the fellow made new circuit boards to create his drone controllers).

a) Data about your buying habits from credit card, online sites, supermarket, mall, etc purchases, is all electronicized now.

b)Data about your viewing habits is available to your cable, sat, etc data supplier. Smartphone surfing, computer surfing, etc -- your IP address ID's you, as on social networks. You are tracked.

c) Companies that produce advertising (political organizations too) know how masses of people move -- they get that from a lot of data about individuals.

Connect the purchase-point activity to the DVR attached to your TV (or whatever new architecture we adopt).

Turn on your TV to watch, say SANCTUARY (as discussed last week

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/religion-in-science-fiction-romance.html )

..and you see it without commercials if you bought Tide, shopped a Toyota showroom, had your BMW serviced, or bought a Big Mac.

If you didn't buy the right product or brand of product, I'd guess you'd be interrupted with even more pitching commercials than now.

After enough of that punishment, you would start to pay attention to what brands provided you with commercial free versions of your favorite shows.

Since most of us time-shift using a recorder of some sort, the shows would be delivered to your automated recording device (or online library of shows) commercial free.

If you're reading ebooks (or even hardcover books) you would not pay money for them. You'd pay with points earned by buying whatever brands are connected to the fiction you want. The writers and publishers would be paid by the brand that sponsors the fiction.

It's not so different from the way film and TV gets produced. Production companies contract with networks and get money to create the show which the networks broadcast and sell commercial time during. Except, this way, there are no commercial breaks and no waste of money by advertisers.

Now how would you know, standing in the breakfast cereal aisle, which brand of cereal to buy to get the show you want commercial free?

Each package would carry a symbol showing what points you get for buying it.

That's why I think a new business is needed.

This would be an IT business that awards and redeems your purchase-points so seamlessly and automatically you don't know it's there.

You wouldn't have to know which show you want when choosing laundry detergent. You get points no matter what you buy, then you spend them to see whatever you want to see.

There might be several such competing IT businesses, each for a type of show (non-fiction, news, Science shows, Education shows you get college credit for, whatever categories shows fall into).

There might be several icons on a package indicating what credit you get for purchasing the product.

Commercials and pitches for products would be presented to you only while you're in the store, and could contain info on what shows you get for buying the product.

But they would be pitching at you while you're paying attention and deliberating over what to buy. They don't waste their money; you don't waste your time, and Congress doesn't need a law to prevent raising the sound volume during commercials.

TV channels, Cable providers, Sat providers, airwaves providers, even maybe production companies like Disney, would contract with these IT services to get money to make shows and deliver them to you. The IT service would get money from product makers that the product makers now waste on advertising to rooms full of people who went to the bathroom or hit fast-forward.

You buy your fiction (uninterrupted delivery) by buying a product.

Now there are two big holes in this idea.
1) Disparity of income creates disparity in buying habits
2) Niche fiction, things that aren't aimed at a mass market, might not get sponsored well enough to be cheap enough. Popularity would still govern availability of fiction.

The higher your income, the more you buy.

The people lower on the economic scale don't spend as much money. So they'd have less access to the very thing they need most to get higher on the economic scale -- fiction that inspires, non-fiction that instructs etc.

Those who spend a lot would have more viewing-credits than they need.

Those who spend little would have too few.

Free market forces would create a trading marketplace for these viewing-credits.

I would suggest the Free Public Library system should be the place to handle the trading since they already deal in fiction.

Most libraries are set up online already -- you can order or renew a book online at my library and the whole library system catalog is online so you can reserve a book your branch doesn't have. And most libraries now have computers set up for internet access via your library card (those that don't will soon have).

So a virtual or real visit to your local library could let you buy the viewing credits you didn't earn by purchasing advertised products.

So if you have no money, what would you buy viewing credits with?

What would people who have a lot of money, profligate spending habits, and a surplus of viewing credits want from you?

For that matter, what would advertisers want from you if you don't buy much?

Maybe some profligate spenders would donate their points to the library, as they now donate once-read books that are nearly new. The library would charge a few cents, as they now sell donated $30 books for $1.50 to sell them to you.

Or maybe the Library would use the points to provide you with access to the fiction of your choice (on-demand style).

Or other things might be bartered -- like filling out a survey, participating in a product trial, etc. I'm sure imagination will supply bartering tokens we could not possibly think of today. (maybe you could pay college tuition with viewing credits one day).

Uninterrupted viewing of the Superbowl could be worth something (though I know lots of people watch for the commercials).

This is a half-baked idea. But it could be applied to solve the publisher's problem, the warehouser's problem, the distributor's problem, the retail-bookstore's problem, the self-publisher's problem.

Writers, publishers, bookstores, etc are selling uninterrupted fictional experiences more than they are "intellectual property licenses".

Piracy is a problem only if your business model is to create and sell intellectual property.

If you get rid of the idea that intellectual property is personal property or proprietary property which you have a right to license (or not) as you choose, the whole picture shifts markedly.

If books, novels, e-books, stories of all sorts in all media could adapt to a "story-supported-advertising" business model, we might survive as writers.

A self-publisher could contract with one of these IT organizations so that people who buy manufactured products could use their fiction points to buy e-books, Print on Demand hardcopy, or other formats just as they would to view a TV show uninterrupted.

Writers wouldn't be selling their "intellectual property" at all. They'd give away their stories, and get paid for giving them away by manufacturers who see their products being bought in order to get access to the story.

The IT business wouldn't have to denominate the points in US$. The points would be like frequent flyer points, just points until you redeem them for Southwest flights or American Airlines flights. Thus they would become a de-facto international currency, and e-books in any language could be obtained using points earned buying groceries in any country.

Like the Wired article said, location doesn't matter any more.

The key points to this concept:

1) Intellectual Property is not personal or proprietary and is worthless

2) People want to do what they want to do when they want to do it and no distractions (sort of like courtship or even like sex). In other words, the driving is the distraction to the texting, so we need cars that drive themselves, which we almost have.

3) Fiction is a necessary nutrient, as vital as food, clothing, shelter, water, air, R.E.M. sleep, to sustaining life and sanity. Satisfaction requires no-distraction time-blocks.

4) Fiction is nothing but intellectual property and is therefore worthless

5) Uninterrupted TIME BLOCKS are of actual monetary value.

6) Given today's Information Technology based civilization, a lifestyle composed of uninterrupted time blocks is a commodity that can be monetized.

7) Connect point of sale information with point of fiction imbibing information and create a business model like the kind of "circuit boards" the fellow in the Wired article created -- don't charge for the intellectual property of fiction, but for the lack of distraction while imbibing it (i.e. charge for the circuit board not what it contains).

8) A new generation won't mind the violation of the basic notion upon which the USA was founded -- personal privacy and individual freedom. The new 40-year-olds in twenty years will be as vulnerable to this marketing technique as the 18 year olds are vulnerable to today's commercial-driven airwaves. But you won't need laws restricting how much money can be spent advocating a political position -- political ads belong in stores, not in stories.

I think that would fix the fiction delivery system and everything I see as wrong with it thusly:

a) it would provide a monetary base to produce and purvey fiction

b) it would provide direct feedback between fiction-imbiber and investor (manufacturer with something to sell).

c) it would stop the fragmentation of fiction into tiny chunks, forcing themes to be simpler and less satisfying than they could be. Thus fiction could become more effective as a lift to the spirits.

d) it would foster long-attention-span instead of the short-attention-span fostered in children who grew up on Sesame Street which has segments structured like commercials (or the TV Show HEROES).

but it would of course create new problems.

a) how do writers get readers to choose to read their books, spending points on them?

b) how do writers with a tiny audience survive the forces of mass marketing?

c) how do niche products attract sponsoring and keep their prices down since they can only reach a small market? How do you create these small markets? (social networking is the current best answer).

A host of other problems are inherent in this concept, but the current method is likewise fraught with flaws.

As Wired points out, this new economy is already revving up to full speed right alongside the old fogies clinging to the old economy.

My question is, "Has the old anything ever won out over the new anything?"

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com