The Strange Benefit Of Social Networking

First I have to thank the renowned editor, Victoria A. Mixon, for mentioning my blog entry of last week (*blush*) in her own blog where she wrote:

-------Quote--------
Author Jacqueline Lichtenberg has written a  long and eye-opening post contradicting the standard publishing wisdom, “You determine your own success or failure by just how compelling your story is.” Lichtenberg is looking at TV shows as fiction, as well as books, for which I think she builds a good case. Pay attention to what she’s saying, folks! This is the keystone.

Her post, in turn, refers to an article by Andrew R. Malkin describing his career in publishing promotions.

And Malkin refers to Seth Godin. I mean, these days who doesn’t?
--------End Quote-------

Victoria's blog is one you should subscribe to!  Here's the link to that particular entry, but just look at her others!

http://victoriamixon.com/2010/02/12/reading-up-on-the-business-of-fiction/

-----------
So to this week's topic is about the mistake people are making when trying to understand online social networking, a mistake so huge it's invisible to the naked eye.

Victoria A. Mixon's reference to my blog post is a case in point on social networking that is more pertinent because I have no clue how she found my blog entry.  She might have picked it up on twitter or via the Agent Rachel Gardner's blog (which is rated #4 on Technorati's list of 100 top book blogs) or might have found mentioned on Galaxy Express here:

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/02/10-steps-to-making-science-fiction.html where the full title is
10 Steps To Making Science Fiction Romance A Contender

You see?  Social networking creates these nebulous networks where the networkers don't know where the information came from -- it's on the network!

So I was thinking about that "network" concept and how the e-world differs from the ancient world (pre-WWW) and I suddenly saw a pattern while trolling twitter.

I will attempt to connect three improbable dots and show you this pattern:

A) Puberty
B) Publishing
C) Commercial exploiting of social networking

As far as I know (which isn't very far) nobody else has discerned this pattern from these particular dots.

If you stick it out through this huge post, I may make you crazy.

Here's how it all came together. 

I had just filed my September review column for The Monthly Aspectarian, which is published on paper in the magazine, then posted to their website (lightworks.com) then finally archived at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/

The books reviewed this year are posted on that 2010 index page and you could look them over and see what the ones you've read from that list have in common.

The September column is about books where the main hero is fully engaged in defending a particular USA city from some form of paranormal attack, and I noted some things cities have in common.  If you read those books carefully in close sequence you will see how the authors exploit the mechanics of social networks within cities that propel the plot dynamics.  But that wasn't the exact focus of my column.

Right after that I ran across another tweet on Twitter:

@michaelpinto: #kidscreen it's not until kids hit age 12 do they use social online services

Michael Pinto is Creative Director of Very Memorable Design, Publisher of Anime.com and Editor of Fanboy.com -- has over 2,000 followers on twitter, and his website is http://www.fanboy.com/

And I offhandedly shot back at him:

@jlichtenberg @michaelpinto #kidscreen "socialization" awareness of "other" may be primarily part of the reproductive urge?

To which he answered:

@michaelpinto @JLichtenberg actually most of the social media at that age is your immediate peers, so it's more of a tool thing

And the head-wheels start spinning! (I do love twitter!)

The image that flashed into my mind was the typical Middle School school yard during recess and the behaviors of various age-groups of children.

It's something I had noticed when I was a child and continued to notice throughout the years, and to puzzle over.

Watch the 4th Grade girls -- they gather in groups, sometimes larger, and they PLAY, they do things, they engage in activities, and the only things they say to each other are in regard to the activity (Dodgeball, jacks, races, games).

Watch the 5th Grade girls.  Some play, some gather in small groups and talk.

Watch the 6th Grade girls.  They ALL gather in small groups and TALK-TALK-TALK.

Something happens at puberty that shifts interest from the activity to the people.

Most of the focus of that talk is "I-I-I" -- it's all about Self.  But watch the 7th and 8th graders.  The talk is 'you' and 'look at that cute boy'.

There is a major shift of awareness we call socialization, and it is a shift from I-self to You-other.  There is a dawning (before puberty) of awareness that others exist, have feelings, and an inner emotional life separate from all activities.

There is a dawning of awareness of the inner emotional life of the Self -- and then a seeking of the mirror of the Self in Other.

The yen for BONDING starts, and it first manifests in those cliques gathered to talk-talk-talk.  I've seen groups of 4 or 5 girls walking home from school stop in the middle of an intersection, totally lose awareness of any approaching cars, and just focus tightly on talk-talk-talk and the talk is all about FEELINGS and interactions with others.

The search is for those who have similar feelings, and the process brings the individual's emotional responses into conformity with the majority or dominant individuals until a group is formed that has very similar emotional responses.

Last night I saw a feature on PBS about the psychology of investing, about neuroscience and other really detailed scientific studies of fear and risk and herd behavior among humans.  And one item struck me relevant to social networking.  The science behind human herd behavior has revealed how neurologically a human being will subordinate the individuality in order to be accepted by the group -- out of fear, out of risk aversion - out of the very sort of "Primal" responses Blake Snyder talks about in his SAVE THE CAT! books.

And that TV feature brought to mind that school yard full of little knots of girls chattering at each other, seeking emotional conformity and emotional bonding with each other (and talking about cute boys, of course, what else is there to talk about?)

Today's cliques of pubescent girls use texting and social networking, but as Michael Pinto observes, it's a tool to carry on the exact same transaction I had observed so many years in schoolyards.  Now they'll text each other across the yard.  But the transaction is the same - bonding self-to-other.  First in small groups.  But today's world is much bigger.

A couple days before that, I ran into the following news article on Yahoo that says YouTube is 5 years old (only 5 years!) and details the changes its advent on the scene has made.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100214/tc_pcworld/theyoutuberevolutionturns5

5 years!  Today's pre-adolescents don't remember the world without Youtube and video-via-cell-phone.  It's just a tool they use to assuage their bonding urge.

Remember, some time ago I did several entries here about social networking especially as used by marketers:

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

The point of that post was essentially that advertisers who tried to use social networking to force a message to "go viral" in order to make a profit were shooting themselves in the foot by following the oldest adage of Marketing.

Mastering this oldest adage of Marketing is a hurdle as difficult to surmount for budding marketers as "show don't tell" is for budding writers.

It is "You Are Not Your Customer."

And I pointed out why Marketers can never succeed at using social networking to promote a product on purpose by citing successful social networking examples such as Linnea Sinclair.  (one of the contributors to this blog http://linneasinclair.com )

In social networking, YOU ARE YOUR CUSTOMER or you fail because the society will reject you violently and with extreme prejudice.

This rejection phenomenon is not new any more than puberty is new.

Way back when Science Fiction fandom (before Star Trek) was a tiny, closed community of people social networking via snailmail, it consisted of several circles of people who knew each other and knew different circles of professional writers personally.

Science Fiction fandom was so closed that people who took a new interest in the fandom without coming from an encyclopedic knowledge of the fiction admired by the groups were viewed as unwelcome intruders.

But of course, "science fiction fandom" was so tiny that even publishers of science fiction paid no attention to it.

Even if a book sold to all the social-network connected science fiction fans, that alone couldn't make it commercially viable.

A book's publishing overhead required that it sell to 100's of times as many people as ever connected to SF fandom's little in-group.  Sales volumes of books that sold to most of fandom and those that sold to no fans were statistically indistinguishable.  The "Hugo Winner" didn't sell enough additional copies to make a difference. Neither did "Nebula Winner" though when BOTH appeared on a book it meant something commercially.  (that changed gradually, year by year, and then SUDDENLY in the 1960's into a "Golden Age." You can look up dates if you like.)

Then came Star Trek in the late 1960's and with the conventions in the early 1970's and the explosion of "trekkies" as opposed to people like me known as Trekkers, started to change book sales patterns. (but Trekkies would buy spinoff novels but not follow an author into their own non-Trek works!)

"Trekkies" is a derogatory term used to designate people whose motives are similar to those of "roadies" -- starstruck fanatics who follow rock stars around the country screaming at concerts.

Trekkies is an odious term because it's a static psychological state.  It's like an addiction.  Instead of making progress in life because of the interest, learning skills, gaining expertise, widening horizons, acquiring stabilizing associations and contacts with people above you on the ladder of success, the "trekkie" just sits at the feet and goes gaagaa.

"Trekkers" are active and growing people -- people on a Trek, a JOURNEY.  They are going somewhere.  All their efforts are toward an attainable goal and they do attain that goal.

Trekkers wrote amazing fan fiction, and many of those fanfic writers became professional writers (after a few were shut firmly out of mainstream publishing because they were known fanfic writers).

Fanfic generated social networks within networks, all connected, knowing each other or knowing of each other.  And those generated whole conventions where thousands of dollars changed hands just with the buying and selling of fanzines (on paper no less.)

More than that, the efforts of Trekkers produced the fan-run Star Trek Conventions (not the "shows" where the Stars posture on a stage, sign autographs for money, and disappear -- the CONVENTIONS where the Stars might drop in and speak on a stage, then go buy stuff in the Dealer's Room and converse with trekkers but ignore the trekkies).

The Trekkers got sucked into Science Fiction and invaded Science Fiction conventions causing an immense backlash of rejection because a lot of Trekkies got mixed in, and Trekkies didn't read the "right" books to be accepted.

This invasion changed the face of SF fandom and actually changed its prestige among publishers because of the large numbers of people and the among of money that changed hands. But individual authors didn't see TV show fans grabbing SF novels off the shelves unless they were TV show spinoffs.

Don't forget that YouTube effect. It's a 3rd generation video-entertainment-only development.

My own Star Trek fanfiction (text-only), the Kraith Series (which attracted 50 creative fan contributors who wrote and drew in my alternate Trek Universe) was nominated for the Fan Writer Hugo (SF Fandom's top award) (and lost because of that backlash of text readers against TV-fan invaders - resentment continues for that, too).

Kraith can be read for free online at
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

Here's an image of the Hugo runner-up certificate :

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/awards-jl/hugo/cert4a.gif

 

It's a good thing I didn't win the trophy because the Trekkie-invasion issue in SF fandom was incendiary, and the person who won really REALLY deserved it.

However, that was an inflection point, and today Science Fiction conventions and even Worldcon have "media" track programming (which was so resoundingly rejected at first).  If the resistance hadn't gone on so long, Worldcon would have been the Event that Dragoncon is now - media and gaming.

These are now two immiscible social networks in fandom, media and books.

Here are a couple of websites listing conventions:

http://www.scificonventions.com/
 
Here is the Locus list of cons: http://www.locusmag.com/Conventions.html

On #scifichat on twitter (Friday afternoon Eastern Time - Follow @scifichat for info ) David Rozansky (a publisher who runs the chat) advised writers aiming at text-publishing:

@DavidRozansky Attend literary-focused #scifi cons, like WorldCon or MileHiCon. Media-focus cons are fun, but won't help you. #scifichat

Of course he was talking about launching a career in book publishing, not media.

He also said that writers today need to develop their own following (of fans of their writing) before they can become well published, and the way to do that is social networking.

So far, nobody I've run across has pointed out what I have pointed out -- that for social networking to become a vehicle for your message, you must first and foremost be a part of that society. You Are Your Customer - or you are nobody -- in writing novels.

Any writer of heroic fiction has learned the principle of what makes a leader in real life.  A "leader" must emerge from the group he/she leads.

If you don't put that into your fiction, nobody will believe it.

In fact, implicit in the concept "leader" is "emerging from the Group to Lead."

But in our real everyday world, "leaders" are often chosen from outside a company.

Everyone who's gotten a job where they come in to manage people who were expecting promotion into that spot knows they have to weed their group of those ambitious ones before they can lead that group.  The first job of a leader is to bond with the group.  THEN they have to "separate" from that group (as Captain Kirk illustrated with his "loneliness of command" theme.)

In the real world, the CEO search goes OUT - rarely do top people get promoted from within.

In fact in order to get to such a pinnacle, a candidate may have to climb the ladder inside a company, then switch to another company and climb there a while, then get head-hunted as CEO of the original company that employed them.  (I've seen that career track happen several times lately in the real world).

Mystically, and practically, a "Leader" has to be or have been a member of the society he/she is to lead.  (think King Arthur)

But Marketers learn bone deep, "you are not your customer" -- it is their mantra.

Alienation on the one hand, and membership bonding.  A dichotomy and a tension line.

Marketers come into social networking determined not to "be the customer" but to "sell to the customer" - retaining the clinical distance, the emotional disconnection of an outsider but attempting to lead the herd into a behavior (buying this brand of product).

Yet playground training in early life, the very first pre-pubescent bonding experience, is not to follow someone who is not organically, emotionally bonded to the group.  And that dynamic turns up in individual investing habits, too.

Physicians learn to be "objective" and Healers learn Empathic Bonding (I explored that dichotomy in depth in my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever which is about the medical career tracks of physicians vs. healers).

The key element here is the Group Mind vs. Individual Mind and the relationship between them, as in the several novels about Cities.

I discuss that in my September Review column
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/  

(You should be able to access the actual column there sometime after October 1, 1010)

To be a leader, you must first be a member.

If you're not a member, when you behave like a leader you become a tyrant.

That's the playground principle the marketers who are trying to use social networking to move product are ignoring and they will regret it. It is a "Primal" principle that every writer knows in their bones, and it's rooted in (oh, yeah, you knew this was coming) ROMANCE! And it's all about reproduction, successful reproduction which involves rearing the young, which requires bonding.

Yes, successful commercial marketing is all about sexuality, all about the fundamental psychological components of which love is built.  

I discussed a possible solution to the marketer's problem in this post:

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

Now let's look at the world from a fiction writer's perspective again.

If we're worldbuilding and we get down to building the society Our Hero is embedded within, then we have to ask ourselves, who's connected to whom and how?

In other words, to create the drama that we wish to display, we must embed Our Hero in a society -- a social network.

Why is that? Why must worldbuilding include social networks we make up out of thin air?  And why is it so easy to make them up?

Because all heroes (even the villain is the hero of his own story) are "connected" -- like The Mob.  The Mob is a "family" or a network of families, some of which are connected by being adversaries, opponents, or rivals if not actual enemies.

Look at the "flip-outs" we hear about in the news.  A person gets fired, broods over it a while, grabs a gun and sprays bullets at the group which rejected him/her, or deliberately shoots at people who are members of a social network which has rejected the shooter.

A bit into the news cycle and we learn this person was a "loner" -- a nice person, quiet, kept to him/herself, had become distant from family (or had none) -- was not active in groups, volunteering, or any of the things you and I always do. But went out of the way to be "nice" while holding forth with opinions that separated them from the group.  

Watching such a news story unfold, it's so hard to understand why this person flipped out and sprayed destruction upon those who "rejected" -- because we get rejected all the time (sometimes 3 times a week for months on end) and don't grab guns and spray bullets.

Why does REJECTION hit some people in the VICIOUS BUTTON triggering a killing spree?

Or suicide.

Life rains blows upon us from all sides.  Mostly, we spend a lot of time feeling like punching bags and emotional garbage cans, recipients of other people's eruptions. We endure the flame wars on Lists and try to be very quiet until it dies down, or sooth things over off-list.  We engage actively with other people's emotions, but we don't kill them. 

What's the difference?

You and I are connected seven-thousand-ways-from-Sunday into dozens of social networks. Many dozens.  From that early playground experience to today, we keep adding networks.

Even standing in line we exercise networking skills.  The worse the situation at airports gets, the more we chat up the folks behind us in line, play canasta with the person next to us on the stuck plane, or entertain their kids.  Every point at which you find yourself in casual touch with someone becomes a conversation just like those play yard conversations - emotional interchanges that form social networked bonds. 

The people who dump on us are either members of one of our own networks and are dumping because they need a friend -- or they're NOT on our network but on some other that regards all members of our network as the source of all the problems in the world. Or source of best friends.

Either way, the emotional blows that rain down on us push us off center emotionally, and we push a little on our supporters, who push a little on theirs, and the blow gets absorbed by a huge number of people, soaked up and dissipated.

People on line now are almost all also on their cell phones!  That can annoy us, but probably because nobody's calling us right now.

Think how snow shoes work.

 Image From Here

Snow is not strong.  All those little crystals tend to come apart when you press on them.  Step on it with your boot, and you'll sink in.  Strap on a snowshoe and spread your weight over a larger area, and the snow will support you.

Social networking works just like that.

By being socially connected to many, MANY people, we become more stable.  We become able to soak up and dissipate blows that are way beyond our personal capacity.

(And I'm not even including any connection to the Divine in this -- this works even without any sort of religious connectivity!  Just plain humans supply enough support for most of life's vicissitudes.  Add the Divine and boost the effect to a whole new level.)

The sign of a mentally healthy person is that membership in many social networks.

Is the social network the source of sanity or the result of it?

Does it matter?

Wherever you find humans, you find social networks no matter how inconvenient or difficult the connections are.  (Even before snailmail social networks existed and functioned).

Who benefits from the existence of social networks?

The individual (as anyone who's on Twitter and Facebook knows) expends a lot of time and energy networking socially.

Marketers have poured lots of brainpower into trying to figure out how to get the effect that individuals get from networks without spending that much time or energy because it's just not cost-effective.

For every single shortcut they invent, they lose more respect from networkers who observe them.

Why is that?  What's really going on with social networks?

We, as Romance Writers, need to know because

a) all Relationship stories, nevermind actual Romances, depend entirely on the answer to that question. and

b) how in the world could we build an alien, non-human society without social networks and have it believed by our readers or accessible to our characters?  Where's the drama without social networks?

Why can't marketers duplicate our results?

Take a single company - advertising via social networking.

What do they expect as a result?

Emotional support in times of stress?

No.

They expect PROFIT and expect to measure that profit in INCOME.

Why do you social network?

What is the real motive in your heart of hearts when you click into twitter?

You might want to repeat a pleasure you've had - finding out what's going on, who's interested in what.  Some bit of random mental stimulation such as I've pointed out I find in twitter all the time.

That's what you get.  What company would want that?  What SEC form could they file for that?

But what's your real motive in networking (and blogging, even just reading blogs, is networking), not the conscious one?

The real source of PLEASURE, the payoff from social networking is the GIVING.

There's a whole mystical dimension to Giving and Receiving that I've discussed in my Tarot posts.  I don't recall exactly which of the 20 posts it's in, but you wouldn't understand it without reading them all.  Start with the most recent one of the 20 and follow the links back, then read them in order of posting date:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html  

There's a spiritual charge we get out of just giving.

But to "give" there must be a recipient -- an element on the other side of the transaction that accepts what was given.  (for a blog, that's a reader who drops a comment).

With social networking, who's the recipient of the huge amount of energy out pour out?

Think hard.  It's not just the bloggers who drop a comment or link to the blog as I pointed out with the Editor and Agent and fellow Romance blog that linked to this blog.
  If it were JUST that first level commenter, it would be private communication such as on the pay ground.

It's all the people those people reach! And all they reach beyond that.

The real recipient of what you GIVE (that corporations are trying to avoid giving because it's too expensive in terms of the profit in money that comes back) the real recipient is SOCIETY.  The real recipient of what you pour out into your social networking is the network itself.  The social fabric of society.

That's why it's called social networking.

You as an individual participating in social networking are pouring your personal energies into a huge, open, black hole.  AND NOTHING COMES BACK.

But you experience pleasure for having poured yourself out.

The whole point is that NOTHING COMES BACK.

That network must be energized, constantly maintained by those who pour themselves out into it, "fruitlessly."

The existence of those social networks is the very foundation of our civilization and more, even of our personal SANITY!!!  And sexuality.  And successful reproduction, transmitting social values to the next generation.

The beneficiary of your social networking skills and contributions is society itself.

If you're not a member of that society, if you're not your customer, you really do drain yourself dry and get nothing for it.

If you are a member, you benefit by membership, but it costs you more than you will ever be able to get out of it, just like rearing children costs more than you get.  You pay it forward!

The benefit or profit that you, personally as an individual, derive from your non-cost-effective investment is really huge, though.

What you get from the existence of the society you belong to is emotional support, ethical support, moral support, even perhaps spiritual support, and ultimately the stability to absorb huge blows.  Ultimately, what you get is immortality in the form of posterity.

As long as that social network lives, part of you survives even if you have no progeny of your body.

I wrote about this a little in my two novels HERO and BORDER DISPUTE, which can be found on Kindle as a single volume:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002WYJG0W/rereadablebooksr/  

Free chapters at http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Because of your outrageous expenditures on social networking, you can rely on being sane and stable enough to absorb the blows that life flings at you because the energy of those outrageous events will dissipate into your social networks harming none, least of all you.

That is not a benefit a corporation can return to shareholders as a dividend, so they have no business doing business via social networking.

But let's look again at the history of publishing.

I've discussed this in prior posts here. A change in the US tax law regarding books kept in warehouses changed the whole business of publishing.

The essence of the change was that books became treated as if they were bolts or hammers -- just stock produced in advance and warehoused until sold.  Each year you keep books in a warehouse, you pay a tax on those books even though you haven't sold them and they've reduced in value.

It used to be that publishers would print thousands more copies than they could sell in a year, hold them in warehouse and sell through a trickle until it sold out - maybe remainder the last couple thousands.

Under that new law, about thirty years ago I think, the business of publishing was nearly destroyed and then shifted into modern publishing which is entirely for profit, choosing titles on a totally different basis than before that tax law.

Print runs were reduced, and titles were chosen only if they could sell out before the tax deadline -- shelf-life cycles were reduced by weeks and months.

Under the pressure of that, publishing grabbed at the Print On Demand concept, but even today that hasn't entirely caught on.

Under the old tax law which didn't penalize publishers who published books that "ought" to be published for literary or social merit, pricing was all about what people could afford to pay, or would be willing to pay.

Today, pricing is about how soon the e-book edition will come out.  And publishing in general is much more sensitive to price-points than ever because of numerous other shifts in tax laws that treat books as commodities not social treasures.
This image is from
http://blog.kobobooks.com/2010/02/04/when-publishers-set-prices-with-pictures/#
And you should read and ponder that whole article:

And today publishers and distributors and warehousers and all connected enterprises (printers, shippers) are in dire financial straits.  People blame that on the economic woes of the housing bubble collapse, or cyclical recession, or the impact of the internet.

But think about it more carefully.  Step back and connect all these dots in your mind.

Who benefits from PUBLISHING?

Well, publishing, as I pointed out with the story of SF fandom, Star Trek fandom, and the explosive blending of the two, generating fanzines, and from Star Trek fanzines, a plethora of fanzines devoted to other TV shows, spawning a generation of writers who transformed the face of Romance with SF-Romance, Paranormal Romance, Futuristic Romance, etc etc.  Other genres have experienced the same.

Why?

Social networking.

Remember the story of how I got into Science Fiction fandom?  I wrote a letter to the editor of a Science Fiction magazine and they published it - my first published words; instant addiction!  But they published my address, and I was instantly invited to join the N3F, the National Fantasy Fan Federation - a network of networked SF fan organizations, founded by the same man damon knight (small letters deliberate) who founded SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America, which I'm also a member of.

Networked networks -- social networks that take more out of you than they ever can give back.

Book publishing is just a larger version of fanzine publishing, and in fact grew out of it before fanzines ever existed!  The Gothic Novel - check the history of that back to the early 1800's.  Go back to the 1600's and the printing press revolution.  The American Revolution and the "Broadside."

Think about it.  That new technology was first adopted by amateurs doing nothing but social networking with a tiny, closed group of people who liked to read.

PUBLISHING is nothing but a giant social network of networks, just like the N3F.

They've tried to make it into a business, just as the marketers are trying to make social networking into a business.

It's a doomed effort.

Why?

Because of the nature of the social network.

If I'm right, and publishing is nothing but a social network (so large we can't see it as one), then the beneficiary of all the effort poured into publishing by writers, editors, publishers, marketers, publicists - the whole apparatus - only benefits SOCIETY.

The beneficiary of the effort expended is the network itself, which out-lives the individuals and carries their immortality forward.

The end result of all these social networks?  We call it "Civilization."

People think the definition of "Civilization" is from the root of the word and means CITY-DWELLERS.  (remember we started this with my September 2010 review column on books about cities being defended from paranormal threats).

Under the old tax law, publishing was treated like a social network that existed solely for the benefit of society.

Under the new tax law, publishing can survive only as a profitable business.

If I'm right, publishing is doomed until the tax law is changed back.  But I don't think even that will restore things because we now have the whole rebellion against the concept of copyright which is the foundation of publishing.

So the 3 things to connect:

A) Puberty
B) Publishing
C) Commercial exploiting of social networking

Publishing and Puberty - the connection is the way sexuality and the reproductive urge toward immortality creates social networks.

If I'm right, Publishing is a social network, or it used to be and needs to be by its nature.

That's why the concept of copyright has become an odious one.  Publishing practiced as a for-loss industry under the old tax law was justified in using copyright because it contributed more to the social fabric than it took.

Publishing was a member of society, a member of the network.

The tax law changed that viciously and I think forever.

So that now Publishing is the stranger, the intruder, the alien, the tyrant attempting to "lead" the social network without being part of it.  Publishing is no longer the customer but the marketer.  So morally it does not deserve the protection of copyright.

Marketing attempting the commercial exploitation of social networks is just an extension of what the bean counters are trying to do with publishing, make it

Marketing, advertising on TV, on the net, everywhere it intrudes, is attempting to lead without ever having been part of what it is leading.

The resistance is gathering.  It is the same force that a play yard clique generates to repel the outsider, the rejected kid.

And that force is the very force that powers sexuality.

Who will win?  Marketers or sexuality?

Lay your bets, pour yourself whole heartedly into your social networks, build your immortality, then watch to see what happens.

Perhaps the nature of publishing will change so much that it no longer is, at core, a social networking phenomenon.

If that happens, will you still read books?

Or will you just hang out on YouTube and watch videos and movies (yes, they're doing streaming of feature films now). 

Or wait!  YouTube is a social network, isn't it?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

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