Trivia For Sci Fi Writers

It's been a while since I mentioned how much I love my subscription to DISCOVERY magazine, but I've subscribed for at least 10 years, and I heartily recommend the publication for those creating alien worlds, or time-travel-punk worlds.

Favorite trivia in no particular order:

Foetuses of reptiles, birds, humans all have gill pouches. No need for gillyweed, then!

Transfuse "alien" blood (even A into a B-type person) and it clots.

Excarnation is the (very) ancient art of removing the flesh of the dead from the bones for more efficient burial.

There are colors that human eyes cannot see.

In September 2002, DISCOVERY's cover story was "A New Ice Age" about how North America and Europe could be plunged into frigid winters. Apparently, the painting "George Washington Crossing The Delaware" showed boatmen pushing on ice on a frozen river. American rivers, as alleged in 2002, could soon be freezing over again.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Chessiecon 2014

The first annual Chessiecon debuted over Thanksgiving weekend in the same location as its predecessor, Darkover, with many of the same staff members and attendees. Bestselling YA fantasy author Tamora Pierce, a regular guest at Darkover, was the author guest of honor. The Friday night masquerade wasn't reinstated, but they did hold a "Time Travelers' Social" in that slot, inviting people to show off their costumes, mingle, and share refreshments. The dealers' room offered the usual bounty. I bought two novels I'd heard mentioned in panels, illustrating the principle discussed at a session on "Reaching Readers"—that personal interaction is one of the most effective book promotions even in this age of Internet media.

I appeared on three panels—one on dark fantasy, one on the appeal of vampires and zombies, and a late-night session titled "Sex and the Believable Alien." The last had ample attendance in spite of its 10 p.m. time and its starting before the concert had quite finished. We addressed the question of how humanoid an alien has to be in order to fit into a romantic or erotic story. We agreed that the important factor isn't body shape but the expectations of the target audience and how the author handles the characters. The consensus was that the alien love object does not necessarily have to be humanoid.

In place of the folk group Clam Chowder, which has disbanded, the Saturday night concert featured filk singer Tom Smith. He has lots of funny material; you can read his lyrics on his website under the "Music" tab (including a Winnie-the-Pooh-Cthulhu crossover—I wish he'd sung that one!):

Tom Smith

Various singers performed casual music in the lobby, a nice feature. And the midnight sing-along of the "Hallelujah Chorus" went on as usual. I always enjoy listening to it from the window of our room overlooking the atrium.

The perennial problem with the hotel, which isn't the con's fault, continues to plague us: Slow restaurant service. Under the old management, the hotel served buffet dinners each evening, so we could easily allow ourselves an hour to eat and pop in and out with time to spare. Now we're at the mercy of the waiters. I had to leave most of my dinner uneaten on Friday in order to make it to my 7 p.m. panel. (Fortunately, our room had a mini-fridge in which to store the leftovers.) Admittedly, the restaurant staff seemed aware of the complaints and made a visible effort at later meals. Still, reinstating the buffet would solve the problem. I've run into similar restaurant foot-dragging at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, too. Wouldn't you think that a hotel hosting the same convention year after year would catch on that people have schedules to keep and want to get through meals quickly?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 11: Terminology in Romance by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 11
Terminology in Romance
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Last week we looked again at Marketing Fiction, and at what sells besides Sex & Violence.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

So today we're going to discuss the part terminology plays in marketing and propose a new term to replace the term "fanfic."  We need to replace the term "fanfic" because of the Changing World in the title of this series of blog posts.

Fanfic has been the driving force behind much of the change, but fanfic itself came from something and has now leaped up to something that makes it require a new label.  That label will open vistas of potential only some of you have seen coming. 

So publishing terminology has its roots inside the fiction that's being marketed, which in turn is rooted in the writer's subconscious, in choice of objectives, in motivation for writing at all.

That's very abstract stuff, but language itself tries to make it concrete.

The classic question, "Why do you write?" is based on the assumption that there is A reason (not a plethora, not a whole personality profile).

Marketing fiction is all about finding fiction that is "aimed at" a specific "audience."  That assumes that a whole bunch of people all share ONE motive for reading (i.e. buying) fiction.

That assumption of a writer and reader sharing just one motivation is the reason that the question, "Why do you writer?" stymies writers. 

There is a why in there somewhere -- but it is not composed of anything you can articulate in a single word or sentence.

Yet all fiction is about that why.

You write a story that is about something (even if you don't consciously know what at the time).  The point of the exercise is not the "something" that the story is "about" -- but rather the "about" itself.  Being ABOUT is what Art is.

As I've discussed in these blog posts on writing craft, stories are Art.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

Art depicts reality - it is not reality, itself.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

And marketing Art shifts and changes, more rapidly now than ever.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-important-book-what-makes-novel.html

Now consider that language, any language, also "depicts" -- the map is not the territory.  Language itself is symbolism.

We've discussed symbolism at some length:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

The essential ingredient in fiction is conflict.  Therefore, the writer must depict both sides of a philosophical argument (a thematic statement) in order for the fiction to be 'about.'  The two sides of an argument must conflict, and ultimately resolve (even if there are issues left over for a sequel.)

The "both sides" structure of a story conflict is artificial.  That division into just two sides is symbolism, not reality.

Sifting two clear, opposing points of view out of the pea-soup morass of human experience so that each side can be clearly depicted is Art.

The process of sifting and defining the two sides is the same as the process of paining a picture.  The graphic artist "selects" certain lines, composition, arrangement, colors, sharp/fuzzy focus, perspective, to "lead the eye" just as a story-writer "leads the mind" via composition.

Having laid out a clean, clear, two-sided conflict, the writer must aim the narrative (a narrative is a beginning, middle, end set of points that are given connection by the writer's composition of the picture extracted from reality).

The narrative must be structured to aim at a particular audience.

If that audience is large enough, the economics of "publishing" (traditional publishing) takes over.  The widely-aimed story becomes commercially viable at a certain break point.  That break point is constantly changing.  It used to be the volume of cardboard consumed by China dictated that break point by dictating the price of newsprint paper used to print paperbacks.

China at that time was just beginning to become a manufacturing powerhouse, and needed boxes made from cardboard to ship finished product.

So trade treaties with China (politically controversial because of China's Communism) governed the subject matter and narrative structure, the composition, of mass market paperbacks, and thus of hardcovers that could be re-published as paperbacks reaching a larger readership.

Then came our "changing world" that I've been writing about here since 2007.


With the advent of usable e-reading screens, the e-book market which had grown via PDF download, dedicated reading devices of dubious worth, html websites posting fanfic, just plain exploded.

It pretty much caught traditional publishers by surprise.

They hadn't followed the growth of hits on fanfic websites. 

And for various reasons, traditional publishers had always been way out of touch with what "readers want" -- and more in touch with what a reader will buy based on a cover, or cover-blurb, or based on what books are placed in a bookstore window or "dump" carton in an aisle. 

Book sales are all that matter to a publisher.  And book sales don't matter at all to a reader, as long as the reader gets satisfaction, or can find the next book in a series they're following.

Book sales matter to a writer only insofar as their income stream is satisfactory.  When income is satisfactory, the matter of sales fades from the writer's consciousness.  The writer is concerned only with ABOUT, with the urge to DEPICT the world in a revealing light that makes sense out of chaos.

To a writer, only the story matters, only the narrative matters. 

That's why writers are so hurt and bewildered when a traditional publisher turns down the next book in a series.  The writer is about finishing the story.  The reader is about finding out the ending of the story.  The publisher is about efficient use of resources to make a profit. 

So with the advent of usable reading screens, the readers who wanted to finish reading the story, and the writers who wanted to finish publishing the story, and some entrepreneurs who saw that connection, founded small publishing via e-books.

The first commercial level explosion of e-book sales for such small publishers was in the Vampire Romance.

Traditional Publishing started this trend -- some might say, Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire started the trend, but I think it appeared first in YA novels about a Vampire who turns up in a High School, either as a student, a teacher, or on the periphery.  13 year old readers become adult readers in about 5 years.

And it was about 5 years after the popularity of YA vampires that we saw the Vampire Romance emerge onto bookstore shelves, buried inside the Romance genre paperbacks.

A  couple years later, Vampire Romance got a label on the spine, different labels from different publishers.

Sales peaked, then started to fall off as other sorts of Paranormal Romance appeared sporadically.  How do I know sales peaked and fell?  Because I was marketing my own material via an agent at that time, and Manhattan lunches gleaned proprietary stats and reports on how the purchasing editors were thinking.

I found that by the time I wanted into that Vampire Romance market, the publishers were saying they were over-bought on Vampire Romance, had more than a year's worth in stock or under contract, and would not even consider another submission.

They ran out of Vampire Romances, and by then other sub-genres were selling better. 

There's a perverse logic in the publishing business model, rooted in the disconnect between the objectives of a writer and the objectives of a publisher.

So when Vampire Romance readers suddenly could not find any more paperbacks to suit them, they quickly learned on the grapevine that Vampire Romance was alive and well, thriving and growing in the e-book market.

That demand for Vampire Romance, in part, drove the demand for readers that drove the technological improvements in screens.  Improved screens increased demand for e-books, and other varieties of novels, and now even non-fiction, are all e-book.

And of course, you've all heard of the contretemps between Amazon and Hatchet and other publishers over the price of e-books.  Readers have been saying for a long time that e-book prices are about double what they should be.

Small publishers are consolidating (buying each other), and refining the business model.  Many, many publishers that started up in the nascent e-book market have closed.  And now the traditional publishers used their marketing strength (and Amazon & B&N) to yank the e-book market away from small publishers. 

http://www.booksandsuch.com/blog/amazon-hachette-battle-matters/

So writers who wanted to reach their own readers self-published.

Many self-publishing writers are New York Times Bestselling writers, taking back the rights to their NYT best sellers, re-publishing them by themselves or through small e-book publishers, and then finishing their series.  Sometimes they bring out new books in new series.

Meanwhile, a lot of writers who could not sell to traditional publishing went with self-publishing.

Some of these had honed their craft on fanfic websites, getting feedback from readers, learning to use beta-readers, and grow into a skill set that works to produce good novels that hit their readers nerves squarely.

Other self-publishing writers learned as they went. 

There's an organization for e-book publishers and writers something like SFWA or RWA, complete with genre book awards and cover art awards which I joined years ago when I had my first e-book out, Molt Brother.  Now it's in paper, e-book, and also audiobook, along with the sequel, City of a Million Legends.



http://www.epicorg.com/  is the website of the e-book professionals organization and it also has an active forum where people exchange a lot of information, writers find publishers, and so on.

These are the people generating the change in the world of publishing.

So we are seeing an increasing level of quality in self-published books.

Historically, Science Fiction Fandom invented fanfic -- fiction written by fans for fans.  For the most part, science fiction fanzines never published fiction, but rather discussed conventions and novels.  But fan fiction thrived in smaller circulation, often on carbon paper, though usually not using established characters of a professional writer. 

With the advent of Spockanalia and T-Negative, Star Trek fans discovered the joys of fanfic written to expand and expound on the TV characters.  And gradually, fan writers created original characters to interact with the established characters, revealing new depths to the shallow TV depictions.

That evolution of fan fiction is the main subject of my Bantam Paperback STAR TREK LIVES!



STAR TREK was the first TV Series to engage the fertile imagination of organized science fiction fandom.  Yes, organized.  There were (and are) clubs with constitutions, slates of officers, and annual elections, plus dues and publications.  The World Science Fiction Society holds the annual World Science Fiction Convention (worldcon) and awards the Hugo, as well as other Awards.

Science Fiction fandom was (and is) organized and connected.  Today it's connected via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.  Then it was snailmail and telephone.

From STAR TREK LIVES! and the New York Star Trek Conventions, the media picked up on the term fanfic (especially slash), and popularized the term FAN, fanzine, fan fiction, and eventually the term FANFIC. 

In that term, FANFIC, may lie the barricade between self-published Romance novels and the prestige they deserve.  It may also give us a clue as to where the resistance against Romance comes from in the general population, even though they flock to films with a tear-jerking Romance, and give awards to the RomCom (the romantic comedy) -- yet shy from Romance per se.

Terminology is key to changing people's assumptions, or prejudices.  We changed from the term "nigger" to the term Black to indicate elevating the prestige, the potential value of a person. 

The terms Liberal and Progressive, Communist and Socialist, Independent, etc etc are continuously redefined, and then changed. 

So let's examine the origin of the term "fan" to see what it is telling the world about us.

The media, and now dictionaries and major sources, keep insisting on a misconception about the origin and meaning of the term "fan."

They insist that the science fiction fan is a FANATIC (i.e. not sane but obsessed.)

That is the label that was slapped on science fiction fandom way back before it was organized, and even afterward for decades.

A fanatic is a person who is not in their "right mind."  And usually, being a mild conditiion, the fanatic "out-grows it" or "gets over it."

Can you imagine out-growing or getting over Romance?  Come on! 

But they are saying that science fiction is a "phase" that some teens go through and therefore it is negligible, and can safely be tolerated and disregarded.  There is nothing in it (they said in the 1930's) that has any bearing on reality or the future.

30 years later, that generation sent men to the Moon. 

The next generation of science fiction fanatics invented the internet and the web.

The next twenty years saw the advent of the cell phone, then the smartphone.

Fanaticism is a mental disorder suffered by teens, like measles was considered a childhood disease you just had to suffer through. 

Fanaticism is a disease.

Today they say of the same age-group that Videogaming is "addictive."  That's it's unhealthy for teens to communicate with each other via social media.

In the 1940's they said the same thing of that generation's teens who were communicating with each other via telephone.  The picture of the teen monopolizing the ONLY phone-line in a household, holding long conversations with fellow teens (often of opposite gender) was a feature of life in the 1950's, tolerated and scorned by adults.

If you're a writer intending to grab a market-share for your work, watch what teens are doing now.  It takes about 5 years to write a novel, from Idea to published, and in 5 years today's teens will be at peak entertainment consumer years. 

But they may pick up the scorn associated with terminology used when talking about Romance Genre novels, and never explore the rich, complex, and satisfying worlds Romance writers build.

Or, if they do browse mass market paperbacks, they may never discover the worlds being created by writers using small publishers or self-publishing in e-books.

I get a couple of newsletters pitching free and 0.99cent e-books, Romance genre, Mysteries, etc. 

https://www.bookbub.com/home/

I often see books pitched as having many hundreds of 5-star reviews on Amazon.

The star-review has become the self-publisher's marketing tool, and yes, there is some fraud associated with this statistic, even though Amazon tries to prevent that. 

Still, read some of those reviews.  Even if you would scorn the book because of typos or need for editing out inconsistencies and filling plot-holes, look at the comments by readers who focus entirely on the payload, the way the STORY made them feel, not the technical flaws in the writing craft.

Those 5-star reviews are typical of fanzine reader responses to fanfic based on a TV-show. 

Get that free newsletter, click through to Amazon on a title with lots of 5-star reviews and read carefully.  And while reading, think about this.

Self-publishing is hard (writing the novel is easy by comparison).  The odds are against you selling a single copy to anyone you don't know personally. 

But there are associations of self-publishing writers who can teach you how to connect with cheap promotional strategies that might work. 

There is very likely an audience hungry for what you want to sell them.  You finding them, them finding you, or "going viral" is a long-shot.  Finding and serving a market is what publishers do -- their business model is suited to that process.  Writing uses a different business model.

But because of the adequate e-reader screens now available fairly cheap, there is a readership starving for what you write.  They just won't recognize it when starting right at it. 

What do we need to get that instant recognition?

We need a label, a symbol, a TERM which describes what this kind of fiction is, where it comes from, why it deserves their attention, and most important what it actually delivers.

The term self-published has gathered scorn because of the missing editorial steps people have become used to.

The term fanfic has gathered scorn because of the old (and inaccurate) term fanatic. 

What other artform besides writing has, historically, been a source of pure satisfaction and meaningful entertainment (and information)?

Think about the music industry.

Commercially available music has its origins in the Bards taking news, information, and historical Events and gossip from town to town, presenting it all as song. 

Isolated towns had their own youngsters who sang and played music.

Think about the old West.  Whoever in town could saw on a fiddle played for the square dancing. 

Along with all this, came one of the oldest artforms, which became known as Folk Music. 

Here's a wikipedia article on 1940's folk music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_folk_music_revival

In the 1960's, people like Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and people you've never heard of because they only played and sang at weddings and birthday parties.  Yesteryear's Garage Bands.

You can get this old music on Amazon, iTunes, and other websites. 

http://www.last.fm/music/Peter,+Paul+&+Mary/+similar

http://tropicalglen.com/Jukebox/Genre/FolkMusic/NewChannel.html

Yes, politics grabbed the folk song and ran with it.  Theodore Bikel's concert records have patter that reveals all that. 

But folk music reflects the life and times of those who perform and those who foster it.  It's folk, not professional.

In the 1960's it became big time professional, and highly respected -- because it made money for the music industry in records and concerts (and movies).

Country Music is the professional development of old, folk music by people who farmed and lived too far away from cities to associate with city folks.  Country was isolated because transit was slow, and internet didn't exist.  Today, many places only have satellite service if that. 

A lot of money has been made from Country Music -- and don't forget Elvis Presley came from that venue.

Today the term folk music doesn't carry the opprobrium that fanfic does.

But, if you examine folk music down to the roots, you will see that folk music and self-published novels (from people who were nerve traditionally published and actively do not want to be traditionally published) share a similar kind of popularity. 

And if you juxtapose real folk music (by folks not getting paid to do it) with professional music (by people who do it for profit), you will see an artistic similarity between folk and professional music that exactly parallels the similarity between fanfic and traditionally published fic.

Trace origins and development, find the driving force behind music, and trace how that force generated the Music Industry, and then do the same for novels.

Go back into the 1800's and study women's Gothic novels, circulating as hand-written copies among housewives.  That was fanfic.

I expect you can do the same study with Art.  There are Great Artists who are "Great" because we've heard of them.  And we've heard of them because they had Patrons and got commissions to decorate famous places (like the Cysteine Chapel, for example).  And there are folk artists whose work is left to us only as fragmentary remains on pottery sherds dug up by archeologists.

There's commercial art -- advertisements, book covers -- and there's fine art shown in galleries.  And then there's folk art, which you find in people's homes, done for the pleasure of their families.  Think about quilting, and going out to "the Country" to buy handmade quilts to hang on the wall as art. Those quilts are folk art, and they are respected.

Today, we also have Fan Art published in fanzines. 

All of these art-forms have a folk version, and a professional version.

Why shouldn't fan fiction and self-published fan fiction be the FOLKFIC of our world?

Self-publishing is so closely parallel, and often related to, fanfic devoted to underlying works and  published on websites for free reading, that the only difference is the homage paid to the underlying work.

Fanfic writers introduce original characters, and re-interpret existing characters, sometimes take them to new worlds, tell parts of a story not treated in the professionally published novels, but it is original writing.

You all know how much fanfic my Sime~Gen Universe novels have generated.  There are millions of words posted on simegen.com alone.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/

Also, on simegen.com we have posted some classic Trek fanzine material.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

You might note on that /startrek/ index page that we have a new addition, the Scholastic Voice Magazine Star Trek Story Contest Winner from 1980.  It was written by a High School boy,  Thomas Vinciguerra, who went on to become a nationally published journalist, and who wrote many articles about Star Trek.  You can find links and the story at:

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/contestwinner/

Here's a 2014 contest on marketing on the internet.
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/seattle-public-library-internet/
-------quote---------
As part of its ongoing Seattle Writes initiative, the library has partnered with self-publishing and distribution platform Smashwords to encourage local writers to package their writing for an audience. The eyeball icing on the finger-typing cake? A contest, open until midnight on October 15, in which up to three entrants who publish via Smashwords will have their eBooks included for circulation in the SPL eBook collection.
The fine print is hardly daunting. Have an SPL library card. Be 18 or older. Publish your eBook (for free) with Smashwords on its website. Enter the contest.
Oh. And write the eBook.
....
-------end quote------


Also a new addition to the simegen.com/fandom/ section is a short novel by a Sime~Gen fanfic writer, Mary Lou Mendum, done in Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire universe, using some of Catherine's characters, and a whole cast of original characters.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/skolianempire/ 

Mary Lou is an example of a writer who specifically does not want to write professionally.  It's a hobby, and she does it to please specific people.  In the case of the Skolian Universe novel, it was done to entertain someone while ill.

She's an example of a folk-writer, writing folk-fic.

Or perhaps it should be called filkfic as akin to Filk Singing.

The term Filk to describe the original lyrics sung to popular tunes done at Science Fiction Conventions dates back to a typo in a con program book.  The term was immediately adopted as a badge of honor, though what they did with music was one of the oldest traditions in folk music (new words to old songs, variations on old tunes to adapt to new lyrics).

Folk Art is the baseline creativity of humanity singing the song of the universe.

Commercial Art (mass market paperbacks) is Folk Art leveled to the lowest common denominator, made accessible to all.

Fanfic and self-publishing are both types of folk art, folk-storytelling.

The material is popular not because an insane person created it, a fanatic, but because perfectly sane people with experiences in common resonate to it, enjoy it, and elevate the performers of it to local celebrity status.

The folk of the town admire and reward the local bard, the story-teller who teaches morality to children, the shaman who teaches history to children in rhyme, and the artist who draws pictures of local events.

Fanfic and Self-published works resemble Folk Music both in content, and appeal and business model. 

But "Folk" carries a much higher prestige than "Fanatic." 

The most powerful force in civilization is the folks, not insanity or teen phases.

You don't tolerate the folks.  You admire them.   Discount the power of the folks at your peril (or so the rulers of France discovered to their tribulation.  England had a problem with those pesky colonists and their Boston Tea Party, too.)

So I propose replacing the term fanfic with the term folkfic or Folk-fic, or some variant so it includes self-published original universe fiction.  Here you find the stories the folk (the largest market there is) really want. 

The More Things Change; The More They Stay The Same.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Digital Course-Pack Controversy

Is unauthorized copying of copyrighted material "Fair Use" if the motive is explicitly "to save money" by not paying the copyright owners ?

The House Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony on November 19th from the Association of American Publishers. The testimony is well worth reading.

http://judiciary.house.gov/_cache/files/7371dd22-94b4-4d0a-85bf-16a51d1cecad/adler-aap-education-testimony-111914.pdf

Highlight:

In this digital age, there has arisen a “new jurisprudence” of courts that have strayed from the statutory language and Supreme Court precedent to justify practices that apply Fair Use differently to digital materials than to print.

 
Comment:
Some courts have given less weight to the impact of systemmatic unlicensed copying of digital materials on the market for legal, licensed copies than to subjective ideas of "the public good" (and of course, the consumer will always prefer "free"), and those who would bilk authors for their own benefit will always claim that scanning a print work to create a digital copy is "transformative".

Highlight:

There is no general or per se exception for use of copyrighted material for educational purposes or by non-profit educational institutions under the U.S. Copyright Act, and such uses are not “presumptively” fair use. 

Comment
See P 3 for more on this. Teachers were never given a free pass to make multiple copies of copyrighted works to save their students money if that copying did not meet the criteria of "Fair Use".

Highlight

Notwithstanding clear Congressional intent and Supreme Court precedent, court rulings in pending copyright infringement litigation by academic publishers against Georgia State University (“GSU”) have exhibited troubling hallmarks of the “new jurisprudence.” 

.... The GSU litigation concerns the university’s claim that its notable changeover from providing students with licensed paper “course packs” of portions of copyrighted works for curriculum reading to providing unlicensed digital versions of the same kind of materials for the same purpose is protected fair use.

 

..... the GSU case is about “a university-wide practice” of substituting unlicensed digital course packs for licensed paper course packs “primarily to save money.” GSU had always paid permission fees to use copyrighted works in a paper format but refused to do so when it used the same or similar copyrighted works in a digital format for the same purpose.

Comment: According to the principle of "media neutrality", a copyrighted work is copyright protected in all media. A faithful and exact digital copy of a work in print is not a transformation. It is a copy.

There's a great deal more in the testimony to inform and delight. I hope you check it out.

:-)
Rowena Cherry

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey Day to all our U.S. readers.

Starting this year, the former Darkover convention, held north of Baltimore over Thanksgiving weekend, becomes Chessiecon. Mostly the same staff, some changes in programming. A new featured filk singer will perform Saturday night in place of the disbanded Clam Chowder folk group. With the continuing rise in steampunk content, for the first time in several years a costume event will be held on Friday evening.

I'm scheduled for three panels, two about the undead and dark fantasy, the other on alien romance and erotica. I'll post a report next week.

Here's the website with information on all the tracks:

Chessiecon

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 10: What Besides Sex&Violence Sells by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 10
What Besides Sex&Violence Sells
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 
The previous parts of this series about Marketing Fiction In A Changing World can be found at:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

We've discussed the definition of "strong characters" previously, establishing that the technical publisher's term "strong characters" does not mean muscles bulging or "kick ass heroine." 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/strong-character-defined-part-2.html

In the Depiction series we started in Part 1 with Depicting Power In Relationships.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

We tend to see our real-world surroundings in terms of "Power" -- such as "Does The Government Have The Power to XYZ?"  or "Does a President have the Power to ZYX?"  "Power To The People!" 

What do we really mean by the term "Power?"

The bald truth is most people, including voracious readers of Romance or Science Fiction Romance (or even Paranormal Romance) have no clue what the term "Power" means to them, except that they want it.

The writer's job as an artist is to DEPICT their reader's ordinary reality in such a way that it makes the Fantasy aspects of the story seem "realistic."  Not real, mind you, but realistic enough to believe for a little while. 

Then, as you've seen in the recent political campaigning, "connecting with" the audience is the big, fundamental, and essential avenue of communicating.

"Connecting" means letting the ideas being discussed come from a person the audience members can "identify with" -- or in some way see themselves in.

In a job interview scene, you want to write the dialogue (very off-the-nose style) in such a way that the interviewee presents him/herself as having something in common with the interviewer, so they communicate smoothly. 

Or if the applicant is to be rejected, you want to make it clear that the interviewee just can't connect with the interviewer/decision-maker.

This is important when talking to Human Resources interviewer, but it is crucial when talking to the person who will be the immediate superior depending on this new-hire to complete tasks expeditiously.

Note: this is VERY important in the case of a hit-man applying for a contract from a Mob Boss.

So there are ways to study political posturing to discover techniques to employ in creating all kinds of fictional scenes.

One of the most critical techniques to learn about dialogue is that all dialogue is mortal-combat -- a jousting match between two (or more) people looking for an advantage, doing one-upmanship, positioning themselves in the power-dynamic of a Relationship -- or establishing a Relationship where they can define their own position as "powerful."

In real life, that's not always true.  There are all kinds of speech used for all sorts of purposes, and some of them actually do lend themselves to becoming a Scene's core dialogue.  There is Intimacy that does not have a power-agenda.  And there is Intimacy that does have a power agenda. 

In general, only a few pages of a 400 page book can be devoted to non-power-agenda dialogue.  Dialogue (as opposed to real speech) has an underlying power agenda.

The reason for the exclusion of non-power agenda Dialogue is that (in general) it doesn't advance the Plot.  All the words, every one, on the page must advance the plot, advance the story, AND enhance the context the characters are living in (description, narrative, exposition are the tools for context enhancement).

Non-power-agenda Dialogue can advance the Story when it does not seem to advance the Plot. 

As we've discussed before, I am using the following definitions for story parts -- different writers use different terminology, but every professional fiction writer knows and manipulates these components.

Story is defined as the sequence of changes in the Character due to the impact of external Events (actions by an opponent).  Plot is defined as the sequence of Events. 

In other words, regardless of the ostensible subject matter, the conversation between characters that survives the final-cut is about Power. 

Two kinds of Power that the writer does not have to explain to a reader are Sex and Violence. 

They sell big, are considered the essential ingredients in a work intended for large and diverse audiences, because they need to explanation, and they need no translation for foreign audiences (Filmmakers aim at World Distribution, and sub-titles just don't cut it if they must contain polysyllabic words.)

So "action" sells because it is violence, and usually needs no translation.  You can depict action easily in Show Don't Tell. 

Think of the 1980's  film THE TERMINATOR.


The Terminator had plenty of Romance, as did the Indiana Jones films.  So did The African Queen which was much more Relationship driven than violence driven -- so they added leeches, mechanical breakdowns, and threats.

If you haven't seen those films, dig them up and watch them.  Streaming has become the most invaluable asset for a writer.  You can pick up long-standing trends, and analyze what does not change decade to decade.

So Romance was top of the heap in World War II movies made in the 1950's, but it was more expensive to depict airplanes in dog fights and big explosions.  Good closeups were cheaper.  The sex scenes were "go to black" -- they happened off-screen.

As technology advanced, audiences came to adore the explosions, destruction of cities, massive crashes, and other violence they had only been able to imagine.  More minutes of a film were devoted to destruction and violence than to the slow-sweet development of a Relationship before sex.

As social values shifted, sex (nude scenes) replaced "go to black."  Step by step, Romance took a back seat to Sex. 

Whatever wasn't a nude scene had to be a violence scene, and those films and novels that spent more time on sex and violence and less on "What she sees in him" made bigger profits -- because "What She Sees In Him" is very hard to translate across languages and cultures.

All the way to 2014, marketing machinery has caused writers and film makers to trim back the time spent on Relationship and include only nudity or violence (or sometimes both at once). 

Some very broad trends in the reader/viewer's community can be traced parallel to this trend in entertainment.

These are decade-long waves of change.  The point in discussing them here is to  pick up a trend and extrapolate it to The Next Big Thing.

So here's a list to consider and research on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

1) The disintegration of The Family (trace Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch all the way to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Lost)

2) The displacement of Loyalty, Patriotism and Honor with Betrayal, Draft-dodging, and Hatred of Parents.

3) The replacement of Character Arc expressed in Poetic Justice with Characters who just win and indulge their emotions (with sex or violence), mostly to just escape their fate.

These are 3 trends that depict the changes in the consumer's real world and are reflected in what those consumers (your market) enjoy in entertainment.

There are reasons for taste preferences in statistically large markets that can be most easily understood by writers via Astrology.  Here is the index post to all the Astrology Just For Writers series -

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Astrology gives a handy way to capture the timing of generational shifts.  Marketers target people between certain ages because at those ages they tend to be more vulnerable to peer-pressure, sales pitches, and tricks of the Public Relations craft. 

That "certain age" lies between the advent of sexual awareness and mastery of the overwhelming emotions and physical demands of the body.  The demographic centers around about age 18, but spreads from 13 to 35, with decreasing gullibility after age 30 (after the first Saturn Return when Saturn (discipline) has been full experienced and internalized. 

As they say: Never trust anyone over 30 -- they might actually be able to think for themselves.  Wisdom sets in at 30.

In other words, at certain ages, humans tend to be better "Marks" for the grifter's tricks.  Public Relations is the grifter's art enhanced with mathematical precision. 

As entertainment producers discovered sales increased when sex&violence were ingredients, and followed the trend to making sex&violence the only ingredients, so too will they follow the trend to something that comes along and sells better.  Could easily be Romance again, with a new twist.

Keep in mind that it is to the advantage of Sellers to keep the Buyers immature and unable to discipline (Saturn) their own emotions (Moon, Venus) so that they will identify with characters who have no self-discipline who "model" impulse-buying and use the excuse "I couldn't help it" when failing to resist an emotion.

It is the hallmark of the teen years when sexuality kicks emotions into high gear that the teen's personal philosophy is founded on the conviction that the only right or wrong in the world is rooted in how you feel.  And we see that reflected in popular fiction -- especially Romance --- that there exists such a thing as an "irresistible" arousal.  And that is true for the immature.

Thus marketers have a vested interest in fostering the assumption of helplessness in the face of your emotions.  If they can induce in you a desire for something, you won't even try to resist because resistance is futile.

The writer's concept "strong character" means a Character whose character is "strong enough" to impose discipline on emotions, even raging arousal, and not succumb -- not even consider succumbing -- to an inappropriate impulse.

In fact, a fully mature human never even has an inappropriate impulse.  That is the Strongest of Strong Characters.  Such people do exist in real life, and every culture has a term for achieving that level of maturity and a theory about how to achieve it.  The achievement was once assumed to be a universal goal of all humanity and was lauded, applauded and rewarded with Rank and Power. 

In fact, the only humans trusted with Power over other humans were of fully mature, strong character.  Others who achieved Power without that Strength of Character we distrusted and rebelled against.

Thus Hollywood depicted Role Model characters, such as The Lone Ranger,

http://www.classicmedia.tv/pr/loneranger/art/LR_creed.jpg

who had achieved that ultimate strong-character position dealing kindly with people who did not have strong character and thus inspired a generation to emulate strength of character (even if they didn't have it).  It was an admired and achievable trait to be beyond temptation via the emotions.

See The Untouchables - Elliot Ness's take-down of the Chicago Mob by being incorruptable - beyond the temptation of money, and beyond the fear of being targeted by a hit man.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052522/combined

Or P.N. Elrod's brilliant The Vampire Files series.

The Vampire Files  Now is in audiobook, too.

Character Arc means the experiences that develop that kind of incorruptible strength of character -- all the way to the point where the enticing vision does not in any way arouse or entice.

We call that an old fashioned value.  So writing it into a Romance can be a radical departure.

Maybe we won't go all the way back to "go to black" for sex scenes - but maybe onward to less air-time (or page-words) spent on nude athletics and more spent on the complex and abstract reasons for accepting this person and rejecting that one according to the self-discipline exhibited by that person. 

This change will come from a book and/or film that just includes that ingredient among the sex&violence. 

So where do we look for this new ingredient that will out-sell sex&violence?

First we have to examine where sex and violence come from in our society, and what those two things represent artistically, then find what other elements exist in human experience that harmonize with them.

In the Astrology Just For Writers series, I pointed out how Astrology describes the relationship between sex, violence, and love.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The sign Scorpio is Ruled By (or associated with) the planet (or whatever they are calling it now) Pluto.  Scorpio is the Natural 8th House which represents sexuality and death, as well as taxes and other-people's-money.  In other words, via the association of Scorpio with the 8th House, we learn the relationship between money and sex, and thus the reason why our Elected Politicians keep getting caught secretly (Scorpio and Pluto represent deep secrets which when revealed become scandals) having sexual affairs and questionable financial dealings. 

Our culture sees sex, violence, finance, Power Over Others, and secrecy as  separate things, as if you can have one without all the others. 

Scorpio Sun Sign is known for such intense privacy preferences that they are considered secretive.

Artists (such as writers) depicting this culture or marketing to this culture, can "see" (with the mind's eye and artist's understanding of poetic justice) that all these separate matters are the same thing.

Scorpio is raw, physical, animal sexuality, and also represents the deeper and more potent manifestations of Violence.  8th House is other people's Values or the Values of The Public.  And Values includes money, which means taxes if the topic is government or power-over-others. 

The current USA government policy is to use Taxes to shape the behavior of citizens.  We tax cigarettes to reduce smoking.  We tax gasoline to prevent driving so much.  This practice puts "Power" into the hands of the few -- the elected officials and bureaucrats who have climbed up the Civil Service ladder to gain decision making power in Agencies such as the IRS, NSA, EPA.

Those who make decisions governing your behavior, incentivizing healthy eating , or dis-incentivizing asocial behavior such as tax-dodging, have positions of Power.

If those individuals are individuals of Strong Character, they can't be bribed, just as Eliot Ness couldn't be bribed in The Untouchables.

And if they have Strong Character, they won't use their Power just to assuage their own emotions.  Say for example the emotion of Fear.  Tax Policy and EPA Regulations are Powers that can be used by those who fear global warming to assuage their fears by forcing people to stop doing what the Powerful believe causes global warming.

People driven by Fear can't be stopped by Facts. 

People driven by Greed (for money) can't be stopped by Facts.

So if one side of the global warming argument is driven by fear of global warming, and the other side is driven by greed for money (based on Fear of poverty?), it doesn't matter what the Facts actually are.  No fact will alter the behavior of either side because the behavior wasn't fact-based to begin with.

We all do this kind of disconnected thinking.  We all have an inner, emotional life that is fraught with Internal Conflict which drives our Story Arc.  That's why novels depicting an Internal Conflict are so vivid.

It doesn't matter nearly so much what the Internal Conflict of a novel-character is, the mere fact that it is an Internal Conflict establishes rapport with the reader.  A character who has an internal conflict that they "project" psychologically on their external world is a Real Person to a reader.

Thus if you are bringing a couple together where one is frantically working to stop global warming and the other is trying to stop the interference with his business by global warming fanatics, you capture the readers from both sides of the argument.

Most people don't know why they believe what they believe.  If your characters likewise don't know or care why they believe what they believe, and so are intransigent in their beliefs, you have a conflict that you must resolve in the end.

"To Agree to Disagree" is not a resolution of a conflict that can lead to a plausible HEA.

If this story is driven by sex and violence -- you will end up with one of this Couple murdering the other.

But if you make the story of the collision of a Believer with a Believer into a genuine Romance (Science Fictional or Paranormal) you another thematic dimension to the innate Sex&Violence collision of say Greenpeace with Whalers.

That thematic dimension is the core theme of all Romance in all sub-genres: Love Conquers All.

People driven by Fear (of Global Warming or Personal Poverty) who have the Power to make themselves feel safer can't be deterred by any arguments. 

Fear is overwhelming, primal, and even more irresistible than sexual enticement.  If these people (government officials or businessmen) have grown up convinced that emotions can not be resisted and had that proven by reading  stories about overwhelming sexuality, then they won't even try to master Fear.

But we have the theme of Love Conquers All.

Love Conquers Fear. 

Love Conquers Sex&Violence.

What's the difference between Sex and Love? 

Raw Sex which is the flipside of Violence is represented in Astrology by Scorpio and Pluto.

Love which is the flipside of Beauty is represented in Astrology by Libra and Taurus.  Venus rules both Libra and Taurus, and has many associations, all of them compatible with Romance which is best symbolized by Pisces ruled by Neptune.

Love is not Romance.  They are two different things, which is why we have so many "Honeymoon Is Over" stories of shattering divorces within the first 5 years of a marriage.  5 years about covers a Neptune or Pluto transit which define the epochs of our lives.

Likewise Love is not Sex.

Love is all about what you see (Libra, Natural Seventh House, Partners, the Public, open enemies) in (internal conflict) another person.  What you value (external conflict) (Taurus, Natural Second House, Money, Beauty, Moral Values) in another person grows out of that Love.

Love is all about what you are capable of perceiving -- not necessarily what is really there.

Love is Blind, as they say.  The symbol for Libra is Blind Justice holding her scales.  Being "blind" in the external eye allows "the sight" with the inner eye, allows seeing into other people.

So your job as a writer is to convince the reader that the reader is smarter than you are, and that the reader is able to see the true inside of at least one of the characters -- to see deeply and accurately enough into a Character to Love that character.

The easy way to do that is to create a Character who is ostensibly an adult but is emotionally immature enough to have no strength to overcome emotion such as Fear or Greed.  His own emotions have Power over him, and therefore anyone with Power over his emotions (of fear, greed, jealousy, etc) can force him to do their bidding even against his own will.

Remember, with Hypnosis, you can not get someone to jump off a roof and commit suicide -- but with control over his emotions, you can -- provided he has no control of his emotions.

The difficult part of telling such a Weak Character's story is to convince the reader that the experiences you put the Character through will cause the Character to strive for strength and thus to become a Strong Character.

Right now, Love doesn't "sell" very well without Sex&Violence added.  So many novels substitute sex and/or violence for studied exploration of the character's inner life.  This substitution makes it impossible to depict Poetic Justice.

Poetic Justice is the Plot Event that brings the reader's sense of right and wrong into alignment with the Character's resolution of the Character's internal conflict.

Poetic Justice is Poetic (a harmony) and Just (making things come out right). 

Poetic Justice is about the Beauty (Venus) of Justice (Jupiter).  The harmonizing element is Mercy.  Justice without Mercy is neither just nor poetic.  But Mercy without Justice creates co-dependence which is not Love and thus conquers nothing.

If you can depict Love conquering All, especially today's most potent Fears, without flinching from depicting those Fears, you may turn the tables on the Marketing decree that only Sex&Violence sells.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Indies First.... Authors Hand-Sell Books In Indie Stores

Saturday, November 29th is not just Small Business Saturday when everyone is exhorted to make physical purchases from small shops and stores instead of online or in major chain stores. It is also the day when authors support Indie Bookstores.

This year's champions of the project are Neil Gaimen and Amanda Palmer, who jointly explain:

"Choose your independent bookshop, talk to the owner or manager, and agree on what you are going to do that day. If you have a website, put that store’s buy button in a prominent place on your website, above the Amazon button and the IndieBound button. If you prefer, you can sign up on the author registry so that a store can contact you."

Read their full post here:
http://www.bookweb.org/neil-and-amanda

Authors can sign up here for the author registry, not just for hooking up with an Indie bookstore eager to have science fiction, romance, futuristic romance, aliendjinn romance, mystery, suspense, horror, fantasy, YA.... authors in the shop helping readers to discover excellent reads, but also for making contact for other high days and holidays or for making autographed books available:

http://www.bookweb.org/indies-first-author-illustrator-registry

Readers can get in on the act simply by visiting local bookstores, and making a purchase.

There is a map here http://www.indiebound.org/indiesfirst showing where the stores are. There are multiple events taking place in California, Florida, along the Eastern seaboard. Take a look....  and if you are a bookseller, you can sign up and join in.

My best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving,
Rowena Cherry

Story Hacks

In this month's LOCUS, Cory Doctorow discusses storytelling as a "fuggly (funky plus ugly) hack":

Stories Are a Fuggly Hack

He's talking about the way narrative art "hacks" the empathy-generating part of our brains to induce us to feel emotions for made-up characters. Stories trick "the parts of our brains that keep track of other people and try to model them, the seats of our empathy. . . into treating the adventures of imaginary people as though they were real."

The main point of Doctorow's essay is to express his admiration for "much more abstract media, that seemingly manage to jump straight to the feels: painting, photography, poetry, sculpture, music." He wonders why artists in these media often insist on foregrounding the "storytelling" dimension of their art. From his perspective, it's really cool to have the talent for tricking the brain into feeling those emotions without immersing the audience in a narrative—"making someone feel something without all that tedious making-stuff-up is a hell of an accomplishment." To the artists in those other media, he says, "if you’re one of those people who can move people without all the stage business of Once Upon a Time, I envy you."

I find this reaction a bit problematic. To me, a story doesn't evoke emotion for the sake of the emotion itself. The emotion, as I see it, has the purpose of making the narrative world feel real, not vice versa. Narratives exist to enable us to see reality through the viewpoint of the Other, whether human or something else, animal, vegetable, mineral, or alien. The passions stirred by a story serve as a sign that it's working, not as the goal in themselves. C. S. Lewis celebrates this process as a way of liberating us from the limitations of our individual consciousness. Narrative art does expand our capacity for empathy, but for the sake of the empathy itself, not primarily for the purpose of generating emotions through that process. For example, I'm currently reading THE GOLDFINCH, by Donna Tartt. I find it deeply absorbing and emotionally moving, but the feelings it evokes serve mainly to intensify my interest in the narrator and his story, which I would never have picked up on my own on the basis of the plot summary. (I started the novel because it was recommended by my sister.) I continue reading for the sake of immersion in the imaginary reality of young protagonist Theo's world, not for the sake of the feelings themselves.

Also, I must admit that I don't react to non-storytelling art the way Doctorow does. Any emotional response I feel to painting, sculpture, or instrumental music tends to consist of an aesthetic "wow, cool" reaction, not a surge of empathic feelings. For sadness, joy, suspense, terror, etc., I need words. If a piece of music moves me to tears, it's because I associate it with lyrics I remember from previous hearings.

So, while I agree with Doctorow that storytelling performs an important function in "hacking" the brain's empathic circuits, I believe it does so in a way and for a purpose that only narrative can do. Or am I misreading him? What do you all think of his remarks?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Important Book - What Makes a Novel Respectable by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The Important Book

Part 1
What Makes a Novel Respectable?
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Last week, we heard from a self-publishing Historical writer who has incorporated a ghost into her series on the Gold Rush which she self-publishes.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-ghost-on-horseback-guest-post-by.html

This series on The Important Book will present some perspective on the place of the e-book and self-publishing in the coming world.

At inception, this Tuesday blog series began to answer the question, "Why is Romance, and particularly Science Fiction Romance, not accorded the respect it deserves?" 

The answer started by analyzing the writing craft of the Romance Writers who first broke the "no science fiction" barrier.  And we then went into detail about the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction, and all about commercial Marketing of these genres.

All the while, the e-book revolution has reshaped the field of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing of fiction.  That revolution is still spinning, and I think gaining speed.  There's a long way to go yet, but writers who can extrapolate where the process will be 5-10 years from now will be able to reach world-wide sales in the millions of copies. 

To extrapolate, one generally starts with a deep look into history.

In this case, since the topic is The Important Book, we need to look at how "important" books used to get published, see where they are now, then look up to chart where they may go next.

From the dawn of publishing (think Gutenberg or even hand-copying), creating copies and distributing them was hugely expensive.  Only Barons and the elite could engage in such a useless hobby as buying books, or writing them and getting them copied.

The mechanism of making copies and sending them around the landscape (think The Royal Mail - dirt roads, saddlebags, and books on parchment with leather bindings that weight 10 lbs or more each) can be thought of as "overhead," the expense of business.

The IDEAS inside those books, suggested by the black squiggles on the pages, are the Payload.  The ideas are what is being sold, what is valuable enough to make the cost of a copy worth while to the buyer.

Today's e-book innovation has reduced that overhead to the cost of a computer and word processor (some of which are free), the time invested to write, hiring an editor, a copyeditor, and a publicist to polish the text and prepare the formatting. 

All of that writing time and editing effort was expended on those early books, too, so that's not a change.  The change is only in the expense of making and distributing copies.

While the e-book innovation was just beginning, traditional publishers encountered increasing costs for paper, printing, warehousing, distributors went bankrupt not paying publishers what was owed, and salaries of editors, etc., costs of publicity (ad prices; good ad-writers) skyrocketed due to inflation and international trade agreements (tariffs).

It's that international component that causes me to point your attention at international affairs, politics, and silent tariff wars.  The international climate was a huge factor in destroying the old publishing business model of doing several "Important Books" a year.

When all this caused a huge shift in the business model of publishing that I've written about here several times, what you saw on the shelves changed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/harlequin-horizons-rwa-mwa-sfwa-epic.html

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

The shift, put simply, is from a Tax-write-off business model to a Profit-making business model.

Up until that shift-point (which had little to do with e-books because there were no screens comfortable to read on), big companies owned publishing companies as a Tax Write-off. 

The publishers were supposed to lose money by publishing Important Books, books that would grab attention, be talked about, referred to, win prestigious prizes, and enhance the reputation of the company that owned the publishing house.

In other words, all traditional publishers were vanity presses except that the vanity being stoked was of the corporation owning the publisher, not of the writer whose work got published. 

After that shift point, the "bean counters" (accountants) took over and monitored publishing profits.

Publishing companies got bought, sold, traded internationally (corporate control of publishing in the USA no longer resides in the USA), and kicked around like a football all over the globe.  Then consolidation set in, with publishers being combined into larger publishers, with fewer and fewer editors making the decisions on which books to publish.

The editorial decision making process went from being in the hands of a specific individual acquisitions editor to being in the hands of committees composed of some editors, a lot of publicity, promotion, art department, legal department etc etc departments. 

The editors would find a few books to bring to a meeting to "pitch" (30-second description) at the committee, and the committee would vote on which of all the books to publish.

Keep in mind that the decision makers had not read the manuscript they were voting on, just as Senators and Congressmen have not read the bills they vote on.  All they know of the subject is in the pitch, and all they are interested in is whether that pitch will be popular enough to generate profit of some kind.

That publishing committee process took hold because it did seem to enhance profit-making potential, but simultaneously we saw the "death of the mid-list." 

The mid-list book is a book that is not a "lead title" -- does not get any budget for publicity except to be noted in the list of books published each month, does not get review copies sent to newspapers, and does not get a person in the publicity department booking the author into Guest Spots on TV.

Lead titles get all that and more -- a huge number of copies printed, banners and "dumps" in book stores, extra fees paid to book stores to get the book put in the front window and placed at eye level on shelves. (these days they pay Amazon to feature a book)

Mid-list books do not get any of that.  They are buried in the midst of all the other books, right above the list of reprints. 

But while a Lead Title requires a huge overhead investment by the publisher, it is a huge gamble.  Very often Lead Titles don't turn a profit.

Mid-list titles on the other hand could be counted on to break even because the readers of that type of material followed the authors, searched out and bought the books regardless of reviews. 

Mid-list titles were bread and butter for Tax-Write-Off publishers, and paid the rent for Indie publishers (there were a few Indie or Start-up publishers, but they were forced by economics to contract with big houses to get distribution.)

So, prior to this shift, Important books got chosen by a single, well read, widely-read, well educated person (very often a Literature Major, or Art History Major, or English Major, sometimes Theater Major) who had read the manuscript all the way through.  This person knew the world and the market and understood the Ideas presented in the book (e.g. the theme).

This person knew how to find a "theme" inside fiction, and how to judge how relevant that theme might be to the readers buying that publisher's book.

This person was in the editing business because they wanted to publish Important Books -- and very often because Important Books were Respectable Books.

Think Gutenberg again.  It wasn't until the Dime Novel and the Penny Dreadful, the pulp era, that books got published just because people wanted to read them.

With expensive overhead, publishing was, like the Sport of Kings, something only the well educated and innovative thinkers were involved with, decision makers who decisions affected thousands.

Publishing was entirely the realm of the scholar, the person who lived their life in the rarified atmosphere of thought. 

An Important Book to them was a book with a New Idea (Isaac Newton) -- preferably an Idea they could argue against at dinner parties.

Yep. All of publishing was just a big fanfic website!  An in-group. 

The exchange of Ideas has never been shown to turn a big profit.  In fact, the effort required to find, formulate and convey a new Idea is far greater than any possible return.  Idea-exchange is a hobby done for the fun of it.

Until, after Newton's era, after Sir Francis Bacon's era, people noticed that innovative ideas generated innovative technology that turned a profit.

What is a profit?

A profit means you get more OUT of a process than you put INTO the process.

For example, the cotton gin -- a machine that could separate cotton balls from the seeds faster and more efficiently than human hands could.

Keeping slaves to do that work is very expensive.  Hiring ex-slaves to do that work is maybe a bit less expensive, but still a huge expense compared to what you can sell the cotton for.  Running a machine to do that work -- a few maintenance workers, mechanics, handle-crankers, and production volume went up while expense went down.

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney

"Business" is all about profit.  Without profit above about 10%, no business can continue.  That's why the history of human civilization on this planet is stagnant up until Gutenberg, starts to move with Columbus and sea-going vessels improving, but is very slow up until the cotton gin. 

Each era's innovation speed can be traced alongside the penetration of reading skills and book distribution.

Some of the "Important Books" that ushered in change form pivot points.

So in those days, Important Books were Respectable Books -- books with ideas in them that people had to discuss with each other, saying, "How did this guy ever think of that?"

And they'd take that idea and think it for themselves -- resulting in more new ideas, and new ways of doing things. 

So, prior to the shift of publishing from Tax-Loss to Profit Making, Important Books were Respectable Books.

After that shift, Popular Books were Respectable Books because they made a quick, easy profit using the innovative technologies that reduced the cost of production of a book and increased the distribution.  This was not a big change.  It only continued the shift seen with the Dime Novel and the Pulps.   

Romance has always been popular, and sales are predictable.  In other words, most Romance novels like Science Fiction novels and other genres, fall in the "Mid-List Category" -- and got hit hard by this shift to profit making.

Profit became the key to Respectability.

This was not invented by the field of publishing. It reflected a shift in our general cultural values.  Another such shift is in progress now.

As the Important Book - the book about Ideas (remember Science Fiction is known as The Literature of Ideas) - has become unpublishable, the e-book revolution has gained steam.

Why is the Important Book unpublishable?  Think about the percentage of people who buy and read books.  It's usually hovering around 5% to 10%. 

Of those who read, even fewer actually want to find a new idea, an idea that contradicts what they already believe.

Adventure into strange ideas is an acquired taste.

So to people who don't want new ideas, the Important Book is the book everyone they know just read.  Popular is important.

New Ideas are never popular because they are new, so nobody has ever heard of them and when they do hear, they don't understand or see any use for it.

So what is "Respectable" to one reader is not worth the cover price to another.

With their huge overhead expense, Traditional Publishers can no longer afford to publish Important Books.

No Important Book is going to have a broad enough appeal to sell to a wide enough audience to break even, given that huge overhead expense.

Important Books, by their idea-rich nature, have a narrow appeal.  But those few people who absorb those ideas and put them to use can, indeed, change the world.

That's why the books are Important -- they change the course of History.

Most books don't do that. 

Even most Romance Novels don't change the course of all history.  But a Romance Novel read at the right point in life can change the course of an individual person's life, and thus is an Important Book to that individual.

Science Fiction -- as a field -- has now been seen to change the course of history.  Star Trek was a big influence, and it built on Science Fiction writers' ideas (which Gene Roddenberry was aware of).  It hit big in college dorms, and those college kids went on to invent the internet (the Web was invented in Europe), fuel ambitions for N.A.S.A. and today the search for livable exo-planets.

Simultaneously, we have seen a cultural values shift that has popularized the notion that the HEA - the Happily Ever After - ending to a Romance is unrealistic, that such things don't happen in real life.

Here is an idea to mull over. 

The HEA ending to a Romance Novel might be the contribution to changing the course of human history parallel to Science Fiction's contribution of the internet.

If that contribution can be made, Romance might become both Important enough and Profitable enough to become Respectable.

So if you have an Idea for explaining to the scoffers why the HEA is plausible and attainable, you have an Important Book.

Where, in this world of publishing-by-bean-counter can you publish any Important Book?

It's the e-book field, self-publishing and/or very small press publishing.

That's where the Important Books that I've been seeing lately are turning up -- not from the traditional publishers.

So if you've written a good book, but get turned down by all the traditional publishers (via agents), you might consider whether it is an Important Book and has been turned down because it's Important.

Would this book have been published in 1890?  Or rather, would the theme that is the core of this book have been publishable in 1890?  Does the book say something that people need to hear but don't want to hear?  Does it say it in a way that makes readers want to hear what it's saying? 

If so, you may have to consider self-publishing or going with a small press that specializes in e-book.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

WheretoWatch -- Search for legal movie viewing

The copyrightalliance.org shared news of a convenient innovation by the MPAA.

Quoting:  "On Wednesday this week, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched a new site called WheretoWatch, a free online service for film and television fans to quickly find our where their favorite titles can be legally viewed. With the growing number of options from subscription streaming to online rental and purchase to DVD kiosks, viewers who care to watch titles legally no longer have to search individual services to compare availability and pricing. 

"WheretoWatch enables search of movies and television shows by titles, directors, actors, and writers. Click on a title, and a single screen shows you the multiple services where the title can be viewed, including prices for rental or purchase.

"We believe this service represents a significant step by the motion picture industry toward making filmed entertainment viewing more convenient in the contemporary market; and we’re pleased to see that many members of the press have likewise praised WheretoWatch this week.

"“In a move I am surprised no one has made sooner, the Motion Picture Association of America has launched Where to Watch, which aims to turn into a comprehensive index of where you can watch movies and television shows legally, whether for free or for money.” — Washington Post

"Not only do we believe it is important that producing industries take this kind of initiative, we also believe consumers benefit because this site is designed solely to promote easier, legal viewing.  A third-party developer of a similar site would invariably seek to monetize the service through advertising or data-mining its users or both.  WheretoWatch is ad-free and free to use with or without creating a user profile.

"We hope you will visit  www.WheretoWatch.com and test-drive it yourselves, and if you like it,  we encourage to share it with your network and via social media. The more use the site gets, the more likely it is to succeed by growing its database and expanding into new markets.

"In case you want to read more about WheretoWatch, here are a few blog posts that you might enjoy reading: 

Studios Launch WheretoWatch Service (Illusion of More), 

Searching for Movies & TV online just got a lot easier with launch of WheretoWatch.com (Vox Indie), 

MPAA Launches WheretoWatch.com (Creativity Tech) and

 Introducing WhereToWatch.com, A New Search Site To Help You Find The Shows And Movies You Love (MPAA)."

Have a great weekend!

Rowena Cherry

Series Time Slips

I ran into a chronological glitch with the book I'm currently outlining, a sequel to FROM THE DARK PLACES, my quasi-Lovecraftian horror-suspense novel with romantic elements:

From the Dark Places

Its first draft was written in the 1970s, and it remains set in that period, even though it was published decades later. I left FROM THE DARK PLACES in the 70s because I knew one or more sequels would focus on the young adulthood of the baby girl born in that novel, and I didn't want to grapple with a near-future setting that would quickly become embarrassingly outdated. Well, I've taken so long to get around to writing the sequel that I now have the opposite problem. If the heroine had grown up in real time, she would have reached her age in the current WIP, twenty-one, in the 1990s. I don't want to set this book in that decade because there's no plot-based reason for its taking place then, and trying to make it clear to the reader that they're in a near-past setting would only generate confusion. So, even though inconsistencies of that kind bug me, I've decided to fudge the chronology. Although the characters have aged only twenty-one years since the previous book, the action takes place in a vaguely defined contemporary time approximating the present. I won't state an explicit year, but I do plan to include a note to the reader acknowledging that an implicit time slide has occurred.

There's plenty of precedent for this technique in the many comic strips and comic books wherein the setting steadily advances to remain contemporary, while the characters don't age or age very slowly. Think how old Superman would be now if he'd aged along with the surrounding culture. In BLONDIE, Cookie and Alexander grew from children to teenagers (but over a period of decades), then stopped, while Blondie became a business owner and Dagwood switched from catching the bus to riding in a car pool. Technology advances in BEETLE BAILEY, but the characters remain frozen in time. Garfield has birthdays every year, yet nobody in the strip gets any older. Some book series develop the same way. In highly formulaic genres such as classic detective stories, "frozen in time" characters seem to be an accepted part of the convention; Holmes and Watson, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot remain comfortingly static for the most part. (Dorothy Sayers supplies an outstanding exception; Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane do get older, along with Lord Peter's friends and relatives.) I don't think anybody minds that Bertie Wooster and Jeeves remain frozen in time in their highly artificial comedy setting. Kingsley Amis, in his book on Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels, notes that if Bond is really the age he appears to be late in the series, he would have been a schoolboy in CASINO ROYALE. This phenomenon can also occur in books with a closer-to-home, ostensibly realistic setting. Beverly Cleary's Ramona novels, written over several decades, follow Ramona between the ages of about four and ten, while social customs and technology keep pace with the publication years. Diane Duane's Young Wizards series works the same way. A few years ago, however, Duane became concerned that potential new YA readers were put off by the obsolete technology of the earlier books' setting, too far in the past to feel contemporary but not far enough to count as historical. She has reissued the novels as e-books in "Millennium Editions" updated so that the characters are portrayed as (for instance) three years younger three years ago rather than fifteen or twenty.

Does this kind of chronological slippage bother you, or can you usually just go with the flow of the series?

Margaret L. Carter Carter's Crypt