Publishing Point has an interview with Cory Doctorow about his new publishing experiment which involves a collection of short stories sold in what I would call the Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead model, where the bulk of the material is available for free, but special editions are available for those who want them.

I’ve embedded it here, but in case it gets taken down, there’s more below…

I think my favorite part was the advice that Cory provides near the end for aspiring writers. To summarize: Finish a book, sell it to a publisher, and then ask for advice on how to market your book. It’s great because at this point, the best way to end up like Cory Doctorow (which is what those aspiring authors asking the questions about marketing want – i.e., the ability to sell a book exclusively via Publish-On-Demand) is to do what Cory did, which was basically to sell a book to a traditional publisher. Yes, he did fight to make it available under Creative Commons, but that’s been done now, so it won’t gain an author as much notoriety as it did for Doctorow at the time.

I am still anticipating (as I’m sure many others secretly are) the first artist and/or author to gain the kind of fame that platinum artists and bestselling authors have without going through a traditional label or publisher. (Perhaps it’s been done, but since it hasn’t registered on my radar, it has yet to meet my internal criteria) The traditional problem has been that physical media had required a distribution outlet. But with digital media (and POD) becoming more prevalent every day, it’s only a matter of time before the garage band and short story author go from internet-sensation-signed-with-big-name to internet-sensation-making-living-without-big-name.

Going a bit off topic… The transition to the new model will continue to be aided by discovery engines. I continue to use the music industry because, as I’ve noted many times, I’m a slow reader, but I can listen to a lot of music, and so, once again: Lala.com. I signed on to Lala this week to discover that Dashboard Confessional and Wale both released new albums. I knew that Wale’s was coming, but didn’t really remember when. I honestly didn’t even know that Dashboard Confessional had a new album coming out. But I’m listening to it right now. Did Interscope (their label) have anything to do with that? Not really. All they did was (I’m speculating a bit): Give DC some money, make an album cover, and put them in stores. All of that is useful, but none of it helped to make me aware of the release. Lala did it all. It knows that I’ve listened to a lot of DC and so it highlighted it on my personal home page. Same with Wale (I mean, who knows how many times I’ve listened to Chillin’ already, right?).

Amazon has the same kind of information, and it will only become a stronger recommendation engine for books as more people get Kindles. Of course, if I were Amazon, I’d be working hard on making sure that anyone could read any eBook they wanted on the Kindle as long as I could verify what book they were reading. More reading data = better recommendations. My theory has always been that people who aren’t going to buy stuff aren’t going to buy stuff, so let them use whatever free media they want, and work on the people who will actually buy stuff if you make it easy enough for them. Back to Lala to finish the analogy: Dashboard Confessional’s DELUXE album is only $2.16. Compared to $9.49 for the MP3 version, I’m willing to make the sacrifice and take the restrictions that come with only being able to listen while connected to the internet because that’s $7 that I can put into my retirement account. Bam, said the lady.

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I was just taking a survey in which they asked what kind of movies I like, and two of the categories were ACTION and SCI-FI. The examples for Sci-Fi were Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation. Fine. The examples for Action were Wolverine and Transformers.

On the one hand, I want to be like “How dare you co-opt Wolverine and Transformers as part of the Action genre?!?” but then I realized that it is merely another example of how Sci-Fi is the new Mainstream.

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Improv Everywhere – the folks who brought you Food Court Musical and Grocery Store Musical – have a new (though unfortunately much smaller scale) song:

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The next time the question of science fiction and “mainstream acceptance” comes up, remember this answer: Who gives a shit? Because, really. Who does. Like what you like, already.

I’ve been liking what I like since middle school, and I’ve always taken flak for it, but as Scalzi makes clear, we Sci-Fi geeks take a lot less crap about liking the stuff we like now than we did when I was in middle school.

My theory follows: Back then, everyone thought of Sci-Fi geeks as Trekkies or greasy-haired Dungeon Masters because those were the only kind of stereotypes that could break through the barrier of the mainstream. Then came the Internet. And now Sci-Fi geeks don’t have to attend conventions (though obviously they still do) nor do they have to huddle in basements (though I’m sure some still do). Sci-Fi Geeks can unite on massive scales simply by logging on. And now, as we realize how many other SFGs there are who share our love for space, time travel, laser weapons, genetically modified beings, etc., we become more brave in the face of the “mainstream” and aren’t as afraid to like what we like because there’s a ton of other people who like it too.

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We watch everything, we pry into everything, and we take whatever shiny bit we might like. We haul it back to our nests and pile it like dragon’s treasure. And then we turn into replicators (pardon me Stargate SG1). But we take our treasure and sift through it and make things out of it. Amazing, wondrous things. We sculpt, we ratchet, we bend and weld . . . . We are writers.

If I looked up copycheating in the dictionary, I would almost expect to see that as the definition. And the best part is that it’s true. No one’s asked me where I get my ideas, but this is a great answer. Take a little bit from here, a little bit from there, twist this around, make this work as something else, and presto!

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Unfortunately for me (and, I would argue, everyone else), the better show is not going to last as long.

FlashForward had better acting, had more interesting characters, is more character-driven (rather than “see what we happen to come across in space”-driven), had a more interesting back story, and had better directing/cinematography.

I really wanted Stargate Universe to be good, if only because I like John Scalzi’s blog and he is employed as a creative consultant on the show.

He shouldn’t have to worry about his job there, though, even though I feel like Stargate Universe is an inferior program in just about every way.

Why?

Well, first off, as SF Signal points out, FlashForward has a pretty specific end date: April 29, 2010. Yes, I can think of several ways they can get around that (and the writers probably already have in mind several others that I didn’t think of), but even if you get past that date, there’s just no way to that the show is going to continue on for any extended period of time without getting a little Lost. (Pun intended)

Stargate Universe on the other hand, starts out basically on a ship that is who knows how far from the final destination. They can just keep heading back towards Earth, encountering new and different kind of aliens, and having turmoil within the “crew” of the ship, for, I would say, at least 10 seasons if the viewership is there to sustain it. Which brings me to the next reason that FlashForward is going to bow out first: Audience.

FlashForward is on network television, and it seems like more and more if shows don’t post big ratings numbers right away, they get canned. I don’t have cable, so I don’t know if it works the same way there, but the fact that Stargate SG-1 was on for 10 seasons indicates to me that shows on cable have a little bit longer of a runway in which to get off the ground and gain a following. It’s sad when people have to start Twitter Campaigns just to keep their favorite (good) shows on the air even for a second season. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking about just running the shows I like on Hulu in a separate tab just so the networks will see them getting more views.

In summary, I’m very interested to see where FlashForward goes, and I hope we get to see it come to a logical conclusion, and I’m not at all interested in what happens in Stargate Universe, but I’m sure if I did want to catch up at some point, I could just buy the DVDs that are already being pressed.

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I point this out because Grammar Monster recently answered a question that has always bugged me: Where do the punctuation marks go in speech?. I’ve always thought that punctuation was supposed to go inside the quotation marks, and according to Grammar Monster, I’m right! At least, in US English, punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. But in addition, I learned that you don’t need to double-punctuate. I never have, but it’s just another one of those things that I’ve always kind of wondered about.

For example:

She looked in the oven and said: “Do you call that a Yorkshire
pudding?”
(This sentence could end in a full stop, but it would look unwieldy
after the question mark and the quotation mark. Therefore, it
is omitted.)

Thanks Grammar Monster!

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Since I had previous created the idea of a “cover poem” (one in which a modern song was modified with increased lyrical content expanding on themes which were usually presented in a simplistic or inadequate manner), I started to wonder if there was such thing as a “cover story.” Yes, I realize this name is the same as that used by newspapers and magazines to describe an article accompanying headlines on the front page or cover. That’s unfortunate.

But, semantics aside, is there such a thing? Has anyone rewritten a famous or popular story in a new and/or unique style? It’s obvious that such an endeavor is much more feasible for a song, which can be recorded much more quickly (especially when the lyrics and melody are, for the most part, already prepared for the cover artist). But, as the creator of the cover poem (as far as I know), I have to wonder if it isn’t possible in some form for prose as well. Of course, I think my poetry style was actually well developed enough that when I modified songs and poems, it made them more like an original poem I would write, where as my prose writing is still fairly basic and lacking a distinct style (at least it seems that way to me). So, it’s not like I’d be writing any “cover stories” right now anyway, but, like I said, it was just something I was wondering about. And if I can’t bare my smallest thoughts to the world, then what is the point of having a blog?

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