Publishing

[gfish]

The Google book search settlement is raising yet another fuss over digital distribution, so I've been thinking about it recently. Base assumption: our goal as a society is to encourage quality creative production, but the exact method is irrelevant. I think everyone is focusing on the wrong things. What follows applies to just about everything, but books serve as a convenient example. Let's break it down vaguely in order of controversy...

Production/Distribution: It is, of course, blatantly obvious at this point that distributing data in a non-corporeal digital form beats the pants off everything that came before. It's many orders of magnitude faster and just about infinitely cheaper. Anyone can do it. Everyone can now publish whatever they want to a global audience. No one can claim with a straight face that we need large corporate structures in order to achieve this goal.

Content screening: One of the unsung advantages to the old system was that it provided implicit quality control. Because publishing a physical book was so expensive, publishers wanted to get their investment back. If something was published, it had a fair chance of being decent. Maybe not your cup of tea, but not absolute crap, either. You were protected from the horrors of the slushpile. One concern with the new model is that, omg, how will we ever sort through the tsunami of material available? (Students of Chinese history will recognize this concern -- and the dangers that come from centralized "solutions" to it.) Well, it turns out this isn't really a problem either. We've developed lots of methods for ranking and recommending material. And more importantly, it matters less when these systems fail. If you're not paying for something, you're only out whatever time it took you to realize it was crap before putting it down. How often do you watch the first 10 seconds of a youtube video before going eh and closing the tab? The problem is solved by the same thing that caused it -- massive reduction in costs and even more massive amateur parallelization.

Content creation: This is where discussions start to get all emotional and pear-shaped. The simple truth is, I see no evidence that monetary rewards drive creation. (Except when the production tools are expensive, which was never the case for writing and is true less and less for just about everything else.) How many authors ever make a living at it? And even those that did, how did they manage to write before they were famous enough to make a living at it? The whole argument is ridiculous. It's even more crazy when you look at the unpaid material being posted constantly online. People like to create! (And that's a really good thing. I'd much rather live in a world where we didn't need to bribe people to be cool.) They also like to be famous, which I will argue was always the real external motivator. So, even though I'm going to be accused of wanting authors to starve to death alone in the snow, there just isn't a problem at this step. Things will still get written.

Editing: Finally, at this obscure step in the process, we run into problem. Going from a manuscript to a final book takes editing. (Also typesetting and cover design and other such things, depending on the final target medium. The same arguments apply.) Real effort, doing something boring and tedious and decidedly unsexy. Writing is sexy -- everyone wants to be an author. There are people who want to be copy-editors, but not usually in the do-it-for-free-cause-it's-fun kind of way. No one ever gets famous for being a copy-editor. Despite all the popular hysteria around the previous steps, this is where the new system grinds to a halt.

In the end, the question I'm very interested in right now is how to incentivize this kind of labor. If you're concerned with quality books coming out after the publishing houses finally go bankrupt, this is what needs to be fixed. There is no guarantee that there is a solution, of course. The old model is permanently broken, though. In the long run, selling data is for chumps. It's time to get over that and start making sure the new world order will be as awesome as possible.

(What, you were expecting answers? Solutions? No, just trying to clarify the issues. Sorry.)

Comments

[arjache.livejournal.com]

For editing, it seems like part (but not all) of the work can be shouldered by alpha and beta readers like you see in various online writing communities. I don't think it's sufficient to replace an editor, but it'll get you a good percentage of the improvements needed for a final product. And there's plenty to be motivated by there. Maybe they already know the author personally. Or maybe they don't but get to feel a certain amount of fame-by-proxy by getting to read and comment on it before anyone else does and by getting to communicate with the author in a more direct and professional fashion.

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

People start out writing by living very cheaply, in ways which are frequently unsustainable. They take a risk, the same as someone does when they run a startup. If they don't make money at it, they eventually go get a real job.

Book-length writing takes significant amounts of dedicated time. We don't need a pay-for-content model, but if we value book length content, or more generally content which has had a significant amount of thought and work done, paying authors is non-negotiable. We don't have to pay them superstar wages -- I'm with you there. However, if you want the kind of writing that you get when someone sits down to think about something for a year, you have to make sure they can eat. Free content does not do this on its own, ever.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on that whole getting-paid-for-writing thing, being partnered with a professional writer as I am.

As he puts it, "do the work, get paid". SO many people want him, and other writers, to Write Stuff For Free. Writing is work. Writing well is hard work which requires hard-won skills which most people, quite frankly, just don't have. Something that is well-written can cause a product to make huge amounts of money for the person selling it ... and that person is usually not the person who did the writing work. So why shouldn't the writer be paid, and paid well for their hours and hours of skilled labor?

A large part of the Google Book Settlement fuss was around the fact that Google was attempting to pirate massive amounts of other people's work and then sell it for a profit, with the very thin excuse that Information Wants To Be Free and They're Doing The World A Service, Really.

Yeah, right. Sorry guys, that just does NOT qualify as not being evil.

[spinnerin-ftw.livejournal.com]

This makes me think of Amanda Palmer's post, even though it's music and not writing: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/200582690/why-i-am-not-afraid-to-take-your-money-by-amanda

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

*sniffles pitifully*

I make a living at content creation!

(And I helpfully demonstrate both sides of the statement... it's also clear that I would be making stuff if I wasn't making a living at it, because I was doing it before. However, given the ability to actually make a living, I a) can make BETTER things, because I can spend more time on them and hire people to help make them better and b) am a hell of a lot less stressed-out and depressed, and less likely to go out in a tragic bang.)

I'm not sure what percentage of word-only authors can actually support themselves, though.

Now, if you implement minimum guaranteed income, so that I *and the artists I would otherwise have to hire* can survive without selling stuff, I'll happily trickle on making stuff for free.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of people who only write because there's money in it, but there are plenty of people who write purely for fun or because (in my case) they figure it's better for the world as a whole to let other people know possible solutions to problems. It took me a long time to design a reasonably good foundry. I can't make any money selling it, but I might as well put the results of my research into the public so other people don't have to go do the same research again. That's the sort of stuff that free publishing does an amazing job of presenting. Popular music is a lot harder, or particularly film-making, which has some pretty high barriers to entry.
Some of the issues you're discussing remind me of opensource arguments, where technical people can make amazing things, but nobody wants to do the work to integrate them or do usability studies, so we end up with these amazingly powerful tools that are very awkward to use.
There *is* value in the content, even if it's just a reflection of the minuscule cost of the bandwidth required. Maybe micropayments are the future. Maybe we need something similar to the National Endowment for the Arts for editors and fact-checkers.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I see no evidence that monetary rewards drive creation.

...is there someone somewhere claiming that they *do*?

This is kind of a straw man. Of course people love to create; of course all creation isn't going to cease without money. That's not the point. That's not anybody's point. "Wanting to make a living at one's writing/art/music" is so many miles away from "having to be bribed to be cool" that I don't even have an entertaining metaphor for how far apart they are.

You're only going to be accused of wanting authors to die alone in the snow if you're suggesting that all writing ever should be given away for free... which... I can't actually tell whether you are or not, because you haven't actually *said* that. If you are, then that's just silly; nobody gets to dictate what lines of work people can make a living at and what they can't. Yes, the corporate structure may well be dying; yes, digital may well completely replace physical media. I currently make more money off of digital copies of my CD than I do off of physical ones. Digital does not have to equal free. Efficient does not have to equal free. Nor should it.

Musicians have already been bucking off the massively toxic recording industry system and proving they can make a living without it; if the publishing industry really *is* going to fail, I have faith that authors will find a way just as musicians are doing. Maybe not strictly analogous, but some way. So I don't think we're ready for editing to be the major issue just yet.

[solarbird]

Your content creation for reward commentary is reasonable for fiction, but largely inaccurate for non-fiction. You can make a real living in non-fiction dramatically more easily than you can in fiction. There are still lots of writers who make a very good living writing non-fiction, and, in fact, most of them wouldn't be writing if they couldn't make a living at it - at least, certainly not to the degree they write now.

I've done lots of technical writing. I enjoyed it. I've liked writing articles on IMAP4 and spam and financial analysis software and so on. I'd have learned about those topics on my own, probably, but I wouldn't have turned those into my carefully-edited (by me - editors love me because they don't have to do any work) publishable articles without being paid, because the extra work isn't compensated adequately without the dosh. Does that make this work non-creative? I assert it doesn't. While money doesn't make me more or less creative, it certainly does affect where I focus these creative energies. It also affects whether I'll drag my sorry ass off the internet and into a working mode when I don't really feel like it.

You touch upon this in comments, mentioning journalism as useful work that isn't glamourous, But it's also true for a lot of other types of nonfiction. Learning the material needed to write a good nonfiction article or book: awesome. Scrubbing a text together over multiple iterations to the best technical and clarity level it can be: not awesome. It's grinding work, and important, and without some direct reward, won't happen nearly as much as it does now.

All you have to do is look at the crap documentation in open source to see that. There's no money in it and also no glamour, so there is no coherent manual for Jack Audio Server. There is no coherent manual for Ardour. I doubt there's one for Rosegarden, tho' I haven't looked. And so on. People figure out things enough to solve their individual problems and the rest is on message boards, if you're lucky.

Finally, you don't touch upon marketing (or promotion) and the value thereof. Marx said it has none, and that advertising is a leech function reducing productivity. I think 100 or so years of economic reality has contraindicated that, which leads us to the conclusion that promotion matters. And promotion - beyond word-of-mouth, which will never be the be-all and end-all of this activity - happens when there's a monetary reward. You might argue this is better, but I'm not convinced of that at all; really actually good creative talent is rare enough without requiring a double-jackpot in both an artistic field and promotion/advertising/whatever.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Perhaps editing is a service the author pays for, to create better work, so as to achieve greater acclaim and fame?

Writing and Publishing Clarification

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Fishie, for bringing up a subject that clearly interests and involves a lot of us - often to an intense degree.

I agree with you the the current models for publication and protection are broken. The innovations of the Internets and peer-to-peer sharing technology, sampling software, computer replication and modification, and other things besides, have changed the game to unforeseen degrees. The old system is economic dead weight. Trouble is, many of the parties who are trying to fix the problem either have little knowledge about the subject, have vested interests in screwing people, or both.

As someone who has worked in the publishing industry for over 20 years(*), I want to share my personal knowledge about the subject at hand.

To begin with, writing is not information. It is inspiration, often shaped by large amounts of time, learned skills, and physical, mental and often emotional labor. A written work is not composed of atoms or bytes of information, but of human thoughts given shape by human skill and effort. Machines can duplicate written content, but although they can produce text, they cannot produce meaningful writing. This is as true of non-fiction writing as it is for fiction. A tech manual still demands hundreds or thousands of hours of labor on the part of the human beings involved in its production. Beyond the necessary research, fact-checking, proofreading and layout, there remains the necessity of a human being converting thoughts or, yes, data into communications that other people can process and understand.

This sounds much easier than it is.

As I tell my students, art involves a spectrum between expression and communication. The Artist expresses, and the Audience understands. An Artist who doesn't mind having a small Audience can express whatever she wants in whatever form she desires; an Artist who wishes to be understood (maybe even paid!) strives to communicate effectively to a larger Audience. This feat involves an array of skills, intuitions and experiences that go far beyond merely putting fingers to keys or brush to paper. It also involves time, labor, energy and risk. The larger the project, the greater its intended Audience, the more resources, time, skills and risk that work demands.

And writing - fiction or non-fiction, is artistry.

On many levels, writing demands even more artistry than music or visual expression. A visual artist can get by on pretty colors or compelling subjects; a musician can get by with volume and intensity. A writer, though, has nothing but words with which to work. Writing in a creative and coherent manner involves a constant mastery of technology and artistry, plus the time and effort to commit it into words other folks will understand.

(more)

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, writing involves time and labor. Writing well also involves a level of skill refined through training, learning and experience. Again, this effort remains invisible until you try to do it. But, as many NANOWRIMO authors (or readers) can attest, there's a galaxy of difference between typing 50,000 words and writing a good (or even adequate) novel.

Writing is an art and a technology. Just as the ability to snap a model kit together does not make someone an engineer, so too the ability to generate text does not make someone an author.

Writing is skilled labor, too. It can be shared, but it should not be taken from granted. As I asked elsewhere, would you expect a farmer to purchase land, tend it, acquire tools, and then spend resources, work and time to grow and harvest a crop, only to have other people walk off with it and hand it off to still more people (often at a profit), and then expect that farmer to get little or nothing for his work? I don't think so.

So what makes a writer different?

I'm all in favor of small-scale sharing. As anyone who reads my blog knows, I recently invited people to write NANO projects based around my own intellectual property, Deliria. That, however, was an invitation I extended to a small number of people whom I trust, within certain legal and creative parameters. If, say, Warner Brothers were to suddenly base a movie off of Deliria and assume that I'd given up my rights to profit off my creation just because the book is out of print, I would not, shall we say, be flattered. Nor would I accept Google scanning that same book (which they did) and then selling it (which they tried to do) without approval from, or payment to, me.

I tended that land. I raised that crop. What's done with it is my business, not Googlebooks' profit.

(more)

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Publishers, distributors and retails get a lot of heat - some of it justified. Thing is, without these parties, the risks they take and the work and resources they invest, there'd be a huge gulf between Artist and Audience. Even with virtual media, that gulf's still there. It's smaller, but when you get to the practical process of creating something and gaining compensation for it, the gulf between Artist and Audience remains. Just ask Lauren or K about the work involved in filling it even on a virtual-medium level(**)!

Finally (*whew!*), there are ancillary rights - a creator's ability to profit from things tht are based on the original work. In the Media Age, this is the wild frontier because - again, as I mentioned in an earlier thread - mass-culture technology didn't even exist when many of the current laws were drafted.

In our era, ideas are commodities. Mickey Mouse is a multi-billon dollar commodity, if only because so many people find him appealing. (Ironically, Mickey was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks because they'd just been screwed out of the rights to everything else they had produced, including Disney's original studio itself.) Beyond the arguments over content ownership, there's a potent war being waged over concept ownership. Where do the lines get drawn between the parties responsible for creating a popular concept and the audience members who are inspired - perhaps in their own creations - to create new things based on the old ones?

I wish there was a simple or reasonable answer to this question. At the moment, there isn't one. I could spend all week writing my thoughts on the subject, but right now, I have a living to make.

As someone who works in the publishing business, though, I know that the solution starts with education. The Googlebooks decision was handed down by a judge who clearly did not understand how writing, publishing and ancilliary rights work. Google, on the other end, knew exactly what the company was doing. As a multi-billion dollar corporation, Google had a board of directors and a legal department that signed off on a blatant, massive copyright violation, then spent millions of dollars defending it in court.

Sorry, but hell fucking no.

We need people who do understand what's involved. People who know all the steps of the process, and who understand where and how the decisions impact real human beings, not abstract philosophies and pithy slogans.

That's why I spent so much time on this post today.

I want people to know what's involved. Because it impacts not only on the value of my own work, but on the work value given to work by people we all cherish.

Thanks again for raising the topic!

- Satyr



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NOTES
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* - I've been a professional writer, editor, publisher, manager and bookseller since the late 1980s. The business has been my primary source of income since 1993.

** Did you know that at least $1.30 of each copy of Ravens in the Library sold on our site went to Paypal, just for processing the bank transactions? That expense sucked, but we could not have processed over 1400 orders without them!

...and on that subject...

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Regarding the "free" distribution of virtual media, Amazon takes a cut as high as 80% of the retail price when handling material for the Kindle. Once again, the gatekeepers of distribution technology take the majority of compensation for the "data" they process. For an issue of Witches & Pagans magazine, by example, that would sell at $1.00 (one-fifth of the hardcopy retail price, which barely covers the magazine's expenses as is), Amazon offered the publisher 20 cents per download. Yeah, right - try publishing a magazine in any format for 20 cents a pop!

[lumiere.livejournal.com]

The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed. (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Attributed)

Some roles are becoming obsolete in the move from publication as involving atoms to involving bits; as your example with blacksmithing shows, there will remain, indefinitely, a luxury class of craft book publication involving atoms, but it will become a small niche.

Some roles are being disaggregated from the rest of the process; this includes printing (http://lulu.com), payment (http://paypal.com), and distribution (http://www.bittorrent.com).

The screening role is not just a matter of reviews, advertising, and channels; it's also a matter of authentication: pulling content from authoritative sources is more likely to get you what you thought you were downloading. This is a service that costs money to provide, and is worth paying for.

Roles that were separate--author, fact-checker, copy editor, chief editor--in some cases are skipped--are there any copy-edited Twitter feeds worth following?--or combined--many bloggers do all their own editing--if they are performed at all. It's worth considering the differences across musical genres between the roles of composers and performers: these are very differentiated in classical music and still distinct in some rock genres, where you see specialist composers or song writers or lyricists producing scripts for performers to produce and interpret, while pop music is dominated by performers who compose the bulk of their own works, which can be more passionate and personal but also leads to a lot of terrible works. You get very different kinds of art from these distinct processes, but both result in lots of wonderful art, and we'd be worse off for the loss of either one.

The economic power that comes with exclusive atoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)) break down with non-exclusive bits and nonrival distribution, but artists have been rediscovering how to produce exclusive and/or rival goods, from concert experiences to t-shirts, from autographs to commissioned works, while building fan communities that support them--distributed patronage (http://www.bonepoets.com/adopt.html)--as well as producing secondary goods for those fans--reputation, social signaling, community--through means that go well beyond mere copying of digitized art.

There will still be rock stars in the new world. (http://craphound.com/?p=2360) And the rock stars will pay for editors to the extent that paying for editors helps them be rock stars.

Final Clarifications About "Orphan Works," OOP, and Googlebooks

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

To wrap up some dangling loose ends:

1. A work that has gone out of print is not an "orphan work." That term refers specifically to works for which the original creator is not named or cannot be found. In most cases, the author and publisher information to a published work can be found on the title, credit and legal pages of a given work. If there are names on those pages, it's not an orphan work.

2. "Out of print" merely means that a publisher has decided that the sales of a work do not create enough profit after the costs of production and distribution are taken out. It does not mean the work, or the rights to that work, have ceased to exist. Books, stories and albums often go through various editions through different publishers. This allows artists and writers to make a living from their work.

3. Googlebooks posts only a portion of the books in their "stock." To obtain a download of the whole book, a customer pays Google for that download.

Until the court case, Google was not sharing that profit with the publishers or authors of the work they were selling.

Thanks to the court decision, they must do so now. To get that money, however, an author or publisher must jump through complicated, time-consuming hoops. I know this. I did it myself. It was not easy, and doing so blew the better part of my day. I should not have to do that in order to retain rights to work that was already mine to begin with.

As an extra kicker, Google "decided" that authors or publishers who do not jump through those hoops have voluntarily given up their rights to that work. In short, if you don't fight for it, they own it.

Oh. Hell. No.

Hence, the continuing court battle.

Just wanted to clarify those things.

Going to do work now.

Thanks!