Archives for November 2009

Format Freaking

November 18, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Whether you know a little or a lot about the interactive entertainment industry, it’s worth reading this (short) article if only to see how pervasive the current uncertainty is in all content-driven mediums. You might think the software business would be less at-risk of the internet as a distribution mechanism, or to concerns about formats, but you’d be wrong.

The article is also hilarious in demonstrating the kind of outdated reference that suggests key executives in all content-driven industries are missing the bigger picture:

For example, [Yoichi Wada, CEO of Square Enix] said, films are generally two hours long or less; television is a half hour or an hour, and runs in a series regularly for several months; and a newspaper is delivered in roughly similar size every morning.

Those mediums could have evolved in very different ways, but at a certain point, they standardized, and consumers know roughly what to expect when they experience one.

Newspapers? Delivered? Wha….?

Note, too, the complete omission of reference to the book industry, which is going through its own format freakout. Each industry will evolve in its own way, but if you believe that form(at) follows function (and I do), then all of these format issues are really just an(other) result of the inevitable move to internet distribution.

— Mark Barrett

Lying With Oprah

November 16, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

As regular readers know, I think ghostwriting should always be acknowledged. If you have a ghostwriter help you with your book and you don’t admit you had a ghostwriter help you you’re a liar. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve accomplished, which political party you belong to or which deity or god you worship.

Which brings me to Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah today, and the fact that — apparently — Oprah Winfrey decided not to ask Sarah Palin about her ghostwriter, or if anyone helped her write Going Rogue, which bears only Palin’s name as author. In fact, the only remotely relevant portion of the interview that I’ve been able to find is a clip posted on Winfrey’s website which did not air in the broadcast interview.

At the 1:44 mark in a clip titled Sarah Palin Explains Why She Wrote Her Book, the following exchange takes place after Palin explains that she has written and kept personal journals for much of her life:

Winfrey — “So when you started to write this book — cause I was wondering how you could remember in such detail, you know…specific events, but that — understood.

Palin — “Yeah, I have detailed prayers that I had prayed over the years, um…different episodes in my life, and — so, logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a really difficult exercise to write the book.”

Again, I understand that this is how the publishing business works. If you’re a celebrity and you want a book written, you hire a ghostwriter to write you a book with the understanding that the ghostwriter will not take credit. It’s no different than when you hire a chef to create those easy-to-heat, old-family-recipe meals that impress all your society friends. It’s what busy, wealthy, important people do because there are only so many hours in the day. [ Read more ]

Emperor Brin

November 15, 2009 By Mark 5 Comments

I originally wrote this post after publication of the NY Times editorial by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, noted below. After some consideration, however, I decided to withhold judgment and wait for the revised Google Book Settlement that was eventually mandated by the federal courts. The revised settlement was made public late Friday.

Throughout the history of civilization, at any one time, there has always been a large-scale dynamic in play, a momentous prize at stake, and one competitor who emerged victorious. The measure of such victories, however, is not in the accomplishment, but in what the victors do with their fragile, momentary claim to power. Feed yourself and you go in the junk bucket of tribal butchers, charismatic frauds and political plunderers that have been the inevitable, predictable rule. Feed the world and you transcend the basest of all human traits.

On Friday, October 8, 2009, an editorial written by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, appeared in the New York Times. Titled, A Library to Last Forever, the editorial made the case for Google’s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild over Google’s attempts to exploit content they do not own. (It is not at all clear that the Authors Guild has standing to act on behalf of copyright holders in crafting such a settlement.)

After explaining why it is important to digitize books (so everyone can have access; so they won’t get lost in a flood), Brin states Google’s selfless case:

Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting.

The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders.

It is important to note what is being omitted here. Nowhere does Brin acknowledge what changed between 1999 and 2004: that Google found itself with such massive cash-on-hand that it was able to fund the entire book-scanning project itself. It did not need to “attract anyone” any more, so Google simply plowed ahead — without asking for permission from relevant rights holders. Too, there is no admission or acknowledgment of a profit motive in Brin’s statements, yet Google clearly intends to profit from this enterprise. Despite protestations that Google is “unlocking wisdom”, Google is in fact stockpiling other people’s intellectual property for its own economic benefit. [ Read more ]

GBS 2.0

November 14, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

It’s never a good sign when a corporation starts acting like a government agency.

Last night, late on a Friday, Google and its co-conspirators dropped the court-mandated revised settlement to the Google Books case. This was done to limit news coverage of the event over the weekend, which predisposes me to think bad thoughts about Google in general, and about the revised settlement in particular.

On the merits of the actual case, the New York Times says:

The revisions to the settlement primarily address the handling of so-called orphan works, the millions of books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. The changes call for the appointment of an independent fiduciary, or trustee, who will be solely responsible for decisions regarding orphan works.

Cutting to the chase, if only because I’m loathe to deconstruct the disingenuous layers of marketing spin, legalese and outright fraud being marshalled by Google in their attempt to hijack other people’s copyrighted works, it seems to me that this revised settlement is pretty much what anyone would have expected. In sum, an attempt to polish up the chrome while making no changes to the underlying structure of the previous settlement, wherein Google becomes the beneficiary of a new legal standard of copyright ownership. If they scan a book, they own it until you prove it’s yours.

(Yes, I know, that’s probably not legally correct, but I’m not really a fan of the way the legal system has been functioning lately. See also: state-sponsored torture, Wall St. bailouts, housing bubble carnage.) [ Read more ]

EA Pounds the Nail

November 12, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Yesterday I noted that Electronic Arts joined the ranks of publishers across all industries trying to embrace the internet and decrease exposure to retail. Today EA addressed the timing of its announced layoffs and acquisition of PlayFish by emphasizing the point:

“It’s no coincidence that we simultaneously announced a cost reduction in connection with the acquisition of PlayFish, because that represents, in our mind, a very important shift to digital direct,” said EA SVP and CFO Eric Brown, speaking at the BMO Capital Markets 2009 Annual Digital Entertainment Conference in New York Thursday.

The parallels here between interactive and publishing (and other industries), even including emphasis on free-to-play and freemium models, are unmistakable:

Like other publishers, EA is becoming increasingly focused on downloadable games and extra content. Brown said that the download-only PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title Battlefield 1943 has sold 1.2 million units to date across both platforms. Half of those sales were in the game’s first week.

DLC trends at EA will continue to snowball. Dragon Age, a packaged and digital game developed by EA subsidiary BioWare, is selling “very well” and will receive regular DLC through the next “12 months-plus,” Brown said. Giving consumers the option to spend more than the $50 or $60 can be advantageous for game makers. “You can find extra demand customer by customer,” he said. And that goes for microtransactions too in free-to-play games.

And of course distribution plays a key part in this move (despite the soft-selling in the quote, which was probably added to keep partners and suppliers from freaking out):

“What you build sells through. There’s no physical good that has to be handled, printed, transported, et cetera, so you pick up this real efficiency gain in terms of the sales return allowance. So overall it’s slightly more beneficial to us as the publisher.”

You could map this to any content-driven industry:

For EA going forward, the four key principles of its business are to drive hits, expand digital services, “aggressively manage costs,” and continue focusing on the Nintendo Wii. But digital services — DLC, subscriptions, free-to-play, PC browser gaming, advertising — is clearly where EA sees its future.

“I think it’s important that everyone understands that the definition of the interactive sector needs to include online. It can’t be associated with the more limited definition of packaged goods through retail. Online is indeed a high-gross segment,” he said.

The internet is killing the retail content-distribution channel. Everything else is a variation on that truth. Whatever industry you are in, whatever content you create or sell, you are going to be affected by this truth.

— Mark Barrett

The Last Nail

November 11, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

You know all there is to know about the disintegration of music publishing, in part because you’ve lived it, and in part because you’ve done your homework. You know the newspaper-publishing business is getting killed because you can hear Rupert Murdoch squealing. You know the movie business is hurting. And of course you know the book-publishing industry is coming apart at the spine.

But even as all this is happening in concert, and even as the internet looms large in every instance, there are still people explaining how what’s happening in one industry has nothing to do with what’s happening in another industry. Or how it’s the recession that’s causing these problems. (It’s not.)

To this litany of carnage now add the computer gaming industry. On Monday Electronic Arts (EA), one of the the largest developers and publishers of interactive titles, announced that it was cutting 1,500 jobs. If that was the end of the story we could chalk up the layoffs to the recession, but that’s not the end of the story. [ Read more ]

Richard Nash’s Ears

November 11, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Steam:

That pain in our foot? It’s not outsiders stomping on it, it’s us, shooting ourselves.

I have nothing but respect for anyone trying to reform publishing from the inside. And I wouldn’t wish that challenge on a dog.

— Mark Barrett

Palin’s Profit (or Loss)

November 10, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

At the beginning of October, in a post gnawing at the subject of ghostwriting, I wrote:

Will Palin’s book include shared credit with her collaborator? I don’t know, but I hope so.

The answer, apparently, is no:

Lynn Vincent, a senior writer for Christian World, is widely reported to have done the gruntwork on Going Rogue — proving so efficient that Palin’s manuscript was delivered early and allowed HarperCollins to move the publication date from spring 2010.

Vincent is not getting a byline on Going Rogue, and she’s not disclosing her fee.

My concern about ghostwriting, as previously noted, is that it is lying. In some cases these lies are killing people. I also don’t think it helps our political process to allow people to be credited with things they did not do, and I would say that about any candidate.

Regarding HarperCollins’ deal for Palin’s book, it looks like all the high-flying cynicism displayed in the production and marketing of her book may be for naught:

For Going Rogue, no publication has publicly stepped up to claim first serial rights — running the juiciest excerpts before the book comes out, which either kindles or extinguishes public anticipation for it. Such an excerpt deal may have been struck for The Oprah Winfrey Show, which features Palin in an interview the day before the book’s release; the public will find out on Monday.

…

Of course, the stars could still align in Palin’s favor. She could produce the hit she and her publisher are looking for. But the math suggests that it may be the readers who go rogue on Palin — and on HarperCollins’s plans to right the wrongs of its dismal book sales.

If the book stalls, I would like to think that the brute-force mockery of the authorial process had something to do with it, but I know that’s naive. It’s the recession.

— Mark Barrett

Following the Money

November 10, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

What are the economics of being a professional author? I know how much I’ve made as a storyteller in various mediums, but the book business is still pretty much a mystery to me.

To the extent that I’ve been able to fill in any blanks I owe individual authors for having the courage to talk about their own experiences. While each story is different, they’re all adding up to a useful composite, and particularly so given all the forces at work and changes taking place in the industry.

For example, today I ran across a follow-up post by Lynn Viehl on Genreality, talking about The Reality of a Times Bestseller:

So how much money have I made from my Times bestseller? Depending on the type of sale, I gross 6-8% of the cover price of $7.99. After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36, which is actually pretty good since on average I generally net about 30-40% of my advance. Unless something triggers an unexpected spike in my sales, I don’t expect to see any additional profit from this book coming in for at least another year or two.

Is that a sobering reality? Easy money? I have no idea. I don’t know how many hours Lynn put into that title, so I can’t do the workaday math. Still, if you didn’t live a big city or have any consuming vices you could probably squeak by on that money, provided you had the same amount coming in next year…but then that’s not a given, is it? (Speaking of givens, Lynn blows up a number of myths in the post, and in the prequel.)

In a previous post I noted Joe Konrath’s sales figures for both traditional publishing and self-publishing of his novels, and that’s also worth a look.

For pure self-publishing numbers I’ve been relying on posts by Dan Holloway writing as a pair of shoes. You can read his initial accounting here, and his latest here.

If you’re a literary fiction writer, how many books do you have to sell to call yourself a success? 7,000.

If you’re an online fiction writer, are there ways to monetize your content? Sure.

Update: Publishing your own RPG? Here’s what it cost someone to do just that.

I’ll post more as I find it. If you’ve already found it, let me know.

— Mark Barrett

Chrono Trigger

November 10, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

You’ve probably never heard of this game, and even if I gave you a copy you probably don’t have a Super NES in your closet to play it on. If you did, however, you’d get a first-class lesson in storytelling for the video game market. A lesson I assumed was lost to the always-receding hardware horizon.

Today, however, I ran across a wonderful write-up and analysis of Chrono Trigger by Michael Brannan, who was participating in a contest in association with the IGDA Game Writers’ SIG. Here’s a sample:

Chrono Trigger’s story is a massive, sweeping story that spans a world consisting of several kingdoms across five distinct time periods (not counting the Day of Lavos in 1999 and the End of Time). In a nutshell, Chrono Trigger follows Crono’s journey through time, beginning the morning of the Millennial Faire celebrating the beginning of the year 1000 AD and follows Crono and the allies he meets on a quest to stop the Day of Lavos from occurring in 1999 AD.

If you’re interested in interactive entertainment, or in the history of the industry, or you were lucky enough to play Chrono Trigger back in the day, take a look. In an industry that often can’t be bothered to remember yesterday’s games, let alone the techniques that made them great, this kind of reference work is shamefully rare and desperately needed.

— Mark Barrett