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Home > 2010 > Archives for April 2010

Archives for April 2010

The Print-On-Demand Molehill

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One of the best things about being part of a community is that the whole has the potential for being self-correcting. It’s not a sure thing, as any example of mob rule or cultural intolerance can attest, but there is at least the potential for a group to help individuals overcome blind spots or obstacles. Individuals who do not belong to a group, or who do not have access to collective wisdom, may be doomed to reinvent the wheel or to repeatedly fail because of their own tendencies and shortcomings.

I’m not a big joiner. I just threw Facebook in the junk pile because the price of belonging to that group is self-deception, and like Sam Spade I’m not willing to be somebody’s sap.* More than wearing a team blazer or adopting a popular philosophy or expressing loyalty to a particular trendy brand, I value belonging to a community of ideas. This has always led to involvement with smaller groups of people who share my interests, but the benefit to me is that these more issue-oriented groups can both augment and check my own thoughts.

In order to derive such benefits, however, it’s not simply enough to belong to a group. Approaching someone to suggest that they may be incorrect about something is fraught with risk, and presumes that the individual is open to such communications. As we all learn at a very young age, this is usually not the case. Most people would rather feel right than be right, even at the expense of their own well being. There is also a tendency for people to be more interested in telling others how wrong than they are in hearing the same thing themselves, and this tendency is often (if not commonly) greater in people who are ignorant or uninformed than it is in people who are knowledgeable. As a result, even if we are open to hearing about our mistakes, the number of reliable advisers that anyone might hope to hear from is usually small.  [ Read more ]

The Facebook Question

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Facebook recently changed its terms of service again, and — as with previous alterations — has weighted those changes heavily in favor of Facebook’s own corporate aims. To the extent that privacy of user data was ever a concern at Facebook, the erosion of those interests over time has been steady and premeditated.

Documenting Facebook’s abuses is more than I care to do. If you’re a Facebook fan, good luck to you. If you’re a staunch Facebook defender, I’m not interested in debating your bullet points. The bottom line for me is that Facebook has tipped its hand more than once, and I’m at the point where I feel like a fool for believing anything Facebook says. I don’t consider the site benign, I don’t consider the site’s corporate aims benevolent, and I don’t believe that Facebook will honor any current legal obligation if they believe they can make more money by voiding that obligation.

For me, personally, the risks far outweigh the rewards. So as of today I have decided to terminate my Facebook account. Because I joined Facebook relatively late, and because I conduct most of my web conversations through this site — which I own clear title to — this decision is probably easier for me than it might be for others. Adding to my interest in disconnecting now is the sense that waiting and investing more time in Facebook only makes the decision harder down the road, and I see this as one of Facebook’s great seductions. By allowing and urging users to weave themselves into the Facebook social structure, Facebook makes it that much harder for users to leave without feeling a considerable sense of loss.  [ Read more ]

Weekend Reads

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Welcome to the independent writer’s life. Put up your short story collection at the beginning of the week, get pounded by malicious code injections the rest of the week.

To help keep your own chin high and lip stiff, I offer herewith a helping of distractions and items of interest that could very well make or break your ability to ever again confront the horrifying solitude of the keyboard. Drink up.

Is It Safe?

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No, it’s not safe.

No matter how much money the powers-that-be put into making the internet seem like a sunny day in the park, the internet is the technological and societal equivalent of a dark alley. From the thugs working out of mom’s basement who are trying to steal your bank account login info, to the thugs at Facebook opting you in to efforts to track, exploit and sell your every click — and intentionally making it impossible for you to opt out — there is no safe place to be on the world wide web.  [ Read more ]

The Year of the Elm — Available Now

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I recently published a collection of twelve short stories on Smashwords. [Book removed 01/03/17].

The first three stories can be viewed free. The entire collection is $4.99, and available in a variety of formats.

Original post here.

— Mark Barrett

The Print-On-Demand Mountain

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At first blush, print-on-demand (POD) seems to be the middle-ground in the publishing revolution. It yields a physical book, much like traditional publishing, but is the result of a quasi-do-it-yourself process. To the extent that holding a book, or being able to physically transfer contents in book form, is important to an author, there are a wealth of companies providing POD services. (The big three are probably Lulu, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source, with Blurb anchoring the image-heavy end of the self-pub spectrum.)

Thinking that it would be nice to make a POD version of The Year of the Elm (TYOTE) available for anyone who wanted it, I spent a fair amount of time last night digging deeper into the POD process. What I’ve come away with today is both a renewed appreciation for the craft and complexity of publishing, and a growing conviction that I don’t want to go down the POD road, at least for now.  [ Read more ]

The Year of the Elm

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That’s the title — and this is the cover — for the short story collection I’ve been working on, which I referred to in an earlier post by the TYOTE acronym. I put the collection on Smashwords last night. [Book removed 01/03/17.]

There are twelve short stories in the collection. The first three stories are free. The price for the full collection is $4.99, for reasons that have been exhaustively detailed in previous posts. (Regular readers are now laughing themselves silly or suffering flashbacks.)

I am making three stories available for three reasons. First, I like the idea that a prospective online customer can peruse part of a work as they might in a bookstore. Second, I believe self-published authors have an obligation to demonstrate that they can carry a tune before asking someone to pay for their work. Third, I intendThe Year of the Elm to create an overall effect, and I feel an obligation to make the structure clear to the prospective buyer. Reading the first three stories should do that.

The next step for TYOTE is to put together a print-on-demand (POD) version, probably through Lightning Source. I’ll have more to say about TYOTE, and about the process of publishing it myself, in subsequent posts.

On the horizon, my next project involves a novel I’m revising, and what may or may not be an innovative attempt to meld the strengths of the internet as a medium with the craft aims of traditional storytelling. I believe that all mediums are eventually turned to fiction, and my hope would be to show how that might be better done with the internet itself.

— Mark Barrett

Art, Craft and Writer’s Block

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I don’t believe in writer’s block. I know full well there are days when the writing comes easy and days when the writing won’t come at all, but I don’t ascribe the difference to any unseen or mystical force. Rather, I ascribe the difference to the fact that writing is damned hard all the time, and any day when it’s going great is a miracle.

I was reminded of my feelings about writer’s block by a post from Stephanella Walsh, in which she herself talked about coming to terms with the myth of writer’s block. It’s a good post, and particularly so because it admits to change, which is something too few people are confident enough to do.

Stephanella does a solid job of listing reasons why people reach for the “I’m blocked!” excuse, and I don’t disagree with any of them. People have been using the excuse of writer’s block — and the premise: that writing necessarily flows from some hidden spring of inspiration — since the first caveman struggled with the first cave painting.

I would like to propose, however, that there is a basic choice that every storyteller needs to make when approaching their work, and that in making this choice a writer necessarily allows or precludes writer’s block as an aspect of the storytelling process. The choice I speak of is whether or not writing is viewed first and foremost as a craft.

If you view storytelling as a craft — as a mix of techniques and channeled authorial gifts (the stuff you just happen to be good at) — I don’t see how writer’s block pertains. When you write from craft you can say you’re stuck, or you’re tired, or you hate your life, but the idea that your muse is playing coy, or that something that happened in your childhood is getting in the way of your ability to bash the holy hell out of your keyboard is absurd on the face of it — as it would be if you were a ditch digger and complained of ditch-digger’s block.

On the other hand, if you view storytelling as art — as a nebulous, ill-defined process of introspection and pure expression devoid of any compelling need to communicate with the reader, or even to be intelligible — then I suspect that writer’s block is useful in an endless variety of ways. Including, perhaps most importantly, by connecting you in spirit to all the other great writers who sat back in a sunny cafe chair and bemoaned the lonely fate of the truly and tragically gifted.

It’s your call, of course. But if you’re thinking that what you’d like to do is tell stories, you might want to take a long hard look at what your storytelling is in service of. Giving your authorial fate over to the unseen or mystical strikes me as a both a considerable statement of intent and a mistake. Unless, of course, what you’re really interested in is the drama of being a storyteller as opposed to the end product.

— Mark Barrett

The Internet as Relief Valve

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Dan Wagstaff had an excellent post up over the weekend at CasualOptimist. Here’s the crux:

My point is not that we should not stop experimenting with new author contracts, transparency, formats, trade terms, or marketing — we need to try new things and be allowed to fail. But this should not come at the expense of consistently good, interesting (and inexpensive) books.

I encourage you to read the post. It’s a summary of things that have been and are being tried to in order to gain a toehold in the new publishing reality, but — as Dan points out — it’s also a reminder that the basic problem is not one of process but product. What is it that is the publishing industry should be selling?

In the comments to the post, I wrote this:

…if the industry needs to contract on the basis of content alone (ignoring other obvious reasons driving a coming contraction) — it seems to me that the internet is a useful mechanism by which that contraction can be managed, as opposed to happening at a more precipitous rate.

I think it’s clear that corporate publishing cannot continue in its present form. It’s top-heavy and badly listing, and sooner or later economic pressures are going to take their toll. Thinking about this over the weekend, it seems to me that even as the internet is the instigator of many of publishing’s woes, it’s also a relief valve of sorts in that it allows publishers to connect readers with content, while at the same time being more (appropriately) selective about which content is turned into physical books. (Note how completely this distinction seems to be lost in the current publishing dialogue at the corporate level, while it is at the heart of discussions at the authorial level.)  [ Read more ]

TYOTE

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The title of this post is the working-title acronym for my collection of short stories. I’m 99% sure the title is the one I’ll be going with, but until I’m 100% sure this is what I’m calling it.

It’s been interesting getting the stories in shape. I’ve pushed myself to make the stories good, and been pushed to do more by the finality of the act of publication — even if I’m only self-publishing them in digital form. Nobody wants to make an idiot out of themselves.

I’m pretty close to being able to put the stories up on Smashwords. I’ve worked through the formatting style guide, and I have a working comp for the cover art. I just need to do a final version of everything and a final read-through of the text and I think that’s it. (I’ll have more to say about the various steps in the process when I’m reasonably confident I didn’t mess things up.)

What I can say so far is that the impending act of publication has helped improve my work. Because I’m taking it seriously, that seriousness is producing benefits I hadn’t imagined. I’m not new to turning in final drafts of fictional copy, or scripts that will be produced by others, but this is a more solitary process, and I’m glad to find that it is not without rewards.

Even as I am starting to see the larger self-publishing movement as a fad or balloon that will inevitably go bust, I’m also utterly convinced that the internet as a distribution and publication platform is for real. I can put these stories where others can find them, and I don’t have to ask permission to do that.

As small as the collection is, and as limited as the economic upside might be, it feels like a big deal. Regardless of the outcome, I’m glad I’m doing this.

— Mark Barrett