Crushed it in one day.
So awesome.
New school, meet old school.
— Mark Barrett
Archives for May 2014
Hachette vs. Amazon
I have refrained from commenting on the ongoing dispute between Hachette and Amazon mostly because it’s boring. Watching two for-profit companies compete with each other for the right to exploit authors as much as legally possible is not my idea of entertainment. If anything, such efforts have become routine in both market segments as evidenced by the Justice Department’s conviction of Apple and a gang of publishing houses on price-fixing charges last year. Because Amazon’s market position is so dominant it doesn’t need to conspire with anyone to fix prices, but that’s the only way to describe what Amazon is trying to do with Hachette, and what it tried to do several years ago with MacMillan. (Detailed explainer here. Latest update here.)
To be clear, Amazon has that legal right. It can refuse to sell products at prices it doesn’t agree with. It also has no obligation to be nice simply because of its market dominance, which verges on monopoly. On the other hand, Amazon’s strident position is obviously predicated on the fact that Hachette can’t sell as many books via other pipelines, and Amazon knows this, so it’s playing hardball when it might otherwise have to take competition into account.
What continues to amaze me is that the main publishing houses (and record companies, and film companies) have not yet banded together to create an independent — and perhaps even not-for-profit — company that could handle online and offline distribution of everything from novels to movies to music. Even if the enterprise only broke even it would would necessarily create competition for Amazon that would improve the negotiating position of those content producers. (I don’t for a minute see this is artist-friendly given the history of predatory practices in those industries, but am simply agog that they are not doing this in their own best interests. There is nothing new to be learned about ordering and distributing products using the web, and I am confident there are plenty of ex-Amazon workers who happy to join such an organization. All the content producers have to do is drop money and they’re in business.)
My main reason for believing the time might now be right is that the once impenetrable branding of Amazon seems to finally be splintering. What used to universally be considered a customer-friendly site is now, more and more, being seen as a bully, opening the door for other players in that space — particularly if the cost of goods is no more than what you would pay from Amazon.com. Given that publishers and other content distributors can set prices on their own site at or lower than those on Amazon, yet pay none of the percentages, fees, kickbacks or other middle-man costs, I’m not sure how Amazon could compete over the long haul, and at the very least I think its negotiating position would be weakened.
If that also allowed independent authors to use the same pipeline for a reasonable percentage or fee — as is already the case on CreateSpace (an Amazon subsidiary) and Smashwords — that in turn would be of real benefit to writers who didn’t want to sign what are often exploitative contracts with publishers. Win-win.
— Mark Barrett
2 University of Iowa Creative Writing MOOC’s
Two free creative writing MOOC’s are now open for registration at the University of Iowa. The first course, How Writers Write Poetry, begins June 28th. The second course, How Writers Write Fiction, begins September 27th. Both courses run six weeks.
One of the great obstacles in learning to write, compared with most of the arts, is that it’s impossible to observe another writer’s process. You can watch a sculptor sculpt, you can watch a painter paint, you can follow a photographer and observe the composition of endless images, but when it comes to writing it’s all cerebral except for the tap-tap-tapping of keys. After hours you can learn to drink by hanging out with writers, you can learn to do drugs, you can even learn to be a cynical, jaded hater, but when it comes to craft and technique there’s nothing to note except perhaps a preference for hardware or software, as if that ever meant anything.
Whether you’re merely curious about how writers write or you’re worried that you’re doing it wrong, these courses are an invaluable opportunity to check in with people who, somehow, despite the odds, found their way. And as I’ve mentioned before, that’s literally — if not literarily — half the battle.
Spread the word. Enjoy.
— Mark Barrett
Storytelling and Celebrity
Want a nauseating glimpse into how central the exploitation of celebrity is to industrial storytelling? Here are the opening two graphs from a short piece in the New York Times’ theater section:
AMSTERDAM — Over the decades, the story of Anne Frank has been interpreted onstage in varying ways, including a version that some critics describe as too simplistic. Now a new play, simply titled “Anne,” that opened here last week presents a complex portrayal of a teenage girl: sometimes impetuous, spoiled and lonely.
In this multimedia stage production, Anne resents her mother, mocks adults and revels in her emerging sexuality. The new portrait comes nearly 70 years after her death in a German concentration camp, in 1945, and is part of a flurry of efforts by Anne Frank Fonds, the Swiss charitable foundation created in 1963 by her father, Otto, to shape her image for the latest generation.
Whoever Anne Frank was as a human being, she was long ago replaced by a brand bearing her name. Whatever she stood for or endured or had done to her, she’s now the narrative equivalent of Indiana Jones, fighting Nazis on our behalf so we won’t ever have to think too hard about where such evil comes from. Fork over your money and absolution awaits. And did you know there’s an animated cartoon in the works?
There are an infinite number of stories that can be told, but why go to all the trouble and risk of doing something new when you can haul out the Anne Frank cookie cutter and put your own spin on a proven box-office winner? Nobody will question your motives for exploiting her memory or profiting from her death, so cut all the deals you can. You know, out of respect.
Anne Franks sells. End of story.
— Mark Barrett
Storium
Don’t know anything about Storium beyond what I read on RPS a couple days ago, but it certainly sounds interesting:
The result is distinctly literary, which is probably why there’s so many authors and fanfic writers playing. One of them is Stephen Blackmore, author of Dead Things, who’s creating a Storium setting called Redemption City: “This is collaborative storytelling that has some mechanics in place to help keep the story moving rather than to determine specific outcomes. If anything I think it might actually be more accessible to non-gamers than to gamers.“ He explains, “This is very much a writer’s game. The mechanics are so unobtrusive as to sometimes feel almost incidental. Storium lets you play with plot, theme, metaphor, character, voice. What other online game not only allows that but encourages it?”
If the mainstream commercial interactive industry has proven anything over the past two decades it’s that it knows nothing about storytelling, and I’m being charitable in that appraisal. However, as was learned even earlier in the pencil-and-paper world, going all the way back to Dungeons & Dragons, most players also lack the requisite skill to drive even a static narrative, let alone adapt one on the fly.
Storium seems an interesting compromise because it necessarily expects someone who’s qualified to initially take the narrative reigns, while still allowing for collaborative if not competitive storytelling. Definitely worth a look.
— Mark Barrett