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The Sex Question

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In a recent post I put forward the idea that sex used in the advertising of nonsexual products betrays products of no particular distinction. At root, however, the previous post was not about advertising. Rather, it was the tip of the iceberg in a larger conversation about the decision to use (or, by extension, not use) sex in any kind of authored content.

The question is not why sex is used in commercials or authored works. We know why it’s used. Our animal brains are hard-wired for sex, apart from any additional sociological or psychological interest we may add as we grow and develop in whatever culture we happen to live in. Sex does in fact sell — meaning attract and hold consumer interest — but that’s not what I’m interested in. Rather, I’m interested in what motivates creators to use sex and its sure-fire, brain-simple appeal in any given instance, and particularly in stories.  [ Read more ]

Weekend Reads

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Your presents are either broken, boring, or waiting to be returned. You’ve eaten all there is to eat. You have two days before the hammer drops again and someone somewhere expects you to do what they tell you to do.

Between now and then, freedom to read.

  • Persuasive Games: I Want My 99¢ Back
    Good solid data on the financial race to the bottom in iPhone app pricing, and good analysis to go with it. If you’re thinking of selling something on the internet, either through Apple, Amazon, or your own store, you need to read articles like this and think hard about what’s happening in the digital marketplace.
  • A world of hits
    More pricing discussion — this time tackling the long-tail/hit conundrum. Again: whether you’re a sole proprietor or planning on opening up your own social-media marketplace, you need to be up to speed on these issues.
  • The Trouble with Blogging, or: A Writer’s Dilemma
    On artistry, writing, being a businessperson and the problem with platforms.
  • Piracy
    The beginning of an interesting conversation and exchange about piracy and copyright, which continues in subsequent posts.
  • NSFW: Free as in “my publisher will disown me after I pirate my book on TechCrunch”
    Found on Kassia’s Kroszer’s Booksquare site, this deserves a read if you haven’t seen it. (Speaking of pricing issues, you get a free book for taking the time and trouble to click your mouse a couple of times. Good deal, or still too steep?)

There are very real opportunities opening up on the web, but there’s a lot to think about and a lot to learn. I’ve been thinking and learning for four solid months, and I’m only now getting a handle on where I need to go and what I need to do. And I don’t have any confidence that there’s money at the end of the road.

— Mark Barrett

Because I Can

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Maria Schneider at Editor Unleashed and Mark Coker at Smashwords are offering $500 for the best essay on Why I Write. The following is my entry. (Note: due to technical problems with the EU Forum, the contest deadline has been extended.)

I write because I can.

I can because I got lucky. I was born in a family that values the written word, in a town that values writing, in a state that values literacy, in a country that was founded on a document. Every cultural break a writer can get, I got, save being born rich. I didn’t choose where I was born and I didn’t value these things when I was young, but they stood as open doors and affected me greatly. I got lucky and I never forget it.

I write because I can.

I can because I live in a free country. I have the right to say what I think, even if you disagree. Even if everyone disagrees. I know all people do not have this right. I know there are countries where writers cannot be true to their reality and imagination. I do not take my freedom for granted.

I write because I can.

I can because I protected the writer in me from every teacher who tried to kill it. I loved writing when I was young, as long as I was allowed to write the way I wanted to write. I hated writing when someone told me how to write. I flunked a class in junior high rather than turn in a five-page science paper. You laugh, but it’s the truth. I never got over the idea that a thesis statement was redundant. I never got past the certainty that the lede in a newspaper article belonged at the end. I knew these things were wrong, instinctively. You don’t start a murder mystery by announcing that the butler did it.

I write because I can.

I can because I tried everything else first. I looked at every job, every career — anything to avoid writing, because I knew I loved it and I knew how hard it would be to care. I tried the blue-collar life. I tried nine to five. I went to college and pretended I was a psychology major. I took a long look at philosophy, even though I knew there was more to life than logic and reason. I took a lot of classes, but I never clicked with any subject the way I clicked with the ideas and words patiently waiting to get out of my head. I was those words.

I write because I can.

I can because every time I look at a blank page I’m seduced by the possibilities. I have never feared a blank page in my life. I can’t wait to gather small strands of nothing until they begin to talk to each other and fuse and give off heat. I see such connections the way other people see contrails in the sky and skid marks on the street.. They are as plain to me. I write them down because I think others would like to see them, too.

I write because I can.

I can because I trust myself. I don’t do things that undermine my own confidence. I try to eat well. I exercise. I am conscious of how fragile writing is, and I try to protect my writing by taking care of the writer I am. Life intrudes, yes. But I’m not sabotaging myself. I know I will meet my deadlines. I may pound my head on my desk from time to time, but that’s the way some stories are. Some births are easy, some are hell.

I write because I can.

I can because there is nothing else. I don’t have questions about what I should have done with my life. I don’t have regrets. I don’t ever wonder if I made the right choice. I know I made the right choice. Long before my peers settled on a career I knew there was nothing for me but writing. I knew there would be no road-not-taken. Frustrations, sure, I’ve got plenty. But I wouldn’t trade the gifts I was born with for the crosses I bear.

I write because I can.

I can because I am still alive. Whatever your beliefs about an afterlife, you only get so many years to write. If you want to write and you don’t write then you blew it. I’m trying not to blow it. I don’t want to die thinking I missed my chance. Existentialism is a big word for taking advantage of the life you have. Take advantage of the life you have.

Write. Because you can.

— Mark Barrett

Sex Tells

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You’re watching TV. A commercial comes on for a product that is in no way related to sex. Despite the obvious disconnect the commercial itself is entirely about sex.

For example:

You’re not surprised, of course, because there’s nothing new about this. Sex has been selling products other than sex since products other than sex have been sold. The current sex-obsessed Axe body spray commercials are simply an updating of the Hai Karate commercials of yesteryear. Granted, today’s commercials demonstrate a greater corporate tolerance for pseudo-pornographic content, but that’s primarily a function of the increased difficulty of attracting eyeballs in the digital age. We’re not looser than we used to be: we’re just more desperate for attention.  [ Read more ]

Ursula K. Le Guin Resigns

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Rounding the bend toward the finish line in college I found myself with a few electives to burn. Although sci-fi was not and is not a passion of mine, I decided to take a science-fiction survey course because I knew there were good writers working in the genre. Over the course of the semester we read through a stack of classics — some hard science, some soft sci-fi — and I genuinely enjoyed them all.

While I don’t remember the titles of many of the books (I’m terrible with titles), we covered the names anyone would know: Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison and Ursula K. Le Guin. I remember Ms. Le Guin particularly because her unusual, rhythmic name somehow matched her powerful prose style.  [ Read more ]

Holiday Reads

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Maybe you’re stuck in an airport. Maybe you’re snowed in.

Maybe you’re about to blow from the 3,000 calorie feast you just sucked down.

Maybe you wish you were at work. Maybe you’re still at work.

Maybe you’ve had it up to here with your relatives and you need a break.

In the spirit of whatever holidays you celebrate or endure, here are a few links to clear the palate, focus the mind, and help you let go of that big laugh everyone had when somebody mentioned that you want to be a writer.  [ Read more ]

The DRM Distraction: Part II

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Speaking Truth to Power
Personally, my biggest concern about piracy and DRM these days is the general lack of a direct response to end-user theft at a moral and educational level. It’s as if the idea of calling customers/users on their thieving ways produces a bigger fear of lost sales in management than does the risk of backlash inherent in any DRM solution. Maybe it’s the direct confrontation that makes people uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s the threat that potential customers will feel management is treating them like criminals.

As a writer I don’t really care what the hold-up is. I just know the one thing everyone is running from is a direct confrontation with end users about their thievery. Only a few years ago Napster tried to make a legal case for peer-to-peer file sharing, the end result of which was that it was laughed at and obliterated by the courts. That Napster, a for-profit corporation, was trafficking in copyrighted material, was blindingly obvious to everyone, yet somehow Napster became an anti-establishment darling. How you become the victim when you’re using America’s youth to legitimize copyright theft for your own corporate profits is beyond me, but they pulled it off.

I don’t think it’s a surprise that many of Napster’s most passionate users were college students who felt they were on the cutting edge of a huge counter-culture movement, even though what they were really doing was stealing other people’s stuff. As long as there is intelligent life there will always be a tide of young minds chafing at restrictions, rules and laws. It’s also probably not a surprise that there will always be people looking to co-opt and engineer youthful exuberance for their own ends, as Napster did.

Just as ardent advocates of DRM are determined to distract you and bully you by constantly beating their self-serving drum (see Part I), so too are anti-DRM voices committed to promoting the DRM issue for their own ends. In the publishing industry the leading anti-DRM voice is Cory Doctorow, although to be sure Mr. Doctorow is not alone in has advocacy of free content or in his hostility toward DRM.  [ Read more ]

The DRM Distraction: Part I

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Reality Refresh
Having looked closely at the publishing industry for the past few months, and having worked in both the software industry and the film industry at various times over the past two decades, I’ve come to a few conclusions about digital rights management (DRM). The most important is that there is no clear-cut solution to the question of piracy, and anybody who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is working their own angle. And that includes Cory Doctorow and me.

Like the subject of abortion in the political arena, DRM is injected into every conversation about content ownership and distribution whether it’s directly relevant or not. If you don’t say the right things to the right people about DRM you risk associations and opportunities that might be of value, not because you’re wrong on the merits, but because you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy by implying that they are not pure evil. At the same time, those people who don’t buy into a black-and-white view of DRM will think you an idiot for not using the impassioned nuts on both sides to your own advantage.

The correct answer to questions about DRM in the current context is not to be suckered into a debate about technological solutions or the prosecution of college students, but to educate and evangelize about the problems that drive the implementation of DRM technology in the first place. Although most end users who pirate content do so as individuals, the collective effect of these individual decisions hurts copyright holders and content creators in very real ways. Yes, some piracy may be sticking it to The Man, but it’s also killing artists that people apparently want to read, listen to and watch.  [ Read more ]

Site Seeing: Richard Curtis | E-Reads.com

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What is there to say about Richard Curtis that hasn’t already been said? If you’re interested in books, publishing, agents, writers, ethics, and the money that holds them all in a gravitational embrace, you have to read Curtis’ posts at E-Reads.com.

You have to. (You don’t always have to agree.)

I first learned of Curtis decades ago when I was trying to get a fix on the book business, to see if I wanted to move toward writing novels. Curtis’ books on the publishing industry — including How To Be Your Own Literary Agent and Beyond The Bestseller — demystified a world that many power brokers would still prefer clouded in cigar smoke.

(There is a revised 3rd edition of How To Be from 2003; Beyond doesn’t seem to have been updated, but I suspect much of the content is still relevant despite the pace of change in the industry.)

— Mark Barrett