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Site Seeing: RNash.com

September 5, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Home to Richard Eoin Nash, RNash.com is one of those helpful sites with a high-speed shutter that freezes the blur of fast-moving cultural events. In a little more than an hour I was able to get my bearings on a host of issues, as well as place those issues in context.

For example, in a linked-to piece I found this quote from a front-line report on how the publishing industry is keeping pace with changes brought about by all things digital:

And that’s when moderator Deborah Schultz broke the news to us. We (the audience) were the ones who were supposed to provide the ideas.

“We’re here to learn about what you want.”

Without warning the panel discussion was turned into an impromptu focus group. A twist that was met alternately with skepticism, amusement, and open hostility.

Read the whole thing. I laughed myself silly.  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Publishing, richard nash, site seeing

My Take on the Google Books Case

September 5, 2009 By Mark 6 Comments

Following up on earlier posts about the Google Books case and the proposed settlement with the Authors Guild regarding past copyright infringement by Google, and after reading Scott Gant’s take on the case, I now feel like I have a handle on what’s going on.

1) Google broke the law by scanning and marketing a bunch of books it didn’t have the right to scan and market. They weren’t the copyright holders, but they went ahead and did it anyway, and that’s against the law.

2) The Authors Guild — which is also a corporation with its own self interests — sued Google for breaking the law, even though it may not have had standing to do so. It did so on behalf of its members, but it also did so on behalf of itself. If Google could break copyright laws with impunity, then the Authors Guild would be meaningless as an entity.  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Google Books

Site Seeing: The Hayfield Forever

September 5, 2009 By Mark 4 Comments

I was pointed to The Hayfield by a link in the comments, and I wrote in reply at that time that I wasn’t sure I really ‘got’ what the site was about. After taking another, longer look, I think I get it now, but I’m not sure that it’s having the intended effect on me. And it’s an open question whether that says something about me or something about the site.

To be fair, it’s all very well done, and I really don’t know the extent to which I’m supposed to actually care emotionally about any of the content. If it’s a gag, but for some reason I’m waiting to be shaken to the core, well, that’s a problem of expectations on my part, not execution. But the very fact that I’m not quite sure what’s going on means to me that I’m thinking more than I’m feeling, and that I’m studying more than I’m reacting.  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: site seeing

The Blogfic Gap

September 4, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

I’m not even sure how I landed on this BBC page, but as someone who’s been telling stories for twenty years, I can say with some confidence that I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else:

Send us your script»

Send us your work. We read all unsolicited scripts for BBC Films,TV Drama, Children’s Drama,TV Comedy, Radio Entertainment and Radio Drama. We accept unsolicited scripts written for film, television, radio or stage.

I mean, even the scammers and con artists who are actively trying to sucker would-be writers don’t just throw the door wide open and say, “Come on in!” (They charge you for the privilege of being fleeced.)

Is this BBC invite a good thing? A bad thing? I have no idea.

But it reminds me that while I’ve been looking for good blog fiction on the web, I keep ending up on UK and European sites. I don’t know what that means, either, but it keeps happening. Is the U.S. badly lagging in blog fiction? Is there an EU government subsidy that’s giving them an edge? How do we close the blogfic gap?

— Mark Barrett

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: blog fiction

Five Years and Counting

September 4, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Here are a few quotes from an excited article about blog fiction:

The weblog has justifiably been celebrated as a new publishing platform. But writers are beginning to see that it also has the potential to be a new fictional form.

Now, the blog breathlessly referenced in the article had two things going for it. First, the blog’s author was a mystery at the time, giving people something to speculate about. Second, the blog was about sex, giving people something to salivate about. Put the two together in any medium and you’ve got enough juice to get yourself on Oprah, so it’s not surprising that it caught this writer’s attention.  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: blog fiction

Doubling Back

September 4, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

I spent a good bit of time last night by myself, holed up in a well-concealed blind just off the blog fiction trail. Despite remaining perfectly still, however, and keeping my surgically-implanted iPod’s volume at a very low level, no blog fiction passed by.

Back at camp, after treating my mosquito bites and refreshing myself with two energy drinks, I doubled back to where my search began: the Wikipedia entry for ‘blog fiction.’ At the bottom of the Wikipedia page I once again began to click my way through the Reference and External links, looking for fresh sign. (No, not like that, like this.)

Unfortunately, the first link — enticingly titled, “Blog Fiction…Where the Story Begins,” and pointing to an equally-enticing URL: blog-fiction.com — proved to be a wild text chase, ending as it did at the battered remains of the aforementioned site, which was apparently being consumed by a ravenous MediaWiki landing page.

Undeterred, I poised my field mouse to click on the next link, at which point the two energy drinks I’d consumed reached critical mass and my heart rate shot to 180 beats per minute for over an hour and a half. Fortunately, sleep was deep on the backside of this ballistic chemical experience, and I am now ready to take up the chase again — as soon as my laptop fully recharges from the feeble outlet here at the infirmary. More soon.

— Mark Barrett

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: blog fiction

More Google Books Hilarity

September 3, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

In all the reading I’ve done about the Google Books class action suit, I completely missed this (from Reuters):

Under the settlement, authors have until the end of this week to opt out of the settlement.

Any time you have to opt out, it means the people opting you in have already won. As to the rest of the Reuters piece, it details an FTC letter urging Google to improve its privacy policy blah blah blah blah blah….

Please. Anyone who ever cracked open the bloody hatch on the political sausage machine knows that nothing matters except enforcement. And so far there’s nothing to enforce. Ergo Google will do whatever it wants and people will enjoy Google Books until SOMETHING BAD happens, at which point everyone will be shocked — shocked! — that there is gambling in Casablanca.

— Mark Barrett

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Google Books

Is Blog Fiction Dead?

September 3, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Following up on the previous post, I followed one of the ‘best blogfic’ search hits back to a 2008 post on BlogFiction.org, titled: Did Blog Fiction Peak In 2005?

An interesting question. If true, however, I would think it had less to do with the potential of the medium than it did with the various attempts during that time. So maybe it’s time to try something new.

— Mark Barrett

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: blog fiction

Lost in the Desert

September 3, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

Can you point me to the best blog fiction on the internet? Not just the best web fiction — although I guess I wouldn’t mind a few pointers there as well — but specifically blog fiction, however you define it?

The reason I ask is that I’ve been rooting around for a few weeks now, clicking links and following threads, and I’m seeing a lot of fiction on the internet. And I’m really glad that so many people are publishing to the web. It can only make them better writers, and it can only speed the process of networking which is so important to any writer’s ability to develop. (All writers need to find good readers. It’s a nightmare for all involved.)

On some level, however, I’m still not connecting with a lot of what I’m reading, and I keep feeling like I’m wandering in circles. So…if I said to you, “Who’s writing the best blog fiction on the internet?”, what would you say?

(I tried searching for ‘best blog fiction’ but I was not encouraged by the number of hits I got in return. And ‘best blogfic’ turned out even worse.)

— Mark Barrett

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: blog fiction

Amazon and Irony

September 2, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

Speaking of Amazon’s outrage regarding Google’s class-action settlement, isn’t there a wee bit of irony in all this? I mean, Amazon’s core business — before it became the go-to site for spatulas and throw rugs — used to be…wait for it!…books.

Yes kids, that’s really true. Way back at the dawn of time (1995), Amazon’s great idea was to be an online bookstore, making pretty much every in-print book and many out-of-print books available nationwide. And it was a huge, huge success. So much so, that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, decided to sell every product known to mankind in much the same way.  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: books, Google, irony

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