Aug 10
20
Don’t Be a Writer, Be a Creator
You know what’s never, ever happened to me as a transmedia writer? Rejection! Nope, I’ve never, ever received a transmedia rejection letter. That’s because there is no gatekeeper for the internet. You wanna tell a story on Twitter, set yourself up an account and let that bad boy rip. Write up a script, grab a video camera, and get that fucker shot and up on YouTube your own self.
-Andrea Phillips, Transmedia Writers Have More Fun
I’ve said often that publishers are effectively similar to venture capitalists (though rarely given credit as such in the “fail faster” meme), and the confirmation of Facebook’s move into location-based services and acquisition and planned shutdown of Hot Potato got me thinking about that, and what it means for up and coming writers, for whom many of the old rules of traditional publishing no longer apply.
Writers basically have two choices: they can build enough of a platform to entice an acquisition, or build one that’s bigger than just books and enables their long-term independence. (And by independence, I mean making a sustainable living, not just self-publishing your book via Amazon or Lulu or Smashwords and declaring yourself an “indie”.)
Similar to work-for-hire vs. creator-owned, it’s evolving into the difference between being a writer and creator. In the digital era, writers sell stories, while creators build storyworlds.
The former is a transaction-based existence focused on the traditional publication of books or articles, with everything else viewed as ancillary. The latter is an approach that sees traditional publishing as just one of many ways via which a storyworld — your fictional universe — can be experienced, and focuses on your ability to reach and engage with readers across a variety of channels.
Posted in Publishing Writing by .
The above tweet led to a fun interview over the at the Book View Cafe blog, “Weird and Wonderful: Digital Book World and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez,” with author Sue Lange asking me some interesting questions that really made me think hard to solidify some of my ideas about the “Future of Publishing” and what it means for authors and publishers.
There’s a lot of fluff and blather right now that makes it sound like eBooks are a magic bullet and simply uploading your book to Amazon makes you an independent author.
Most of that fluff and blather is coming from new intermediaries who take a smaller cut than traditional publishers, while putting your eBook on a virtual shelf where no one who doesn’t already know it exists will ever find it. And, of course, some of them will also upsell you on services to help you market your eBook and increase sales, for which they’ll get their cut.
In a lot of ways, it’s basically Vanity Publishing, in a shiny 2.0 coat.
I also explain a few things about Digital Book World, make the argument “that marketing is, first and foremost, a publisher’s responsibility,” and talk a bit about my own writing and how it has evolved over the years.
Posted in Publishing by .
The weakness of “It’s all a dream” — why we hate that, why we feel cheated when narratively anything is revealed to be all a dream — is that you’ve just asked me to spend so much time and emotional capital investing in the stakes of this, and you’ve now swept it away with the most anti-narrative structuralism that doesn’t have anything to substitute in its place. It’s laughing at you for even taking it seriously. You don’t want to feel like a victim of the narrative, and I don’t think Christopher Nolan would do that.
Inception’s Dileep Rao Answers All Your Questions About Inception
Nuanced, brainy and thought-provoking, Christopher Nolan’s provocative sci-fi masterpiece (yeah, I said it) isn’t your typical formulaic summer blockbuster. Even its car chases, gun fights, explosions and special effects wizardry exist on a whole ‘nother level, raised by the sheer audacity of Nolan’s demanding that moviegoers sit still, pay close attention and think hard about what they’re seeing for 2.5 hours rather than be spoon-fed the usual red/blue pablum Hollywood spews out like clockwork from their “me, too” factories.
There’s no filler, no empty calories, no short cuts, no opportune pee breaks; Nolan packs something worthwhile into every second of screen time, and you blink at your own risk. It’s an action movie for intelligent adults who are tired of being treated like teenagers, and it will stick with you long after, whether you loved it or not.
It’s also a call-to-action of sorts for writers and publishers. Or could be, if they’re listening.
Digital Book World- Tumblr
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- glecharles: RT @MarketerBlog: Check out why I say @CharleneLi 's "Open Leadership" is a must-read for ethical marketers http://networkedblogs.com/7qWHW
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