Futurismic

I’m out of town and away from the interwebs today (at a conference about Web2.0 in libraries, ironically enough), so I’ve left you these articles to chew over using the magic of scheduled posting. [image by Tom Maisey]

First off, David Louis Edelman repeats the oft-heard assertion that the novel will die, but he doesn’t see it as a downer:

“Very soon we’re going to have a medium for distributing the written word that’s not only easier but better suited to the task than books. So let’s dispense with the silly, sentimental arguments you often hear about why storytelling is never going to go electronic. “You can’t replace the feeling of a holding a book,” “I don’t like reading on a screen,” and “I can’t read an e-book in the bathtub” are some of the sillier excuses you hear all the time for why printed books are going to survive until the end of time.

I’m sorry, but “I can hold my entire library in my hand,” “I can download new books at will,” “I can search my entire library in a nanosecond,” “I can instantly send books to my friends,” “I can translate and define words on the fly,” and “I don’t have to devote an entire room of my house to holding my books” are going to trump reading in the bathtub any day of the week.”

Well worth a read. Now compare and correlate with Jason Stoddard’s recent posts on the future of creative writing … start with this one about creating fully featured alternate realities:

“What do you think this is? This is 100% writing – and this is some of the most powerful writing you can do. Instead of blogging about your dogs and your vacation schedule or how the world is going to hell to create a post every day, turn some of that energy towards this!”

And then move forwards chronologically through the next four posts or so.

And then … discuss, be you writer or reader!

Related posts

• China embraces the digital novel (0)
• Can shorter books save fiction? (11)
• A New Year’s look at 2007’s science fiction (4)
• 2007 Nebula Award longlist announced (2)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)

Tor author (and sometimes Futurismic blogger) Tobias Buckell has an interesting post talking about the effects of authors giving away their novels. There has been a lot of criticism of the practice by some writers and lots of praise from other corners. But with Neil Gaiman adding his superb bestseller ‘American Gods’ to the list of books you can legally download for free, are people shooting themselves in the foot or will this bring more income in the future through increased readership?

At the moment, it looks like the practice works. Two of John Scalzi’s books are up 20% and 33% in sales since the first one was released as a free ebook by Tor. As Charles Stross has mentioned, the fact that current ebooks are as much as a few hundred grams of chopped down tree, chemical treatment, ink printing, shiny cover embossing, a few thousand miles of transportation, part of the salaries of manufacturers, printers, truck drivers and shop assistants that make up the price of a typical physical book is simply insane. And that’s not even including the price of an ebook reader like the Kindle monstrosity. So until someone comes up with a £50 reader that gives you digital books for £3, £2 of which goes to the author, ebooks aren’t a business model. But they do provide clever authors with the chance to increase their reader base. What do you guys think? Would you purchase a book after you’ve been impressed by the free ebook version?

[image is the cover of Vernor Vinge's novel 'Rainbow's End', which you can find for free online here.]

Related posts

• Contest to design a new e-reader (0)
• Big things are afoot at Tor - major sf publisher goes web2.0 (2)
• Yet more free fiction (0)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)
• Wired interviews the VanderMeers, gives away chapbook (1)

If you went through last week’s Friday Free Fiction, you’d have noticed me mention Tor Books’ new email newsletter/giveaway program.

As good as that appeared in its own right, it seems much more is in the pipeline at Tor - Simon “Bloggasm” Owens has the scoop on this one, complete with anonymous tip-offs from within the organisation. The Tor site will have simple social networking features in addition to original content (fiction and non-fiction) from authors both on and off the Tor roster.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden confirms the rumours:

“The free digital books are exactly what we say they are: an inducement to get people to pre-register as users and allow us to send them emailed progress reports,” Nielsen Hayden said. “The book-length freebies are a temporary program slated to run from now until when we launch.

Although the site will be ‘giving away’ a lot of content – indeed, all of its content, as we don’t anticipate any part of it being DRMed or paywalled – the core of the site will not be built around a program of free novel giveaways. That said, we reserve the right to give away free digital books any time we think it’s a good idea to do so. (With the cooperation and consent of their authors, naturally.)”

Best go get signed up, if you haven’t already!

Related posts

• UXO, BOMB DOG by Eliot Fintushel (6)
• MALLORY by Leonard Richardson (40)
• In praise of Uxo (1)
• Friday Free Fiction for October 12th (2)
• Friday Free Fiction for August 31st (0)

A blogger at The Guardian wonders whether the decline of interest in reading could be slowed by reversing the trend for bigger longer books. [Via SF Signal] [image from stock.xchng]

“Readable in a couple of hours, a novella demands far less time than a full-length novel: you can get through them in the same amount of time it takes to watch a film or two reality television programmes. If you read one in bed you can actually finish it in one go, as opposed to reading the same few chapters repeatedly because you keep forgetting what you covered the night before.”

Perhaps she has a point; she also mentions that writing novellas forces the writer to be more concise and economical with words in much the same way as the short story form.

I guess this is a reiteration of the “burst culture” argument - the idea that as our culture speeds up, we only have the attention span to deal with shorter works. But will a change of format reverse the trend, or is the reading decline a generational phenomenon with more complex roots than simple attention span?

How would you “save the novel”? Does the novel need saving?

Related posts

• China embraces the digital novel (0)
• Nobel winner writing new novel online - and giving it away for free (0)
• Dave Edelman says the novel will die (7)
• Big things are afoot at Tor - major sf publisher goes web2.0 (2)
• A New Year’s look at 2007’s science fiction (4)

Besides actually sitting down and, you know, writing (which is the bit I always struggle with), there’s no precise science to getting science fiction stories published. over at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Carol Pinchefsky asks how much value networking has in the tight-knit international community of sf writers and editors.

Meanwhile, Jeff VanderMeer has the inside dope - all the successful genre writers are on drugs!*

[* In case it isn't absolutely clear, both Mr VanderMeer and I are joking, OK? Joking. No lawsuits required. KTHXBAI.]

Related posts

• Online publishing: how can we do it right? (2)
• THE JIMINY DEVICE by Lisa Mantchev (16)
• THE BABY WINDOW by Vincent VanAllen (0)
• Some statistics about the publishing industry (0)
• Should science fiction short stories be more optimistic? (7)

Amazon’s Kindle ereader received a rather lukewarm reception. Although some of the concerns related to the high price of both the gadget and the ebooks ($299 for the Kindle plus prices for books not much cheaper than the hard copies they replaced), a lot of vitriol was directed towards the rather clunky design, which resembled something out of the 70s version of Battlestar Galactica.

Over at ‘Industrial Design Supersite’ Core77, they are having a competition to design sketches of e-readers that might live up to the kind of design standard mp3 players have led us to expect. The competition is open to both computer and hand-drawn designs and is open until Tuesday. If you are interested in an ebook revolution, maybe you should enter your own idea. If not, you can still check out some of the interesting sketches so far.

[via Treehugger, image from the contest]

Related posts

• The internet is a major feature of reducing carbon emissions (13)
• Online publishing: how can we do it right? (2)
• Foldable, crushable Epaper offers glimpse at the future of textual media (1)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)
• The Future of short fiction (6)

FreelancingBlog has collected some statistics that should be of interest to any aspiring writers, of fiction or otherwise. It’s kind of a mixed bag - some of them are quite heartening, like this one:

“Book sales account for 25-30 billion dollars in annual revenue?”

While others make you realise that there’s a lot more to getting published than simply bashing out a manuscript:

“Out of every 10,000 children’s books [written], 3 get published.”

As the post says, you’ve got to have guts and perseverance if you want to make it through.

Any writers among Futurismic’s readers who’d care to share their experiences? [Image by dbdbrobot]

Related posts

• Online publishing: how can we do it right? (2)
• How to be a successful science fiction writer (0)
• Career advice for writers, by writers (1)
• Writing tips round-up (1)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)

As you may have noticed, Paul has been putting lots of links to other online fiction markets over the last week or so - we hope to encourage people to read the stories from all over the interweb. The topic of internet vs traditional publishing has been sweeping the sf blogosphere recently and there are some superb opinions on the subject. Some notable contributions include Erin Hoffman at Homeless Moon, the editor of Clarkesworld, Tobias Buckell, Booksquare on the viability of the iphone as a ebook reader, Paolo Bacigalupi’s superb 5-part critique of the state of the current print mags. Heavyweights John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow and Warren Ellis all helped start the debate.

The print medium hasn’t had such a quick transition into the internet world of the twentieth century, giving it the advantage of seeing how badly its brethren in the music and film industry have dealt with change. By stubbornly trying to hold on to old business models and suing many of those uptaking new technology, music and film executives alienated large quantities of their target audience and only recently has there been movement towards a sensible model. As digital paper and ebook readers get closer to producing an enjoyable reading experience, editors and authors will have to adapt to the digital age too.

The print digital revolution has the advantage of hindsight - we’ve seen how badly avoiding the idea is and have some element of time to start thinking about alternatives. Whether by email weekly story subscriptions, ebook purchases, tipjars for individual stories or community collection before posting, the internet is offering alternatives. I’d be interested to know what Futurismic readers feel about the debate. Of course, we can’t move to a new writing paradigm if people aren’t reading - so travel to some of the links on the side and read some of the great SF out there on the internet already!

[via Tobias Buckell, image from the latest cover of Clarkesworld magazine]

Related posts

• Striking writers look to open new internet ventures (0)
• How to be a successful science fiction writer (0)
• Contest to design a new e-reader (0)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)
• The internet is a major feature of reducing carbon emissions (13)

Opinions are divided among Western authors and publishers as to whether free fiction available online boosts or damages the sales of physical product - witness Pixel-stained Technopeasantry. Wired reports that the book business in China is in fact undergoing a renaissance thanks to the increasingly popular pastime of reading novels online, and that the stories go on to be used in other media like television and computer games. The question is, will the same model work in the West?

Related posts

• Nobel winner writing new novel online - and giving it away for free (0)
• Can shorter books save fiction? (11)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)
• The bell tolls for second-hand bookstores (0)
• SOLITUDE RIPPLES FROM THE PAST by David Reagan (2)

Stephen Wolfram’s immense tome “A New Kind of Science” is now available online, for free, in a really sharp, full color format. I won’t even pretend I’m going to read it, but if I ever do get the gumption to tackle it I’ll probably try it out online before I refinance my house to buy the book. [boingboing]

Related posts

• Where art meets science - the pickled frog webserver (4)
• SciVee - YouTube for science research (0)
• Online publishing: how can we do it right? (2)
• Nobel winner writing new novel online - and giving it away for free (0)
• Contest to design a new e-reader (0)

The science fiction genre is full of authors who, with a few exceptions, understand the value of giving content away for free as a marketing ploy (and we love them for it, too). The same attitude is less prevalent in the world of ‘proper’ literature, but the literary cachet of Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, combined with her enthusiastic adoption of a new publishing paradigm may change that fact. A recluse in real life, Ms Jelinek feels more able to communicate with people online, describing the internet as “the most wonderful thing there is. It connects people. Everyone can have input.” As an experiment into using the internet to raise an author’s profile, I’d say it’s been a success - Nobel Prize or no, I’d never heard of her before now. I wonder if the story’s any good?

Related posts

• China embraces the digital novel (0)
• Wolfram’s Magnum Opus Online (1)
• With Knol, Google enters the knowledge market (0)
• Striking writers look to open new internet ventures (0)
• Online publishing: how can we do it right? (2)