>>> Item number 21731 from WRITERS LOG9312A --- (178 records) ---- <<< Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 18:00:04 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: TECH: electronic publishing [long - background, and nonsense, and so forth. Darn it, this is a hot topic for me...] (just to resurrect things - Ed Tully suggested that he had a plan and so forth for electronic publishing. Then...) JE4520@ACSPR1.ACS.BROCKPORT.EDU (Jane Hamilton) wrote: - I think that the downside to electronic publishing is that it can be - easily copied, after which the author gets no royalties whatsoever. - I know that books can be photocopied, but at far greater expense to the - "pirate." (see below - hint: I agree it can be easily copied. I consider that an advantage!) - I might be wrong, but that's what the local electrical engineer told - me. (Can electronic publications be protected against this?) - Jane H. tully@CSCNS.COM (Ed Tully) answered: - There is no protection against that kind of pirate. Howevr, intellectual - property is protected by copyright law. And if someone is going to copy - your work and publish it, it usually means it's good and it will show up - on the marketplace as a copy. And the copyer has more troubles than he or - she can handle. I don't know if that gives you a greater comfort level or - not. aw, come on, Ed. First - there are ways to do protection. Most of them are miseries (funky little plugs that fasten to the machine, weird password/date/hidden file stuff) AND they often make the software less reliable. Personally, I refuse to touch software that uses this kind of nonsense, and I would refuse to touch "writing" that is similarly damaged. But - again, you don't have to do things so simply. For example, I suggested that the net be used to "bait" readers - with first chapters, for example. Then follow that up with a floppy, CDROM, or hardcopy WHEN they send money. No protection on that first chapter - in fact, you want people to spread it around! Second, let me suggest - royalties are the "established practice" for paying authors. HOWEVER - go back a ways and there were other methods (patrons, etc.) Look around, and there are many ways to set up the monetary bit. Personally, I'd like to see CDROM (roughly up to five hundred - 500 - novels on one) take off, but the big problem is pay. Say you put 500 novels on one disk, and sell it at 50 bucks a disk (MAJOR PROFIT FOR MAKER!). That means the reader pays 10 cents per novel. most authors would be rather upset at getting even 50 percent royalties at that rate! For that matter - put 50 on it (WASTE THE SPACE!), and the reader pays 1 dollar a novel. Now, maybe, you can pay the authors a bit, and still make the rest of the economics work. And, frankly, while people may cheat some, the pain of copying some 50 megabytes of data versus popping for another copy of the CDROM will stop most of that. (consider - 1 megabyte floppies run about a dollar each in bulk - that CDROM is massively cheaper!) So - I expect to start seeing people doing the old "fixed fee" novels (e.g. Tom Swift I know used to be written this way - free-lancers got a set fee), then turning around and dumping a whole set on CDROM. Or maybe we'll do patrons again. What the heck - suppose PANASONIC or some other big company said they'd pay you XXX for a novel, and they package the whole thing? you going to turn them down? Third - are you old enough to remember the video tape debates? when the movie industry, television, and nearly every lobbyist around (including writers lobbyists, I'm sorry to say) said that video tapes would DESTROY the market? All that unauthorized copying, you know? Guess what - as far as I can tell, the video tape market brought the movie and television industries back to life (they were sinking not too many years ago!). Unauthorized copying runs rampant - and I think smart movie and television people are happy that it does. I'll quit sniping - the point is, while there are (stupid) ways to do protection, I think the better approach is to reshape the economic system - and start using the media without crippling them! - Another question that also needs to be addressed is the loss of first - rights to publish by the hardcopy publishers. You could not give them - that if you publish electronically. I forgot to mention that as a downside - to my posting of yesterday. Everyone keeps saying this, and it is WRONG! First North American Serial Rights, like most salable services, is defined as part of a contract. I have talked to lawyers about this, and basically they doubt that anyone has defined whether electronic pubs are also serials or not. If the services or product being sold change, the contracts can change. Frankly, I expect to see either (a) more definition of specific forms - i.e., an author might sell Hardcopy Rights, Film Rights, Video Rights, Electronic Network Rights, etc. independently or grouped; (b) more "cross-media" sales - i.e., when you sell it, you sell rights to all media, from electronic to hardcopy, movie to musical; or, maybe, (c) more attention to resale rights. Right now, it is not unusual to sell FNASR to one place, then resell the rights for secondary, etc. publication. Shoot, people sell paperback and hardback publication rights separately - and that's much closer than electronic and hardcopy. Book and magazine rights often are separated! Give the lawyers half a chance - they'll divvy up the rights into so many splinters you won't have any troubles. GINER@NYUACF.BITNET (Roger Giner-Sorolla) also mentioned: - 3 objections: - 1. Turnaround time would be too long between paying and getting the novel. - Payment has to proceed via snail mail, and the "impulse" factor in book buying - is a strong one. (If it were something like a book club, though...) I can tell you how my book club handles some of that - snailmail the first "registration" which includes a CREDIT CARD AUTHORIZATION. From then on, impulsive email can easily buy things. I've also suggested that I think the real trick is putting a significant chapter out on the nets. Give the readers a good chance to hook themselves on your writing, then tell them that for the rest of the story, they should send xx to this address... - 2. An entire novel might be too big for most people's e-mail accounts. Also, - I'm not quite used to reading novel-length works off a screen, or as a sheaf - of manuscript. this is another part of what I expect to see - first chapter hooks you, you send money (or whatever), then you get a copy of a book. How about an instant bound copy on 5.5x8.5 inch paper, Roger? I've seen postscript packages that will print a book on demand (with newer printers, doublesided!) - 3. E-publishing might work better for a known writer with an established fan - following, like King, because his/her devoted followers can be expected to - readily leap the above hurdles to get Exclusive Output. For us mere mortals, - it might be a less fruitful endeavor. I see personal epublishing as a way for the author with the smaller audiences (from one up!) to go. After all, you have already (probably) written the thing on a computer - how hard is it for you to make a disk copy (or hard copy) and mail it? Consider that the small audience is unlikely to hit all at once, so you might be doing one or two copies a day - at four dollars a pop? it ain't much (maybe two dollars profit), but it is a lot better than NOTHING! - Perhaps a better idea might be an e-mail magazine, with serialized novels and - novellas, and short stories too. People can pay for a subscription once and - not have to worry about it, and the material would be easily enough digestible - on the screen. Still, the mag would have to establish some kind of reputation - as offering a consistently good product, in order to thrive. -- Roger sure - and we're starting to see some of those. Hey? could you take a look at 020407 TECH: Sharewrite - A dream? 020862 Re: TECH: Sharewrite - A dream? send LISTSERV "/ship writers 20407, 20862" to get copies, then let me know what you think. Or do you really want me to pull up the old copies and dump them on the list again? Ed - my biggest objection/concern is simple. Why should an author bother giving you part of his take when he can do it himself? Why don't you lay out your plan - or send me a copy so I can see what you are talking about? tink