My Non-Luddite Rant Over eBooks

Moving stinks, don’t it?

Especially when you possess more books than most county libraries.

This is just the foyer area...
Floor to ceiling, baby

I more than once heard exasperated friends (who’d I'd roped into helping me lug boxes around) ask whether I’d ever heard of eBooks.

Why yes. Yes I have.

See, I’m not really a Luddite. I have the smart phone, I do the Twitter thing (I still think people who tweet should be called twits, just saying)

But gosh darn it, I want to FEEL pages when I read a book. I love the wood pulp smell of my old battered paperbacks, and the dusty tang of all those gilt-edged hardbacks.

And there’s a part of me that doesn't entirely trust digital media.

Not the content, but the technological architecture and it’s susceptibility to manipulation by anyone with either power or an agenda. Since eBooks are a post-Napster commercial enterprise, the architecture is “locked”.

As opposed to, say, MP3s.

You can make MP3s to your heart’s content. There’s nothing really stopping you from playing, copying, distributing or sharing MP3 files—at least not from the technological side. The MP3 was originally a proprietary audio file format designed by Steinberg in Germany; they used to charge a licensing fee to create MP3 files. But no one programmed in DRM so somewhere along the line the genie was let out of the bottle and no power on earth can put it back in the bottle for Steinberg to control.

In other words, you are the master of your MP3 files. Enjoy that, revel in it, cackle a little maniacal cackle if you must.

It is different for your eBook.

Did you know that in 2009 Amazon pulled copies of George Orwell’s “1984” from Amazon AND FROM the eReader of everyone who had purchased the book? (They call that irony) It’d be like a publisher reaching into your bookshelf and removing the book you bought last week. It doesn’t even matter the reason the book was yanked: IT WAS YANKED. Sure, sure, the internet goes berserk when it happens, but this feature is BUILT INTO THE ARCHITECTURE.

Are you picking up the paranoia in my all caps?

Yeah it’s convenient, and yeah it feeds our instant gratification itch. But it’s not really ours so long as the technological architecture facilitates content control by anyone other than the end user.

What do you think, O great expanse of Internet?

Take the I out of 1st person

Ok, firstly, there is nothing wrong with novels or stories written in 1^st person.

But recently I read a book in 1^st person that made me feel the whole time as if the action was in slow-motion as I waited for the main character to narrate what was happening.

The cool premise of the book was killed by removing me from the immediacy of the action through an effect I oh-so-recently called “telescoping”*. (I’m sure some literary professor type knows the real word for it, but I stick to “telescoping”)

* In fact we had a rescue from Hollan, who is said literary professor type, who corrected my totally subjective term "telescoping". The correct term is FILTERING folks, filtering. This post has been edited to remove my egregious misuse of astronomical terminology.

Action should be IN YOUR FACE!

Filtering is when the action happening RIGHT NOW is filtered through the narrator needlessly distancing me, the reader, from the action. (Author intrusion also can fall into the realm of filtering)

Sure sometimes you may deliberately want distance in 1^st person. It can lend a certain cold detachment to certain scenes, or even allow the character to show their bias or coloration of events.

But regardless whether it’s 1^st person, 3^rd person close, or even 3^rd person omniscient, I personally want to feel like the events are happing right here, right now. Not over there to some guy who keeps getting in the way of the narrative. (There’s nothing worse than a narrator who gets in the way of the actual narration!)

Here is my totally heavy-handed and off the top of my head example of filtering.

Filtered 1st person	Immediate 1st person
As I ran down Ventura Boulevard, I could tell that things had gone from bad to worse. I noticed that my stitches had come undone and felt the blood run down my back. I could hear guns roaring all around me and when I looked back I saw the zombies at the far end of the street still coming. Why’d the world have to end in zombies? I thought to myself. I kept running.	As I ran down Ventura Boulevard, things went from bad to worse. My stitches came undone and the blood ran down my back. Guns were roaring all around me yet the zombies far down at the east end of the street kept coming. Why’d the world have to end in zombies? I kept running.

When an author is filtering in 1^st person, the narrator creates distance by “feeling, or noticing, or perceiving that the action is happening” instead of the action just happening.

Am I right here, or am I crazy-cakes?

OK, who put Copyright in my Freedom?

I read an interesting post about DRM and eBooks the other day (for the life of me I can’t find that link!) and one of the things that was talked about was the need for copyright control.

Control is the trick, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve slaved for months and/or years over your songs, short stories, novels, art, and by golly you don’t want someone turning around and mass producing it without giving you a fair cut.

But we live in the digital age. Information wants to be free. The original might be a canvas, or on 2” analog tape, or in a handwritten draft in your drawer, but once you digitize it and put it out there, you can’t maintain control. (and I assume you are putting it out there, i.e. on the interwebz, because if you aren’t you aren’t reaching your potential market. Unless your market is the Amish.)

So, let me say that again.

Once it goes into the world, you have no real control. Not that it’s always right, or fair, or whatever epithet you give it. But it’s true: once you let it out into the world you lose control. (That doesn’t stop people from having the illusion of control and suing Napster into oblivion)

You can’t stop piracy, you can only try to mitigate it.

So do we artists and content providers throw our hands up in despair? Maybe we buckle down and make DRM and copyright laws even more draconian. Or do we turn it all loose like the bands Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who release their albums on a “pay whatever you like” zero-copy-protected creative commons open license?

Let’s go back to the problem of control. One thing to realize is that control is the old-model method for dealing with copy protection.

If the strong arm of the law can’t reign the copy-right violators in, codify the law into computer code (DRM) and force them to obey. The problem in the digital age is that any form of copyright control is like a game of whack-a-mole. DRM? A joke. Hordes of l33t h4x0rs are hunched over keyboards cracking content providers’ DRM as a morning exercise before their real hacks.

Copyright control, as used by the old guard, also has the negative effect of fomenting an antipathy between customer and content provider—comparable to the effect that censorship has on nations (i.e. in the same way that censorship creates more fervent curiosity and subversion, copyright control, such as DRM, encourages more circumnavigation and antagonism)

But there is a new model that seems to work.

It’s been called the iTunes model: Make the legitimate avenue of acquiring the product so easy, simple, so ubiquitous and NORMAL, that piracy is relegated to the outer fringes.

Notice that this model doesn’t try to stop people from copying the content; it just makes it easier and more convenient to buy it legitimately.

One sad truth is that piracy flourishes where legitimate copies are unavailable.

A book that comes out in the US may not come out in Australia for months. An album available on iTunes USA might not be available in Japan.

And if there’s something true about consumers of today, they hate waiting. And sadly there are some antiquated and despotic copyright/licensing laws to thank for that service gap.

Another part of the new model is value-added content, content (special packaging, author extras, personalized content, etc, etc) that can’t be replicated by privateers (pirates) easily. Such content de-legitimizing illegal content providers.

So in the new model, reliable and value-added content delivery mitigates piracy more effectively than methods of copy control. If information really wants to be free, well let's not try to hold back the tidal wave, but instead channel the energy of its inertia to sell content.

Your thoughts?

Delusions vs. Dreams

Some people who think they are writers are delusional.

Sure those of us who write with the goal of being published (and maybe even earning a living at it) are all delusional in a way, but it's not a bad sort of delusional. It's more of a dreaming (with lots of hard work thrown in.) Writers are delusional in a similar way to those who want to be professional musicians or actors. It's a long-shot, but you can actually work hard and hone your craft until you get some breaks.

The short and skinny is that a person who writes, does so because they must. Nothing anyone else can say could persuade a writer not to write. The desire to create with words is a compelling force that they can't deny. It is part of their dreaming self, this need to write which makes them a writer. Getting published is a whole other ball'o'wax.



But there are also those wanna-be writers who are BAD DELUSIONAL. Run from them.

Bad delusional is the guy at the back of the bus who smells like incontinent cats and mutters about being an archangel. Bad delusional is playing slot machines as part of your investment portfolio. Bad delusional is quitting your day job before you even start your first novel because "Hey, I'll get a Stephanie Meyer deal right out the gate."

I once met a guy who claimed to be a writer. I asked him what he wrote.

"Oh, I haven't written anything yet."

Really? Well, if you were to write something, what genre or style would it be?

"Oh, I'm only going to write best-sellers. Or soemthing that would ensure my literary fame. I won't waste my time writing anything else."

And during twenty hubris-laden minutes he proceeded to tell me how terrible every best-seller was, how his would be superior and that he was studying what was hot right now and would just follow the formula of best-sellers to write his guaranteed hit novel. And yes, he told me how publishers would be throwing money at his feet when he told them he was about to write their next block buster.

I never knew people like this existed.

And if you haven't yet seen this video, stop, turn off the music, shut the door, press play and put down the beverage to avoid soaking something.

Writers: Don’t Sign Your Short Story Rights Away With a Bad Contract!

You know that exciting feeling when you get that acceptance letter for the story you sent out months ago on a wing and a prayer? Excitement! You prepare your awards ceremony speech as you glance at the contract and sign it with a flourish before—wait a second! You mean you didn’t read it?

“Well Mason,” you say, “Those contracts are all pretty standard, don’t you know.”
Really?

I recently had a short story accepted by a publisher, but when I got the contract I quickly saw that it would not be in my best interests to sign it.

(As it is, I'm hoping the publisher will negotiate. It never hurts to ask, right?)

The publisher asks for exclusive publishing rights to my work for the full term of copyright.

Not content with just that, the publisher also asks for exclusive rights for the full term of copyright for every known conceivable media form. But I’d only submitted my work for a print anthology.

Like most short story writers I’d like to sell my work as a reprint to some other market one day. But in case I didn’t understand it the first time, there’s a line way down in the copyright infringement section (hidden on purpose?) that tells me that “THE AUTHOR WILL NOT SUBMIT WORK TO BE INCLUDED AND/OR PRINTED IN ANY OTHER PUBLICATION.”

I don't think they wrote an author-unfriendly contract on purpose. But contracts are naturally weighted in favor of the one with leverage.

“You want to get published, right? Sign here.”

But the contract is the final act of negotiation. It sets boundaries that protect the parties involved as they engage in business together. Just like the rest of the negotiation process, a contract can be modified until each party gets the rights, terms and conditions that best serve their interests.

And not all publishers are out to get you. Some have really fair contracts. Some contracts are simply overreaching. But there are some which are exploitative, yet are signed because writers don’t know any better!

Literary agents are great because a huge part of their job is to negotiate the best, most author-friendly contract in the universe. But agents don’t deal with the short fiction market, so us writers are left on our own.
So what’s a more author-friendly rights-granting clause?

What about granting exclusive first North American printing rights [world for stuff being published online] for a set term length? Exclusivity begins with the signing of this contract and lasts for 90 days [or 6 months, or 1 year] after the date of first publication.

Hey look, now you can resell the story as a reprint! And you’re not signing the exclusive copyright over to some little magazine forever! Wow!

But what about if the publisher wants to reprint the story in a “Best Of” compilation? Well, ideally you get paid a reprint fee. Or if you’re feeling generous you can grant them a non-exclusive right to reprint. It can be for however long you want, but I’d rather limit it to a term, say 5 years. Since it’s non-exclusive you still can sell it to other markets as a reprint and your rights aren’t bound up in the publisher who first printed the story.
Another thing to look out for are contract clauses that contradict or effect others in an author-unfriendly way—whether intentional or not.

For example, the contract I got with all the “exclusive rights forever” stuff has one little line buried way down in Article 8 that says (very casually): “ALL WORK SHALL REVERT BACK TO THE AUTHOR ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICATION OF BOOK”

Well it seems that my fears were unfounded, they say the work shall revert after a year. But what about all the “exclusive” and “for the full term of the copyright” language contained in the Rights Granted section? Do we just throw that out? Can we safely forget about it because this one little line exists?

But take a careful look at the wording. The Work shall revert? Or the rights to the work? And why isn’t this clause part of the Rights Granted section? Not to mention that it contradicts the rights already specified.

Again, I don't think there is any malicious or sneaky intent on the publisher's part. It's just a clunky contract. Lawyers make millions on parties squabbling over such contradictory and weakly worded contracts.

So, WRITER BEWARE! Read your contracts. Know what kind of rights you are willing to grant, otherwise you’ll lose’em.

Here’s a helpful copyright and contract clause website for writers and content creators: http://www.keepyourcopyrights.org/ also check out WRITER BEWARE

* Hey! Before you get all clicky on those links, why don’t you leave a comment?

Stop Twittering About It and WRITE

Ask anyone to whom I ever talk writing and they'll tell you that I get a little crazy-eyed.

I'm a bit of an instigator. Mostly I instigate more writing. Sometimes I instigate things like the following photograph.



Back Row, Left - Right: Mason Ian, Mercedes M. Yardley, Hollan Johnson, billie "the girl" bundschuh
Front Row, with intense eyes and a sparkly tank-top of sparkliness: Battle Bunny



I'll let you look at that picture a moment longer.

Yes, I was responsible for that. These are the sorts of antics we get up to at our writers group.

The Illiterati, if you're not one of us, you've never experienced... well... just look at that photo again.

Anyhow, I'm an instigator. But more than that, I've discovered that I'm a motivator. I want to see people live their dream of becoming a writer. It excites me when I talk to other writers.

One of the things I'm always getting crazy-eyed about is: "If you want to be a writer, you've gotta write."

Sounds simple, but I can't tell you how many people I've heard say something along the lines of: "Oh, I'm a writer too, but I don't really have time to write. I used to write in high school, and my mom says it was really good. I'm just waiting until I have more time. I've been working on this novel for 10 years now. I've got a few chapters kinda done."

Among all of this I want to ask them how they have the audacity to call themselves writers.

See, writers write. NOW. Not, they used to write. Not they're thinking of writing, or telling everyone on Twitter or facebook that they write. THEY WRITE. Nothing can stop them from writing. They'd use a sharpened toothbrush and their blood for ink if they had to.

We're not talking about literary merit. That's something for the critics to argue. We're just saying, writers write. It may be dross, it may be plotless and full of Mary Sue characters, but it's been written!

*ahem. I just caught myself ranting. See? There's the proof of my crazy-eyed passion about motivating people to write.

So it was a fun treat to have my craziness quoted over at "Musings of a Scattered Mind" a blog by new friend and self-described geek chick going by the Twitter handle: Asheyna.

Let me finish by saying this: Writers write. They can talk about writing, blog about it, dream about it, and twitter about it. But they also do it.

If ever you find yourself doing more talking, blogging, dreaming or twittering about writing than actual writing, you might want to consider how serious you are about being a writer.

Also you can never ever ever complain about not having the time to write. I bet some of you would weep and gnash your teeth if you compared word-count between twitter and your WIP, or blogging and your still-unfinish-novel.

Do I walk the walk?

Heck yeah, once I click submit I'm turning off the internet and writing. Booyah!