Crowdfunding or What?
So much of the future of media debate concludes with little evidence and much conjecture on how the latest idea or gadget will or will not “save” publishing. Therein lies the problem. The Internet presents us with limitless possibilities. How could anyone believe in a silver bullet?
If a savior is what publishing needs, the best thing anyone could hope for is that more people will draft their wills like Ruth Lilly (she left Poetry magazine 100 million.) Really, the goal should be business models as unique as our creative strengths, but sometimes that feels just as unrealistic.
The trouble I see with crowdfunding for creative projects is not that it doesn’t work, but that it couldn’t possibly work for everyone. First of all, the very act of crowdfunding requires a level of self-assuredness that does not often come naturally for artists and writers. Mikita Brottman, literature professor at Maryland Institute College of Art, talks about the problem her students have selling themselves to the public “I have art students who grasp pretty complex ideas but can’t put them into words. If someone is a great video-game designer or great artist or a great musician, when if comes to speaking about it, if they aren’t articulate, they’re seen as freaks.” This often comes at the expense of grants and other opportunities they are more than qualified to receive, but fail to articulate the need. That point reminds me of something I read about Dr. Suess. He was invited all the time to speak at schools but mostly declined. As a very shy, somewhat awkward person, he worried children would be let down as he does not appear as carefree and spirited as the narrator of his books.
The least remarkable novels I read seem written as though the author knows his mother will see it one day. Imagine an author who feels accountable to hundreds and hundreds of people — context collapse as the death of creativity.
My friend Ed Champion was once explaining the difference between writers who write to write, rather than write to have written. I worry crowdfunding works best for the latter — those who see writing as the means for prestige rather than a greater calling. When I look at my bookshelf, I don’t see a single author who was ever described as “salesman-like” or even “good with people.” In a country where 81% of the population “feel they have a book in them,” there’s already a problem of loud voices crowding out raw talent, with or without crowdfunding.
As Joseph Epstein once put it, “I wonder if the reason so many people think they can write a book is that so many third-rate books are published nowadays that, at least viewed from the middle distance, it makes writing a book look fairly easy. After all, how many times has one thought, after finishing a bad novel, ‘I can do at least as well as that’? And the sad truth is that it may well be that one can. But why add to the schlock pile?”
Last week there was an informal discussion about crowdfunding on Twitter, preserved here by Tim Maly. More from Maly, Michelle Pauli at The Guardian, PD Smith, and Paul Raven at Futurismic. Will Wiles expanded on some of his points in the debate, with a thoughtful post, “I Have Always Relied on the Strangeness of Crowds”. I like his footnote, “Here’s an idea for redistributing the risk in publishing – crowdpledging. How about a publisher says ‘get 1000 people to say they’ll buy a copy of your proposed book, and we’ll give you a contract?’ Could that be made to work?” I also like the idea of publishers, indie or otherwise, using Kickstarter and other crowdfunding methods to find new voices. A writer who is his own cheerleader, probably isn’t maxing out his talent. But so long as demand for outstanding work remains high, there’s still potential for alternatives.
There is no standard format for e-books like an mp3. While Kindle and Nook offer apps for the iPad, you can’t carry a book from one reader to the next. “In certain cases, you can’t read the electronic book you buy from one store on a device supported by a competing store. Similarly, you can’t read e-books you borrow from your library if you don’t have the right kind of device. And there’s a chance you won’t be able to read the e-books you buy today on the e-book reader you own several years from now.” (via.)
Ryan Chapman’s on Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey: “I remember Sam Tenenhaus saying Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 was great because it captured our fragmented, internet-addled expression of reality. I would say Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey does the same. This slim work doesn’t need images, or hyperlinks, or video animations to make it ‘better,’ it’s already at the peak of its art as a novel. It can be tersely described as a Borgesian fan fiction approach to Homer. (This plays well on Twitter.) But I would also argue its episodic structure, sidelong approach to canonical myths – an iterative text built upon the urtext – and its conception by a computer scientist make Zachary Mason’s novel a consummate evocation of the novel in 2010. It contains the modern world, though slyly, furtively.” Wow. More about Mason in the New York Times today.
“There is no culture here in California, only trash. And we who grew up here and live here and write here have nothing else to include as elements in our work. … The West Coast has no tradition, no dignity, no ethics – this is where that monster Richard Nixon grew up. … [O]ne must work with the trash, pit it against itself.” – Philip K Dick. In a six part series, LAT interviews his friends and family giving a good picture of his middle age, paying particular attention to how California influenced his work. Read I am Alive And You Are Dead, if you haven’t yet. And here’s me with the PKD robot. His head went missing not to long after that photo was taken. Besdies Blade Runner, of course, most of his books were turned into unremarkable films…but I hope someone does Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said right, as it’s one of his more slapstick, cinematic novels. Really though, I would love to see someone like Lynne Ramsey or Darren Aronofsky take on Confessions of a Crap Artist.
Siva Vaidhyanathan reviews Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.” Great title, but very flawed thesis is what I thought at his talk at the Berkman Center a few months back. As Vaidhyanathan points out, he sets up the problem in easily relatable way, however the “expiry date” idea is just too neat, I find it hard to believe Mayer-Schönberger is even serious about it. Previously: Save or Delete: Post-Scarcity vs e-Clutter
How to Frame the Internet II: Entertainment and Culture Post iPad
Mainstream since the 50s, but rarely used since the early 80s craze, 3D is now expected of every major movie these days.
Why? You can’t download 3d glasses, let alone an IMAX theater. It’s the staging of an event, a singular experience. Something that cannot be so easily replicated at home.
Likewise, in 2008, I wrote a post How to Frame the Internet, calling for the staging of events online:
The problem I see in terms of editing online content seems to be the absence of “frames.” Time frames as well as frames as a metaphor: ways of segmenting information so it doesn’t overlap with other content or ideas, complementary or not. Creating scarcity when there is abundance and understanding how to work with the desire that grows in anticipation of something.
I can’t remember the comedian — I want to say someone Saturday Night Live affiliated — but he was making a point about repetition in sketch comedy. You tell a joke once and it’s funny (well, sometimes, in the case of SNL.) Tell it again, it’s not funny. Tell it a third time it’s funny again. The next several times it’s really not funny, but if you keep repeating it after ten times and keep going, each of those times the joke is funny (this is, of course, a total perversion of the law of diminishing marginal returns.)
Art filmmakers are aware of the boredom they inflict when they hold a certain shot just a moment too long. Horror films especially are cruel games of anticipation. It is agonizing to watch the girl go down the steps to the basement tiptoe after tiptoe sooooo slowwwly.
The great change we are waiting for, the one that will make newsworthy information part of one’s daily media diet is online content that will acknowledge and work around a user’s lack of patience. This means creating an event out of what is being presented… Make viewers mark in their calendars for it. Make them miss it if they miss it.
Twitter often takes this role. For the past few years, I make a point of watching the State of the Union as it airs, rather than later on in the evening, at a time more convenient to my schedule. Only then can I keep up with the tweets and status updates from friends and bloggers I follow.
In terms of segmenting information, I’m very enthusiastic about the iPad. One aspect in particular is intriguing, and it is the very aspect that annoys Gizmodo so much: No Multitasking.
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can’t have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.
- Gizmodo, 8 Things That Suck About the iPad
Here is the slow web in effect. The opportunity to focus on the one task at hand. Combined with the intimacy of the device, we’re going to see an entirely new way of interacting with information.
It is a more reflective way, one that might even correct some of the signal-to-noise issues we’ve for so long taken as a given of the digital age. Also in 2008, I wrote about how I feel the iPhone (and now the iPad) could gradually kill off some of the more inane youtube comments. From the post Reading Only Devices: Why iPhone, Kindle, and Tablet PCs Might Mean Smarter Blog Comments:
If more and more people start reading online media on mobile phones and Kindle, the incentive to leave a comment will go down dramatically. Do you really want to save this post for later and comment in a couple hours? Or do you want to struggle with writing something on the inadequate keyboard?
We might also see growth in devices that divorce writing from reading… A computer is designed to do both things at once so you no longer even think of reading while writing as multitasking. Often times the experience of writing an email is consuming and processing at once: as the message you are writing and the message you are responding to are in the same frame. I’m not old enough to remember the conventions of handwritten letters, but I doubt my grandmother sat at her desk composing a letter to her friend with her friend’s prior letter folded above it, going line by line, making sure she’s responded to every question in sequence.
The keyboard is closer to you than the screen. Many of us scroll the screen with the same keys we compose letters. It’s wonderful in that it has made us a more literary culture, but it also means a lot of great stuff gets lost in the abundance of online text.
If Kindle becomes more popular, and more laptops start including tablets, I think users will grow accustomed to reading without having to add their .02 once they get to the end. Which means those who do, might have something really interesting to say.
I actually prefer my iPhones inability to multitask. It’s putting a constraint on me… and my worst multi-tabbing, unfocused habits. If I can’t so easily navigate to another app or another page, I won’t.
The iPad is effectively dividing two experiences: reading and writing. This means actively listening to another person’s words, and having the time to think of what to say before typing. This is better communication. This is the future.
Previously:
Charlie Huston’s “Sleepless” reviewed by Ed Champion: “The sleepless are doomed to an early mortality, but this doesn’t stop sleazy Hollywood producers from recruiting them as extras. Nor does this hinder predatory industries, both on and off the Dow Jones grid, from tempting this withering demographic with shiny new pharmaceuticals. In one of Huston’s sly satirical jabs at the overstimulated life, the sleepless flock to an addictive multiplayer online game called Chasm Tide, where virtual economies bloom as real currencies flounder.” This book sounds incredible (especially at 4.23am EST) Previously: Who Needs Sleep?
Movie studios and publishing houses are rarely open to unsolicited manuscripts, due to fear over plagiarism charges dating back to when Art Buchwald sued Paramount for stealing his idea for “Coming to America.” “he slush pile has been transferred from the floor of the editor’s office to the attaché cases of representatives who can broker introductions to publishing, TV and film executives.” WSJ recently explained. Previously: Panning for Gold as Reading and the Creativity of Outsiders, Crazy Artists, Crazy Authors, and Blog Comments as a Slush Pile Unfiltered
Sarah Weinman has a great essay in the Believer this month about an author you’re going to want to read next: Don Carpenter. More on her blog: “He never deserved to be forgotten.” Weinman explains he was a regular at the San Francisco dive Enrico’s in the late 60s along with Richard Brautigan and Evan S. Connell, another unjustly forgotten author (”one of the first to put the literary scalpel to the suburban skin,” as Greg Bottoms once put it in Salon.)
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