Craftsman, Artist or Professional?

This was inspired by a conversation I had, or at least a couple of tweets I
exchanged, this morning with @digitalfiction.

Is it fiction? Or Content?

Blimey.

But it's an important distinction. Are we doing this for the sake of art
or are we in it for the money? Or both? These days, what is the Writer?

Let me get my personal nonsense out of the way first: if I'm any good as a
writer it's because there is a part of me that wants to be a craftsman.
I'm slightly too cynical to consider myself an Artist (and perhaps too self
conscious to risk making that claim) and I'm deeply suspicious of anything
that sounds like management speak. It sounds like the world is once again
relegating the writer to a mere backroom person, a shadowy figure wreathed
in whisky sweat, swearing and cigarette smoke who emerges from some troglodyte
twilight world clutching double spaced typewritten paper. It sounds like
the delivery mechanism exists to be provided with content, as if the writer
is enslaved by it.

There are writers apparently in thrall to the blank page, who cannot see a
space without attempting to fill it with words and ideas. I am not one of
them, as evidenced by my startling output this year alone. I think the
rest of us write for different reasons.

One of them appears to be theb ability to create short items of almost no value that nevertheless trigger Google to place interesting adverts. A lot of content provision systems rely on this targeted writing, most of which it devoid of character, usefulness, interest or spark. Believe me, I've tried it. It soon palls and you wish you were doing something else. Preferably something creative.

I think this might be a cart before the horse issue. Folks want to make money, preferably not by going to work for someone else in a cubicle. It occurs to them that they have two markets - people who like to read things and people who want to write things. They can probably monetize the website with adsense or something very like it. There are business models that will provide an actual income stream from a site that's set up the right way. At this point, it doesn't matter what the content is. You could, potentially, make money out of bloody awful slash or fanfic (if it
wasn't someone else's IP and the faast route to having your rear sued off by a major publisher or studio), because it attracts a loyal audience. If you include a way for writers to communicate with readers, you've got another reason for people to stay on the site and spend time abnsorbing the ads.

As I said, at this point it doesn't matter what the content is because it's camouflage for the advertising. That's content provision and the sole intention of the site is to provide the owner with an income stream; it has the secondary effect of making amateur writers feel important. I know this because it's the exact reason I've wanted to contribute to similar sites -
you find a market that pays actual money and it makes you feel like a legit writer, no matter how amateur you really are.

So I suspect the answer to whether we are content providers or writers depends entirely on why we do what we do.

It's not only the online world that behaves in this way. The standard publishing industry also behaves in a manner more or less guaranteed to restrict the author. The publishing industry would like more than a few authors to become brand names, because that guarantees sales. This is something I learned from the Fantasy genre, and Dave Langford (way back when he was writing a review column for White Dwarf (which, at the time, was a magazine about more than one game), and I'm showing my age now). Why are there so many fantasy trilogies? Because fans cut their teeth on Lord of the Rings and expect these types of book to come in threes. These days at least threes. Or in multiples of three. Or five. Which makes life really interesting if you've got a really good idea for a stand alone fantasy novel.

The desire for more of the same - the McDonalds Instinct - is the desire for what we know to be comfortable and safe; we will buy what we already know we like. People who refuse to live in that comfort zone are strange, hard to advertise to, and interesting.

I'm straying. Essentially, the publishing industry wants writers to be deliverers of content too and it's a rare author that refuses to stay put (Neil Gaiman seems to pretty much do what he wants when he wants to, and it generally turns out rather well) or finds a place in which to write anything that they want whilst kidding us all that it's another in a long line of similar books. And yes, Terry Pratchett, I am looking at you.

I think those writers who make a decision to stick to what sells are making a rational and intelligent choice, because I would gnaw off my own...ooo...left leg in order to be paid well enough to quit working in a soul destroying cubical and to sit at a computer writing all day. I would! And if I want to, all I need to do is write something that people like and sell it. Then do it again, and again, until someone realises that they can make quite a bit of money from my labours and pays me to stop going to work and to work for them instead.

I'd do it, too.

But where does that leave art? I think the position of writer as artist hasn't changed an awful lot. I think if you're writing for the sake of art, if you're writing for the sheer joy of writing, nothing's going to stop you so long as someone, some long suffering friend or tiny audience, is reading you. Eventually we might find that the artists come back into fashion. I hope so. I'd quite like to see what the Content Managers make of it.

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Digital Britain: Rant Warning. Sweariness ahoy.

The Digital Britain report is out and I'm not convinced by it.

There are good things -

50p a month to ensure 2mbp broadband nationwide by 2012 (just in time to
stream the apocalypse). Nice one.

Three Strike Rule for File Sharers. - not so good. Here's why:

1: Competition.
- no UK ISP is going to hand customers to a competitor. I worked for a
cable ISP in the USA who enforced the DMCA by suspending access and
terminating it for repeat offenders. It worked because we were the only
game in town. No one else was willing to drag the internet out to the cuds
where we did, so if you were busted for DMCA three times, your internet was
GONE and not coming back. If we'd had competitors, there would have been a
different business model. In the UK there are a dizzying number of ways to
get internet service, so if I'm determined to go P2P and get busted, I will
switch provider, be back on line very quickly thereafter.

2: Privacy.
- the way in which you catch a person sharing copyrighted files over a P2P
network is to browse the share folder they keep on their computer. Let's
imagine for a moment that you'd be dumb enough to leave all the illegal
material you own in that folder: the P2P network has access to it, because
that's the point of Peer To Peer sharing: as you download a file you're
also uploading it to other people who are downloading it...and uploading it
to still others. It means that someone out there is using the P2P client,
or something very like it, to wander around looking at the contents of your
share folder. Sure, if you can be identified as seeding a copyrighted file
then you could be in trouble. But otherwise, it's an open invitation for
people to snoop.

In the USA, the DMCA makes it clear that it's seeding and sharing that
people have a problem with: leech all you want!

3: Technical expertise and workarounds.
- I am not a hacker, not even close to being a hacker. Yet even I, less
than a script-kiddie, know more than one way to share a file. The comments
in the Digital Britain report make it seem as though P2P is the only way,
but I know it's not.
- I know that if I want to share files that I shouldn't be sharing, I need
to obscure my tracks on the internet. I can do this several ways. If I
was technically minded, I would do some learning and read up about IP
spoofing. After all, the primary way to track internet activity is by IP
address and if you can hide yours, or make yours look like someone else's,
so much the better. I've seen people become victims of this sort of thing.
- there are legitimate services out there - FTP, Drop Box, newsgroups -
that share information and are specifically created to do so. Sharing
information is what the Internet is about. Unless someone is get all
President Madagascar about the internet and block everything except Port
80, someone is going to find a way to use a legit service to do something
they shouldn't.

Solution?
- Make getting access to your content easy and worthwhile. Do a decent
deal with the artists and creative people for Digital Rights. Recognise
that the internet, and the people who use it, have very little time for
borders and geography. Don't geo-lock content, make it available for
subscription or by accepting the presence of advertising. If your content
is good enough and the service simple enough, chances are I'll pay a fee to
watch a show.
- if you are the artist, look...I have to confess, my relationship with
your art is much stronger when I have a relationship with you. My
favourite writers all have a presence on Twitter, for example, and have
demostrated that they think a bit like I do. Instant connection, and
instant desire to keep them working on their art by...ta.daaaaa! Buying
Their Stuff!
- Stop stressing about Monetizing things. Ferthelovamike, the Internet
does not require monetizing! It is not a place! It is not a product! And
fuck you if you think it is! The internet is a delivery system and a
communications tool. You don't have to monetize it, you just have to have
a product people want to pay for. What a lot of companies are running into
is that people genuinely don't think their products are worth paying for.
- Any old shit you choose to give us is will no longer do.

BBC Shares Licence Fee with ITV and C4
- No. Thrice no and double fuck off.
- for one thing, did the BBC go crying to .gov when ITV and C4 were riding
high? No. Have .gov beaten the BBC like a dog and dragged it around the
yard? Yes. Is a media free from corporate editorial control and also free
from the .gov influence a good thing that we're about to lose?

Yes.

IF ITV and C4 are unable to generate revenue from advertising, because
their programming is unable to capture viewers, I do not want to subsidize
them. They have failed. I'm very sorry about that, because even at it's
worst C4 is head and shoulders above the likes of ABC, and I'm also sorry
that ITV and C4 weren't smart enough to compete with Sky, or Virgin. We
keep being told we are a capitalist nation, and that means sometimes
companies fail. It should not ever be the job of the government to prop up
failing businesses.

It is also a terrible mistake to sacrifice the BBC in order to do it.
The BBC is:

The best news service in the world, although I hear surprising things about
Al Jazeera.
The most comprehensive and consistently the highest quality radio service
in the world. BBC 7 in particular has been a thing of joy - the other
night I lay back, headphones on, tea in hand, listening to Alan Bennett
read "The Wind in the Willows". Glorious. Utterly glorious.

If ITV and C4 cannot compete without sharing in the BBC's revenue source -
which has been an excuse for the forces of .gov to hold the BBC to ransom
over the last decade or so - then they have failed as ventures. If C4 is
the natural home of digital innovation, why do I not ever visit a single C4
website? Why do I never hear about the exciting things they are doing?
And why are we going to punish the BBC because they failed?

If we divert funds from the BBC, we stand to see a drop in program quality.
I for one am not willing to miss out on stuff like Top Gear, Doctor Who,
Ashes to Ashes, Being Human and a variety of other shows the BBC has
produced in the last few years. I don't want talent shows, or reality
shows. I want stuff like the BBC's poetry season or QI. Stuff, in other
words, that if I know where to look I can find online. Because people
think it's worth sharing and preserving. A lot of it...most of it...seems
to be BBC content.

It argues that people are not generally keen to share the output of other channels because it's of a limited appeal. Folks in America are generally very impressed with BBC output, and some stuff from elsewhere - Primeval ( now cancelled! Booo!) and Skins, for example.

Enough of this for the moment.

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I own an e-book reader!

I said I wouldn't buy a Kindle.

Actually, I bought a Kindle 2.

The Kindle DX was too expensive; this was the sole reason for not
pre-ordering it, although now I read a few of the reviews I'm wondering if
I didn't make the right choice anyway.

What I wanted was an e book reader that would replace my library of
paperbacks, because I keep being parted from my nests of books by my habit
of relocating. The idea is that if I get a reader with enough space I can
have as many books as possible and take them all with me. The Kindle 2
holds 1500, which seems like a suitably vast amount. Even with my
compulsive need to fill all available storage space with stuff (which is
why my PC's hdd and the external HDD and my various flash drives are all
crowded) it's going to take me a while to fill 1.4gig with e-books.

And indeed it will. I went through a total frenzy of finding, downloading
and in some cases converting free ebooks into Kindle readable format. I
have well over 100 ebooks now, and I have noticed a couple of things
already.

Firstly, the Kindle 2 itself:

- it's light, easy to handle, I'm not bothered about page turning. It's
as simple and as satisfying to click a button as it is to turn a page. It
has the advantage that, when I'm reading in bed and drop the book, I don't
lose my page. The disadvantage is that I can't turn quickly to a section,
but I haven't investigated the possibility of marking spots I want to
return to yet. The Kindle2 has a variety of functions that I haven't
played with yet, and these are fast becoming things I am saving for wet
Sunday afternoons (not that we get many in Phoenix). I also want to
question the wisdom of having the manual in the reader, even though it's
well set out and seems to contain all of the examples you need to figure
out the operations it describes.

I have, of course, played with the wireless settings. Books really do
arrive in a minute or less, which takes the waiting out of ordering stuff
online. That delay to gratification was always an issue with a
biblioaddict like me, and now I can get most of the things I want
immediately.

The web browser is primitive and the screen not well suited to reading
anything but the simplest human readable text. Which, honestly, is for the
best. I have managed to navigate some picture heavy sites by kicking the
browser into Advanced mode - and the e-ink screen is not well suited to
reproducing colour pictures, nor websites with dark backgrounds. It's
worth using the links to places like Wiki, and it will be worth my while to
pop back to one site in particular to change my preferences to make it
kindle readable. Why?
Well...to have an electronic book through which I can access The
Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, essentially, geek heaven. So I want
to. I think the Kindle will be able to read the site properly if I use
Brunel instead of Classic Goo.

But think about it - I can access the Guide via an electronic book. How
Douglas Adams is that?

I haven't tried the text to speech feature, although if I can find a copy of
"A Brief History of Time" I might have the Kindle read that to me.
I also haven't tried using the Kindle 2 as an MP3 player, because I already
have one of those. It's nice to know I can listen to Audiobooks, but, as I
said, I have an MP3 player which packs a couple of gig more than the
Kindle2, so I shall save the space on the K2 for actual books.

In short, it's easy and pleasant to use. I'm not getting into the politics
of the Kindle2, the DRM nonsense et al - please see the collected works of
people like John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow for the full SP - they know far
more than me.

The other thing the Kindle2 has opened up is the real utility of the
Creative Commons Licence, and it's also had an effect on me.
I admit, free is my favourite price. And I also admit that I'm unhappy
about having a copy of something I haven't paid for, and therefore it is
lovely to see folks like Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi
making stories and, indeed, whole novels available under Creative Commons.
The side effect is that I now want to buy their books.

I do! I want the physical object as much as ever and the Kindle is a nice
way to have a portable version. But when I'm settled again, and have
bookshelves, a priority will be given to buying the works of authors I have
read and enjoyed thanks to Creative Commons.

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