Mmm. Case in point the crazy woman who wrote a novel-length Star Wars fic, then had it printed in book form and was selling it on Amazon.com until George Lucas's lawyers went after her with a cease and desist order.

Precisely. That's just plain flippin' stupid. But, like I said. Hubris and delusions of grandeur. 

Okay, now I have read the whole thread, and I think I see where you guys are coming from. The problem is, you're not necessarily seeing where the fanfic writers are coming from.

I do not hang out in fanfic circles, just Star Trek RPG circles, but I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of fanfic writers don't intend to make any sort of profit off their writings. The ones who do (and I have seen them, at conventions, with really scary pictures of Kirk and Spock doing questionable things with their shirts off) deserve to have the book thrown at them, because they are profiting off of something to which they do not own the copyright.

But for all the folks out there who write about what Harry Potter did between Potions and Herbology and then say, "Hey guys in this fanfic community, look at what I just wrote!" -- they aren't breaking any laws, aren't at risk of causing J.K. Rowling any trouble, and are most likely such bad writers to begin with that no one outside of their particular community will ever give a damn. But hey, they're having fun and expressing their fandom in their own way, and maybe practicing writing regularly like that will make them better writers who can actually string a coherent sentence together. Or not. Who cares?

Just because it exists doesn't mean you have to read it, or appreciate it. But I would encourage people to accept that it does exists and that people do derive a form of enjoyment from it, and as long as they aren't violating any laws by trying to profit from it, then leave them be.

I'm going to post a worst-written line that I heard read at a conference...I don't remember who originally wrote it, otherwise I'd give credit...


"His muscles bulged and twitched like a hoard of hamsters all humping one another beneath a tightly stretched canvas."


And there you have it.

Now, see, I don't see that as bad writing. I see that as well-crafted cheese, extremely vivid and horrendously ludicrous all at the same time. It took a sick and twisted imagination to come up with that metaphor ^.^

The Eye of Argon, however, from what little I could manage to read, is bad. It isn't funny, or clever, just tedious.

Take the class   Knowing how your language works is invaluable to a writer, and will save you time in editing down the road, especially since those grammar checks are often laughable.

Oy. It's good I haven't been cruising the boards as much lately, if things are getting vicious enough to warrant this kind of thread

How about this for a policy?

If things are getting heated, the mods tell the folks who are fighting to back away and cool off so that they can debate later, drop it, or take it into PMs. Maybe the mods could take a crack at mediation (like having someone summarize the other person's arguments) if they think it's necessary. Then, if the parties won't knock it off and play nice, the mods get to use their wonderful mod tools to slap the fighters or close the topic. I would recommend getting more volunteer mods if this kind of thing would be too much for the current staff, but other than the nerd!fury in TV land, I don't think there's been too much beyond the normal debate/discussion posturing.

I think most of us here are polite enough to know when enough is enough and follow something like that. But making a whole new class of thread or board seems like an extreme measure for what should be a matter of common sense and decency.

The nerd fury will die down eventually

Remember, just be polite and actually try to understand (read: open yourself up to the possibility of being convinced) where the other guy is coming from.

If your goal is to actually make money by selling your book(s) online, I would recommend against it. If Tad Williams couldn't make S'march work as a viable e-business, I doubt it is even possible in today's internet climate ^.^

BTW, how'd this sort of venture work out for Stephen King? I think he tried this once, too.

There is also a severe handicap to the medium of online reading. People read text on a screen slower than they read text on a page. In other words, it is physically harder to read words on a computer screen. (Note to web designers, this is also true of text and background colors; a dark background with light text is harder to read than a light background with dark text.)

I think perhaps if books are to become marketable as internet-based documents that authors will have to look at webcomics for a business model. On the other hand, successful webcomics will often have pulp editions, so we're seeing again that paper is powerful. Perhaps if one were to pool together several authors and offer sample chapters from their novels to generate interest, then sell hard copies to loyal readers through self-publishing? That might be a better alternative to just use the net as a marketing tool.

Frankly, I'd be more concerned for the newspaper community than I would the bookselling community. Online media offer an immediacy that daily papers cannot hope to reproduce without their own webpages. But that immediacy is not an essential aspect for enjoying a book, so the net loses that advantage when it comes to selling online novels.

The only other advantage (assuming storage space is not an issue) would be the barrier to exposure, but that becomes a double-edged sword; anyone can publish what they want online, but a person's work becomes dilluted in such a vast market to the point that making any sort of money off it would be impossible without the backing of publishing-house marketing. iTunes hasn't exactly seen the advent of independent music -- it's just another way to get what the record companies are already selling on CD.

Yeah, don't think we'll see the death of paper books any time in the near future.

Quote from: Antimatter Girl on September 07, 2006, 08:14:16 PM

I have a thoery that emoticons will become a new form of punctuation withing th enext two hundred years or so. Because really, there's only so much you can do with an exclamation point and an interrobang.

The problem I have with them is that they don't play well with normal punctuation because they're made of punctuation themselves.  I like them, they really fill a lacking niche, but try using parathenses with them and it messes things up.  So I tend to sacrifice the emoticon when I am using the parenths. (sp, I can't spell this word!)

This is why I usually disable graphical smileys. I hate what they do to my OOC chat (which is denoted by double parenthesis) in my RP game   I appear to be in the online minority on this point, though. Everyone wants to see the silly pictures.

Also, we have prescendent for creating new punctuation out of existing punctuation. Semicolon? Interrobang? Yeah...not so unusual

Quote from: Antimatter Girl on September 07, 2006, 08:07:19 PM

Hrm...is this some new campaign they're on to get new blood in their author pool, or is this the same old drill they usually have?   'Cause if it's new, I know someone who would probably like a look at this, if he doesn't know about it already.

I didn't know there was an "old drill". This is the first I've heard of them actually putting out a call. I got the info from a newsletter for writers. It can't hurt to check it out if one's interested. I don't know if not getting "copyrights" is any indication of what you mean, but they are paying, and well....money's money. Plus the sale would look good on a writing resume.

Eh, I'm assuming there's an "old drill" because my friend has been looking to break into that biz for a while. He even won the Strange New Worlds short story contest for their third year. Anyway, if you're getting advertisements for it in a writers newsletter, it sounds like they're being a little more active than I gather they usually are. I'll go ahead and give my friend the link ^.^