![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinWell, the first chapter of Cat Valente's web serial, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, went up yesterday, a little bit after midnight Eastern Standard Time. It is so full of quotable lines that I dare not quote any of them lest I make the rest jealous.
It's an intoxicating beginning, but it will be a while before the ultimate success of the project can be judged. I know, I know, I've kept saying it will succeed... and some perhaps would argue that it already has, in that it's already brought money and publicity to the author. But as Cat's announcement was picked up and echoed around the web, particularly on Twitter where space is limited and punchier messages travel farther and faster, the message was more often rendered as "my friend/comrade needs help" than "woman of manifest talent has something of unique value to share with the world, and invites compensation from those who enjoy it".
What happened as a result of those repeated calls was incredible and should not be scorned, but it also stands as an example of how an internet community responds to a crisis than as a practical demonstration of cyberfunding as a routine form of income. That's okay. The actual value of The Girl Who, Etc. has yet to be seen by the world, a world that will hopefully keep paying attention even after the initial crisis has ended. I have hopes that as the United States progressively wakes up and people remember to check her site, the first chapter will start to get ReTweets and shout-outs based on its own merit. Once there are a few chapters present I plan on using some of my own advertising reserve to help bring them to the attention of people outside the circle of the literary twitterstorm, and to remind people who maybe caught the initial buzz that there's an actual story attached to it.
This is crucial, because it's going to be the long-term profitability that reflects on the success of the project. Cat's use of language ought to qualify as a Schedule II controlled substance for its addictive qualities, but it's very easy to lose even a very impressed audience when a project like this is new and there's not a whole archive of it to read through. The fact that this particular story is child-friendly opens up one unique possibility for making sure that people keep coming back: their children will insist on it. But I suspect that, initial hoopla aside, the story's readership will really take off once there is enough material to keep the average reader occupied for one hour. Some people can read for five minutes and be hopelessly hooked on something, but few people can read anything for an hour and not desperately need to know what happens next.
Being a very fast reader with a very poor sense of time, I have no idea how much the average reader will read in an hour, which will make it hard for me to judge the accuracy of this prediction.
And, of course, even when it's finished, the full value of the project to its author will still remain to be seen no matter how steady the reader contributions have been. Because she never has to take it down and she never has to remove the tip jar... new readers will continue to find it and will continue to appreciate it.
And readers, new and old, will want a copy of the book that can sit on their shelves, that can be held comfortably in bed, that can be easily managed in airports and coffee shops and on buses, that can be read in the bathtub without voiding a warranty. They're going to want print editions.
(Trust me on this one, Cat. You may feel awkward about putting forward the idea of people paying you to buy a book that they have already read and may already have paid for, but people are going to insist. I'm going to insist, because I really like reading in the bathtub.)
And while the author will certainly have options for producing said volume herself, I hope that through her contacts with small presses and/or the visibility of this project, she can wrangle a deal to have it published through a more traditional means. Yeah, yeah, I know... that seems counter to my rhetoric on the subject. But it would be a tremendous step towards exploding one of the Great Big Lies that is used to discourage self-publishing, e-publishing, and cyberfunded creativity: "If you do this, no publishing house will ever want the results. No publisher wants to buy reprint rights, because no one will pay money for something they already got for free."
It would seem to be a no-brainer for a publisher to pick up a book that has a built-in fan base, that has people clamoring for a chance to buy a copy of it before it's been printed, that lots of people have heard about, that has had steady buzz for months or a year, etc., which is what ...Fairyland... will be by the time it's finished, but it would also be something of an exception to the rules. At least, when viewed as "reprinting a book". In terms of "taking something on the web and packaging it for bookshelves", blogs, webcomics, and humorous or informational sites have been distilled into books before.
So, the only question will be: will publishers recognize this and see the value of being the one who delivers a much-desired product to a willing and eager public?
Actually, by that point there will also be the question of whether or not Cat sees a publisher's contributions to the process as being worth giving up the lion's share of the revenue. Her work is so successful in part because she undertakes to promote it herself, and by the time Girl, Fairyland, Circumnavigated is in the proverbial can much of that work will already be done. All a publisher would really bring to the table at that point is a finished physical product and a distribution system, and the web gives authors access to those things. I know that Cat is friends with a very successful user of Lulu.com's print on demand services (and no, I'm not talking about myself. The print editions of my work are an area I've traditionally underexploited.) I'm sure that she'll find herself with all the support she needs if she decides to go that route.
So, anyway... the project is off to an auspicious beginning, and I predict that I will (perhaps mercifully) not have as much to say about it for a few weeks as it builds in momentum. To make a long story short (TOO LATE!), though, some people will doubtlessly already be declaring victory for the experiment on the strength of the initial reaction and some few people will possibly be declaring the medium and model a failure because the initial reaction was not a practical or sustainable or repeatable response... to both groups of people, I would say that to suss out the level of success of this project, it'll be necessary to ignore the initial response and watch how things unfold over time.
That's something I'm looking forward to doing.
It's an intoxicating beginning, but it will be a while before the ultimate success of the project can be judged. I know, I know, I've kept saying it will succeed... and some perhaps would argue that it already has, in that it's already brought money and publicity to the author. But as Cat's announcement was picked up and echoed around the web, particularly on Twitter where space is limited and punchier messages travel farther and faster, the message was more often rendered as "my friend/comrade needs help" than "woman of manifest talent has something of unique value to share with the world, and invites compensation from those who enjoy it".
What happened as a result of those repeated calls was incredible and should not be scorned, but it also stands as an example of how an internet community responds to a crisis than as a practical demonstration of cyberfunding as a routine form of income. That's okay. The actual value of The Girl Who, Etc. has yet to be seen by the world, a world that will hopefully keep paying attention even after the initial crisis has ended. I have hopes that as the United States progressively wakes up and people remember to check her site, the first chapter will start to get ReTweets and shout-outs based on its own merit. Once there are a few chapters present I plan on using some of my own advertising reserve to help bring them to the attention of people outside the circle of the literary twitterstorm, and to remind people who maybe caught the initial buzz that there's an actual story attached to it.
This is crucial, because it's going to be the long-term profitability that reflects on the success of the project. Cat's use of language ought to qualify as a Schedule II controlled substance for its addictive qualities, but it's very easy to lose even a very impressed audience when a project like this is new and there's not a whole archive of it to read through. The fact that this particular story is child-friendly opens up one unique possibility for making sure that people keep coming back: their children will insist on it. But I suspect that, initial hoopla aside, the story's readership will really take off once there is enough material to keep the average reader occupied for one hour. Some people can read for five minutes and be hopelessly hooked on something, but few people can read anything for an hour and not desperately need to know what happens next.
Being a very fast reader with a very poor sense of time, I have no idea how much the average reader will read in an hour, which will make it hard for me to judge the accuracy of this prediction.
And, of course, even when it's finished, the full value of the project to its author will still remain to be seen no matter how steady the reader contributions have been. Because she never has to take it down and she never has to remove the tip jar... new readers will continue to find it and will continue to appreciate it.
And readers, new and old, will want a copy of the book that can sit on their shelves, that can be held comfortably in bed, that can be easily managed in airports and coffee shops and on buses, that can be read in the bathtub without voiding a warranty. They're going to want print editions.
(Trust me on this one, Cat. You may feel awkward about putting forward the idea of people paying you to buy a book that they have already read and may already have paid for, but people are going to insist. I'm going to insist, because I really like reading in the bathtub.)
And while the author will certainly have options for producing said volume herself, I hope that through her contacts with small presses and/or the visibility of this project, she can wrangle a deal to have it published through a more traditional means. Yeah, yeah, I know... that seems counter to my rhetoric on the subject. But it would be a tremendous step towards exploding one of the Great Big Lies that is used to discourage self-publishing, e-publishing, and cyberfunded creativity: "If you do this, no publishing house will ever want the results. No publisher wants to buy reprint rights, because no one will pay money for something they already got for free."
It would seem to be a no-brainer for a publisher to pick up a book that has a built-in fan base, that has people clamoring for a chance to buy a copy of it before it's been printed, that lots of people have heard about, that has had steady buzz for months or a year, etc., which is what ...Fairyland... will be by the time it's finished, but it would also be something of an exception to the rules. At least, when viewed as "reprinting a book". In terms of "taking something on the web and packaging it for bookshelves", blogs, webcomics, and humorous or informational sites have been distilled into books before.
So, the only question will be: will publishers recognize this and see the value of being the one who delivers a much-desired product to a willing and eager public?
Actually, by that point there will also be the question of whether or not Cat sees a publisher's contributions to the process as being worth giving up the lion's share of the revenue. Her work is so successful in part because she undertakes to promote it herself, and by the time Girl, Fairyland, Circumnavigated is in the proverbial can much of that work will already be done. All a publisher would really bring to the table at that point is a finished physical product and a distribution system, and the web gives authors access to those things. I know that Cat is friends with a very successful user of Lulu.com's print on demand services (and no, I'm not talking about myself. The print editions of my work are an area I've traditionally underexploited.) I'm sure that she'll find herself with all the support she needs if she decides to go that route.
So, anyway... the project is off to an auspicious beginning, and I predict that I will (perhaps mercifully) not have as much to say about it for a few weeks as it builds in momentum. To make a long story short (TOO LATE!), though, some people will doubtlessly already be declaring victory for the experiment on the strength of the initial reaction and some few people will possibly be declaring the medium and model a failure because the initial reaction was not a practical or sustainable or repeatable response... to both groups of people, I would say that to suss out the level of success of this project, it'll be necessary to ignore the initial response and watch how things unfold over time.
That's something I'm looking forward to doing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-06-15 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-15 02:26 pm (UTC)I went to her website and watched the trailer for Palimpsest, which led me to wonderful things (http://www.tabu1arasa.com/). She really is an author of great skill (as is the one that got me into this in the first place) and I liked what I found so much that I ordered her Palimpsest book the same day.
Here's to hoping that her project works out and that we may enjoy her work for years to come.
Celade / Aiten.
no subject
on 2009-06-15 02:33 pm (UTC)And if you liked the music on the Palimpsest trailer, it's available here: http://skinnywhitechick.bandcamp.com to listen to or purchase, along with all the other tracks of the companion album that have been released so far.
(And other albums by
no subject
on 2009-06-15 04:08 pm (UTC)It's funny though, as my "normal" musical taste is very, very different (Industrial'ish stuff), but I did enjoy listening to some of s00j's work.
no subject
on 2009-06-15 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-15 04:04 pm (UTC)If I have to put it out through Lulu I will, but I do hope someone swoops in and publishes it--for that distribution network, which cannot be understated.
no subject
on 2009-06-16 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-16 05:02 am (UTC)