So rather than giving fans what they ask for, I aim to give them what they should have asked for. If you follow my drift.
]]>So you're going the Apple way instead of the uSoft way.
Can't say I disapprove... :)
]]>(Of course, it won't be sustained. Got the copy edits for "Neptune's Brood" arriving next Monday. But still, I should make it to the 75% mark before then ...)
]]>Setting aside what our kind host hates and why, Amazon's self-publishing model has somewhere between zero and negligible effect on Charlie's income. Publishing isn't a zero sum game. And while he may be competing with the slushpile-as-Kindle ebook to a certain degree, he has the advantage of being a name brand author. (There probably are other factors contributing to Rule 34 outselling my novella on the Kindle, such as minimal audience overlap, but this is the main one. It's safe to assume no one is going to go to Amazon looking for a Charlie Stross novel and by a novella by Keith Edwards instead).
The only thing that could effect his sales would be a failure to fulfill his end of a contract, that is, failure to write the next book and deliver it on time (there's an element of quality control as well but from the books I've read, he's got a solid handle on the consistency issue).
And Amazon's model offers those writers like myself who have yet to secure a contract with a publisher an alternate model of doing so. However likely that may or may not be compared to the traditional route of getting an agent and/or surfing the slushpile at the publishing house of your choice is a discussion we could have, but probably shouldn't as it would involve a lot of wild speculation on the part of all parties.
]]>But also skullfuckingly brilliant. Let's hope that you can fit "a couple of years" non-linearly into a smaller time frame :-)
Looking forward to robot bankers in the meantime!
]]>On some of my more cynical days I wonder whether some variation of this strategy would make money.
This, of course, would be a f**king awful book... but would it be so bad that it wouldn't make it's money back... Seeing some of the kindle stuff that comes out and apparently makes money I sometimes wonder...
]]>You could perhaps hook this up to the TV Tropes website and add a sprinkling of tropes into this. They might even be selectable.
"Needs a bit more Applied Phlebotinum, less Ermine Cape Effect."
This might go on towards a real AI too much, though.
]]>* Outsource the writing of scenes to Mechanical Turk in parallel. Give the slaves a style guide to work with and the generated plot so they have some context.
That's one of the standard "accusations" against the dime novel variety of e.g. science-fiction. But then, the historiography around specific authors undermines this somewhat...
]]>I am not sure that the post-crash world of publishing is so devoted to that sort of book, but I can see how Kindle-like tech could open a market for that sort of series-fiction. I've seen some not-very-competent Kindle things which would fit the Perry Rhodan model, a regular novella, but the quality sucked.
While I was in hospital, I heard that Amazon had changed its handling of tax and royalties. I couldn't see it being worth getting embroiled with the US tax system, which was the necessity of Kindle Publishing the last time I checked. I shall have to check that, my source could have misread something.
]]>