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I like science fiction, mostly what is called hard sci-fi, and I tend to shy away from fantasy, but recently I’ve begun to wonder if some of the science fiction I read isn’t any more fantastic than the stories that are inhabited by Elves, Dwarves and magic.
Books
Novels that are based on the science we currently have (sometimes extrapolated) could well be a lot closer to the true idea of science fiction than those that work with ideas that could never happen.
Teleportation and hyperspace are a couple of good examples. Man’s current understanding is that these things will never be possible (wormholes are a slightly different matter). Therefore, is it right to have them in science fiction stories? What’s the difference between a technician flicking a switch so the main character is transported to somewhere else on the planet and a mage calling out an incantation to achieve the same result? I suggest that there is nothing, other than the clothes the two scenes are dressed in.
By that reasoning, should true science fiction be limited to those stories that take a current theory and work it into a plot?
I’m not entirely convinced, given that I do like space opera I would rather not file it in the same category as sword and sorcery, but it’s certainly food for thought.
Cory Doctorow’s (@doctorow) experiment might work, but not for long.
I won’t reiterate everything Cory Doctorow has said (you can read the full details here), but the upshot, if I understand it correctly, is that he is giving away his new book in as many formats as possible, while at the same time it is being published in a normal paperback version. He will then make all of the revenue available for people to scrutinise. The aim is to see if the free approach, one he has always espoused and stuck to, hurts his physical sales.
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I like the principle behind what Cory is doing, and I’m pretty sure it’ll work out okay for him, but I’m also convinced that if the experiment were run again in ten years time the result would be drastically different.
My reasoning behind this is simple: there are far more people (who want to read his book) that don’t know how to access the free variants, than there are who do. That is to say, that although a lot of the world is now plugged into the internet, many of those people have neither ability nor inclination to download an eBook or audio version.
For example my group of close friends range from their late twenties to their early forties (about twenty people). All of them have at least one computer and many have internet connected mobile phones and iPods of some kind. Only one has an eBook reader. Two listen to audio books. Some have tried reading online, but that has only been on the odd occasion and certainly hasn’t continued.
My point is that the majority of people are in this position. They neither have the knowledge nor the inclination to use one of the new forms of book distribution and so the likelihood is, if they want to read a novel they will go out and buy it.
Jump ten years into the future and I suspect you will see a very different world; one where eReaders and audio books are far more mainstream. If you want to do a fair comparison now, put printed books on sale next to free versions, then see which ones fly off the shelves. In the meantime it’s good practice to make your work free online as long as you have a priced paper version as well.
(I could have misunderstood the idea behind Cory Doctorow’s experiment, in which case ignore the references. My thoughts about how free eBooks alter remain as stated.)
More thoughts on combating the theft of books and eBooks.
(This is the second part of my thoughts on the matter. The first section can be found here.)
While it still frustrated me that the publishing industry is not learning from
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what the music companies have gone through (changing the way they make money etc.), there is one obvious and very easy thing authors, agents and the rest, can do to avoid piracy: make downloading legitimate eBooks easy and simple.
It is my view that a large proportion of the human race will take things for free if they can. With a big following a donation system will earn you some money, but it’s not going to be anywhere near the same level of income that can come from getting everyone to pay a small fee. And the simple fact is that most people don’t mind paying a low price for something they want.
The key is to ensure that getting the product, and paying for it, has to be quick and easy. More to the point, it has to be easier than getting the same thing for free.
Torrents suffer from a number of problems: the software isn’t fool proof (a seventy year old can just about understand iTunes, but uTorrent is something that is beyond their reach); the quality of the download is variable; the format it comes in isn’t always going to work with the software you own; getting exactly what you want is not that easy when the file name is all over the place.
The answer for the book industry, I would suggest, is not to get caught up in DRM. This only makes it difficult for people to do what they want and pushes them towards the illegal material. What they need to do is make stories easy to get, easy to pass around and easy to pay for. Crucially they need to make it easier than getting hold of the illegal stuff.
Combating the pirating of books and eBooks.
Part One
There has been, and I sure will continue to be, plenty of discussions about the illegal book market now made available by torrents. I’ve posted comments on a number of them and it therefore seemed only right that I finally put my opinions down in my own space.
Before I start, I’ll give you some background so you can understand how I’ve come to my conclusions. (I’ve also split this into two parts as I’m sure I’m not the only one who dislikes reading long blogs.)
Pirated software has been around for longer than the web, but when the internet first appeared torrents were the place people went to get it, everyone used IRC or Usenet. (Interestingly these methods of distribution are still available, they are just less well known of. Okay, so neither is as fast as a torrent, but you can still get almost everything you want and there is less monitoring done on those networks.)
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When I was younger I got my music in many forms and a lot of them weren’t legal. I’ve taped stuff off the radio, done cassette to cassette copying, borrowed CDs from friends and copied them onto MiniDisc or computer, and even had a go at downloading. In more recent years, however, I’ve returned to buying CDs. By doing this I know exactly what I’m getting and I can do exactly what I want with it.
Until recently I couldn’t do the same thing with tracks I’d purchased from iTunes or other stores. Now, finally, music companies have realised that restricting things isn’t going to win anyone over. Sadly they’ve only learnt this because others have forced it on them.
How does this tie into the book publishing industry? At the moment getting an eBook is neither cheap nor easy when compared to getting a paperback. The Kindle has helped and other eBook readers are starting to catch up, but there are no standards, no one format that is available from every online store.
If I buy something from Amazon the eBook is locked down with DRM. I can’t take it off my Kindle and pass it to a friend who has a Sony reader. Compare this to what I do with a paperback (in fact, not only what I do, but what many people do). I buy the book, read it and if I like it I pass it to one of my friends. They read it and likely then go out and buy other novels by the same author.
My instinct with any book, or music track, isn’t to instantly pirate it in some way. All I want to do is share what I’ve enjoyed with other people. As others have said before, restrictions put on the digital format of media presumes from the get-go that I am going to do something naughty with it. While I don’t find that offensive I do find it annoying and it pushes me closer to using something that is already illegal, but that I can do more with.
(Part two on Friday 23 October 2009)
There are only two novels I’ve started reading and then never finished. There used to be three, but I revisited one of them.
Books
That first one I actually struggled with was Cyteen by CJ Cherryh, but the first book I never got to finish is from a lot further back in my past. I was fourteen. I’d been reading books my father would get from the library. They were mostly science fiction. I absolutely loved them.
One such novel was about a group of people who were miniaturised and sent to live in a house. It was along the lines of The Incredible Shrinking Man; just the type of adventure story boys enjoy. Sadly, I was only halfway through it when my dad, not realising I was reading it, took it back. My memory is vague as to why I never told him I wanted to finish it, and sadly I still don’t know what the title was.
Cyteen came a lot later. With this one the story was too in-depth for me. It failed to hold my attention and I put it back on my book shelf. A few years later I took it on a long holiday (thinking it would keep me occupied for at least the first two weeks) and I read it in a matter of days.
The only one I have never returned to was called Skinners. It was science fiction, but I’m unsure about the plot. (I’ve looked at the books with this title and I don’t think it was any of them.) I do believe I have the details of it buried in one of my archives but I’ve not checked.
Apart from these three, I have finished everything I’ve started, from books that dragged to those that really disappointed. There are certainly some I’ve given far less regard to than other, ones I’ve flipped through, but I have completed them.
If only I could track down those last two I’d feel like I hadn’t walked away from any book.
Should I read science fiction if I’m writing it?
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The question occurred to me a while back when I heard one author say that he did not read books from the genre he was writing in. I can understand his point of view. I’m sure there are very few writers who can claim they have never been influenced by something they’ve read.
The problem is, I like science fiction and if I was to give it up I’d be rather unhappy. There is also the fact that anything I read, listen to or see is bound to influence me in some way. My job as an author should therefore be to edit those various inputs making sure that no one thing over rules everything else.
The one thing I have decided to do is keep my selection of reading material as wide as possible. I’ve recently finished a romance novel (it was solid chick-lit and rather good to boot), I’m halfway through a psychology book and the rest of my reading list is distributed between science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction.
The problem of not reading enough books has now been solved; well and truly.
Books
A couple of months ago I became very disheartened about the amount of books I was reading. In years gone by I read plenty, but I’ve suffered from a shortage of time as many people do. I’ve gone from reading a novel a month to barely two a year.
Something needed to be done and therefore Wednesday nights became reading night. Once each week, at around 20:00, I shut the door to the study, put iTunes on random and disconnect myself from all forms of electronic communication. I then read for two hours.
It doesn’t sound like a lot, but since starting this regime I have already finished two books and I’m close to getting through a third.
There have been some interruptions along the way, but on the whole I’ve managed to stick with two hours of reading each week. It’s simple and it makes me happy; things one should never shun in life.
After mentioning eBooks being corrected as readers spot errors (here), something else occurred to me: service packs are issued for software, they add value to what you’ve already paid for (in theory); sometimes they are free and sometimes you pay a small amount for them. So, is there anything wrong with authors doing the same thing for their readers?
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If you’ve purchased an eBook how nice would it be to get a free piece of flash fiction (less than 1,000 words) by the author about the same characters (or a side plot)? If it was a longer story would you be happy to pay a small price for it?
Knowing how much readers enjoy stories set in the same world I can’t imagine this would fail to gain interest. The workload isn’t even that onerous for the author. A piece of flash fiction takes about three hours to write. That’s from start to the finished article. Three hours, every now and then isn’t that much work and the value it adds to the reader is immense.
Now all we need is an easy way for the author to send updates out to the Kindle without having to fight their way through Amazon.
Books
I’m not talking about author platforms or eBooks (well, I kind of am going to mention the latter). What I’m interested in is the speed at which versions of a book come out.
I those dark years when all we had were books printed on paper and the electron powered format was just a twinkle in the eye of the creator, popular books would get reissued every few years. When these new versions were brought out editors would sometimes update sections, making corrections the author, or even readers, had suggested. Now that books can be downloaded, changed on web sites, or even repealed by the publisher, does the version you read today have to be the same as the one I read yesterday?
I heard Jasper Fforde tell a wonderful story about this. During a talk a reader questioned a particular reference in one of Jasper’s books. The reader pointed out that the author had got something wrong. Thinking on his feet, Jasper asked which version of the book the man was referring to. The one I got from the shop, came the reply.
“Ah,” said Jasper. “In that case you’ve got the old version. The new one is available on my web site and that error has been corrected.”
At the time there was no new version, but as soon as he could get to a computer Jasper posted one. Problem solved.
The two questions that spring from this are: is it legitimate for an author to update his book on an ongoing basis, and should he then be able to charge for it?
If your answer to the first part is yes, would you then like to have the publisher update the copy you have already paid for and downloaded (I’m thinking about Amazon’s little 1984 issue)? Maybe you should be given the option to accept or decline the update and offered a list of amendments. And if that is the case would you always read through them, or after a few years of getting used to updates popping up would you just press the ‘okay’ button each time?
Why not read or watching something from another culture?
Film
I’ve heard various ideas around this theme previously. The first (which I’ve mentioned before) was get friends to recommend books for you to read. The idea being this will give you the chance to try a book you wouldn’t normally have picked.
A more recent variation is read three books each year from different cultures. Ideally these should be good translations, but there isn’t any reason why you can’t pick something written in English by a foreign national.
If books aren’t your thing, then try films. You’ll get a lot better understanding if you go for a subtitled movie, but that doesn’t have to mean it must be arty. You might be surprised to learn that action films and love stories aren’t just done for the English speaking market.
If neither of those grab you, then there are plenty of podcasts to pick from and if you dig a bit you can find ones in English.
