drewbear | "Naked Truth"

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"Naked Truth"

I'm currently reading "Naked Empire" by Terry Goodkind, the 8th book in his "Sword of Truth" series, and I've gotta say that it's getting tiresome. The first few were entertaining, but both this one and the previous one ("Pillars of Creation") are just chock-full of pages and pages of his personal political feelings dressed up in exposition. When I can skip 3 pages of pure dialog, in which one or more characters expounds on the delights of libertarianism (not explicity stated, but in essence) and other characters are immediately swayed to that point of view, and still miss none of the plot, there's a problem. Of course, with a 700+ page book, you need filler, right?

In closing, I wish to place a curse upon Robert Jordan and his frickin "Wheel of Time" books, which showed publishers (and authors) everywhere that a long, meandering, essentially endless series of increasingly lengthy and trite fantasy novels will sell in massive quantities. If you read fantasy or science fiction, when was the last time you read a really good, recently published, original, stand-alone novel in the genre? Yes, I know that there are good series out there, but where are the good stand-alones?

All book publishers want to see profit, which means that they need to sell the most popular books they can. Lately, this means series. Especially series with already established fanbases, like Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, etc. And while good books can come from such series, most of them are mediocre at best. Science fiction, especially, is getting dumbed down, to the point where many books & series are essentially fantasy novels with "hyper technology" taking the place of magic. (Yes, Clarke's Law, I know.) The truly innovative writing is usually being restricted to short stories or novellas, because authors can't sell longer, novel-length pieces to publishers, since "everyone knows that those don't sell", which means that if you want a fix of the good stuff, you either go to the short story mags or settle for the lesser stuff available on the shelves, which just reinforces the cycle.

I've read suggestions that Internet publishing will fix all this, but I've yet to see any convincing explanation as to how. As all of you know, the ratio of "info you want" to "crap you slog through" online is at best 1:20, and probably much worse. So how am I suppossed to find the quality works among the spam, porno pop-ups, and really, really, really bad fanfiction? Word of mouth could work, as it does in certain fanfiction and slashfiction circles, but we still have the problem of finding referrers we can trust. Vicious cycle.

Now from the other side: If I, as a writer, want to get some compensation from my online works, how do I get it? Selling access to a site is problematic due to 1) technical issues which I don't want to have to deal with, and 2) human nature. I won't go into the technical issues, so let's investigate the human ones instead. Internet users, whether casual websurfers or hardcore l33t, don't want to spend money on site unseen (pun intended). But anything that you make freely available has the potential to become immortal, i.e. copied onto so many places that you can't recall it if you tried. And (brief delving into tech issues) unless you code it so that users can't save the written work for later perusal (which would seriously piss them off, anyway), all it takes is one "fan" or screwhead making his/her copy available for free to make your hard work all for naught.

"But information should be free!"

Bullshit. Inidividuals may choose to make their works, whether written, artistic, musical, or otherwise, freely available. But that does not mean that individuals who choose not to make their work freely available are wrong. Everyone wants recognition for their efforts, in the form of feedback or site hits or guestbook entries or, yes, money. And so long as they are not poaching on previously owned intellectual property, I see nothing wrong with the desire to be paid for your work.

...okay, I don't know where that came from. I stand by everything I said, but I honestly only intended to write my impressions of "Naked Empire". {reading back over it} Okay, I want your comments. Tell me if you agree or disagree, tell me what alternatives you can think of, tell me about the good/crappy stuff you just read. Talk to me people; it's that feedback recognition thing I talked about earlier.

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You may thwap me for these recs, as you see fit.

I'm rather starved for discussion, and I agree with you about Robert Jordan -- and I haven't even truly attempted Terry Goodkind's series. I got tired of them long before his latest published works.

I like the Liaden Universe; the latest novel, which is unrelated to the others (from what I can tell) is Balance of Trade. The author's webpage is www.korval.com

I like Laurie J. Marks' books all; her latest are:
Fire Logic
Earth Logic

Again -- series both, universes both, magic more than science in them both. Political commentary -- I'm sorry. I'm not sure I'd noticed if it was dropped on my head. But I don't think I could skip pages in any of these books and NOT miss something that moved the plot along.

*bows*

Oh, I don't mind series or magic (I'm currently randomly re-reading the Discworld books), I just find the over-use of them annoying. As for the book recs, I've not heard of either series; could you give me a quick summary or overview?

Um. I'm not good at this, and I don't have the books at hand. But here goes:

Balance of Trade:
In the future (isn't that how most of these start?) humans have achieved space. In their space-faring, they encounter another humonoid race, called Liadens. Liadens are .. physical characteristics don't really matter, but something like very dangerous weasels, if humans are considered a large breed of dog (I think I need sleep, I doubt this is helping). Liadens are bound in a complex web of clan and honor, summed up in something called the Code. Terrans are wary of Liadens because of the Code. Argh! I told you I was bad at this.

The story of Balance of Trade is about a young spacefaring Terran who wants to learn the business of trading from a master trader who happens to be Liaden. This has never been done before -- the humans and the Liadens kept themselves very, very separate. So, this young human finds himself in a very alien environment, where pitfalls can mean a Balencing leading to bloodshed -- and the story is of how he adjusts to it. There's more, but that's my poor attempt.

Laurie J. Marks books:
Fire Logic is the first book -- it weaves a tale of how some oppressors and resistance fighters lived in the chaos that marked the end of one .. epoch, I guess, and before the next one started.
Her world is one where there are five major forms of magic, and if your blessed/cursed with a strong leaning to one or the other, it influences how you think and what you do (this is very crude and not doing justice to how she writes the characters). It takes the tale of fighting for freedom and uses "Fire Logic" to turn it on its head and change direction completely. ^^ I'm sorry, I'm not doing a good job. I'm very cynical, and I can't watch some movies because it's so predictable -- and this story, first novel and second, was so unpredictable to me, and yet, in retrospect made so much sense, I don't think I can describe it any better.

Earth Logic is really how the new epoch gets started.

I'm, um, hoping someone will be able to help you out more.

Hi, Drew!

I don't think Internet publishing will change the sorry state of publishing as much as on-demand publishing combined with the Internet will. Look at the success of ERAGON - it started as a self-published book and now its 19 year-old author has a huge book deal with a major publishing house. Wil Wheaton is another self-published author who is now the happy recipient of a three-book contract from O'Reilly.

The on-demand publishers make it possible for anyone to be published AND receive compensation for it. The Internet makes it possible for anyone to do their own virtual book tour and marketing campaign. Wil Wheaton's books, for example, couldn't have succeeded without the fans from his blog.

Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of fly-by-night companies that will rip you off with their "vanity publishing," but there are others that will get your book to Barnes and Noble and Amazon, just like a "real" publisher.

Some times the only way to get the books we want is to write them ourselves...

Caro

Hnh. I knew about Eragon (got it for Xmas, even), but I didn't know about the Wheaton deal. And I hadn't thought at all about net-to-store publishing...

I needs to go think me thinks on this...

P.S. re: "do it yourself": Yeah, I'm actually almost done developing my own pencil&paper RPG system. And fanfic helps too (as I'm sure you know).

Compensation for original fiction: Yes.

Compensation for fanfiction: No. Since you are essentially playing in someone else's sandbox. Of course, if you receie permission from the original creator as happened in the Star Trek fandom then payment would be given.

Book Recs:

The People Series by Kathleen and W. Michael Gear.

The Gear's are archaeologists, specializing in Early American societies. Their books explore the various Native American cultures on a very personal level. The stories are fiction but the science behind theme is real.

I agree with the "no monetary compensation for fanfic" statement, but I guess I didn't explain that very well. And thanks for the book recs; I'll check them out as soon as I can afford to.

Pillars of Creation was the book that caused me to stop reading the SOT series. It saddened me because Faith of the Fallen was, I think, the best of that series. I don't exactly know what Goodkind was trying to accomplish in Pillars. Perhaps he has a contract that he simply wants to be done with. Musicians sometimes do that (Prince did it with Warner Brothers). Perhaps he became jaded with critical remarks about the books. I stopped reading Jordan after Winter's Heart. I did buy COT but upon attempting to read the 70-some page prologue, I gave up. It totally bored me.

My newest passion in fantasy is George RR Martin. Not only is his series A Song of Ice and Fire extremely engaging and fresh, but his stand-alone novels are also very good. I enjoy his gritty style of writing, and his eye to historical and military detail. It's not gratuitous like Goodkind, but it paints a real picture of life in a medieval setting, I think.

As for online publishing. I can't really say much. I think it's probably going to come into being at some point, but not for a long time. People enjoy purchasing books in corporeal form, taking them home, and curling up in a chair or in bed with them. Personally, I find reading from a screen to be straining at best and downright nauseating after too many hours. There is something far more primitive and visceral about holding a book in your hands than there is about sitting in front of a machine.

Be that as it may; online publishing is still a small niche, and it's enticing for independent writers and hobbyists. I try to disuade people from it. Particularly if, in the future, one thinks he might actually try for a book contract with a publishing house. Anything that was previously publihsed online is not going to be seen favorably by a publisher, for both legal and practical reasons.

You mentioned role-playing games, so you must have heard of the online published modules and systems and such. I bought a psionics supplement from online 'cuz the price couldn't be beat. It was a slightly nerve-wracking experience when I briefly wasn't sure if it was going to download correctly. And then printing it out was annoying. I'm no computer genius, I get things wrong repeatedly, and the machines love to catch obscure bugs and quit working just when it's REALLY IMPORTANT that they don't. So it isn't going to ever be something I do a lot of.

I'll take the physical books, with the pleasure of getting out of the house, looking at the pretty covers, reading half the book in the store and buying it because I need to know how it ends over the irritation of surfing any day.

I found Robert Jordan insulting to my intelligence by about the eighth book and Terry Goodkind not near as funny as people say. Too many humorous books include horrible sadness these days. Regarding George RR Martin, I've been picking up The Hedge Knight, which is a comic book adaptation of a short story of his set in the Song of Fire and Ice world. I adore the art and the attention to medieval-ish detail.

A few series I know found an odd way of dealing with the 'keep writing in this world!' editorial edicts. Robert Asprin's some good/some bad Myth series switches points of view among the character cast as well as timeline. When Asprin didn't feel like moving the story forward, he wrote a story set in the old days. Mercedes Lackey goes all over the place and timeline in her Valdemar series, switching whole cultures and countries. Steven Brust's Dragaera series keeps switching from new to old, and then to hundreds of years ago with bit characters.

'Course, all these are fantasy. There isn't too much I like in the sci-fi bent. Too much concern on dry human politics for me.

::sigh:: And I do write what I want to read. Alas, I'm only middling talented and goodfic doesn't inspire me to chuck my stunted children onto the stage.

Lamashtar

I do read Lackey, and I like how she handles keeping the "Valdemar" universe fresh. I was less impressed by the later Myth books, I think mainly because you really *needed* to read each one to get the whole story, unlike the first 5 or so. That's actually a big reason why I like Pratchett's Discworld books; while it *helps* to have read the previous books, it's not *necessary*. I.e. you can still read and enjoy the book without having to know about the backstory.

I haven't read much of Martin or Brust, but I'll check them out as soon as is affordable.

I have found Mercedes Lackey's books to be rather plot repetitive (not as bad as David Eddings, I think it was...) and some of her stories don't seem to be consistent. Guess the latter would be a common problem with any long running series.

Ah, the pleasure of hardcopy was a point I meant to make, but forgot about. Thanks for reminding me.

As for "Pillars", I think he was trying to change it up by having it from an entirely new viewpoint (Jennsen). The problem is that, as I said before, the endless exposition gets incredibly tiresome. The only reason I'm reading "Empire" is because someone loaned it to me and I won't be able to return the book for another week or so.

Baen books has a way of making use of the internet to help sales of its existing stuff (and flies directly in the face of the RCA's incorrect assumption that internet sharing of copyrighted materiel damages sales) - they put up older books of existing series on the 'net which brings in new readers and also encorages them to by the currently in print books.

There are ways to make the 'net 'pay' but they arent easy. Prince had a membership website where people forked up about 100$ to get access to new songs, chat and etc. It's entirely possible to have a member list where people who pay get access to your writing - first. And first is the key because, you're right it's very difficult to keep someone from republishing or emailing your creation around the net for free. However, that's not terribly different from magazines, or paper books. After all, how many of us get books from the library? Or on loan from a freind? There are always people who want something right away, or want it paper form (for example, I can see putting up an intro chapter/story on the net but the complete work is only availible through orderign a print to order book blah, blah).

I think there's a missaprehension (encoraged by publishing houses and such) that somehow reading information passed around in the net is stealing while somehow book loans are not??

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