Wave of Change? Or Sunami?

My head is spinning!

I’m currently involved in producing a movie for DVD release. No, I’m not bragging. It’s still in the financing phase, so it could all just go bye-bye any moment … kind of like Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers … anyway, my point is that this movie I’m doing is also going to be put up as a webseries. I’m telling you all this because the education I am getting and the slap-upside-my-head experience of researching how webseries need to be “put up” and the wild west nature of this whole process has my head spinning.

In all the spinning, however, I’ve gotten glimpses of a wave of change that is sweeping over the Internet effecting writers of every stripe. This blog entry cannot possibly address all that could or should be said about this. But, hopefully this will generate some dialogue about the topics I’m going to discuss and through this discussion perhaps we will all get a better grasp of what is quickly turning from wave into a sumani.

First off, who is at risk? Yes, I use the word “risk” intentionally. Everyone who writes in formats considered “old media” are at risk. This list includes: novelists, poets, short story writers, playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, academicians, and anyone else who has something to say in the written word (bloggers excluded). Now don’t panic, books are not going anywhere, or films/TV, or short story collections, etc. The risk part has to do with missing out on all the new formats and distribution channels developing to get your work into the “hands” of potential readers. What are these new and risky avenues? Here is a short list, and I’m excluding all the “old,” boring platforms like e-books (soooo 20th Century!):

(Blurbs courtesy of Wikipedia)

Webisodes: A webisode is an episode of a television show that airs initially as an Internet download or stream as opposed to first airing on broadcast or cable television. A webisode is simply a web episode —collectively it is part of a web series, which features a dramatic, serial storyline, where the primary method of viewership is streaming online over the Internet.

Mobisodes: Mobisode is a term for a broadcast television episode specially made for viewing on a mobile telephone screen and usually of short duration (from one to three minutes).

Cell Phone Novels: See my July 13, 2008 entry on this. Cell phone or mobile phone novels are meant to be read in 1,000 to 2,000-word (in China) or 70-word (in Japan) chapters via text message on mobile phones. They are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications on a mobile phone. Cell phone novels often appear in three different formats: WMLD, JAVA and TXT.

Podcasts: A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers.

Mashups: A digital mashup is a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video and animation drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work.

Podiobooks: A specific form of mashup. These are serialized novels or short stories in podcast format, which mix mixed media, narrative, audio, and anything else the writer can squeeze into it. These are very akin to the old radio dramas of the 1930s. (Amazingly there is no Wiki entry on this yet)

Net-Native Narratives: Also, no Wiki entry for this yet. This is very new stuff. This is a form of storytelling that marries traditional narratives with gaming ARG (Alternate Reality Game) environments to create an interactive, immersive narrative experience. Imagine Moby Dick as an interactive, ARG experience. Ok, maybe not the best choice, but how about Dracula?

A writer can certainly choose to ignore all of these tempting tidbits and simply churn out traditional hard copy. This does not make you a Luddite (look it up if you don’t know the term). The John Updikes and the Amy Tans of the literary world will still wow us with their prose and enchant us with great storytelling. But, the Stephen Kings, Dean Koontzes, and Robin Cooks of the world will write their books AND are putting up webisodes and podiobooks and expanding their readership exponentially, attracting readers/viewers they would have missed entirely if they had just relied on pure hard copy and the marketing might of their publishers.

The other empowering aspect of all these tempting tidbits is that authors are now becoming more empowered to take control of how their work is disseminated and this can only be a good thing. For a writer to remain solely at the beck-and-call of their publisher for exposure and distribution is completely unnecessary with all these new technologies. Publishers are pulling back on support for their authors anyway, so now writers are much more capable of taking the reigns of their promotion and distribution into their own hands. Missing this opportunity is one of the main things writers risk by ignoring all these new developments.

Now, it doesn’t mean you have to go back to school and get a degree in Artificial Intelligence for M.I.T. There are lots of companies, services, and consultants out there now to help you develop your work into these new formats—yes, for a price. But, freedom doesn’t come cheap. Nor should it.

Okay. If your head is spinning, join the club. I’m going to leave it at this. Potential, possibility, and opportunity: these are the watchwords for the future. Welcome to a brave new world. Big Brother is watching, but the good news is he’s paying for the privilege through service fees, website memberships, and pay-per-click advertising dollars. Spin, spin, spin.

More on this to come. I have to go lie down.

Twitter-lit Redux

A few days ago I wrote a post on something called Twitter-lit. Twitter has always been about real-time reality, being in the moment, life in the raw in 140 characters (or less) at a time. Then, one day, someone decided to depart from reality and just make stuff up (like no one ever makes things up on Twitter)—voila, fiction and Twitter meet: Twitter-lit.

Today The Huffington Post (wonderful online newspaper) started a Twitter-lit contest. It invited its readers to submit their version of the great books in literature. In other words, give them a 140-character version of War and Peace. If you know about screenwriting, or have ever worked in the entertainment business in story development, then what you are going to see next will look familiar. Here are some samples of what the Huffpo readers submitted:

Mary Shelley’s Frankinstein by AskMrScreens:
Misunderstood monster only wants a friend in a recycling project run amok, with an ending that goes up in flames! (Huffington Post, 10/06/09)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula by marcywoody:
Creep preys on the veins and sexual desire of eager young women. Despite immortality, his thirst is forever quenched by one heroic doctor. (Huffington Post, 10/06/09)

Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility by LolaDanger:
One sister wanting romance, the other craving good chat (both hot for rich brits) outplay a manipulative bitch and an emasculated gigolo. (Huffington Post, 10/06/09)

(Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/huffpost-twitterature-con_n_333974.html?slidenumber=grlh7L0PxJM%3D#slide_image&cp)

Okay screenplay hounds. The Internet culture calls these examples Twitter-lit. But, screenwriters will recognize these as something else, something we use and agonize over for hour, days, sometimes weeks (or more). These little flavor-of-the-month masterpieces above are nothing more than loglines!

A logline is your movie (or book) in a sentence. It is a complicated, complex, and challenging little beastie. The logline has to capture the essence of your story, meaning it has to give a sense of the core relationship driving the story, the high-concept conceit of the story, and a hint of the conclusion without giving too much away. Loglines are essential tools for anyone who works in the movie and/or television business. Anyone who has done script coverage has had to come up with a logline. And any writer pitching a story to an agent has had to get that logline perfect for their elevator pitch. It is also important for novelists, though less so. Loglines get movies made, when they’re good. And when they’re bad—well, you know the rest.

What I find fascinating about this little exercise by Huffpo is that this “new thing” is being touted as a new thing, when it is as old as the hills. This all speaks to an important idea to always keep in mind: nothing about writing on the web or for new media is really “new.” Take away all the SEO (search engine optimization) gibberish, all the IA (interactive architecture) interfaces, and all the Web 2.0 gobbledygook and you are left with words on a page. It’s all “just” writing. You can put all the lipstick you want on that pig; you still have pork. I’m all for repackaging and re-branding ideas, but it is important for writers not to get too caught up in the hype of “the next big thing.”

I’m enjoying all the new formats, platforms and delivery windows that are opening up for writers thanks to the Internet, but I’m taking my own advice. I will just keep my wonder and awe reserved for the simple written word that knows no gimmicks, attention-grabbers, or leaps in the technology zeitgeist. Trust me, I’m no Luddite, I’m a technology champion. I just think it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that so much of what we’re seeing in new media content delivery is really just a variation of the old notion, “What was old is new again.”

Netflix perfected the movie-rental-by-mail model and opened the door for copycat imitators to quickly follow. In this case, however, an innovative company called Bookswim has been trying since 2007 to implement the Netflix model to book rentals.

As Bookswim explains it:

"Bookswim creators George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui spent their Thursday night as always, freeloading books in the local behemoth bookstore café. When asked to pay for the books along with the coffee, they replied, "No, we're just gonna read them and put them back... but thanks for asking." Now this kind of behavior should never be condoned, but George and Shamoon noticed a pattern: everyone else was doing it, although maybe not so openly. If all of these people were simply reading, why aren't they vagrantly loitering at a library? It's free! Well, there's no double mocha lattes at the library ... but through researching the answer they discovered that the whole literary distribution model needed to be turned upside down." (Bookswim.com 2009)

And so they did … turned things upside down. Through this effort Bookswim hopes to play its part in saving some of the 22-million trees cut down each year to produce books, not to mention the gas that will be saved from driving to the bloody bookstore every week. Okay, the post office uses trucks to ship the books to you, and the local post office drives around town in their little putt-putts, but hey, the point is still valid. So, in short, Bookswim is good for the environment -- and it’s slimming too!

Mediabistro’s Gallycat (the best blog on Earth) has a great interview with Chip O’Brien, Director of Customer service for Bookswim, where he discusses the phenom. Check out the full interview here: GALLYCAT BOOKSWIM INTERVIEW.

It’s a brave new world out there for books, authors, publishers, and readers. I’m fascinated by all these changes and will be commenting more about these new-fangled ideas as I stumble upon them. Who said reading is dead?

The Tiny Novels Are Coming! The Tiny Novels Are Coming!

Anyone who knows me knows technology is one of my addictions. I’m always looking forward (I think) to see what’s coming, what’s converging, and what’s about to land on us without our seeing it. That’s how it happens, right? Changes in technology don’t greet us at the door with a smile and handshake, it drops on our heads like a piano cut loose from the top floor or a New York brownstone before it can be pushed through the window of that fancy apartment on 5th Avenue! Okay, a long metaphor, but you get the point.

But, sometimes, technology changes, especially in the arts, sneak up on us and bite us on the ass when we’re not looking. This is kind of what’s happening with the revered novel and the cell phone. Technology is now delivering a whole new experience over the cell phone and transforming how we read.

This is from Wikipedia (I just cut and pasted because it’s easier than plagiarizing or paraphrasing):

Cell phone novels are meant to be read in 1,000 to 2,000-word (in China) or 70-word ( in Japan) chapters via text messages on cell phones. They are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications on a mobile phone. Cell phone novels often appear in three different formats: WMLD , JAVA and TXT.

The first cell phone novel was “published” in Japan in 2003 by a young online writer, Yoshi. His first cell phone novel was called Deep Love, the story of a teenaged prostitute in Tokyo. It became so popular that it was published as an actual book, with 2.6 million copies sold in Japan, then spun off into a television series, a manga, and a movie. The cell phone novel became a hit mainly through word of mouth and gradually starting to gain traction in China and South Korea among young adults. In Japan, several sites offer large prizes to the winners (up to $100,000 US) and purchase the publishing rights to the novels.

Five out of the ten best selling novels in Japan in 2007 were originally cell phone novels.

The phenomenon has not yet spread to the United States or Europe, but it is inevitable that as cell phone and text message usage continues to increase, cell phone novels will become popular in these locales as well. There is a blog at www.textnovelblog.com referencing a new site that is preparing for launch in the United States market.

The cell phone novel Deep Love, for example, was first “published” via text message, then it was published as an actual book, filmed as a movie, and made into a television show and a Japanese-style comic book. It hasn't simply created a new medium; it has affected other media at the same time.

Well, this Wiki entry is a bit behind the times on one thing: cell phone novels are arriving on our Western shores, and soon. I work for several publishing companies and I know that they are having internal discussions about how to incorporate cell phone services into their business models. The U.S. is behind Europe and Asia in cell technology (welcome to the 21st century), but with the new iPhone and its competitors, the delivery system is now in place and the novels are coming! the novels are coming!

So, get those thumbs in shape and start thinking in 70 word text messages, because that’s the new way to write the great Ameican novel—one SMS text package at a time!