Mid-November, Harlequin announced the launch of Harlequin Horizons, a new division billed as "[an] opportunity for women's fiction writers and romance authors to publish their books and achieve their dreams," provided they've got cashola to subsidize that publication. The partnership with subsidy-publishing juggernaught AuthorSolutions drew instant opposition from several authors guilds, which quickly lambasted Horizons as a vanity press operation. The Romance Writers of America announced Harlequin wouldn't be eligible for favored-publisher privileges at next year's national convention, the Science Fiction Writers of America announced "NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA," and the Mystery Writers of America said it might also take that route.

(Some of the above quoted from Mediabistro's Galleycat, 2009)

Since mid-November, Harlequin tried to sneak under the radar, re-branding Harlequin Horizons as DellArte Press, and the Mystery Writers of America jumped off the fence to the “personae non grate” side, declaring Harlequin as no longer a member of its prized “approved publishers” list. According to its rules, a "publishing entity" must "be wholly separate and isolated" from "an entity that provides self-publishing, for-pay editorial services, or for-pay promotional services." Harlequin’s alliance with AuthorSolutions violates these conditions, ergo the personae-non-grate status.

Who cares? Well, Harlequin does, that’s for sure. But, writers should care about this development as well. The various guilds find themselves in murky waters vis-à-vis pubs decisions to leverage the emerging power of Internet self-publishing. At a time when every angle is being explored to expand a publishing company’s bottom line, this once clear line in the sand separating the vanity world of wannabe authors from the proud world of made-it authors (i.e., published versus really published) is vanishing. As businesses, the pubs are scrambling to shore up the leaking business models of yesteryear, hoping against hope a new model that will show them to the golden road of profitability will emerge soon.

In the meantime, a profit center is emerging in the chaos. Subsidy publishing is on the rise and writers, the good, bad, and ugly are flocking to this opportunity. How should the guilds respond? Should they oppose, outright, traditional publishers from venturing into these profitable waters? Are they only trying to protect traditionally published author’s territories and their own member bases? Or are they missing an opportunity to follow the lead of some of these pubs that see the writing on the wall and are trying to adapt and innovate?

Questions, questions, I’m full of them. I don’t have the answer on this one. I’m not condemning either side. I see how each has its own reasons for picking one or the other side of this fence. I just think the guilds should not be so quick to throw down the gauntlet. Things are evolving for everyone in the publishing industry and writers, their organizations, and the publishers and their organizations are all scrambling to make sense of something that is still in flux. I understand it’s hard to not take a position, especially when special interests or feisty memberships demand such, but careful consideration is in order. I’m still looking at all the pros and cons for pubs moving in the subsidy-publishing direction, because I’m not convinced this could not be a win-win for everyone, if communication stays open and cooler heads prevail.

Maybe not, though, maybe this is just one more ploy to screw writers … except for the fact that the emerging group of writers in the subsidy arena kind of consider themselves writers too. Including the half-dozen or so who have made the New York Times bestseller list. Gosh—it’s all getting so bloody complicated. Grand, isn’t it.

[Full Disclosure: I work for AuhorSolutions as an editorial consultant.]

Why Twitter Matters to Writers

I know, I'm writing a lot about Twitter these days. There's a reason. It's getting to be a force in the writing universe. Consider the following:

I've heard it all before--as have you, "Why bother with Face Book, Twitter, My Space (so not cool now), etc.? Just a black hole of my time and keystrokes. Who has time?" I've heard myself say these same things.

Well, 28-year-old Justin Halpern found the time to setup his Twitter account titled "ShitMyDadSays." It has over 700,000 followers. One of those followers is CBS television. And--please sit down for this so you don't fall down--they just signed Justin to a TV deal. In addition, Justin signed a book deal recently based on his Dad who says shit.

Here's a sample:

"You look just like Stephen Hawking...Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him. Feel better? ... Fine. Forget I said it."

("ShitMyDadSays," Twitter 2009, Justin Halpern)

I can totally see how a creative executive at a network could run with this. Whoever saw the potential in this tweet made their salary for the year. And they made the right call. This is perfect for sitcom development, and this is the kind of stuff that fuels TV development all the time. I completely see how this could spin off into a multi-camera, family sitcom.

So, why Twitter matters, why Face Book matters, etc., beyond the social networking aspects, is that there are companies out there scouring these sites for ideas. We've all known for a dog's age that media companies have their story department interns reading e-books, watching every new web series, and listening to podiocasts galore. Web series like "Quarterlife" are now legendary for jumping species and moving to TV (disastrously in Quarterlife's case). But, now the focus of the Great Eye is now taking in anything where an ounce of creativity might show itself.

The point here is that writers can no longer take social networking for granted. Social applications where you can create a presence for yourself are gold. They are part of doing business for the writer, like writing every day, or calling your agent every week, or drinking gallons of coffee. You have to have a presence in all these venues. It's time consuming and a pain in the ass, but if you want to work, if you want exposure, if you want to be seen by the Great Eye that sees all things remotely creative, then you have to play the game.

If you watch anyone under thirty, you will notice they spend as much time thumbing their mobile device as they do making eye contact. These are the people who are being hired into power positions at networks and studios. I'm an old fart, but I'm tech savvy and I know this stuff, so I'm not behind the curve. But, how about you? Do you have your blog? Do you have a Twitter account? Are you marketing yourself in all the places you can to maximize visibility for your work and your brand? Even if you don't have a brand?

I'm happy for Justin. But, his story is no different than the stories we used to hear about in the indie movie world where the young-up'n-comer from out of nowhere lands the movie deal for the sixteen millimeter short he/she shot while on summer break from school. We just heard a similar story with the phenom "Paranormal Activity," shot for 15,000 by an unknown director two years ago. Recently released by Paramount, "Paranormal" is now pushing 100 million domestic and hasn't even been released globally. There are always the lottery winners out there who fuel the dreams of struggling filmmakers and writers everywhere. "Hey, that might be me next!" I say dream on, and congratulations Justin.

But, in the meantime, while you wait for the lottery to shine on you, take a cold, hard look at what is happening in the marketplace and on the Web. This is where writers have to be in the years to come (screw years-months). It's just starting. We don't even know how all this is going to end up, because it is constantly evolving. All I know is that Justin is a huge shout to us all to rethink our businesses and our writing. I'm not saying you have to abandon traditional values and/or methods, or that you have to start writing 140-character novels. I'm only suggesting its time to open up the repertoire and design a business model for your career that leverages the world as it is, not as it was.

Publishing, movies, television, it's all changing--and fast. Justin is our canary in the coal mine, only instead of dying form poisonous gases he is flying high for being in the right place at the right time. You can too. It just takes work and attention to your writing life--screw the lottery. You have to be your own lottery.

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?

Twitter-Lit: The Opportunities for Writers Keep on Coming!

We’re all familiar with adaptation. What novelist doesn’t want his or her book adapted to a movie? Everything is open for the adaptation magnet: poems, books, comics, commercials, everything. This truth is no less true now with so-called new media. As the Internet evolves, so do the windows for creative expression. We now have the first Twitter-lit adaptation to film.

What the hell is Twitter-lit, you ask? Good question. It’s essentially a Twitter haiku. Somebody writes a 140-character fictional message, rather than talking about what he or she had for lunch, or how the job interview was a disaster. As fascinating as your life might be that you have to tell the world what you're doing every 10 minutes, imagine how much fun it might be to just make things up? Because everyone tells EXACTLY what they are doing, and never embellish or make things up on Twitter--right? So, think fiction. Think short. Now think even shorter. Now you're in the ballpark.

This is an exploding phenom, or so Twitter claims. There are more and more people jumping onto this flash-fictionesque platform. Twitter-lit authors submit daily “stories” and are finding a following. This is certainly familiar to fans of flash fiction. This form of fiction (flash) has many devotees, and there is no real agreement on what constitutes flash fiction, but some go as low as 300-word max. Never more than 1000 words.

The most famous form of flash fiction, of course, is the one Hemingway created that was only six-words long: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This is, in fact, archetypal Twitter-lit. Twitter imposes a maximum character length for any post of 140 characters. So, not unlike other physical formats (poetry, screenplays, short stories, etc.) technology is placing limits on writers, and we must step up to the challenge to prove creativity has no limits, even when they are artificially imposed by the information superhighway pipeline requirements.

Apparently, Twitter-lit authors are pulling it off, because one of them just got adapted to film. See this post from the Mediabistro Galleycat blog by Jason Boog on Oct 08, 2009:

"The world's first Twitter-lit adaptation has won the People's Choice Award at the International Filminute competition. Twitter author Arjun Basu rallied his army of Twitter readers, a readership gained as Basu publishes bite-sized, fictional tweets like this short-short story every day: "They tolerated the ennui of their jobs, bought off by promises of spectacular riches sometime in the future. At retirement, they bought guns." Now Canadian director James Cooper adapted one of Basu's stories into a minute-long film called "Life." As the press release about the winning films shows, the short film genre is booming--start writing your Twitter scripts today... "

So, get out your stubbiest pencil and start writing your pithy, action-packed, visually-stunning Twitter-lit so that all those production companies and studios who regularly farm through these sorts of things looking for the "next big thing" can find you and sign you to a seven-figure deal. Or if that has little or no attraction to you (God, I hope so for your sake), then just do it 'cause it's bloody fun. I just might myself.