Another Sky Press Driving Neo-Patronage

avidreader writes "Another Sky Press is making a serious go of the neo-patronage / tip jar model — their tagline is 'Welcome to Another Sky Press. We want people to read our books even if they read them for free — though we'd love it if you bought a copy!' Not only are they putting the entire text of their releases online, but they're selling the dead tree versions at cost plus optional contribution. Their first release is garnering some great reviews - 'Intelligent fiction for the mentally unhinged.' According to their website, there are more projects in the works — everything from a short story anthology to a coloring book by artist Jesse Reno. They've also got interesting essays on why they're doing this and neo-patronage. They're even getting neo-patronage some mainstream attention — the Metro Times calls them '...more punk than the punks at Dischord Records.'"

Comments

Images of the text?

[courtarro]

Er, it's nice that it's free, but can't we have a standard format available like HTML or PDF? It's a nuisance to read a book as fixed images.

Re:Images of the text?

[Jboost]

Click a bit further then the homepage and you'll see: "A PDF version of Click will be available within a few days (for free)."

Re:Images of the text?

[warkda rrior]

No worries, it is fixed in CVS.

Update the tagline

[mac123]

Should be 'Welcome to Another...awww cr*p...the server's been slashdotted again'

This will be as good as shareware.

[Neil Blender]

I think I sent someone $5 in 1994...no wait, I didn't.

Repudiate Copyright

[dada21]

I'm the founder of No Copyright Studios, a production company that repudiates legal copyright and everything that goes with the use of force.

We're currently in the process of signing bands, podcasters and other free market pro-freedom content creators to our "movement" which is nothing more than a new way to find ways to profit without using the law. We believe that the law creates cartels and monopoly markets that are nearly impossible to penetrate -- copyright is one of those legal manipulations that only helps the big boys and hurts the little guy.

I have created content for nearly 18 years and have NEVER used copyright to protect my work. I've written songs, books, blogs and newsletters and I openly advocate the copying of them (or what I call "Free Marketing" for me). I even let people drop my name if they wish, but I warn them that if I catch them I'll publicly embarass them for putting their own name on it.

Once you create something that is easily mimiced or duplicated, there is NOTHING you can do to protect yourself. Copyright laws? How will you fight in civil court? With what money? Why even embrace copyright when there are already ways to make money without it. I make money on my sites, on my music that I produce, and on the books (e- and printed) that I've created, and I openly admit that I don't use any protection on the content other than a moral obligation for my reader not to copy it.

I can't enforce the morals of others, other than public embarassment and humiliation. That is the best way to protect your content -- and it also opens up a huge audience of people who don't realize how much copyright frustrates them, once they realize that copyright doesn't protect anyone but the largest content distribution cartels.

Re:Repudiate Copyright

[dada21]

The current fact of copyright is that very few creators of content actually profit greatly from their work on a self-employed basis. Those who get salaried jobs to create are the ones who generally get paid the best of the actual creators (look at TV show writers versus movie script writers, or in-house web designers versus painters).

Today, a band has absolutely zero chance of making it big, and about a 5% chance of actually making enough money to live on. Why is this? Because of copyright. Currently only the content distribution cartels are in a position of profitability -- they use the law and the costly legal system to enforce their profits. Without copyright, this form of monopolization would not exist.

Would "pirates" in a copyright-free society quickly destroy profit? I doubt it. Even with rampant "piracy" as it exists today, musicians still sell albums. They have to sell them through the cartels though, as non-cartelized albums don't get the distribution via radio, video and concert promotion. Try getting an indie song on the (regulated) radio, the (regulated) cable stations or the (regulated) concert venues. It is nearly impossible.

I do believe that we'd see MORE profits per artist, or at least a more equalized playing field, when you remove the cartels from the structure. Today's artist market sees barely a few dozen artists actually making it big, and very few of them actually make their own art (look at big label bands, famous movie actors, etc). The artists who are talented but not part of the cartel have very little chance to promote their work.

We're changing it. We're working with local theatrical studios around the world to actually make and then syndicate theater as TV-show. Why do stupid theater when you can do a regular scripted work with memorable characters, etc? We're going to use it as a tool to promote their local productions, and hopefully see a profit on the digital side. The same is true with musicians -- we're taking their digital music and using it to promote their albums and live shows. If you buy the official album, you might get a free ticket to a show, or a password to watch the band practice and record the next album (live or online). You might get guitar lessons or who knows what. With painting artists, the capacity to reproduce their work is much slimmer, which is why you see so many successful galleries in any metro area. In my area (Chicagoland) we have over 700 successful art galleries -- this is a media that doesn't require copyright to protect profits, so the cartels don't exist.

Coral Cache

[dbc001]

http://www.anothersky.org.nyud.net:8090/

Re:Distribution....

[CRCulver]

Not only might they not have enough money to distribute, but I can't see them doing decent typsetting either. The new publishing firms like iUniverse, essentially vanity press, will print your book, but don't spend any time actually making it look professional since that threatens profit. As an example, I recently picked up Solar Labyrinth , Robert Borski's kookish commentary on the writings of Gene Wolfe, and the book was so obviously done in a second-rate word-processor without even the slightest effort to emulate the standards of real typesetting engines. From what I've seen, Another Sky Press doesn't even have things like hyphenation.

It really sucks that in the era of TeX, when the finest typesetting of the pre-computer golden age can be had again, publishing houses are getting even worse in making their products readable and easy on the eye.

Incomprehensible article titles, part XIX

[RobertB-DC]

"Another Sky Press Driving Neo-Patronage" -- yet another in the time-honored tradition of new-economy names colliding with old-school English grammar.

I first read it as "[Another Sky] [Press-Driving] [Neo-Patronage]", and wondered what "Press-Driving" meant -- would it be something similar to Astroturfing?

Then I read it again, as "[(yet) Another] [Sky Press] [Driving Neo-Patronage]". A little closer to the true intent, but I wondered what a "Sky Press" is, and how many others are out there if this is just yet another one?

So I read the article -- crazy and dangerous, I know -- and found out that it's "[Another Sky Press] [Driving Neo-Patronage]". Ok, I get it now. Thanks.

Re:Chilling.

[bitt3n]

so would you refuse to read a paper that calls itself The Daily Dispatch because dispatch can mean homicide as well as message?

Re:MXPX

[ResidntGeek]

MXPX isn't punk. Choking Victim is punk.

Re:Distribution....

[daigu]

I'm guessing you have never used LaTeX or TeX. I haven't used them extensively, but I have done a few simple things in LaTeX - because it wasn't possible to do what I wanted to do in a standard word processor. It is this exact reason why Knuth created TeX in the first place - to cover everything from proper rendering of math formulas to graphics to abstracted definitions for handling every aspect of the document.

One simple example is that LaTeX handles different types of documents differently. When's the last time your word processor asked you to specify whether you were writing an article or a book and behaved accordingly - based on the different needs of these document types? This is a useful feature.

For example, if you were writing a poem in Word using the default set-up, it will try to capitalize each new sentence. However, capitalization is a very useful feature when I'm writing articles - which is more frequent that poems. Where can you abstract out a content set in Word to change the settings for how the application behaves based on document type? You can do some of the work by creating different templates for formatting - but I am not aware of different modes within Word and it is a major hassle to change all the settings to what makes sense every time you choose to work on a different document type.

I can think of other examples. Anyone that has ever tried to do graphic layout in Word can point to many problems in the application for this kind of work. I've also found the Master Document functionality a bit sloppy too. Many of these issues can be addressed easily by someone competent in LaTeX. I've never used Lyx, but I can imagine a number of circumstances where an easy front-end to LaTeX would be useful.