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Was This the First CC Community-Edited Novel?
Odinson writes "In late 2005 I released a draft of a science fiction novel under the by-nc-nd CC license. I started accepting edits in the hope of polishing a manuscript for submission to a publisher. A publisher never materialized, but after thousands of comments the draft started getting really solid. So a couple of months ago I decided to buy an ISBN and sell hard copies from Lulu. While doing research for a press release, I was unable to uncover the first community-edited, CC-licensed work of fiction. I strongly suspect that my novel is the first. Can anybody point to a prior example? How about under other licenses? If someone has traveled this road before, I'd like to ask them how it went. I would also like to vet this question here before staking a claim to be the first."
There certainly existed community-edited novel-length fanfiction before 2005, although I don't know if you would count them as "real" novels.
:)
Also the license terms for fanfiction are generally rather murky
So I tried to download the book... and its going at a few bytes per second... I think we slashdotted his poor server. :(
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
The finer points of the license only apply to people who aren't the copyright holders. Copyright holders can do whatever they want.
The Rifter series was released circa 2001 or so and is available at rifters.com for free under a CC licence IIRC. However, I'm fairly sure Watts used a publisher for the back end stuff.
Congrats, and thank you for looking to publish in this manner.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
With the permission from the community in question. You need to make distinction between creators of the work and the public that uses and distributes the work. One would assume that if they get contributors aboard, each of them will understand what they're going to do with the work, right?
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was released under BY-NC-ND, and was definitely a "community work" in every sense of the expression. It's also sold on DVD, for profit - by the creators. -NC just means you aren't allowed to make a copy and then sell it yourself.
The King James Bible was created by committee - perhaps the only example of a worthwhile achievement implemented by one. (Though, in fairness, they didn't make it Creative Commons.)
http://bittornado.com/torrents/Thicker-Than-Blood.pdf.torrent
Sorry about the off-topic reply, just trying to help people w/ their slow download.
The publisher in question was different from most Vanity Presses in that they advertised for submissions, provided super-positive feedback from 'real critics,' and only after leading the authors to believe they were about to strike it rich would they ask for money to subsidize the publishing.
The sci-fi authors were outing the scam.
It was kinda like those Nigerian guys who need your account info, only the money they are going to give you is going to come from your soon to be bestseller instead of a disused slush account.
Er, Monty Python wasn't a person. They were a comedy troupe.
I am one of the community editors for this book. My name is listed in the acknowledgments.
First let me say that the book is awesome. It's got a great plot, great characters, and it pulls you in. A few times I was late to work by a few minutes because I just couldn't put the book down until I finished the chapter I was reading. I highly recommend it.
Now, let me explain how I helped edit the book. I can't speak for the other editors, but this is how I got involved. I decided I was going to read the book, so I downloaded it and started reading. I find that I'm pretty good at finding typos and grammatical errors in books. I find them in books that are published by the big publishers & authors all the time. I usually find at least one or two mistakes in every book I read. When I was reading thicker than blood I just started keeping track of everything that I knew was misspelled or grammatically incorrect and everything that I was unsure of as well. When I had finished the book I found that I had nearly 200 edits, so I sent them over to the author. He was very grateful and a few months later he sent me a printed copy of his book.
So, the 'nd' doesn't really apply because I never made a derivative work, I just sent him a patch that was human-readable-only. The changes that I made are so small that copyright doesn't apply to my changes. I mean, I would assign him the copyright if it did matter, but such a small change would not trigger copyright. If I had rewritten a few paragraphs or added any real substance it may have, but fixing typos and making sure apostrophes are placed correctly does not deserve any attention from copyright. These are the contributions that I made and I can not speak for other editors.
Again, I can't recommend the book enough. I can't wait for the sequel.
Mark Drago.
The book was released under that license from the start. I was originally planning on getting it published by a traditional (see fearful) publisher and didn't want to do anything to risk a potential deal. I just couldn't stand the thought of someone buying it and sitting on it. (Which happens all the time)
I the complete draft. A dozen people submitting edits on their own. Some of the contributions just emails with lists of hundreds of edits per post. None of which where solicited beyond 'if you find any errors' It *WAS NOT* the original plan to have this book be community edited.
BTW I can count the number of books I have sold on my fingers and toes. I just put it up on Lulu and bought an ISBN. When I realized the CC+CE+fiction+novel might be the case I tried to verify it and could not get a affirmative response from CC community list or many people I emailed. Only a group this large could have affirmed this.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Here is a pertinent (and my first) review.
(and my first) review.
On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, Chris Knadle wrote:
Hey, Matt.
Okay -- I love the book. I finished it in three days and I wanted to finish it earlier. :-) I think the book is "good scifi" in all of the
important ways -- it's got some geeky detail, it's got plot, it's got
character development, and each character has some quirks, just like you'd
find in real life. In all honesty you've got a great book here.
I loved the dedications page. I was happily surprised to even be on it --
that was neat! I'm especially interested to hear who Shotgun Trucker is
now. :-)
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
just couldn't stand the thought of someone buying it and sitting on it. (Which happens all the time)
Um, not in fiction it doesn't. If a trad. publisher acquires your novel, they're going to pay you an advance on royalties. They gain nothing by not publishing your book. Your publication date will be in your contract along with a line that says they have a set time in which to publish your book. 2 years is what I see in my contracts. If they don't, all rights revert to you. That language is usually boilerplate. It's there to protect the publisher and you in case of, say, bankruptcy or some other controvery. I've sold and contracted now 8 novels and never ever had one not get printed. And, I don't personally know of any author who's had this happen to him or her, and since I'm in the writing business, I do know a lot of authors. Really, truly, this doesn't happen all the time so don't let that fear hold you back.
The routes to traditional publishing are diversifying all the time. If you have verifiable sales in the thousands then chances are someone at one of the trad publishers is paying attention. POD isn't a bar to publishing. Crappy writing and/or a poor story are.
The issue for you is going to be what rights you have to license to a publisher. If you released under a CC, you may not have rights a traditional publisher can acquire. But that won't stop an editor from asking what else you have.
Good luck with your writing endeavors!