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."

Comments

Fanfic

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :)

Re:Fanfic

[jackharrer]

Slashdot.org

sometimes it feels like south american novel...

Re:Fanfic

[the phantom]

Actually, you may not be too far off. Anyone else remember Jon Katz, and his book on Columbine? "Voices from the Hellmouth," or something like that -- it was a bunch of Slashdot comments slapped between two covers...

Community edited

[vigmeister]

Sure that's such a good idea?

Pg. 147

"As Ja Rool climbed out of the skies CLAIRE IS T3H AWESOME of Planet 142, in the yellow smoke trails he caught the glint BUCH SUCKS of an enemy spacecraft. Maneuvering his nimble XPJ-134, JAMES LOVE CINDY."

Cheers!
--
Vig

Re:Community edited

[$RANDOMLUSER]

The flip of a switch gives Joe, an ordinary mechanic, superhuman abilities. He discovers his new powers after his aunt saves his life with restricted nanites.

^U It was a dark and stormy night.

Re:Community edited

[ubrgeek]

Citation needed.

;)

Cheap publicity.

[urcreepyneighbor]

I hope you realize that this sounds like nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt?

This novel was originally posted online as a rough draft in late 2005. It has made great strides, receiving tens of thousands of reader contributions. It has received good reader reviews, and has been downloaded 6000 times in a two year span. So, do the people that helped you get a cut of the $12.95?

Re:Cheap publicity.

[freedom_india]

So, do the people that helped you get a cut of the $12.95? That is the main problem of crowd sourcing or open sourced works.
Who profits off wikipedia? The maintainer, the contributors, ?
How do we distribute?
Is it the cost of printing (which is permissible) or more?

Re:Cheap publicity.

[QuantumG]

If there's people who are willing to do the editing for free, why would you pay them?

Re:Cheap publicity.

[endofcell]

This is not a problem of crowdsourcing at all. Contributors to Mozilla and Firefox don't ask for a cut of the profits/donations it receives from Google or other partnerships, and users of the browser don't get paid for using it. The fact you get to use Wikipedia is enough, and no one forces you to contribute to the common good, or commons. If you want to participate that is a free choice. You should not be vilified for trying to get some revenue back for open sourcing your work -- you should be congratulated for releasing it as such rather than going for the default 'commercial' model.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Chapter80]

So, do the people that helped you get a cut of the $12.95?

Anyone else think this is funny? The fact that the parent contributed this comment to a forum that is making money from ads off this very page!

Using this logic, Slashdot should be paying its contributors. Surely the comments are a significant source of value to the readers, and they don't pay a penny for them.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[makkverk]

This novel was originally posted online as a rough draft in late 2005. It has made great strides, receiving tens of thousands of reader contributions. It has received good reader reviews, and has been downloaded 6000 times in a two year span.

So, do the people that helped you get a cut of the $12.95?

No, but under the CC lisence they're all allowed to print and sell the book themselves.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[PopeRatzo]

The fact that the parent contributed this comment to a forum that is making money from ads off this very page!

There are ads here? Hell, I've been a subscriber so long I've completely forgotten that /. has advertisements.

Ad-block is the bomb.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Phyrexicaid]

If there's people who are willing to do the editing for free, why would you pay them? "If there are people" No charge ;)

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Josh Triplett]

I presume that as the copyright holder, rather than a licensee, he's allowed to also sell copies. The question is whether the "community contributions" hold any copyright as well, and if he is only entitled to them under the CC license terms (like GPL patches without assignation of copyright). If so, he might not be within his rights to sell the book via Lulu! Unless the author established some additional terms on top of the CC-by-nc-nd license, any "community contributions" represent unauthorized derivative works.

If the author had instead used CC-by-nc-sa, the "community contributions" would fall under the same license, which would give him no right to sell the book with the contributions included.

So either way, the author has no right to sell copies of the edited book, via Lulu or otherwise.

Yay for unintended consequences. People should think twice before using a Creative Commons license that includes "nc" or "nd" terms. In addition to making the work non-free, they can lead to consequences like these.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Odinson]

My cut is $3.30 if it's sold from Lulu, and $.48 cents for books sold from Barnes and Noble. After three two four years of writing, editing, and a month of working the Kinks out of Lulu, I have sold exactly 23 books. Half of those I bought, and mailed to the heavy editors to say thanks. Reviews have been great, so all I can think is people just don't take CC/Lulu authors seriously. Not a good sign for those west coast haters out there.

Since you can download it for free, best I can figure is I really just did this for the Slashdot Karma. :)

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Kamikaze Chipmunk]

We tried to cut you a check, but oddly couldn't find your contact information.

Re:Cheap publicity.

[Em Adespoton]

This is exactly the point. Publishing is not being crowdsourced; editing is. The resulting work is publicly available for ANYONE to take and print under their own ISBN; in this case, it is the person who originated the project who decided to monetize it through publication. Hopefully he'll roll the profits back into the site to help foster future such projects -- but that's his choice. He could just as easily pocket the profits. If he does this, the rest of his team is within their rights to fork the project and produce their own in-print copy (with edits if desired).

Re:First by-nc-nd CC post!

[martin-boundary]

*
* (c) 2008 Anonymous Coward
* This comment is free; you can
* modify it and repost under the
* nc-by-nd CC license.
*

I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok!
I release this post with the CC license!
HE'S A LUMBERJACK AND HE'S OK!
HE RELEASES THIS POST WITH THE CC LICENSE!

I write a post, I eat my lunch
I ask for changes from others.
HE WRITES A POST, HE EATS HIS LUNCH
HE ASKS FOR CHANGES FROM OTHERS!

I write down comments, I skip and jump
I like to press wild flowers
HE WRITES DOWN COMMENTS, HE SKIPS AND JUMPS
HE LIKES TO PRESS WILD FLOWERS

I put on women's clothing
That's why I'm famous now!
HE PUTS ON WOMEN'S CLOTHING
THAT'S WHY HE'S FAMOUS NOW!

Peter Watts

[pionzypher]

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.

Re:Peter Watts

[bcrowell]

There are quite a few professional authors releasing fiction under some kind of CC license. Cory Doctorow, Rudy Rucker, Karl Schroeder, Peter Watts, and Charles Stross are some of the better known SF pros who are doing this. Bruce Sterling has released some nonfiction under a CC license. Other, less well known professionally published authors are trying it as well, e.g., Rick Dakan, Mike Brotherton, Jim Munroe.

I'm not sure what's so notable about the "community-edited" part. It sounds like an attempt to make a false analogy between fiction writing and software development. Software is a tool, so the "with enough eyeballs, all bugs become shallow" concept makes sense; if it's broken, people can help you fix it. Fiction isn't a tool. The difference between a good novel and a bad novel isn't just that there are typos here and there. There's also a massive oversupply of people who think they can write fiction, so it's not exactly exciting news that someone is willing to give me his novel for free. Slush pile editors get paid to read unpublished fiction all day, and at night they go home bleary-eyed and debating whether to slit their wrists.

One similarity that does exist between fiction writing and software hacking is that they both require a large amount of practice to get good at. I collected about forty rejection slips on about a dozen pieces of short fiction before making my first sale. If the OP really wants to get to the point where he can reach an audience with his science fiction, I'd advise him to look into some online groups where he can get feedback on his work. Two good communities are critters.org and the Baen's Universe e-slush board. I also benefited a lot from attending one of the Clarion workshops.

I think the analogy with open-source software works much better for nonfiction, and it's also with nonfiction that you can actually hope to reach a significant audience without going through a traditional publisher.

Re:At least we now have a new notch on the scale

[stoofa]

But infinity being what it is they would also produce Shakespeare and thicker than blood.

You obviously wouldn't publish anything from their 'e' period.

It's been done before

[jamesh]

It's been done before, in fact it happened to some friends of a friend of mine, they didn't like each other very much and were made to write a story together, alternating paragraph by paragraph... it went something like this:

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

You total $*&.

Stupid %&#$!.

by-nc-nd? Community edited?

[WK2]

How can a community edited work be published under by-nc-ND? The nd means "no derivative" which means that the public can't distribute modified works. When he says, "community edited" does he mean a private community? Also, according the the website, they are selling this book, which you can't do if it is by-NC-nd, where the NC means non-commercial. If it was community edited, you would need permission from every copyright holder (which might mean a lot) if you want a different license.

With so many things left unanswered, how can we answer this guy's question?

Re:by-nc-nd? Community edited?

[WWWWolf]

How can a community edited work be published under by-nc-ND?

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.

Re:by-nc-nd? Community edited?

[Markusis]

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.

Re:by-nc-nd? Community edited?

[Odinson]

The book was posted by me.

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.

Re:So I tried to download the book...

[SeaFox]

and its going at a few bytes per second... I think we slashdotted his poor server.

No, it's still in editing. Please stand by while we continue to write it.

First community driven book?

[stpk4]

Wouldn't that be the Bible? = )

BitTorrent download

[TheSHAD0W]

http://bittornado.com/torrents/Thicker-Than-Blood.pdf.torrent

Sorry about the off-topic reply, just trying to help people w/ their slow download.

Re:At least we now have a new notch on the scale

[gsslay]

Pity. At some point in infinity I see your two above sentence being a chick-lit blockbuster, selling well in spaceports in the lly language of sector 8662 in the year 2987622224.

Not enough sex though, and the ending is a bit rushed. But Simian Book Review of The Month said 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee', and reviews don't come any better than that!

Re:First by-nc-nd CC post!

[sapphire wyvern]

Er, Monty Python wasn't a person. They were a comedy troupe.

Also: Oxford English Dictionary

[Hemogoblin]

The Oxford English Dictionary, which was first conceived in the 1850's, was a completely volunteer driven project. It's like the Wikipedia of today, except by mail and 140 years earlier. I read an awesome book about the making of the dictionary, but the title escapes me. I'll quote Wikipedia instead.

Volunteer readers would copy to quotation slips passages illustrating actual word usages, then post them to the dictionary editor. In 1858, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" ... ... On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published, and research started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54-pigeon-hole grid. In April 1861, the group published the first sample pages; later that month, the thirty-one-year old Coleridge died of tuberculosis. Apparently the hardest part of the work was finding quotations of some of the simplest words, since everyone was interested in quoting long and complicated words.

Re:Also: Oxford English Dictionary

[the phantom]

The creation of the OED was certainly in interesting effort, but I would not go so far as to say it is like the Wikipedia of its time. The OED was edited an compiled by a very small group of people, who had complete editorial control. Certainly, volunteers submitted words and quotes to the editors, but the editors were ultimately in control over which words and quotes ended up in the dictionary. This is in stark contrast to Wikipedia, where there really isn't any centralized control.

Re:First by-nc-nd CC post!

[xappax]

Actually, I believe they were a flying circus.