I'm not sure how useful bestsellers stats are for readers. My agent keeps pounding into me that word of mouth is your best advertising medium, and I've come to believe him. In fact, I think I value the recommendations of friends much higher than some page or TV spot telling me what I'll like. As a writer, I feel that my books are my best advertising, and my readers are my best advertising reps. That said, a big problem with being a novelist these days is that the publishers hold sales data very close to their chests. It's almost impossible for us lowly scribes to get any sales numbers, not at least for a year or two after the book comes out... so for us, an objective third-party measure of our success could be very useful in making critical career decisions--such as, I _think_ my latest book's a hit; should I quit my job to write full time now?
Reputation economies have problems too
on
Dog Bites Website
·
· Score: 1
John Katz says in his article:
"It's about individualism, free expression, and a culture open to us all."
Actually, it's not. As in any economy, it's about having enough currency to be able to purchase clout. Open-source is a reputation economy: the currency is the level of your profile in the community. John Katz has a good profile, so from his perspective, it must seem easy to use the open-source network to promote his books. I have no profile in this community, as far as I'm aware, so I'm relatively confident that had I posted the article "Dog Bites Website", it could not have appeared on the home page of slashdot. I lack the currency to pay for that kind of exposure. So do many others, particularly authors and artists who may be producing material greatly of interest to the open-source community, but who don't actively participate in that community because... well, they're working on their art.
The rights to individualism and free expression have to be paid for via participation in the open-source movement, because what you're buying is the attention of your peers in the movement. (You can be as individualistic as you want, and be ignored by all if you have no credibility in the community.) And the "us all" that Katz refers to in his posting is the tiny subset of people who are part of that movement--and not everyone else. So, no, for most of us, open-source is not a solution to the problem of how to get our names out there.
Brief panic, then recovery
on
Rare Earth
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I was about 3/4 of the way through writing a new novel when "Rare Earth" came out; since "Rare Earth" contradicted pretty well every premise I'd based on the novel on, I was pretty freaked--until I actually sat down and read through the book. I shouldn't have worried.
The basic arguments put forward in "Rare Earth" are each consistent and compelling; the problem is that each challenge to the development of life presented has its own solution(s), which they ignore. For instance, they maintain that plate tectonics is essential for the maintenance of an atmosphere; this is manifestly untrue, because neither Venus nor Mars have plate tectonics, and both planets have atmospheres (albeit unlike our own). In fact, when you examine Venus, it turns out to have something that may fulfil the same role as plate tectonics: "coronae" which are upwellings from inside the planet that form ring-shaped volcanic chains. So an Earth-like planet with coronae is quite conceivable, even likely.
The authors of "Rare Earth" argue fallaciously by assuming an exact match to the Earth to be required for life, then running through a laundry-list of reasons why such an exact match is rare. But an exact match isn't required; not even an inexact match.
My new novel posits planets in orbit around brown dwarfs (failed stars bigger than Jupiter but smaller than the smallest red dwarf). In researching the book I became convinced that such exotic environments (which may be the rule rather than the exception in our galaxy because brown dwarfs are at least as common as lit stars) are perfectly fine environments for the development of life: for sunlight, substitute infrared radiation and intermittent visible-light flares from the dwarf; for plate tectonics, substitute tidal stretching by the dwarf; for a Jupiter to protect against cometary impacts, substitute a smaller and more impoverished Oort cloud. The list goes on and on--for every supposed "requirement" of the Rare Earth hypothesis, there's at least one, usually many, alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how useful bestsellers stats are for readers. My agent keeps pounding into me that word of mouth is your best advertising medium, and I've come to believe him. In fact, I think I value the recommendations of friends much higher than some page or TV spot telling me what I'll like. As a writer, I feel that my books are my best advertising, and my readers are my best advertising reps. That said, a big problem with being a novelist these days is that the publishers hold sales data very close to their chests. It's almost impossible for us lowly scribes to get any sales numbers, not at least for a year or two after the book comes out... so for us, an objective third-party measure of our success could be very useful in making critical career decisions--such as, I _think_ my latest book's a hit; should I quit my job to write full time now?
"It's about individualism, free expression, and a culture open to us all."
Actually, it's not. As in any economy, it's about having enough currency to be able to purchase clout. Open-source is a reputation economy: the currency is the level of your profile in the community. John Katz has a good profile, so from his perspective, it must seem easy to use the open-source network to promote his books. I have no profile in this community, as far as I'm aware, so I'm relatively confident that had I posted the article "Dog Bites Website", it could not have appeared on the home page of slashdot. I lack the currency to pay for that kind of exposure. So do many others, particularly authors and artists who may be producing material greatly of interest to the open-source community, but who don't actively participate in that community because... well, they're working on their art.
The rights to individualism and free expression have to be paid for via participation in the open-source movement, because what you're buying is the attention of your peers in the movement. (You can be as individualistic as you want, and be ignored by all if you have no credibility in the community.) And the "us all" that Katz refers to in his posting is the tiny subset of people who are part of that movement--and not everyone else. So, no, for most of us, open-source is not a solution to the problem of how to get our names out there.
I was about 3/4 of the way through writing a new novel when "Rare Earth" came out; since "Rare Earth" contradicted pretty well every premise I'd based on the novel on, I was pretty freaked--until I actually sat down and read through the book. I shouldn't have worried. The basic arguments put forward in "Rare Earth" are each consistent and compelling; the problem is that each challenge to the development of life presented has its own solution(s), which they ignore. For instance, they maintain that plate tectonics is essential for the maintenance of an atmosphere; this is manifestly untrue, because neither Venus nor Mars have plate tectonics, and both planets have atmospheres (albeit unlike our own). In fact, when you examine Venus, it turns out to have something that may fulfil the same role as plate tectonics: "coronae" which are upwellings from inside the planet that form ring-shaped volcanic chains. So an Earth-like planet with coronae is quite conceivable, even likely. The authors of "Rare Earth" argue fallaciously by assuming an exact match to the Earth to be required for life, then running through a laundry-list of reasons why such an exact match is rare. But an exact match isn't required; not even an inexact match. My new novel posits planets in orbit around brown dwarfs (failed stars bigger than Jupiter but smaller than the smallest red dwarf). In researching the book I became convinced that such exotic environments (which may be the rule rather than the exception in our galaxy because brown dwarfs are at least as common as lit stars) are perfectly fine environments for the development of life: for sunlight, substitute infrared radiation and intermittent visible-light flares from the dwarf; for plate tectonics, substitute tidal stretching by the dwarf; for a Jupiter to protect against cometary impacts, substitute a smaller and more impoverished Oort cloud. The list goes on and on--for every supposed "requirement" of the Rare Earth hypothesis, there's at least one, usually many, alternatives.