From the Desk of the Chief Hairy Ape: Adjust Fire

Posted by Darwin - 24/02/10 at 01:02 am

Let me be straightforward here: Evolutions isn’t working.

The primary reason for that is me because I am Evolutions.

Seriously.  Just me.  A guy with a measly three published short stories who barely knows how to run Wordpress 2.5 and can’t upgrade to save his ass. (I keep destroying the database on the dummy site I’ve been using to experiment.)  Editor?  Why do I call myself that?  Because I’m the only one doing it.  Ergo, that’s the only title I can use.  I don’t feel like an editor, but since I write checks and do all the editing and layout crap, editor it is.

But, the key point is, it’s not working.  It’s not working for lots of reasons but mostly because I lack the necessary OCD to run something like this solo.  Call me an odd duck, if you like, but I’d really prefer to work this in a team environment.  I prefer to have people to bounce things off of and listen to.  I don’t want to live in an echo chamber.  That was never the point of this effort.

Which, oddly, brings me around to what I wanted to talk about.

See, I’ve been spending a bit of time pondering about what the heck I should do with Evolutions since: a) I have no motivation whatsoever to work on it and b) I have no money to spend on it anymore since I’m with the 17-20% of Americans who are more or less still screwed by the recession and unemployed. (Read that last bit as “Darwin ain’t got no money.”

Part of this has to do with the ongoing maelstrom that is e-publishing.  Amazon, MacMillan, whatever.  The big boys are busy stepping on each others feet to the detriment of authors and genres pretty much everywhere.  The thing is, the big boys are so disconnected from their market base that it’d be laughable if it weren’t so damned tragic.  Well, emotions start to come to the fore at this point, so I’d best leave off that for a minute otherwise I’ll get a spittle-flecked rant going, and that’s not what I want.

The key is, I deviated pretty wildly from what I originally wanted to do with Evolutions and that deviation has trashed my enthusiasm.  See, the point of Evolutions was to provide an alternate path to publication - to open another door, no matter how cramped, for fiction to get out into the world.  I never really wanted to follow the traditional “periodical” model, though.  I just kind of ended up there, which was the big mistake.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think any of the issues I’ve strung together have been “mistakes”.  I love the stories and art that I’ve been able to share with people (both of you, God bless your gracious hearts.)  I don’t think, though, that another “traditional periodical” is what readers and writers need for their web-based e-reader friendly fiction at the moment.

Straight up here, Evolutions is a Wordpress blog web site.  The amount of content that can be shared by that site is limited by two things, basically: one is bandwidth and the other is money to pay for the required bandwidth and servers.  Theoretically, it would be possible to post thousands of short stories a day if such stories existed and the readership existed to consume those stories in such a manner that the costs of editing and hosting that fiction materialized.

So, if infinity is possible, the roadblock must be…people?

And the answer to this is, “Yes, people” - me in particular at the moment because of my deceased motivation but also in terms of demand.  Supply, well, that continues to amaze me.  Not in its overarching quality, mind you.  Rather, in the fact that people are willing to submit to a complete idiot such as myself.  That, in and of itself is a sign of how things need to change.

Another reason for my pondering comes from the work I’ve done with Sarah Hoyt in helping to spread her “Space Enough and Time” universe short stories.  Because the stories always draw attention, I started thinking about the dual goals that get satisfied every time we post one.  For Sarah, it’s all about publicity.  For me, it’s all about drawing readers in.  The thought vein runs deeper, though.

Well, in any event, I’ve got to come up with some semblance of enthusiasm for my original mission, which was to provide a reader and writer friendly webzine kind of thingy that would let more works get out there and more writers get known while providing readers with a certain assurance of “decent quality reads” that would make it worth the click-through.

What an ugly sentence and generally wishy-washy mission statement.  Still, it’s much better than the brainless PC pablum mission statements I was forced to observe during my time in corporate America.

Let’s glean that: 1) Provide a place readers want to go to on the web.  2) Provide a place for writers to put fiction for readers to read. 3) Make sure there’s some sort of quality control so that it’s not just some idiotic vanity site or fan-fiction clearinghouse.

I’ll add one more: pay it forward in a way that encourages authors to keep going.

That seems clear to me now but, damn!  Was it ever murky there for a while.  Like for 2 whole years, more or less.

Well, I’ve rambled on about that for a while but, to what effect?  Honestly, I want to change things.  I want to get back to what I yakked about with heartkin in Syracuse oh so long ago, even if I’m not one of them anymore.  I want to leverage the changes that are shaking up the big money interests so much because those changes should be better for both readers and writers and hell on the “extra hands” folks who uselessly suck money out of traditional publishing.

I have an idea of how I want this to go.  That being said, I would really like to have a discussion about it.  I’m tired of driving in the dark across Montana.  I don’t have the narcissistic ego for that.

Here’s what I want to do:

I want to get the discussion board running again and set up a “slush” discussion group just like what Jim Baen’s Universe used to do on Baen’s Bar.  The idea being that people can post their stories there and receive feedback (yeah, call it critique) with the goal of making the stories meet some level of “publishable”.  I intend to stay on top of it and smash any asshats who start playing bully or prima donna.  This is the “pay it forward” bit.

Once a story has reached a certain consensus of “good enough”, the author can then take it wherever they want to sub it out.  And let me make it clear right here that I don’t care where they sub it.  I encourage people to sub to places that pay decent rates first and foremost.  However, one of the places they can “sub” is up the chain to Evolutions.

The reality is that people won’t have to go that path any more than they had to at Universe.  People with confidence will be able to sub directly to the ‘zine.  Difference being, those who drop stories in the slush forum will get feedback from others and even editorial staff (me to start with) as to what does and doesn’t work.  Direct subs will get either rejections or acceptance, not feedback.

This, of course, brings us up to this whole idea of “publication”.  The goal of any writer who’s not writing for themselves alone is for other people to see their work.  That’s publication.  The reality of web publishing is that, whether someone else buys it an puts it on-line or you throw your story up yourself, it’s still publishing.  If someone can Google your name and find your stories on-line, ta da!  Most “serious” publications won’t touch the story with a ten foot pole.

In other words, first release rights are shot.  All you could possibly hope for are reprints after you’ve made a name somewhere.  This is the reality of web publishing.  In the past, there was also a certain stigma associated with web-published authors, but that’s fading away and doesn’t really mean much unless you try to claim web-published semi-pro or amateur credits on your cover letter.  Don’t do that.  Seriously.  No Brownie points will be garnered.  Pro web sites?  (i.e. SFWA recognized.)  Yeah, go for it.  Those count.

Distractions, distractions.

Anyway, the point is that I can’t really afford the model I have.  Unemployed, remember?  No readers, no donations, and I haven’t really grokked all the ad crap that feeds the webcomic dudes.

So, if a publisher can’t pay, what’s the point, right?

Well, okay, let’s ponder that for a moment.

There’s this huge pool of people who want to get published.  Thing is, there’s not that many places to get published.  That kind of drives down the relative value of fiction.  (We’ll kind ignore the whole “99% of all submissions are crap” issue for a moment.)  What’s worse is that the market sucks.  Steve Jobs thinks that nobody reads stories without pictures anymore.  Not that I give a blow about what that narcissistic pinhead thinks, but the nugget of truth in his flaming bias is that prose is severely disadvantaged when it comes to competing with things like web comics and YouTube.

Now, let’s see.  Somebody’s gonna jump up and mention Scalzi and Doctorow and whoever else is top of the wave right now in on-line prose exploitation.  Yeah, hooray for them.  Scalzi got PAID to blog and build up a readership before he did fiction.  Not sure about Doctorow since I know him by vague intimation only that he’s somehow successful online.  In any case, independent success by flinging fiction upon the pig sty that is the intrawebs is definitely not a guaranteed way to success.  Success via that route is the rarest of exceptions.

So, anyhow, why would anyone want to publish via Evolutions?  Because they wouldn’t be self-publishing.  That’s about all I’ve got.  It’s a way of getting work out for consumption in a manner that isn’t self-publishing.  And, over time and with enough decent quality stuff, there will be a readership that checks out what shows up on the site.  So, eventually it’s really being published as opposed to self-publishing and having a certain audience who might actually read and comment on your stuff.

Now, having said all that, I should point out that I do want to pay for fiction.  However, there’s no cash in the till.  Frankly, that’s part of why I’m unmotivated to do much at the moment.  I’m certainly not recouping the costs of paying for my hosting.  In fact, the only reason I’m keeping this thing alive is that I have other web projects based off the same account and keeping Evolutions on-line isn’t setting me back anything.

So, what to do.

Well, the idea occurs that if I’m not the only one selecting stories anymore (and puhleeeese, let me stop being the only one), maybe it’d be possible to do a co-operative effort to fund putting together the funding for prose and art for the actual releases.  That’d mean singling out the “best of the best” for paid publication in the main releases while letting the “good but not stellar” reads choose whether to go on-line for the love of it or to sub out somewhere else.

Hell, this brings up the whole issue of multiple people having a call on the money, too.  And the moment you have either money or land in the mix, that’s when the shooting starts.  God, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s really not worth it.  Maybe it’s better to have people piss their work away as self-published in vain attempts to build some sort of visibility or to keep pounding their heads against the slush piles after living in little crit-group echos chambers too long.

See, the thing is, I liked it when I got to write for people who would read.  This goes way back to 2002 and Barfly Slush.  It was nice not writing in a vacuum.  I met a few cool people and a whole boatload of psychotics, just like in politics or university.  It was nice to not be alone (although I could really, really live without the psychotics.)

I think it’d be nice to help folks share their work in a way that they’d have pride in what they’ve accomplished and without the stigma of being “self-published”.  If a decent and supportive community could come out of that, even better.  That’s what I’d like to have.

With really cool art, if at all possible.  Have I mentioned that I love my artists?  Yes I do, Sam-I-Am.

But, really, I’m kind of at the end of my rope.  I could do a lot to try and attain goals like that, but I’m not built to do it in a vacuum tube.  The self-hate kicks in and I simply can’t keep slugging along.

Anyway, I’d appreciate some thoughts about this.  If there’s a way to shake a money-tree to pay authors, that’s great, but I’d really like to have readers, too.  Can’t really have one without the other, actually, and I really do think that there’s an opportunity here, as nebulous as it seems to me now.  There’s got to be some way to pulling this all together in way that helps writers reach readers and helps build interest in the SF&F genres again.

Then again, it’s late and I’m babbling.  But I pay for this site, so if I want to babble, I’ll babble, damn it!

Feel free to babble back.  Free association is permitted and encouraged.  Innovation is needed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 1:47 am and is filed under editorial. The entry is tagged under editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.