I know they're shit books. Amazon does nothing good for books and I have to defend the three or whatever major publishing conglomerates are left because Amazon seems to want to burn down the publishing industry and fill the resulting vacuum itself. How can someone reasonably hail self publishing as the future when its biggest success so far is 50 Shades of Grey? Are you as an author scared that of Amazon will change publishing for the worse?
He's not insane. He's Crazy Eddie. Amazon's business model is, pure and simple, "cheaper than everybody else." That means that they will either continue until someone else cuts their margins even deeper (see: Monoprice) or they're busted for labor practices or anti-trust. Amazon's business strategy is about as complex as a game of limbo - they lower the bar and everyone goes under it. Thing is, they gotta go under it too. Really, this is Amazon trying to build a pulp fiction repertoire. If anything, they're trying to Netflix up a formula because all of their Kindle First Books are so shit. It's pretty damn telling that their approach to greatness is all stick, no carrot, though. "Fuck you, authors, write better! Here, we'll pay you less so you're incentivized!"Also, between Amazon Echo and his manical cackle, how do more people not realize that Jeff Bezos is batshit insane?
Love the crazy Eddie reference. Amazon's business strategy is actually "sell Amazon web services." And why does this mean that everyone has to get paid less? Netflix pays good, really good, money for its content. They put big money into production and they get some good content, some great content and some awful content. They also recycle a lot of content that would have made up syndication. I imagine that the people at Amazon would rather eat Penguin's lunch than make a Netflix in a different medium.
More accurately, "Sell Amazon web services at the lowest possible price." Akamai who? Amazon competes primarily on price, not service. And it means that everyone gets paid less. Netflix does NOT pay "good, really good" money for its content. They pay somewhere between "Youtube money" and "network money" for their content. I knew people on the web version of Arrested Development and they were getting the same sorts of rates I get for working with Smosh. And when you're forcing people to earn every word, you're forcing them to write serials. Long form? With a payoff at the end? That shit's dead... which means the only people who are going to play by their rules are the desperate and talentless. I've seen this movie before. Everyone who isn't desperate or talentless bails. Ask me why I'm moving out of Hollywood.
Because you're jaded and bitter that you didn't make it rich? Because there are a mass of people that are willing to grovel in the dirt for the idea of mega-star style success. Because the entertainment industry sells the sizzle not the cow? Even though they promised a herd. That's the actual problem, the idea is that the only success is in dollars and cents. Not in fulfillment, satisfaction and being content. I sound like a super hippy...I am not...I just think that the first step towards being happy is not being angry because you feel like you're not getting enough. I have run into you a few times now and you are really angry, or at least you have been over the past few days. Everything okay?
There's this idea amongst people who have no idea how Hollywood works that everyone is a star and the salaries are all huge. How many people made Jurassic World? How many of them are Chris Pratt? Realistically speaking, you need to land two movies, three TV shows or about 100 commercials a year in order to make a comfortable, middle-class living... if those projects are traditional union projects. More and more of them aren't. Lots of us are down here doing our middle-class thing while trying to get our projects off the ground - very few people came to Hollywood to be a 2nd AC but there are lots of 2nd ACs in Hollywood. In 2006 there were 84 full studio features shot in Hollywood. In 2014 there were two. Television production has moved to places where the rates aren't good and the commercial world has contracted around itself. If you weren't shooting with those guys in 2004 you never will, and once they're retired that entire segment will be gone. I'm leaving Hollywood because the comfortable middle-class lifestyle I choose to lead is becoming harder to find... and the show that pays for most of my year only lasts three months so I'd rather spend the other 9 somewhere more pleasant. Beyond that, it's substantially cheaper for me to make movies elsewhere, despite the fact that the trained crews are down here. Problem is, for what I can sell a feature for, I can't afford to pay my friends what they're worth, and I've been a part of a half-dozen sold features so it's not like I'm howling in the woods. I will not mourn a market segment that cannot compete in the modern marketplace... but I will also not pretend that what replaces it will be as good. I also wouldn't presume to project emotional motives on a discussion about economics. That's ad hominem rhetoric, and it convinces no one. Just sayin'.
Hey man, I just wanted to check in. Emotional inventory of people I am sharing a moment with. Not trying to bust your balls.
Isn't part of the problem with production leaving LA that modern market isn't really a functional market to speak of? As I understand it, much of the production has gone to places whose legislatures give millions of dollars to studios to shoot movies and TV there. I live in one of those states (MI), and of all the reasons I despise our GOP legislature, cancelling the 43% film incentive isn't one of them. I love movies and TV, I am willing to pay good money to see them, but I am not a fan of directly subsidizing them. It seems to be bad for everyone (except already rich execs) on the balance.I will not mourn a market segment that cannot compete in the modern marketplace... but I will also not pretend that what replaces it will be as good.
The only country that doesn't heavily subsidize its entertainment industry is the United States. There's a reason foreign films are often artier and more high-brow - they don't have to make a profit. I know of three different production companies that went bankrupt when Michigan reneged on its deals.
And one entire municipality who had bet the farm that they would become the production hub. It was terrible, and of course my heart went out to the people who thought they were building something here. But the government can't be tossing 43% at any industry. The theory was that the money would be scaled back as the industry took root, but then the next state just steps up and gives 44%, and you're fucked. Shooting a movie is just a tad more portable than building cars, but the leaders here in all their wisdom seemed to not recognize that. No one is going to stay in town just because they like you. Do you think that the US should be in the business of subsidizing the entertainment industry? I like many foreign films, but I'll take Hollywood over any other movie hub, even if they throw the occasional Gigli at us. Right now, I feel like state governments are boning the industry in their attempts to make short term gains at home. Edit: Don't take my endorsement of the policy as an endorsement of the way it was implemented. I didn't like the film credits much, but a deal's a deal, and the way the GOP just pulled the plug was really disgraceful.I know of three different production companies that went bankrupt when Michigan reneged on its deals.
The problem with film credits is few legislatures have the appetite long-term to make them work. Those that do get a film production industry: New Mexico, Georgia. List industries that the US doesn't subsidize and I'll show you a list of industries that make it up in payola and kick-backs. Honestly? I see it like the Airbus/Boeing debacle: Airbus exists because it is subsidized by the governments of France, Germany and England. Boeing exists because Boeing receives illegal payouts and favoritism in order to stay afloat against a rival that doesn't have to profit. Considering movies are rarely used to kill someone but always used to spread your economic and social ideals, FUCK YEAH we ought to be subsidizing the production of entertainment. If I could make the DHS and the NEA swap budgets I'd do it in a heartbeat. What do you think Hitler looks like without Leni Riefenstahl? How long do the '80s last without Red Dawn and Top Gun? It's all propaganda; the only real question is how directly you fund it.
For sure. Here in MI, we have a giant budget deficit, because the Big 3 were promised tax credits for keeping jobs here during the recession that we can't afford. If not for the incentives, what manufacturing remains would already be overseas. I suppose my problem isn't with subsidizing industry, because of course that happens everywhere, but rather with the race to the bottom that all the states play against one another. Remember the "Texas Miracle" that was basically Rick Perry telling industry that they could treat his state like it were a quarter million square miles of a garbage dump? I loathe that kind of mentality. MI didn't create any jobs when it gave up its money; it stole them from CA. That looks more like looting than economic development to me, and I think it makes us all poorer.List industries that the US doesn't subsidize and I'll show you a list of industries that make it up in payola and kick-backs.
Every time he laughs in this interview I become uncomfortable http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/baettl/jeff-bezos The phone, the Echo, the lack of profit, the laugh: I think he's insane. Not that you're wrong but I think he's a crazy person.
I understand Amazon wanting some quality control. I understand Amazon looking for a "better" model for funding self-published work. Heralding 50 Shades of Grey as a triumph of anything other than discovering that people are more than willing to buy sex is the wrong argument. I think that the funding model has possibility. No one writes to get rich. Writers write because of the passion for crafting story. Amazon has the means to change the funding model...I say let them. They will get burned. Someone will figure out how to make cash by hacking Kindle hardware and Amazon will bleed for it. The truth is that traditional publishing doesn't protect nuance or favor art any more than Amazon does. They want to make more. Books of caliber don't make more money necessarily. Popular books do. It will be a cold day in hell when someone finally convinces me that Harry Potter was anything other than derivative pap...but the fact is that every publisher wishes that it was in their catalog. But that derivative pap was entertainment. It was escape. It was something that caught fire with the mass market. Self publishing will make the model different. Better? Worse? Who knows until we try, I for one welcome our new benevolent overlords and look forward to hacking a "page turner" that will make me rich.
Self publishing has the potential to obliterate non fiction. Without a publishing house to fund actual research that takes months or years to complete I don't see a lot of people producing quality research based text. You make a good point about good books often not selling well but shouldering promotion and editing while also presumably working so you don't starve is unrealistic. The publishers are a necessary evil and so are record labels and movie studios. Strip out all the protections afforded by a big guy with money in your corner and you get 50 Shades of Grey and the YouPorn of erotica kleinbl00 mentioned. It's nice to have the gatekeepers weakened so a potential talent isn't overlooked but tossing them out completely is at the bare minimum foolish. Since I mentioned record labels, where are all the Internet musicians making it big with direct distribution and YouTube promotion? I can think of one and his name is Justin Bieber.
The non-fiction is an angle I'd never considered. Though as a response that I have no reasonable way of checking, don't university presses make a lot of the non-fiction for the academy? As I said, probably wrong, a legitimate question. And the difference I think that we're thinking of is scale of success. You mention Bieber as the scale of success that you are familiar with, but underground success can make you a living in the music industry, and I think it could be able to with publishing if authors weren't being paid like slaves. The without publishers people would still write, and without record labels the music industry survives because art isn't a commercial product that scales. The Odyssey was written before publishing.
Mozart wrote before record labels. The difference is the definitions of success...megahits versus supporting yourself. Consumerism in contrast to satisfaction.
I worry about Amazon because they're the #1 retailer of books in the world. They're so powerful they can push around traditional publishers on issues of price and those publishers are huge companies backed by other huge companies. Anyone with a reasonable working knowledge of antitrust laws couldn't argue that they aren't abusing their market share in monopolistic ways. This self publishing trend is nice but it produces abject shit for the most part. Publishers take incredible risks on books that go nowhere. Go to Goodwill or the remainder pile in Barnes and Noble to see how much money is spent on books no one reads. Traditional publishing wants to sell your book more than the record companies want to sign your band, your book just sucks. No one, not even publishers, get into the book business to get rich but Amazon by virtue of its market share can make publishing much worse if it ends up assuming end to end control of publishing which seems to be within their goals as a company.
Fair enough. But the phenominal thing about monopolies and large companies is that they are very difficult to keep in the position of market leaders. They eventually get out innovated by the market. Even when Microsoft was at its worst and either buying or crushing everything that opposed it in the 90s a company came back and beat them. I mean now Apples is getting pantsed, but beside the point. The problem isn't that there is something wrong with publishers putting money out marketing and printing books. But with digital distribution, the issue at stake here, what is the problem with a funding model that rewards better click rates? Isn't that the application of the internet funding model on books. We're all okay with bloggers getting paid that way, newspaper and magazine writers getting paid that way, but we've got a problem with self-published novelists? I know Amazon won't last because the strategy is flawed.
Bieber didn't really make it big until he got picked up. There's always this discussion of "gatekeepers" as if their job is to keep you out. It isn't. Their job is to find the stuff they think is valuable and then exploit it for a percentage. An agent who gets ten great books out of ten submissions is going to push all ten towards publication so that she can get ten points off of all ten. Unfortunately agents generally get zero out of ten so they have to say "sorry, no thanks, best of luck" as politely as they can. Trust me - the publishing industry has the nicest "gatekeepers" I've met.
Books with holding power make more for longer. If your model was accurate there would be no reason to purchase back catalogs or issue reprints. If Harry Potter is "derivative pap" what is it derivative of? And if it was nothing special, why was there a bump in literacy that coincides nicely with its publication history?
Harry Potter really isn't orginal in terms of story, but in terms of setting. Boy is orphan raised by aunt and uncle.
Boy feels alone and wants something more.
Boy gets message that leads him to a wondrous place.
Boy finds out he has powers and great things are expected from him.
Boy gets training for coming war where he will be a hero.
Boy defeats great evil from his past.
Boy is hero. That's Harry Potter, or Star Wars, or any of a hundred other stories. Harry Potter is unique because of setting and richness of character development, and though it may be derivative, it's not pap. It's a story we want to be told again and again because we all want to be Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker.
Because structure is a commonality across all drama. Despite what pedants think, nearly all Western narrative consists of a beginning, a middle and an end. Audiences enjoy seeing character growth. The fundamental cycles of the monomyth, Campbell aside, can be found in a plurality of stories and legends across cultures. Psychologically speaking, we like to have certain elements in our storytelling. Alexander Polti divided all possible works of fiction into 36 dramatic situations and when you look at it like that, everything is "derivative" of whatever came first, whether or not the author is even aware of prior works. It has been argued that The Hunger Games is "derivative" of Battle Royale but this argument is largely made by people who want to hate on Suzanne Collins. The fact of the matter is, both stories deal with schoolchildren made to fight on television. Collins had a much different message to convey, however, and although the scenario is the same the denouement and plot are very different. Besides which, Suzanne Collins was unaware of Battle Royale until Hunger Games was finished, so if the definition of "derivative" includes derivation, Hunger Games ain't. Both stories owe an awful lot to Walter Moudy's "The Survivor" but dollars to donuts neither one of them had ever heard of it. As a part of the collective unconscious, maybe - but then, all three stories owe their existence to Fredric Brown's "Arena" which most people know from this: Now - is Hunger Games derivative of Kirk v. Gorn? NO. But they definitely have elements in common. Wanna see derivative? This is derivative:
If you want to be that hyperbolic you could say that writing letters to make words is not an original invention. We're talking about major story elements here which play out across a ton of stories. I think that's derivative. You don't and you've made your point well. I guess I enjoy derivative work equally alongside original work. If Harry Potter is telling the same story as Star Wars it doesn't matter to me. Both were fun to watch though I prefer Star Wars.
I answered that question succinctly with Star Wars. You said that it was guarded from guilt of derivation under the protective category of the monomyth. I disagree with your argument as too broad and told you as much. If you'd like to have another try at explaining why stories which are as similar as Star Wars and Harry Potter are not derivative of the former as the former is derivative of many stories which came before it you are welcome to it, but your tone is rude and doesn't help you in any way.
Don't get me wrong I like Harry Potter. But it is hardly some sort of renaissance of literary art. It is the intertwining of two very British literary traditions. The coming of age story and Arthurian legend. If it seems hard to believe think of it this way. Take all the wands, wizards, talking paintings and faeries (the fantasy elements) and you end up with a story of a public school coming of age novel. Probably set from 1938-1945. You take away the public school coming of age and you get a predestined hero being helped by a group of friends to overcome supernatural evil, Arthurian legend. I know that I am oversimplifying but there is no element of the story that is unique in its own right other than the combining of the two stories...which in itself wasn't really original because other authors had done it before see "The Worst Witch" by Jill Murphy. Was Harry Potter good? Yeah, I think it is very entertaining. Is it literature? No. But then again I think a lot of what counts a literature is worse than Rowling. And don't pretend that the bump in literacy is anything other than the by-product of mass consumerism. Think of all the good we could do if we treated scientists like we treat Bill Nye.
You're arguing that Harry Potter owes a lot to TH White. Sure, obviously. That doesn't make it derivative of The Once And Future King. "Derivative" means, at its most basic, "imitative in a negative way." Having written 500 words or more on how Harry Potter is not the most amazing new thing under the sun, I think we can stipulate that JK Rowling owes a lot to basic literary tradition. But that's a long damn way from being "derivative pap."