nancyfulda ([info]nancyfulda) wrote,
@ 2007-09-04 17:45:00
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You know what I want? A do-it-yourself anthology website.
I love reading short fiction, you see. But I like to read on paper, and I have limited time for pleasure reading. This means that I don't want to buy a magazine or anthology and get a grab-bag of stories. Sure, they'd be good stories, but they wouldn't be the stories on my urgent "Oh yeah, I've gotta read that" list. In the end, I'd never get around to reading them, and the purchased items would clutter up my shelves for years.

But. Imagine that I could go to a web site and build my own customized anthology. I'd skim the listing of available stories and think, "I've always meant to read 'The Cold Equations'. Let's put that in my anthology. And James Maxey's 'To the East, a Bright Star'. I've always loved that one. And, ooh! Here's one by Lois McMaster Bujold. That goes in, too."

Then I'd click a couple of buttons to select cover art, pay a fee which includes royalties for all the authors whose stories I used, and the software would automatically generate a pdf of my book and send the order to a print-on-demand publisher. Two weeks later, my anthology arrives. One anthology that satisfies my entire Wannareadit list.

As a bonus, when my daughter gets old enough, I could compile her an anthology of unicorn stories. And my son could get a fistfull of rock-hard science fiction.

So, uh... who'd like to volunteer to organize it?



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[info]raisinfish
2007-09-04 04:42 pm UTC (link)
That would be awesome. Authors would probably make more money on their short stories selling them that way than they do now. (Well, the ones of the popular stories would. The ones of the less popular stories wouldn't be able to ride on the sales of the more popular authors anymore.)

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[info]biomekanic
2007-09-04 04:53 pm UTC (link)
Soon as I win the lottery, I'm on it. ;)

It is a great idea, there's a lot of authors out there that I'd love to have a big honking volume of their work, instead of it being scattered.

But, given a certain associations views on electronic publication, I'm not holding my breath.

To paraphrase and combine the comments of 2 friends of mine: "That they're fighting the future tooth and nail is so ironic, you could cut it with a raygun".

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[info]nancyfulda
2007-09-04 05:37 pm UTC (link)
>"That they're fighting the future tooth and nail is so ironic, you could cut it with a raygun".

Heh. Isn't it the truth?

Still, you wouldn't need ALL the authors on board to make the concept viable. Just, say, 25% of the most successful ones.

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[info]david_de_beer
2007-09-04 06:39 pm UTC (link)
>Imagine that I could go to a web site and build my own customized anthology

that is a site I would pay annual membership dues for, gladly.

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[info]maryrobinette
2007-09-04 06:43 pm UTC (link)
Holy cow. That's actually a brilliant idea. I know who to talk to to handle the coding too...

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[info]bluetyson
2007-09-05 04:33 am UTC (link)
Yep, I have thought something like this would be way cool. Put it together, and have it send you electronic or order you a book like lulu, whichever you want?

Further thoughts lead to the fact that you might have to have a lot of slaughtering of lawyers and publishers first, to get it to work, currently. :)

No reason you couldn't set up the architecture with public domain stories as a test, I suppose - and people package those all the time, and quite a few authors sell things at Fictionwise.

David's membership idea is interesting, and the above bookshop does have a 'lending library' function it seems.

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[info]nancyfulda
2007-09-05 12:37 pm UTC (link)
>Further thoughts lead to the fact that you might have to have a lot of slaughtering of lawyers and publishers first, to get it to work, currently. :)

Why would you need to deal with lawyers or publishers? The story rights belong to the authors, in most cases. If you win the authors over, who else has a right to complain?

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Could this be a Universe feature?
[info]mbarker
2007-09-05 12:32 pm UTC (link)
It sounds like something that might be possible - provide a way for people (who have already subscribed and paid for the stories) to select a set of stories and have it "packaged" for them? Kind of a "roll-your-own" best of JBU. Seems like a natural addition to the current offerings.

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Re: Could this be a Universe feature?
[info]nancyfulda
2007-09-05 12:35 pm UTC (link)
It's possible. So far, JBU has had a policy of sticking with electronic format. I'm not sure whether that's likely to change any time soon.

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Re: Could this be a Universe feature?
[info]samhidaka
2007-09-05 09:56 pm UTC (link)
No, I don't think JBU will ever get into the business of selling dead-tree versions of the stories -- because that would put us in direct competition with Baen Books.

THE BEST OF JBU is a different matter because it's published and sold by Baen Books.

Of course, there's nothing to prevent subscribers from making hardcopy "personal favorite anthologies" themselves, with the stories they've already purchased -- as long as it's for personal use, and not for resale.


I love the idea of a "do-it-yourself anthology website" though.

Too bad Jim Baen passed away too early. If he were still alive, and you took the idea to him . . . well . . . he'd probably say: "Great idea. Do it yourself." But he may have backed you with Baen resources -- like using the Bar to get started.

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Re: Could this be a Universe feature?
[info]mbarker
2007-09-06 08:12 am UTC (link)
Sam? I'm confused. As I understood it, the notion was that perhaps there should be a way for a person to get a "personal favorites" anthology packaged and ready for printing. It seems like a natural addition to the features offered to subscribers to JBU - let them pick out the stories they like from the ones they have already purchased and put them together in a nice format. Personal use, of course, not resale - that's the whole point of a DIY site, I think, is that the selections are yours.

I'm not clear on the corporate relationships of JBU and Baen, so don't really understand why this would be competition. It seems more like a question of packaging - another alternative to by-the-month and different formats, selected stories.

Sorry if this kicked some buttons. Just speculating.

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Re: Could this be a Universe feature?
[info]samhidaka
2007-09-07 05:17 am UTC (link)
Mike,

I thought the premise of the discussion was that Nancy likes to read on paper. (Yeah, that's sooooo last century.)

And JBU isn't going to get into the business of providing paper anthologies of JBU stories -- except for the BEST antho published by Baen.

As for providing an electronic anthology assembled from a subscriber's choices of stories . . . that might be a possibility in the future.

But I'd guess that it'll be quite a while in the future. There's quite a bit of work involved in assembling the stories and producing a printable PDF from it. I suppose we'll eventually automate the "produce the PDF" procedure for the magazine issues -- and that same procedure can be used for DYI-anthologies.

I'd actually like to have a year-by-year anthology of the Introducing stories.

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[info]e_moon60
2007-11-26 05:14 pm UTC (link)
A very nifty idea, and one I'd like to see happen...anyone around capable of running the numbers of what it would take to get it started, in terms of finances and time? Business plan? Etc?

As long as some money flowed back to the writers, the writers I know would be for it. They (and this includes me) would want to see a business plan that gave some confidence the idea would be around long enough to have a chance of flying, and a clear statement by the people running it that they would work within copyright (which, for such a site, would mean contracting with each writer, just like a regular publisher.)

The rights the site should negotiate for would probably be nonexclusive worldwide English-language e-distribution (because the royalties per story per download would be so low, to keep the total anthology download low enough people would buy it. Writers would need to be able to continue to market those stories elsewhere, including to print publishers, and these days that won't fly if the e-rights are already completely gone.)

Ideally you'd first limit participation in the "library" to established writers (as the market is already there) to build customer confidence in the process, and then when it's going well, add in new writers as they're published in markets that themselves are attracting likely anthology collectors. To avoid or at least limit editorial costs, you'd need to limit participation to published writers. You would want to set up some kind of agreement with a network of printshops/binderies (if you didn't try to set up your own, which would be expensive as all getout and a headache to boot) so that customers would have local contacts on that end--so they wouldn't have to dig through directories unless they wanted to.

This is similar to an idea some other writers and I were tossing around almost ten years ago, but none of us had time to pursue it, and we didn't get as far as custom anthologies on this model. (Custom books, sure. My point of entry was people with disabilities, as I had a friend, a cancer victim, who could no longer hold the average hardcover, but could hold lighter books. And I knew someone else who could read more easily if the pages weren't white. And so on.)

Another thought: if you don't want to run it yourself, consider pitching this idea to several of the top publishers or (if you prefer) small press publishers--it would help generate more income from their short fiction writers and their novelists who also write short fiction; they already have a lot of the necessary infrastructure in place and the experience in setting up divisions, in writing contracts with writers, etc.

Yet another thought: start with market research, as you're doing here, but get nitty-gritty with it. What would people actually pay for the total download of, say, 15-20 stories (typical anthology length)? They're still going to have to pay for the printing and binding itself. How much would you pay for your own private unique anthology? How many people would pay that? How long would you be willing to wait, between "ordering" the book and its arrival from the printer/binder? Because that's your bottom line...if everyone says they'll pay $5, no more, then it's not going to happen no matter how many people want it. Printing and binding alone, for single-unit jobs, is more than that. If the market for custom anthologies is only 500 people, it's not going to happen at a price most of those 1000 people will pay. If the acceptable delay between downloading a file and seeing the finished book is "less than 24 hours" it's not going to happen for quality books (for things printed on standard 8.5 x 11 and comb-bound at Kinko's or Ginny's or another shop of that type, it might, depending on their other workload.)

So run a survey: how many people say they'd take the time to compile one and how much would they pay for it and how long would they willingly wait to see the finished book? Would they want high-end production (leather binding, acid-free paper, deckle-edged, interior artwork) or midrange standard hardcover, or trade-paperback size paper, or...?

Really neat idea. Hope someone takes it on in a way I can support from both ends, as writer and as customer.

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[info]nancyfulda
2007-11-29 08:17 am UTC (link)
A very nifty idea, and one I'd like to see happen...anyone around capable of running the numbers of what it would take to get it started, in terms of finances and time? Business plan? Etc?

Funny you should ask. As it turns out, all the encouragement I got on LJ and elsewhere prompted me to start developing the project. Initial financial investment wasn't too bad, actually, although it's taken up a lot, lot, LOT of my time. *grin*

The rights the site should negotiate for would probably be nonexclusive worldwide English-language e-distribution

Actually, we're not contracting any elecronic rights at all, although we may expand to that in the future. We're buying reprint rights, and printing the stories in a physical book that's sent to the customer.

Why aren't we buying first world serialization rights? Well, mostly because I don't feel that we can pay what those rights deserve. I wouldn't want to be a vehicle for authors shortchanging themselves. If established authors wanted to release brand-new material on the site, I suppose we could work out an individual contract for that.

(Custom books, sure. My point of entry was people with disabilities, as I had a friend, a cancer victim, who could no longer hold the average hardcover, but could hold lighter books. And I knew someone else who could read more easily if the pages weren't white. And so on.)

Ooh, now that's an interesting idea. I wonder whether we could incorperate some of those features in a year or two... think think think.

One thing we are doing is providing the option of large-print anthologies for readers with poor eyesight. I know several people who love to read, but for whom it's a pain because the print is so small.

What would people actually pay for the total download of, say, 15-20 stories (typical anthology length)? They're still going to have to pay for the printing and binding itself. How much would you pay for your own private unique anthology?

Those are good questions. Right now it looks like the final price will be $14.95 plus shipping per anthology. The printing is handled from our end, so the customer won't have to worry about that. Shipping costs will fall in the range of typical book rates.

Really neat idea. Hope someone takes it on in a way I can support from both ends, as writer and as customer.

Thanks for the encouragement. If you keep tabs on this journal, you'll be among the first to know when the system's up and running ;)

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