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Their publishing company / record label / film studio stops them from releasing their work as CC / Public Domain. Because the middlemen of the entertainment ind

Their publishing company / record label / film studio stops them from releasing their work as CC / Public Domain. Because the middlemen of the entertainment industry want to ensure a profit. They're also the one's lobbying the government to make the copyright term longer and longer. So changing this is beyond the means of the lone storyteller or fan embracing an alternative. We need shorter copyright terms.

rayiner 11y ago
So film the thing on your GoPro and publish directly on the internet.
- coldtea 11y ago
  In the dellusional hope that "nothing" stops a self-budgeted GoPro filmed internet movie from competing with hundrend-million budget, non stop marketing, major studio distribution movie?
  - rayiner 11y ago
    That really kind of proves the point, doesn't it? If studios spending hundreds of millions to make/market movies is what gets people to watch them, then aren't they the ones adding most of the value of the movie? And if so, why should any proceeds from that process ever accrue to anyone who didn't make that original capital investment?
waterlesscloud 11y ago
You don't need a publishing company / record label / film studio. You might use one to finance your work. Or market your work, which is their best talent these days. But you don't need them. You can produce and release your work freely without them.
- tjradcliffe 11y ago
  Sure you can, but no one will read them. My novel "Darwin's Theorem" (available on Amazon for a nominal price in e-book format, a less-nominal price in paperback) is published under a CC license but that doesn't mean anyone will read it. The fundamentally borken part of the indie ecosystem is marketing/discovery. Publishers still act as gatekeepers for the reading public. Most people don't read and what they do read is almost entirely determined by the amount of marketing done for it, and while marketing is a learnable skill (I've run my own consulting shop, so done a lot of it) it is difficult to do on the kind of budget most indie authors have available for what amounts to a hobby. The indie music industry has done a better job of discovery but that's in part because music is consumable in much smaller pieces than novels. The solution to this in writing has been--to some extent--to return to serialization, but while that has worked a bit in non-fiction (people write blogs they turn into books) it has so far seen only one or two successes in fiction, and they have been... not notable for the quality of writing, for the most part. I've experimented with a couple of alternative forms to see if this can be overcome, but no luck so far. One was an illustrated serial prose format (finished version here: http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html), the other an somewhat informal poemed illustrations format (http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html) that appeared on the artist's blog and developed as a kind of jazz work as we tossed themes back and forth. The latter actually got a bigger following, although we promoted the former a lot more heavily. Go figure. So far it looks like conventional serial narratives--probably pod-cast--are the best bet for the indie author. Some kind of serial pod-cast will likely be my next move, more in the spirit of exploration than anything else. I'm fortunate to have some training as a voice actor, but the number conditions on an idie author to be successful are many, and the difficulty for readers in discovering work they might enjoy is considerable.
  - thenomad 11y ago
    Writer of the original article here. I've been avoiding commenting so far as the discussion's made most of the points I'd want to make, but I thought I'd chime in on this one. Speaking as someone in the same position as tjradcliffe but in the movie (and now comics) world rather than prose, his analysis is spot-on. Discovery's the problem. In the indie narrative film world - which is in a much, much worse position when it comes to discovery and distribution than the self-publishing world in most ways for reasons somewhat too complicated to go into in a short comment - there's an aphorism about the current situation that I'm hearing more and more. "There's never been a better time to make a film, and never been a worse time to get anyone to watch it." Like tjradcliffe, I'm experimenting with ways around it. And like him I've ended up settling on serial works - both Carcosa, which is mentioned in the article, and other stuff that I'll be bringing out shortly. But that's far from a complete solution to the problem.
- normloman 11y ago
  Musician here. It's possible to record your own album, book your own gigs, be your own marketing department, and make a living wage from it. Just like it's possible to ride a unicycle over a tightrope across the grand canyon. Of course, even with a label, you have as good of a chance making good money from original songs as you do being struck by lightning. Most artists who were successful at the DIY thing got fame with a major label at some point (Trent Reznor, Radiohead, etc). So as long as artists depend on labels to get their music heard, labels are going to dictate copyrights and licensing to a degree.

rayiner 11y ago

So film the thing on your GoPro and publish directly on the internet.

coldtea 11y ago
In the dellusional hope that "nothing" stops a self-budgeted GoPro filmed internet movie from competing with hundrend-million budget, non stop marketing, major studio distribution movie?
- rayiner 11y ago
  That really kind of proves the point, doesn't it? If studios spending hundreds of millions to make/market movies is what gets people to watch them, then aren't they the ones adding most of the value of the movie? And if so, why should any proceeds from that process ever accrue to anyone who didn't make that original capital investment?

waterlesscloud 11y ago

You don't need a publishing company / record label / film studio. You might use one to finance your work. Or market your work, which is their best talent these days. But you don't need them. You can produce and release your work freely without them.

tjradcliffe 11y ago
Sure you can, but no one will read them. My novel "Darwin's Theorem" (available on Amazon for a nominal price in e-book format, a less-nominal price in paperback) is published under a CC license but that doesn't mean anyone will read it. The fundamentally borken part of the indie ecosystem is marketing/discovery. Publishers still act as gatekeepers for the reading public. Most people don't read and what they do read is almost entirely determined by the amount of marketing done for it, and while marketing is a learnable skill (I've run my own consulting shop, so done a lot of it) it is difficult to do on the kind of budget most indie authors have available for what amounts to a hobby. The indie music industry has done a better job of discovery but that's in part because music is consumable in much smaller pieces than novels. The solution to this in writing has been--to some extent--to return to serialization, but while that has worked a bit in non-fiction (people write blogs they turn into books) it has so far seen only one or two successes in fiction, and they have been... not notable for the quality of writing, for the most part. I've experimented with a couple of alternative forms to see if this can be overcome, but no luck so far. One was an illustrated serial prose format (finished version here: http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html http://www.siduri.net/songsofalbion/songs_of_albion.html), the other an somewhat informal poemed illustrations format (http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html http://www.siduri.net/cindylooyou/index.html) that appeared on the artist's blog and developed as a kind of jazz work as we tossed themes back and forth. The latter actually got a bigger following, although we promoted the former a lot more heavily. Go figure. So far it looks like conventional serial narratives--probably pod-cast--are the best bet for the indie author. Some kind of serial pod-cast will likely be my next move, more in the spirit of exploration than anything else. I'm fortunate to have some training as a voice actor, but the number conditions on an idie author to be successful are many, and the difficulty for readers in discovering work they might enjoy is considerable.
- thenomad 11y ago
  Writer of the original article here. I've been avoiding commenting so far as the discussion's made most of the points I'd want to make, but I thought I'd chime in on this one. Speaking as someone in the same position as tjradcliffe but in the movie (and now comics) world rather than prose, his analysis is spot-on. Discovery's the problem. In the indie narrative film world - which is in a much, much worse position when it comes to discovery and distribution than the self-publishing world in most ways for reasons somewhat too complicated to go into in a short comment - there's an aphorism about the current situation that I'm hearing more and more. "There's never been a better time to make a film, and never been a worse time to get anyone to watch it." Like tjradcliffe, I'm experimenting with ways around it. And like him I've ended up settling on serial works - both Carcosa, which is mentioned in the article, and other stuff that I'll be bringing out shortly. But that's far from a complete solution to the problem.
normloman 11y ago
Musician here. It's possible to record your own album, book your own gigs, be your own marketing department, and make a living wage from it. Just like it's possible to ride a unicycle over a tightrope across the grand canyon. Of course, even with a label, you have as good of a chance making good money from original songs as you do being struck by lightning. Most artists who were successful at the DIY thing got fame with a major label at some point (Trent Reznor, Radiohead, etc). So as long as artists depend on labels to get their music heard, labels are going to dictate copyrights and licensing to a degree.