SFWA and The Electronic Medium

Late last night, Michael Capobianco, President of SFWA issued a statement on author’s rights through the organization’s LiveJournal account as well as the organization’s website, which may go down in history as the most timely use of the latter, ever.

First, let me say that I agree in large part with John Scalzi, in that I think it’s a “very reasonable statement.” It seems apparent from all those other folks I’ve heard from that Capobianco is working hard to manage the PR crisis that cropped up on Labor Day weekend, and he’s been doing a fair job at staying out front of it. Which isn’t to say that I agree with the entire thing (and Scalzi seems careful not to say that, either), just that it is reasonable. It aims to strike a sort of balance.

I’m not entirely certain it succeeds.

For one, I think its specious to ask “who will profit…?” The answer is always the corporations, it’s just a question of how much the writer profits as well. Capobianco laments the collusion of Google, publishers, and (inexplicably) libraries in reaping the benefits of this “brave new world,”[1] perhaps at the expense of authors and their rights. As it is, authors don’t get much choice in how the publisher deals with their printed work, either, so I’m wondering how different those who espouse traditional models expect their electronic works to be treated that much differently from their printed stuff. Ask an author, for instance, how much choice they have in their cover art, marketing, or where their books are sold.

So, too, with Google’s electronic publishing efforts.

Where I think SFWA stands to do the most good, is in educating authors on the question of electronic rights. So far as the author reserves their electronic rights, there’s nothing that Google or the publishers can do to take that choice away from the author, and I’m not sure that Capobianco’s statement makes that really clear. It sounds more like the sort of defiant, anti-e-publishing stance that the more conservative members of SFWA have applauded in the past, especially since the statement only refers to two of the more controversial online venues: Google Books and Scribd.

Educating members as to their options, informing them that negotiation for electronic rights is an option and not something to just let publishers have, stands to be one of the more useful potential resources SFWA can provide. Unfortunately, it also seems like SFWA is dominated by folks that don’t want to know, don’t have the knowledge to inform the rest of the membership, and are unwilling to go to those that do have it. That’s just an outsider’s impression, but I think a powerful one; there is certainly a PR issue with SFWA, and I’m not sure this statement goes quite far enough to fix it. It still seems like they’re swatting at the eBoogeyman.

Now, as it stands, it looks like Google is getting set to charge fees to full ebook access, which I think should mollify some of their critics among the writer community. So long as the publisher is collecting coin on full book texts, it stands to reason that writers will as well, through the publishers. But this is another area where SFWA can do a lot of good, especially for young authors, helping them to know what to ask for.

And at the same time, there’s still a powerful argument for free distribution. I doubt I would have ever heard of Tom Godwin, for instance, if his fiction had not been posted on-line for free, but now there’s a pretty decent chance I’ll actually read his book; if it were an option, I’d probably buy it as well. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t do much to convince, but it’s worth noting, again, that many of the people who have given their stuff away for free have benefited from it. And it makes sense to help the SFWA membership how that works, rather than trying to referee a battle of rhetoric, as the Labor Day weekend thing seemed to turn quickly into.

So, all-in-all, a “very reasonable statement,” but not perfect and not, I think, worthy of the challenge that electronic media present.

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[1] As a stylistic point, I think this phrase has officially flown straight through “cliche” and crashed hard into “beaten to death.” Maybe I’ll make it my personal internet crusade to see it eradicated from the ‘tubes.

Three Things

• I’ve been sitting on my butt quite a bit the last couple days on account of working form home for the dayjob. In between phone calls and while I do paperwork, I decided to go back and start rewatching the first season of Stargate SG-1, quite possibly one of my favorite science fiction series ever, if not the favorite. Except … Disc 2 of the first season features three of the worst examples of Richard Dean Anderson overacting that I’ve ever seen: “Broca Divide,” “Brief Candle” (story by Steven Barnes!), and “Cold Lazarus.” I think they must have twigged to that themselves and written fewer stories where RDA’s Colonel Jack O’Neill gets taken over by alien entities or whatever. He’s definitely at his best when he sticks to the wry, sarcastic core.
• On account of my fat ass sitting in my office chair so much, my chair and the plastic chair mat are both wearing out in somewhat alarming order. My wife and I have the same of both, and she’s had her chair longer than I, but my chair mat is all cracked and jaggedy, and today I felt the piston in the chair failing inch by inch. I raised it up again and it seemed okay, but I’m not looking forward to the day when it dumps me off onto the floor.
• This is damn cool: