thoughtjunkie

Was talking with Jei about Manga production companies... She was saying how everyone always complains about the low quality of the books, even though they print so many in a run that they will never really become collectors items. My idea, tired and hungry as I was (we were in a bookstore after failing to get to a yoga class) was for the manga companies to have 3 parts to their business. 1, the manga writing. Pretty straightforward. Then, they put them on the interwebz. 2, they sell crappy paper, binding materials, printers, and ink on the cheap. And 3, they sell really nice trade paperback (and, for their really successful titles, hard cover) books of manga. Seems like a pretty simple horizontal business model, though it would require a bit of investment capital right at the beginning (to kick-start the printing-material production aspect). We left the bookstore, changed conversations, ate some pizza, and then went home.

When I got back, I saw another reincarnation of the People Pay for Form, Not Content argument on boingboing.net. This particular entry on boingboing was in regard to an article ("Post-Medium Publishing") where Paul Graham argues that we've been paying for form all along. To super-duper paraphrase, "[A great paperback book is approximately the same price as a bad one. Same with hard covered books. But a brilliant paperback is still cheaper than a terrible hard cover.]"

Publishing is (and always has been) running on the bottled water model-- the water's free. But the bottle. That's $2.50.

Now this is interesting to think of, in terms of intellectual property rights, obviously. Ideologically, I support Creative Commons, and have been wrestling a lot with the notion that gaining recognition as a writer nowdays means operating, at least partially, inside old int. property rights models (which I really don't support).

That was when I developed my hairbrained scheme. Or. Well. My newest hairbrained scheme.

Keep doing the "sub to lit mags" thing. Then, every time a story gets published, just put it out under one of the creative commons licenses (provided I get my rights back.... I don't know if I would sign a contract where I regained and retained no rights, anyhow. Unless it were me writing romance novels, or Holywood scripts which I didn't care about, of course). Then, set up in the CC license for anyone using my work to direct people to my website, where I will set up a service to commission a hand-bound book of 1+ of my stories.

I realize that this would never ever make any money. But it would be really fun, and crafty, and I have a feeling I would learn a lot doing it. AND, of course, it would be very much in-tune with both the pragmatic realities of the publishing biz (you pay for materials, not for words), and with my ideals.

So. Whaddaya think?

That's great.

I'm going for it. Anyone know HOW I can learn to bind books?