David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Kristine Kathryn Rusch pointed me to a post about ebooks at The Idea/Logical Blog: Some ebook observations.

What this post suggests to me is that publishers need to change from a “book” model of selling their products to a “software” model. Software publishers today manage to sell products very like ebooks, with the same problems of “need to be quality-checked on every platform they run on” and “retailers want to use margin to gain share,” yet they seem to be doing very well. The key is that many different strategies have been successful (for different products in different markets at different times) — publishers will have to become as nimble in selling ebooks as software publishers have been forced to become in selling software. And, as with software, the pricing will be all over the map — bestselling fiction for $4.99, technical titles for $499 — as publishers learn what the market will bear. The transition to this model will occur as it did when video tapes moved from a “priced for rental” model to a “priced for sale” model in the 1980s — same product + different market = entirely different price points.

The branding problem is an interesting one, and differs from the software model. On my computer, the user experience of the Apple-branded word processor, the Microsoft-branded word processor, and the several other brands of word processor differs enormously, but the content (the words they process and the things you can do to those words) is quite similar. But on my ebook reader, the user experience of the Tor-branded, Del Rey-branded, and DAW-branded ebooks is nearly identical although the content of each book is unique. This makes it tough for a brand to establish itself.

Some publishers will try to impose a “house look-and-feel” on their ebooks to create a brand. This won’t work because the ebook experience is so malleable — devices vary in their capabilities, and users want to impose their reading preferences (e.g. font and font size) which is one of the main selling points of the ebook over the paper book — and anything the publisher does to put anything other than plain, readable text on the screen will be resisted by readers.

One thing that publishers can do to establish a brand is to make sure to nail the aspects that make one ebook better than another on the same platform. Make sure the illustrations are the best possible for the platform, make sure the table of contents works, enable any optional features, and do the right thing for every supported platform. This is a heck of a lot of work, but quality control in a multi-platform environment always is, and in the software business we have a saying that “quality doesn’t cost money… quality makes money.”

I think, though, that the bottom line for branding ebooks is identical to that for paper books. A publisher can get some aspects of a paper book right or wrong (font and font size, paper quality, binding) but fundamentally most paper books are quite similar — ultimately the thing that readers will remember about a publisher, if they remember anything at all, is whether or not they consistently provide the kind of books they want to read. That’s how to create a brand.

I’ve been waiting to announce this until I had some more specific news to report (and it is coming, and it is good, but there are still x’s to be crossed and j’s to be dotted), but as George R. R. Martin has just let the cat partway out of the bag, I figure I ought to blog about it now.

I’m now a member of the Wild Cards consortium. The other members of the Wild Cards Class of 2009 are Cherie Priest, Mary Anne Mohanraj, David Anthony Durham, and Paul Cornell.

For those who don’t know, Wild Cards is a shared universe (where multiple writers all create stories in the same setting, with their characters interacting with other writers’ characters) that has been running since 1985. It’s basically a superhero comic in prose form, a world in which superpowered “aces” and deformed “jokers” live, love, and struggle.

I was a huge fan of the series in college and for me to join in this bunch is the fulfillment of a dream I didn’t think would ever have a chance of coming true.

Kate is now on Twitter, as KateYule. (I’m on there too, as daviddlevine.)

I’ve compared Twitter to a whole fanzine full of linos. Many of the 140-character-or-less “tweets” in my reading list are, indeed, mundane notes on what the author had for breakfast, or some such, but the people I choose to follow are a reliable source of brief, witty bons mots. I particularly recommend MaryRobinette, whose glimpses into her work with props and puppets are like found poetry.

How could I have forgotten to mention one of the keenest parts of our trip to DC? Before my talk at the Library of Congress we got a backstage tour of the Manuscript Division.

I had envisioned musty historic documents under glass — maybe not the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, but other important and well-known individual documents. Not so! The Manuscript Division is where ALL the papers of prominent individuals are stored. (They have the files of presidents up through Madison; later presidents have their own libraries.)

We saw table after table covered with box after box of papers from Ron Zeigler, being sorted and cataloged, and another room with papers from Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian. The latter was more interesting to me… it included several award statuettes, including a Saturn and a Dracula, and boxes with intriguing labels like “production stills, Cleopatra.” Also boxes and boxes of Hollywood industry magazines, and a copy of the California Drivers’ Manual… everything that had been in his files at the time of his death. Our guide explained that anything that is significant to the subject is kept (for example, they might keep a magazine if it has marginal notes) and the other stuff is offered to other institutions or destroyed. Processing a new collection (which usually arrives after the subject’s death and may not be in the best of shape) can take years.

After everything’s been gone through, duplicates and dross eliminated, and the remaining interesting stuff sorted into folders and the folders placed in boxes, the library prepares “finding aids” to help researchers find the stuff afterwards. Each “finding aid” is a folder containing a brief biographical sketch of the subject and a list of the information they have on him/her. But the detail is only down to the folder level… you can learn that the library has a folder of “correspondence with Joseph P. Blow, 1959-1963” but if you want to know any more about what’s in there you have to request the folder and look in it yourself. (I don’t know if you can get them through interlibrary loan… you probably have to come down to the library in person. The reading room is quite nice.)

The ranks and ranks of shelves on which the boxes and bound volumes of papers are stored are an interesting historical exhibit in themselves, showing the changes over the years in what’s considered state-of-the-art in manuscript preservation. Some of the material is self-destructive, high-acid paper and the like, and these are carefully photocopied, though the budget for preservation and conservation is finite, of course.

The thing about the Library of Congress, our guide explained, is its scale… there’s tens or hundreds of times more of everything here than anywhere else a librarian may have worked, and dealing with so much material requires different ways of thinking. And it keeps coming in, in ever-increasing amounts.

Looking over all this stuff helped me to understand why and how my own papers should be preserved for future historians (Lynne Thomas at NIU has requested mine, as she has for many other SF writers) and when I got home I started in on the process of sorting them into “keep,” “send to NIU,” “send the original and keep a copy,” “send a copy and keep the original,” and “why is this here anyway?” which I’ve been meaning to start on for almost two years. The work is going slowly, and it’s mind-numbing, but it’s kind of cool to look over my own history and realize how much progress I’ve made in the ten years or so I’ve been doing this writing thing. Finding the Writers of the Future Honorable Mention certificates, for example, was a nice surprise, and a reminder of how pleased I was to receive each one.

I’ve also been a little bit depressed at the thought that my best years may already be behind me. “Tale of the Golden Eagle” was written in 2001, after all, and I don’t think I’ve written anything quite as good since. On the other hand, the lack of major successes in the last few years may just be due to the fact that I’ve spent much of that time working on novels, and since each novel submission can take months or years it may be quite a while before that work bears fruit. And “Titanium Mike” did get a Nebula nomination just last year.

I keep plugging away.

We’ve been back from DC for most of a week and I’m still just finding my feet, but here are a few brief observations anyway.

My talk at the Library of Congress before the convention went very well, despite the fact that they moved it to a different room at the last minute and put the sign announcing the change outside the new room, and there was another event with free food at the same time which took away many of the people who might otherwise have attended. We wound up with about 20 people all told, most of them square dancers who were also in DC for the convention.

Although I felt incredibly underprepared, that thing in my head that takes over when I have to do public speaking did its job and the presentation came off smashingly. Some of the square dancing librarians in attendance were so excited they were talking about inviting me to speak at an ALA conference. I’d love to, and I hope it really happens. I’m also going to try to sell the talk as a non-fiction article.

I’d originally planned to speak without visual aids, but at the last minute I was inspired by a talk at TED.com and decided to put together a PowerPoint slide show consisting only of images. It worked great, even though I had to clutch the projector cable in my hand all through the talk to keep the image from turning magenta. I also used PowerPoint to record the talk, but unfortunately it only recorded the first 10-20 seconds of audio per slide. Which is a real shame, because the bits that did get recorded sound fabulous.

The convention itself was superbly run and featured a lot of great dancing, including several unusual specialty tips: the Cipher tip with calls delivered as spoonerisms or riddles, a Mirror tip that swapped left for right (if your square breaks down during a Mirror tip, is that seven years bad luck?), and an hour of six-couple “rectangle dancing.” Allowing people to choose their table mates for the banquet, then placing the tables at random, was an excellent innovation. The one negative comment I have was that the Fun Badge Tour buses were given insufficient directions, which (together with a mechanical breakdown) caused us to miss an entire stop on the tour and wound up with our bus being so late for the last stop we had to dance it by ourselves. We had fun anyway.

We also visited the Newseum (highly recommended), the Spy Museum (only okay, especially because it was so crowded that day) and the Smithsonian Natural History museum (I saw so many skeletons there that for a few hours thereafter all the people looked like skeletons with skin and bones on) and ate many fabulous meals. The convention was right at the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan subway stop (and why are the first two separated by a hyphen, but the last two by a slash?) and there were dozens of great ethnic restaurants within one block. Probably the best meal was the Afghan dinner we had on the first night, but none of them was less than good.

• Friday morning: Writers Workshop for those who have already signed up (I’m moderating).
• Friday 9-10:30pm, Senate B: Turns out this IS your Dad’s SF/F. Panel with me, Jane Acheson, Chip Hitchcock, and Brad Lyau (I’m moderating).
• Saturday 10-11:30am, Room of One’s Own: Attendees Receive Free Cyborg Unicorn. Readings with me, Rosalyn Berne, Greer Gilman, Nnedi Okorafor, and Catherynne M. Valente.
• Sunday 2:30-4:00pm, Wisconsin: The Rules: Use or Abuse Them. Panel with me, Ellen Klages, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Joan Vinge, and Patricia Wrede (I’m moderating).
• Sunday 4:00-5:30pm, Caucus: Humor in Feminist Speculative Fiction. Panel with me, Charlie Anders, Heather Lindsley, and Pan Morigan (I’m moderating).
• Monday 11:30am-1:00pm, Capitol/Wisconsin: The SignOut. I’ll be signing copies of Space Magic.

Looks like they believed me when I said I enjoy moderating!

I’ll be appearing on a panel at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham tomorrow, Thursday April 16, 6-8pm, as part of National Library Week. It’s called “Worlds Connect with Science Fiction” and other panelists include Aimee Amodio, Tina Connolly, and M.K. Hobson. The panel will be held in the Bob Scott Room in the MHCC Library and is free and open to the public.

Hope to see you there!

Heading for Washington DC for the annual gay square dance convention. As is typical with large convention hotels, they charge an arm and another arm for network access, so I may be offline for the next week.

Until then, have a look at some of my photos from Radcon, which I didn’t get around to uploading until recently.

I’d also like to put in a plug for Molly Lewis, aka sweetafton23, the cutest little ukulele player (and the wittiest) you ever did see. We saw her with Jonathan Coulton back in January (you can see a video of that very performance) and you can now buy a couple of her songs as high-quality MP3s. Check her out!

It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights! It’s time to meet the Muppets at the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium!

The NW Film Center is having a special retrospective in May entitled “Muppets, Music, & Magic: Jim Henson’s Legacy”.

“The retrospective presents a treasure trove of Henson’s extraordinarily imaginative work, including TV pilots, shorts, commercials, promotional films, feature films, and rarities galore. To further explore the magic of Henson’s world of fantasy, Emmy Award-winning collaborator Dave Goelz will host ‘Muppet History 101’ and ‘Commercials and Experiments,’ and answer your every question. One of the principal Muppeteers for over 30 years, Goelz has designed and performed dozens of beloved characters, including the Great Gonzo and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.”

We’ve already bought tickets to the two Dave Goelz presentations on May 2 and 3, and Labyrinth on May 10.

For more information and to buy tickets: http://www.nwfilm.org/screenings/19/152/