It’s been very interesting to watch the shift in perceptions of new media being “nerds” in their basements to being something you could talk about in a job interview–very cool.

I fully foresee serialized audio fiction making a dent in the published fiction scene. It opens the doors for exceptionally talented creators to reach a wider range of audiences without much of the hype and hurdles.

The underground is already gone. When you have an “Independent Film Channel” in millions of homes, you are no longer underground.

You are a creator as much as anyone else is. Everything after that comes down to talent and money.

His blank “Dolls” sounded very similar to the “blanks” in your 7th son series.

Sounds like a great new series.

I’d love for this perception to change. I’m in the planning stages of podcasting my novel and this post couldn’t have come at a better time.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about ebooks, and how initially everybody wanted to sell them and make money in a very linear fashion from it. This works in some genres, like romance. And with the Kindle it may start working more in others, but free ebooks are, IMO an excellent marketing tool. (Sorry, that veered.)

Viva La Resistance!

Keep on kicking asses, and congrats on the book deal.

Zoe

What you have written here is something that has been on my mind a lot lately, but you have expressed it far better than I have been able thus far.

Becoming more than our delivery method is so important. I remember the early days, back in late 2004 through 2005. The podcast community. It was warm, almost like a blanket, and it felt great to be a part of it all.

That community has pretty much splintered now. Not in a bad way, but just as a natural progression. Some of us have gone the route of making this a professional endeavor, while others have perfected the hobby aspect. Still, our productions have become more than what they were in 2004-2005, but we still cling to those early, limited, views of what we create.

I like the use of producers. We are not podcasters, or net casters, or any other limiting label. We are film makers, writers, dj’s, whatever. Thank you for articulating that point so well.

To paraphrase a much wiser man than I, Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are absolutely right.

We need to drop the limiting thoughts about who and what we are and what we create. Every major media success started with somebody in a room with an idea, wondering if what he is creating is worthy or not. The successes decided it was indeed worthy, and ran with it.

Get ready for the marathon as there will be a lot of running.

Great post.

I think the shift you talk about and the points you raise are good ones. For too long people have focused on the delivery mechanism of their content (podcasting) more then the content itself.

People want to be entertained, informed or educated. They want to consume what they like and just because the device and method that they do this consumption is changing no one wants to focus on that, but those of us creating in this space have gotten stuck in that rut for a while now and as you suggested it is time to move beyond that.

Thanks for a nice state of the union and where you’d like to see it go. Great thoughts as usual.

I must say, I will miss the feeling that I belong to a secret, underground, little-known community of writers when that feeling is gone. On the other hand, for me, the sense that we’re better than mainstream writers was tied up with that feeling, and I know that it’s wrong to look down on other groups of people like that. The only ethical thing for me to do is to accept these newcomers into our space with an open and understanding heart, so I will do my best to do that.

As to the second part of your post, I can certainly understand where you’re going with it. What it reminds me of is when Wil Wheaton talked about being a writer. For a long time, even after he published two books, he regarded himself as a “small w writer”. He struggled with thinking of himself as a Writer, even though he is, and a good one at that. Could that type of thinking be involved also? Certainly fans would think of you, Sigler, Lafferty, Doctrow, etc as writers, (and much of your stuff is better than “mainstream” authors!) but I’m sure there are people like me – ones who write as a hobby and for fun – who might feel like calling ourselves a “Writer” is too much. I don’t see calling myself a “blogger”, even when I include some fiction on my blog, as anything bad or worse per se. But I do think that many people, especially in the Main Stream Media, regard bloggers, and by proxy podcasters, with disdain. I think we just need to change their perception, and with Wheaton et al showing digital entertainment is the wave of the future, we’ll get there.

Sorry for the long response. Hope my ramblings made sense. I wanted to link my blog posts titled “The revolution will be downloaded”, but my blog is down! Hate the timing, too, with MINE going live.

@Mabus: I appreciate your thoughts, and absolutely agree that internet distribution changes the content and intent of the thing being distributed. We’ve seen that with “Dr. Horrible” — the serialization and short episodes play to the strengths (or weaknesses, depending on your perspective) of the distribution method and audience. Video files sizes are large and time-consuming to download (warranting the serialization) and Web-based viewers dig shorter content (warranting brief episodes).

I also dig your comments about webcomics creators, and how — like the indie and pro creators mentioned in my post — they use the canvas of the Web to experiment in their work.

However, I feel the seemingly intractable combination of the word “web” and “comics” — just like “pod” and “novelist,” for instance — showcases the mental ghettoization I mention in my post.

Webcomics creators should not perceive themselves as merely “webcomics creators.” The term is just as restrictive as the monikers I mentioned in my post. These folks are comics creators, period. The Web may be the current way we’re all distributing our content, but I feel these terms — not our content — can limit the public’s (and artists’) perception of our works’ impact .

The point of the second half of my post is that since all entertainment will soon be available in an online digital format, artists should start calling themselves what there are — novelists, comics creators, filmmakers — and drop the pod-, web-, and -caster add-ons to what they do. While the Web is the future, most norms currently associate the word “Web” with the words “amateur” or “awful.”

What a great many of us do is far better than that, and — in preparation for the “inevitable ubiquity” I mentioned in my post, and in the interest of leading popular opinion toward that acceptance — I suggest we call ourselves what we are, and lessen the association of how we release our content.

–J.C.

I don’t know about the ghetoization thing — you could make the same argument about webcomics. Thing is, most people I know who are online read webcomics and webcomics are swiftly becoming recognized as a legit way to do comics by all people.

Thing is, the internet distribution method DOES change the thing being distributed. For example, the concept of infinite canvas in webcomics. Or, in a choose-your-own-adventure style of youtube video, which blurs the lines between a movie and a videogame. (If you’d like to check out what I’m talking about: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1lFfNDFDUuA

Ultimately the fact that these stories are being distributed via computers changes them. Computers mean code. And the difference between a work distributed via computer coding and work printed on dead trees is as vast as the difference between work painted on a canvas and work sculpted in stone.

The internet, and computers, are more than just a distribution method — they are also a new medium for artists. Consider the playing for keeps podcasts Mur Lafferty did — with her PDFs she was able to sneak in easter eggs that provided a new level of content. Those easter eggs could not have existed in any other medium.

I don’t think those words ghetoize new media producers — rather I just think they are words designed to describe aspects of the new medium that is computers and the internet.