How To Pay Writer Harlan Ellison

I can’t give a link to this directly. Explanation at end.

HARLAN ELLISON
– Saturday, January 23 2010 14:3:4

IMPORTANT !!!!!!!!! please read & REPOST HERE DAILY!!
I’ve been reading your posts since Thursday, and I know you mean well, but if you TRULY wish to do me any financial good, stop going to buy my books for hefty prices, in crap condition, on Amazon and elsewhere…

IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE TITLE YOU WANT IN A SIGNED MINT EDITION HERE AT THE ELLISON WEBDERLAND BOOKSTORE…WHICH MONEY COMES DIRECTLY TO ME AND SUSAN…

Then just go to E.READS!!! They have 33 of my books in handsome downloadable editions with a nifty Dillon cover! They are, in most cases, Preferred Texts. And I get a decent part of the minuscule price.

PLEASE!

Keep passing this on, or perhaps Rick can pull down the AOL banner, now long out of currency, and plug in the above.

Spreading ANY kind of word will be useful.

But this ongoing ignorance of how to PAY THE WRITER and not Google or Amazon or any other server doddering under the weight and onus of stealing from the primary creator…requires some shucking-off of the perpetual naivete and ignorance!

E.READS is my agent for books, after this board’s well-run (by Susan)booksearch as your first stop!

Whatever is convenient for you to do….but do stop wasting your money on my work as appropriated by smoothyguts entrepreneurs!

Quietly, I thank you.

Harlan Ellison

I sympathize with his desire, but his Internet presence is rather primitive. It’s all volunteer labor, as I understand it, so I can’t criticize. But others have pointed out on his message board (where the above is from, and which doesn’t link to individual posts at all), the lack of a direct transactional link at his site is an ongoing frustration to all the people — especially internationally — who want to Throw Money At Him.

Previously here:

Pay The Artist!

ePub eBooks From Apple Will Use FairPlay DRM

This has never been a question in my mind so I’m really shocked to see posts around wondering if the ePub eBooks sold through the iBookstore will have DRM.

Of course they will!

Apple And eBooks: A Horror Story

This is the most difficult post I’ve ever had to write.

Steve Jobs hates ePub. He hates eBooks.

How can anyone with his refined sense of taste not hate them?

They’re an abomination. A tasteless — and incompetent — techie committee solution to electronic books.

Seriously, can any of you see Apple creating ePub? (If you can, leave now. You don’t know Jobs or Apple.)

And iBooks? iBooks?!!!?

From the company that gave us the delightful CoverFlow …

… we now get shelves?!

The Threshold

Every. Thing. Changes. Tomorrow.

The I.O.U. Button

I’d really like to know what frikkin world print publishing lives in.

Because I live in one in which most people cannot afford to buy everything they’d like to have.

Including books.

I don’t think there is a single real writer out there who cannot sympathize with a reader who wants to read a book but cannot afford it.

That’s what public libraries are for.

But my fellow writers who will never enter the Gates of Hell known as traditional publishing and those who free themselves from its parasitic grip, will most likely offer digital books that won’t be available to borrow in a public library.

Do you want to turn that reader temporarily short of disposable income into a thief?

There are some books, for whatever reason, a person feels he or she must have. It could be to distract them from their current woes by reading a work from a writer whose books they’ve bought in the past but can’t right now not afford. It could be a book with practical instructions to help escape a dire situation. It could be advice, motivation, whatever.

The point is, don’t create a pirate.

Remember the times you were behind in your bills, the time you wanted something, the time when life had its fingers around your neck and was squeezing hard and you could have used a break.

Forget a “Donate” button. That’s a pussy move. That says, “I’m a beggar.” Don’t do that.

Offer a “Buy” button.

But for god’s sake, also offer an “I.O.U.” button. One that allows a fan of yours — a potential lifelong reader — a chance at some dignity. Something that says, “Look, I understand how it can be. You need this now, but remember to pay me later when it’s better for you.”

Do that.

The bastards currently running things never will.

This is your way to not be like Them.

February 7, 2010 Update: Buy Now, Pay Later (Maybe With Your Allowance) This Is Big. I’d like to see them extend it to self-hosted WordPress blogs and others (if they can get it offered by WordPress.COM — my free host — that’d be magnificent!), so writers can immediately incorporate it. It’s brilliant. I’m not sure how the Scoring works, but if it could be worked out for purchasers to set the time limit, that’d be excellent. I noticed on their Publishers contact page they ask for the size of the audience. This is backwards. PayPal didn’t ask people for their number of friends when it began. And it spread like a contagion. I’d like to see Kwedit spread that way too. It’d take everything to the next level for writers — and, in fact, for everybody.

Publishers Versus Readers

Avid Readers Want Both eBooks and Print Books

He also noted that a staggering two-thirds of avid readers surveyed were 45 or older. In contrast, only 28 percent were in the 18+ bracket. Publishers face two unique challenges: keeping the baby boomer readers as they retire and building new readers with a younger generation.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

I did that here: Apple’s iSlate Gives Book Publishers False Hope

What I have to add is this:

People grow up. Those who grow up with any sort of impulse towards self-direction and initiative understand that reading is important. They also grow up to understand that people need to be paid.

What I said in the prior post still stands, generally. Instead of selling to an existing — and shrinking — pool, enlarge it:

In a London pub, Studs meets a Welsh miner from the Rhondda Valley. “You’re from Chicago; you must know Nelson Algren.” Whiskey flows. Then the old boy sings out the titles of all Algren’s books in a mellifluous Welsh accent. — R.I.P. Louis “Studs” Terkel

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

How the hell was that miner reached?

Studs Terkel Will Save Publishing

Studs Terkel: Last words with a Voice of America

I went looking for an anecdote from Studs Terkel’s epic 1974 book, Working, and wound up with another and a different point to make:

“So when I did the book Working, there was in it a portrait of a waitress, Dolores Dante. She was a girl. And at the end she starts crying about her life and being a middle-aged woman when the kids have left. And much later a guy stops me in the street and says, ‘You son of a bitch. After reading about that waitress in your book, I’m never going to speak to a waitress again the way I did before.’ So I affected that guy. Dolores affected that guy. It was her moment of immortality.”

People are curious about other people.

Why doesn’t publishing use this fact to sell non-gossipy, non-trashy books?

It’s the same damned impulse — near-pathological, stalker-like curiosity — and it can be used to publishing’s benefit.

How would that guy have known what the lot of a waitress was like if he hadn’t read that book? How many people — especially in these Gotterdammerung me-me-me times — stop to consider what another person’s life might be like?

The young and callous look at a waitress with contempt, if they look at her at all.

Terkel’s book shows the human being behind (or stuck in) that occupation.

I’m not going to lay out examples of how this can be done. Earn your damned marketing salary, dammit.

Paper Fetishism And eBook Prejudice — In 1987!

Let me set the history for you. In 1987, the Apple Newton was still two years away and the Palm Pilot was still nine years away.

So consider the foresight it took to have this little exchange in the third episode of Star Cops:

Chandri: You’re impressed with my library, Commander.

Spring: Yes. Yes, I am. I’m more impressed by the weight allocation it took to bring them — and all of this — from Earth. You must have friends in the freight business.

Chandri: It was all paid for, I assure you. I don’t like electronic books. Something about poetry particularly which needs to be read from the page. It dies when you put in on a viewing screen.

It takes place in the first minute in the video after the break.

Writing Red Alert: Star Cops

Star Cops is a series I’ve mentioned in all my blogs (see end of post).

It’s an excellent SF series from the late 1980s. Rarely seen in the U.S. and never released in America on DVD.

It was created by Chris Boucher, who took over Blake’s 7 from that series’ creator, Terry Nation. It’s really the first adult SF series, attempting to do real adults in real space. No silly ray guns or monsters. And it’s thoughtful SF, moving at a deliberate pace.

Some of the highlights to watch for in the series are desktop touchscreen computers:

There is the 27″ iMac of 2011!

And an artificially-intelligent voice-interactive PDA called Box:

The only way it can be seen outside of the U.K. is via piracy, which is really an absolute disgrace.

Someone has posted the entire series up on YouTube. Run there and watch it. This is a gorgeous transfer from the U.K. DVDs.

First part of episode one after the break to get you started.

Quote: Writer “EKW”

Huge $70M Settlement In TV Writers Age Discrimination Lawsuit: CAA Lone Holdout

The only reason I was working at 58 was because I was still selling spec scripts, but when I went for writing jobs they took one look at me and I could feel the withdrawal. Facial expressions changed, the atmosphere in the room completely went flat. Here is the thing: They liked my scripts but when they saw me they forgot that and all they could see was this old man. Never mind that the scripts were all written within the past 4 years and two of them had been made and released.

Well, look. You can’t have an adult working in Hollywood. It’s spoils the fun of the talentless children, some of whom got there purely via nepotism. Why, you might know their Daddy or Uncle Shmuel and accidentally mention all the coke you saw spread out on their desk or how you overheard them ordering a bunch of hookers for the weekend. Worst of all, you might actually write about everything you’ve seen.

I am sooooo glad they won.

Related:

What’s Up In England?!