Monday 9 August 2010

BEDA - Aug9 - SEKRIT things are SEKRIT

Secret (or SEKRIT as Maureen Johnson would say) things are afoot. I’ve been very busy the last couple of days with planning and figuring out logistics for a project I am going to embark upon very soon. This (as well as an epic late night shift at work) was the reason for my completely rubbish blog yesterday. I just wanted to keep planning.

I cannot tell you exactly what it is yet, because until I unveil it properly I want to keep it on the down-low. Just know that (I think) it’s going to be a lot of fun.

My current plan is to try and get it unveiled as part of the end of BEDA on August31. But if it’s not ready by then, then I won’t be releasing it until it is – I want to do it justice, and this is sort of a labour of love. All I can say is that it’s going to combine my love for Film, for Youtube, and for blogging – possibly not in the ways you might immediately think. But anyway: more on that later in the month.

For now: its August 9th. I was just watching John Green on BlogTV, and discussing the ins and outs of ebook piracy, stemming from the fact that more than 40000 have allegedly illegally downloaded John’s book Looking for Alaska in 2010 – far more than have bought it.

This led to a discussion on the future of publishing both in ebooks and regular books, and the way copyright works, and how an alternative system with no copyright may (or may not) stifle creativity.

It was fascinating stuff, and as an aspiring writer myself – I am in the process of writing my first 2 novels (yes, 2 at once, both entirely unrelated, I just liked both story ideas so much I needed to keep writing both or I would have lost one of them) – the idea of actually making money off of my stories has never been at the forefront of my mind, indeed both stories I am writing purely because I need to write them – if anyone else enjoys them when they’re done then all the better, but I’m really writing them because they’re in my head and have been for years and I need to finally do something with them.

For many people though – people like John – it’s not that easy. They need to make their living on writing, so they can you know, buy food, or diapers for their 6month old son. So in this new world order, if people are becoming less and less likely to purchase books in the way they once would, just where will these kinds of authors go?

1 comment:

  1. I am not the target audience for John Green's books but I love them and would be sad to see him & others like him (Maureen Johnson, Scott Westerfeld etc) not be around because they can't just give away their product and piracy or other complications make it impossible to keep publishing their work

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