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Kevin Kelly, who a couple of years ago wrote this provocative article on the future of books, is at it again, this time asking how it is possible to charge for something in a digital world where the cost of duplication and redistribution is almost exactly zero. While books are not the focus of his latest blog post, he could be talking about the publishing industry when he says 'Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.'

The problem for content producers and owners, as he describes it, is that 'Once anything that can be copied [eg ebooks] is brought into contact with [the] internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.' For book publishers, struggling with issues of ebook pricing, or looking askance at the record business where copy protection is on the way out and the price of recorded music slides inexorably towards free, working out how to create value and encourage people to pay for digital products is becoming an important issue.

But happily Kelly has a possible balm;

'When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.'

He suggests 8 'values', including authority, personalization and immediacy which increase value for the user and potentially could encourage payment for a something which might otherwise have a tangible value close to zero. I'm not going to copy his entire article here (though I could simply reproduce a digital copy at no cost to myself at all) - but I do suggest checking it out, it is a most worthwhile read. Perhaps most usefully (and something that really should be obvious) is his suggestion that business models are considered from the point of view not of the content creator, owner or distributor, but from the users perspective; What, he asks, can encourage us to pay for something we can get for free?

Meanwhile, the O'Reilly publishing conference is today starting in New York. At last years' conference Chris Anderson scandalized attending publishers when he said that he was trying to get his new book, Free, priced as close to, er, free, as possible since for him books were an advertisement for his speaking and consultancy business. As every single publisher said, 'that's great for him, but what about us?'. Kevin Kelly, thankfully, provides ample food for thought.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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Last year, on Wordy Girls, I posted that my 2007 theme would be Ask Questions Later. I wanted to be more fearless, decide to say yes before I analyzed every single cotton-picking pro and con. And I think I made good progress on that. I said yes to presentations I was unsure about and to writing assignments, especially, that I wasn't sure how they would go. And overall, I was so pleased with my yeses.

But now it's time to pick a new theme! After a little thought last nast night, I decided that Lose Control was going to be my theme for 2008.

All my life, I've been the responsible one. I moved out of the house at 16 and worked more than full-time to put myself through college. I never got drunk. I never touched drugs. In grown-up life, I made the charts, I did the budget, I planned everything. 

I got sick of that. 

I'm especially tired of what responsibility has done to my writing. I'm a professional, and that's a good thing. I turn in manuscripts on time. I follow editors' directions. I research accurately and write thoroughly. All of this works fabulously well for my work-for-hire work and my speaking and teaching engagements, but not so much for my personal projects.

Over the past few years, my husband and I have shared more of the duties of running a house with kids, and it's been so nice to get some of that weight off my shoulders. I don't want to be responsible for everything. In fact, sometimes I just want to be irresponsible.

The same is true of my writing. Being 100% responsible, in control, is not always the best thing.

Kelly R. Fineman had a fantastic E.B. White quotation in her quote-skimming post this week: "A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify it by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it."

I love that. I need a little more mystery, intensity, loss of control in my writing. Probably mostly in my poetry, but in other forms, too. I want to be more open to not knowing what's going to happen when I let my fingers strike the keys. I want to just ride air waves, wind currents, and dip into the ocean (but not scrape bottom) like a seagull does.

Unlike the goals I set (which are always measurable and attainable, of course), this theme isn't something I research and plan out--thankfully! Instead, it's just something I will try to keep in my head during 2008 and get better at. It is possible to be conscious of trying to become a more subconscious writer? Anyway, we'll see what happens.

What about you? Any theme you'd like to set for 2008?

by mary, click image to view larger

Chemistry: Guess what's Coming, by Mary Stebbins Taitt. Leaves are Chemistry! (Well, everything is chemistry, actually!) But what I meant was, the fall colors that are starting to show where I live, just a little, are caused by chemical changes. The greens of summer are a pigment called chlorophyll which photosynthesize and make oxygen and all the sugars and starches we eat. There are also carotins and anthocyanins and zanthophylls in the leaves. When it begins to cool off and the sun drops low in the sky (I know, I know, it's NOT cooling off yet!), the leaves begin to seal themselves off from the tree (or vice versa) and the chlorophyll begins to die, exposing the other pigments of red, yellow and purple. YAY fall colors! YAY Chemistry. Who knew? (Who cared?)(I did!)

(For this week's challenge.)

You've written some stuff. You feel good about your characters, you've got some action, but what drives your energy for showing up is exploring the deeper meaning of life.

Start with an unusual setting and some "different" characters.

Set the time.

Figure out your obsession.
Say it's with finding out who you really are, your own unique identity (insert your obsession). Generate scenes with that in mind ~~ the character's interaction with others, trying to figure out her place in the world ~~ that's better ~~ a universal theme for kids and all of us...

As you write, look for clues to finish the theme to make it thematically significant: how DOES one figure out his place in the world? Through trial and error? Okay. And so what, really, does that mean overall? Finding one's place in the world takes trial and error, but in the end....

The anwer to the ...above must be worthy enough for you to give up hours of your life to write, worthwhile to the character to go through the struggle of a journey, worthwhile for the reader to give up hours of her time to read your story?
Hmmmmmmmmm

Picture books, because they push away subplots, make the concept of plot is easier to grasp.

Take, for instance, Where the Wild Things Are by Sendax.

What is it? 34 pages? Many of which are drawings. I can't remember and I'm not going to get up and check, but lets say there are 17 pages of written language.

Beginning: 1/4 of entire project introduces characters while showing where and when the story takes place, and demonstrating a major character flawy that will help drive the action of the story (go to:
http://www.blockbusterplots.com/character-development.html for the character Plot profile info.).

In the Beginning of Where the Wild Things Are we meet Max, the cat and the mom. Max shows his wild side and drives everyone crazy.

End of Beginning: a scene signifying no turning back, entering the heart of the journey toward transformation
At the end of the Beginning of Where the Wild Things Are, Max is sent to his room with no dinner and there he watches his room turn into a forest or is it a jungle?

The Middle: 1/2 of the page count showing trials and errors, antagonists. Whateve keeps the conflict, tension, suspense or curiosity of the audience high.
Where the Wild Things Are ~~ journey to Wild Things, conquering wild things

Middle of the Middle: Showing an unsual world
Where the Wild Things Are ~~ shows 4 or more pages of covered with pictures demonstrating wildness

Crisis: Middle builds toward the 3/4 mark and the biggest scene of all
Crisis is a scene forcing the character to a new awareness.
Anything energetically higher than anything that has come before
Where the Wild Things Are ~~Max has everything, but he is lonely for love.

The End: Lots of significance toward the Climax.
Where the Wild Things Are ~~ journey home.

Cimax: The character "showing" the transformation
Where the Wild Things Are ~~ settles down to eat his dinner

One page of Resolution ~ his new life from then on
Where the Wild Things Are ~~ and his dinner is hot.

Of course for a novel, or screenplay, or historical you'd have lots of sub-plots that follow their own template as described above, but at a sub-level ~~ they are sub-plots, afterall.

The PICTURE BOOKIES SHOWCASE THEME for the week beginning July 9, is
S W E E T.

I've inserted a watercolor done at my life drawing session last week. The pensive mood is nice, and it's time to start another novel, which will involve some casting about for concept and theme. My present evening reading is Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” translated by Edith Grossman. I’ve read other, earlier translations, but this is both scholarly and a handsome edition, replete with footnotes about Cervantes’s story references, and the manuscript history. A jacket blurb by Lionel Trilling says, “It can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of “Don Quixote.” Perhaps. The theme of an addled but learned man coming centuries late to the call of knightly chivalry, and setting out in comical, makeshift knight’s regalia to seek adventure, has the ingredients of a comical farce, and yet, it never admits to anything like tongue-in-cheek comedy. We groan and shake our heads at Quixote’s foibles, even smile, ruefully, but the language, and often the wisdom sweep us along. Another jacket blurb by Milan Kundera says it well, “Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being, and yet, in our memory, what character is more alive?” There are many story variations on this hero’s journey, or quest, from the crossing of the threshold from our world into the story world, the trials the hero must face along the journey, the winning (or losing) of some treasure, and the return—richer or poorer, in wealth or spirit. Perhaps none have, or will, make the journey quite like Don Quixote.