I was browsing the app store tonight, checking out the new Navigon GPS which I’m thinking of buying while it’s still available at a loss leader price. On a whim I dropped into the book section of the appe shoppe and was unsurprised to see a lot of old, out of copyright titles, and a lot of other unattractive books.
Got me to wondering if there might be a market for me to directly release into the app store, particularly for something I wouldn’t necessarily want to release somewhere else. A novelette (say 15k words) set in the AoT universe. Or a WW spin off. Perhaps even a collection of fan fic with a couple of contributions from me bracketing the thing. It’s appealing because it wouldn’t involve the investment of time involved in a full novel.
It’d have to be something my publishers wouldn’t want, but enough readers would.
Interesting idea, or waste of time?
I think there might be a market for shorter-form stuff. Something episodic that you can read between bus stops. People often use apps to kill time – 5 mins here and there. Failing that, what about an audiobook/podcast? How’s yer reading voice?
I would like the WW spinoffs, say Quiet Room missions.
You could do it a different style of writing as its a short stories, do it more in the style of those Boys Own Adventure books which was out when we were kids, where its just basic storyline, then evil baddie, confrontation, baddies shakes fist and utters words like a commando comic e.g Gott in Himmell, Actung Tommy etc… Well that’s my sad idea.
The 39 Steps was a slim volume,yet a classic, would that even be 15k words?
I like doc yobbos ITWPT book that he has on his second blog. It’s just long enough that it doesn’t get tiring and the episodic nature keeps me coming back.
Is be so down organising some podcast stuff jb. Big big fan of podcasts.
I don’t think it’s a sad idea at all, Markus. I always liked the idea of doing some Quiet Room stuff. And i think Kieran is on the money with the emphasis on short form. I do a lot of reading on the iPhone, but all short stuff. Mag articles etc. You’d need lots of cliff hanger breaks. But I already do that.
Actually — if you kept the prices down, I think the fan-fic idea is very fucking clever. Because there are a zillion people writing fan-fic, and it seems to me there’d be an instant market. And of course, the feedback-to-fandom thing would get tighter and more powerful still.
Definitely worth considering, Mr B.
This form of fiction is very popular in Japan (where people read on their phone during commutes) – there are some people that made some serious cash out of it. At some point iPhone exclusive fiction will go nuts – better to be too early to the party than too late.
The shorter stand-alone stuff would be easier to dissect away from the ‘core material’ but perhaps better for hooking a long term audience would be just serialising a longer piece in easily chewed regular lumps? Kinda what I did with ITWPT (In The Worst Possible Taste) which Beeso kindly mentioned above – though picked that format not for any commercial reasons, just because I thought the ideas in it deserved better than gathering dust and 5-6K lumps is kinda how that story gets told anyway. Commercial model would just be to have a new ep out every week or two a week or something, content by subscription from the app store. I’d have guessed that would do you more consistent business than one-offs or fan fic compiles – though the latter would presumably involve less manhours on your part.
Good idea, except for those of us that don’t have iPhones or use itunes. Bittorrent will come to the rescue I suppose.
I wanna know about Fifi’s adventures before she ended up on the boat with Pete and Jules.
Or Caitlin’s adventures before she ended up as Cathy in a Parisian hospital.
But I don’t have an iPhone (silly Macs!) so that sucks for me.
All of those would be good, but i would be looking for the fan fiction selection stuff. As a bonus you could later point to the books and say to your publishers see they want more AoT stuff, and they we could get more AoT stuff, and then i would be happy, and isnt that what its all about.
But dont be a snob, make sure you make it available to us trailblazers on the Google Phone.
Hi John.
Another Aussie writer, Max Barry has been trying a similar thing, through email, RSS feed etc called Machine Man. It’s an episodic novel, where he writes a page a day, taking on board stuff left by readers in a comments section. The first 30 pages were free then you signed up for the rest for $US 6.95. Last I heard he had about 6,000 people signed up.
His motivation was that his readers were complaining about the time between books. But I like your idea of harnessing the App thing – especially now that 3.0 has push capabilities. And with Pre and Android coming along nicely I’m sure you’ll be able to tweak the App so it can work with them and their stores too.
BTW Max’s website is http://www.maxbarry.com
xcellent idea. Will be a while before everyone kindles etc but more and more (esp your audience) read stuff on an iphone – pity its so hard to do, given amazon geographical restrictions on kindle content outside us (ie reading on an iphone in europe). 15K AoT novella sounds good and lets face it- it could be a little more rough and ready so quicker to do – bookending some fan fic sounds great idea too
Nods to those trapped in Satan’s own operating system hell. I’ll expand my horizons to consider other smart phone platforms.
Definitely intriguing, but why limit yourself to the Iphone? There IS an Iphone App store, but no Kindle equivalent. There ARE or will be App stores for Blackberry, Android (Google OS), Symbian, Palm Pre, Nokie and other App stores within 2 years.
You could do it yourself and license the distribution and get your agents to handle it. You write and upload, they edit and you argue it out, then publish electronically.
You could do what several science fiction authors have done and create the “universe,” and let them (fans) publish to IT, and then let your publishers/agents deal with licensing and downloads and etc.
A whole new universe of possibilities. If you currently buy a John Ringo book in hardback, you frequently get a CD-ROM with several OTHER books to peruse. You could do illustrated books…..
A good plan–just what you need, more work. Good for us, maybe for you, not so much. Actually, why not serialize a book? Main question is: how do you get paid? Subsidiary question: if it’s a financial venture as well, do you have your legal ducks in a row? Copyrights, waivers, etc.
Well, I am an iPhone newbie myself – and downloaded the app Stanza – which in turn gave me Weapons of Choice for free through Random House ‘Free Novels’ thingymajiggy.
Yes – I will claim the word thingymajiggy for New Zealand thank you very much, before you Aussies start on it!
But is there an app to download quality books to read?
I’m chomping through Alice in Wonderland at the mo…re-connecting with my youth…
Front Porch:
The CDs in Ringo and other Baen books are part of Baen merchandizing strategy. Give away the first one free and hook them for the rest (it works with drugs too, kids)
I would go for it, if John let me explore my alien scenario of the biggest collateral damage incident in history. Or my Puerto Rican take on the WW. I even have a non-canon “what if” if the Venezuelans had not surrendered and we have been force to do a “coup-de-main” at Gitmo.
Jose
We can seek advice with the folks at 1632, Inc who had done something similar with the Grantville Gazette, websubscriptions and similar items.
On a somewhat related note, I seem to recall that Charlie Stross was toying with the idea of trying to write a novel using a cellphone. This was a few years ago, before the iPhone era. I don’t know how far he got with it.
Another thing to consider is a twitter style flash fiction format. The Shine Anthology, edited by Jetse de Vries, is running something like that via Outshine. I don’t know if it is generating any revenue though.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
Oh, an AoT project would be cool. I think I have one laying around here somewhere. :)
Respects,
Murph
On the OuterMarches
This is what I mean, I think that it maybe 6000 words long if I ever finished it.
WITHOUT QUARTER
A Without Warning Non-Canon Fan Fiction
By Jose J. Clavell
Airfield, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base
1035 Hours Local time.
Captain Roberto “Robert” Cabrera used his boot to prod the body of the dead Venezuelan soldier. It was more procedure than any serious attempt to find anyone trying to play dead. Besides, with half his face missing and the remaining covered by a thick layer of black flies, the young officer was quite sure that aside from a sudden onset of a Zombie’s plaque, that dead man was not going anywhere. He looked wearily around the hard fought ground to check how the rest of his men were doing. His command, Bravo Company, First battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment had suffered heavy casualties on the assault. His first platoon and his XO, had been on the first C-130 Hercules that attempted to land under Warthog cover, and their funerary pyre now added a black and oily smoke to the gray haze that covered the battlefield.
Cabrera would have been on that first plane but his battalion commander had given him a direct order to take a later one, assuming correctly that given the expected opposition, Command and Control was likely to get decapitated in the first few minutes of the assault if they were on the lead. It was a damn shame that any of those precautions failed to save his own life, as his fire-engulfed C-17 had gone nose first into the harbor with no survivors. From Cabrera’s point of view, the first combat engagement for the 65th since the Korean War was far from the glorious action over which future military historians would pour in minute detail trying to glimmer a higher truth.
Despite that, Cabrera still considered himself lucky, a company of the 82nd Airborne had volunteered to jump ahead of the assault landing. So far, he had not encountered or seen even one live or unwounded paratrooper. Yes, he was lucky despite his strong suspicion that he was now his battalion senior surviving officer. He had started the battle with three radio operators and now PFC Luis “Luisito” Gutierrez, the youngest man in Bravo, was the only one remaining. Young, of course being a relative term, because when he looked into his eyes, Cabrera could not find any trace of the boy that had been but only of the new man that seemed to had seen too much. A similar expression was in the face of almost every surviving member of his company.
“Hey captain, you better come up and take a look at this.” Of course, there was always some glaring exceptions and his First Sergeant, Hector Pabón, was one of them. Standing beside a gun pit while peering inside, he seemed as nonchalance holding his M4 carbine like a hunting piece as if they had been conducting a routine weekend drill exercise back at Camp Santiago in Salinas. His casual manner even included puffing a rather smelly cigar, his trademark, whose obscure brand, he fancied. However, as Cabrera made his way towards him while trying not to step into the dozens of smelly, bloated, fly-covered and rotting corpses of the initial casualties of the Venezuelan airborne and amphibious assault on Gitmo. He started to understand the true value of his prop and wished that he had one of his own as he started gagging over the stench.
Keeping his stomach under control was not exactly one of the things that Cabrera had learned at Ranger School but he manfully managed to do so as he stopped beside Pabón and took a peek inside the pit. Luisito loyally stayed with him to cover his back and kept the radio handy. But one glance and he turned to face the other way with a strangled sob. Cabrera could not blame him. He already suspected that given the Venezuelan casualties disposition that this had been the last stand positions for the airfield defenders. So as he expected, the pit was full of American bodies, mostly Marines but with smattering of the other services, to include armed civilians, possibly volunteers from the refugees that had not found temporary resettlement in Puerto Rico. All were men, except for one lonely woman in a distinctive and very out of place Air Force service uniform.
That forced him to pause and stare, too. Cabrera had joined the Puerto Rico wing of La Patrulla Aérea Civil or Civil Air Patrol at age 15, so her blue uniform was achingly familiar. Heck, growing up, Cabrera had seriously toyed with the idea of going Air Force until he finally decided to stick with family tradition and joined the Army. The woman wore the shoulder epaulets of a lieutenant colonel in her blouse and her presence in the pit made him felt uncharacteristic weary and sad, and for a moment to forget everything else. It was difficult to figure out how she had looked, because someone had shot her in the face while she lay pinned under one of her own troops but Cabrera could read her partially detached nameplate.
“Colonel Pileggi, the airfield defenders’ commander I presume, Top,” he heard himself comment in a detached manner.
Pabón nodded once. “Must be, sir, she is the only Air Force field grade officer that we had encountered so far.” The First Sergeant didn’t have to mention that there were perhaps hundreds of other women, mostly civilians, whose bodies lay all around Guantanamo. On this day, death had been an amazingly equal opportunity equalizer.
“However, she took a hell of a lot of jonnies with her,” Pabón said looking around with great admiration. “If we still have a nation, she would be a shoot-in to be the first woman to get the medal for sure.” Cabrera nodded thoughtfully, gazing back at the terrain around the pit, the dozens of bodies and the thousands of shell casings around and decided that her actions must be recognized somehow, even if he had to push the report in person through whatever channels were left.
“Heads up, Captain. We got company coming of the cute variety, sir,” Pabón warned him. He looked up to see a lieutenant of military police making her way towards them through the bodies strew field escorted by two of her MPs and instinctively moved to block her view of the pit. Being protective of her was an intrinsic part of his make up and had done that for all her life.
His little sister, Carmen was four years younger than him and since childhood had looked up to him with both a mixture of admiration and sibling competition. Whenever he did something, she would try and do it too. So she had dogged his steps all throughout school and sport competitions. He joined CAP and as soon as she reached the minimum age, Carmen even joined the same squadron. He took Army ROTC while studying at the University of Puerto Rico and she did that too. Like him, she had ended up as Cadet Commander and distinguished military student on her senior year. No one in their family has been surprised, that after her own commissioning, she had followed him into the Army Guard. However, he was glad that as a woman, she was barred by law to follow him into the Infantry. Of course, being Carmen, she had chosen the next best thing, military police.
So given her track record, Cabrera wondered why he had been so surprise when she followed him into combat. Both had been in orders to deploy to Iraq with the follow-on forces when the wall hit. Of course, it was now part of her job and intellectuality, he could understand that not only was she ready but was superb at it. However, he was still her big brother and did not have to like it. So he had boarded his plane cursing a blue streak under his breath after recovering from the shock of watching her lead her platoon at a trot into the next C-130 waiting on the flight line.
But his concern was also tinged with huge amount of pride. Because, when everything was said and done, she had demonstrated to be a child of First Sergeant Joaquin Cabrera, US Army retired. A man who once had sported the tower of power in his left sleeve, the so-called juxtaposition of the Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces tabs. Together with the tabs, he had also sported an impressive collection of medals for valor in his chest. Most of whose citations to this day remained classified and his dad still refused to discuss the particulars with his grown children despite their security clearance and the many years passed since his retirement.
On top of everything, Carmen was also a very attractive young woman, a fact that even her camouflaged face, helmet and battle rattle could not failed to conceal. The effect that she usually had in any breathing, living non-related male with enough blood left to pump a heartbeat, finally convince him that there were no Venezuelans pretending to be dead around. Even Luisito, managed to momentarily forgot his weariness to stand tall, puffing his chest out. Of course, he knew that was a wasted effort on his part, because like many attractive women, Carmen seemed totally unaware of the effect that she had in men. The only one that seemed wholly unaffected by her arrival was Pabón but after meeting Mrs. Pabón, who even at forty and four kids could easily turn heads around, he could easily understand the why.
His sister stopped in front of him, with expertly held M4 muzzle down at her side but did not salute as there may be snipers still hiding around. “Sir, we are secure. We had taken all the civilians that we found still alive to the aid station. I got my platoon canvassing the area again in case that anyone is still hiding but I seriously doubt that we are going to find any more.” Cabrera did not immediately reply allowing for the noise of a C-17 in its take off run noise to subside. The airfield had been opened by combat engineers just as the last remains of resistance were finally put down. The plane was now on route back to Puerto Rico with the latest load of wounded and survivors. Cabrera took the opportunity to look around once again as he nodded in agreement with his sister assessment. The bastards have fought with the ferocity of trapped rats and went for the “soft” targets first.
“Very well, LT. I heard that you talked to the Cubans. What they had to say about themselves.” Cabrera had not liked when Pabón told him that her sister had been sent to liaise with them. However, given her appearance, diplomatic skills, and native Spanish speaking prowess, it was a wise move from the command staff.
“You mean after they stopped drooling, Robert…sir,” the short female MP Sergeant taking a knee at her sister’s side, wisecracked. But come up short when an angry look from Pabón froze her on the spot. Being in the Guard was not exactly like being in the Regular Army in respect to fraternization. Noelia Rodriguez was her sister best friend since high school and a classmate at the UPR law school. So, Cabrera personally knew well that under her battle rattle and painted face, she was not too far off from his sister in the looks department either but found her odd sense of humor at the few times that they gone out together, perplexing.
His sister accustomed to those antics, ignored her and kept reporting in a correct but mechanical manner. Cabrera noted a haunted look in her eyes and his gut told him that’s something was very wrong but decided to wait until she brought the matter herself. “No much, Robert. They denied having any knowledge of this Cuban government–in-exile that Chavez claimed. I tend to believe them, some of Chavez’s thugs sought refugee with them. They showed me their bodies. In the other hand, they provided shelter for close to 300 of our refugees, mostly women and children and had asked if there is anything else that they can do to help. Command is thinking over their offer.”
Cabrera nodded and was going to pull her aside to ask what was wrong with her, when Luisito interrupted. “Captain, I got a FLASH message for you.” He almost slapped the handset out of his hand on his haste.
“This is Bastard six actual, go ahead,” and listened.
To be Continued.
I can see there’s gonna be some actual research needing to be done here. There are already a coupla dozen small web publishing outfits which will turn your ones and zeroes into phone novels, and push them out across as many platforms as possible. Of course, to do that they take a huge bite out of your royalties and the thing that attracts me to the App store and it’s imitators is the 70% royalty they pay. I think it’s worth mastering the new publication process and doing it all myself to maintain that royalty.
I’ve been doing some work on the future of media/publishing for a feature story, and although I’m not entirely despondent about the collapse of the current business model, especially with trad book publishing, I do see massive changes ahead and agree with Orin that it’d be a wise idea to get in early with direct distribution and a micropayment model. I don’t see it as a direct challenge to my mainstream publishers. Indeed it’s likely that allowing an AoT or WW universe to spawn in this way would feed back into increased hard copy canon sales.
It is also the surest way I can think of to actually get a fan fic operation properly commercialised.
just needs more than the iphone platform… otherwise you have your junkie here.
JB:- the new media publishing mogoul.
well i know of an MS that is sitting in a corner some place gathering dust. Perhaps this may be the place for it JB?
A few of ‘em couldn’t do any harm as advertising…
Sounds like a good idea in theory. Though must admit have some reservations, See my comments re the Kindle thread at geek.
I vote interesting idea. I read the Sherlock Holmes stories on my Palm. It needs to be cheap though, not like Steven King’s attempt where he tried to sell a serialised story for much more than it was going to cost if it ever came out as a book.
From a reader’s POV, I think the idea of a serialised thriller would work. Eg, perhaps book ends written by you, then X amount of fan fic chapters in between, where each author takes over from the last.
I did this recently for a project with 15 or so other writers. Jeff Deaver did the book ends, then the rest of waited for our turn where we’d have two weeks to write a chapter in the story. One author acted as a running editor to keep some sort of continuity going, and then Jeff did some slight tweaking so that his final chapter would come together (we needed to resurrect a key antagonist). It was a heap of fun and a challenge – the amount of twists and turns was a mindf*ck. First it comes out as an audio book, called “The Copper Bracelet” (which I think on release they serialise it in chapters and then follow with the full book… I think… it’s been several months since I’ve thought about it), and then a published/paper book “The Watchlist”.
OT, just picked up your latest from my po box, JP. Sweet lookin cover.
Yeah sure, if you want to sell one copy and then have a zillion on peer to peer. I think you’ll find the price will just not be worth the effort. While the writing might be 10% of a normal book, I think it will still be 40-60% of the usual effort. Really, I have no idea, I’m just guessing.
John/anyone else in Brisbane who has renovated recently
Sorry, way off topic, but can anyone recommend a cabinet maker to do wardrobes/home office stuff?
I wasn’t happy with the work that the last mob did over June/July, so I still have two rooms at Casa Quokka to fit out. Preferably by a company that uses dust sheets, builds cabinets that resemble the plans that you’ve agreed on, and doesn’t take chunks out of the freshly polished and painted surfaces surrounding said cabinets…grrr…
The Bloke is an architect and when he heard you on By Design he looked it up on the website. Looks good to us.
Definitely a good idea. Fan fic and episodic publishing would lessen the workload and give the fans more explodey goodness. That Quiet Room idea FTW.
Quok’, our cabinet maker was a genius, but a solitary, reclusive genius who doesn’t take on clients unless they’ve been sent to him via our builder.
However, I have some other sources. i’ll ask around.
Thanks John.
Our builder was great but unfortunately he’s in England now visiting his twin who is dying of cancer, so the last thing I’m going to do is hassle him right now.
The cabinet maker was someone that the bloke found independently, and while the end result looks OK, something went wrong with the design in every room that they did so the thought of having them back here is enough to put me into foetal, twitching, on the sofa.
Although at some point I will need to get them out here because the drawers that they built to store my CDs & DVDs don’t actually have the height clearance to put the GD things in there…
Can’t offer advice about Ipods as we don’t use them. Although while my bloke was commuting for the 9 weeks away by train from Sandgate, he did come home with some creative suggestions for what he’d like to do with the overloud doof doof ipods on the spotty teenagers seated beside him for the journey.
I’m off to seek consolation from Goran.
sounds like a great idea. Love the thought of you letting other authors play in your universe. My vote: Go for it
Whimper….Don’t limit it to phones…
Some of us have been resisting carrying around those electronic leashes, and if you released a story only readable on a phone, I might have to go out and buy one. And then I’d curse you every time I got a SPIM or robo-dialer call.
Oh! Iphones! Misread it, that’s what you get from twitching in foetal staring at an unpacked box of DVDs.
didnt the count of monte cristo, one of the greatest epic adventure stories ever told start as a newspaper serial? actually i think the book was the collected serial.
basically, it could be a whole book on the fly although i do love the idea of extra helpings of AoT universe.
All the tinitin books were just the collection of the newspaper stories. They were successful as at the end of every third frame, there was a dramatic ending forcing you to wait for the next paper. Could you even do The Quiet room illustrated say 3 -5 panels daily and 5c per daily download? Its a pity that nothing like tintin exists anymore in the papers, just the same bland/inoffensive cartoons and forcing toons likes doonesbury to be so overrated as no one else is aiming for an intelligent audience.
I like the idea – we had a UK guy here last year who did a community publishing project where they put out books of short stories opf different lengths that were written tlo be read on public transport – opne was called ‘Commutes’ (with longers stories) and the other was called ‘A couple of Stops’ (for short jaunts)…
I think it is a fantastic Idea, I think it would give you a chance to write back stories to any of the WW characters that interested you. I would love to see a real range of writing styles too, newsreports filed by the reporter, diary type stories by other characters, even officiasl report type writing by some of the officials. Long time since I read WW, can’t remember character’s names that good.
Maybe after a certain time it called all be published in a book for us that don’t have iphones to get hold of. Similar to Hovercar Racer years ago.
yep mastering the app development for books is the thing – although the book side of teh app store is going to have to shape up now its kind of hitting critical mass.
El Couqi – best line ever!
“This is Bastard six actual, go ahead”
Michael Stackpole is already doing this:
http://www.stormwolf.com/
He sells ebooks from his site as well as via iTunes and has said that it’s been very successful for him. Maybe you could drop him a line and get the skinny on it.
Thanks, Sparty. My little homage to John Ringo’s The Last Centurion.
:)
Specific to the discussion in question:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/index.asp?r=1&afsrc=1
i am never going to get an iphone but i would be very keen to read AoT stories.