Hyperfiction (n.) - A form of fiction that takes advantage of interactive media to elevate a story beyond mere linear narrative. Basically, a story that incorporates hyperlinks to allow the reader to experience the text in any particular order, and to explore story materials that are ancillary to the main plot. For example, a hyperfiction novel might include interactive maps of the setting, video news accounts of events in the story, and blogs or journal entries made by several characters. Hyperfiction is still in its infancy, though Shadow Unit by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, Leah Bobet and Holly Black is perhaps the most well known sci-fi experiment in the medium to date.
I bring it up because:Hyperfiction is more than fiction on a hypertext-capable reader, as Elizabeth Bear informs us. This is the point being missed in the recent Amazon vs. MacMillan brouhaha, to say nothing of the announcement of the iPad -- fiction that is native to digital media does and is more than fiction native to analog media. Put another way, producers did more with DVDs than they did with VHS tapes. Interactive features, games, alternate audio commentaries, whole extra cuts of the film, easter eggs, and the like. This is taking advantage of the potential of the medium. To date, we've stuck analog books on digital readers and called them ebooks. But what does a hyperbook look like? How would a hypernovel differ from a novel? We haven't even begun to really ask the question. Until we do, don't expect e-readers to become "necessary" to the average consumer. You haven't replaced their novels yet. You've only copied them.
The gang over at Futurismic finally addressed the elephant in the room as applies to the future of short fiction publishing: Is patronage the only way short fiction will survive? This is the main question I've been wrestling with in my own sci-fi magazine 2.0 concept, because it's become pretty apparent that people just won't pay for short stories in the traditional, buy a magazine site unseen and hope what's in it is good sort of way. It's especially true online, where nobody wants to pay for anything not developed by 37signals.
(For those that don't recall the specifics of Magazine 2.0, the idea is this: Rather than query editors for publication, authors query readers directly. They synopsize a story, post the synopsis online, and list a price for which they are willing to publish it. The readership can donate in whatever increments they like until to a set query deadline, and if the price is met, the story is "unlocked" and published. The zealous fans will do most of the bidding, and thus will pay the freight for the majority who refuse to spend money on content. The 90-9-1 rule is thusly observed and monetized.)
Now, the Futurismic folks don't distinguish between celebrity endorsement and outright underwriting, as both rely on a patron to either pay for the content outright so others can enjoy for free, or for the patron to endorse a product so the fanboys will support it as a show of fealty to their fandom crush. In both cases, the content is a supported charity, not a product. This is what Elizabeth Bear calls the "public radio guilt model" and lots of hallowed institutions (public radio, for example) and a few sci-fi magazines are coping on this system. And Bear would know about online publishing, what with her cofounding involvement in Shadow Unit.
Thus we arrive at the glaring hole in my Magazine 2.0 idea -- audience size. As io9 pointed out a while back, the main reason Baen's Universe online magazine is shutting down is that it couldn't grow its audience fast enough to ween itself off of the fiscal teat of its associated fan club membership dues. It was dependent on a specific type of patronage and when that patronage faltered, the magazine was doomed. You must cast your income net to a diversified group of sources so as not to die when when one of supporters stops supporting.
My magazine 2.0 concept can't work before an audience is built, because there is no money in the bank to publish stories on spec as a means of building an audience. Old-fashioned loss leader publishing startup principles won't work here. Magazine 2.0 presupposes an audience who will look at synopses and bid on stories, but it needs stories in order to build that audience.
The answer, I believe, is distributed patronage. I don't want just one John Scalzi using his powers to save Strange Horizons, I want fifty or a hundred John Scalzis bolstering a couple dozen magazines every month. (In this case, Scalzi may be a bad example, as he is a sufficiently bankable author that he only works on commission these days, rather than on spec; most authors are not so lucky.)
Specifically, when Author X submits a story synopsis to Magazine 2.0, it generates a code snippet for a Donate Now button that Author X can publish on his Web site. Thus, Author X's audience becomes Magazine 2.0's audience, even if only for a brief while. Meanwhile, Blogger Y wants a story from Author X on his blog, so he signs up as a Magazine 2.0 Reprinter, and thus gets the right to reprint Author X's story on his blog as well. At the same time, Blogger Y gets his own code snippet to promote donations to unlock Author X's story. (Or, Blogger Y could just pay the unlock cost himself to get the story immediately.) Thus, Blogger Y's audience becomes Magazine 2.0's audience, even if only temporarily. Any Web site that publishes a donation widget that contributes to publication earns simultaneous reprint rights. If you want exclusive online publishing rights (or, more precisely, exclusive except for Magazine 2.0's own copy), you'll have to pay the whole freight yourself.
As to why A-list authors like Scalzi would play this game: Publicity. As Cory Doctorow repeatedly points out, anonymity is the greatest enemy to author success (which is why Doctorow gives away so many loss-leader free ebooks of his stuff). Magazine 2.0 casts the audience net as wide as possible, meaning Scalzi could make his commission rate just as easily under Magazine 2.0, but theoretically be seen by more people as the donate widget spreads to multiple venues. Moreover, for a select list of authors, Magazine 2.0 could be adapted to solicit for commissioned work, rather than spec work. (Scalzi would write the story only after and unless the donation cost was met, not before.)
Magazine 2.0 is thus a meta-magazine, one that houses all the stories it has unlocked for perpetual online consumption and reprint. It is also a platform for enabling other online venues to acquire short fiction (or, conceivably, any) content, and one that co-opts the audience of each venue and contributor as an ever-shifting, distributed donor base.
The launch obstacle thus becomes publicizing and enlisting the use of the platform by authors and venues, but that's a much less steep hill to climb than bootstrapping a magazine audience. Essentially, magazine 2.0 is a crowdsourced marketplace for authors to sell their spec content, and a method for audiences and publishers to acquire said content. Crazy, but I think it can work.
The side gig has been kickin' my lazy ass of late and the day job is rounding into bizarro mutant form with actual processes and duties and a business model that relies on me pumping out Web video show scripts at a mind-numbing rate (seriously, I'm looking for willing supplicants to do similar work on the cheap; ping for details). The mangy scrap of putrid fucktard fiction I vomited all over my writers group last week was such a waste of fucking time that I was seriously contemplating shelving my lets-be-us-a-fictional-type-author aspiration for, say, a decade.
And then Elizabeth Bear, who is not only published and a mondo mega blogger but also sports stamps of approval from both Ensign Crusher and His Lord John the Scalzi goes and reminds me that, yes, it's supposed to be hard--dispshit--and that it's the hard that makes it worthy, so on and so forth. But she invokes the platitudes so well, you see. And she makes these points, that well and truly have convinced me not to go gently into that cliched, self-pitying night:
I read something somewhere that opined that the difference between garage bands and bands that break out is not musical competence, but having found their own sound. I've listened to this happen to a couple of friends' bands, and it's true, I think.
It also applies to writers. You get stuck at that stage because you are trying to find the things that will lift you our of competence and into the next stage. And I can tell you what those things are.
One is confidence (hard, in a business where one faces constant rejection.) Confidence in the story you're telling. Confidence in your ability to tell it. That confidence is what gives a narrative drive, allows you to stop hemming and hawing and say what you mean rather than talking around it.
Another is voice. Sounding like yourself, the rhythm and swing of your rhetoric, the unique chord progressions that make this identifiably your song and not something anybody could have written.
And the interesting thing there is that that personalization--which is what's going to make people love your work--is the same thing that's going to make some people hate it. Strong opinions are what you're after. And some of those strong opinions are going to be negative.
And there's experience and technique and craft, of course, but those are all part of the competence. And mere competence isn't enough. You have to have that something extra.
See what she did there? She made this all my fault--which I already knew--but she also made overcoming it seem so very damn possible. And lo, cynical pragmatist that I am, I live for the possible. So here I be, resolving to stop second-guessing and just carve out some precious time to write my fucking fictional ass off for a change. All because I cyber-stalk Wil Wheaton's tweets and the magnificent bastard goes and lives up to his Nicest Mothefucker On Teh Internets rep.
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