|
Recently, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary commented on an opinion expressed by Dr. Howard V. Hendrix, outgoing vice-president of the Science-Fiction/Fantasy Writers Association, wherein Dr. Hendrix referred to writers who post or publish their work on the internet as "webscabs".
I appreciate the SFWA. They have a terrific webpage with a great deal of useful information for the aspiring writer. They also, it seems, have some elitists that seem to think the only way to do things is the old way they did them.
Here, quoted from the original letter sent to Will Shetterly's Livejournal, is his exact comment:
- I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.
- Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) -- given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the "net time" they seemed to want at this point in the organization's development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.
- The entire text is here: http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/10039.html
I'd like to examine Dr. Hendrix words for a moment. As an employee in a Union shop, I am well acquainted with the concept of a "scab". It's the term the Union applies to anyone who doesn't actively support their agenda, regardless of whether said agenda is good for the individual, for the body of workers, or for that matter, for anyone but the Union officials.
It's easy, of course, to criticize someone working to get their writing out there for others to read when you've already managed to secure your own contract. Once you've managed to carve yourself a niche in the traditional publishing business, and hence perpetuating the problems within it, you have a nice comfortable spot from which to lob insults as the poor schmucks who haven't managed to convince an editor that they have a sellable manuscript.
That's the criteria; it doesn't have to be any good, it just has to be sellable. Otherwise, Paris Hilton wouldn't have a published book on the market. The reason she does is she catapulted herself to fame with a supposedly pirated sex video, made herself a household name in the purloined porn department, and the editors figured out people would buy something just because it had her name on the cover. Meanwhile, talented writers who don't have filthy stinking rich daddies and dirty videos of themselves floating all over the world get ignored.
It's the same issue facing comic artists. The syndicates only care about how much they can sell, and so will continue to distribute reruns of a dead artist's work for years, denying space to a new artist who has something fresh and interesting to offer. What's left for the artist? To post it on the internet, where hopefully he or she can attract readership and a following, and create a market not controlled by bean counters that have never created anything more entertaining than a spreadsheet in a Powerpoint presentation.
I can imagine a few hundred years ago, when another person similar to Dr. Hendrix blasted the infernal technology of the printing press, undercutting the value of real books and robbing the true scribes of their due wages. I'm sure they had a similar term that came out to the effect of "printscabs", and they were going to destroy the noble profession of writing for all time.
Well, Dr. Hendrix, welcome to the 21st Century, where the internet has offered aspiring writers an alternative to the crapshoot of the traditional publishing system. The internet will no more destroy the art of writing than the printing press did. Oh, it might have an effect of the business of writing, and more specifically, on the business of publishing, but just as the railroads had to adapt to the changing market when the interstate highway system made trucks a viable option for shippers, so also the Big Publishing Houses are going to have to adapt to the new market, or like many of the railroads that failed to adapt, vanish into extinction.
It's turning into a great new world for writers that write for the joy of writing. Most all of us would love to have an acceptable contract from a traditional publishing house for our manuscripts, but many of us just haven't managed to win that crapshoot like you have. Even Terry Brooks, who has made an excellent living with writing, admits his first success was luck of the draw. He just happened to submit at just the right time for a certain editor to decide to make an example out of his work. A little earlier or a little later, and someone else would have snagged that contract.
How many great stories have died with their writers, because the traditional publishing system didn't bother to notice them? How many never got their contracts, because writers with contracts demanded more money, and thus there was none left to pay the new talent?
With the internet, a writer can get his or her stories out to an audience all over the world without waiting for a jaded editor to figure out the work has merit. For a reasonable cost, he or she can advertise globally for less than it would cost to run a small ad in a local newspaper. With POD services, they can retain creative control of their work and not have it butchered by a publisher in the name of making it more "profitable." Using technology on their own desks, they can harness the power to be writers in the truest sense, answering to the readers rather than to the stockholders in some huge conglomerate.
We can be the artists writers were supposed to be. It's our work, sir, and if we choose to give it away for free, that's our choice. If that means someone is less likely to pay you for your work, then maybe yours isn't that much more valuable than ours.
|