{"id":3373,"date":"2009-03-24T17:30:07","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T21:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3373"},"modified":"2009-03-24T16:44:14","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T20:44:14","slug":"tuesday-various-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3373","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>I think there are a lot of advantages to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Print_on_demand\">print-on-demand<\/a> publishing model, but it&#8217;s still weird to see it applied to other products <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/warner-brothers-can-burn-you-a-dvd-of-that,25586\/\">like DVDs<\/a>. Still, I think this is the way to go. Studios like Warner Brothers can avoid the high cost of mass producing a disc with limited sales appeal, while at the same time making DVD-quality copies available to the collectors and film buffs who really want them.<\/li>\n<p><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Then again, if you listen to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shirky.com\/weblog\/2009\/03\/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable\/\">Clay Shirky<\/a>, maybe there&#8217;s <em>no<\/em> publishing model that really makes sense in our new Internet age:<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public \u00e2\u20ac\u201d has stopped being a problem.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">What I think what a lot of Shirky&#8217;s critics (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.journalism20.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/18\/abcs-gibson-out-of-touch-sends-college-journalists-wrong-message\/\">like Charlie Gibson<\/a>) are missing, however, is that his analysis is very well considered &#8212; seriously, read his whole article &#8212; and ultimately quite hopeful. Shirky is <em>pro<\/em>-journalism, even while he acknowledges that newspapers (and by extension publishing) is in a state of transition and flux, and some old ways of doing business are likely to fall by the wayside. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\/\" title=\"Waxy.org Links\">via<\/a>] <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Until that point, however, the publishing industry still exists. And personally, I&#8217;m with Jay Lake in thinking the terms of the new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jlake.com\/2009\/03\/18\/publishing-the-banal-evil-of-the-google-copyright-settlement\/\">Google Books\/Authors&#8217; Guild settlement<\/a> are pretty dire for the writers who create that industry&#8217;s content. Whatever you think of Google Books &#8212; Lake himself is a stockholder and supporter &#8212; it sets a dangerous precedent for copyright. [<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfsignal.com\/\" title=\"SF Signal\">via<\/a><\/font>]<\/li>\n<p><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wrongquestions.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/three-links-make-post.html\">Abigail Nussbaum on tired fantasy criticisms<\/a>:<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Most fantasy readers go through a phase where they realize that <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em> is conservative, reactionary and, by certain very real yardsticks such as, to take Morgan&#8217;s example, realistic characterization, not very good. It&#8217;s like figuring out that Narnia is a Christian allegory. You take a deep breath, pick your jaw up from the floor, and decide if you can go on liking the book in spite of these flaws&#8211;because it has other qualities that you value, and because a genuinely good work of fiction is one that you can enjoy even if you disagree with the attitudes it expresses.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">She makes a lot of good points. Still, as some of the commenters there note, it&#8217;s sometimes <em>worth<\/em> repeating things for those who have not heard them before. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>And finally, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to survive one atomic blast may be regarded as a misfortune; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,510262,00.html\">to survive both<\/a> looks like carelessness.<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think there are a lot of advantages to the print-on-demand publishing model, but it&#8217;s still weird to see it applied to other products like DVDs. Still, I think this is the way to go. Studios like Warner Brothers can avoid the high cost of mass producing a disc with limited sales appeal, while at &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3373\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238,10],"class_list":["post-3373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}