Yes, small things. As in, “There ain’t no reason not to do this.” As in, “This costs nothing, or next to nothing.” As in, you don’t need to reinvent the industry or discover the magical monetization model or invent the free ebook reader that convinces everyone to give up their iPhone.
Of course, we’ll be following this with 5 big ideas. Hence this countdown starting at 10. But those are for another post.
10. Divorce yourself from bad design. Why do so many science fiction sites look like they were created in 1995? Sorry, guys, but if we’re going to be the leading edge, we can’t make people laugh uproariously at the first click. This is not an example of a forward-looking site. This is better. And, before you drag out the, “I ain’t got no money” excuse, download Wordpress for free, then take a click over to 99Designs and run a design contest for a template, pay a freelancer for some Flash work, and you’ll soon have yourself a site that would have cost $1MM or more to make during the web 1.0 revolution for less than 4 figures.
9. Bring us together. So how come no science fiction organization or publisher hasn’t clicked on the “create social network” button at Ning? Or any similar site? In a few minutes, they could have their own social network, complete with all the friending/group creation/user management tools of Facebook. Free. Wait. Let me repeat that. Free. As in FREE. Are you reading me? A social network for science fiction writers, pubs, and fans would be infinitely better than the forums and whatnot they have now. And infinitely better than waiting for some half-baked, committee-ized, overthought, too-late, internally-created system.
8. Stop devaluing yourself. If I see one more author or publication wring their hands over the possibility of success, I’m going to scream. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make money. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make *lots* of money. No other profession does. If we want to bring this field forward, we need to be able to make a living as writers and publishers. A good living. And yes, I know we’re still figuring out the new models for monetization. I just want us to shoot for a model that provides more than break-even accounting.
7. Embrace reality. Sorry, but if SF is the most popular movie genre in the world, then it’s time to go there. Especially since the trend appears to be accelerating to cover the entire entertainment space. How many science fiction- or fantasy-based shows are there right now? Yes, most of them are light entertainment. Yes, most of them are filled with rubber science. That’s fine. Use them as a gateway drug to lure people to real science. Or offer your own alternatives. A few months back, I was amazed to find an anime series that depicts a mature augmented reality environment, and fully explores SF tropes as sophisticated as those in Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”–and it is aimed at a tween/teen audience!
6. Lose the negativity. Yeah, I’ve harped on this before, but it bears repeating. If we want to lead, we need to be the people with answers. We need to have vision. We need to look beyond the current crisis of the world (and the world has been in a current crisis, since, say, Sumerian times) and imagine positive futures. And no, this does not mean happy-sappy tales where everyone goes skipping through a field of flowers. I’m talking work that embraces the full scope of human aspiration, anger, benevolence, greed, kindness, sadness. I’m talking about work that may be disturbing, and that may come out in a place where things are profoundly different–but it does come out, and we are still human, and still moving forward, in the end.
Stay tuned for the big things.
April 11th, 2008 /
April 11th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I wish more people were listening to you, Jason. I keep expecting to see someone besides Paul or Me mentioning your posts.
I’ve got a lot of design projects in the air right now, but I especially have a project to address #10 (besides the fact that 99% of my freelancing design work is done for the SF world).
April 11th, 2008 at 7:34 am
[…] Jason Stoddard added an interesting post today on 5 Small Things Science Fiction Can Do To Improve Its ImageHere’s a small reading […]
April 11th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I’m sure this will pop up as one of the Big Things, but just in case:
Let go of the past.
Quit writing like we’re under the shadows of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke et al. Climb on top of their shoulders and look, dammit.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Hey Jeremy: I’m also mentioning this maven/madman/media guru*. That makes it at least three. All your intarwebs belong to us!
(*) delete as appropriate…;-)
(And virtual beer: it’s Friday evening here…d-:)
April 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
[…] Jason Stoddard wrote an interesting post today on 5 Small Things Science Fiction Can Do To Improve Its ImageHere’s a quick excerpt Yes, small things. As in, “There ain’t no reason not to do this.” As in, “This costs nothing, or next to nothing.” As in, you don’t need to reinvent the industry or discover the magical monetization model or invent the free ebook reader that convinces everyone to give up their iPhone. Of course, we’ll be following this with 5 big ideas. Hence this countdown starting at 10. But those are for another post. 10. Divorce yourself from bad design. Why do so many science fiction sites look like they […]
April 11th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Jeremiah: I’m thrilled to see that you’re addressing #10. There are a lot of sites out there that need help–whether you’re talking publisher, con, fan group, whatever. It’s almost like there’s an ingrained resistance to change.
Jetse: Madman may be appropriate, since I’m criticizing sites from publications that *I haven’t been accepted in yet.* Suicide? We’ll see. I think I’l join you in a beer. In 10 hours or so, that is.
Adam: Actually, that’s not one of the big ones, but I think it’s a great addition–the 6th of 5 small things.
And thanks to all for mentioning me!
April 11th, 2008 at 9:36 am
[…] Editors wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
April 11th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Well, I was looking for a blog topic and I think I’ve found it.
FWIW, I know that #9 is currently a work-in-progress in many areas. Baen seems to have struck internet gold with Baen’s Bar, and Tor is going to be taking a crack at the social networking thing any day now. I’ve got EOS as a friend on MySpace and they churn out a ton of promotional stuff there.
So it happens.
And I think #7 is starting to happen in a really cool, sorta quiet way, but it’s happening. But I think I’ll leave that
April 11th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
… for my blog post.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
[…] Stoddard, who is fast becoming one of my favorite science fiction people, has a tidy little call for action up on his blog. Succumbing to sweet temptation, he resorts to the old Top Ten list (and if David Letterman ever […]
April 11th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Neither the SFWA site nor the SciFi site are shining examples of good web design. But good web design won’t change much about science fiction either.
Neither will creating yet another social network. We’ve watched bunches of them get created and bunches die once the Ponzi scheme nature of them pushes over the tipping point. Some will survive, of course.
Point being, that tweaking little things here and there on the web won’t make much improvement for something that really isn’t in a bad shape.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Dave: thanks for the mention. I’ve replied to your blog.
I’ll reiterate #9, though–with Baen’s Bar locked behind a password wall (and nothing to tell users what lies within,) their Alexa results are hardly something to brag about. And it’s not really a social network–it’s a newsgroup. One that needs to pay close attention to #10.
Tor’s network is, well, as useful as any network that *does not exist yet,* and it remains to be seen how cool it will be. With the technology available for simple, free creation of a captive social network, why not try it out?
King Rat: Thanks for the comment. I’ll agree that neither SFWA nor SciFi.com are *great* web design, but *one* of the sites will not cause instant dismissal by a modern web-user–as in someone who has grown up with the internet. And this is a very important audience for SF.
And I *will* argue that good design is all-important, is well worth doing, and will change things for the better. Look at the hundreds of studies out there linking design to perception (positive or negative) and purchase intent.
And with 6 of the top 10 global sites being social sites, I think that the social phenomenon is a little more than a Ponzi scheme. It may not fundamentally change human communication, as the founder of Facebook believes, but allowing more people the ability to communicate in more ways has been a good bet since, oh, the days of the printing press.
Stay tuned for the big stuff.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Oi, good stuff, but yer links in 6 & 7 need fixin’.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Every sci-fi writter should watch Denno Coil
The thing is, Denno Coil is barely science fiction…nothing portrayed (in the first half season) is beyond a slight extrapolation/refinement of present technology.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Came to read your post because Warren Ellis mentioned it this morning, and I added you to my Bloglines right after. Thanks for challenging my favorite genre the way you are. Looking forward to the big ideas…
April 12th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Hey Karloff, thanks and fixed. Duh, I is a profeshunal . . .
Darkflame, yep, agreed, but people don’t understand how close we are to this tech! AR is going to change, well, almost everything.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:29 am
View my page on Small Press Group
April 12th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
A-fucking-men.
April 12th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Thanks so much for pointing me to Denn? Coil!
Possibly the most awesome concept I’ve seen in animé!
I can see why it took more than a decade to develop.
(The episodes are available at veoh.com, if anybody’s curious.)
April 12th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Spencer: thank you!
Chris: wait till you get to episode 12!
April 12th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
A few of us (small press people) were playing around with Ning several months ago and found it lacking in a few areas, particularly in the way their forums worked. Have you tried out any of their competitors? If so, I’d love to hear what you think of them.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:20 am
[…] Jason Stoddard » Blog Archive » 5 Small Things Science Fiction Can Do To Improve Its Image Yes, small things. As in, “There ain’t no reason not to do this.” (tags: writing sf scifi sci-fi publishing essay sciencefiction) […]
April 13th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Aside: The 2nd trackback / 5th displayed comment on this post seems to come from a splog. Interestingly, the 1st trackback is from a very similar source, but the page doesn’t feature any links - perhaps it’s just there to lend credence to the link network or something.
Only the first 2 items are really actionable, aren’t they? The others are calls for attitude changes, and they’re not really measurable.
I want Science Fiction to stop lying to children about science to make them “interested” in science - i.e, enough with all these lies about Space. We are going to be more comfortable living on Earth even when it’s a toxic dump.
April 13th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Okay, let’s take ‘em from the top:
10. SFWA is not an SF magazine. It’s a writer’s organization. The website’s done by volunteers, for internal use. I repeat: this is not a public-facing commercial operation. (And they’ve lately formed a committee to look into a new design, anyway.)
9. Tor (the biggest SF publisher in America) have done exactly this; their social network/portal site is called Lightspeed and it’s launching Real Soon. (There are other, older social networks; usenet is still heavily used, there are the fora at SFF.net, there’s Baen’s Bar … I call “bullshit” on item 9.)
8. Stooooopid. In a field where typical unagented first novel advances average $6000, it’d be astonishing if people didn’t angst over their lack of money. And you know something else? The tiny advances don’t mean authors are being ripped off by the publishers — *they* aren’t making potloads, either. The sad fact is, a first SF novel in hardcover in the USA will typically sell 4000-6000 copies, and maybe 20,000 paperbacks. And 50-70% of the revenue goes to the distribution chains (bookstores and wholesalers, or those nice friendly people at Amazon who insist on their 60% discount price - 30% for the punters and 30% for Amazon). Do The Math. It ain’t hard. If you can come up with a new business model that boosts average sales by 1000% across the board, I’ll kiss your feet and give you a blow job. I reckon if it gets me a $60,000 book advance it’ll be cheap at the price.
7. It’s happening. Go look into machinima. The bad news: scriptwriting and novels are two different art forms and the skill sets aren’t automatically transferable.
6. The negativity is a side-effect of today’s world. Writers do what they do against a background of current events, and they work out their uncertainty and fear about the present on the projection screen of the future. You want American SF writers to be upbeat and optimistic, you’ll have to send off for a new republic — this one’s broken. (Or buy British SF, which has generally worked through its end of empire neuroses and managed to get back to the future.)
April 13th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Charlie, okay, wow, man oh man, maybe I still have a ways to go as a communicator, but hey, let’s take a look at your comments on my comments.
10. Maybe I made a mistake by picking SFWA specifically–what I meant, in general, is look at *many* SF publisher/organization sites, and tell me that they won’t leave the general public with the impression that we are far, far behind the times. This isn’t a good thing. I’m also an active member of SFWA, and I’m aware of the committee on redesign. And I’m aware of what usually comes out of such committees. I’ll try to be positive, though.
9. Again, Tor’s system ain’t live yet, so here’s hoping it’s cool. Baen’s Bar is a newsgroup. I must respectfully disagree.
8. I’m well aware of the economics, it’s just that we’re in a field where you see apologies from people and organizations *about the very thought of making money.* I see value in what we do, and I don’t think we need to apologize for it. And I wouldn’t expect any successful economic model to be based entirely on selling dead trees.
7. I think you misunderstood me. I’m familiar with machinima–we’re working on one for a client as we speak–I’m just saying, “Let’s not factionalize into pro-film/anti-film/only-lit crowds. Note that sci-fi films work to bring people into the genre, and take it from there.
6. There’s a difference between giving up and wallowing in it and working towards a glimmer of hope. I’ve been reading a lot of wallowing, so apologies if this seems reactionary. And I’m well-aware of British SF–most of my published work has been in Interzone.
Hope this clears some things up for everyone.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I think part of the problem with SF is that SF writers feel that they should be able to create websites themselves. After all, we’re techy, right? And five or ten years ago they could. The web has moved on, though, and is becoming increasingly more professional. The best sites have enormous budgets and large numbers of people working on them. Those are beyond most of us, as Charlie says, even if we try a design competition.
Even if it’s not that writers are trying to do websites themselves due to lack of cash, there are also quite a number of people who set themselves up as web designers specifically for writers who obviously don’t know what they are doing. Obviously some, like Jeremiah, do, but a lot don’t, and most writers won’t know they’re being ripped off by amateurs.
I’ve been planning for a while to write a series of blog entries about websites for writers for a while but I haven’t got around to it. Until I do, I should point out that there are places where you can get a reasonably high-quality template for free if you want one. It won’t be a unique design, of course, and it might not be exactly what you want, but it’s probably better than doing your own if you’re not a designer. Here are a couple of places:
http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.designsbydarren.com/
There are plenty of others too.
Or you could use a free Wordpress template.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Patrick, I tried to post this on Warren’s blog, but it decided I was a spammer. So here you go–it doesn’t take a lot of money to have a good, solid website running on an extensible open-source CMS:
Actually, there are dozens of services that specialize in taking web interface designs and turning them into valid CSS/xHTML, including templates for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, an many other CMS platforms. PSD2HTML.com and CSSrockstars.com are a couple we’ve worked with, or you can put the job up at scriptlance.com or getafreelancer.com. The cost? $200-500.
And no, this does not *completely* address the wealth of text content that may be in older table-based layouts–but, using a service like 99designs, combined with a service like PSD2HTML, gets you a credible, modern site platform done on an open-source CMS like Joomla for $500-1000, which is a pretty darn good start!
April 14th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Oh, and an announcement: I am leaving today to speak on social media at The eMarketing Forum, so I may be scarce for the rest of the week. I’ll try to get the 5 big things posted tomorrow, before my connectivity is severely limited.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:06 am
As long as the number one Big Thing involves robot ponies with jetpacks, I’m there.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Jason, I think you’re right that you can get a high-quality web design for those prices through 99designs. I’m just not convinced it’s an appropriate solution for most authors, at least. Nor, to be honest, is something like Joomla, even if it’s set up for them. However, you can do a site essentially for free using either a free template like the ones I linked to, or by using Wordpress and one of the themes. (Wordpress is a perfectly adequate CMS for most beginning writers’ needs.) Even though those won’t be massively high-quality, they would be so much more so than the vast majority of sites out there.
Okay, I really do need to do some blog posts on websites for writers. Soon…
April 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am
[…] to Peter Wong I have just added Jason Stoddard to my feeds list. This post about how the SF community might present itself in a more positive light is generating a lot of […]
April 15th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Fascinating post. Here’s a few off-the-top-of-the-head reactions.
10. With you all the way. Too many SF web sites are stuck in the 20th Century. I’m no great whiz with design, but I know where I can find good themes and if I really need something good I can go to someone like Tony Geer. Way too many SF folk I know have no idea what an RSS feed is.
9. There are actually a lot of SF-related groups on Facebook. It is free too. Why is Ning better?
8. See the recent debate about the seemliness of asking people to vote for you in awards. We’ve currently got 19% of respondents saying that any such request is demeaning, which may be why some authors are leery of self-promotion.
7. Charlie is right about skill sets not necessarily being transferable, but every time I hear someone complain that the dramatic presentation categories have no place in the Hugos I know that you are right.
6. I suspect that most SF authors are all too aware of the false positivity of the past. Either that or they understand why Michael Crichton sells so well.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Cheryl: Ning is not a social network, it’s a system for building your own social network. Where you control what features there are, and can program your own if you don’t like the readily available ones. I’d say (probably oversimplifying though) if Facebook is LiveJournal (where you join an existing network and do what you’re allowed, but on the other hand get the benefit of a huge existing user base), Ning is WordPress (with free hosting, but where you get to pick the parts you want and expand on the thing yourself to go beyond just blogging).
April 16th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Ah, that’s very interesting. I can see it being quite useful for certain applications. I’m already wondering what it might do for a Worldcon committee, for example. But I suspect that it won’t be very good at building a general community because a custom environment will be a step too far for many people. They’ll say “I’m already on Facebook/MySpace/etc, I don’t want to have to join something else.” And there will be a lot of people who won’t touch it because it isn’t LiveJournal.
When I can find some time, I’ll check it out.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
“And there will be a lot of people who won’t touch it because it isn’t LiveJournal.”
True. On the other hand, a custom community might work for those people who won’t touch a community because it *is* LiveJournal or Facebook. You just can’t win sometimes…