And the clock ticks down....

[heliopausa]

For the Athena's Daughters 2 Kickstarter.      It's been really interesting watching from a distance how it works.  (The video, for starters!  Amazing!)

And only a week or so back I was reading an essay  by sartorias about how she and rachelmanija went the self-publishing route for their latest book, Hostage, and the reasons for a shift from publishing through the big companies.
It occurred to me that what's going on is actually a rolling back of a publishing model which began more or less with the Industrial Revolution.  Before that (very open to correction on this - this is idle thought, not actual research speaking!) poets and theorists self-published slim pamphlets, or else publishers asked for a list of subscribers before they'd take a risk on setting up larger books, or else writers could find one major patron (who then might renege on the deal, as in described in Samuel Johnson's famous letter to Lord Chesterfield )  but then, round about Jane Austen, authors found themselves not waiting on subscribers or patrons, but on approval from publishers, before the works hit the presses.

I guess it was to do with technology?  As printing presses became larger, the industry became more capital-intensive, and the decisions were made more deliberately in terms of the return on capital alone, by those whose capital was tied up in the presses?   Wiser insights gladly welcomed.


*I tried to make the links using <username=  >, but it didn't work.  :(  Insights welcomed there, too, as to what I'm doing wrong.

late addition: thanks to wise advice over on LJ, I have now conquered how to do neat links, though I still don't exactly know what I'm doing.

Comments

[rthstewart]

Thank you for your kind support! I really appreciate it. I find what happened with 50 Shades of Gray really interesting from a business publishing model. EL James wrote the fan fic, got zillions of readers and then, I believe took it down from the Pit of Voles and put it behind a paywall and then changed the names, cleaned it up a little and self-published and then was eventually picked up by a publisher. It's a very interesting turn on how someone took control of her own story.

[heliopausa]

You're very welcome! And congratulations on the result. :) I'm looking forward to the reading part!

The tricky part about the 50 Shades model is the second step, though, isn't it? get zillions of readers. :( (And again, :( )

But the self-publishing part - did she do it as an e-publication, or on paper? And the part about the paywall - was this while it was still being published chapter by chapter, or after it (the first book) was finished, but as people wanted to read it a second time, or as their interest was piqued by word of mouth?

[pulchritude]

Try <user name="">?

[heliopausa]

Thank you -- I've tried it (with one name) but it doesn't seem to be working. :(

[edenfalling]

<user name="namegoeshere"> The space is important!

Also, if the person is on another site, you can do <user name="namegoeshere" site="site.com"> -- again, the spaces are important, and you'd use .com or .org or whatever the actual address of the site in question is. No www is necessary. (This won't work for all sites, but I know LJ, Tumblr, AO3, Twitter, and probably also Facebook and Deviantart are supported that way. There may be a FAQ somewhere with a complete list.)

[heliopausa]

Thanks -- I've tried it but it doesn't seem to be working. :( I'll go and look at the LJ version,to see what it looks like there.

[edenfalling]

Hmm.

sartorias sartorias

rachelmanija rachelmanija

It's working for me, so... are you using rich text or basic html as your posting interface? That might have something to do with it.

[heliopausa]

rich text. Following your hint, I've just tried to switch to basic html, but as you see, without success.

I think you may have provided the clue,though. Maybe if I'd started in html, not in rich text?

[edenfalling]

Alas, I don't know remotely enough about programming to say. :-(

[heliopausa]

Next time I post, I'll start off in basic html, and make sure that I reference a name, and see how it works. :) Thanks for the tips!

[transposable_element]

So, on the topic of publishers, I suspect the phenomenon you're describing has to do with the rise of the novel, or perhaps the rise of literacy, an increase in the number of people writing as well as reading. Presumably this would be intertwined with technological developments as well. I'm just talking out of my hat, here, mind you!

[heliopausa]

Oh...interesting points! :) I've just been and checked out Clarissa (which, as I expect you know, is a walloppingly long novel published about half a century before Austen), to see how it fitted the model, and found to my amusement that Richardson was a printer and publisher himself, ie before he decided to get into the novel-writing game. :D So that explains that, about how it saw the light of day!

I wonder if it's to do with tighter controls of the press, too, with the Restoration, and pamphleteers getting their ears clipped and so on. (Now not only talking through my hat, but I haven't even got a hat!

[kerrypolka]

I know very little about the history of publishing and its changes, but I do remember the first time I heard about subscription-based publishing (on a historical pub tour of London a year or two ago) and thinking "Gosh, that sounds like Kickstarter!"

[heliopausa]

:) (Though I have a gloomy feeling that publishing won't be the only zone where we're rolling back to the eighteenth century, and beyond.)

[sally_maria]

Sorry to butt in, but I was having a look at your recent entries and hoped I might be able to help.

When ever I'm not sure about the DW and LJ codes for links, I've found this page which lists the codes to be a very useful reference.

[heliopausa]

Thank you! That looks very helpful indeed. :)