I was ambivalent about going to watch Avatar. The trailer, as with many Hollywood trailers nowadays, doesn’t leave a taste of mystery, but rather exposes too much of the thrust of the story, and revealed it to be a fairly standard, even cliched, tale.
And so it was.
Dances with Smurfs, as South Park lampooned it.
The story wasn’t a surprise, but the visuals were. The sheer amount of them. They were endemic in the film. In 3D, the film certainly looked 300 million dollars (or whatever it cost). With a budget like that I suppose the last thing they could afford to do was take risks with the story. It ticked all the psychological boxes, straight out of film-writing school: hero with a goal that changes half way through, meets beautiful girl, falls in love, earns the hand of said young blue maiden, big battle with the baddies at the end, good prevail over evil.
The themes of the story are surprisingly prescient, considering the story must have been written years earlier. James Cameron tapped into the zeitgeist of the time, and it seems even stronger now. Like many American films, the military figures dominantly, but this time they are the bad guys (or rather the unquestioning warmongering mentally is the enemy). It has a strong ecological theme too. It reminded me, in many ways of Final Fantasy. Remember that one? The last great reinvention of film, before Avatar. How quickly we forget reinventions!
One of the striking differences of the visuals in Avatar is the use of colour and light. Why is it that CGI has always been to represent dark a gloomly things thus far? It was nice to see something artificial realized so vivaciously. It enhances the themes too - the good guys full of colour and light, and their militaristic counterfoils in bland steel greys and muted khakis.
Is it the groundbreaking reinvention of cinema claimed by the hype? No: after all, how many films will have a budget like that? Perhaps it is a milestone though, a landmark consolidation of the state of CGI, thanks again largely to Weta Digital. The reinvention will come when such quality visuals become even more affordable for the average film budget of a non-blockbuster film that can afford to take risks with more original stories.
My expectations were low, but I did enjoy it more than I expected I would. At the very least, Avatar is a fantastic, immersive, vibrant, and entertaining sojourn from the real. Much needed in these times.
December 18th, 2009
Dealing with corporate clients, handling their last minute rush requirements that absolutely have to be done by Christmas (happens every year!) got me thinking about the megacorps of publishing. The megacorp of publishing - Amazon. Ok, so bear with me. I’m have a suspicious mind. It comes from reading and writing all those thrillers.
When I first considered self-publication a year ago, BookSurge was the candidate. In the meantime, it has been subsumed into the great belly of the Amazon beast. Not long after, Amazon stated that the only vanity press they would list on their site was … BookSurge (CreateSpace as it has recently been renamed).
There’s the rub. And a portent of the future. That was a clear case of Amazon leveraging it’s online market dominance to push out other vanity presses, and so maximize its profits from that sector of the market. It is a common strategy of all megacorps, like Tesco and Walmart. Suppliers are so glad to get into chainstores like those, that they will take a financial hit for the sake of wide exposure. And the megacorp will squeeze them financially, because they know they will take it.
In the Internet age, if we are not vigilant, we will live in an age of monopolization of the distribution channels. The companies who control the distribution channels set the rules of the game, and can squeeze suppliers.
So who are Amazon’s book suppliers? The publishers? Yes and no. Mostly no. Because it is the authors who actually make the product. Amazon knows this. This is why CreateSpace makes such sense for them, especially in the long term, as I will explain shortly. If they capture the huge volume of vanity published authors, it doesn’t matter if they sell only a few books on each. Amazon aren’t fussy, because one person’s buck is as good as any other. Multiply a few book sales out by the volume of vanity authors they can capture (remember, they control the main distribution channel). And they can charge the author for the privilege of using their vanity services too (the willing supplier will be squeezed gladly for access to the distribution channel).
Publishers aren’t really the suppliers. They are the middle men in Amazon’s paradigm. Amazon need publishers for now, of course, because Dan Brown’s latest will drive browsers to Amazon in droves. But in the future … who knows. Apart from squeezing supplier’s profit margins, the other strategy megacorps use to maximise profits is shortening the supply chain. On the Internet, this is known as disintermediation. The middle men are kicked out, because the distribution costs are kept low, and the Internet company can connect supplier directly to customer. Authors linked directly to customer, by Amazon alone. Internet companies will use and tolerate any intermediary only so long as it makes financial sense for them. With Borders bookstores closing daily, will Amazon grab some high street pick-up points for their consignments on the cheap in a recession? If Amazon become the distribution channel for books, what’s to stop them signing contracts with Dan Brown once his contract with his publisher expires? What’s to stop them from setting up an X-Factor book site to crowd-source the next Dan Brown from the ranks of all the CreateSpace authors?
Publishers beware. And watch what Amazon is up to. Gradually, Amazon’s interests may be to push the publishers out of the chain and deal with authors directly. Small shifts, inexhorably, over time. Too suspicious for you? It’s not just me: Publishers need Amazon - but do Amazon need publishers?
The big worry, in such a doomsday scenario for publishing, is who would be left to fight back against the megacorp in the author’s interest?
But, for now, we’ll all happily use them. They’ve got the biggest, best distribution on the Internet. Right?
December 14th, 2009
Here at Optimistic Future Publishing Enterprises we are always on the look-out for excellent candidates to fill our job opportunities as fiction novelists.
The successful candidate must have the following:
- An original manuscript, already completed, to our satisfaction.
The successful candidate should also display some (but not necessarily all) of the following:
- Work well alone
- Work well in a publishing team
- Self-starter
- Self-finisher
- Imaginative
- Observant
- Attentive to detail
- Patient
- Persistent
- Ambitious
- Withstand criticism
- Self-motivated
- Can work to a deadline
- Deliver long-running projects with no management intervention
- Avid reader (hundreds of novels in your genre ideal)
- Mastery of at least one major international language
- Word processing skills
- Proof-reading skills
- Editorial skills
- Research ability
- Psychologist
- Philosopher
- Good people interaction skills
- A large social network of friends
- Tireless self-promoter
- Knowledge of the latest marketing strategies
- An active blogger (a back catalogue of many years worth of blog posts is ideal)
- Frequent twitterer
- A keen observer of publishing trends
- A keen observer of social trends
- Media savvy (some training preferred)
- Knowledge of libel & slander laws
- A high public profile (celebrities preferred)
- Public-speaking experience
- Loves to travel
- Young
- Attractive
- Interesting
- G.S.O.H.
- A strong arm (whichever one you sign with)
If this sounds like you, we want to hear from you! For the right candidate, renumeration is negotiable(*).
* Renumeration is on sales commission basis only. No salary provided. Overtime will be required. Second income recommended.
November 16th, 2009
I thought this was interesting, given my interest in all things genetic. A court has reduced a murderer’s sentence because he tested positive for genes believed linked to agression.
Is this yet another potential change in society that genetic knowledge will foist on us? Will we no longer be responsible for our actions, but merely considered slaves to our genes? A society built on lesser personal responsibility does not bode well.
If science has killed God … now sin is shortly to follow. Broken evolution indeed.
November 5th, 2009
The iPhone has been grabbing my attention. As if to reinforce the now undoubtable shift in the publishing paradigm, it seems that the number of books being published as apps on the iPhone is growing … fast. Book apps releases in the appstore overtook game apps for the first time ever. 20% of the apps released in September were books. It seems publishers and indie authors are not waiting for the mooted Apple eReader, the one that’s easy on the eyes and the batteries (… yada, yada …), but rather are willing to take advantage of another distribution channel for eBooks here are now. And why not? There are, no doubt, more iPhones than eReaders out there. There’s a huge user base who scan the appstore everyday. Sure, there is eReader software like Stanza on the iPhone, but I can see the attraction of a custom app in terms of its attention, customization, regular updates, linked interactive content, options for free/purchase content, etc. I’m not the only one.
There’s early adopter advantage to be had here. After all, where is an Apple eReader likely to get its content? Are they likely to do a content distribution deal with a competitor like Amazon who have their own eReader to shift? I don’t think so. Maybe Google? Or Stanza. Or will they open up a bookstore of their own, just like they’ve done for every device they’ve made recently. Perhaps. The answer might be simpler than that. It wouldn’t surprise me that many of the books will just come from the appstore anyway, and run on the eReader as they would on the iPhone.
Perhaps its time to dust of my programming skills and write my first iPhone app. As I know from writing software for other handhelds, its not trivial — beyond the ken of most authors. Maybe I should make the fruits of that effort available to other authors and publishers too? Well, let’s see where it goes - that’s pretty much the mantra for the whole publishing business right now.
November 3rd, 2009
