![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I just finished reading Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe and it does give a person.. well me, a lot to think about. Crowdsourcing is what Wikipedia does, what Epinions does, what YouTube does, what shirt.woot does.. you get the idea. The crowd contributes in some fashion or another, oftentimes in multiple fashions, to benefit themselves, each other, and the company.
Sellaband.com was mentioned in the book and it's an interesting concept. You, the avid music fan, can go buy "parts" in a band for 10$ and if the band reaches their target of 50K or 100K, then sellaband hooks them up with a studio and promotes them to some extent and all the people who bought parts split half the proceeds for 5 years. In theory anyway. I poked around on there and it didn't seem to be working too well of late, though I think the model is a good one.
Companies can really frell this up if they don't have a good grasp on how you work with a community. Epinions knows how to work with a community, from my experience. They knew it was a valuable asset when they started and very much listen to the community when it comes to making changes.
Apparently the cover of the UK edition of Crowdsourcing was crowdsourced. Though it didn't sound like they gave the community as much control as they could have. The crowd designed covers and voted on them, but a 'panel' had final vote. It can be hard to give up control over a cover on something _you_ wrote.. but then again, few authors do have a lot of control over covers anyway.
The Interstitial Arts Foundation is seeking artwork for the cover of Interfictions 2. Though in this case, I think it's mostly to give the interstitial artists a shot. Whereas the "coversourcing" of Howe's book seemed more of an experiment and promotional gimmick.
I do think it's a great idea though. You could get a great piece of cover artwork out of asking fans of a series to submit their art. And then the fans vote on it. They've at least read the books and know why _they_ love the books. I think it's a good way to get a cover that represents the book and appeals to those who are going to buy the book. And at least at this point in time, I don't see how it couldn't help but stand out on the shelf of publisher-chosen covers.
But covers are just one part of the writing and publishing process. I know Baen's Universe has a method where writers can submit their work to the community there and the cream rises to the top and gets a chance of being published.
I did have the idea that sf/f could have a publishing venue that's a combination of fanfiction.net and epinions. Writers post their work and the most-viewed and/or most-popular and/or other mathematical criteria earn a greater share of the ad revenue. With a community built up around it, it could be a good way to interact directly with readers and find ways to improve your work. (Or write to the crowd, which may or may not be your aim.) The site could then have anthologies of some of the stories, sell Tshirts, etc.
Then I had another idea, which was hinted at in the book, but which Howe didn't elaborate on. A crowdsourced story. (He mentioned a novel.) I picture it on a wiki, because that's easy for lots of people to update, but maybe a wiki isn't the best tool. Anyone's free to come along and change the text, or change it back. I would say until a certain period of time, but maybe the crowd would find its own limit. Ie, it's now what everyone wants, or they've all grown bored with it and moved on to a new one. What sort of story would this produce? Would it be sellable to a pro publisher? (Never minding who then owns the rights, you'd have to work that out ahead of time.)
There must be other models out there to try. Have some of these been done before? What were the results? Is it worth trying again with lessons having been learned? Are there other ways to harness sf/f writers, readers, and general fans to make something cool?
Sellaband.com was mentioned in the book and it's an interesting concept. You, the avid music fan, can go buy "parts" in a band for 10$ and if the band reaches their target of 50K or 100K, then sellaband hooks them up with a studio and promotes them to some extent and all the people who bought parts split half the proceeds for 5 years. In theory anyway. I poked around on there and it didn't seem to be working too well of late, though I think the model is a good one.
Companies can really frell this up if they don't have a good grasp on how you work with a community. Epinions knows how to work with a community, from my experience. They knew it was a valuable asset when they started and very much listen to the community when it comes to making changes.
Apparently the cover of the UK edition of Crowdsourcing was crowdsourced. Though it didn't sound like they gave the community as much control as they could have. The crowd designed covers and voted on them, but a 'panel' had final vote. It can be hard to give up control over a cover on something _you_ wrote.. but then again, few authors do have a lot of control over covers anyway.
The Interstitial Arts Foundation is seeking artwork for the cover of Interfictions 2. Though in this case, I think it's mostly to give the interstitial artists a shot. Whereas the "coversourcing" of Howe's book seemed more of an experiment and promotional gimmick.
I do think it's a great idea though. You could get a great piece of cover artwork out of asking fans of a series to submit their art. And then the fans vote on it. They've at least read the books and know why _they_ love the books. I think it's a good way to get a cover that represents the book and appeals to those who are going to buy the book. And at least at this point in time, I don't see how it couldn't help but stand out on the shelf of publisher-chosen covers.
But covers are just one part of the writing and publishing process. I know Baen's Universe has a method where writers can submit their work to the community there and the cream rises to the top and gets a chance of being published.
I did have the idea that sf/f could have a publishing venue that's a combination of fanfiction.net and epinions. Writers post their work and the most-viewed and/or most-popular and/or other mathematical criteria earn a greater share of the ad revenue. With a community built up around it, it could be a good way to interact directly with readers and find ways to improve your work. (Or write to the crowd, which may or may not be your aim.) The site could then have anthologies of some of the stories, sell Tshirts, etc.
Then I had another idea, which was hinted at in the book, but which Howe didn't elaborate on. A crowdsourced story. (He mentioned a novel.) I picture it on a wiki, because that's easy for lots of people to update, but maybe a wiki isn't the best tool. Anyone's free to come along and change the text, or change it back. I would say until a certain period of time, but maybe the crowd would find its own limit. Ie, it's now what everyone wants, or they've all grown bored with it and moved on to a new one. What sort of story would this produce? Would it be sellable to a pro publisher? (Never minding who then owns the rights, you'd have to work that out ahead of time.)
There must be other models out there to try. Have some of these been done before? What were the results? Is it worth trying again with lessons having been learned? Are there other ways to harness sf/f writers, readers, and general fans to make something cool?
