Welcome to Fail Month, apparently

[oloriel]

I admit that I was mildly amused by the most recent Amazon fail. For those who don't know, Amazon.de apparently sent out a few hundred pre-ordered copies of the most recent A Song of Ice and Fire instalment last week. Official publication date: July 12th. The same apparently happened - on a smaller scale - with Amazon.jp. Afterwards, several German bookshops also put their copies of A Dance with Dragons (that is, the book in question) on the shelves and sold them.


Personally, I don't think it's a big fail, but then I still keep trying to finish the first book and just. can't. arse. myself. unless I'm linked to the CTG machine and even then it's a struggle -- anyway, so I don't actually care. I do remember waiting impatiently for various instalments of Harry Potter, though, so I understand about the plight of fans who've been waiting for a book for a long time. Typically, my first reaction was rather "Oh those lucky people must be so happy" rather than "OH NOES, SOMEONE WILL POST SPOILERS!!1!".

But it's apparently a big fail from the POV of the publishers (OK, I kind of see that) and the author (well, that's his prerogative), who put up an LJ post along the lines of "Heads will roll" (no, literally. There has been mention of heads mounted on spikes. In the comments, additionally, of golden crowns and balls cut off and fed to the goats. Incidentally, I am not certain that goats would eat balls - swine, gods yes, they'll eat anything but coffee grounds and citrus fruits*, but goats? - but then I also doubt that you could, in this or any other world, get a cooking fire hot enough to melt gold... I digress). - I'd link, but I don't want the pingback bot to alert the angry hordes of GRRM fans to my little ramble here, so I won't. --

Anyway, you wouldn't believe how much that bothers me. Heck, I don't believe it myself. It's not my fandom, after all, and I mostly just keep vacillating between "wow, that author sucks for hating on fan fiction indiscriminately" and "hm, ok, he actually asked for linguists to develop a conlang for the HBO series, maybe he doesn't suck quite so badly". (I know all these things because while I am not a fan, several people on my flist are and I remember stuff, whether I care or not.) Well, after the George W. Bush rhetorics I'm back on the "sucks" swing for good.
Not that it matters.
I mean, I know he's just blustering. Obviously. What may actually happen, or not, I wouldn't know, is that Amazon.de and .jp, and possibly the independent booksellers if they actually manage to find them from the US, get sued. No actual heads are going to roll or be "crowned"; no balls are going to be cut off and fed to the goats (or swine).

So why does it bother me so much? I have no idea. Perhaps it's just because I don't like the guy. Or perhaps it's because I kind of find it embarrassing by proxy when people do that kind of thing - that is, bluster and threaten, no matter what the reason. I find it particularly embarrassing when they do so in some kind of official function: I can kind of understand when the fans, who have been waiting for what, seven years?, for this book, get angry and emotional that others are already reading when they have to wait for two more weeks, because two weeks can be a long time, especially when you're trying to avoid spoilers. But the author? I don't buy the "he'll loose money because people will put up illegal online copies and then nobody will buy the book anymore" thing (like that might not just as well happen after the street date). Quite honestly, either people will read an illegal copy (out of impatience, say, because a legal copy isn't available to them yet or because they have all the other books in softcover so they're waiting to buy the next one as a softcover, too²) but still buy the book as soon as they're able (just as people may stream episodes of TV series they don't get where they are, but will nonetheless buy the DVD once it's out), or they wouldn't buy/have bought a legal copy anyway. This doesn't mean that I approve of piracy; I just think that the real problem is elsewhere.
But I digress again.

Anyway, I don't buy the "loss of money" argument, not on the scale that's propagated at any rate. I kind of see the "bestseller list" point (as in, bestseller lists may only count copies sold after the official publication date, so if the book is leaked earlier, those copies aren't counted) - although I have to wonder, do copies sold in Germany and/or Japan actually make it onto the New York Times Bestseller List? (This one's a genuine question, btw.) And how relevant are 180 copies (that's the number of books Amazon.de apparently sent out early) in terms of bestselling lists? (Another non-rhetoric question.) This may be the naïve view of someone who only dreams about writing bestsellers instead of actually doing it (or even actively trying, at the moment), but I would've thought that if you're talking bestsellers, you're talking about several thousands of copies, in which case two hundred can't have that much of an impact. And how much of a difference does it make whether you're "the #1 NYT bestseller" or just somewhere else in the Top 10, particularly with genre fiction (which people will either read no matter what, or won't read no matter what)? And if a place on bestseller lists is actually in any way relevant, isn't it just for reasons of publicity in the end? And can't a "scandal" like this generate just as much (if not more) publicity, so monetarily it's all the same?

Is anyone still reading this? Probably not. Time to come to a conclusion. For whatever reason, as I said, I'm terribly annoyed by the "If we find out who is responsible, we will mount his head on a spike"³ - in a way that I wouldn't be annoyed if the author had said, instead, "we are considering to take legal action" or even "we are taking legal action", even though that would amount to the same (or actually, in the real world, to more). So it's likely not just my vague dislike of the author interfering, but rather my inner pacifist or my general dislike for martial rhetoric in not-entirely-obviously-ironic context. At any rate, to me it comes across as unprofessional, graceless, and, quite honestly, stupid.

Does the author have every right to be angry? Gods, yes. Who am I to forbid him, or anyone else, to think, write or say what he wants? As long as he doesn't actually go and behead - or go and pay someone to behead - some poor sod at Amazon.de, how he reacts to this kerfluffle is entirely his own decision.
But do I have to like that reaction? No! Can I take it as yet further proof that This Is Not My Ship? Hell yes!
Does it matter? - Of course not. I have no illusions concerning the weight of my word in general, or even just in my small world: The people on my flist who're into the fandom will surely stay there - I doubt anything I'll say will make them second-guess their liking for those books. (Would I like that? Sure! But I don't think it's bloody likely.) The people on my flist who aren't, already aren't. Might I ruin the fun for someone? I suppose that's possible, but honestly, if your enjoyment of a fandom is dependent on my sharing it, something is clearly going wrong...
So does it matter? No. But this is my journal and if I care to express my irrelevant opinion, I can do that. (If I actually were an official book reviewer for a newspaper or something, I'd probably be a lot nicer. I'm a big softie, actually. I just rant here because I know it doesn't seriously hurt anyone - it takes quite a bit to make me so aggressive IRL.)


As for the Amazon Fail, I'm still mildly amused, and still congratulating the lucky fans who got their copies early, and still wishing the others that they'll manage to escape the spoilers. And that's that. Look how generous I am.

- - -

Next topic!

I was initially completely indifferent when the first posts about the LOTRFF chaos showed up: I never worked with LOTRFF at all; I may have read a story or two there, for the MEFAs, as the badly thought-out page layout looks kinda familiar (hint: grey script on black is not the best of ideas, particularly if you're dealing with great amounts of text), but that's about it. So I pretty much just shrugged.

Within a few hours, however, it transpired that this was actually a failfest of epic proportions. I'm too lazy to sum it up, but fortunately I don't have to: esteliel wrote a fine article here; if you want more, you can have a collection of related links here. Long story short: The owner of a LOTR fanfic archive sold said archive (which is her right, though I disagree with the way it was handled) to an investor who plans to make money with said archive (which is not a good idea, whatever else you may think about the guy). She, apparently, did not research him as well as she might have; he, apparently, is completely unaware of who he's dealing with in every direction...

Since then, I've been avidly reading along, because even though I have nothing to do with the concerned archive, it's been getting exciting. Which is actually why I posted those two links: I think this is so exciting that even people who are not in the fandom might find them educating and/or entertaining. So much fail! So much ignorance!


And, to be honest, I am quite proud of being part of this fandom right now. Because yes, we may look harmless and mostly we're just playing around, but we are also intelligent and well-informed (better, obviously, than Mr. Investor here who thought it'd be a good idea to cash in on fan fiction based on the literary property of possibly one of the most litigious (AWESOME NEW WORD I LEARNED THERE!) copyright owners around. And - get this - who thought he'd escape the danger of lawsuits by registering his business in the UK rather than the US, showing how utterly clueless he is of what he's dealing with). And occasionally we're well-organised, too. Figure that someone who apparently used to work for Facebook didn't expect that...
And we're still nice enough to inform him of the potential trouble he's heading into. I mean, we could just quietly let him think he's about to strike gold, withdraw our own content, make popcorn and watch while the Tolkien Estate sued him for all he's worth or while he got into major trouble because whoopsie, his precious content (what would be left of it after most people withdrew their stories...) contained such dangerous stuff as, well, everything you may find in fanfic - kinks of all shapes and sizes, RPF, incest, slash, het pr0n, you name it.

Well, ok, "we" are not just doing it because we're such good people. Partly "we" are pissed off because an outsider is trying to cash in on "our" collective efforts - writing fanfic is no less hard work than writing o-fic****, and while most fanfic writers are happy to write with no revenue but reviews and fandom fame, writing with no revenue while someone else is making money from it is rather a different matter. Partly "we" are afraid that once one fandom site captures the legal attention of the Tolkien Estate, all others may get into trouble as well, justified or not. Partly "we" want to make clear that just because "we" occasionally name ourselves "fangirls", we're not children with no clue about business and legal issues and even, God forbid, our own rights.
I mean, I myself? I am totally watching this in delight because the combination of "people on my side being awesome" and "people I generally don't like being foolish" is just, well, pleasant. Not particularly charitable, that.
But there's still some part where, I think, "we" genuinely want to keep someone from harm. At least, that's what the great amount of constructive criticism and questioning suggests. If everyone was just in it for the drama and bloodshed, things would look quite different.

There would be more talk about heads on spikes, for instance...


Ah, fandom. Keep being awesome. Or batshit. Whatever, as long as you are.

- - -

*Yes, really!

²I don't know why publishers don't seem to realise that. I mean, I am the impatient sort of person who will buy the hardcover or the over-sized deluxe softcover just to bloody own it already - but I know several people who won't, who want all the books of the same series on their shelf to look like each other and who do have the willpower to wait for the appropriate paperback edition no matter how long it takes, or who'll read the book elsewhere - borrow a friend's copy, go to the local library, or yes, read some online version of, erm, questionable legality - and then (and this is the important part) still buy the paperback edition of a book they already know by then just to make up the set, so the author and the publisher will still get their money.

³There, now you can google that line if you want to read the original entry and don't already know where to find it, so there's no need to link anymore.

****whatever GRRM appears to believe.

Comments

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

As you haven't read the books: the rolling heads, the balls, the goats, the spikes and yes, the molten gold are all in-canon references. Still pretty graphic but I saw it as tongue in cheek. YMMV.

And seriously? As author I'd also be pretty pissed because this is just a whole big fail of service that may indeed cost him some money. Also, information now leaks out previously to the official release and I can imagine he simply did not want this to happen. His work, his rules.

And just because it's on such a large scale he still has a right to complain. No matter how much money you make, if you sign a contract you have the right to expect it's fulfilled. Amazon for sure makes tons and tons of money selling his books as well, so they'd better, IDK ... do their jobs?

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Actually I've read enough of Book 1 to know about rolling heads, spikes, and the golden crown - don't worry. And I figured that the goats would come sometime later.
As I said, of course it's blustering. Not coming across as tongue-in-cheek to me (that is, the heads on spikes: the rest is coming from fans, and some of them are clearly just being referential/joking, not serious), but as you say, YMMV.

Again as I said, he has every right to be angry, and he has the right to express it any way he wants! But I still don't have to like it, and I can still think it could've been handled better. And that's all this is about. :)

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all of this. I thought GRRM and the fans were being tongue-in-cheek, too.

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

From what you said it sounded as if you were still way at the beginning.

I can understand the graphic language is offputting and I can understand all of your arguments but I was a little surprised having a WALL OF RAGE directed at it.

Also, to satisfy the hobby-biologist, no actual goats eat actual balls in the books ;)

When I think about it: the goat/ball thing is actually , how did you put it, "just blustering" and quite an empty thread in-canon so it IS in fact pretty tongue-in-cheek - if you have read the books, of course, which in turn people affected by the leak have.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

The usual rules about the internet and the difficulty of properly guessing people's true intentions apply, no doubt. Of course, I can only speak about how I interpreted it. As this is a private journal based, ultimately, on my experiences and interpretations, that shouldn't be a problem. ;)

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I mean, he wrote: "I'm not happy about this" and not "RAAAAR OFF WITH THEIR TONGUES". I rather understood it like that: he is pretty pissed and the publishing house was even way more angry than him (which doesn't surprise me, I bet their losses are in the end higher than his).

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Nah, then I wouldn't have said "keep trying to finish the first book" but rather something like "keep trying to read..." - but that's my personal code, and you couldn't know that. :) I've actually only got two chapters to go. As I have another CTG appointment on Thursday, I assume I'll manage to finish reading the book then.

It's not actually the graphic language so much as what came across (to me) as an elderly gent in a professional function behaving somewhat childishly. Which may also be why I didn't get the tongue-in-cheek impression.
The WALL OF RAGE is probably partly inspired by my frustration with the book as such, so it was not so much the cause as rather just the catalyst. *shifty eyes*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, he did write "I'm not happy about this" and then "If we find out who's responsible"... The line between "off with their tongues" and "head mounted on spike" isn't that broad. ;)

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get it. Part of it is just that whole "the whole internet can see the code you write to your buddies" thing. In-language often comes across poorly to those who aren't in the club, as it were.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I get that, too.
Even so, however, it's not that I "thought he was serious" - I think I tried to make that clear. And note that I did read the fans' reactions as tongue-in-cheek, but the author's original self-quote as completely over the top. So this seems to be about more than just in-language/outsider problems (as the fans would be in the same club, right?). If I cared enough (and hadn't already rambled too much ;)) I'd probably look into it at length...

[littleshebear.livejournal.com]

I'm not bothered about other fans getting the book before me, so long as they aren't dicks about it. Unfortunately, this is the internet, so the chances of some of them being dicks about it rises exponentially. It would be nice to be able to go on various message boards to discuss casting rumours/announcements for season 2 without having to worry about people posting, "X HAPPENS TO SO AND SO IN BOOK 5!!!" It hasn't happened to me yet but I've had reports from some places, which I'm now avoiding. It's just so obnoxious.

I can understand GRRM being annoyed, what Amazon did was a breach of contract. End of.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I perfectly understand the first part - I remember waiting for Deathly Hallows and some dicks going out of their way (including posts at totally HP-unrelated communities or at random on people's journals) to publish spoilers. As you say, it's utterly obnoxious. Not that anything much can be done against it, aside from avoiding the most likely. Apparently someone has been sending LJ messages with spoilers from A Dance with Dragons (without warning for them, obviously), so you may want to be careful around those or deactivate them altogether for the time being!

And yes, it was. And as I said, I understand he's angry. Of course he is! I just - personally - didn't like the way he expressed it. But as others have pointed out, to them his original message came across as tongue-in-cheek, so I'm probably just overreacting. And either way, no one has to agree with me there.

I dunno, I clearly didn't make myself clear enough. Eh well.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

I, too, took the whole "heads on spikes" bluster as, well, tongue-in-cheek blustering that translates to "we will probably take legal action". GRRM has pissed me off slightly with other things he has said or done, but that was rather obviously ironic (albeit still angry) to me.

The less I say about his stance on fanfic, the better, though. ;) I totally rebel by still writing it where he can't see. Was der Autor nicht weiß etc.

[littleshebear.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got LJ messages deactiviated just in case. And yes, it does remind me a little of those people going past bookstores and shouting, "Snape kills Dumbledore!" You're not funny, you're not clever, you're just being a douche.

I'm pretty sure it was just a spot of canonical-reference hyperbole. Even in the books, the stuff about genitalia being fed to goats is hyperbole, it never happens.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

Also, the LOTRfanfiction.com story is EPIC. How clueless can this buyer be?

[littleshebear.livejournal.com]

I think he's flat-out wrong when it comes to fanfic but eh, I can still enjoy a work without agreeing with everything the author says.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

I can still enjoy a work without agreeing with everything the author says.

Oh god, yes. Or I'd have to throw out at least 50% of my library, including my ASOIAF collection AND my Tolkien stuff. Heh.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

True enough - otherwise I couldn't be in the Tolkien fandom ;)
In this particular case, it just adds up - I was unimpressed by my first attempt at A Game of Thrones before I even read about the author's stance on fanfic, for instance, so when I read that it was mostly a "Hah! proves my point!" kind of thing. Possibly unfair, but what can I do ;)
The fact that I still haven't managed to finish GoT (and I've had the book lying on my desk for almost two months now >_>) has nothing to do with that, though - it just doesn't work for me. One of these days I'll look into the TV series to find out whether it works better. ^^

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

It's hilarious, isn't it? And he just won't stop!

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

1) I read it all.

2) I have friends who refer to GRRM as "the American Tolkien," but I just don't see it. After much peer pressure, I'm finally reading A Game of Thrones and I have to say... eh. I'll likely finish it, but I won't be reading the rest of the series, most likely. I might watch the HBO version, but that's because, hey... Sean Bean!

3) As someone who has written well-received fan-fic (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1978788/1/bFarewell_b_bProfessor_b_bMcGonagall_b) and own-universe material (http://delicateart.livejournal.com/), I have to disagree with your assertion that fan-fic is as hard to write. It's as rewarding to write, and I do believe that it's a good introduction to writing. I'll even say that the challenge of keeping true to a setting and characters is different from OU writing.

But I seriously do believe that building an effective world is a challenge, and a greater one than stepping into an established world that you already know and love.

Which is not posted to "correct" what you've said, just to air my own view. Because, you know, everyone's entitled to my view. ;)

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

No matter how pissed you are at the author, saying something like that in public, no matter if it's a canon reference or not, just is beyond that pale. IMNAAHO.

Also, thankfully, I've by now forgotten enough of the details of the books I read up to the book I stopped reading because I only wanted everyone in it to die the most painful way imaginable.

Why couldn't he have simply asked fans to play nice and not to post spoilers? In a, you know, friendly and polite manner?

I am soooo glad I hate those books. :)

Re: lotrfanfiction.com

*grins*

It's fun to watch that huge a fail, isn't it?

(I do feel sad for those who had their online home there, but thankfully I had already removed my stories months and months ago because I simply couldn't keep up.)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

1) Kudos!

2) Yep, that's how I feel, too. (Currently, everyone who seems to share my odd view comes as relief to me - both my first and this attempt to read GoT were sparked by the impression that if so many people loved it so much, it had to be good, right? So I always felt guilty about not finishing my first attempt, and this time around still kept wondering what was wrong with me. As the occasional other person pops up who apparently didn't enjoy it, either, I am feeling smugger and smugger ;)

3) As so often (all personal views aside), my reply to this is a whole-hearted "It depends". I agree that world-building is a challenge, but in my personal dabblings, I loved the process - so it was fun, not hard. But then, in academic writing, I found the two (mostly) empiric studies I did a lot easier than the ones based predominantly on previous work. Maybe I just tick that way. ;)

For what it's worth, with the "established world" I am writing for - the deep, dark, murky and chaotic recesses of the Age of the Trees and the First and Second Ages - there are so many different versions around (canon versions, because JRRT delightfully never really made up his mind, and established "fanons") that in the end you have to do a lot of putting together pieces - it almost boils down to creating your own 'verse from scratch in the end. The deeper you get into Silmarillion fandom, the more you as the reader/fanfic writer have to decide what version to go with and how to fill the gaps. With the additional difficulty that a) some parts are already given, and b) there are loads of other people who know insane amounts of stuff about different publications and different versions, and they may challenge your choices. So despite vaguely knowing and loving the world, when I write something, I will often check up at least one, and very often several more, primary and secondary sources to get all the facts "right" (or at least congruent with stuff I've taken up elsewhere).
So in my fandom, it actually is quite hard to get the world right, even if you're just trying to be consistent within your own interpretation of "canon". I can't say I had any less world-building to do for my Númenorean fanfic than I had to do for my two original NaNovels, for instance! With the NaNovels, however, I have the advantage that I don't have to justify my choices, as I'm the one who defines canon there...

But of course, Silmarillion fandom is special. VERY special. In general, your view may well be more common. :)

(Also, Ravenclaw icons represent!)

[fusselbiene.livejournal.com]

"I was unimpressed by my first attempt at A Game of Thrones before I even read about the author's stance on fanfic, for instance"

Same here, really. I managed to read about 100 pages and gave the book back afterwards, because the writing style really put me off. But the tv-series is quite entertaining, despite the occasional weak actor or actress. ^^

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I was convinced that the first time around, I'd read about half the book before I gave up.
This May, I discovered that I had actually read -- 29 pages. And then I did what I do when, in fanfic, someone with violet eyes, silver hair, and a name like "Princess Daenerys Targaryen Stormborn of Dragonstone" shows up: I hit the back button, or, in this case, I slammed the book shut...

This time I managed to read beyond that. Heck, I even managed to develop a certain fondness for Daenerys for a while (and there aren't many characters in that book that I don't downright hate), until it all got too absurd! But I'm still not impressed.
I'll see how the TV series holds up. My brother tells me that there are no violet eyes there. I hope he's right. XD

[fusselbiene.livejournal.com]

I was willing to put up with the silvery hair, violet eyes and whatnot. I was even willing to put up with the not very creative character stereotypes, because that's what I loved about Avatar, for example.
But his way of telling the story really bored and annoyed me. It was like... dunno, I really wanted to listen to what he had to say, but I couldn't get into the story because his narrating voice broke the spell. Each and every paragraph.