We got an e-mail from Scott Pack this weekend - remember him? Former chief whatever of whateverstones, chicken-lover, embodiment of evil, etc etc. Regular readers have probably have been missing him as much as we have. For what is James Bond without Scaramanga, Penelope Pitstop without The Hooded Claw, Harry Potter without - well I don't know, we don't read Harry Potter in this shop. Whoever his enemy is. Anyway it would seem that our erstwhile nemesis has got himself a new, disappointingly un-evil job, with this apparently innocuous independent publisher. But look more closely: it's a publisher of books *adapted from websites*. Yes, it would seem that Mr Pack, not content with his former dominion of the entire book-buying universe, now seeks to control the internet. And he thought he could sneak that one past us! It won't happen, Pack-man! The Crockatt & Powell blog will remain forever independent! (Unless you want to turn it into a book that is. Call my people, let's talk.) OK, it is true that the exact levels of evil of the so-called "Friday Project" have yet to be discerned, so in the meantime, Scott, who is taking over from you at the chain who must not be named? We need to start hating them ASAP, just to maintain continuity.
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booksellertothestars
- http://www.markfarley.blogspot.com
- Tuesday, Apr. 11, 2006 @ 06:29:03 pm
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cpmarie
- http://www.crockattpowell.com
- Tuesday, Apr. 11, 2006 @ 08:49:46 pm
No shit! So who is going to be safeguarding the local author displays at Wartastones Notting Hill?
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- Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2006 @ 12:47:47 pm
it is true that the exact levels of evil of the so-called "Friday Project" have yet to be discerned
Well, not paying the authors may only be a mild for of evil, but.
Their first book took a load of member comments from a London community site, and the writers weren't paid. The second one was a load of user contributions to Holy Moly... and the writers weren't paid. Then they got a whole load of full-length blog posts from the previous year, and... I'm sure you can guess the writers' fees.
Obviously Scott Pack woke up one morning and thought: "there's a business model here".
You won't have heard of these books, mind, which raises the question of why Pack didn't go for any of the other blooking models out there.
But I'm sure the great man will reveal the method in his madness when he deems the time to be right...-
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booksellertothestars
- http://www.markfarley.blogspot.com
- Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2006 @ 04:38:49 pm
That Blogged 2005 book was really good, but wait... no one got paid for that? That's insane....
You have copyright on what you write on your blog.... don't you?
I think they were all asked permission to use the post though. That's the impression you get when you go on the sites that were in the Blogged book. None of them were that good if i remember when I went on them, so the editor seems to have done a great job of weeding out the chaff so to speak.
I had an entry in the Holy Moly book (you don't expect to get paid for a public forum like that) incidentally but the site is naff since they changed it and I don't go on there anymore...
Errr... In that case, I'm just off to cut and paste all of Matthew and Adam's pieces on here to write a book about a bitter independent bookstore pissed off at the major chains.
He he-
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cpmatthew
- Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2006 @ 05:54:28 pm
BSTTS - you know you want to be us!
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- Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2006 @ 06:03:09 pm
Yeah, Holy Moly is a different category. You can do that, fair enough, and then I suppose it's tricky to resist the temptation to do the same thing to full-length blog posts. (Though I wonder if there were disclaimers on the London site and stuff, or whether contributors retained their copyright, legally speaking?).
There was some good discussion of the ethics of not paying bloggers at the Guardian blog, and the Friday people linked to their own blog from there.
It seems that most of the big fishes in the online world get tradiutional deals, and the sprats get paid in a "hey, it's all good publicity" kind of way - tricky to resist the dreams, and hey, it's a free market.
It's almost a new publishing economy: find the fame-hungry and you get free copy. But will they sell?
Well done on getting "published" in Holy Moly, though (though I can't say I visit the site as often as I used to either).
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- Thursday, Apr. 13, 2006 @ 05:49:27 pm
...and the next one has some dirty jokes assembled by the B3ta forum users. Why does Scott Pack want to work with this generation's Nigel Rees?
Ahem, that would be me.
But you guys hate me already though....