It does sound dirty, but I want.  Specifically, I want the top one to be the pretty leaf earring Arachne has.  My mom went to look, but said she couldn't find one.  </sulk>

Hell, in MUVerse, all those fucking enchantments stack apparently outside of body-slot limitations, I'd rack my ear until I didn't have any space left.

Heck, I could probably do a piercing or two with my new beard.

--fje

I think things are changing, but I think it will be the transformation of the book-buying audience AT LARGE which will cause this change in any meaningful way.

Which is to say, the most popular online self-published content cannot hope to match the numbers of John Grisham.

And that's not because he's good.

It's because Joe Random Guy buys his books.  He walks into the B&N and he picks it up off the NYT Best Sellers rack at the front of the store and he checks out with it and he reads it.

And that's sales.

Publishing is a wacky thing, for sure, but publishing is nothing without the audience.  Publishing is lean, in an economic sense, because costs are high and audience is low (compared to TV and Movies audience). 

The danger comes from publishing being too slow to react when the audience DOES shift in sufficient numbers to impact survivability, and in finding a sustainable business model.

The way I see things going, sadly, is that in 20-40 years, what we know as writing may simply disappear, if there is no sustainable business model found to fund it.

Because the current: "Write it, pimp it, try to get donations for it" model leads to an infinitely fractured audience.

Traditional publishing does one thing very well ... it weeds the shit out from the gold.  They pay people whose professional job is to sit around and crush the hopes and dreams of People Who Cannot Cut It.  Writers make money because only so many books are published for print.  This is roughly less than 5% of the submissions that come in.  That means, essentially, 95% of the stuff that WANTS to be available is so much spam.  The people writing it think it is good, but it isn't. 

In the land of the internet, we, the audience, have to do the weeding.  We have to sift through 95% worth of shit to find 5% of gold.  And it isn't easy to spot.  You might read something for a long while that is "good enough" but isn't great.  You might be the only person that likes somebody else's writing.  And you're supporting that person with 1$ and 3$ at a time, every few weeks, which is buying this person a beer now and then but isn't paying their bills. 

Because right now I think AE is doing well because MU is popular.  And MU is popular not because it is GOOD but because it is SUFFICIENT.  It is the only modern-magical sex-focused pansexual kink and gay-friendly serial story that I've found.  There are a few others cropping up.  But many readers, I suspect, are reading because it is SUFFICIENT.  Some people don't like the sex.  Some people don't like the constant homosexuality.  Some people don't like ass-to-mouth.  Some people are terribly bored by side-stories.

If something better came along, they'd jump ship.  Specifically if something THEY LIKE better came along, they'd jump.

AE is successful as she is for the same reasons PUBLISHING works.  Because if you want it, you have to put up with the crap you don't like to get it. 

A general proliferation of internet-based publishing will eventually, I feel, kill her.  Because as one guy peels off for "MU Without Sex" and another one peels off for "Sex Without Elves", etc etc, the readership will dwindle and the buck here or there will no longer support even a shoestring budget and she'll be back to working in the salt mine. 

Her only salvation is ADVERTISING.  Knowledge.  If she can keep people from finding out about competitors or can keep herself more visible than the other guy, people won't KNOW they have a choice of something they would personally like better, and they'll stay, and they'll pay. 

Big Box stores drive sales because people only know and see the shit on the front shelf.  The best-sellers.  And trickling down to the racks ... the bigger sellers are the books turned cover-out, followed by the established authors (name recognition) and such and such down to Little Sally Nobody's Spine-Out Genre Book On Unpopular Subjects On The Bottom Shelf. 

And Little Sally Nobody STILL has a leg up because her half-shit book is still THERE and not dying on the slush pile somewhere where nobody will see it or pay for it.  Somebody has done you the service of killing the 499 similar works that sucked even worse than hers.  Little Sally Nobody gets the 5 grand, the others get nothing.

In the land of the Internet everybody gets $10.

And that might seem great, but it kills craft.  If nobody can support themselves writing, nobody gets GOOD at it.  Everybody is a hobbyist, nobody is a craftsman. 

Perfect distribution SOUNDS great, but if nobody kills the crap out there, nobody makes any money ... together.

--fje

I haven't looked but how many of the self-sustaining webcomics are OLD, before "webcomics" became a big thing and everybody with a pen and a dream started posting shit to the internet regularly.

Which is to say I thought most of them were well established.

Also, that they're all labors of love go to my point.  "Please donate" isn't really a sustainable business model, one, and while advertising often is, the kind of page views necessary to generate real income is quite high, requiring a very established comic to do.

Nobody is going to be able to write traditional NOVELS and churn out four or five of them before their writing begins to pay.

Additionally ... unfortunately dedication and passion and love do not equate talent, craftsmanship, or basic ability.

--fje

I think Ogre nails it on the head.  Internet publishing is taking the place of short story publishing in traditional media.  Maybe the publishing houses will perk up and scoop up web serial authors.  Maybe it is already happening with good authors.

Most written work, though, ends up in the publishing house round bin.  Sure these people can do it as hobbyists, but it's like the difference between your mom pulling out a splinter or treating a scraped knee versus a surgeon removing a blood clot from your brain.

Not everyone who writes a novel is going to get it picked up and have it mass produced.  Even fewer are going to be able to make a living off it.  Such is life.

So you're saying the future is in berets, right?

FINALLY, somebody is listening.

--fje

Yah, isn't this the first time she's been away from school without Amaranth around? It's the perfect opportunity. He'll probably think she took Steff out just to lure her back and eat her. A comedic chase around the suite will ensue and they will break everything and have to explain it in the morning. "My demon dad came over and totally tried to eat my girlfriend who is a boy."

It would be badass if it was her dad.