Screamingly Funny...Fruit?

The tag line read “Who Knew Fruit Could Scream?” and I was caught.

Way back in a former life (that is, before I became a hermit) my job required that I follow advertising. Though it's no longer all that much of my life beyond the occasional inevitable bit of self-promotion, now and again I see an ad worth comment. Like

Sliced: the Movie.

It tickled my funny bone. More than that, it earned itself a place in my memory.

Ads are judged successful only if they influence customers to purchase, to look for, to remember the product/brand name, or at least to think better of the product than they would have before—so a lot of ads have to be called failures despite their undeniable energy and a certain creativity. (Yes, Spritzy, I mean you!)

This, on the other hand, I'd say has to be at least a qualified success. Not that I'd drink strawberry-orange-banana hard lemonade if the alternative was some other sort of physical torture , but I was interested enough to seek out the list of other varieties—hint: click the bottle—and I will be looking for this stuff, next time I'm anywhere it might be sold.

I'll be looking for more work from this agency, too, regardless of the product. Hmm. Wonder if they do book ads? I don't like book trailers, as a general rule—the good ones impose defined visuals on my reading experience, and the bad ones just annoy me—but, man, a book-trailer like this, I might.

Fade in: a multi-line telephone, message light malevolently blinking...

Voiceover: Will she Reach Out and Touch Someone before it's TOO LATE?

Um, yeah. Then again, maybe not.

As always, wishing you

peace and x-rated joy,

pxj

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Loaning Across the Digital Divide?

One of the loops I belong to is talking about libraries right now—specifically, libraries and electronic books. I feel qualified to comment (not that any lack would stop me when I’m in the mood to speak) since I spend a fair amount of time in libraries. In fact, I’m posting this from one! And here’s my considered opinion:

My local public library system is actively hostile to e-books.

Sound paranoid? Well, I might be, but in this case, I’m also correct.

The Austin library system does offer NetLibrary, but most of the Austin eContent catalog is the same list of titles that you can get directly from Project Gutenberg. The others are literary analyses and small-press literary works, largely poetry and non-fiction with the odd regional story scattered here and there.

Okay, I know, that doesn’t sound too bad; Project Gutenberg includes a great many readable texts, and some people like poetry about chaparrals and high winds on lonesome plains. But even if you find an e-book you’d like to read from that sadly lacking list, the default option is online-only. You can check a book out and download it, assuming the library has the appropriate license for downloading, only if you have an account. That’s free to card holders, but it’s a separate step—even if you have an account with the library’s electronic portal. (Why can’t I just use that?) Downloading the PDF may also require activating a separate instance of Adobe Reader, but after that, you can read the thing. Until your borrow-term expires, or you finish it. You must also check the text back in, which involves more steps than a physical return would, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to renew without checking it in and back out again, or at least, not one I’ve found.

Oh, and it’s Adobe Reader only, no other formats, with the initial download only to a computer, though you can then transfer to a PDA or whatever. Ack! All that, for things I can either get elsewhere and own for no charge and with less work, or don’t want in the first place?

I know, some of you are muttering about evil and stupidity. Maybe they just didn’t think things through? But I’m not finished yet. It’s not just that the e-book section looks like it was populated by someone trying to discourage readers from trying e-. It’s more than that.

I don’t know if any of you’ve ever heard of Mark Y. Herring. Certainly it’s not a household name! I wouldn’t have known it myself except for a poster I saw in the library. (The Northwest branch of the Austin Public Library system, the first and only time I was ever in that particular branch!) The poster was headed

10 REASONS WHY THE INTERNET IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A LIBRARY

And it’s apparently based on one or more articles he’s written. A quick search turned up this one. I was so annoyed by the poster-version that I actually wrote down the high-points from that numbered list; the article isn’t identically phrased, but covers the same points, so in either version, # 6 and #10 raised my blood pressure a few points—

6. Hey, Bud, What About E-books?!

Reading on any e-reader is a chore. The technology will doubtless improve but it's still more than a generation away.

10. The Internet is Ubiquitous but Books Are Portable.

Try curling up by the fire with a laptop, or stopping by the woods on a snowy evening with a handheld. The future may bring this, but for now the vast majority of readers-- even online readers--want books.

Yes, folks, this is the message my local library system disseminates. In their catalog, in their sponsored talks, on their bulletin boards and lectures, and on their walls, they’ve chosen their message: e-books aren’t books, to them.

Hostile, like I said. And this in Austin, which is trying to become the most wireless wired city in the US! Maybe I’ll ask them to order something I know is only available in e- But then, I’d have librarians actively hostile toward me. And you know what they say about librarians...

pxj

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Finding Sanctuary

Vanished again, I know. Sorry. No, I wasn’t hermitting—as some of you may know, I’m a freelance technical writer, and the latest gig involved many too many onsite hours. Lovely wifi they had there, but monitored. Yes, I know that still leaves the off-hours, but...I really wasn’t hermitting. Call it inspiration for future stories.

Tonight’s the first time in a while I’ve had some free time to just play online. So what did I do with it? Among other things, checked out Sanctuary.

What? I was curious! And it’s summer, season of popcorn flicks and bad faux-reality TV. Not to say I can’t live without television, or movies either, but...sometimes, I’d really a decent SF-nal something, y’know? And more than that, I’m always interested in new market models!

Not just in broadcast, of course; e-books, anyone?

So, Sanctuary. Direct-to-web short episodes. Monsters and gothic architecture and pretty people. Monsters! No ads. Did I mention monsters? I had to look. And after having seen the first two webisodes, I’d say Sanctuary seems like it has a chance. It’s visually stunning; they’re building on an established fan-base, what with all the ex-Stargate folks involved; SF fans are traditionally more open to innovative distribution models; and they’ve got the “social networking” thing going in overdrive. Want to know how effective that last is? Hey, I heard about it! And I’m a hermit.

Traditional broadcast television counts on word-of-mouth, too, but lately, networks don’t seem to feel they can afford to wait for that word to spread. Firefly is my favorite example: a show Fox didn’t keep around for an entire season, that had—that still has—a fan-base so strong it supports conventions and comic books and even a profitable movie. But the ultimate Space Western’s certainly not the only show nets cancel before they should: Jericho, canceled in May of this year, has just been resurrected for a short next season, as of yesterday, after a massive fan action. (I still want to know who thought up the nuts!) Seven more episodes, contingent upon yet more fan activity, with the dangled hope of more still. But if fans want the show to continue, says the network statement: "It [Jericho] needs to grow on the CBS Television Network, as well as on the many digital platforms where we make the show available."

Hmm. Viewer to CBS: I watched the show, I told people about the show, you canceled the show. I and my cohorts made a loud enough noise that you decided to bring it back, and now you want me to tell even more people, trusting that you won’t just pull the rug out from under us all again? You don’t know me very well, do you?

These days, a lot of shows find their best profits not in ad-supported broadcast, but in DVD sales, which don’t require a broadcast network’s fickle faith after the fans have found a show. Some items are now going straight to DVD, without even a stopover on the network circuit. New episodes of Babylon Five are due out soon! How long has that show been off the air? Straight-to-web isn’t all that unlikely, given the rise in broadband coverage and increasing customer willingness to pay for television programming. As with DVD sales, if you purchase the product, it’s yours, so you’re free of network schedules; no ads, so you’re free of those, too. And, hey, if you purchase a bundle, you know you’ll have all its contents! Much better than broadcast, these days.

Still... Am I—me, myself—willing to purchase episodes, to exchange actual cash for them? Well, why not? That’s all a DVD is, really. If you divide the cost of a DVD by the number of episodes... Hmm. Sanctuary’s an expensive proposition, by that scale, but not outside the bounds of possibility. I have to admit, I think part of the appeal, for me, is this idea of bypassing the networks. For the producer, it’s a way around a very limited distribution channel; for the customer, a real way to express a preference. Vote with your wallet! For me, it’s a way to thumb my nose at the folks who keep buying Tim Minear shows and then yanking them off the air again! With Sanctuary, I can buy the episodes just the way I’d buy e-books or songs. (And so can anyone else, naturally.) That’s a really, really nice idea.

And a gamble, counting on fans to shell out money instead of going the ad-supported route, but...I think it’s going to work. I hope it’s going to work. I might even defrost my very own credit card and shell out for a season. Or more. Not that I think it’s the best show ever or anything (that’d be something by Whedon), and I’m not sure the writers have really perfected that short-segment writing yet, going from forty-some-odd-minute episodes to fifteen, but it’s still pretty cool.

Don’t take my word for it, please! Low-res versions of the first four eps are (well, the first two are, and two more will be) available for viewing without charge; there’s a list at sanctuaryfans. Or go straight for the purchase option. Hey, four episodes cost about the same as an e-book...

pxj

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