Was This the First CC Community-Edited Novel? 194
Odinson writes "In late 2005 I released a draft of a science fiction novel under the by-nc-nd CC license. I started accepting edits in the hope of polishing a manuscript for submission to a publisher. A publisher never materialized, but after thousands of comments the draft started getting really solid. So a couple of months ago I decided to buy an ISBN and sell hard copies from Lulu. While doing research for a press release, I was unable to uncover the first community-edited, CC-licensed work of fiction. I strongly suspect that my novel is the first. Can anybody point to a prior example? How about under other licenses? If someone has traveled this road before, I'd like to ask them how it went. I would also like to vet this question here before staking a claim to be the first."
Fanfic (Score:5, Informative)
Also the license terms for fanfiction are generally rather murky
Re:Fanfic (Score:4, Insightful)
sometimes it feels like south american novel...
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Re:Fanfic (Score:4, Insightful)
BitTorrent download (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry about the off-topic reply, just trying to help people w/ their slow download.
DjangoBook.com (Score:2)
Djangobook.com [djangobook.com]
A really great book. Under the GNU FDL, not CC. And the authors maintained pretty strict control over incorporating user comments (i.e. not like wikibooks), so progress was kind of slow, but the quality is good. Last I checked some sections were still unfinished, but it's more than enough to learn all you need to get started with Django.
First by-nc-nd CC post! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:First by-nc-nd CC post! (Score:5, Funny)
* (c) 2008 Anonymous Coward
* This comment is free; you can
* modify it and repost under the
* nc-by-nd CC license.
*
I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok!
I release this post with the CC license!
HE'S A LUMBERJACK AND HE'S OK!
HE RELEASES THIS POST WITH THE CC LICENSE!
I write a post, I eat my lunch
I ask for changes from others.
HE WRITES A POST, HE EATS HIS LUNCH
HE ASKS FOR CHANGES FROM OTHERS!
I write down comments, I skip and jump
I like to press wild flowers
HE WRITES DOWN COMMENTS, HE SKIPS AND JUMPS
HE LIKES TO PRESS WILD FLOWERS
I put on women's clothing
That's why I'm famous now!
HE PUTS ON WOMEN'S CLOTHING
THAT'S WHY HE'S FAMOUS NOW!
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Slashdot admins have just received an email from BBC Worldwide requesting the removal of your comment due to certain copyright violations.
You will be hearing from the BBC legal department in due course.
Re:First by-nc-nd CC post! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:First by-nc-nd CC post! (Score:5, Funny)
Community edited (Score:5, Funny)
Pg. 147
"As Ja Rool climbed out of the skies CLAIRE IS T3H AWESOME of Planet 142, in the yellow smoke trails he caught the glint BUCH SUCKS of an enemy spacecraft. Maneuvering his nimble XPJ-134, JAMES LOVE CINDY."
Cheers!
--
Vig
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Re:Community edited (Score:5, Funny)
;)
Re:Community edited (Score:5, Funny)
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When I touched my aunt's nanites, I felt like I had been given superhuman powers.
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FIRST!!
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So I tried to download the book... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So I tried to download the book... (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's still in editing. Please stand by while we continue to write it.
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http://bittornado.com/torrents/Thicker-Than-Blood.pdf.torrent [bittornado.com]
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for( i=0; inovel_length_word_count; i++)
{ strcat( novel, " " );
strcat( novel, random_word_from_dictionary(d) );
}
Done.
Layne
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for( i=0; i (less than) novel_length_word_count; i++) etc.
Layne
Cheap publicity. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Who profits off wikipedia? The maintainer, the contributors, ?
How do we distribute?
Is it the cost of printing (which is permissible) or more?
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Funny)
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Me, I'm just trying to be annoying.
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Using this logic, Slashdot should be paying its contributors. Surely the comments are a significant source of value to the readers, and they don't pay a penny for them.
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad-block is the bomb.
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Layne
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Slashdot pays in "goods and services".....it's a barter system. In return for contributing to the community, they provide a place for you to contribute and poorly editted summaries on which to comment (since no one really reads the articles, the comments *MUST* be about the summaries).
Reminds me of the old internet ethic, 'If you take from the internet, give back to the internet.' Then AOL let their users online and it became 'If you pay AOL, everyone on the internet owes you everything for free.' I liked the first version better.
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Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I presume that as the copyright holder, rather than a licensee, he's allowed to also sell copies. The question is whether the "community contributions" hold any copyright as well, and if he is only entitled to them under the CC license terms (like GPL patches without assignation of copyright). If so, he might not be within his rights to sell the book via Lulu!
Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:4, Interesting)
If the author had instead used CC-by-nc-sa, the "community contributions" would fall under the same license, which would give him no right to sell the book with the contributions included.
So either way, the author has no right to sell copies of the edited book, via Lulu or otherwise.
Yay for unintended consequences. People should think twice before using a Creative Commons license that includes "nc" or "nd" terms. In addition to making the work non-free, they can lead to consequences like these.
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The horror that is the CC license, i take particular objection to no derivative, which seams a lot like microsoft's shared source, "you can look, but you cant touch". In practice (this)CC license is no different to proprietary licenses only under cc you can copy legally (which has no real affect for proprietary products anyway)
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Re:Cheap publicity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you can download it for free, best I can figure is I really just did this for the Slashdot Karma. :)
No Derivative Works + Edits? (Score:2, Insightful)
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The finer points of the license only apply to people who aren't the copyright holders. Copyright holders can do whatever they want.
At least we now have a new notch on the scale (Score:2, Funny)
'Tens of thousands' = Thicker than blood.
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Re:At least we now have a new notch on the scale (Score:4, Funny)
You obviously wouldn't publish anything from their 'e' period.
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As indeed this will.
Re:At least we now have a new notch on the scale (Score:4, Funny)
Not enough sex though, and the ending is a bit rushed. But Simian Book Review of The Month said 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee', and reviews don't come any better than that!
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Alternatively a single monkey with an infinite amount of time would produce the entire works of Shakespeare.
An infinite number of monkeys with infinite amount of time would produce an infinite number of copies of Shakespeare work, and an infinite number of derivatives (some of which would be finitely better, but people poorly versed in infinity would claim to be
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Sounds right to me.
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On behalf of the infinite number of monkeys, can I point out that we haven't been given an infinite amount of time yet.
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Dear Infinite Monkeys,
We regret to inform you that we already have ample copies of Shakespeare's works, as well as numerous duplication technologies which are significantly faster and less expensive than retaining your services. Further, our legal department informs us that duplication of more modern works which might be of more value to us in the market-place would in most cases violate Copyright law, regardless of the manner in which these duplicates were produced.
In short, your services will no long
Community edited (Score:2, Funny)
Peter Watts (Score:5, Informative)
Congrats, and thank you for looking to publish in this manner.
Also: Oxford English Dictionary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Also: Oxford English Dictionary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Peter Watts (Score:4, Informative)
There are quite a few professional authors releasing fiction under some kind of CC license. Cory Doctorow, Rudy Rucker, Karl Schroeder, Peter Watts, and Charles Stross are some of the better known SF pros who are doing this. Bruce Sterling has released some nonfiction under a CC license. Other, less well known professionally published authors are trying it as well, e.g., Rick Dakan, Mike Brotherton, Jim Munroe.
I'm not sure what's so notable about the "community-edited" part. It sounds like an attempt to make a false analogy between fiction writing and software development. Software is a tool, so the "with enough eyeballs, all bugs become shallow" concept makes sense; if it's broken, people can help you fix it. Fiction isn't a tool. The difference between a good novel and a bad novel isn't just that there are typos here and there. There's also a massive oversupply of people who think they can write fiction, so it's not exactly exciting news that someone is willing to give me his novel for free. Slush pile editors get paid to read unpublished fiction all day, and at night they go home bleary-eyed and debating whether to slit their wrists.
One similarity that does exist between fiction writing and software hacking is that they both require a large amount of practice to get good at. I collected about forty rejection slips on about a dozen pieces of short fiction before making my first sale. If the OP really wants to get to the point where he can reach an audience with his science fiction, I'd advise him to look into some online groups where he can get feedback on his work. Two good communities are critters.org and the Baen's Universe e-slush board. I also benefited a lot from attending one of the Clarion workshops.
I think the analogy with open-source software works much better for nonfiction, and it's also with nonfiction that you can actually hope to reach a significant audience without going through a traditional publisher.
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This post is one of the better ones I have read. I may not be brilliant, but I'm smart enough to know no matter what I say there is a grains of truth to this. Except this part.
"I'm not sure what's so notable about the "community-edited" part. It sounds like an attempt to make a false analogy between fiction writing and software development."
It may seem like that, but based on my experience I respectfully disagree. You may have weighed the cost benefit of paying an editor over asking a group of peop
Mine... all mine! (Score:2, Funny)
It's been done before (Score:5, Funny)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.
You total $*&.
Stupid %&#$!.
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by-nc-nd? Community edited? (Score:4, Interesting)
With so many things left unanswered, how can we answer this guy's question?
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How can a community edited work be published under by-nc-ND?
With the permission from the community in question. You need to make distinction between creators of the work and the public that uses and distributes the work. One would assume that if they get contributors aboard, each of them will understand what they're going to do with the work, right?
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning [starwreck.com] was released under BY-NC-ND, and was definitely a "community work" in every sense of the expression. It's also sold on DVD, for profit - by the creators. -NC just means you aren't allowe
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I assume that ol' Pimpson here published his original draft as by-nc-nd, but that the edits that he received came with no such restrictions themselves. I say "assume" in the full knowledge that I may be making both of the contributors and me.
Actually, what I really assume is that he doesn't really give a Goddamn about licensing, and is just using Slashdot to pimp the sweat of other peoples' brows. But then I'm kind of a dick that way.
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That's why Qt can be dual-licensed, that's why a book published under by-nb can be sold by the copyright holder, that's why the copyroght holder can do whatever he wants with the work, even disregarding the license completely - because he's not bound by it.
Re:by-nc-nd? Community edited? (Score:5, Informative)
First let me say that the book is awesome. It's got a great plot, great characters, and it pulls you in. A few times I was late to work by a few minutes because I just couldn't put the book down until I finished the chapter I was reading. I highly recommend it.
Now, let me explain how I helped edit the book. I can't speak for the other editors, but this is how I got involved. I decided I was going to read the book, so I downloaded it and started reading. I find that I'm pretty good at finding typos and grammatical errors in books. I find them in books that are published by the big publishers & authors all the time. I usually find at least one or two mistakes in every book I read. When I was reading thicker than blood I just started keeping track of everything that I knew was misspelled or grammatically incorrect and everything that I was unsure of as well. When I had finished the book I found that I had nearly 200 edits, so I sent them over to the author. He was very grateful and a few months later he sent me a printed copy of his book.
So, the 'nd' doesn't really apply because I never made a derivative work, I just sent him a patch that was human-readable-only. The changes that I made are so small that copyright doesn't apply to my changes. I mean, I would assign him the copyright if it did matter, but such a small change would not trigger copyright. If I had rewritten a few paragraphs or added any real substance it may have, but fixing typos and making sure apostrophes are placed correctly does not deserve any attention from copyright. These are the contributions that I made and I can not speak for other editors.
Again, I can't recommend the book enough. I can't wait for the sequel.
Mark Drago.
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Here is a pertinent (and my first) review.
(and my first) review.
On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, Chris Knadle wrote:
Hey, Matt.
Okay -- I love the book. I finished it in three days and I wanted to finish it earlier. :-) I think the book is "good scifi" in all of the
important ways -- it's got some geeky detail, it's got plot, it's got
character development, and each character has some quirks, just like you'd
find
Re:by-nc-nd? Community edited? (Score:4, Informative)
The book was released under that license from the start. I was originally planning on getting it published by a traditional (see fearful) publisher and didn't want to do anything to risk a potential deal. I just couldn't stand the thought of someone buying it and sitting on it. (Which happens all the time)
I the complete draft. A dozen people submitting edits on their own. Some of the contributions just emails with lists of hundreds of edits per post. None of which where solicited beyond 'if you find any errors' It *WAS NOT* the original plan to have this book be community edited.
BTW I can count the number of books I have sold on my fingers and toes. I just put it up on Lulu and bought an ISBN. When I realized the CC+CE+fiction+novel might be the case I tried to verify it and could not get a affirmative response from CC community list or many people I emailed. Only a group this large could have affirmed this.
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Then it sounds to me like the community edits were copy-edits, rather a replacement for the kind of work a professional fiction editor would do. Even if the comments went into detail about plot holes etc, it sounds a bit more like a workshop-type interaction where participants critique the author's work (except that usually it's also vice versa).
You're probably aware that there are several long-running writing workshops dedicated to SF/F. These are 'communities' who provide 'edits' of the sort you descr
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I do not think "community edited" means what the author thinks it means.. it seems that he wrote a novel draft and released it online. He allowed people to send him comments/corrections etc., which he would either implement or not at his own discretion.
This makes him the copyright holder, meaning he can release the work under whatever license he wants. You may want to check out a very similar situation [nin.com] where the work is available under a CC-by-nc license and yet is also sold commercially by the copyright
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Well said. This is not non-fiction. Non-fiction can have two contributers resolve disputes through civil discourse about the nature of the truth. Fiction is a lie. How would you resolve plot direction? Who can type faster?
Naked Came the Stranger (Score:2)
A similar spoof book, Atlanta Nights, put together by a bunch of science fiction writers to demonstrate t
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The sci-fi authors were outing the scam.
It was kinda like those Nigerian guys who need your account info, only the money they are going to give you is going to come from your soon to be bestseller instead of a disused s
First community driven book? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not the first book (Score:2, Informative)
Folktales (Score:2, Interesting)
Beowulf? (Score:2)
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Which is a good thing, because it started out as a dirty joke about a guy called Barry.
I did something similar in 2002 (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't use a CC license though the one I drafted for myself [kuro5hin.org] is pretty similar. In particular I insisted on reserving print rights for myself. CC seems a bit more intent on making information free than reserving the possibility of future conventional publication.
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In this case, the editors for TTB understood that this was meant to be sold with their edits.
It sounds like the kuro5hin crowd was less offended that it was posted at all. :)
I've worked on something like that (Score:2)
Although the idea was to get an input from the community, in the end I almost got zero input, perhaps because of the target people (they mostly come through my illustrator's web p
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Try promoting it to you local LUG one person at a time. If they get excited about it, they will send you fixes.
So... are we plugging our "own" novels now? (Score:3)
Toaster Books is an imprint of The TankTopToolKit Corporation.
All rights reserved - cue that exciting David Newman fanfare from the start of 20th Century Fox Movies.
Devilbunnies (1993) (Score:3, Interesting)
It started as a Usenet newsgroup devoted to nonsense. But sometime around 1993, people began generating a consistent storyline within the newsgroup. (The particulars involved intelligent, man-eating rabbits and their quest to enslave humanity, but that's not important for this discussion.) Before very long, the writers in alt.devilbunnies were creating novel-length stories, often with over a dozen contributors, and all set within an internally consistent shared world.
The Devilbunnies phenomenon continued from around 1993 to around 2002, when the authors slowly abandoned the newsgroup. There were multiple attempts to bring the Devilbunnies to the web, or to publish their shared stories. But every time someone began such a project, someone in the community would oppose it for one reason or another. Because the copyright on the devilbunny universe was shared between everyone involved, there was no way of publishing or continuing it if even a single person vetoed the project. So those who wanted to make it bigger eventually gave up. Now the devilbunnies are nothing more than a group of friends who fondly remember stories they wrote together but which will never -- *can* never -- live again in any other format.
I believe alt.Devilbunnies is the first internet-powered collaborative story group. (There are many pre-internet efforts, going all the way to Beowulf and beyond, as others have mentioned.)
It is also my considered opinion that the fate of Devilbunnies awaits any collaborative story project, unless it is a small, close-knit group who have been told in advance that the project is intended for publication and been given clear rules for how it will be done. Copyright laws are strict enough, and legal expenses great enough, that a single bad egg can ruin an entire collaborative fiction project. So be careful, and don't let what happened to alt.Devilbunnies happen to you.
Or in other words, keep an eye on your toes, because those wabbits will eat them if you give them half a chance. And keep your fireaxe handy.
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Not really 'oldest'... (Score:2)
This is Slashdot: so... SVN or GIT? (Score:2)
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