Here’s a dilemma for you.

I’ve been working – on and off – on a book. Got it completed way back in mid 2007. A second is half-done, a third has bits and pieces done.

At its core, it’s a set of interlinking short stories, concerning recurring characters in a vaguely sci-fi setting. I’m told (and think myself) that it would make a good TV series; and that’s where my imagination lies anyway: I’m not good at long things, so break them down into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion (but with this story there’s an over-arching set of themes and storylines).

Then a movie came out, not only with the same theme, but the same concepts.

But I didn’t blink. I kept going.

Now I find that something I wanted to do with my story has also already been done: the graphic novel.

At the risk of being boring about this, I am tired of hanging around. Admittedly I haven’t pushed the book out to publishers, but everything I’ve heard has told me that going the “traditional” publishing route is fraught with time-wasting, boredom, and dependence upon others; others who receive manuscripts at the same rate that spam hits mail servers.\

There are two alternative options available to me:

1. Publish myself via a site like lulu.com

2. Fix a GPL license (or similar; basically open source but you can’t reproduce, publish or do anything with it without my consent) to the work and let it loose in the internet.

The idea of writing is to have it read.

The concept of publishing is to distribute to the world, for people to enjoy.

One thing is for sure, it’s not being enjoyed by *anyone* sitting on my hard drive.

And the other thing that’s pretty certain – given the information I stated at the beginning of this piece – is that it would be difficult to get published.

So what’s your opinion on this?

Oh, and FYI, I copyrighted the work way back in 2004.

This is very interesting

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTehTbT7aho&rel=1]

They’re right when they say that the studios are only assessing and distributing movies that they can make a buck off of; the same as every other business out there. Movie-making is a business, it’s not about creativity.

I, and friends, have a similar issue with the publishing industry.

The music industry is exactly the same.

This is the beginning of something interesting and new; the net has given us a way to communicate ideas and our creativity — be it good or bad — to the entire world (other than those countries being actively censored of course). The concept is revolutionary, and totally circumvents the business models which have worked for the last 100 or more years.

Now the key is to keep-up the momentum, so here are some additional links:

• Publish your book or periodical online at Lulu.com
• Show your movie or short film online at youtube.com
• Play your music for anyone to hear at myspace.com

These aren’t the be-all and end-all; there are plenty of other ways to get music, movies and books out there into the wide world; the next stage is getting it known.

And that’s where HTML metatags come in handy. You have to capitalise on the bots by working out the best search terms which will get your content to the top of the search results…

Ultimately, this is open-source for everything else. We’ve got open-source software, there’s the potential for open-source hardware, but open-source music, movies and books is a new development…  And like everything else that’s happening in the world, it’s making big-business very very scared.

Good.