On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 1:20 PM, D Garcia <donovan@abs.net> wrote:
On Monday at 08:46:49PM -0500, Greg Newby wrote:
On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 06:36:17PM -0400, Greg Weeks wrote: The whole workflow at DP does NOT let you combine things when they need separate clearances.
Is that the only thing in the way?
The idea, which I think you've heard, is to consider combining these very short items to make a larger item. Combinations could be by author, by topic, or by source. For example, perhaps combining an entire year's worth of Weird Tales items.
Let me know what you think would be a good solution. I, personally, think that very short items should only be posted as a single eBook when there is a compelling reason (Robert's example of a pamphlet seems compelling, though even then I would wonder whether there are other, related pamphlets to combine).
I see I basically already said this, below. What I'm not seeing is whether there is a reason (other than limitations in the DP workflow) not to combine.
The problem is not a "limitation" in the DP workflow: This issue arises solely out of the fact that PG refuses to post items they consider to be "too small," which is arbitrary, ridiculous and completely unnecessary. PG requires that the SF shorts in question be cleared separately for very good reasons; what possible argument is there for NOT publishing them separately, especially considering that PG (via the WWers) are almost inflexibly insistent that ordinary works with illustrations be kept as small as possible?
DPs workflow is intended to faithfully reproduce works as they were originally published. While PG certainly acts as a publisher, there is no practical reason for requiring "short" works to be compiled and thus muddy the origins of the source material.
The sensible and practical thing for PG to do is to do away with any minimum size requirement for postings. Items can be posted as they were published, and any desired compilations can then be created by PG without forcing arbitrary requirements on their contributors.
I think I can see the reason for the original policy... PG doesn't want to publish incomplete works... say, pages 10-30, or (more recently) the first X chapters of a book. Or for poetry... have someone reduce a collection of poetry into 250 separate works. Or pick and chose 20 of the 250 for posting. The difference between the general policy and the Rule 6 shorts is, I think, as follows: 1) We're forced to select particular elements from each published book/magazine/whatever because of copyright requirements, 2) These types of publications are generally composed of a number of separate, unrelated works by different authors, 3) Where a particular work is spread across multiple issues, they get combined to reform a complete story, or sat upon until we can get all the issues in question, 4) Much of the material in question is ephemeral, and difficult and/or expensive to find complete sets. Most of the stuff I purchase off of ebay is yellowed and somewhat brittle, and much the worse for the wear after I remove the staples and scan it, 5) The published works are of highly variable length, from full length novels to 4 line poems. Since we're already breaking up the old published units, and sometimes recombining them, sometimes adding new material from an existing source as further research is done, and almost ALWAYS doing them out of order, it doesn't make sense to me (and, I think, to others processing this material for DP/PG) to form arbitrary collections that will have to be constantly reedited as new material is found/completed; or worse, make the material difficult to find by putting them into small unrelated groups. Actually, I can think of another similar case where we break up existing works without qualms; a novel (usually short) published with a novella or short stories at the end, generally by different authors and not mentioned at all in the opening material of the main work, primarily (I think) done by publishers to pad the book to marketable length (possibly as advertising for new authors, but many of the ones I've seen were by already established authors.) R C