On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 06:36:17PM -0400, Greg Weeks wrote:
I thought we had this settled, but apparently not. I have two projects over at pgdp where the PPer has given up on posting them because the WWer refuses to take them because they are 1 page poems out of Weird Tales.
Greg, I'm sorry about this, but I was supposed to follow up with you and didn't.
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. We can certainly consider methods at the WWer phase to do such combinations, if that would help. 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. -- Greg
The items are: Lycanthropus by Bolen, C. Edgar 20100108175432bolen The Lost Temples of Xantoos by Calhoun, Howell 20100110102049calhoun
They come out of different issues of Weird Tales. I know not who the WWer is as I'm not actually involved in the posting step at all.
Greg Weeks
On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Greg Newby wrote:
On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 05:06:59PM -0400, Robert Cicconetti wrote:
I definitely agree with the basic idea, although I would like to suggest that the rule be rewritten altogether to allow shorter works, "complete as published", as well. Pamphlets, for example, were very important in shaping public opinion during the American Revolution.
Not all were collected later, or if they were, some are under a compilation copyright.
R C
The 25K is a guideline, not a fixed lower limit. I agree with posting smaller items when they are indeed their own "items."
For short stories from magazines, it would be preferable to have the whole issue, but as Greg mentions not practical when only some of the stories are clearable.
I'll remind the WW team that shorter items are fine, when these practical issues make a shorter piece difficult.
BTW, one of my first PG "titles" was O Henry's "Gift of the Magi." That was too short for a full eBook (only a few pages), so Michael elected at the time to not assign an eBook number, but to add it to the collection. That's not how we'd do things today (we rely on eBook #s as a main identifier), but shows that flexibility is nice! -- Greg
On 6/18/07, Juliet Sutherland <vze3rknp@verizon.net> wrote:
Sounds like a great idea to me.
JulietS
Greg Weeks wrote:
Can we get a waiver for the 25K minimum size limit for postings for the rule 6 SF pieces? They have to be cleared separately, so it's very difficult to aggregate them. In the case of the ASF stuff from 1959-1963 we would run afoul of the collection copyright if we tried to aggregate by issue anyway.
-- Greg Weeks http://durendal.org:8080/greg/
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. David
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
participants (3)
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D Garcia -
Greg Newby -
Robert Cicconetti