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Agile Novel Development
In a previous journal entry, I described a model for selling a story idea that someone else could turn into a book or comic. I had hoped to refine it into a functional (theoretically functional, at least) sales method, but it seems that I was trying to build on a shaky foundation. Commenters took the position that most artists prefer to work as auteurs, as there's no possible way that anyone but the idea's originator could do a good job with it. Since most of us aren't professionals, it's not a surprising philosophy, although most of what we produce- fanworks- are testaments to the effectiveness of producing an idea that someone else came up with. (Hollywood is another testament.)
However, one line of thought especially jumped out at me. On my livejournal,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lalunatique shared a great article that outlined the history of Publishing and the role of the Author in the evolving sales model, ending with the assertion that the changing marketplace (online versus bookstores, grassroots over corporate publishing, etc.) will yield a new manifestation of the old concept of an Author. The article can be read here, and I recommend it as much for its exciting and punchy style as for the learning opportunity it offers. The article really got me thinking and one idea especially won my infatuation:
What if the next evolution of the Author is from a single, credited person to a team of interchangeable people?
The strengths of this are obvious. You can get great idea people, great writers, great communicators, great editors, and great promoters all put together in a team dedicated to creating the best book they can. The main focus of the team would be on producing something that is simultaneously art and entertainment. (With more emphasis on the entertainment than the art, if there's a conflict between the two.) Naturally, the normal rules about teams need to be applied. Everyone has to get along, believe in the end goal, be able to work effectively together, and so on. Preferably, there would be a "manager" instead of a "leader," a person who takes point on organizing and troubleshooting instead of making decisions for the rest of the group, but every team has its own optimally functional culture.
Before everyone protests this idea, LaLunatique provided an example of this type of thing in action already. Anyone heard of the group of manga producers called CLAMP? If not, Wikipedia has a short description of their collaborative work process here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clamp_(manga_artists)#Business_model It seems they've managed to achieve some level of success. A similar example outside of the writing/art industries is Valve, a computer game company that does all their own development and publishing without leaders or major public figures, and is known as a strong brand that produces reliably good video games.
In my own day job as a web developer for a large corporation, I've had years of experience with a team model. We use a software development method known as "Agile Development," which is geared towards producing quality product with low turnaround time using a collaborative approach. My own company doesn't exactly use a pure version of this, but the strength of Agile is that it's very flexible, and every company can implement a flavor that works best for them. The basic idea is that you take a final product, and break it up into 'features,' which are then broken up into smaller tasks that can be completed in several days. Over a period of two to three weeks, the team works together to implement a set of features, with the idea that at the end of the working period, the group will have a minimally functional software that can be used as the base for the next set of features. The people on the team can have specialties (User Interface developer, Requirements writer, Tester, and many possible others) but the central idea to Agile Development is that the entire team can 'swarm' on a task or feature that needs to be completed quickly. For example, if you're coming up on the end of the working period and a lot of stuff still needs to be tested, everyone drops what they're doing and becomes a Tester.
Of course, Agile Development has its own challenges, but what methodology doesn't? Being very familiar with it, I got to thinking about how a similar system might be used to collaboratively produce a novel.
First, let's set our goal: to produce, publish, and sell a novel without a major publishing house being involved.
Now, what will we need to accomplish this?
Writer(s)
Editor(s)
Cover Artist
Promoter(s)
Distributor
Writer: This one is fairly obvious. A writer is someone who creates the words of the actual story. Even now, writers can collaborate on a single book, but in my idea for a team approach, this could be extended beyond that. Perhaps there are two 'primary' writers on a book assignment, but then you have other secondary writers who handle special assignments like action scenes or dialogue-heavy scenes, or even just contribute a few passages here because they have a good idea for the presentation. They would work from a full outline of the plot, and perhaps each chapter could be a single assignment.
Editor: There are different kinds of editors. The kind most of us are familiar with are "copy editors," the people who proofread and point out spelling errors, typos, grammar problems, and so on. Yes, this is a separate job in today's world. "Pure" editors are becoming endangered, and are the people who read your book and then send it back talking about how your story lacks focus, the main character's arc was unintentionally subverted by the events of chapter 24, and you could strengthen the narrative by streamlining that sequence there about two-thirds of the way through the book. Ideally, the person providing this kind of editing is not also a writer on the book. These days, the author's agent is expected to perform this kind of duty to save the publisher time and money.
Cover Artist: The person who makes the cover! They can paint a masterpiece showing an epic battle between a knight and a dragon, or simply put the title of the book in fancy letters on top of a green box for a minimalist effect. This person isn't just someone who can draw or photoshop, but someone who understands how to sell the book with a single image and make it stand out on the bookshelves or the Amazon results list or whatever.
Promoter: It used to be that this was the job of the big publishing house (aside from the binding and printing process, which are now available to everyone and their dog at a good price). Writers, by definition, should be able to communicate ideas to lots of people, but the sad fact is that a lot of the people writing sci-fi and fantasy books are really lousy salespeople. The publishers would organize ad campaigns, signings, arrange for prominent placement in the best bookstores, line up reviews from prominent figures, and lots of other interesting stuff. Now that we have this thing called the internet, though, publishers expect authors to do more of their own promotion via Facebook and blogs and other such venues. A dedicated promoter would make this their primary concern, buying ads on websites, organizing the team's blog, running contests on the team's Facebook page, and other such activities. This is a fact of the publishing world now, and it strikes me that having a dedicated expert is better than making a writer with no talent for it learn how to do exploit the internet.
Distributor: It's not just a matter of printing, binding, and shipping the books out. Books don't just live in bookstores, anymore. Smashwords is an online retailer that will sell you an eBook in a variety of formats (HTML, .mobi, Epub, PDF, RTF, LRF, PDB, and even plain text!). Amazon will sell you a Kindle file or a printed-on-demand copy. Lulu will likewise sell you a printed-on-demand hardcopy. Apple and Nook have their own digital retailers. And those are just the services I personally encountered! Now, how many of you would be surprised to learn that every single one of these services requires a differently formatted file to be submitted to them? If you're at all familiar with technology these days, I bet you're not surprised at all. I think that having a "Distributor" who is responsible for making up all these different files, keeping them in-sync with late-stage changes, making regular backups, and other techie grunt-work would be a big boon to the project.
Now, reading over these roles, how many do you think can be done by more than one person? I already called out the Writer role, since that's done now. A book may only have one official Editor in the big publishing houses, but it probably has multiple copy-editors, not to mention each author's agent acting as a preliminary editor. As for the Cover Artist, couldn't a couple of people collaborate on that, and maybe even use an idea from one of the non-artists in the group? You could easily have a pair of Promoters, and the entire team would be expected to contribute to the official blog. And who couldn't help with the Distributor role? One person can handle the formatting, another the regular backups, and so on.
Of course, these roles could be done by a single person. In fact, it's happening today. It depends on the nature of the project, the time frame, and whatever issues pop up thanks to that crazy thing we call life. But what I'm trying to do is shrink the entire publishing process down to a single team that leverages the glory of the internet and a lot of flexibility to easily take a book from start to finish.
Linking things back to the Agile process, you'd start with the two main "features" of the project: the book itself, and then the publishing work. Those would each be broken down. The book would probably be broken down into chapters, and then those broken down into scenes, and it would be the scenes that are assigned to a specific Writer and Editor. The Editors who do the scene-by-scene development probably wouldn't be the same people who edit the finished revisions. While this is going on, you'd also work on Promotional tasks ("Write a blog post describing the setting and some of the world-building to get people interested"). Of course, the Writers are doing the bulk of the work, and you don't necessarily want a half dozen or more writers dividing up a book between them. Two primary writers are probably what you want the maximum to be, and then only a small percentage of the scenes would be handled by supplementary or specialist writers, such as action scenes. So, this brings to light the idea that some members of the team would be busier than others at various times. What would we do with those other team-members? After all, we want the book credited to the team, and the whole team to be happy with that. So how do would all that time and effort be managed?
Well, why not have the team working on two books at once, with both final novels credited to the team?
The second book would have different primary writers, of course. Heck, all the other primary roles could be mixed up as well.
How fast could a team like this churn out books? Considering how much less effort goes into books, sometimes it seems like movies get made quicker. Wouldn’t it be great to shorten that turnaround time, while maintaining quality and style?
So, do you think something like this could work? What improvements would you suggest?
However, one line of thought especially jumped out at me. On my livejournal,
lalunatique shared a great article that outlined the history of Publishing and the role of the Author in the evolving sales model, ending with the assertion that the changing marketplace (online versus bookstores, grassroots over corporate publishing, etc.) will yield a new manifestation of the old concept of an Author. The article can be read here, and I recommend it as much for its exciting and punchy style as for the learning opportunity it offers. The article really got me thinking and one idea especially won my infatuation:What if the next evolution of the Author is from a single, credited person to a team of interchangeable people?
The strengths of this are obvious. You can get great idea people, great writers, great communicators, great editors, and great promoters all put together in a team dedicated to creating the best book they can. The main focus of the team would be on producing something that is simultaneously art and entertainment. (With more emphasis on the entertainment than the art, if there's a conflict between the two.) Naturally, the normal rules about teams need to be applied. Everyone has to get along, believe in the end goal, be able to work effectively together, and so on. Preferably, there would be a "manager" instead of a "leader," a person who takes point on organizing and troubleshooting instead of making decisions for the rest of the group, but every team has its own optimally functional culture.
Before everyone protests this idea, LaLunatique provided an example of this type of thing in action already. Anyone heard of the group of manga producers called CLAMP? If not, Wikipedia has a short description of their collaborative work process here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clamp_(manga_artists)#Business_model It seems they've managed to achieve some level of success. A similar example outside of the writing/art industries is Valve, a computer game company that does all their own development and publishing without leaders or major public figures, and is known as a strong brand that produces reliably good video games.
In my own day job as a web developer for a large corporation, I've had years of experience with a team model. We use a software development method known as "Agile Development," which is geared towards producing quality product with low turnaround time using a collaborative approach. My own company doesn't exactly use a pure version of this, but the strength of Agile is that it's very flexible, and every company can implement a flavor that works best for them. The basic idea is that you take a final product, and break it up into 'features,' which are then broken up into smaller tasks that can be completed in several days. Over a period of two to three weeks, the team works together to implement a set of features, with the idea that at the end of the working period, the group will have a minimally functional software that can be used as the base for the next set of features. The people on the team can have specialties (User Interface developer, Requirements writer, Tester, and many possible others) but the central idea to Agile Development is that the entire team can 'swarm' on a task or feature that needs to be completed quickly. For example, if you're coming up on the end of the working period and a lot of stuff still needs to be tested, everyone drops what they're doing and becomes a Tester.
Of course, Agile Development has its own challenges, but what methodology doesn't? Being very familiar with it, I got to thinking about how a similar system might be used to collaboratively produce a novel.
First, let's set our goal: to produce, publish, and sell a novel without a major publishing house being involved.
Now, what will we need to accomplish this?
Writer(s)
Editor(s)
Cover Artist
Promoter(s)
Distributor
Writer: This one is fairly obvious. A writer is someone who creates the words of the actual story. Even now, writers can collaborate on a single book, but in my idea for a team approach, this could be extended beyond that. Perhaps there are two 'primary' writers on a book assignment, but then you have other secondary writers who handle special assignments like action scenes or dialogue-heavy scenes, or even just contribute a few passages here because they have a good idea for the presentation. They would work from a full outline of the plot, and perhaps each chapter could be a single assignment.
Editor: There are different kinds of editors. The kind most of us are familiar with are "copy editors," the people who proofread and point out spelling errors, typos, grammar problems, and so on. Yes, this is a separate job in today's world. "Pure" editors are becoming endangered, and are the people who read your book and then send it back talking about how your story lacks focus, the main character's arc was unintentionally subverted by the events of chapter 24, and you could strengthen the narrative by streamlining that sequence there about two-thirds of the way through the book. Ideally, the person providing this kind of editing is not also a writer on the book. These days, the author's agent is expected to perform this kind of duty to save the publisher time and money.
Cover Artist: The person who makes the cover! They can paint a masterpiece showing an epic battle between a knight and a dragon, or simply put the title of the book in fancy letters on top of a green box for a minimalist effect. This person isn't just someone who can draw or photoshop, but someone who understands how to sell the book with a single image and make it stand out on the bookshelves or the Amazon results list or whatever.
Promoter: It used to be that this was the job of the big publishing house (aside from the binding and printing process, which are now available to everyone and their dog at a good price). Writers, by definition, should be able to communicate ideas to lots of people, but the sad fact is that a lot of the people writing sci-fi and fantasy books are really lousy salespeople. The publishers would organize ad campaigns, signings, arrange for prominent placement in the best bookstores, line up reviews from prominent figures, and lots of other interesting stuff. Now that we have this thing called the internet, though, publishers expect authors to do more of their own promotion via Facebook and blogs and other such venues. A dedicated promoter would make this their primary concern, buying ads on websites, organizing the team's blog, running contests on the team's Facebook page, and other such activities. This is a fact of the publishing world now, and it strikes me that having a dedicated expert is better than making a writer with no talent for it learn how to do exploit the internet.
Distributor: It's not just a matter of printing, binding, and shipping the books out. Books don't just live in bookstores, anymore. Smashwords is an online retailer that will sell you an eBook in a variety of formats (HTML, .mobi, Epub, PDF, RTF, LRF, PDB, and even plain text!). Amazon will sell you a Kindle file or a printed-on-demand copy. Lulu will likewise sell you a printed-on-demand hardcopy. Apple and Nook have their own digital retailers. And those are just the services I personally encountered! Now, how many of you would be surprised to learn that every single one of these services requires a differently formatted file to be submitted to them? If you're at all familiar with technology these days, I bet you're not surprised at all. I think that having a "Distributor" who is responsible for making up all these different files, keeping them in-sync with late-stage changes, making regular backups, and other techie grunt-work would be a big boon to the project.
Now, reading over these roles, how many do you think can be done by more than one person? I already called out the Writer role, since that's done now. A book may only have one official Editor in the big publishing houses, but it probably has multiple copy-editors, not to mention each author's agent acting as a preliminary editor. As for the Cover Artist, couldn't a couple of people collaborate on that, and maybe even use an idea from one of the non-artists in the group? You could easily have a pair of Promoters, and the entire team would be expected to contribute to the official blog. And who couldn't help with the Distributor role? One person can handle the formatting, another the regular backups, and so on.
Of course, these roles could be done by a single person. In fact, it's happening today. It depends on the nature of the project, the time frame, and whatever issues pop up thanks to that crazy thing we call life. But what I'm trying to do is shrink the entire publishing process down to a single team that leverages the glory of the internet and a lot of flexibility to easily take a book from start to finish.
Linking things back to the Agile process, you'd start with the two main "features" of the project: the book itself, and then the publishing work. Those would each be broken down. The book would probably be broken down into chapters, and then those broken down into scenes, and it would be the scenes that are assigned to a specific Writer and Editor. The Editors who do the scene-by-scene development probably wouldn't be the same people who edit the finished revisions. While this is going on, you'd also work on Promotional tasks ("Write a blog post describing the setting and some of the world-building to get people interested"). Of course, the Writers are doing the bulk of the work, and you don't necessarily want a half dozen or more writers dividing up a book between them. Two primary writers are probably what you want the maximum to be, and then only a small percentage of the scenes would be handled by supplementary or specialist writers, such as action scenes. So, this brings to light the idea that some members of the team would be busier than others at various times. What would we do with those other team-members? After all, we want the book credited to the team, and the whole team to be happy with that. So how do would all that time and effort be managed?
Well, why not have the team working on two books at once, with both final novels credited to the team?
The second book would have different primary writers, of course. Heck, all the other primary roles could be mixed up as well.
How fast could a team like this churn out books? Considering how much less effort goes into books, sometimes it seems like movies get made quicker. Wouldn’t it be great to shorten that turnaround time, while maintaining quality and style?
So, do you think something like this could work? What improvements would you suggest?
no subject
Two areas of conflict could be particularly hard to crack: money and creativity. Working out a good agreement beforehand could lessen the risk of money conflicts, but creative differences could get intractable. It's not just between the writer(s) and editor(s), the promotion and marketing people probably have ideas too. I guess these differences might be easier to manage given the creative side of the team is more predisposed to team play than your average solitary auteur, but where there are people who care about their work there's always the possibility of passionate, sometimes heated, debate. The question is how to turn these differences to creative directions. I suppose good communication skills and internal procedures would help, as would a skilled manager to serve as a mediator.
no subject
Naturally, not everything can necessarily be solved by discussion, especially if a new team has to shake out some personality and creative differences. In that case, I think there has to be the option for a team-member to leave at any time, with the provision that they don't own the work they did for the team and while they'll still be credited as having contributed at some point, they have to make a clean break.
Hollywood already uses that model, where everyone who worked on a screenplay draft gets credited, even if the final scripwriter(s) completely rewrote everything for the final draft.
Settling disagreements would call for different tactics depending on the nature of the conflict, but perhaps "usability testing" could be used in some cases. In software development, that's where a prototype or the incomplete software itself is given to a volunteer customer to test, and then they're asked specific questions about their experience, stuff like, "When you wanted to access your account, how many tries did it take, and how did you eventually figure out what to click?" For writing, you might have someone outside the team read the plot summary, or read what's been written so far, and ask stuff like, "How do you feel about this certain character?" or "How do you think the story will end? Do you think you'll like that ending?" Stuff that lets the team figure out how readers are reacting to the story, so that disagreements have a solid foundation on which they can be discussed.
As for the money itself, that's probably going to have to different for every team. If we go by the corporate model that pays me, then each member would be salaried and that comes out of the project budget, which was laid out at the beginning. If the project runs out of money but there's still work to be done, then either no one gets paid, or money has to be taken from another project. That would be ideal for situations where team-members might leave, because they'll have been paid for their work. The only time I can see a team agreeing to defer pay until the book makes a profit and then dividing the spoils is if they're sure everyone is sticking around.
no subject
One way I can think of to make the system somewhat fair and control risk is by having the team members work on specific milestones and be paid (if the work turns a profit) in proportion to their work. So maybe story and character concepts are 5% of the writing work, a detailed scene-by-scene outline is 20%, and writing each of 15 chapters is 5%. If the writer (we'll assume one writer) leaves after the conceptualization, outline, and three chapters, he'll have done 40% of the writing work and will be paid accordingly from any profits. Someone else could take over to write the remaining 12 chapters to get 60% of the writing payment. A milestone system is also good for checking progress and diagnosing any problems.
It's not a cure-all, of course. A big part of the disputes are likely to be about whether the milestones are being met in satisfactory ways, and in the most intractable disputes it may very well be that the writer's (or editor's, or promoter's etc.) work has to be done over, making their share of the payment a deadweight loss for the enterprise. Maybe, for a shoestring operation, all the participants will have to accept the risk of leaving without payment and of others leaving when a dispute becomes unsolvable. And then the problem becomes the possibility that people would dig in and try to push out the other side, determined to be the one who stays to the end and gets the payout. If the team becomes split, who will own the project? What about the work product and recognition created up to that point?
Of course ideally everyone will give a little and no one will let things get out of hand so badly, but my legal training compels me to work with worst-case scenarios. If a system can withstand that, it can withstand everything.
no subject
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the industry that hasn't already done the field-testing on this kind of thing isn't the music industry with bands. That's creative output, heavily monetized, with a long history of creative differences and breakups. The Beatles, for example, must have figured all of this out for us if they're still all (who are alive) making money ofc their 60's music. I'll have to do some research into that, though, as I can't even name the members of the Beatles, never mind talk about ownership and profit-sharing of their music.