In my vision, there would be a team of people, preferably friends, but the overriding concern is that they'd be creatively compatible. Most or all would be writers. Perhaps one is good with dialogue scenes. Perhaps one is good at fight scenes. Perhaps another is just really good at sticking to a set of themes and keeping the story on track. Each would have their own weaknesses, and hopefully the team approach would address that. The story would be made up as a team, and each member would have different writing assignments. One or two could serve as the primary writers, with another one or two serving as editors, but anyone in the team could try their handing at writing a portion.
But the team wouldn't just be limited to writing and editing. One or more members of the team would be able to handle the publishing process, formatting all final draft for submission to all the various digital publishing venues. You'd have one or more doing the promotion, playing up connections on Facebook and Twitter and the like, and maybe running a blog that the whole group could contribute towards. One person would be an artist and could put together a cover, or would simply have enough deviantArt friends that they could get someone appropriate to put together a cover.
Basically, it would be an Agile team (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_development) devoted to creating a book, from beginning to end. Perhaps the team is working on multiple books, but not everyone on the team is involved in both books. Perhaps I'm one of the two primary writers for one book, but only contributed the Idea (covered in the same detail as the Idea I was trying to sell up above) to a second book, and am merely going to edit that and a third book. The person doing the distribution could do all three books more easily than one at a time, and as success built, promoting each new book would become easier.
It would offer all the services of a big publishing house (even if it had to work harder and longer to get a hard copy on the shelves of book stores), and vastly superior to going it alone in the self-publishing scene.
And, instead of there being an Author's name under the title, there would simply be a team, just like a video game. And just like a video game, at the end are the full credits. Unlike Hollywood, the team identity would be given priority over the Auteur. That's what the brand would be built on. (Example: the video game development studio Valve. They run the whole process from start to finish, including their own digital distribution, and everyone knows that when you buy a Valve game, you're getting a certain standard of quality and production values, even if the game isn't your thing.)
Dang, I'm all fired up for this. If only I had a team of writing buddies I could bring together in my basement.
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But the team wouldn't just be limited to writing and editing. One or more members of the team would be able to handle the publishing process, formatting all final draft for submission to all the various digital publishing venues. You'd have one or more doing the promotion, playing up connections on Facebook and Twitter and the like, and maybe running a blog that the whole group could contribute towards. One person would be an artist and could put together a cover, or would simply have enough deviantArt friends that they could get someone appropriate to put together a cover.
Basically, it would be an Agile team (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_development) devoted to creating a book, from beginning to end. Perhaps the team is working on multiple books, but not everyone on the team is involved in both books. Perhaps I'm one of the two primary writers for one book, but only contributed the Idea (covered in the same detail as the Idea I was trying to sell up above) to a second book, and am merely going to edit that and a third book. The person doing the distribution could do all three books more easily than one at a time, and as success built, promoting each new book would become easier.
It would offer all the services of a big publishing house (even if it had to work harder and longer to get a hard copy on the shelves of book stores), and vastly superior to going it alone in the self-publishing scene.
And, instead of there being an Author's name under the title, there would simply be a team, just like a video game. And just like a video game, at the end are the full credits. Unlike Hollywood, the team identity would be given priority over the Auteur. That's what the brand would be built on. (Example: the video game development studio Valve. They run the whole process from start to finish, including their own digital distribution, and everyone knows that when you buy a Valve game, you're getting a certain standard of quality and production values, even if the game isn't your thing.)
Dang, I'm all fired up for this. If only I had a team of writing buddies I could bring together in my basement.
(2/2)