media

Free Stuff And Our Legacy

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Lots of free stuff out there, isn't there?

Free books, free games, free video.  Games that are free unless you want premium content.  It seems that a lot of our media – at least that we can get electronically – has an awful lot of free stuff.

It's also good free stuff.  I've been continually impressed with what I can find for free online or via DLC.

Being who I am I like to speculate on why we got so much free stuff available because . . . well this is me, culture, economics, and geekiness.  It's sort of what I do.  It's my thing.  Plus I'm curious.

The reason we have so much free stuff?  It's a legacy of previous work.

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Media Size and The Changing Media Environment

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(Last week I posted to a link on an article about rejected SF and Fantasy novels, and one of our regulars noted that Dune had been rejected for length at one point – and then noted how some series and books seem to be overlong.  That got me thinking and this column is the result).

What is the ideal length of a book?  A series?  A TV episode?  A movie?  A movie series?

You have an idea in mind.  Publishers, TV executives, authors, and everyone has an idea in mind.  I daresay you could, with little prompting start quite a conversation – or argument – about the ideal length/duration of any form of media.  We all have ideas about such things, some held quite passionately.

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Are We Loosing Our Creative Breathing Room?

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Technology allows us to deliver content and spectacular speeds to an audience of ready fans.  We writers can get our eBooks out faster than anyone in publishing dreaded of a decade ago.  Those of us in gaming can get out a game in parts, or keep the DLC flowing until a game's sequel comes out.  Musicians can deliver one tune at a time until the DVD burns or concert season comes up.

We can keep delivering content all the time.  There can be almost no gap between one product than the next – in the case of novels, with continual e-chapters, it never has to end.

I'm wondering if this is a good idea, or if at the very least it'll be hard to adapt to:

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