International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

[matgb]

Seriously, I'm surprised this one hasn't[ETA: it did, oops] this made it into slapfights already. Anyway...

The Science Fiction Writers Association (of America) was, until recently, a mostly dead dog. Then scalzi decided to run as a write-in candidate for their presidency,a nd suddenly everyone is taking an interest again. One of the issues that has come up in the campaign is that of giving away free e-books web promotions and similar. Now, there's a lot of debate about this, and some of the negative points are strong, and valid. But some of them, well, they're really not.

One of the reasons why the SFWA was a moribund mess? The outgoing vice-president, Howard V. Hendrix, emailed a blogger asking him to publish his opinions on e-publishing. He thinks that, and this is for real, authors who e-publish their work, especially for free (shock horror) are webscabs and converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch. Seriously. For real. First out of the gate that I've seen was the wonderfully ascerbic nihilistic_kid, who demolishes the argument wholesale. Then james_nicoll ponders if it would be possible to avoid a Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch lifestyle.

Initially, scalzi declines to comment but then declares
Yeah, I Couldn't Just Leave It Alone and writes an excellent rebuttal concentrating on Hendrix's belief that publishing is a zero-sum game and the way that an elected officer could call his constituents backstabbing scum (extra comments).

All of this prompts Nebula nominee Jo Walton to declare Monday 23rd April is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, and asks that as many people as possible, especially pro-writers, give away something online that they would normally charge for. Scalzi is in, James is promoting it and also has some food for thought about extinction events with some nice graphs about biodiversity as well.

So, next Monday, give away something for free online; post something on your journal, write a story, etc. I'm not an author, not a writer, but to keep in the spirit of the thing, would anyone want an SEO/site usability analysis from me, to be published openly here?

Oh, and try to come up with something for yourself as well, as the more the merrier I say, because being a pixel-stained technopeasant might be fun...

Comments

[antipholus.livejournal.com]

I'll as happily be pixel-stained technopeasant as I'll be a self-transforming machine elf! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine) Count me in.

[matgb]

Cool. Let us know what you're going to do, I suspect this could turn very silly very quickly...

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Howard V Hendrix? That really sounds like a made-up name, which would explain a bit...

Slightly more seriously, I did find myself thinking, 'The SFWA vice president is someone I've never heard of before'. Hmmm. Wonder why (unless he writes under a different name, of course).

[matgb]

Appears he's mostly only published in America, although he does have a pretty website of his own.

But yeah, the SFWA is going to die without a shot in the arm, arguably it's pretty dead already, but the recent upsurge in interest may help it attract much bigger talent; Scalzi is a "name", although his books are only just coming out over here (seriously, get hold of Old Man's War, I'd lend you mine but there's the distance thing).

It might be a made up name though, or, alternately, American, it seems half the country has name that sounds made-up.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I'm surprised this one hasn't made it into slapfights already.

We were all over it!

[matgb]

Ah, must've missed it, didn't look like it was the same story when I scanned past. Ah well, I only put it up as a plug for the comm anyway...

[lokean.livejournal.com]

*thinks*

I might get into trouble for it, but I could provide a 30k word technical treatment of ultrashort laser physics, some colleagues and I put it together as part of a group project. Technically we've all given permission for reasonable use (since we agreed it could be used as the basis of a new course, and course notes are published online)

It'd need some pretty heavy copy-editing to convert to a web format though (currently .doc) and I'm rather too busy at the moment...

[matgb]

Boost it my way, it's not like I've got anything better to do, and OpenOffice and Google Docs can convert Word to HTML fairly easily anyway.

Looks like I may need to plug my SEO skills a bit anyway, no takers as yet and if others are going to actually Do Stuff I'll need to sell it a bit.

[lokean.livejournal.com]

Please note, I only wrote one section and I was *not* the copy editor for the hardcopy. There are still typos and there's a severe 'conflict of voice' issue between sections (not much you can do about that though).
All my alt text for images was stripped when they reformatted it, and the rest never had any; if you need sensible alt text that actually provides meaning for any images in particular, tell me.

Stuck it on Mark's C&W webspace...

[foxfirefey]

All the recent SFWA stuff has been downright fascinating to watch! I've been reading it during meals. ldragoon made a cute Technopeasant banner!

((OMG IRRELEVANT PS: slapfights is Plus--if that's not on purpose and they're not using the extra features and there's no other objection, they could probably go to Basic.))

[matgb]

That is indeed a cool banner; wrong shape for me but cool. And yes, I've liked Scalzi for ages,and hadn't really heard of the SFWA until he did the thing, and while I doubt he'll win, he's done good just by running I think.

I'll mail ninebelow about the Plus thing tomorrow, I hadn't noticed except that the Post pages are pretty, which I much prefer anyway.

[foxfirefey]

Haha, your icon makes me think of 101 Reasons to Stop Writing.

If you like post pages to be pretty, by all means keep it Plus!

[matgb]

It's from an old t-shirt I had, now lost. John Major, then Prime Minister, sued two magazines at the same time. One printed an article saying he was having an affair with his caterer, he wasn't, it was libel, clear cut case.

The other printed an article saying he wasn't having an affair with his caterer and journalists should stop gossiping and concentrate on attacking his policies. British libel laws. Possibly the most opaque mess ever invented in legal history...

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* ponders a bit of writing now she has internets back *

[fearmeforiampink]

I'm tempted to make the offer to give someone an hour's worth of designing on something(probably whoever's concept/brief I like the most/find most inspiring).

However, that timing is also the same as my start of university term, which doesn't help. Possibly I could make some icons, a poster/desktop background or suchlike.