Comparing the Publishing Industry to the Movie Industry

I've worked in both the film industry and the publishing industry, and I've found it striking how similar they are in terms of their various levels.  What's especially striking is how few people in those industries seem to recognize this similarity, or perhaps how much they're in denial, particularly in the publishing end.

Here are the different levels at which these industries connect:

Movie studios are the equivalent of major publishing houses
Independent movie studios are the equivalent of smaller publishing businesses
Youtube is the equivalent to self-publishing

People who work in publishing, especially those in major publishing houses, would be appalled to hear one say they operate like the film industry, and will deny it until they're blue in the face.  But it doesn't make it any less true.  If you want to get your script seen by a studio, you have to go through an agent who has the right connections.  If you want to get your manuscript read at a major publishing house, you need an agent with the right connections.  Often these agents work in the same office, and are sometimes the same person!  And while publishers will act like their work is superior to films, the agents who will get you to them will all say that they're only interested in a book that can get made into a movie.  To say that you're trying to write a book for the sake of a book will get you laughed at by the very people who smugly act like they're better than the film industry.  There's really no difference.

The benefit you'll get from a studio is huge amounts of publicity and large payment.  The drawback is you'll have to do everything their way.  This is the same with publishing with major publishing houses.  Their editors will tell you how they want you to do it.  These decisions will often be based on the same politics and financial analytics that studio executives deal with.

To get into an independent movie studio takes having a connection to them.  This doesn't always have to be an agent; you just have to have made the right connection to finagle your way in.  This connection can often be made at a film festival if you're not hanging around the right crowds.  This is also true of small publishing companies, like university presses.  You can often make those connections at book fairs if you're not hanging around the right circles.

The benefit you'll get from an independent studio is you'll get exposed to all the art audiences and the festival circuits, as well as you'll have a short run in theaters and on TV.  The drawback is that you won't get as much traction as you would out of a major studio and when it's done, the production company owns it, not you; even if it barely got shown and you know how it could get better exposure.  When they're done with it, it's done.  This is the same with a small book company.  They'll release it to all the book festivals and to a number of independent bookstores... Maybe you'll get on the shelves of select Barnes & Nobles stores and it'll probably be available on Amazon for a time.  But when the company is done with it, they're done, and you no longer have the rights.

Producing for Youtube is literally the same thing as self-publishing a book.  When you press "upload" you are literally self-publishing.  I emphasize this because it's shocking how few Youtubers seem to understand this.  Luminaries in their field like John Green self-publish amazing Youtube videos, then put down self-publishing books.  Booktubers who review all sorts of mainstream books by huge publishing houses refuse to look at self-published works, all the while not acknowledging the fact that they themselves self-publish their videos.  Their similarities here should be self-evident, even though it's gone over the heads of so many in the Youtube world.

The benefit of self-publishing is that you have the freedom to tell the story the way you want to.  You don't have to alter your vision based on what some executive thinks is in vogue, and you'll be able to keep pushing the book long after the initial six months after release are over, (the time that most publishers give up on a book.)  You can also sell on Amazon, the top seller of all books.  Hell, they'll even help you publish it.  The drawback, of course, is you're in charge of everything.  You have to buy the artwork for the cover.  You have to get the editor, (and yes, you need one.)  You then have to promote it, and believe me, most other people in self-publishing won't help you.  Youtubers obliviously consider self-publishing to be unimportant, (even though THEY are self-publishers,) and many, many blog reviewers say in their terms, "no self-published works".  This is, of course, the height of hypocrisy, but that's the sort of uphill road you have to traverse when you're self-published.  And it is VERY hard to get noticed through all the noise.

My Book Reviews

            When I tried to get my books reviewed, some of the first places I thought to go to were blogs and Youtube book reviewers.  They were the logical choice considering the fact that they were themselves self-publishers.  I was shocked and amazed at how many of them refused to review self-published materials, never recognizing their own hypocrisy.

            I’m a believer in putting your effort where your mouth is, so I did a Youtube book review show where I only reviewed independently published books.  It was the only one on Youtube of its kind.  I was proud of it, and I mixed it with doing my weight loss as I would read the books while out on walks, and check my weight after doing the reviews.

            What was frustrating was that the views never got to be very high.  I would get the people whose books I was reviewing, some of their readers and friends, then I would get completely different viewers the next week.  None of them were watching other reviews, supporting other independently published authors.

            It’s frustrating seeing this sort of every man and woman for him and her self.  This whole industry is very difficult already, and we’re competing with large corporations that have many employees.  The best thing we can do for ourselves is to band together and help each other.

            I want to go back to reviewing these books.  I feel strongly about independent publishing, and I want to help others as I want to be helped as well.  But I’ve been taking a break from it for now as the effort was going to waste while I was ignoring my own projects.  Hopefully that will change.

RPG Into a Book

I’ve been thinking about a role playing video idea I've had and I know what I want to do with it.  First, I want to do my own version.  It won’t likely have as good of production value as Wil Wheaton’s, but I plan on doing something he didn’t; use miniatures.  This will bring over what I’ve already collected for my mini-wargaming show, and will hopefully bring over that audience.  It will also give a separate voice from other rpg videos already out there.  It should also look really cool.

But what will also make this endeavor work is the idea that I could make a book based on the story at the end.  The videos can generate an audience which is then drawn to the book at the end, because it’s the story they just watched unfold.  What’s more, I have had this idea for a fantasy world for a long time, but I didn’t have a specific story put together.  This will fill in that all-important part while giving me the chance to fulfill this desire to build my fantasy world.

I’ve also determined that sci fi and fantasy are a lot more likely to sell in self-publishing, and have determined to focus on that from now on, so this fits with my overall plan more anyway.

Everything Wrong with The Ables by Jeremy Scott

Independent Book Review - Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and other Creeps

Book Review - Secrets of a Hollywood Private Eye

Sent books to PBS/NPR

Today I mailed a whole slew of books to various places.  They were mostly to public television and radio locations throughout the country based on lists I had made.

I started by looking up station information in specific states:  Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois. New York, South Dakota, Idaho, and Washington.  These were all places where Richard Hart lived.  I also included California as that's where I live, and media outlets are more likely to do a story on you if you're a local.  Once I had my list of stations, I went through the website of each one, searching for the contact person to send a book to.  This would usually be programming, or sometimes a producer.  I would always look to see if there was a specific show that handled books, and sometimes I even called to ask if the station did any specials on books.  When a station looked like they only aired programming from other locations, I didn't bother with them, as I've already sent books to the main NPR and PBS production locations.

Once I had the contact information, I looked to see which seemed better, email or mail.  Email is cheaper and easier, and you get an answer without a financial investment, but it's also easier to ignore or not notice when there are hundreds of emails going to some of these locations every day.  It's also easier to say no to someone when all you see is an email IF you even get it.  It's harder when you see a nice book that came for free which has an interesting topic right there on the cover.  So I categorized many of the names on the list.  The ones that were the most important, such as Chicago's public station, and the local LA affiliate, I just automatically got the name and address so I could mail a book.  Some of the smaller ones, and some which seem to prefer doing things electronically got an email with links to the Bandwagon website.

The books that I mailed mostly went with media kits.  Even though I made the media kits to go to stations that weren't getting books, the most important locations got them in addition to the books for two reasons:  First, because they're PBS/NPR, the most likely places to feature books and therefore worth the extra effort.  Second, because at a lot of these places there will be book critics considering doing book reviews, and news departments which might do stories on Richard Hart or the Capone family.

The most important package to go out today was one to The Daily Show.  I managed to get the name of the woman in charge of booking guests, so I packaged up a media kit, a letter, and a book.  This one being a bit more important, I made sure to get a hard cover version of it made since this was so important, and typically you see John Stewart handling the hard cover rather than the paper back.

All of these places could have learned about it through the press release I sent out, but being PBS/NPR locations that regularly talk about books, I wanted to make sure I got in their faces.  So far the emails haven't had much of a response.  Let's hope the mailings have better luck.

I did a number of other things this week that aren't coming to mind right now.  The trouble with me reporting all this is that I work almost nonstop from morning through late into the night.  Many of the things I do just get done and they're not even done being wiped from my plate when I'm on to the next thing.  I almost need someone with a camera over my shoulder to show what I do, as I have no time to write them down, or to hold a camera and show people.

Although I did start one channel.  After seeing a whole bunch of bloggers and Youtubers refusing to review or even look at self-published works, (even though they are self-published,) I became infuriated, and wanted to do something about it.  I also have been aware that i need to stop making excuses and start losing weight.  (My girlfriend doesn't let me forget.)  So I decided to combine the two and I am doing a monthly Youtube program where I pick one independently published work and I read it while I'm out on walks.  At the beginning of the month, I pick the book and weigh myself, and at the end I review the book and weigh myself again.  Here is the first full episode.

My Big Push

This year is my big push.  One can always say that every year is their big push, and New Year resolutions are as cheap as paper and dissolve as easily, too.  But this year is a true make or break year for me.

For one thing, it marks my 20 year anniversary in southern California.  I’ll have been here longer than I’ve ever been anywhere before.  And it’s getting a bit ridiculous having struggled for so long and still not having a career.  The film career didn’t really go anywhere, (you can read more about that in my blog “Tales of a Failed Filmmaker”,) so now it’s on to the writing career.  I don’t want that to linger in the same way, so I placed a limit on it.  Succeed at writing, (or one of my other two possible careers: video producing or gaming,) or choose another career on which to live.

Don’t get me wrong.  My writing will always be there, and I’ll always have a passion for games and videos; but if, at the end of this year, I’m still having to supplement my income with a “day job,” then I will at last admit that I cannot succeed financially in any of my passions.  I know that others can, and I know that it’s possible; and I’m hoping that I will number among them as I want to be able to finish work and be done.  I’d rather not have one career job in the day, and try to cram all my passions into the evenings and weekends.  I’d rather do them during the day and have my free time be mine; with my family and friends.  But I can’t live like this forever, so I have to make things work now or surrender.

This year will tell.  This blog will follow that journey as I put my books together and try to promote them.  First up is Two Gun Hart, (about Al Capone’s long-lost brother who was a Prohibition officer in Nebraska,) which is currently in pre-order and will become available to the public March 20^th.  I will be touring after that, then going on to Relic Worlds the rest of the year.  (Relic Worlds is about an anthropologist searching for long-last alien relics.)  If you follow along, you can see how it goes.  I’ll be talking about other areas of this push in my other blogs:

Jeff McArthur

Relic Worlds

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker

Command Combat

#promotions #presales #capone #blogs

Making a Book Trailer

When you look up book trailers, you usually find very dry, dull, and most of all, cheap videos that leave you less likely to buy the book than when you started watching.  I don’t think this is from a lack of trying.  I think it’s from a lack of looking at it from the reader’s point of view, and a lack of creativity.

There are a lot of trailers that have the author reading the book.  In these cases, I can’t even tell you what he’s saying.  When given visual and audio cues, we tend to take the visual.  I hear “Person talking, person talking, person talking, person talking.”  It’s suggestion through visual leads.  There are many other trailers which show cliché images, like a person’s shadow while a narrator, (usually the author,) reads a part of the story which doesn’t show how the book stands out.  And then there are those trailers with just words.  I might as well just read the description at that point.

What works is making it look like a movie trailer, using the elements that make people go, “I wish I was watching THAT right now.”  If it’s a book, people will want to read it to get those same images in their head.

In doing this, the most important aspects are twofold.  First, be clear about what it is; and second, show how it stands out.  If you show a trailer that makes it look like every other book of the genre, people will just go, I’ve already seen it.

As for being clear, understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean showing it in chronological order, or showing whole scenes, or even telling the whole plot.  Sometimes getting the idea across includes showing a series of shots that express your story or theme.  In the case of many fiction stories, this means just showing clips of single lines of characters mixed in with other shots appropriate to the genre.

In non-fiction, the best route to go, I find, is some sort of documentary.  Make it clear that this is a true story, and make the images, words, and music go along with it.

How to get these images is the biggest question.  You’ll have to make a budget for it, but don’t break the bank on this.  You can get great stock pictures at several sites, like Pond 5 or Shutterstock.  Shooting actors in front of green screens makes it possible to put whatever you want behind them.  And sometimes what you want are images you don’t have to create.  For instance, if it’s non-fiction, you often want images from the true story itself, including photographs and newspaper clippings that are probably already in your book anyway, so you have the rights to them.

And if you’re not planning on showing your book on TV or some other place that requires all the rights to be cleared, you can get away with a lot more.  Youtube actually allows you to post video up of other people’s material, as long as you’re not making money on it.  If you’re doing a book trailer, you truly are not wanting to have other people’s commercials on it, because the trailer itself IS a commercial.  Therefore, you don’t need to be having commercials on it and making money from it.  Below are a couple examples of how I’ve done this.

Relic Worlds – Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World:  I used all sorts of images from other movies and video games, intercutting my actors in front of blue screens that were replaced by backgrounds that looked like the places in the movies and game videos, so they looked like they were in among the other, better visuals.  The cuts are usually so fast that most of it looks like it’s all part of the same scene.  Also, in true trailer form, I have a character start talking in one shot, and it carries over the next, which gives even more of a sense of connection.  To top it off, I used music from Battlestar Galactica, which not only sounded better, it appealed to BSG fans.  Youtube allows me to have this up, as long as I’m not making money directly from the trailer.  And I’m able to post the trailer up in various locations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcDFJT5RPQ8&list=UU1CcgAwLJ7dVsIEVVyQwaVg

The Great Heist – I mixed typewritten information with images from the book.  I then put it all to the music of The Untouchables, which is thematically appropriate to the material.  Again, while it’s not music that I own, as long as I’m keeping it on Youtube and not making money directly from it, it’s okay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaFGR1CPmgA

Two of them that I’ve had a lot of luck with are the ones for Pro Bono and the Pick Your Path books.

Pro Bono – I did two videos in this case.  One of them was a semi-documentary where I mixed footage of an interview with my father talking about the case with images of the case itself all to Bruce Springsteen music that was written about the story.  The other is simply a real documentary that was made in the 1970s about the case.  This has been extremely popular, as it is a documentary lost to history about a case no one forgot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODW6uh1Bt0Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LgGj5nFmoo

The pick your path books actually allows the viewer to pick a path.  They get the initial video, which takes them onto a planet where they follow the main character to some ruins.  He looks at three doors, and the reader gets to click on whichever one they wish to go through.  This takes them to a video that shows them what happens when they go through that door.  (Each one, of course, just leads them to one of the books.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC46wo5qAVU

The Fault in Our Stars & How Hank and John Green Changed the World of Media

With the ongoing success of The Fault in Our Stars this weekend, I think it would be a good idea to analyze how John Green and his brother Hank built an empire of entertainment and a vast community through independent means.  It was, after all, this built up community that is to thank for the success of the book and the movie, so it’s something to be studied by anyone who wants to see success in the growing world.

The first thing that’s important to note, even before I go into the history of the Vlog Brothers videos, is that they grew this big not by blatantly trying to grow big, or by shamelessly marketing; and most importantly, not by seeing what had been done before and following some sort of formula.  They honestly and earnestly set out to do something that interested them, and that they thought would be good for the world.  People latched onto that and respected it, and their community grew around them.

So on to their history, which I think will one day be studied in classes around the world.  It began on January 1^st, 2007 when Hank Green posted a video for his brother John Green on the relatively new site Youtube.  Neither brother was well known, had any experience in film or television, and did not live in big cities generally deemed “important.”  They were just two young brothers who decided to speak to each other solely through video.  Hank started it with this upload:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtyXbTHKhI0

He dared John to communicate every day, and if either faltered, the other would be able to decide on a punishment.  John responded, and the two began a dialogue every day with rules that included a short length, they had to talk about something they found interesting, and not much else.  They just had to do it on a regular basis.

They called it Brotherhood 2.0, recognizing this as a sort of 21^st century type of family relationship of the high tech era.  They also began calling themselves and their fans “Nerdfighters,” not after people fighting against nerds, but nerds who are fighting against problems in the world.  Their numbers were a trickle at first, though they had a few more than someone starting today as the competition was nowhere near as fierce in those early days of Youtube.

John was the first to miss a day, and Hank sent it out to the few viewers to determine his punishment.  It would not involve any sort of physical pain, except to eat something that would be very unappetizing, and he had to do it on video.  When he posted it, the views climbed, as humor and childish pranks have a tendency to get more hits.  People continued to watch because their conversations were so interesting.  Hank and John are very curious people, and each video was them trying something new out.  They’re also very creative, and many of their videos involved some trick of cinematography or editing that would make any film school professor proud.

In fact, over the year they continued to grow due to a perfect mixture of policies.  I don’t believe they knew at the time this was the perfect formula for getting views, they just did it and turned out to be right.  They are:

Consistency:  By coming out with a video every day, people could rely on them and knew to tune in to see what they were doing.  This led to the number two biggest reason for their growth…

Quantity:  By having so many videos, they littered the internet, and people couldn’t help but run into them, especially when going on Youtube.  They were able to make so many videos because they kept them:

Low Budget and Easy to Produce:  By keeping the videos as blogs where they simply spoke to the camera, they were able to do one each day.  This lent itself to speed and quantity, and that large quantity also meant they had…

Many Key Words:  Each video had to be titled something, and they always titled it after the subject of their video.  They also put whatever they were mentioning in the metadata, and the description.  Fans also said things in the comments that drew key word searches to them.  The key words were also about…

Things People Wanted to See and Hear:  The brothers talked about things that were famous and big at the time, and also things that people wanted to learn about.  So, if you put in a search about Harry Potter because you were going to see the movie, you saw their video on the Google search.  If you wanted to learn how to stack cards, you’d find their video on stacking cards in the Google search.  They did this through their…

Charm and Charisma:  This is a trait they are naturally good at, but if anyone wanted to do the same, they would need to make sure they have the same sort of friendliness and likeability that gains viewers.  Speaking of which, they…

Involved the Viewers:  They asked questions of the viewers and sparked conversations among them.  This made people feel part of the conversation, and they even referred to things people were saying, which made them feel special.  Viewers could also get through a lot of the videos because they were…

Short and to the Point:  Making one of the rules that videos had to be under four minutes made it easy to go through lots of their videos, and made it less daunting to put them on in the first place.  Plus, it made them get right to the point, which made people stay on the video once they clicked on it.  No fancy graphics or credit sequences, just the video itself.

Most importantly, they have been positive, informative, and funny, the three most important things on the internet.

After the first year was done, they had enough viewers and enough fun doing it that they continued, despite the fact that it didn’t really bring in any money.  They just enjoyed it, and it was getting a following for John’s writing career and Hank’s musical career, so why not?  Plus, they were getting a lot of good friends out of it.  So they went on to the next year.

During that second year, Hank wrote a song about Harry Potter just before the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out.  The subject was, of course, on everyone’s mind because it was a hit movie based on a hit book.  The song was short, fun, and catchy, so when people found it on Google searches when they were intending to find information about the movie, they watched him.  To make matters even better, Youtube featured the song because of the movie’s popularity.  As such, the song became a hit, and people began flooding to Hank’s videos.  This made them automatically also flood to John’s videos, even if that wasn’t their interest.

This is where fate worked perfectly in their favor.  Many of the people who had come to Hank through Harry Potter were young book fans.  John wrote books for young fans.  These people immediately became drawn to John’s books, and became curious about his latest book, which was coming out soon.  This was The Fault in Our Stars.

John not only let the community in on his writing process, but he also made them a part of it.  Comments on the book at that time were read, and he commented back.  Fans found themselves becoming a part of the process, and felt validated by it.  Most importantly, they felt invested in it.

In fact, the book itself was inspired by one of the “Nerdfighters” who herself had cancer, Esther Grace, and who died from it.  John was so moved by her life and plight that he essentially made the lead character a fictitious version of her, and even made an Esther Grace day, which is now commemorated everywhere.  In doing this, he added to the formula the most important ingredient:

Helping Others and Sharing the Spotlight:  If we’re entertainers, we want the spotlight on us.  But ironically, the best way to do that in today’s world is to shine the spotlight on someone else.  Today’s technology works on Karma, and I mean that quite literally.  It’s not just a matter of what goes around comes around, there are two basic elements that go into supporting others comes around to supporting you:

                First of all the people you support will usually support you back, or they’ll find themselves supported by no one.  The more people you support, the more people will send their viewers to you, and your numbers will grow.

                Second, part of the formula of the Google search engine is to see how many links there are to your site.  So the more you link to other sites, the more Google notices you, and the more people will come to you.

Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

I recently learned of someone who refused to place links to other people on his site because, in his words, “I don’t want people leaving my page.”  That man’s page is very lonely.

You see links in the Vlog Brothers videos and posts ALL the time.  This is one of the key elements that has kept them popular.

But most of all, there’s the honesty and integrity.  Hollywood and New York television stations, which have controlled entertainment for more than a century, is based on lies and deceit.  They have done this because it’s worked for them in the past, but what Hollywood producers and New York executives didn’t realize is that it worked because no one had any choice.  Once piracy came along on the internet, people were very willing to do it because they felt no pity for these millionaires who had ripped them off without caring about them, and who truly felt they were more important than the general public.

Anyone wanting into the film industry, myself included, I’m afraid, flocked to these studios and many conformed to their ways to be let in past the velvet rope.  A historic moment happened in John Green’s video Hitler & Sex in 2013 when John Green actually turned down a major television network to instead focus on Youtube.  Up to that time, people used Youtube as a means to an end, placing videos up there to get the attention of studios and networks.  But with this video he said that he only wanted to do things on Youtube, and he had no interest in the exploitive networks.  Here is the video:

What the producers at studios and networks have failed to realize is that people are huge fans of the Vlog Brothers specifically because of their integrity; the very thing these Hollywood and New York producers have shed in their constant pursuit of viewers.  They don’t realize that the very thing they’ve gotten rid of is the very thing that would bring them viewers, not turn them away.  As the Vlog Brothers started more shows with higher production values, such as Crash Course and Sci Show, their viewership has increased.  Instead of going after short gains by doing ridiculous episodes on aliens and the Nazi party that catch viewers initially, they produce videos that give real information.  This does not get viewers immediately, but it keeps them over time, and slowly grows.

As such, their types of productions will continue to grow.  As they do, these same producers and executives in Hollywood and New York who were consistently short sighted in the past will scratch their heads and wonder how they lost power to these young upstarts.  They’ll blame video piracy and lack of star power, as they always do, but, like an alcoholic who refuses to admit he’s got a problem, they’ll never recognize their own faults, and will lag behind until they disappear.

Thank you, Vlog Brothers, Hank and John Green, for helping to shape entertainment into a new golden age.

The Real Independent Video and Film Revolution

Yesterday I had the wonderful privilege of working with Geek & Sundry on their Tabletop Day Special.  It was a huge honor for me as a gamer, but more importantly, as an independent artist.  Even though this blog is intended to be about independent publishing, I’m going to talk today about independent videos on the web because it’s an important element to freelance writers, and more importantly, an important ingredient to independent publications and publicity.

When I first got into film, I wanted to be an independent artist.  I was excited about the whole idea of film festivals and private investors to make heartfelt movies by real artists.  What I found in my 20 years in the film industry was that none of this was true.  The festivals were, at best, “independent” with the word in quotation marks because, first, you couldn’t even get your movie accepted unless you had a celebrity in it, (and you could only get those celebrities in your film if you were part of the Hollywood system,) and aspiring filmmakers who tried to get into the activities of these festivals usually found themselves blocked out by red velvet ropes that separated them from the VIPs.  I found the whole process hypocritical.  There was very little difference between the “independent” scene and the studios.

There was a first internet revolution in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.  Several production companies popped up and there was a central location for videos called iFilm.  At first, these were made up of independent artists excited about pressing the reset button to create a true independent video scene.  Unfortunately, the mentality of many of these places were the same as the studios and “independent” film places.  Some of these companies were even run by the same people.  iFilm itself put up their own red velvet rope by deciding to stop accepting videos they deemed “unworthy” and even kicked a lot of videos off.  One of my own, a short version of The Forgotten Grave, was one of them that was kicked off, even though it had won a competition within iFilm’s own company.

What really killed the first internet revolution was when major movie companies tried to create internet content.  They saw real independent work being done, and they wanted to control it, the way they had bought all the “independent” production studios in 1999 when they swept the Academy Awards.  The result of this attempted take-over was that content became stale, and the larger companies found that there wasn’t enough money in it for them.  What should have been a place for young artists to grow was hijacked by people who wanted lots of money, who then threw it away because there wasn’t enough money in it for them.  The content itself was so much like regular television that people went, why should I watch this when I have TV at a higher quality level.  (In those days, watching on the internet meant you were watching a 2 inch screen that was often jumpy and couldn’t play more than five minutes at a time.)

The second internet revolution has, of course, taken hold.  High internet speeds are given the credit, and to be fair, that is a big part of it.  No one has to watch tiny screens and there’s no time limit.  But the main credit should go to Youtube, who doesn’t believe in the red velvet rope.  Companies like iFilm screwed it up for themselves by trying to follow the studio and film festival models and being exclusionary.  Everything had to be of a certain “quality level” or have celebrities involved.  This destroys innovation and experimentation, but more importantly, it takes the power away from the audience, who should really be deciding what plays and what does not.

This has given rise to some of the greatest entertainment ever to be put on screens.  Individuals from all over the world can now innovate, and others can decide for themselves what they want to watch rather than having some stuffy executive or pertinacious film student deciding what’s “worthy.”  The concept of capitalism itself was based on the idea of competition, and that has made entertainment on the web better.

It has also made other mediums better.  The rise in quality of television shows for programs like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones is due in many ways to this rise in quality in internet entertainment.  Why?  Because the competition is rising, and television executives are realizing they now have to compete with the rest of the world, not just their fellow executives.

What this means to writers is that many more opportunities are arising for work on projects that are more artistic, experimental, and innovative.  Whether searching for work with other companies, or to create product independently, the world of visual entertainment has grown, and in favor of trying new things.  It also aids book authors as video content is always a good way to get people to look at their books.  And with programs like Hit Record, people are sharing content that can then be used to support other artists in every medium, including books, blogs, etc.

So meeting Wil Wheaton yesterday was the equivalent to me of meeting a favorite author.  His show Tabletop, though it’s about gaming and not about writing, is helping every artistic community through being innovative, independent, experimental, and supportive.  Wheaton himself would be considered a “has been” by Hollywood, but rather than letting that get him down and believing what the system says, he took his interest, something most people would consider to be unimportant, and brought it to the forefront.  He shows through his passion and sheer joy how gaming brings people together.  He shows off games by both mainstream and small companies.  Most importantly, rather than being aloof from his community, he becomes a part of it through social media.  He helps others be seen through his Tumblr page, he vlogs to people that catch his attention online, and he treats people he meets on the same level as anyone rather than acting like he’s somehow above them.  Yes, he has celebrity status, but he’s using it to shine spotlights on subjects and people around him rather than demanding million dollar paychecks and entitlements the way most people do.

The new celebrities of the internet are mostly that way.  Some of them were celebrities in film and television, such as George Takei and Joseph Gorden Levitt, but I have to give them credit as well, as they could have just stayed in the more established film and television world, but they have been willing to make less money on the internet in order to be part of this true independent revolution.  As for non-celebrities, you have people like the Green brothers and Jay and Mike at Red Letter Media who are all from the Midwest and would be overlooked in traditional medias, and you have the fantastic comedians at Screen Junkies, How it Should Have Ended, and College Humor.  And if you want gaming, there are channels that have opened up that are very much like sports, such as Tabletop, The Prince of Macedon, World of Tanks, and my own Command Combat Battle Reports.

This democratization has opened up more venues than ever for writers and artists of every genre.  I’m at last satisfied with the independent television and movie scene.

Here are a few of the shows I recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/user/geekandsundry

http://redlettermedia.com/

http://hitplayrecords.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers

https://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom

https://www.youtube.com/user/screenjunkies

https://www.youtube.com/user/Commandcombat

https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldOfTanksCom

https://www.youtube.com/user/nigahiga

https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldScienceU

https://www.youtube.com/user/PrinceofMacedon

https://www.youtube.com/user/collegehumor

Bandwagon Network in Progress

Last year I started making some battle reports of my own game, Command Combat: Civil War, to spread word of the game and hopefully build interest.  Unfortunately, no one watched because no one knew the game.  I figured I'd do a video of a game they do like, Flames of War.  I figured this would bring people to the channel, then they'd watch more about my own game.  This didn't really work in that they didn't come and switch over to my game, but tons of people watched our Flames of War videos.  In fact, Battlefront, which makes Flames of War, placed our videos on their site and we started getting thousands of hits.

I also saw how a lot of videos based on computer games were getting a lot of hits, so I did those.  My girlfriend and I got to having so much fun doing these things that we branched out into several other videos, until it became unclear what our channel was about.  Some who had come to look at Civil War stuff were particularly confused.

And so we're making a new channel called Bandwagon which will include everything from the battle reports to the video games to a review show to board games to history lessons to ways to build and paint miniatures.  We've taped almost everything, and it goes live at the beginning of October.