Reopening the Sundman files

Mike Linksvayer, April 27th, 2006

Gonzo SF novelist John Sundman was an early adopter of Creative Commons and of publishing books on the web before Creative Commons existed. About three years ago I read his first two books, Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices (both highly recommended) and intended to interview him shortly after. The interview didn’t happen (entirely my fault), but with serialization of The Pains now is an opportune time to reopen the Sundman files…

Three years ago you
licensed
two books under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, now you’re
serializing a third,
The Pains, under the
current version of the same license. As a repeat user, how has Creative Commons and
this license worked for you?

The biggest consequence of my using the Creative Commons license has
been the change in my own head.

In 1999, in what was a relatively rare move at the time, I put the
first 13 chapters of Acts of the Apostles, in HTML, up on my website
wetmachine. This was a teaser, about one third of the book. If you
wanted to read the rest of the story, you had to buy the book from me.
This strategy worked very well. I was a totally unknown, self-published
author, and within a few months I was getting book orders from
everywhere. Michigan! Florida! Saskatchewan! Korea! Sweden! Singapore!
I was so paranoid about “losing sales” to people who would read the
whole book online that I didn’t even have the sources on a machine that
was connected to the Internet.

In 2002, I put the first bit of Cheap Complex Devices online in HTML,
and made the PDF of the whole book available for five bucks. This was
an honor system, no DRM, and I was nervous about it. I sold about a
hundred such licenses, which was a pretty easy way to earn $$.

Then I went to Etech in 2003 and found out about Creative Commons, and
impulsively in the spirit of the moment, I put the complete sources to
both books up. I actually did this while at Etech, with the help of
Rusty Foster, of Kuro5hin fame.

Already my thinking had started to change. Whereas before I had been
concerned about “canabalizing” sales of my books (and ebooks), I had
started to become more concerned with creating a wider audience. I saw
what Cory Doctorow was doing, self-promotionwise, and it was clear that
he was a rising star. Now, I love Cory and his books, but I don’t
think they’re any better than my own, so I had to ask myself “why him
and not me”? And part of the answer, in addition to his incredible work
ethic and outgoing personality and sheer volume of output, was that he
was giving his stuff away, and even encouraging people to mash it up.
“Mashing up” was and still is considered “ripping off” by lots and lots
of people — I used to be in that camp — and so his way of looking at
things was a challenge to me. But the results were good for him, and
besides, it looked like fun.

People continue to download my books and they continue to buy print
copies. I assume that having the free PDFs has contributed to my
overall sales rate of printed books, but I have no way to test that
hypothesis. It’s not like I’m getting rich off of this hobby, by the
way. In a good year I make a few thousand bucks. I could probably
make more money with a lemonade stand. But I’m certain that having the
books available has made them more visible, and has made self
publishing at least plausible, and more fun. People assume
self-published books suck, and I used to spend a lot of energy
defending myself to cynics and skeptics. But when your books are
completely available for free online, you don’t have to spend any
energy at all trying to convince people that you are a legitimate
writer. And now Cory Doctorow has initiated this meme that I’m a “gonzo
SF novelist.” Hey look, I’m a rock star! That’s kind of neat.

The reason I like the Creative Commons “no derivatives” license is that
I think at least one of my books would make a great movie, and it would
piss me off no end if some big corporate studio were to get rich off of
it and not compensate me. I don’t like big media companies, in general.
So Creative Commons makes me feel like I’m not totally naked in that
respect. (Not that I think that was a likely development, but one
never knows, does one?)

Nowadays I don’t spend any energy at all worrying about how to
“protect” my investment in writing. I just don’t think about it.
Rather, I think about how to make more of the opportunities afforded by
today’s technology. I’m pretty old fashioned in a lot of ways and I’m
not of the gee-whiz camp that a lot of your readers are. I’m more of a
technoparanoid than a champion of the future. But I figure that I’m
not going to stop the tide, so I might as well have some fun surfing.

Thanks for that very informative answer. I hate to be a pain but there’s an obvious followup. The “no derivatives” part of the license is a blanket prohibition on derivative works (excepting fair use of course), including noncommercial “mash ups.” The noncommercial provision by itself prevents big corporate studios (or anyone) from making money with your work without first negotiating with you. Usually people use a “no derivatives” license because they don’t want their message changed or in the interest of artistic integrity. Could you expand on why you chose “no derivatives” or perhaps consider switching to a license that allows derivatives as Cory did after a year? :-)

For the time being I think I’ll leave as is for three reasons:

1) Because the artwork is copyrighted to the artist, Matthew Frederick
Davis Hemming, I don’t want to offer a blanket release on rights to my
part of the book lest there be any confusion about that. He and I have
not worked out how we feel about modifications to ”
the-thing-as-it-is”. Also, because the roll-out is incremental and so
forth, I’m exploring new territory. Therefore I want to control some
of the variables.

2) In the case of a translation into a foreign language, I would at
least like to discuss the approach with the translator. Especially
since that’s a case that naturally lends itself to financial
transactions. I do point out that in the cases where I’ve been
approached for translation rights to Acts of the Apostles, I have given
them, with no charge. I don’t know if the translations ever appeared,
although I do know a translation into Russian was at least begun.

3) I’m lazy and don’t want to bother updating the website, or even
thinking any more about this, before you post the blog entry.

I’m especially sympathetic with the third reason given that it’s taken me three years to conduct this interview. Thanks again for the informative answers and good luck with The Pains serialization!

Check out John Sundman’s books on wetmachine.com.