Bloggasm

(Updated below)

Tor Books, a major science fiction and fantasy publisher, announced recently that it would offer free weekly ebooks of its print titles if you sign up for its email newsletter. But this is just part of a larger online expansion that will include social networking and the publication of original short fiction and nonfiction, sources familiar with the project told me.

Two sources who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said that it’s intended to be a “go-to site, a central community” for science fiction and fantasy fans. A few authors have already been approached to submit original short fiction to be published online. Tor is paying upwards of 25 cents per word for these stories and right now is only dealing with solicited authors.

According to one of the sources, this website will act in part as a form of branding and promotion for Tor book titles, “with an eye towards leveraging traffic into advertising revenues, down the road.” The project is being largely organized by Patrick Nielson Hayden, a senior editor at Tor.

So far the details of this site have remained a secret, hence why the sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an email on Friday, Nielsen Hayden confirmed many of these facts.

“Yes, it will involve lightweight ’social networking’ features, although I don’t think those will be the core value proposition of the site,” he said. “We’re not going into competition with Facebook.”

The editor described the site as “a platform for original short SF and fantasy, by both Tor authors and non-Tor authors.”

As for those free ebooks?

“The free digital books are exactly what we say they are: an inducement to get people to pre-register as users and allow us to send them emailed progress reports,” Nielsen Hayden said. “The book-length freebies are a temporary program slated to run from now until when we launch. Although the site will be ‘giving away’ a lot of content–indeed, all of its content, as we don’t anticipate any part of it being DRMed or paywalled–the core of the site will not be built around a program of free novel giveaways. That said, we reserve the right to give away free digital books any time we think it’s a good idea to do so. (With the cooperation and consent of their authors, naturally.)”

He confirmed that the site would be functional in approximately three months, “but any such estimate has a large margin of error.”

Ebooks slated for free publication include Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, and Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold.

In an article published last week titled “The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?” I predicted that many companies would launch online publications to act as a form of branding for their products. I think this project with Tor supports my theory.

UPDATE: Irene Gallo, an Art director for Tor, writes:

I will add that the commissioned fiction will be accompanied by commissioned artwork and we are working gallery section that will contain portfolios for 100 artists. This wont be the kind of peer-to-peer workshop site that ConceptArt.org and CgSociety is, but it will be a place for fans and art directors to get a taste of an artist’s work and then link into the artists’ sites.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. For political cartoonist, how do you draw caricatures of Obama and Clinton and not come off as racist or sexist?

2. I’m late to the party, but apparently Sam Zell, new owner of the Tribune Company, recently said “fuck you” to one of his own journalists.

3. Now this is a way to go out in style. A Yahoo employee who gets laid off twitters his entire last day at work.

4. Has anyone else noticed that with ebook/Kindle and its recent purchase of Audible, Amazon is quickly changing its sales product from real-world objects to digital bits?

5. Kevin Kelly argues for why we need online editors. In other words, crowd sourcing isn’t valuable unless there’s a leader.

6. HarperCollins to release books for free on the web. Too bad they’re doing it on silly terms.

7. And as a follow-up about Sam Zell, apparently his workers aren’t given the same profanity privileges.

Via nick I came across something truly bizarre tonight.

It’s a man named Ashida Kim. Based on his website, he appears to be some kind of ninja, who operates a publishing company called Dojo Press. This is one of the books he’s written:

On his website, he has a link to an “official shit list” with all sorts of bizarre accusations. Who’s on this shit list?

Jimmy Wales and all of Wikipedia. Also, publishers called Paladin Press and Citadel Press. Apparently they withheld author royalties from him or something.

Confused yet? Me too.

But these guys better be careful. This guy is a certified ninja warrior. Here’s the flap summary of one his books titled “21st Century Weapons of the NINJA”:

Ninja Master Ashida Kim demonstrates two of the most likely weapons man will face as mankind moves out into space in the new millennia.

ALIEN HORN SPEAR-
Based on the principles of how an alien beast might use its horns, this stainless steel double ended weapon might be used by any warrior race ravaging the universe.

LASER SWORD-
Man, or some similar alien species, will almost find a method of harnessing Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation into a coherent beam that can be used much in the manner of a 20th century sword.

And don’t think it stops there. You absolutely have to watch this Youtube video embedded below in which he demonstrates his laser sword skills:

Some media-related links for your amusement:

1. What news outlets can learn from the porn industry. Let me just say that I agree with all the points made in those links. This is precisely why I announced not too long ago that I would begin covering the porn industry in this blog.

2. Tobias Buckell talks about freelancing full time and the importance of getting out of the house and socializing.

3. Ebook sales for the Sony Reader are still outpacing the sales for Amazon’s Kindle.

4. The perils of taking a press release and flipping it without making any follow-up phone calls.

5. Yes! Facebook is taking measures to cut down on the spam effect of its platform applications.

6. Those internet trolls that plague message boards? A court ruled that they can remain anonymous.

7. From Gizmodo: “If there was ever a time for a band to try going completely independent, this is it. Why give over 90% of your income away to greedy sleazebags when you can sell your music online without the middleman? This industry needs to be burned to the ground and built back up again; it’s broken and it seems less and less likely that it’ll be able to be fixed”

This list is fairly anemic, but I’ve been busy this week and haven’t had much internet-surfing time. Anyway, here are some media-related links:

1. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is one of the first Big Idea books of the 21st century — and though it presents a number of ideas about how trends spread, the notion that most people found intriguing was the fact that a small number of “influencers” were responsible for huge trends. Well, a man named Duncan Watts has devoted his life to proving Gladwell wrong.

2. Here are some pictures of workplaces in Web 2.0 companies. My favorite is the Craigslist pics — it looks like the company is run out of an apartment.

3. Waxy caught a PR flack link spamming social networking and media sites to promote The Times (UK). Given that so many desperate get-rich-quick bloggers spam these sites every day, I was rather unperturbed after reading this news.

4. Yes, I realize that Clinton is a minority and Obama is a minority. When did it become the trend amongst journalists to try to predict how other minorities will vote for each one? First there were the blacks, then there were the Latinos. With this next minority it’s just getting ridiculous: The Jews
. Update: They’re also apparently fighting over the gays. This is beyond parody.

5. A cool profile of a niche blogger who writes about immigration issues.

6. With some of the major news magazines like Newsweek and Time, so many reporters have contributed to investigating a story that it’s almost misleading to give a byline to a single person. One Newsweek journalist talks about his own experience grappling with this problem.

Geez, I didn’t realize that I had let so many of these pile up without posting them. Anyway, here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. I don’t know how many people know this, but media organizations love political seasons because there’s a huge influx of paid political advertising that go into them. Not just with political candidates, but also special interest groups. Unfortunately for newspapers, presidential candidates stick mainly to radio and television advertisements. But it looks like this year the internet is going to get a sizeable chunk of that ad revenue.

2. On a related note, internet ad revenue is expected to hit $50 billion by 2011.

3. In a world in which phone calls, faxes, emails and websites are easily-used research tools, is journalism suffering because journalists no longer need to visit the locale on which they’re reporting? Media Shift explores this issue.

4. The New York Times has a cool profile of a military blogger who has embedded himself in Iraq.

5. I’ve never heard of Josh Harris, but then again I was just a kid in the 90s. Whoever he is, he’s trying to make a comeback.

6. Although I enjoy reading Digg and subscribe to its RSS feed — I’ve also made it onto its front page twice — I long-ago stopped caring whether my site every gets linked on it. Too many people try to game it; friending and networking and all sorts of silly tactics to try to get on its front page. It really is a sad sight to see so many bloggers write about the best way to make it onto the front page. The irony of it all is that a reader wrote in to me to tell me Bloggasm seems to have been banned from being submitted on Digg — something I find humorous considering how many people who aren’t banned who are actively trying to game it. Anyway, to address this gaming problem, Digg creators have once again changed the super secret algorithm to try and stop said gaming.

7. “An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam.” This is a US-backed government in a country we’re currently occupying. Surely the US can do something to reverse this?

8. Note to Fox News guests: Don’t go on television and start ranting about a video game you haven’t played or know nothing about, or else the internet will pwn you.

9. Mashable has a cool post about the nightmare that the internet has caused for PR companies. I wrote a similar post awhile back titled When viral marketing backfires. Mashable lists International Delete Your Myspace Account Day as one of its examples.

10. It’s always interesting when authors turn down book prizes. Do they do it because it essentially doubles the publicity for the book? In light of the Oprah/Franzen debacle, forgive me for being a skeptic.

11. Jon Stewart vs Jonah Goldberg.

12. I’m a 42-year-old gay man with a superhero fetish

13. An article arguing that female stars like Spears and Hilton get piled on by the press while male stars, who are experiencing similar downward spirals (Heath Ledger) get ignored until after the downfall has reached its end.

14. Daniel Schorr, a 91-year-old NPR commentator, tells bloggers to get off his lawn. He then turns to the journalist interviewing him and says, “Where are my pants?”

15. The Columbia Journalism Review was among the first to bring up the idea of government subsidizing journalism. Now Tech Crunch picks up the torch.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. There’s a subculture in New York that digs through old buildings and dumpsters to find rare old books.

2. A scientist talks about his experience being interviewed by Stephen Colbert. He actually tried to anticipate Colbert’s faux arguments beforehand for preparation.

3. Note to self: If I ever become an editor of a major magazine, I should probably refrain from using the image of a noose on the cover.

4. Search Atheism on the rise: “A new study from the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future has found that a growing number of people no longer believe that search results are reliable and accurate.”

5. Techcrunch has a rundown of the fastest growing websites on the web compared to the websites that are decreasing rapidly in visitors. Let’s hope that Myspace will soon join the latter list.

6. Speaking of Myspace, they should take a lesson from the New York Times: Visitors hate annoying advertisements.

7. We’ve heard of the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, but one geared towards the presidential primary? I think there should be a photoshop contest of Ron Paul trying to appeal to kids voters.

8. Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald made a good catch: Passive Voice Journalism. How could so many mainstream journalists mention the 2000 John McCain smear without talking about the source of the smear?

9. More reports that UK news sites have more readers outside the UK than in.

10. This is pretty cool, The Atlantic Monthly is releasing all of its content for free online.