I recently had a fairly big discussion burst into being on brand dilution and similar concerns from fanfiction in response to a journal post I put up early this month on those subjects. I work in online marketing (among other things), so it's a major concern for me conceptually and in terms of my actual real-life job.
That being said, I don't think this qualifies as brand dilution at all. The work would have to be derivative for it to qualify as such. This is actual distilled work from specific authors. It's propagation of individual authors' work according to reader desires -- the work is unmodified and therefore there is no dilution.
The people that have to worry about this are indeed anthology editors (particularly anthology editors who reprint work), and I think there is certainly author-driven reason to support those folk. But I also think that, like Deb is saying, quality editors of that kind of work have nothing to fear from a website like this, which is another beast entirely.
I think it is wholly a good thing for authors, especially ones still working to achieve notoriety -- and for authors who are trying to pull in new audiences from related audiences. The cross-pollination potential is fantastic.
The only potential author concern here would be if you offered ALL of your stories on this site and then wanted to put together your own short story collection, you might be at risk of undercutting yourself for future sales of your original collection in the future if all the stories were available through AB.
"Brand"-wise I think it would be wisest for a writer to put their most well-known stories up on AB, examples of their best work that they would want to offer up as additions for people to sample their work in paper format when they were putting together a collection including a bunch of their favorite authors. Then in a separate collection you can add other more "acquired taste" stories and toss in an original to drive sales of the new book.
Re the royalty comment above, what they're doing is just bunching together payments because otherwise the overhead on by-the-penny royalty payments makes their model untenable. So long as they aren't requiring you to have a royalty payout in a certain amount of time (eg all royalties go away in 6 months if you haven't reached $20) there's nothing insalubrious about it.
PS, hi Dave! I am Odyssey05 and I think I've emailed you before. I just followed Joanne's link to your journal -- I could have sworn I'd already added you, but I guess not! Maybe I just had your old blogspot address added. Mistake corrected. I really loved "Iron Ankles" and it certainly deserved to be picked out in several of the YBs. Best with the new book!
For my part I would love if you would put some of your SH stories on AB so that I could make an anthology with your work and Matt's and a few others' in it. What I see in the future for this technology is alternate "year's best" collections, charity collections, what-have-yous -- there's tons of potential. It will be interesting to see where it goes and I concur with Matt that it will be something advantageous to be on the ground floor of.
no subject
That being said, I don't think this qualifies as brand dilution at all. The work would have to be derivative for it to qualify as such. This is actual distilled work from specific authors. It's propagation of individual authors' work according to reader desires -- the work is unmodified and therefore there is no dilution.
The people that have to worry about this are indeed anthology editors (particularly anthology editors who reprint work), and I think there is certainly author-driven reason to support those folk. But I also think that, like Deb is saying, quality editors of that kind of work have nothing to fear from a website like this, which is another beast entirely.
I think it is wholly a good thing for authors, especially ones still working to achieve notoriety -- and for authors who are trying to pull in new audiences from related audiences. The cross-pollination potential is fantastic.
The only potential author concern here would be if you offered ALL of your stories on this site and then wanted to put together your own short story collection, you might be at risk of undercutting yourself for future sales of your original collection in the future if all the stories were available through AB.
"Brand"-wise I think it would be wisest for a writer to put their most well-known stories up on AB, examples of their best work that they would want to offer up as additions for people to sample their work in paper format when they were putting together a collection including a bunch of their favorite authors. Then in a separate collection you can add other more "acquired taste" stories and toss in an original to drive sales of the new book.
Re the royalty comment above, what they're doing is just bunching together payments because otherwise the overhead on by-the-penny royalty payments makes their model untenable. So long as they aren't requiring you to have a royalty payout in a certain amount of time (eg all royalties go away in 6 months if you haven't reached $20) there's nothing insalubrious about it.
PS, hi Dave! I am Odyssey05 and I think I've emailed you before. I just followed Joanne's link to your journal -- I could have sworn I'd already added you, but I guess not! Maybe I just had your old blogspot address added. Mistake corrected. I really loved "Iron Ankles" and it certainly deserved to be picked out in several of the YBs. Best with the new book!
For my part I would love if you would put some of your SH stories on AB so that I could make an anthology with your work and Matt's and a few others' in it. What I see in the future for this technology is alternate "year's best" collections, charity collections, what-have-yous -- there's tons of potential. It will be interesting to see where it goes and I concur with Matt that it will be something advantageous to be on the ground floor of.