http://sydneymediajam.com/sitebuilder/
Newbbay.com is a first. It’s “live” writing in front of an audience, including other writers. It’s a showcase opportunity, and it’s an incubator in the sense that it adds heat and light to creative productivity and creative thinking.
Starting a website is very much a process of getting things right. We had a fantastic reaction to our new site, and lots of authors inquiring about publishing. We got a fascinating array of writing styles, story ideas, and it must be said we also got the genuine article in terms of many highly committed writers.
We also had IT problems we didn’t suspect while this was all happening, which came home to roost in a range of ways, from dysfunctional site features and code issues. A few dozen large, annoying, spanners went in to the works.
Starting anything with high ideals ultimately means living up to those ideals. We had to balance our standards against non-delivery of the things we needed. This situation got serious, and no amount of extremely patient diplomacy got us much response. It certainly didn’t get us the response we needed. The IT had to go, and we needed solutions.
That’s a major deal, in terms of how the site operates and how well it functions. Changing IT is like changing parents for websites. It’s nerve wracking, and emotionally challenging. We’re having to effectively rebirth and reboot the site, and that’s coming along at a respectable speed.
Fortunately for us, we’ve also wound up with a lot of good books. At last count, I found we had at least 24+ commercially viable books which didn’t need any maintenance work on them. That may well be some sort of record in the publishing industry. Most publishers, particularly at startup stage, have a very small base of actual commercial product. A few good books are a major achievement, and we have literally dozens.
The new Newbbay.com
We’re now in a position to start offering our writers better deals, too. We’re just tweaking the new contracts now, hopefully to be ready when the new site launches. We’re looking at print on demand, and we’ve even been getting inputs into transforming books into scripts for film production. (Being based in LA does have a few advantages.)
Meanwhile, we’re looking for new writers around the world. We’re currently advertising in LA, London, and Sydney, with more to come. We need the innovators, the mavericks, and the self-starters. We need depth and range of writing subjects. We need people who have their own vision to share with ours.
The Newbbay.com story is just starting. This is about writers, by writers, for writers. I don’t have any respect at all for the publishers who won’t try new things and won’t give new writers a break without a ton of bureaucracy attached. We’re doing better stuff than they are, even at startup stage.
In my book Wanderlaugh you’ll find a story about The Academy of Artistic Cowardice. This was a whole artistic idiom of doing precisely nothing. Dancers wouldn’t dance. Sculptors wouldn’t sculpt. Need I say that’s not exactly our idea of how to do any kind of art.
Whatever the future brings, Newbbay.com won’t be accused of gutless conformity and cookie cutter creative product. We’re here to bring chaos to a smug industry, and given a whiff of gas, that’s exactly what we’ll do. Literature is the basis of real civilization and the heart of human expression. We’re going to see how far we can take our stuff. If Artistic Apathy Land doesn’t like it, it can get out of the bloody way.
Copyright Paul Wallis. All rights reserved . www,sydneymediajam.com
