I think would diminish independent author rights. Quite often, a novel will become popular only decades after publishing, and I think the author should be able to profit on the fruits of their labour without wealthy corporations tarnishing their original IP, or creating TV shows and the link with no reperations to the creator. Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were…
Paul, I get a sense that you have a keenly ingrained sense of morality and justice. What you may want to try is looking at fictional or hypothetical scenarios which depicts people's actions from an observer's point of view. Then compare the same facts coming from a friend's point of view. You will be astonished at how different the two can be. Nobody here is saying the YC and VC community are all evil super-villians. But as PG's essay and your views here indicate, there may be a startlingly shallow understanding of the nuances of human behavior in the YC community as a whole. Techies such…
I think there's two big factors. One is book vs script length. A film is 100 pages. Novels are 250+. This means big story-arch rewrites. It can really kill plot & character development. This is where series open up a lot of possibility. That's usually the biggest adaption, but there are lots of other big things that must change. Novels can do character thoughts, exposition and other things well. For example, a strategic battle scene will work in a book. In a film, it's near impossible so they focus on action and drama. Films do visual representation, so action-rich scenes work. They get…
I'm not going to argue too strenuously for any particular number, so long as your proposed number is lower than "70 years ranging upward to infinity" - don't look a fantasy gift horse in the mouth, right? - but I'll just point out that even if "A Game of Thrones" were magically out of copyright today, Martin would still be benefiting from the surge of interest. The interest would sell the sequels that were still under copyright. It would sell the sequels that have yet to be written. It isn't even obvious that Martin himself wouldn't benefit from the additional publicity of giving his…
If A Game of Thrones were out of copyright, he wouldn't be collecting royalties on the adaptations -- unless he made such an agreement while it was still under copyright. One side effect of making copyright terms short, as is being discussed, is that studios could freely make movies (video games, etc.) based on all but the most recent works without seeking approval or paying royalties. And if HBO's adaptation of A Game of Thrones was popular but was relatively inaccessible since most people don't have an HBO subscription, any random person could make their own adaptation of the book and…
Consider that "A Game of Thrones" was published 16 years ago, but its sales only really started taking off last year. I feel like it would be a shame if George R. R. Martin, who is still alive and writing the series, was getting absolutely nothing from this surge of interest. Some creative works simply take a while to get going in the culture. I don't think we should punish creative folks who are, for lack of a better term, "ahead of their time." Obviously this concept could be taken to an absurd extreme, but I would argue that 25 years is better than 14. It's at least closer to the duration…
> How do you individually address an issue where the hiring manager is making a generic decision based on age unrelated to your individual performance (especially in hiring where they have no idea how many hours you personally work)? There isn't evidence of this, but even if you believed that were the case, you combat it the same way you would any other weak point of your value proposition. You address it head on in a tactful way that resolves those concerns without having to be asked explicitly. That could include interest and experience in an emerging tool or architecture (combats…
Visceral description has its place, but it needs to be used sparingly. This guy's prose runs so purple it verges on eggplant (or, as he'd probably say, aubergine). And the various slips in and out of Aussie vernacular are jarring. I understand the intended effect, but it's like salt on your scrambled eggs: a little bit goes a long way. Too much, and the salt's all you can taste. He can turn a clever phrase, but he tends to indulge himself. When he does, he gets way too cute. He's got the descriptive power to be a great writer, but he needs to be a better self editor. Reading this story…
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the premium content will be, its something I would like to talk more to authors about and test a variety of things as the platform develops. Imagine that you were reading Game of Thrones, you might consider paying a dollar to read an extra chapter about the Iron Islands. Perhaps a short story of a Greyjoy adventure. We would be different to Amazon simply because the structure is very different. Most of our content will be free. Our focus will be on building a fanbase for the author, and selling those fans special privileges. I've been a game…
I don't know that A Game of Thrones is a good example, at all. The series was already remarkable commercial success before the TV adaptation. A Feast for Crows debuted at #1 on the NYT list in 2005. The series sold millions of copies prior to the TV series. That's more successful than the average successful Fantasy novel by orders of magnitude. If the books sold even more copies after being adapted, that's because HBO put the story on TV, not because of anything the author did. And, of course, even if the first book in the series lost it's copyright after 28 years (nearly three decades!),…