Blog Fiction and StumbleUpon

If you've never heard of stumbleupon(SU), think of it like flipping through your 400+ TV channels, except you're doing it on the internet. If you're a user of SU, here's how it works. You tell SU what you're interested in. Then you install their toolbar into your web browser. Then you press the Stumble button and it takes you to a random website. You can continue doing that until you find something interesting. Then for better targeting you can rate whether or not you liked a certain website. Supposedly then, it'll narrow your stumble websites down to just what you like.

How does this work for driving traffic to your blog fiction? Pretty darn good. The only tricky part is getting several people to rate your site positively. The more people that rate your site positively, the more people will get sent to your site. It's a pretty good system. I've had a couple people "stumble" my website. Everytime they do that, my web traffic has a small spike that lasts 2 or 3 days.

If no one has stumbled your website, you can get your own account and then stumble your own site. Note however that it probably won't get as much new traffic to your site as older accounts would if they "stumble" your site. The older a stumble account is, and the more "friends" that person has, the more important that person's opinion is.

Bottom line, if you're looking for free promotion, StumbleUpon is going to be worth your time.

Fan Fiction and Copyright

Online writer's of "Fan Fiction" need to be really careful of violating copyright. If you don't know, Fan Fiction is (usually) online fiction based on a popular book, tv show, or movie. Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Lord of the Rings are some of the popular targets of fan fiction writers.

Fan Fiction by it's very nature needs to be very careful because almost by it's very definition it is copyright infringement. Copyright, at least in the U.S., doesn't protect just copying and distributing a work, but it also protects reusing characters created by another author. For instance, J.K. Rowling used international copyright laws to shutdown people using the Harry Potter Character.

You're probably asking why I say this on a blog about blog fiction? Well, the reason is is that 2 of the active fictional blogs are writing fan fiction. In both cases I think both are pushing copyright law to the edge. Captain Picard's Journal and Life in Bear Country. Both of them are based on a TV show.

In spite of these blogs being based on someone else's work there are a couple things that protect the authors from infringing on the original author's copyright. Not being a legal scholar myself, I'll depend on the people at Chilling Effects to interpret the law for me.

1. Fair Use:

   The fair use doctrine says that otherwise copyrighted works may be used for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. To decide whether a use is "fair use" or not, courts consider:

   (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
   (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
   (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
   (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

   Parody is also fair use.

2. Borrowed World, Not Characters:

   It seems unlikely that a FanFic work would include no previous characters but it is not impossible to imagine. Take Tolkien's "Middle-earth" world for example: this world has been taken without the main characters and has been used in role playing games (RPGs) and video games (see the TSR example below). For these cases, it is important to remember that copyright does not extend to ideas. Therefore, incidents, settings or other elements which are indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given topic are ideas and cannot be copyrighted. For example, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that "elements such as drunks, prostitutes, vermin and derelict cars would appear in any realistic work about the work of policemen in the South Bronx." These "scenes a faire" are therefore unprotected. Likewise, the Seventh Circuit has held that mazes, tunnels and scoring tables are unprotected under the scenes a faire doctrine in video games like Duke Nukem.

3. Non profit:

   If the court finds that you unlawfully copied, it has several possible options. First, and most likely, an injunction could be granted to prevent the author from publishing and distributing the FanFic. The infringing materials could even be destroyed. The court also has the power to award monetary damages. The amount of damages would depend on the lost revenue suffered by the copyright owner and possible profits earned by the FanFic author. Generally, the loss of revenue is rare since FanFic does not draw audiences away from the original; rather, FanFic often serves to enhance sales of the original work. And if FanFic is not for profit, then it is unlikely that the author will have any profits to report. Since there is seldom lost revenue and profits, plaintiffs will often go for "statutory damages." This award can be between $200 (innocent infringement) and $100,000 (willful infringement) for each work infringed. [emphasis mine]
   

4. Apathetic Copyright Holder:

   Different companies have different methods in dealing with FanFic. Some, like Paramount Pictures, see that FanFic could actually help boost their sales and so encourage the writing of FanFic. Other companies are presumably waiting for more business information and legal clarity before making a decision.

What probably protects Captain Picard's Journal is #1. It's fair use. How is it fair use? It's a satire or parody.

Life in Bear Country is another story. It is not a parody. It doesn't have ads on it's website so it's not making any money. So unless the studio that owns the rights to the original material are real A-holes they won't care. Today, though, I noticed something disturbing. Life in Bear Country is printing a book and selling it. Uh oh, it's not a parody and now the author stands to make money off of it.

This really caught me by surprise because i remember from the disclaimer of the original site that:

the staff has a mortal fear of lawyers.

You would think that if they have a mortal fear of lawyers they wouldn't be printing a book based on a tv show without permission. The only thing that may save them is exception #2 from above. She only borrowed "the world". The story and characters are original. That being the case, I still think she's pushing it. I hope for her sake that she got permission or consulted with a lawyer knowledgeable about copyright laws.

My advice to everyone who's writing fan fiction is to be risk adverse. If you're writing fan fiction either make damn sure that it's obviously a parody, or don't make any money off of it. (by selling advertising or otherwise) If you want to make money from writing online, write wholly original stuff for two reasons. First, you won't have to worry about getting sued. Second, if you want a publishing company to take you seriously they'll expect that you can write original stuff.

Oh yeah... one more thing. I too have "a mortal fear of lawyers". Therefore let me add this disclaimer:
The information provided in this blog post is *not* legal advice.

Congrats & (temporary) Goodbye Wilf

It's time for my favorite game... the (Yeah! - Boo!) game.

Wilf, of Wilf's World fame, is going to be published. (YEAH!)

Wilf will be taking a well deserved break while it gets published. (BOO!)

But Wilf will be back to blogging starting May 1st. (YEAH!)

I will be taking down the Wilf's World RSS feed on the left, since it no longer fits my "active" requirement. (BOO!)

But I'll add it right back as soon as he starts blogging again. (YEAH!)

Here's to the success of your book, Wilf. Also, thanks for the head's up.

Better Google Rank with Blogspot?

Just as an addendum to yesterday's discussion about blog fiction and search engines. If you are still interested in getting traffic from search engines there's something I noticed. If you want quick traffic to your blog you may want to use blogger. The evidence is anecdotal at best, but enough to consider.

I had Terran Resistance up for months before it started showing up in searches other than "Terran Resistance". However, this blog, almost immediately - as in within a week - I started getting search engine traffic. Since blogger is owned and run by google, it makes me wonder if google somehow favors blogger sites.

There are, of course, other plausible explanations. Perhaps this blog was more "google friendly". Or the keywords were better. Maybe it got backlinks quicker so that it went up in importance. Even with those other possible explanations, it still seems damn odd that the difference is a week vs months. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this.

Update: It appears that at least one other person has speculated on this phenomenon.

Blog Fiction and Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is finding little tricks for creating your website so that it will be more friendly to search engines. By "friendly" I mean so that when somebody does a google or yahoo search, your website will come up instead of somebody else's. Most SEO concentrates of google since that's where nearly 60% of all web searches are done.

There are 2 basic ways to make your website more visible to search engines.
1. Make it easier to be searched by a search engine
2. Make it more important.(usually accomplished by getting other websites to link to yours)

There are entire websites, books, and seminars dedicated to teaching you the finer points of SEO. Therefore I can't really add anything new on how to do it. What I can say is that, based on what I've seen, if you have a website with only fictional content (like a fictional blog). Don't waste your time on it. Just let it happen.

Nearly 6 months went by after going live I got zero traffic from search engines on Terran Resistance. I then spent weeks, maybe months, learning about SEO. I made my forums and blog more searchable. I spent time on other forums and blogs creating links to my site and getting others to provide links. Now that I've done all that "optimizing" I now get at least 1 hit every other day. So you might think that it worked right? Well... let's take a look at the top 5 searches that brought people to my website in 2007:

1. women in combat
2. terranresistance.com
3. marine drills
4. fast marines
5. drills marine

Well, that'll teach me to write militaristic scifi. So it looks like people that find my site aren't finding what they are looking for, and people looking for a fiction aren't finding my site. Oh and 2008 isn't looking much better. No one looking up info about marines has found me, but I am getting some equally random searches:

• Kramble (1)
  
• Terran Miller (1)
  
• ramona steele (2)
  
• alex chou (1)
  

To a human, these searches make no sense. Searches that SHOULD be finding my website are, "fiction", "science fiction", "blog fiction", or "online writing". To a machine like google though, it does make sense. Google, and most every search engine is based on the words on a website. Therefore, the words that appear on my website like "ramona steele" and "marine drills", are the search words that bring up my website.

This is the problem with people finding online fiction. Search Engines can rarely bring you directly to a fictional story base on how they work. Instead people are more likely to find websites that have lists of online fiction. Therefore, if you're trying to promote your online fiction, don't worry about getting traffic directly from search engines - like I did. Find websites that catalog online fiction(like this one) and get a link on that website.

Hardest working fictional blogger: Jean-Luc Picard

If there was an award for hardest working blog fiction writer it would definitely go to the person running Captain Picard's Journal. It's only day 7 of 2008 and they already have 4 posts into the new year. Not only that, they also kept new content flowing all through the holiday season. Kudos.

Now contrast that work to me. From December 11th until now, I essentially fell off the face of the blogosphere. Makes me feel like a slacker. Although, looking at the rss feeds on the right, it looks like I'm not the only one who's posting slowed down in December. So that makes me feel a little better.

That's the tough part of writing blog fiction. Not only does it require all of the writing skills of other types of fiction writing, but you have to be creating new content constantly to keep readership up - just like in a normal blog. I have no doubt that Captain Picard's Journal's flow of new and consistent content makes it so popular. The rest of us blog fiction writer's could learn a thing or 2 from it.

Be Considerate to Your Readers

There is nothing I dislike more than being forced to guess if a blog is still active or not. This goes for both fiction and non-fiction blogs.

Here's the picture, you find a page on a blog that's interesting. You visit the blogs homepage. The latest entry is 4 weeks old. Looking at the archives you see that posting is usually at least once a week. Now you have to ask yourself. Is this blog abandoned, or is the person just get a little busy. Should you bookmark it and come back later, subscribe to the feed, or just write it off?

More and more I just write it off. I think it's good blog etiquette that if your normal posting schedule has gone awry for whatever reason, then you need to let people know. That way your current readership will know what's going on, and if any new readers come by they'll know that the blog isn't really abandoned.

That's why today I was going to post at terran resistance that posting was going to be suspended at least until Monday, the 24th (Stupid Day Job!). That's when I discovered that my site was down!!! Well, technically it's not "down", it's just that the server isn't processing my php code. Which, when your entire site is written in php, it results to your site being "down".

Anyways, that site is "down" and even after it comes back up, posting there, as well as here, will be suspended at least until the December 24th (Hello Christmas vacation!).

"Best Fictional Blog" isn't a Fictional Blog

The Black WebLog Awards for 2007 were announced back in September. Much to their credit they had a category for Best Fictional Blog. Much to my chagrin the judges pick for the winner isn't really a fictional blog. It's a serialized fiction published on a blog. Don't get me wrong. It's an entertaining story and it has a solid following, but it's not really a fictional blog.

The story is written as a novel. The only online device used by the author is that in between each post some time passes. The author also participates in the comments as the author and not as the character.

Here's the criteria they used for the category:

This category is for blogs which have over 90% fictional content (as determined by post number). Mainly, these are blogs which are about fictional characters and must be stated as such somewhere on the blog. Think of it as a soap opera or a book, but in blog form.

Based on this the only requirement really is a blog that has fictional content. If that's the only requirement then the winner does meet those requirements. I just disagree on the definition of a fictional blog. The problem is somehow differentiating between a real blog fiction and a blog that just has fictional content.

My usage is that fictional blog is an actual blog written like a blog that either tells a fictional story or is written by a fictional person. A Fiction Blog is a blog about or containing fiction. Just like a Business Blog is a blog about business. Or how a Humor Blog contains humorous content. That'll be my usage of the words and the ones that make the most grammatical sense to me.