"The regurgitation of creative works into summary format"

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**beast_gts**

This popped up on my Twitter, and I though they had a good point:

Landry Quinn Walker wrote:
People ask when I will write more stories about the Crimson Corsair and Kix, the "last clone". But here's a super simplified explanation of why it is hard to make happen.

The internet.

By that I mean: The regurgitation of creative works into summary format. Let me explain...

I wrote two official Crimson Corsair stories. They have been, by all accounts, well received. They have inspired a ton of fan art and a lot of fan fiction. So it seems like it should be a no-brainer, right?

The problem is that many of the fans of the story didn't read the story.

Instead of reading the book, a lot of fans come to the story through sites like Wookipedia or - more often - videos on Youtube. And these videos rarely credit the source of their material. One of which has well over a million views.

The book is less than 2$. If 5% of those people who watched that video bought the book, you'd get more books.

And to be clear, I love it when people make videos about my work. But why not link to the book? Or even just mention the books title?

Most of the time they don't.

Let's be clear, dude gets 1.3 million views based on my writing, he's making money. Probably a lot more than I made writing the actual book. Probably a lot more than the publisher made.

I like an enthusiastic response. I don't like being someone's uncredited content farmer.

Long story short - if you want to know more about a story, support the story. Sites that aggregate information and make it easy to digest are wonderful. But if they replace the source material as a means of obtaining stories that fuel them, then there soon there is no new fuel.

Authors getting screwed over royalties is nothing new (and Disney is particularly bad for that) but I hadn't considered that wikis / YT / etc. would have an impact.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

It’s definitely something to keep in mind. Media requires funding, and that funding is source through our consumption.

On my mate and I’s nascent YouTube channel we intend, in future videos, to say where someone can watch whatever it is we’re wittering about in that video.

**LunarSol**

This is actually something Japan has cracked down on pretty hard after a surge in popularity of people making a quick buck essentially recapping different media. There's definitely a tricky line to draw between literary analysis and taking the cash by regurgitating someone else's work. I know I've caught myself watching 2 hour breakdowns of a 90 minute film and realizing I should really experience it first hand and form my own opinions.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Yeah I definitely avoid reviews/analysis of more than 20 minutes or so.

If you can’t be concise in your opinions, I’d have to question whether you yourself really understand what you’re saying. And this goes doubly when its some cretin on YouTube laying into a new release, taking longer to dump on it than the media itself.

**LordofHats**

I've noticed an upswing of criticism about this on some social media. Usually it's about people who copy other people's Youtube channels (reaction videos are the most bizarre thing in my eyes) but I've seen discussion of this to.

I'm actually surprised how many channels seem to get away with it where comic books are concerned. There are whole channels that just just walk you through an entire comic book, scanned and all, with a crappy AI voice over reading it out.

I can't say I'd complain if it all just vanished overnight aside from the blatant copyright infringement and complete lack of anything of its own to say.

**Dysartes**

Here's a question for y'all - how many of you will say it's wrong for it to happen to a novel, but perfectly fine when it is some dipstick doing the show-all-the-pages-of-a-new-codex content on YT?

**Skinnereal**

Dysartes wrote:
Here's a question for y'all - how many of you will say it's wrong for it to happen to a novel, but perfectly fine when it is some dipstick doing the show-all-the-pages-of-a-new-codex content on YT?

Piracy is piracy.
But you knew that when you posted

This is exactly why I pay no attention to codex leaks. Though, codexes are usually 2-4 times the price of a novel.
Also, I am of an age that prefers to read than to watch someone reading. I hate video-only content, far preferring text summaries or transcript, to watching videos.

**Overread**

Codex is probably safer because who wants to spend ages flipping through pages on a video to find the info reference.

But yeah I've noticed a surge of "tells you the entire plot of the film" channels that go through an entire film summarising every turn and twist.

And yeah the blockbusters won't get hurt by it, but all the "maybe on an offchance I'll try it" films and purchases do get impacted. Because those videos 100% fill the casual curiosity phase.

Of course there's other things too, some of those million views are repeat views from the same person and bots and more. So its not purely that many customers.

That said I recall Nintendo also clamped down on this because osme channels were showing "movies" of video games. Ergo the entire game start to finish and for many the story is why they play so if the story is spoilt that way suddenly there go a bunch of purchases or potential purchases.

Personally I'm not a big fan. I find that regurgitation of summary formats of books and stories just spoil the fun of the story. You lose out on the story and adventure and twists and turns because you boil it down to its most basic components to summarise. It's not as engaging nor fun, its just bulletpoints of things that happened.

**lord_blackfang**

Reading a Codex cover to cover on camera is functionally a review. Because the exact words and numbers are literally the information you need to gauge whether the Codex is worth buying, not anyone's opinion on whether you will enjoy the subjective experience of reading it.

Regarding the topic in general... meh. The story probably got out to 1.3 million people more than it would have otherwise.

**LunarSol**

Codex reviews are a good example really. The ones that literally just pose a picture of each page for a screenshot are probably a bit more on the problem side. The ones that go through the changes and talk through the detachments and other features less so. Since its highly unlikely anyone is going to be able to play from a video, it acts far more as a review. If you present the pages to turn into screenshots to play with, more of an issue. Thus far I haven't seen much reading of the fluff sections, though I'm sure some of that is out there.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Overread wrote:

That said I recall Nintendo also clamped down on this because osme channels were showing "movies" of video games. Ergo the entire game start to finish and for many the story is why they play so if the story is spoilt that way suddenly there go a bunch of purchases or potential purchases.

This really came to a head over Smash Bros, which had built a lot of its single player content around rewarding players with elaborate and expensive cutscenes. They were putting a ton of development resources into a part of the game that people were both demanding, but ultimately not experiencing because it was easier to watch the YouTube compilations. Definitely a part of developers realizing that a lot of people don't actually play the games they buy, which is one of those things trophy data has made extremely apparent.

**The_Real_Chris**

lord_blackfang wrote:

Regarding the topic in general... meh. The story probably got out to 1.3 million people more than it would have otherwise.

I think the authors point he would rather be paid by 100,000 people buying the book than 1.3 million knowing about it

**lord_blackfang**

The_Real_Chris wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:

Regarding the topic in general... meh. The story probably got out to 1.3 million people more than it would have otherwise.

I think the authors point he would rather be paid by 100,000 people buying the book than 1.3 million knowing about it

Rather, either the author's baseless assumption that "piracy" hurts sales, or the classic neolib fib that, all other things being equal, people shouldn't get what they didn't pay for.

**Dysartes**

What fib, Gracie?

There's no incentive for an author to write (or a publisher to publish) a book, especially a book within a setting like Star Wars, if every entitled little gak is going to access it through other avenues instead of buying the damn thing.

**Polonius**

I think that with copywrite infringement broadly, you have two major buckets: infringement that occurs without any impact on the viewers purchases, and infringement that replaces at least some or all of the viewers purchases. Some argue that piracy might lead to more sales, in essence the old shareware model, but I think that in practice that's a small group.

If you look at napster in the 90s, the record industry was a juggernaut, hitting record sales year after year and having frankly more money than sense. Early on, I think that Napster probably had little net impact. Music lovers still bought roughly the same number of CDs, but also downloaded a bunch of stuff they wouldn't otherwise buy. But over time... well, the record industry almost collapses. IN the long run, piracy forced a massive change in their business.

Here, it sounds like the author is basically saying that 1) they aren't getting paid enough to do another books, and 2) people seem to like the work, and other content creators ARE making money off of it. At one cent per view, one reviewer made $10k off of her story, which is on the high end of what a short story sells for!

I do think that people forget that there is a broad creative middle class of authors, artists, actors, etc. who aren't rich or famous, and make a lot of decisions like you or I would about money.

**LunarSol**

There is and always has been a middle ground where piracy does indeed hurt but is often over reported in how much damage is done.

**Ahtman**

This kind of use will hurt lesser known artists quite a bit more than someone like Stephen King.

**lord_blackfang**

Dysartes wrote:
What fib, Gracie?

There's no incentive for an author to write (or a publisher to publish) a book, especially a book within a setting like Star Wars, if every entitled little gak is going to access it through other avenues instead of buying the damn thing.

Indeed, and as we live in a time where file sharing is trivial, there are sadly no indy video games, music, miniatures, or any other forms or art. Hopefully Disney&co. can finally push some draconian legislation to open up the market to small creators again.

**JNAProductions**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Dysartes wrote:
What fib, Gracie?

There's no incentive for an author to write (or a publisher to publish) a book, especially a book within a setting like Star Wars, if every entitled little gak is going to access it through other avenues instead of buying the damn thing.

Indeed, and as we live in a time where file sharing is trivial, there are sadly no indy video games, music, miniatures, or any other forms or art. Hopefully Disney&co. can finally push some draconian legislation to open up the market to small creators again.

Is your position that writers and other creators shouldn't be compensated for their time, effort, and skill? They should just make it for the enjoyment of others and get nothing in return?

**Overread**

JNAProductions wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Dysartes wrote:
What fib, Gracie?

There's no incentive for an author to write (or a publisher to publish) a book, especially a book within a setting like Star Wars, if every entitled little gak is going to access it through other avenues instead of buying the damn thing.

Indeed, and as we live in a time where file sharing is trivial, there are sadly no indy video games, music, miniatures, or any other forms or art. Hopefully Disney&co. can finally push some draconian legislation to open up the market to small creators again.
Is your position that writers and other creators shouldn't be compensated for their time, effort, and skill? They should just make it for the enjoyment of others and get nothing in return?

I think his point is that we live in an age where it has never been easier to be published for creative works. There's no guilds to stop you; the cost of entry barrier for distribution to the world is trivial if you use the internet.
Sure the very top end is still dominated by "big names" business and so forth; but there's a thriving creative market out there of independent creators.

Of course that doesn't mean piracy doesn't have an impact on them - it can indeed cause all kinds of problems for creators who are small or getting started or in a niche. There's also the issue that so much material is being made and shared now that you can get lost in a sea of creativity and not get your head up.

**lord_blackfang**

JNAProductions wrote:
Is your position that writers and other creators shouldn't be compensated for their time, effort, and skill? They should just make it for the enjoyment of others and get nothing in return?

Is your position that you should be paying royalties to the inventor of fire?

**JNAProductions**

lord_blackfang wrote:
JNAProductions wrote:
Is your position that writers and other creators shouldn't be compensated for their time, effort, and skill? They should just make it for the enjoyment of others and get nothing in return?

Is your position that you should be paying royalties to the inventor of fire?

I don't think physics needs a paycheck.

But, generally speaking, if someone is alive today and you're using a service or product from them... Yeah, they should get some form of recompense.