The Murverse Mothership

So it’s two years ago and I am on a train. It’s late at night, I’ve just legged it across London from seeing the very excellent Twilght Zone stage play. It’s GREAT. Witty and dark and playful, Serling haunting the entire thing like an unusually well-dressed Banquo. There’s this lovely piece of slight of hand the cast members who ‘play’ Serling have been taught. Out of nowhere, they’ll turn to the audience and adopt his clipped and precise tones, pulling a cigarette out of thin air as they narrate the story that’s just ended. It’s a great touch and a GREAT piece of magic. How great?

Penn and Teller, who I saw perform in Vegas two weeks before seeing this show, were in the audience too. I passed them, they nodded and smiled to me. Because when you’re two of the best magicians in the world you remember everyone and everything, especially audience members’ faces.

So all of this is great but the train? The train is not. It’s late as Hell, it’s a week night (A Thursday I think) and the train is like most trains in the UK; too short, too crowded, too old and too slow. I’m not going to be in Reading before 11, not home before 11.30. But I’m being paid for the work. It’s not much, at all, but the site I’m writing for will take most things I send them and thirty pieces at ten pounds a time is almost like one piece at professional rates, right?

Right?

Except the next day I find out they aren’t paying my travel costs, because I was ‘going anyway’. I scored a press ticket, so I’m not out that much, but still the math is brutal. I ended up travelling close to six hours to write a piece that would land me twenty pounds in the red.

Something in me breaks. This doesn’t happen often but I vowed never to put myself in that position again. I’m worth more than a cursory payment and if it meant I wasn’t going to be recompensed then I wouldn’t go. I stuck to my guns too, and a lot of opportunities have come up since that I’ve turned down because I won’t be reimbursed travel.

So there’s lesson one. Get your expenses covered and if it can’t be monetarily then be sure there’s a token gesture at least. Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson once got paid in sporting goods. They’re fictional, they don’t need to eat. You do.

Get paid.

The one free market I write for hooks me up with Royal Albert Hall tickets a couple of times a year so even then, I’m not working for nothing. Never work for nothing, not just for you but for everyone else’s sake. We’re worth what we’re paid, all of us. We’re never paid enough. You have the power to do something about that.

So, skip ahead  to a couple of days ago. When not being an international man of mystery, writer, bon viveur, occasional jazz maverick and full contact cook I like to write RPG books. I’m good at it too, got shortlisted for an award a few years ago and I’ve written for some big licenses including Doctor Who and Star Trek. Last year I picked up a couple of jobs in quick succession in that neck of the woods. The first was a chunky piece of sourcebook for a new science fiction game based on a European war game. The other was a little supplemental piece for the new version of a classic horror game.

Both were BIG FUN. The big job was that glorious kind of thing where the game world and your style fit like a glove. The editor rode herd on stats, which is always a relief, gave us constant feedback and did a really good job. Love your editors, folks. Cherish the good ones and he’s a very good one. The smaller job was for a different company but just as much fun. I got to do a lot in a little space, throw in some fun lore from the game world and come up with some ideas that really made me smile. Again, good gig. Again, good editor.

Oh you see that too? Yeah that rapidly largening shadow on the ground IS the other shoe dropping.

I opened my email a couple of days ago and had messages from both of them right next to one another. The big job editor was answering my query about whether I could invoice for the work I’d done a year ago. He was very apologetic, explained he hadn’t been able to invoice yet either and they were ‘only now putting the book in review’, a thing I was not told at any point would happen.

The little job editor was writing to tell me the company had just declared bankruptcy.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyohGod

So! What did I learn from this? Other than a searing relief I was not on a train in the middle of the night coming from a job that paid me in minus figures and a dick punch? This time?

This. This. I learned this.

Good Editors Have Your Back

Neither of the guys on these projects put a foot wrong, both were great team leaders and I’d work with both again in a heartbeat. Little job editor has actually collated invoices from the staff who worked on the book and is meeting with the company owners to try and get us paid. I’m not sure how successful that will be but I’m incredibly grateful he’s doing it.

Don’t Stand There

I love writing RPGS but RPGs don’t care. There’s a wider story here, which touches on Mur’s experiences with the field that boils down to the fundamental assbackwardness of an industry crowdfunding to pay creatives the money they’re owed for the project that’s being crowfunded. That boils down to a choice between being cynical and being realistic. Being cynical? You have to assume this stuff will happen and send your invoice in with your completed work. Being realistic? You have to assume this sort of thing could happen. And you’re your invoice in with your completed work. Which brings us to one of my all time favorite pieces of advice:

‘I get hit every time I stand there.’

‘Stop standing there.’

I’ve done a lot of RPG material and I can measure the amount that was frictionless on my thumb. I’ve been paid for material in a different decade to it seeing print. I’ve had a word count cut by ten thousand words with no reason why. I’ve had work commissioned, written, edited and revised that’s coming up on three years in a drawer. Unpaid. The hours I spent writing that could have gone on anything else which would have had a material payoff by now either in experience or money. And now, bankruptcy and extra edit rounds a year later. I feel like there’s a bingo card for this stuff, mine is full and my prize is…to wait for other people to do their jobs. At my expense.

Like I say I’m not mad at the editors. I’m not even mad at the publishers. I am mad at the industry though and this is where we get Ditch Digggy. As both Matt and Mur have said over and over and OVER, without writers, none of this work exists.

NONE

OF

IT

And yet people like me are still submitting material to books which then go to kickstarter to be able to raise funds to pay us for the book that’s already written and suddenly the Midgard Serpent isn’t just eating his tale he knows that he’s doing it, knows it’s stupid and carries on anyway.

It’s bananas. It’s insulting. It’s a relentless cobbled together failure parade of compromise and systemic devaluing of creatives. No one does it personally but its effects are absolutely that. It’s time to stop standing there. It’s time to do literally anything else.

Which brings us to the third lesson.

Go Independent

I’ve written another RPG over the last couple of years. Co-created with Jason Pitre, After The War is an RPG of survival, community building and mimetic horror at the edge of settled space. It’s been the most rewarding experience of my career in the field. I’ve been paid upfront and on time, I’ve worked with and continue to work with amazing artists and editors and the whole thing has been FUN. Plus, mimetic space horror!

The indie RPG circuit is better put together, moves faster and adapts more readily than the mainstream. Or at least for me it does. It’s professional, up front and makes you feel valued. It’s what I was told the whole industry was and I’ll be sticking around there for sure. The other side of the fence? I’m done with.

So, three things!

-Love your editors. Seriously send them muffin baskets and shit it’s totally worth it.

-Don’t. Get Hit. You Don’t Have To Get Hit.

-Go Where You Feel At Home

And a surprise special guest that always goes without saying and never should:

GET. PAID.

This job is hard but it can be hard on your terms, not on terms that make it harder for you. And that’s this month’s ditch.

Hi there! I’m Alasdair, the newest Ditch Digger. I’m a Hugo finalist this year for Best Fan Writer,  I co-own and run Escape Artists, the oldest genre fiction podcast network on the planet, I’ve written for numerous organizations, was once the voice of a vocabuvore, and am currently playing the unsung hero of The Magnus Archives.

Honestly he is. I checked.

All of which means two things: that I’m uniquely equipped to write about the genre fiction space as a business, and that I don’t say no to the word ‘work’. Which is good, given that podcasting at the moment is going through Interesting Times. Want to know how interesting? This literally hit my inbox as I finished the first draft of this paragraph:

Find the rest of the very good article here.

So let’s break this down. First off, Luminary is a new podcast streaming platform that launched a few months ago with a ton of exclusive titles and a ton of money, very little of which they seem to have spent on a public relations department. The idea is that they are ‘the Netflix of podcasts’, which presumably doesn’t mean:

‘We’re sustained by the physical library system that no one expected to live this long and it takes two years for us to get the new season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine’.

Instead, the idea is that Luminary will feature forty or so podcasts which are only available through it’s app, most of which are fronted by celebrities.

How you feel about this really depends on how you feel about ‘famous person has some thoughts’ style shows. I could live my entire life without hearing what professional opinion havers like Russell Brand think about anything, ever but there’s a definite audience for these shows and its not to be taken lightly. What I tend to care about more are scripted audio dramas which brings me to The Bright Sessions, The AM Archives and the can of worms.

The Bright Sessions, created by Lauren Shippen, is a startlingly good series best described as ‘In Treatment’ crossed with ‘Alphas’. And for the five people reading who saw both shows, know I am high-fiving you all right now. A psychologist treats a group of teens who, it becomes apparent, all have superhuman abilities and all of whom are in serious trouble. It’s an extraordinary show, using format as a storytelling tool, crammed full of excellent writing and acting. It’s massively (and deservedly) popular.

The AM Archives is the sequel and you can only hear it on Luminary. One is free, the other is behind an eight buck a month paywall.

Hence the worms.

But here’s where things get interesting. Lauren has been very open about her experience with Luminary and what it’s allowing her to do. Namely, pay her people fairly and secure the resources to make future shows.

In other words, that ticket price is being reinvested into the future of the creatives subscribers are paying to hear. Which, on paper, is great right? Hell yes, it’s even necessary and years over due BUT, the manner in which it’s coming to the fore is just one of three full-on conflicts raging in podcasting at the moment.

Pay vs Free

Himalaya have thrown $100 million at their podcast content. Spotify are essential Borg collectiving their way around the industry and picking a massively ill-advised fight with Apple. Luminary are attempting to be the velvet-roped VIP area for particular types of shows. So basically, podcasting is already becoming Pay on the Door versus walk in. Based on most responses I’ve seen, no one is happy with paying on the door, especially given the entire industry has been built on ‘Take this, it’s free!’ since its inception.

But that model has a single, massive problem.  Every podcaster I know, myself included, works based on donations. We are an industry of Blanche Dubois, relying on the kindness of strangers. Strangers are, in fairness, very generous — but as a business model it’s far better suited to continuity than it is to expansion. Donations allow you to hold, and push the red line a little. External funding allows you to paint the line on a building across town that you just bought.

OR DOES IT?

Venture Capitalists vs Your Money

We’ve owned Escape Artists for something close to five years and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve gazed covetously at Venture Capitalist funding. It’s what allowed both Twitter and Patreon to launch, it gives you a cash injection and all you have to do is pay it back, plus extra, a couple of years later. Which is fine as long as you’re not in an inherently mercurial constantly changing sub-field of the creative industries, right everyone!

Hey wait, where’d you go?

Damn it.

VCs are the questing beast of podcasting, but maybe they shouldn’t be. The ongoing problems at Patreon can be traced directly back to the fact they’re VC-funded. Roughly 33% of the eternal garbage fire that is Twitter, much the same. The moment you get VC backing, your project is no longer yours. Or at the very least it’s buying that building across town with someone else’s money, knowing full well if you can’t afford to pay them back, you don’t get to work there anymore.

Luminary is entirely VC funded. That means that their VCs are going to want returns on that investment, and soon. That means they move fast, they’re abrasive and because no one EVER thinks to actually throw money and people at a PR problem, right now they’re the biggest asshole in the industry, loudly yelling about how great they are while everyone else just keeps talking around them.

Commissioned vs Extant Content

This shouldn’t even be a thing. But, this is the fight Luminary’s PR, unwisely, tried to pick a few weeks ago. Going deeper, it’s the fight that everyone who’s asked for their shows to be taken down has been dragged into. This isn’t just a licensing or user data issue, although that’s a part of it. This is a company whose fundamental misunderstanding of the industry they’ve vowed to ‘disrupt’ has caused their reputation instant, massive backlash.

Luminary has been accused of deleting show notes and donation links, hiding their requests behind proxies, and have done a textbook impersonation of the guy who thinks it’s hilarious to loudly praise steak in the middle of the vegan supermarket. As a result, everyone from the Joe Rogan Experience to PRX, the producers of Welcome to Nightvale have asked for their content to be taken down. All because Luminary decided the best way to turn the podcasting industry their way was to kick people and then demand applause.

While they’ve walked back some of these actions, their two-months-early launch week could fairly be called disastrous. While Luminary right now are one of the only deep pockets in the game, their professionalism and media strategy is being lapped by companies with two staff and none of their capital. Which given how they’re funded, is not a good sign of things to come.

This leaves podcasting in the middle of its version of one of those CSI montages where EDM blasts and people glower at test tubes. The industry is years late on having the ‘Is it okay to be paid for this?’ conversation, and I hate that it’s being forced to life this way. But it needs to be had if podcasting is going to grow as a creative industry and avoid the massive spiked pits every other creative industry has fallen into. We’ve got to have this conversation. And maybe glower into the odd test tube, if it helps.

So what can you, and I, as individual writers learn from this hilarious Katamari Damacy ball of other people’s egos, ‘let’s do the show right here!’ attitude, and, somehow, Axe body spray?

1. If you’re working in any creative space and you don’t have contracts with everyone you work for and with, get them. Immediately. Stop working if you have to and if you’re providing the Intellectual Property ABSOLUTELY stop working until who holds what rights for how long is written down and agreed upon. A Gentleman’s agreement is never made by a Gentleman. A handshake means NOTHING. Get contracts. Get a paper trail. Sleep better as a result.

2. If you’re running a podcast already, then odds are you’ve already got some kind of donation system in place. Get another one. ‘Two is One, One is None’ is the order of the day here. Most of them run through PayPal (like Ko-Fi), but there are other options available. If there’s interest, I’ll happily dig into which ones do what in a later column. For example, EA runs with PayPal and Patreon, and that works well.

3. Prepare for Success. Seriously, it happens. If your show takes off, in the current climate there’s a non-zero chance Johnny Capitalism is going to pull up to your Twitter feed with promises of money, success and movie deals. If you’re not ready for that, if you don’t know what rights, if any, you’re willing to licence and on what terms, that opportunity may slip away.

This is a really exciting time to be in podcasting and my definition of ‘exciting’ does include ‘AAAAA!!!’ in this instance, yes. If you can make smart, thoughtful choices early, you’ll be fine and maybe even better than fine. If not, batten down the hatches until the present wars blow over. Because whether it’s Spotify, Luminary, or Apple in charge doesn’t matter — what matters is keeping your show alive and ready to take advantage of what comes next.

And that’s the ditch I’m digging this month.