

NaNoWriMo: Author as Entrepreneur and Lean Publishing - ryan_twinlabs
http://blog.twinenginelabs.com/2013/11/nanowrimo-authors-as-entrepreneur.html#.UnpjgZTF0Yg

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mikegriff
I just get a "Ghostery blocked comments powered by Disqus." when I go to that
page. Why does it seem like the whole article is wrapped up in Disqus?

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weeksie
What's an MVP for a novel? I can sort of see it if you're writing a technical
book, but not for fiction. Maybe doing short stories to see if people like
your characters? Even then, you're not guaranteed to get the right people
reading.

An indie author is _definitely_ an entrepreneur, "measure-and-learn" is not
applicable to novels (making the article a bit nonsensical for NaNoWriMo).

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ryan_twinlabs
I think what others have posted about serialization, character pieces, or
short stories are all ways novels can make sense of the MVP concept of lean.
There are also sites such as Wattpad that allow the author to publish as they
go and get crowd feedback. They can then rework sections based on how fans
react to characters, story arcs, etc.

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bowerbird
a good many authors are _artists_, damn it...

please stop trying to make them businessmen!

"it doesn't work, and it annoys the pig."

-bowerbird

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ryan_twinlabs
I definitely can understand the frustration with thinking of the book as a
product or business but in some ways it is. I think what is different in how I
conceive of a product in this post is that in many ways the product (whether a
novel, piece of literature, film, painting, etc.) is never finished. It is
always a work in progress, a coming-to-be. I did my graduate work in
philosophy and multimedia creative works at the European Graduate School,
which took a smattering of filmmakers, philosophers, artists, etc. to come
together and produce. I found an interesting commonality in the creative
process amongst all of them. That commonality was that inevitably the creative
work was produced for someone - the customer, viewer, listener, audience. And
in that way creative works are a dialogue with an-other. This is what lean is
all about at heart. It is making whatever you are working on a dialogue with
someone else and incorporating that feedback into the build-measure learn
loop.

I, however, do not think that the two are mutually exclusive and even if you
are only concerned with the work as an artistic creation, the relationship
between the author and the audience is still important.

