This will teach me to just fire off a comment and wander away. :)
As a writer, I do feel ownership over the textual reproduction of my work. If someone is reproducing my story in text form, I want every single word transcribed as I posted it. Dammit.
However, once the media of my story changes, I feel that if I'm going to give permission at all, I should cede control to the person creating the new work. Even if it's a recording, which is more or less a spoken version of my written-down words, I know that the chosen format will alter the way the story arrives in the receiver's brain. Even if the reader repeats each one of those singular words exactly as I wrote them down, they will give them different emphasis, different tone, different pace, different everything than I imagine. It's inevitable. Changing the form will change the how the story needs to the told, and I'm all right with the new creator taking their own creative license to make those changes.
In other words, by choosing to allow someone else to verbalize my story, I'm giving them permission to re-interpret it anyway. I suppose, in whatever passes for logic in my world, that's the big deal, and shifting around the words and even eliminating some of them doesn't seem to bother me. I can't say I'd be thrilled if someone pulled all the sex out of a story, but so long as they link back to the original and note that it's been edited (which is a specification I've made for transforming my work), then I'm satisfied that someone who sees the new work will also have the chance to see where it came from.
Also, there is the fact that I am lazy and shiftless and would rather a reader or other transformer feel free to make merry with my stuff without my actually having to be on hand to check e-mail and grant permission and stuff. :)
As for the question of where podfic lies in the gift/work spectrum, my impulse is--probably not surprisingly--to put it more in the "fanwork of the reader" end of the spectrum. As I said above, if a listener has the opportunity to look at my original text, I don't think I would worry too much even if someone--in my opinion, of course--really screwed up an interpretation of a story. I feel fairly strongly that once I've released a story into the wild, how readers respond to it is out of my hands. That includes how a podficcer chooses to interpret it. That said, I don't feel obliged to agree with an interpretation, and I feel that I have every right to review independently created podfics of my own work and point out places where I disagree as much as where I agree.
Obviously, the above is my own personal stance. I completely understand how nervous many authors are about having their stories read by others. The thought of someone tampering with a work that they've spent a great deal of time and effort over, sweating over word choices and turns of phrase only to have them changed by a reader--that's a big deal, and I don't blame anyone for saying "please don't change anything without asking." I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance. I can't pretend that I'd be exactly joyful to discover a podfic that radically altered a story of mine in ways I found objectionable. But I can't control that without also controlling everything, so I've chosen to take the risk. Believe me, though, that I fully understand and support the decision of others to not take the same risk. I just wanted to make that clear.
no subject
As a writer, I do feel ownership over the textual reproduction of my work. If someone is reproducing my story in text form, I want every single word transcribed as I posted it. Dammit.
However, once the media of my story changes, I feel that if I'm going to give permission at all, I should cede control to the person creating the new work. Even if it's a recording, which is more or less a spoken version of my written-down words, I know that the chosen format will alter the way the story arrives in the receiver's brain. Even if the reader repeats each one of those singular words exactly as I wrote them down, they will give them different emphasis, different tone, different pace, different everything than I imagine. It's inevitable. Changing the form will change the how the story needs to the told, and I'm all right with the new creator taking their own creative license to make those changes.
In other words, by choosing to allow someone else to verbalize my story, I'm giving them permission to re-interpret it anyway. I suppose, in whatever passes for logic in my world, that's the big deal, and shifting around the words and even eliminating some of them doesn't seem to bother me. I can't say I'd be thrilled if someone pulled all the sex out of a story, but so long as they link back to the original and note that it's been edited (which is a specification I've made for transforming my work), then I'm satisfied that someone who sees the new work will also have the chance to see where it came from.
Also, there is the fact that I am lazy and shiftless and would rather a reader or other transformer feel free to make merry with my stuff without my actually having to be on hand to check e-mail and grant permission and stuff. :)
As for the question of where podfic lies in the gift/work spectrum, my impulse is--probably not surprisingly--to put it more in the "fanwork of the reader" end of the spectrum. As I said above, if a listener has the opportunity to look at my original text, I don't think I would worry too much even if someone--in my opinion, of course--really screwed up an interpretation of a story. I feel fairly strongly that once I've released a story into the wild, how readers respond to it is out of my hands. That includes how a podficcer chooses to interpret it. That said, I don't feel obliged to agree with an interpretation, and I feel that I have every right to review independently created podfics of my own work and point out places where I disagree as much as where I agree.
Obviously, the above is my own personal stance. I completely understand how nervous many authors are about having their stories read by others. The thought of someone tampering with a work that they've spent a great deal of time and effort over, sweating over word choices and turns of phrase only to have them changed by a reader--that's a big deal, and I don't blame anyone for saying "please don't change anything without asking." I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance. I can't pretend that I'd be exactly joyful to discover a podfic that radically altered a story of mine in ways I found objectionable. But I can't control that without also controlling everything, so I've chosen to take the risk. Believe me, though, that I fully understand and support the decision of others to not take the same risk. I just wanted to make that clear.