Electronic rights-, power source or static?So, what about the Steinbeck backlist? What was that all about?
Good question. Examine the situation and you will see that the
Steinbeck books had several advantages that made them right for
electronic editions. First, almost all of the backlist was in the hands
of Steinbeck's publisher, Penguin. Second, the historical elements
of his books lend themselves to electronic enhancement. Finally,
Steinbeck's novels are big in schools.
The Modern Library, which I mentioned earlier, also has an elec-
tronic rationale because it is a unified body of work with a brand
name. It lends itself to electronic anthology editions.
It still remains to be seen whether fiction of any type will sell
profitably on CD-ROM. For that matter, many wonder whether CD-
ROM itself will survive. Christmas sales in 1994, the first big season
for multimedia, were generally fairly lackluster and they have not
improved much since. Granted, many retail issues have yet to be
sorted out. Price, packaging, display space, demonstration modules,
and a host of other factors are all still in the development phase.
Nevertheless, most industry observers agree that CD-ROM prod-
uct is mostly a collection of lifeless derivatives—or "repurpos-
ings"—of movies, TV, comics, books, and the like. Our early CD-
ROMs are also beset by technical glitches. They are hard to run.
Picture quality is poor. Film clips are the size of stamps. Fonts look
fuzzy. User interfaces vary. No wonder games and content-oriented
titles like The Way Things Work sell best.
CD-ROM content is a long way from its potential. Very few disks
seem artistically exciting. There are exceptions, johnny Mnemonic,
one of the first titles to use full-screen video creatively, is one, but
it was developed by Propaganda Films, producers of "Twin Peaks"
and Wild at Heart. Several Inscape titles like The Dark Eye are also
promising. (That one explores the mind of Edgar Allan Poe using a
phrenologist's cranial map. It was animated by Doug Beswick, who
worked on Beetlejuice.)
Are you seeing a pattern here? Innovative CD-ROM material is
not springing from licenses of novels. It is coming from movie stu-
dio-style production teams, and that process is producing its own
stars. Writers working in the multimedia business will tell you that
the way to get ahead is not to license old novels but to write origi-