December 5th, 2010
Part of why the glass is more than half-full at The Future of Publishing: Xtranormal. If you can type, you can make movies…a very nifty site. I was going to make you a nice movie to prove it, but one runs into payment demands very quickly:
- The default actors and set for any Showpak (i.e. those that come with the starting scene) are free.
- You may use whatever actors, sets, and sounds you like and preview with them, for free.
- If you use premium (payable) actors or sets, you will see the points widget above the preview to indicate that they cost money.
- To publish and share your creations, you will need to pay for the premium actors & sets that you are using, or switch to free ones.
- You can buy actors and sets using Xtranormal Points, our new virtual currency, by clicking the blue ‘Buy more points’ button, or by publishing your movie.
- Points are available in value bundles of various sizes according to your needs.
- Buy a points bundle with a credit card, and then use the points to pay for your assets and publish your movie.
So instead I’ll show you someone else’s movie called, So You Want to Write a Novel (which I can’t find on Xtranormal, as there’s not a search feature. Google points of course to the YouTube version).
Voice of Reason: “You do realize it takes years of honing your craft before you’ll be ready to produce a publishable book? And that’s assuming you’ve spent the last twenty years reading hundreds of novels.”
Hopeful Writer: “I’ve been living my life. Not wasting my time reading. What do you think I am? Some kind of dork?”
The same Google search points also to a popular guidebook on this topic, by Lou Stanek, PhD.
UPDATE: January 10, 2011, A long-winded entry on eBooks, showing off another format, and the ability to ruin an animation through failure to edit: