[Terez]

You can't access the search with out a Theoryland premium account, and you have to sign an e-certificate saying you own all of the books to access it, and you can only do 100 searches per month. The search only gives paragraph-ish chunks, so it's nearly impossible to reconstruct the books from it (much easier buy one copy and scan it in). The e-books show up on the internet every now and then (not because of us), but TOR always takes them down fairly quickly.

I've thought about making something similar for Malazan, and I've talked to a few people about it, but everyone seems to think that SE wouldn't be cool with it (RJ and TOR knew about our search engine, and they were apparently happy with the precautions we took).

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Do the people who say SE wouldn't be cool with it actually know him, or is it random people like us on the forums just giving their 2 cents? Someone should actually ask him.

[Terez]

Not random people, no. Respected posters here. But no one's asked him. That was mentioned as a possibility. SE might be cool with it if certain precautions were taken - it's all about being rabid fans, after all - but then again, he might not be happy with the inevitable intense scrutiny of his series. SE seems to get freaked out about that....but I'm thinking he would get over the scrutiny and appreciate the hard core fandom aspect of it.

Oh, and by the way...some people think it's unscrupulous for Theoryland to charge for access to the search, via the Theoryland premium account (it's only 15 USD a year or 50 USD for life). But it's really the best way to keep the search from being abused by the internets at large, and I think that's why TOR and RJ were cool with it. We weren't making money off of RJ's books so much as making money off of the hard work we put into making the search engine, and there are all sorts of other benefits with the premium account as well.

[Illuyankas]

It's not like it's impossible to find both WOT AND Malazan ebooks online for free already.

(And before you ask, NO I will not tell you where, and YES I do own all the relevant books in paper form - I try not to shoot authors I like in the wallet if I can)

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Terez;336077 said:

Not random people, no. Respected posters here. But no one's asked him. That was mentioned as a possibility. SE might be cool with it if certain precautions were taken - it's all about being rabid fans, after all - but then again, he might not be happy with the inevitable intense scrutiny of his series. SE seems to get freaked out about that....but I'm thinking he would get over the scrutiny and appreciate the hard core fandom aspect of it.

Oh, and by the way...some people think it's unscrupulous for Theoryland to charge for access to the search, via the Theoryland premium account (it's only 15 USD a year or 50 USD for life). But it's really the best way to keep the search from being abused by the internets at large, and I think that's why TOR and RJ were cool with it. We weren't making money off of RJ's books so much as making money off of the hard work we put into making the search engine, and there are all sorts of other benefits with the premium account as well.

Did RJ see any of that money? Hopefully SE wouldn't be too stressed about the intense scrutiny. Seriously, I think we already pick it apart on the forums. If he can take that, he can take anything. I think it would be worth somebody asking him. Worst that can happen is he says no.

[amphibian]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;336079 said:

Did RJ see any of that money? Hopefully SE wouldn't be too stressed about the intense scrutiny. Seriously, I think we already pick it apart on the forums. If he can take that, he can take anything. I think it would be worth somebody asking him. Worst that can happen is he says no.

I like the idea. I'll send him an e-mail tomorrow. I've never done it before with Erikson, but some people will actually reply to well-written letters ie. Chuck Palahniuk.

What about making it part of this site and only accessible through a real search for multiple keywords? I'm envisioning something where all of the books are in a database, but you can't "touch" the shelf and are limited just the little notes the librarian jots down and hands you.

Instead of allowing searches for "the" and reading the whole dang books, you type in "Karsa", "big sword" and "lots of dead dudes" and then only paragraphs come up - like what Terez describes.

This sounds like a lot of work, but I swear it'd propel things like the Encyclopedia Malazica far forwards and build the fan network like crazy. Look at Lostpedia.

What if Erikson put the books together in e-book format with our discussion threads hyperlinked in the margins or as appendices? We'd not get paid, but it'd be so effing awesome and value-adding. Okay, I'm excited.

[Illuyankas]

But we already have Vaiski.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

But he's not always logged on. We need something for when he's not around.

What if they made it accessible only through the forums, and only to people with a certain amount of rep? That would be sweet.

[Terez]

Illuyankas;336078 said:

It's not like it's impossible to find both WOT AND Malazan ebooks online for free already.

For WoT, the sources usually change every few months or so, but I got mine at some online library place.

Quote

(And before you ask, NO I will not tell you where, and YES I do own all the relevant books in paper form - I try not to shoot authors I like in the wallet if I can)

Yeah, I'm the same way...I'm not about trying to kill my favorite authors' careers in any way, shape or form. That point is moot with RJ now but I still respect his family and the publisher in this. Only a hard core fan is going to pay money to a fansite to be able to use the search, because it's essentially worthless to someone who is after an ebook to mass produce, and it's extremely unlikely that such a hard core fan is not going to own at least one copy of every book (I own at least two of every WoT book - paperback and hardback - and I have three of some, not counting my ebooks).

The kinds of ebooks that publishers try to sell you (image only pdf's) are worthless for book discussion, because you can't copy/paste from them (unless you know how to bypass the restrictions on the file - I'm not quite that geeky).

[ChrisW]

Wotmania also has a search function. A bit different to Theoryland in that you type in a word or phrase and it tells you what book/s and chapter/s it appears in. SE might be more inclined to agree to that instead having chunks of paragraphs on the net.

[Terez]

RLY said:

Did RJ see any of that money?

He saw money from everyone who uses the search for his books, and usually several times over. Like I said, the search is only part of the benefits offered with our premium memberships, and it's one of the best ways possible to prevent abuse of it. We're not charging for the books - we're charging for the effort it took to put the books into a searchable format that makes it nearly impossible to abuse it to the author's and publisher's detriment, and also for the other extras on the site that required hard work from our admin, and also as a means of preventing abuse of the search engine. The search engine only helps generate book discussion, which in turn helps generate more fans that are going to buy the books because no one likes to read books for pleasure on the computer (well, few do anyway). Premium memberships are sometimes the only thing that keep fan sites alive, and fan sites contribute to an author's success.

Granted, I'm pretty sure we didn't ask permission to set it up. But we have a good defense for that:

RJ said:

TITLE - New Spring
CHAPTER: 6 - Surprises

After a night of troubled, restless sleep, she needed no urging from Siuan to return to that small room rather than joining the other Accepted hurrying to the stables. Though some were not hurrying so quickly, today. It seemed that even a trip outside the city could pall when all you had to do was sit on a bench and write names all day. Moiraine was looking forward to writing names. No one had told them not to, after all. And they had been wakened by the sounds of the other women getting ready, not by a novice bringing orders to ride out with the rest. As Siuan often said, it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Though the Tower was rather short on forgiveness for Accepted.

phib said:

What about making it part of this site and only accessible through a real search for multiple keywords? I'm envisioning something where all of the books are in a database, but you can't "touch" the shelf and are limited just the little notes the librarian jots down and hands you.

Instead of allowing searches for "the" and reading the whole dang books, you type in "Karsa", "big sword" and "lots of dead dudes" and then only paragraphs come up - like what Terez describes.

Here's a screenshot of what I get when I search "Lews+Therin+sane":



I selected from only from The Fires of Heaven onward because, although Lews Therin's memories first surface in The Shadow Rising, Rand doesn't figure out the source of those memories until The Fires of Heaven.

You can search all the books at once, or you can search only the interviews, but you can't search both at the same time. There's a glitch in the Theoryland interview database anyway, so I'm working on my own. Here's a screenshot of my results for that search:



As you can see, this is extremely difficult to abuse.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

ChrisW;336091 said:

Wotmania also has a search function. A bit different to Theoryland in that you type in a word or phrase and it tells you what book/s and chapter/s it appears in. SE might be more inclined to agree to that instead having chunks of paragraphs on the net.

Not quite as cool, but better than nothing. I'm getting excited about all of this.

[Terez]

ChrisW;336091 said:

Wotmania also has a search function. A bit different to Theoryland in that you type in a word or phrase and it tells you what book/s and chapter/s it appears in. SE might be more inclined to agree to that instead having chunks of paragraphs on the net.

There's a WoT search on the web that's not associated with Wotmania as far as I know. The Theoryland is far superior because it gives you a quote to use in book discussion, and a bit of context, and as far as I know, you can only search words or phrases in those kinds of search engines - being able to search words out of order is a prime tool. Quotes makes book discussion better, and people are more inclined to use them when they don't have to type them out. And paragraphs? What are paragraphs floating around on the net going to hurt anyone, when we're talking about a series of 3-4 million words? Think about how many paragraphs in either series would simply never get used, because they're not relevant to any interesting book discussion.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

It looks like WoT has some of the most dedicated fans on the internets. I have to say I'm impressed.

[Terez]

Well, in defense of Erikson, he hasn't exactly been around all that long, and his fans don't have as long to wait with nothing else to do between books.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Yeah, eventually Erikson will be much bigger than he is now. His books are so complicated (in a good way) he probably needs all these search and discussion aids more than any author out there.

[Terez]

Right...RJ definitely needed them, but I think a part of why I have a hard time getting into book discussion here is that I'm so accustomed to being just set up as a book scholar. I can discuss any WoT topic any day with no problem, but I feel lost in Malazan book discussions, not only because I haven't read his series as many times, but because I have no f'n tools!

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

There are plenty of tools on this forum. I count myself as one of them.

[Aimless]

Huh, I remember the days when all we had to go on wuz our MEMORIES

It's a very sweet idea, and I am very impressed with theoryland's implementation.

I'm wondering if perhaps it wouldn't be good to tag some passages with, er, tags, as well

[Werthead]

Quote

Gabriele, after reading say books 1-4 or so, check out the novel New Spring. It's a prequel focusing on Moiraine and Lan, and the beginning of Moir's quest to find the Dragon Reborn, and it's a very good read features shadowspawn that are scary, and some great characterisation and back-story.

I'd say steer well clear of the novel version. The first half or so is extremely poorly-written, among some of RJ's most lacklustre writing. I'd say track down the short story version that appeared in Legends as it was much better, or the comic book adaption although IIRC due to the licensers messing around the comic book wasn't finished.