Thanks for this very cogent explanation of Red Lemonade and what Richard Nash has been up to. There is a clearly a curatorial and pretty standard direction then if the first two books are Lynn Tillman and what sounds like a pretty great first novel by Vanessa Veselka. These are both books that would have appeared when Nash was at Softskull. In short they are both books that should be produced but are produced by standard means. As the first products of a proposed social community they do much to I believe to set the tone of the community, but in fact they are not really products of an existing social community, but the products of Nash himself, and in fact, judging from my experience reading and writing at other social communities, if Nash is courting aspiring writers, then he has essentially created a community that has a goal -- namely to get published by Nash in the mode of Veselka and Tillman. This goal closes down many of the open ended aspects of the community because interaction in the community becomes informed by the goal "to be published like Veselka and Tillman." If any part of the process does not support the scale-free aspects of the social network and flips to a zero sum (fixed) process [i.e., a fixed number of titles] then you are not dealing with a scale-free solution at all. You can't really pick and choose about this aspect. All eyes in this community are going to be focused on the path to getting published by Richard Nash.

My experience is anecdotal, but Zeotrope online writer workshops suffers a great deal from this problem: the goal to be published in the print edition of Zeotrope the magazine. Participants pragmatically build circles of friends to jack up their ratings. The site does offer good feedback, but in the context that it is within the context of a motivated social setting with the end that everyone is competing for the attention of the editors. I had initially joined the site around 1998 thinking it would be this utopian, and egalitarian place. In 1998 it was radical to have what was essentially an open slush pile. But it was still a slush pile, but one in which the people submitting to Zeotrope could work together to get their work noticed. Some good writers actually did come out of this environment, and in talking to them, they are pretty positive about their experience. Mine was less spectacular mostly because I didn't really cultivate "friend."

I think the fact that Zeotrope offers this vision of an open ended platform for your sharing your stories (and this suggests that there is room for everything) when in fact is still a zero sum game, and in the end only a few things are selected. The situation is much better on sites that do not have such obvious goals or support the scale-free network of a true social network. Even their it helps to have friends, but with a clear goal, things tend to just be friendly and supportive or things are completely ignored. I'm thinking of Fictionaut or the music community MacJams.

Perhaps Nash long term goal is to somehow fade from existence as a curator? In this model then as his curatorial role would fades, the network would select books. There could be no limit to the number of books published this way, then. Somehow the community would have to provide the resources to get the book "published." But then it is unclear to me how this is any different than what is already going on the Internet?

In any case, I suspect that Nash having already set the tone and essentially example taints the community. Building the mechanism for a Web community is very difficult (as Paul points out) getting people to use the community is even more difficult (as Paul also points out), but creating a dynamic community capable of dealing with the ambitions of its members (this ambition I think is a good thing -- who wants to read the work of unambitious writers?) is even more difficult. I hope Nash succeeds, but it sure seems that adding any zero sum element to the mix only increases the difficulty.

Yeah writing can be a very lonely thing. Which I sometimes dig but there comes a time when writers need feedback and Redlemonade fills that space. It's different from other places, like fictionaut for example, because people (or atleast myself) go to redlemonade with the mindset and patience we take to read longer pieces and also I think we accept that a good deal of the work up is a work in progress so we can get valuable feedback like line edits or ask about certain style choices. Overall it shortens the distance between writers and readers which is like shortening the distance between feeling unloveable or insignificant and feeling loved and lovable.

Yeah writing can be a very lonely thing. Which I sometimes dig but there comes a time when writers need feedback and Redlemonade fills that space. It's different from other places, like fictionaut for example, because people (or atleast myself) go to redlemonade with the mindset and patience we take to read longer pieces and also I think we accept that some of the work up is a work in progress so we can get valuable feedback like line edits or ask about certain style choices. Overall it shortens the distance between writers and readers which is like shortening the distance between feeling unloveable or insignificant and feeling loved and lovable.

This is helpful, thanks. Tillman is such a great writer. I can't tell if you liked Veselka's book.

@5: I did.