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Babylon 5 Script Book Project to be Revealed !

I'm listening to the live feed now. This is a joke, and a sad one at that. I will not be buying them.

All it is, is a collection of all the posts jms has made online since the beginning, in hardcopy.

Whatever the price is, it's overpriced. Seven volumes of this? Screw it.
 
OmahaStar said:
I'm listening to the live feed now. This is a joke, and a sad one at that. I will not be buying them.

All it is, is a collection of all the posts jms has made online since the beginning, in hardcopy.

Whatever the price is, it's overpriced. Seven volumes of this? Screw it.
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Oh my. I've bought all the previously released books... This, I will have to pass. I don't understand why you would want this... JMSNews is fine.

I wanted Crusade Books or something. :(
 
OmahaStar said:
I'm listening to the live feed now. This is a joke, and a sad one at that. I will not be buying them.

All it is, is a collection of all the posts jms has made online since the beginning, in hardcopy.

Whatever the price is, it's overpriced. Seven volumes of this? Screw it.
Click to expand...


As fascinating as that might be, it's not worth the coin. I'd rather have the 200-page encrypted notes or even a reprint of the novels or something.
 
Yeah. They're still figuring out how many books it'll be - between 4 and 6 for this monstrosity - and they will be 40 bucks each. Or, you could just go to jmsnews.net and search them for free.

When asked about the possibility of digital/ebook versions, the response was that they might possibly have small chunks of the project available in a digital form.

They also may or may not have a digital search engine available after this project is done. The people who shell out money for this shit will be able to type in "g'kar age" and it'll say what page to look at. Or, one could type "G'Kar age" at jmsnews's search and get the same thing.

Still no answer on what the other two books will be. And the Crusade scriptbooks will not be announced until everything B5-related is out and done.

The books will go on sale April 1 - yes, I am pretty sure the date is on purpose. On March 17th, an email will go out to everyone who is on the info mailing list (sign up on b5scripts.com if you want) and something "special" will be inside it.

But then, this thing was described as being special as well. And something every B5 fan would "need" ... somehow I think that was overestimating it immensely.

I am disgusted by this. The scriptbooks were a great idea. A bit on the pricey side, but contained enough new content to justify the costs.

This garbage? Not even close. I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for JMS.
 
OmahaStar said:
All it is, is a collection of all the posts jms has made online since the beginning, in hardcopy.
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Not quite. Certainly JMS's posts are a huge part of it but we've taken a lot of his online chats as well as posts that we found that aren't in the archives (yet) and it's very definitely not all of his posts. Basically, it's the heart of his online conversation with the fans presented in a far more enjoyable (IMO) format. The point is the legacy of that historic interaction.
Whatever the price is, it's overpriced. Seven volumes of this?
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No...we're not sure of the final layout as yet but we're looking at 5, maybe only 4 volumes. The other books haven't been announced yet.

Nobody's going to ask people to buy it on faith. Captain Jaclyn is planning on posting a number of sample pages just as she did with the Chronology book. And there's always the 30-day guarantee. They won't be to everybody's taste any more than the Chronology book was, we know that.

Also, for those on the announcement mailing list, watch for the announcement of the book. There's a plan to include something very special in that mailing.

Jan
 
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well, this is a waste of trees and a money grab to say the least. The Crusade books should have been done before this garbage
 
No, it's about the conversation, as indicated in this post from 1996. JMS spent hours per day online that he could have spent sleeping or writing because it meant a great deal to him.

Jan
 
Jan said:
No, it's about the conversation, as indicated in this post from 1996. JMS spent hours per day online that he could have spent sleeping or writing because it meant a great deal to him.

Jan
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You're saying that, but you're also too close to the situation.

For those of us just learning about this, it sounds like a colossal waste of time, paper, resources, and money. Especially with so many people waiting on the Crusade scripts, the team is putting this ... this thing out, which is absolutely 1) useless and 2) pointless.

Unless the lurker's guide (which is mirrored all over the place) and jmsnews are going away (which is unlikely, but it's archived on archive.org anyway), I question the point of all of this.
 
OmahaStar said:
Especially with so many people waiting on the Crusade scripts, the team is putting this ... this thing out, which is absolutely 1) useless and 2) pointless.
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But putting out these books doesn't delay the Cursade script books at all. No matter what, those wouldn't be happening until JMS has time to devote to them which he simply doesn't these days. The Crusade books will be published but not until all of the B5-related material is out. That's been the plan for a long time.

Unless the lurker's guide (which is mirrored all over the place) and jmsnews are going away (which is unlikely, but it's archived on archive.org anyway), I question the point of all of this.
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That's because you're thinking of these as just collections of the chats/posts but it's much more than that because of what's been done with the material. Sure, I'm close to it (to say the least) but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think much the same way you do back when the whole project was first under discussion. Lurker's and JMSnews will always be incredibly valuable resources and these books aren't meant to replace them in any way. To me, these books enhance the years-long conversation and make it much more interesting. We know we haven't described it well but it's really not easy to describe.

I'm not saying this to sell anything, it's what I think. I wouldn't spend a year and a half of my life on something that I didn't believe in.

Jan
 
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I don't want to add the negativity, but I'm not interested in these four books at all. It's not really an exercise in killing trees, though. This is a print on demand series, after all. I won't be buying this round of books, they won't have to print them for me. It's as simple as that.

Thanks for all your hard work, Jan. Hopefully The unannounced books (I thought all would be announced yesterday?) will be more to my liking. :)
 
Quick message from Captain Jaclyn for those who are interested. The release date is the 7th of April, not the first as she said on the podcast. She misread the 7 as a 1 by accident.

I thought it might be incorrect which is why I didn't respond to Omaha's comment on the first.

Jan
 
So basically you are paying for something you can read on the internet and print out yourself. This isn't a waste of trees. The paper was already made.
This is a waste of good sense.
 
Saul said:
So basically you are paying for something you can read on the internet and print out yourself. This isn't a waste of trees. The paper was already made.
This is a waste of good sense.
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And you can't search in there like you can on the net.

Jan, I am sorry if you feel like I'm attacking you personally. I'm not. It's the concept that I find entirely insulting. I've been one if the project's biggest cheerleaders since day one, and have gone on at length in defending JMS publishing the scriptbooks. As recently as this weekend, I was doing the same thing on the B5 livejournal. Now I feel insulted and I think the whole thing is a big rip-off and a gigantic "Fuck you!" to the fans who have spent so much of their hard-earned money with this project so far.
 
Yes, you can access most of this stuff yourself (not all of it is archived yet, though it will be at some point) and yes, you can print it yourself. But if you were to want to see what JMS had to say about ____fitb___ and when and how that changed and evolved over time, no you couldn't unless you had one heck of a search engine.

That's what this is all about, not just a willy-nilly printing of what was said, it's about the conversation over time and it's a far more enjoyable experience than reading stuff online. (IMO, YMMV, etc.)

As they said on the podcast, it's not easy to explain. When the sample pages are posted, take a look. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the difference in formats whether you choose to buy the books or not. For that matter, even if you buy one and don't care for it the 30-day guarantee is absolutely genuine-you won't get any hassel at all.

Jan
 
Omaha, I don't feel at all attacked. Yes, I've worked on it but it's not as if the content was/is mine. What I don't understand is the resentment and anger I'm seeing from people who haven't even seen what this is yet. *Why* is it
a big rip-off and a gigantic "Fuck you!" to the fans who have spent so much of their hard-earned money with this project so far.
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I honestly don't understand.

Defend the script books? Why would they need defending? Why would any of this need defending? Either people want them or they don't and they either feel they got value for their money or they don't. If people are still complaining about the price like they did early on, tell them to go over to CafePress and do the bloody math for themselves if they think JMS is raking in the dough on these. Anybody who thinks JMS is doing this for the money must not have a clue about the kind on money he's making on a screenplay these days.

Jan
 
Jan said:
the conversation
Click to expand...

Is that the marketing buzzword? I keep seeing that in your posts, and I kept hearing it last night with Jac and Jason whenever they'd try to stress a point.

I realize Summer and the others have to keep things positive in order to keep getting free stuff, but I'm not in that position. I'm paying my money and if something stinks, by gosh I'm going to say something. And this stinks. I said it before and I'm saying it again, it's an insult. Do JMS and his gang understand that? It's a fucking slap in the face. "Hey you spent hundreds of dollars, now here's another 200 bucks to spend on something you get for free right this very second, but it's printed so that makes it something new!"

Fuck. That. Shit.
 
Conversation. Online interaction. Experiment. They're all terms JMS has used at one point or another to refer to his participation online with the fans to demystify the TV making process.

I just like the term conversation better. The actual name of the series is Asked and Answered.

Jan
 
I'm a big fan of B5 and of JMS' work in general. But honestly, this project seems just bizarre. A multi-volume book collection compiling his online posts and chats? I mean seriously, what's the market for this? About a dozen people?
 
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