making contact

weezlgrrrl was talking to me the other day about emailing Jonathan Coulton, and tangentially about interacting with fans as a writer. today Coulton posted a link to a nice article about the new economy for musicians that features him. he spends six hours a day doing fan email. ooof. i know that he needs to keep doing that work to keep the money flowing, and i love the flowering of creativity that has come from his site (he encourages derivative works, so there are videos, pictures, plush half-pony/half-monkey monsters, etc.) but i note that since the end of Thing a Week there is no new music.

i'm excited about the opportunities that are happening for all kinds of artists through the long tail, but i'm wondering how the balance is struck between constant connection and creativity. Neal Stephenson doesn't think it works at all. perhaps it won't be an issue to people who have spent their lives with a sidekick in hand. maybe what it means is the slow dying off of epics like the Baroque Cycle in favor of daily webcomics or the return of the serial novel. (hey, why aren't people writing serials for me to read? dance, monkeys!) i'm torn. i like being fed morsels of content, but i think i prefer a thorough immersion in a longer story. i've started putting entire series on hold at the library so that i have it all (hopefully) waiting for me when i'm ready.

as a consumer, i want the artist to be slaving away producing product for me. i want art more than a personal email or frequent, voluminous blog entries. (from a fan POV, Matt Ruff's site gets me all i need, other than more books! yesterday! no loss of quality!) a while ago, i was thinking about how fans at ComicCons expect pencillers to produce personal sketches, but people don't walk up to authors at signings and SF cons expecting a unique piece of flash fiction. but we do ask for an equivalent, with blog comments and emails and MySpace friend requests.

i know that self-promotion is terribly important. so timewise, where is the tipping point between encouraging a fanbase and doing the thing that the fanbase wanted from you in the first place? what do we do as fans to keep our favorite artists fed, sheltered and cranking out quality material?