A TV Tropes Book?

I have an idea. I think it's a cool one, so hear me out.

I got to thinking about how cool it would be if we were to get part of the TV Tropes wiki printed in book form. Something like "1001 TV Tropes" or "The Guide to TV Tropes".

It may not make much sense to charge money for something that can be found online for free (and in greater quantity—the information on the wiki would likely have to be condensed as the examples can get quite lengthy), but that just means we'd have to get creative about how the book is presented, or include material in the book that can't be found on the wiki.

Any issues with copyright (not being able to use copyrighted art or live-action stills from films) could be circumvented by hiring artists to contribute to the book. This could tie into the above, perhaps by offering some kind of book-exclusive comic or some such.

I was also thinking that user contributions would feature largely in the book. Users could offer commentary on tropes, perhaps represented by their avatars. If there are again issues with copyright (some of us may have avatars using copyrighted images or art), we could maybe have special avatars for contributors to the book.

Thoughts?

I could see it working as a sort of entertainment reference manual for tropes that people could have on their shelf, to get out when discussing movies or just reading for laughs.

The only issue I can see is that the trope pages are written by many contributors. I'm no law talkin' guy, so I'm wondering if there would be any copyright concerns due to this.

I suppose the legal issues would actually fall back to laws governing how wikis function. Who actually owns what, etc.

I like the idea though. I'd buy it. It's great edutainment!

But the book would be outdated 5 minutes after it comes off the press...

>_>

<_<

...updatable e-book?

edited 13th Mar '13 7:43:05 AM by MajorTom

So, like those printed editions of Wikipedia that apparently exist, then?

Welcome to the field of Geology.

Due to people constantly getting new data points and redefining the boundaries of specific time periods, books go out of date pretty quickly.

I don't think taking material from a collaborative wiki would infringe on the rights of the users who contributed to it, as it's a nonprofit thing—provided that it doesn't involve actual copyrighted material, as I mentioned earlier. The inability to use art or stills from films, TV shows, etc. is the only real legal hiccup I can see. Even then it might be possible to get permission from the copyright holders to use those images. Then again, copyright law is fickle and I'd like to hear from someone who is actually knowledgeable about the subject.

That said—Can trope pages and trope examples be traced to the users who wrote them? I'd like to be able to credit tropers by name.

Another potential problem is who would receive the author credit if it's going to be a community effort. Is it possible for a collective (e.g. "The TV Tropes Community") to be named as the author?

As to the book quickly becoming outdated, I don't think that will be a problem if only a portion of the wiki is printed. Since the wiki is quite large and we can't have all of it printed, I was thinking that the book would focus on more popular or recognizable tropes, like The Oldest Ones in the Book. We wouldn't include all the examples from the trope pages either, probably only a few well-known ones from each category. That should prevent the book from becoming outdated quickly. And we could always do a second edition.

Also: If the book is broken up into sections or categories (e.g. Hero Tropes, Villain Tropes, for two very broad examples), we might have a page at the end of each section which lists more relevant tropes which can be found only on the website, as a way of driving more traffic to TV Tropes.

edited 13th Mar '13 4:47:15 PM by Alma

I like the idea.

And regarding copyrights, let us not forget what license our wiki uses.

Anyway, if this were to happen, then we'd need to really expand upon the trope definitions. I'm not so sure how much it'd be able to fill out otherwise.

Some trope pages are pretty detailed, others not so much. Some would need to actually be condensed, I think. Suppose there was a word count or a limit of one trope per page (with the overleaf maybe being for the examples).

The big disappointment, I feel, would be the lack of potholing.

That's what makes this place the big, gigantic, wonderful timesink that it's known for being, after all.

Agreed. One of the big problems with books is that they are a serial access medium (gotta flip through pages to find the one you want) as opposed to a random access one.

We can solve that with footnotes, FOOTNOTES EVERYWHERE!

x3 That can be addressed by highlighting or colouring trope names or text that would be potholed.

For example, blue text is a direct reference to a trope name, while red text is a pothole (with the trope name as a footnote or some such). Sounds boring, but with creative design/formatting, I think it could work.

The only problem I see with this is if pages refer to a trope that falls outside the umbrella of "popular/recognizable tropes" and it's not enough to justify adding said trope to the book. Most likely, though, the trope pages would be revised before being put in the book.

edited 14th Mar '13 12:16:54 AM by Alma

So while in itself Geology, a "short period of time" is something mind-bogglingly long, Geology books actually age very fast?

Exactly!

While a lot of things in geology are pretty well understood, it's still a relatively young field and people still make new discoveries quite often.

Also, geologists tend to bicker a lot, so the specifics of some stuff can change depending on who's winning the flame war at the moment. XD

edited 14th Mar '13 6:14:06 AM by VolatileChills

Keep the topic alive, people! I don't want to see this sink to page 2.

The question becomes what to put specifically into said book. More then a few articles need clean up and work. Some are problem articles etc.

There is Ebert's Little Movie Glossary for an example of a book that is along those lines.

edited 14th Mar '13 8:23:29 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Well, if I could drum up enough interest in the idea of a book, I would then put the question to the community as to what tropes would go in it. I suggested some basic categories like "Hero Tropes" and "Villain Tropes" as an example. Maybe we could vote on it, even turn it into a game.

But if we do that, then we'd need a whole "Beach Boys Tropes" section to set them up.

Let's see... some or all the Tropes Of Legend could go in (how many are there again?), and sections about the Omnipresent Tropes, and an index for each genre (Fantasy Tropes, Horror Tropes, etc.). That's probably far too large already, though.

Maybe just a "Tropes Of Legend" book would suffice.

But really, how long or short do we want this to be? Will it be comparable to an encyclopedia or Uncle John's Bathroom Reader?

Tropes Of Legend alone could work.

I'd honestly like it if it was a huge encyclopedic tome. Sort of a one stop reference for tropes. But that's probably the least practical option to take with this.

I had been thinking it would be a fairly large book, though not quite a Doorstopper. But maybe a small book would be good to start with. We could make it a series. Tropes A-Z perhaps, with each letter of the alphabet being one booklet? Or one book per genre?

There are tonnes of tropes beginning with A and C but almost none that start with Q, so an alphabetical serial would be unbalanced.

A book per genre would also have a lot of overlap between genres.

However, you could narrow genres down to their nitty-gritty specifics to lessen that.