Reflections

You are currently browsing the archive for the Reflections category.

Filling Osama’s beard

May 4, 2011 in Reflections | 2 comments

The site’s a mess at the moment – I’m in the middle of a re-branding exercise, so mind your head on the scaffolding. But with the news today, I just couldn’t not post …

I’m surprised that with all the column inches devoted to Osama bin Laden today, there’s not a single mention of his one great claim to fame. He was probably the most successful indie writer, artist, performer of our age. When Osama spoke, the whole world listened and trembled. Even when we didn’t have a clue what he was saying.

You have to feel for the poor guy. Imagine how he felt when he saw his other buddies, Bush and Blair, landing big book deals with proper publishers. Even Saddam, for goodness sake, has 12 books on Goodreads – and now Sacha Baron Cohen’s turning one into a film. But Osama, what did he get? An interview. One lousy interview, way back in 1997 with CNN’s Peter Arnett and produced by Peter Bergen.

I mention Bergen because he immediately spotted Osama’s potential. I remember a couple of hours after the 9/11 attacks a fresh-faced, English-accented young analyst assuring the CNN audience that the outrage bore all the hallmarks of Bin Laden and an organization I’d never heard of before, Al Qaeda. Gospel truth. And while Osama never got his publishing deal, Bergen hit the big-time. He’s had three best-sellers already, including ‘The Osama Bin Laden I Know‘, and I notice today, less than 48 hours after the dramatic end to the manhunt, Bergen has been commissioned to write the definitive book. By George W Bush’s publishers.

Can you imagine how Osama must have felt? Is it any surprise that he was bitter and twisted? Everyone cashing in except him. What’s a guy gotta do to get a deal?

# # #



We were talking about Osama this evening, my daughter and I. A newspaper, folded, between us. The headline: OBAMA WATCHED .. But they weren’t Obama’s eyes staring out at us – they were Osama’s.

- Do you think it’s true?
- Dunno. Dunno if it was ever true.
- He had such kind eyes.

Trust Josie. She’s always been immune to mental re-conditioning, praise the Lord.

I looked again. Sure enough, he did have kind eyes. Only problem was, turn the paper over and below the fold he had a curling sneer and a zealous uncompromising beard. The devil incarnate.

And I got to thinking. Now he’s gone, who do we have to replace him in the public imagination? Ayman al-Zawahari? Has a beard, but not the right kind of beard. No sneer. Who else is bad enough? Julian Assange? Young enough to terrify us for years. But just look at him. The face of an angel. Gaddafi then? All the right credentials, and I suppose the evidence is that he’s the West’s favorite for the role: after all, we know exactly where he lives, but we haven’t sent Seal Team 6 to batter down his doors. The problem is, he wears silly hats and looks like a pantomime version of Richard III. And he still doesn’t have a proper beard. So who’s going to scare children and grandmothers to bed? Where’s the face that will make us all believe our cause is right?

Wanted - dead or alive

It’s a rhetorical question. I already know the answer. It’s my face. I’ll need to fashion the beard a bit. But in the right light, at the right angle, I can do the sneer. I have a bit of background too – with all those years I spent in the Mid-East. Why? – I ask you to ask me.

Of course, I’ll need to cut back on some of my other activities to do the job properly. Being Santa at Christmas – that would have to go, for a start.

I’ll have to work a bit on evil too. But I think I know just the man who can help me. Peter Bergen, if you happen to be reading this, you’ll find me in the cave at the end of my garden. No, any time’s OK – just tweet me.

FOOTNOTE: Huffington Post reports ‘Bin Laden’ Google searches increase 1 million percent. Peter – seriously, call me. We could be HUGE together. And look at the graph. Your numbers are falling. You need me.

Tags: ,

Will the Kindle win the e-reader war?

April 27, 2011 in Reflections | 5 comments

In a two-part post, I’ll show why the Kindle seems set to dominate the e-reader market … perhaps driving all its competitors out. And then I’ll explain why, despite the advantages of consolidation, we may have reason to fear an effective monopoly.

Taking the publishing world entirely by surprise last week, Amazon announced that it had signed a deal to make its Kindle list available to 11,000 US libraries later this year.

Commentators, like TeleRead’s Paul Biba, are still busy piecing together the implications of the news and its impact on the market. But essentially the agreement seems to be between Amazon and OverDrive, the major supplier of books to US libraries.

On the face of it, this is good news. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’m a big supporter of book-lending and library systems. Most of the authors I love today were first introduced to me as recommendations from other people; very often I was first a borrower, then a convert, and finally a regular purchaser. That’s why through my own Author Associates scheme, I’m allowing those who enjoy my writing to gift an e-novel to their friends. Although I’ve chosen not to publish in print, libraries are very much in my plans.

Most libraries will probably welcome the announcement as well. Librarian Andy Woodworth wrote recently of the difficulty explaining to a would-be ebook borrower why a book might be incompatible with a reading device. Or if the book could be downloaded, how to organize all the permissions and programs needed. ‘I am the de facto technical support,’ he grumbles. How much easier it would be if, as Amazon no doubt intends, there was only one reading device to worry about. Particularly if it’s probably already the most popular e-reader available for seriously committed readers. (Don’t start growling, iPad fans. I haven’t forgotten you.)

Until now, the Kindle and libraries haven’t seen eye to eye. The Kindle’s proprietary AZD publishing system will not run ebooks published as ePub files, the free and open e-book standard. Other devices don’t read Amazon’s special AZD files. OverDrive meanwhile has always distributed ebooks to libraries as ePub files, using Adobe formatting to set borrowing terms. So Kindle books were out in the cold. (If this all seems too technical, bear with me and just think of it like this: the Kindle won’t read non-Kindle books, and non-Kindle devices won’t read Kindle books. It’s just like trying to run Mac software on a PC, or vice versa.)

But with the new agreement, the whole Kindle library will be accessible. Are you worried, libraries, that your previous investment in non-Kindle ebooks might be wasted? You needn’t be: OverDrive assures you that existing arrangements will be honored and you won’t have to re-purchase books that you already hold.

So, this author is happy that his book can be borrowed; the library is happy that ebook lending will become so much easier – and therefore that libraries can keep up with the digital times; the borrower’s happy that the ebooks she wants will now be available. Everybody’s happy.

Aren’t we?

Let’s look closer at where the Kindle seems to be going in the longer term. A good starting-point is the announcement from OverDrive’s’ manager for content sales, Karen Estrovich:

Your library will not need to purchase any additional units to have Kindle compatibility. This will work for your existing copies and units.

A user will be able to browse for titles on any desktop or mobile operating system, check out a title with a library card, and then select Kindle as the delivery destination. The borrowed title will then be able to be enjoyed using any Kindle device and all of Amazon’s free Kindle Reading Apps.

So, she’s saying existing copies of library ebooks (published in an ePub version, remember) will work on a Kindle. Does this mean that the Kindle will soon be able to read ePub files? I suppose it’s a possibility. But I’d be very surprised. Why would Amazon want to help promote ePub when its own best interests are served by delivering books in its proprietary format? Much more likely is that a major conversion program is underway to get existing OverDrive-distributed titles available in the AZD format.

Estrovich’s assumption seems to be that the Kindle will quickly become the library’s e-reader of choice. I think she’s right, because the Kindle has three important competitive advantages:

  1. It’s easy to download and use. Most readers and writers aren’t especially technical, and librarians are tired of explaining.
  2. Amazon has spent years building its book catalog. Back in 2005, Tim O’Reilly in his landmark article ‘What is Web 2.0?‘ advised: “For competitive advantage, seek to own a unique, hard-to-recreate source of data.” That’s exactly what Amazon has done. Virtually any title will be available.
  3. The Kindle will cost next to nothing.

OK, perhaps I’m jumping the gun on Kindle pricing. True, there’s been web speculation that the reader will be free by Christmas, but Amazon have stated nothing of the sort. Yet all the indications are that further price reductions are in the offing. Already in the last 18 months, Kindle prices have halved, and there was another important announcement last week. Users in the States will be able to buy at a price as low as $114 if they’re prepared to accept advertising.

My view? The price slide won’t stop there … because Amazon, unlike Apple, is essentially a sales and marketing operation, not a hardware manufacturer. They make their money taking a cut on the sales of 900,000 books to a few million readers. But suppose they could drop the price of the hardware low enough so that, say, every school kid and college student carried their text-books on a Kindle? Suppose it became just as indispensable to us as a calculator? Suppose they do exactly what the manufacturers of ink-jet printers did, selling the hardware cheap and maximizing their profits on ink cartridges, selling to a captive market. Because of the strength of their catalogue, that’s exactly what Amazon could do. And their competitors would be left floundering.

If that’s the plan, the libraries initiative makes absolute sense. It’s not the sales of hardware to the libraries that Amazon are interested in. It’s another step towards establishing the Kindle and the Amazon brand as the only viable e-reader in the market. To create an unassailable monopoly.

But of course the Kindle won’t eliminate the competition, you say, you technistas. How could it, when The iPad is packed full of features, offering so much more than the Kindle?

If you were around at the end of the 80s, maybe you’ll remember those feature-full, multimedia-capable home computers, the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. Alongside them the clunky IBM PC, with only 16 colors and a few beeps – fine for business applications, but also trying to push into the home market with pricing at less than $1000. I remember attending a conference of leading British leisure software publishers as late as 1990 and debating: Was the PC a serious contender? The answer was a resounding ‘No’.

Yet a couple of years later, the PC was almost the only show in town. Not the IBM model though. Manufacturers in the Far East managed to reverse-engineer the machine and flooded the market with cheap clones, with prices at or below the cost of the best home computers. The combination of keen pricing and a wide, versatile software range – including proven business and productivity applications as well as games – made the PC clone the perfect family computer.

What happened back then seems to be characteristic of emerging technologies. In the early days a number of manufacturers struggle for pre-eminence, each of them with a slightly different system and standards. Before the PC clones, there were at least half a dozen serious contenders for home computer leadership, all with their own operating systems and their own software. But eventually a point is reached where one of them wins out, and a single standard emerges. It happened with home computers. It happened with video – when JVC’s competitively-priced VHS machines eventually triumphed over Sony’s technically superior but more expensive, Betamax. And I think it’s about to happen with e-readers.

I’m not saying that the iPad isn’t a wonderful machine, or that its success will be short-lived. It offers tremendous potential for so many different activities, which users love. But if we’re talking specifically about the world of digital books, it’s the Kindle which seems poised to assert its supremacy and consolidate the market.

Which will make a lot of people happy.

And which fills me with concern.

Next time, I’ll explain my concerns, drawing on my experience as an independent software publisher working with another company that built a monopoly – Microsoft.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Myths at Easter

April 24, 2011 in Reflections | No comments

I was reading spiritual activist Michelle MacEwan’s thoughts on myths and story-telling this morning:

Every mythology has to do with the wisdom and magic of life related to a specific culture and a specific place. These mythologies are timeless narratives handed down from generation to generation.

And I was reminded of something my protagonist, Richard, writes in The Lebanese Troubles:

I’ve always thought the best part of an adventure comes with the telling. That’s when myths and legends are born – out of the ordinary actions of ordinary people. In a way, it’s the story that really is the adventure, not the events at all. It’s the story-teller who collects the incidents, shapes them, colours them, decides which to keep and which to discard. He can make a hero out of a bystander, a villain out of a man acting under orders. He can make the trivial significant, the accidental planned, cowardice an act of bravery. The wonderful thing is, it’s all true – just because he tells us so, and the story is his invention.

A fictional character reflecting on myth-making. I guess that makes it untrue.

But a myth doesn’t need to be true; it needs to be Truth.

Somehow that seems appropriate on Easter Sunday.

Tags: , , ,

7 Way To Engage Readers

April 24, 2011 in Reflections | 1 comment

Here’s a post from a year back on reader engagement. It’s a little dated – who remembers Tony Blair and Brangelina now? – but the advice still holds. Maybe I should re-read it too.

# # #
Fame Costs - Book cover

This is the book I’ve been reading lately. Bet you didn’t think I was into that kind of thing. To be honest, nor did I, when Lena set it down next to the computer a couple of weeks back.

- It was only 20p at the stall in the market.

- Was it?

- Thought it might give you a few ideas.

Uh-oh. Been spending too much time on the damned book recently and not paying enough attention. So she buys me a Mills & Boon. Why didn’t she just say something?

- Look here – under the smiley man. ‘A true story of the author’s struggle to break into print.’ Useful?

- Um, yeah. Maybe.

Humour her.

 

Fame Costs is the true story of F.T.Unwin – or Pimbo, as he liked to call himself. He was from these parts, a Cambridge man, and it was Cambridge he wrote about. Not the university town. Not the tourist town. His books were full of stories of the people who have always lived here, and probably always will. Sentimental, nostalgic stuff. ‘He was, undoubtedly, an awful writer – which is all part of his naive charm’, that’s how he was remembered recently. Not much to appeal to today’s reader.

Unless that reader happened to be me.

Pimbo had a life-long ambition to be a writer, paid for writing courses, submitted to magazines, and after 30 years of rejections decided to go it alone with his first novel, using a vanity publisher. He managed to place a few copies in local shops, did some signings, and sold less than 100 books. So what to do with his stock?

Here’s what. He gets on the bus with a bagful of books, heads for one of the outlying villages, and starts selling door-to-door. Sets himself a small target every day and doesn’t take the journey home till he’s hit the target. Writes in the morning, gets the bus in the afternoon. He’s around 60 years old.

The first year was hard, but he began to attract attention, with a little press and radio coverage. Then it was local TV. Pimbo did it his own way. He was a character.

And the next year, when he took his new book on the same routes, people remembered. They invited him in, told him their own stories – which of course were then featured in his next novel. Pimbo’s readers began to have a personal stake in his books.

By 1987, with around 20 titles to his credit (nobody seems to know exactly how many), he had sold 80,000 books. Did his readers love them? Well, just about every review I can find includes the word ‘awful’, but as one commentator puts it:

Fred Unwin probably had a larger readership amongst local people than any better known author, and certainly amongst those who might not normally read books … He built up a list of regulars, brought great pleasure with his visits, and when he had made enough money from selling one book he would write another. He commands huge respect for that.

 

So what am I recommending? Write slush? Get out there selling door-to-door? Neither. But the lessons of reader engagement in Pimbo’s story still hold true today just as they did then, 30 years ago. Just one thing has changed. We don’t have to wait for the bus any more. Because we’re on the magic bus – the web – and we all have a free pass. This bus is especially magic because although you still need to start by going out to find your readers, you can soon get them coming over to your place – it takes just a second – if they enjoy spending time with you.

This is what I’ve learned from old Pimbo:

  1. Know who your readers are. For him, it wasn’t people who went into bookshops, or the city’s temporary residents, but the people who had lived in Cambridge all their lives.

    2.  

  2. Go find those readers. We shouldn’t expect people to buy our books just because they’re in the bookshop. Once we’ve identified our typical readers, we need to find where on the web they hang out, and spend some quality time with them. Not selling all the time: people hate that. But chatting, discussing, commenting, sharing, becoming one of the gang. And then when it’s time, inviting them back to our place – or places. (Different places for different types of reader.)

    3.  

  3. Make the visits frequent. Pimbo’s visits were once a year. Everyone would know when he was due back in the neighbourhood. Times have changed, and now our visits are two-way. When your friends drop in to visit you on your blog or website, there needs to be something new every day. Maybe not a major new post like this. But latest updates, new links, anything to keep the content fresh. And you need to be going out visiting every day, too, or people will quickly forget you. Of course, there’s not time to visit all those great sites you’ve bookmarked and leave comments. Only the key ones. But you can remind friends of your presence by posting regularly to Twitter or Facebook, at least a couple of times a day, maybe three or four.

    4.  

  4. Make every visit pleasurable. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it, if you want people to come back to your place again? But how? There are some great ideas from Misty Belardo in The 8 Types Of Posts That Get Maximum Comments. She suggests how-tos, competitions, personal experiences, showcasing your work, resource lists, thought provokers, creative work, humor. I’ll add only two things – there should be a place for most of these in your website or blog – and that the content needs to change quickly enough to keep it feeling fresh. Nothing turns people off faster than a static site.

    5.  

  5. Keep it personal. Pimbo met people face-to-face. We’re not actually going to meet most of our readers, but we can still engage with them personally, by encouraging questions and comments and reactions. I don’t think it’s necessary to respond to every comment individually – not if you’re busy – but we should be acknowledging the feedback we get, and we should aim always to answer questions. Within 24 hours. You might want to encourage readers to post their questions via Twitter – because all interactions will be less than 140 characters long. Nobody will expect long email answers.

    6.  

  6. Make the experience interactive. For Pimbo, this meant gathering stories from those he visited. In A Real Writer, I want to encourage everyone to assist with the research – by helping me, everyone helps themselves. And if readers do get involved, they’ll feel they have a stake in my success.

    7.  

  7. Remember that you’re part of the story. Pimbo’s novels were pretty awful, remember. And yet he sold 80,000 books. Let’s face it, my writing friends, a book very rarely stands or falls on its quality alone. Pimbo sold because he was a character. Then there’s this Tony Blair fellow – the one who’s book has won him a £4.6 million advance because, as his US publisher says, he’s ‘such an exceptional writer’. Would anyone have given him £1000 for a book in 1982, when he stood for Parliament in a by-election, won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit? Unlikely.

    For your book to succeed, it really helps if you have a compelling story for yourself. I’m not suggesting that you necessarily need to start a war or two. And please don’t start telling your readers what you had for breakfast this morning, unless your name is Brangelina. But what is it that makes you stand out from the crowd? Start preparing that story too.


Have you found any new ways to engage with potential readers recently? Did you actually engage with any new readers today? How?

Tags: , , , , , ,

Read it. Love it. Forget it.

April 19, 2011 in Reflections | 7 comments

“My impression of kindle … is that most readers have a very fast cycle of Read it. Love it (hopefully). Forget it.

The one-click buying is very instant gratification. Unless you’re a prolific writer of formulaic genre books, turning out 2 or 3 a year, I don’t see much opportunity for building up a readership. Unless you are constantly on the forums you will quickly be forgotten.”

So said fellow lit fic author, Ali Cooper, on a Facebook thread a couple of days back, sparking a stream of comments from other writers. Many of them saw this as the fatal flaw in digital publishing. The ebook is a fad. Most serious readers will turn back to print for their serious reads.

People probably said the same when the motor car was invented. Just think of the inconvenience. Someone walking in front of you waving a red flag. And besides, our roads aren’t wide enough for them. Noisy smelly things too. It won’t be long before everyone goes back to the horse.

Like it or not, digital is here to stay. It doesn’t mean the death of the print book. People will always love them, just as they love horses. But while we may still stroke real books and allow them to nuzzle up to us, I suspect most of us won’t actually own one.

The truth is that we always adapt to new media – and quickly. New roads are constructed, pot-holes covered over, speed-limits put in place, pedestrian crossings and traffic-lights invented.

And our lifestyle evolves too. Car ownership made society more mobile. We moved away from friends and family, and started commuting to our jobs, miles away. Homes became a commodity and a housing market emerged, as the pace of our vehicle-driven job-hopping increased. Suppliers became national instead of local. Even our towns and cities shifted, as malls clustered around available parking space for the delivery trucks and shoppers.

Is life better? Debatable. Are our behaviors different? Undeniably. Was change inevitable? Irresistibly.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Ali. Yes, Kindle readers – and all digital readers – do tend to read, love, forget. And there’s a reason. Our reading behaviors are changing in response to the new media. Mine are anyway.

Let me borrow an image from Seth Godin: the purple cow. Godin says that if you’re in a herd of cows, people won’t remember you unless you’re different. Purple. But let’s develop his analogy. Imagine you’re in a herd of a million cows – and there’s a green cow too, and a blue cow, and a polka-dot pink cow, and several varieties of stripy red. The other cows don’t say Moo! – they say Me! – and they’re all trying to push to the front.

Here’s how it is for readers. I remember seeing a funny cow last time I came this way … purple, I think it was. Can’t see it now though. Maybe over there. Ah, there’s a pink one. Look, that one’s cute …. OK, kids, time to get moving.

That’s how we read, most of us, much of the time. Scan. Stop. Sample. Maybe Like. Move on. It’s how we use Twitter and Facebook. It’s how we read blogs. It’s not hard to find the evidence. As I write, one of my posts, One of our Tweeps is Missing, has attracted 143 visits today, largely as a result of a Facebook link from Ommwriter, which was featured in the post. On the face of it, a success. Until I look more closely. Google Analytics reveals that only 10 visitors spent more than a minute on the page, and 80% of them flashed past in less than 10 seconds.

But what about the readers who do engage, the ones who take the time to read and absorb and then open other pages? Or in Ali’s case, the dozens of people who cared enough about her excellent first novel, The Girl On The Swing, to write reviews. Now that she’s just published her second, Cave, where are they? They’ve probably not forgotten her: it’s just that right now they’re all tied up with the stripy cows.

So, what does the forward-thinking, market-oriented, technically-adept purple cow do? Figures out the media. Fits herself with a GPS tag, and hands out scanners to fans.

Or something like that.

Again I think Ali gets it right: it’s all about being prolific. She suggests that writing two or three books a year or pounding the Kindle boards will keep you in the public view enough to build up a following. Like Barbara Cartland, who published 723 books … averaging 20 books a year from the age of 77 to 97 … and sold over a billion books! Probably having a few royal connections didn’t do her any harm either. (Most of us prefer to keep that sort of thing quiet.)

Now I couldn’t possibly hammer out a novel a fortnight, but I can still learn something from Ms Cartland. I’ve been blogging for the last 20 days, putting on a live creative writing gig most days. It’s keeping me in front of my readers, and showing them how I write. I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to keep it up too much longer: I’m not a spontaneous writer, and coming up with the story-line and writing with as much care as I’d take in a novel often expands out into an all-day job. But I could, relatively easily, write a 20-30 minute short story every couple of weeks.

How would the short story help? Well, I have good evidence that in our changed reader market, the demand for short stories is strong. A year ago, as a trial, I published three free shorts on Smashwords under my Rapscallion imprint – two from Suki Michelle and one from me. Without any effort at all, we’ve had 2500 downloads. You might argue that the majority of our readers have been greaders – they took the stories and never read them – and you’d probably be right. But it only takes one or two reviews like the wonderful, thoughtful piece from eCapris yesterday to start showing the discriminating reader that we mean business. That we’re trying to raise the bar.

In our mobile world, and with the reading tools we have in our pockets, the 30-minute read is likely to become ever more important. Commuting. The lunch-break. Between classes. In the waiting-room. The moments we snatch in our busy day. The free short story and smart essay fit perfectly into this window. And if the reader learns to love a writer at lunchtime, she may end up with his novel in bed that night.

Of course other social marketing tools will continue to be important, not least the Kindle message-boards. But while my comments there may show people who I am as a person, my short stories show who I am as a writer. That seems important.

And there’s one more thing. Remember the cow’s GPS tag? Here’s my version. When readers sign up as members for my blog, my (still-to-be-launched-but-coming-soon) Associate scheme will allow them an email notification option every time a new short story is released. This purple writer means to stay found.

Am I right about changes to our reading behavior? Has the way you read changed in the digital age?

Related posts – both written a year ago:

12 Reasons Why Printed Books Will Survive
With A Little Help From My Friends
Seth Godin’s now saying that purple cows need to be in reinventable fields. Me, I’ll stick with the GPS tag.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Social Saturation

April 14, 2011 in Reflections | 2 comments

At 3.22 this afternoon, I reached saturation point. I’d been busy on the web for hours, checking tweets and posts, following Facebook flows and LinkedIn chains, looking for inspiration and affirmation.

The morning hadn’t been wasted. I was delighted when someone tweeted that they were ‘becoming addicted’ to my writing ( – but be careful with that!) and I connected with Sara Sheridan, whose Guardian blog post today, ‘Why writers must embrace social media, no matter the genre‘, is recommended reading.

But suddenly it was all too much. Like being in a crowded room at a party, when all you want to do is get out and take a deep breath of fresh air. Who are all those smiling faces? And what am I doing here anyway?

I tracked back over the last 100 tweets. A quarter of them were from writers trying to sell me their book. Around 20 gave me news that didn’t really interest me. Most of the rest were either desperate to teach me something, letting me eavesdrop on gossip, or quoting something deep and meaningful.

Only one led me to a blog where I was truly entertained. Seth Godin again – you might have guessed.

Again the question. Why am I even here, blogging?

I guess the answer is that I’m selling too. Except the difference is I’m not going to headline “my AWESOME new book, just $0.99 at Amazon today“.

Instead, my aim is to put on a live performance. Not talking about writing, not trying to teach anyone to write, but just really writing. With proper stories, plot progression, characters you’ll love, hate, laugh at, feel sorry for. And if that gets you hungry for more, well then you’ll be able to get the book at the door at the end of the show.

It’s a two-way thing. Every artist needs an audience, and when it’s live like this, I can hear from your reactions whether I’m getting through to you or not.

And you know what? If I’m going to put on a good show, then I probably need to rest up more and spend more time in rehearsal. I’m not saying I shouldn’t talk to my friends and supporters – that’s an important part of the feedback – but maybe I shouldn’t spend so much of the day trawling for readers. If the show’s good enough, word will spread and people will arrive, I’m sure of that.

But wait. This has been a rant, not a performance. So let’s put that right. Here’s a 5000-word short story that I’ve just reposted on Smashwords: Waiting for Orders. It’s free, an irreverent satirical romp, short enough to be read in 20 minutes, and needs to be read in the voice of a young Jack Nicholson. Does it work for you? Cheers or hisses or silence?

And that brings me nicely to tomorrow’s topic – the importance of the short story, and why I’m going to be spending much more time reading (and sharing with you) other emerging writers I admire.

# # #

If you’ve never used Smashwords before, you’ll need to sign up first. Then refer to this guidance page to optimize your reading experience. Smashwords allows you to download in a number of different formats to suit your e-reader. I’m still using my PC and the quickest way is to use the HTML version offered. But I much prefer using Kindle for PC – a free download – all the details are on the guidance page.

Tags: , , , , ,

The Penance Of A Pirate

April 14, 2011 in Reflections | 2 comments

Pirate


An operetta in five acts – with lyrics by Mr WS Gilbert.


‘Publishers cannot pay higher royalties because the money has to go to fighting piracy’ – TeleRead: April 12, 2011.


ACT ONE

When Alain was a little lad he proved so brave and daring,
His father thought he’d ‘prentice him to some career seafaring.

If you’d known me as a youth, you’d hardly recognize the wretch who stands before you today. With a stout heart and an unyielding arm, I fought piracy with the best of them. When someone offered to lend me a book, I steadfastly refused to accept it, preferring to buy my own copy. When our school started handing out photocopied pages from text-books, I poured sugar in the toner – and it wasn’t long before I could dismantle the drum and make off with it in less than 30 seconds.

From my lofty moral plateau, how far I was to fall!

ACT TWO

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly

How did I become a pirate?

Was it a thirst for freedom and adventure? Was it my love of words, the sensuous thrill of ‘swashbuckling’ as it surged forward in my mouth to break on my lips, then fell back exhausted? Was it Johnny Depp?

I’d served my apprenticeship and was an articled writer with a book of my own, written and reader-ready. It was then that Pirate-King Mark Coker came marching into town, recruiting for the bad ship Smashwords. His rallying-call had a beauty and purity I found irresistible. “God is dead.” Ah, Nietzche! “Big Publishing is built upon a broken business model.” And he pressed me to answer a question, neatly bringing the old JFK proposition into tune with the times.

Ask not what you can do for your publisher – ask what your publisher can do for you.

A few days later I was camped at the mouth of the Amazon with the motley Smashwords crew. Every morning we set sail, me and ten thousand other ragged writers with the wind in our faces, bent on mutiny and mischief. We hacked at prices, strangled the old trade-routes, thumbed our noses at authority and tradition. Pirates, of course, but good pirates, only intent on the redistribution of opportunity. Every evening newcomers flocked into the camp, ready to serve under the skull and crossbones.

ACT THREE

I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
I know the croaking chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes! …
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

Unperturbed, the ships of the great publishers continued their stately progress, laden with the works of fine writers and Tony Blair. (No sir, ‘laden’, not ‘bin Laden’ – they’re still working on the terms.) Let Coker and his mutineers slash prices, and cut their own throats into the bargain. Quality and influence would win the day, as it always had. The croaking chorus would soon be silent.

And besides, there were more important battles to fight, against the age-old foe of my youth – the copy-pirate. Now he was digital and doubly dangerous. But with so many years of experience, this was a battle publishers knew they could win. What’s more, they knew who would pay: their own loyal authors of course, on whose behalf the battle was being fought.

ACT FOUR

Although we live by strife,
We’re always sorry to begin it,
For what, we ask, is life
Without a touch of Poetry in it?

I have a vision.

In dark Amazonian alleyways, heroes rub shoulders with villains. The New Pirates are now the New Publishers. There are no readers, only writers, and on every corner, they plead with one other:

- Read my book, guv? Please read my book. I’m sure you’re going to like it. OK, don’t read it. Just Like it. Or maybe you could just Like me.

What of the Old Publishers? They’re still fighting the Old Pirates, and they’re still winning. Copy-protection’s easier now they no longer work with living writers. And dead writers are far less likely to mutiny.

I have seen the error of my ways.

ACT FIVE

Resume your ranks and legislative duties,
And take my daughters, all of whom are beauties.

Is it too late to say I’m sorry? Too late to renounce my boorish behavior, and fall back into line with the good and the great?

Ever since ‘independent’ became fashionable, I feel like I’ve been losing my independence. A few days ago, word came round that we’re not to call ourselves pirates any more, we Smashwords people. We’re ‘Smashers’ – official! Institutionalized nihilism! I didn’t get into this to be an institution. Or to smash. Just to change, and to have some fun.

And another thing, it’s slim pickings these days, being a writer-pirate. With all the competition, you have to work so hard.

So, what about it publishers, you who are trying so hard to help writers by maintaining the old order? Won’t you take me back? I’m not even asking for much, not like that audacious Hocking woman. A few thousand would suit me just fine.

Ah yes. Yes, of course – I’d forgotten. This is where we came in.

# # #

If you expected to see me revealing the secrets of how to hypnotize your readers today, well I’m sorry to disappoint you. But my lips are sealed – as I said they would be unless we had at least 10 Likes for the post. No likee – no tellee. You’ll need to speak to a few of your friends if you want the lowdown.

Tags: , , , , ,

Sweet

April 12, 2011 in Reflections | 1 comment

Have you ever noticed that there’s a direct correlation between the length of a post and reader reaction?

That’s why this one’s short.

Tags: ,

Whisperings: birth of the e-novel

March 27, 2011 in Reflections | 9 comments

Just emerging

2010

A year ago, I wrote that April 3rd 2010 would be remembered as “the most important day in 570 years”.

Do you remember that day? The excitement and expectation as the iPad finally hit the stores after months of rumor? Of course by April 3rd 2011 no self-respecting technista would be seen dead with an iPad. Now it’s all about the iPad2 – ‘thinner, lighter, faster’, all manner of temptation to succumb to the Apple again.

But I wasn’t writing about the product. What happened that day was a turning-point in history – a watershed. The ebook had been rapidly emerging for a couple of years, but the iPad somehow legitimized digital publishing. It was the new cool. Bless my soul and whiskers, even Twitter millionaire Steven Fry was promoting the virtues of e-reading on this ‘game-changing’ new product. It was cooler than anything since …

1440

The last game-changer in the history of text – Gutenberg’s invention of the printing-press. No longer would the monk labor in his drafty cell, painstakingly hand-crafting the illuminated manuscript (“How I love the smell of vellum.”). Now a book (“Call THAT a book?”) could be produced in a matter of hours – thinner, lighter and faster than ever before. For the first time, books passed out of the hands of the Church into the homes of ordinary people (“How will standards be maintained if there are no gatekeepers?”). A social and cultural revolution was underway.

What changed? As literacy spread, learning was increasingly secularized. Books started to appear in the vernacular instead of the language of Christendom, Latin. There’s a strong case to be made that print was directly responsible for the Reformation, the Renaissance. The reliance on oral tradition died. Arguably, print brought about the growth of organizations and centralized businesses, created modern urban society. But of one thing there’s no doubt. Print created a market of private readers. And to satisfy this market, a new art-form emerged: the novel.

Fast forward

To today, a year after a new text revolution. What’s changed? Perhaps it’s not so much change as acceleration. Writing has been democratized: we write almost as much as we talk – some of us more so. A year ago, we sent 50 million tweets a day; today it’s 140 million. In the same time the number of WordPress blogs has increased from 10.5 million to 18 million. The number of books published on Smashwords has passed 40,000, with 5000 new titles added per month.

Those are the figures, but what’s the impact? We’re beginning to recognize the vernacular: this week OMG and LOL were added to the OED. (If OED is a new one to you, don’t worry – you really don’t need it for most texts.) We’re decentralizing: who needs to be in an office when you can message anyone on your mobile? The prophet of our electronic age, Marshall McLuhan foresaw this 50 years ago when he wrote of our return to the village – but now ‘the global village’.

But most tellingly, the events of the last few weeks in the Middle East are directly the product of the text revolution. I remember sitting on a beach in one of the Arab Gulf states 35 years ago, and asking how long their comfortably feudal systems could survive in a modern world. The answer was 35 years. After all those years of quiescence, the ruled have erupted against the rulers. And what’s driven their revolution – not the cause but the mechanism? Text messages, Facebook, Twitter.

Weren’t you supposed to be talking about the novel?

I’m coming to that.

So authors are publishing 5000 new books a month on Smashwords. On Amazon it’s probably more … plus of course all the previously published books re-released there. In the digital world, publishers realize, books never need go out of print. (Watch for proposals to change the copyright law.)

But almost without exception, books are still written first for print, then converted to a digital format. The iPad in particular perpetuates the illusion that we’re still reading a printed book, with a display that simulates a page turn. How long will it be before we start seeing books written to take advantage of the new medium? How long before an e-novel emerges, as radically different from the current literary form as the novel was from its predecessors?

Probably a long time. After all, it was 200 years or more after the printing press that novels in English began to take off with the work of Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding.

Our friend Stephen Fry, it’s true, has already had a stab at it. In September last year The Fry Chronicles, a memoir, was published simultaneously in hardback, as an eBook and as an iPhone app. And it’s genuinely innovative: the app allows readers to skip through the book using color-coded categories to focus on different people and subjects.

But most writers have carried on as before, conceiving the novel as a print object, thinking in terms of the number of print pages, maintaining a print layout, telling the story as they would a print story.

Then this week, for the first time, I heard the faintest whispers that change is in the air.

First on an Amazon thread – that old chestnut, ‘What is literary fiction?’ In a fascinating series of posts, Stefano Boscutti claims to be working on stories that can change in reaction to a reader’s physiological responses – but admits that it’s ‘a stupid, crazy, ridiculously daunting project’. Maybe. But it will happen one day, to be sure. Then Stefano touches on something of particular interest to me, because it’s exactly what I’ve tried to do in my novel, The Lebanese Troubles:

I’m pushing for a hybrid of screenplay and prose to make my stories “read” better on screens. Increasingly the screen is how we consume text.

Then just this morning, I was followed on Twitter by 40kBooks.com – and their site was a real find. ‘Smart content for smart people’ was the message I got from their home page. And I have to say that these folks have a smart marketing strategy. They’re thinking about where their smart readers read, and how. It may be hard to get time to curl up with a novel, but there are times in the day when you’re waiting, maybe commuting, maybe taking a lunch break, and your mobile phone is already with you. So what kind of material are they publishing? Novellas, from both top and up-and-coming European and American writers. Essays, from leading thinkers. The sort of content that will keep the reader fully absorbed for around an hour. Because ‘short is more’ they say. That’s thinking outside the book.

And then, right there on the home page, two sentences that expressed my thoughts perfectly, from an essay by Thierry Crouzet:

We know today how to translate books from paper to the e-world. It is now time to learn how to write books which could not have been written on paper.

Whisperings perhaps, but the game really is changing. The e-novel is being conceived.

* * *

If you’re a novelist who thinks screen rather than paper, please check in here, with a comment. We could have fun exploring ideas together.

The discussion continues in ‘e-Novel: explorations in writing and reading‘, with discussion on the changing relationship between writer and readers, and a live e-Novel exercise.


References

The most important day in 570 years – my original post
MediaDigest – Twitter figures
ReadWriteWeb – WordPress figures
Smashword figures – see post for March 25.
Wired.co.uk – new entries in the OED
Stephen Fry‘s blog
Stefano Boscutti‘s website
The 40kBooks website
Thierry Crouzet on 40kBooks.com

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Adding value or just creating noise?

March 24, 2011 in Reflections | No comments

So last night I opened an email from an Australian web-acquaintance, Syd Harbour, who runs a writer support network. Syd was venting off at a writer called Wally, who had sent out a mass mail along these lines:

Hi folks – I’m an award-winning photographer who’s just branched out into writing, and my first novel is “Teenage Vampire Ninja”. It’s the story of an 18-year old on the trail of a pack of vampires who destroyed his family. My Amazon link is ….

From someone unknown, uninvited. No indication that Wally even knew who Syd was. Spam.

Syd tracked Wally down and read him the riot act. How could Wally even think of behaving like that? “I was just following advice”, said Wally. “I spoke to J.K.Fowling – you know, that guy who’s selling all those ebooks, and he told me this was the way to do it.”

Syd then goes on to give us the usual netiquette homily – find out who you’re talking to (Syd doesn’t review fiction), no unsolicited messages, no mass mailings … and then proceeds to give us a link to Wally’s book page! And his website! And how to message him! And to cap it all, he tells us that Wally’s Amazon author page needs revamping and invites us to go visit it and send our comments!

There were repercussions too. Fowling had written in to deny any contact with Wally. I wondered how far it was going to go. Did we have another Rebecca Black on our hands? I checked Wally’s Amazon listing position this morning. Good, lower than mine: that’s OK then.

If I’d never seen Syd’s other output (and if Wally had shot to the top of the listings), I might have thought this was the smartest piece of viral marketing I’ve seen for a while. I don’t think it was that, but it raises important issues about who we associate with, and how we writers promote ourselves and others.

In a comment here the other day, Jamaican author Joy Campbell said: “I feel like I’m pimping my work every time I make reference to it.” I guess we all feel like that to some extent as we try to get someone – anyone – to please just take a look at our book.

Sometimes we hunt in packs: for example, members of the Independent Authors Network help each other out by retweeting other members. I’ve met good people there, and I’m happy to support writers who are doing good work, but there are dangers in working blind and supporting indiscriminately – IAN is growing fast and sadly just this week, a member was suspended when it was noted the author page was racking up 1000 hits an hour – a group of Facebook dwarfs apparently clicking away all day long. Credit to IAN founder William Potter for dealing with the problem quickly.

Noise - thanks Nevit Dilmen

Noise
thanks Nivet Dilmen

We do the indie writing community no favors at all if we come across as loud-mouthed web-hogs or promote work of dubious quality. I’ve done it – probably most of us have. But we constantly need to ask ourselves: Am I adding value to the community and supporting people and ideas that need to be heard? Or am I just creating noise? Is my viral marketing pleasing, or just sneezing?

Oh, that story about Syd and Wally. All true, every word of it. But the names and book title and context have been changed to prevent further viral infection.




References:
The Independent Author Network. And here’s my author page there … just to show you how it works, you understand, not to promote my work in any way!

Rebecca Black – 29 million hits for ‘the worst song ever’ – no, you find her – I’m not going to promote her.


Tags: , , , , ,

« Older entries

close