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A Wedding, a Politican, and the Pursuit of Happiness

April 25, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 1 comment



I’m beginning to wonder whether this week’s Royal Wedding in the UK is one of the most audacious feats of political skulduggery ever.

My suspicions were alerted when I saw a headline in the Daily Telegraph this morning.

Archbishop of Canterbury hails plan to measure national happiness

It wasn’t the normal Easter address from the head of the Anglican Church, calling on Christians to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. Instead Dr Williams used the occasion to praise Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to replace GDP with GWB (= General Well-Being) as the primary indicator of the nation’s progress.

And then he called on us to celebrate the union between our future Defender of the Faith and his Kate, proclaiming ‘Let a thousand street parties blossom!’

Is it only your TwitFace correspondent who has noticed that hard on the heels of The Wedding – just a week later, when we’ll probably still be trying to find our shoes before we stagger home from the party – comes one of the defining moments in our political history? What defining moment? You’d forgotten? May 5th is the date set for our referendum on AV, the Alternative Vote, possibly changing the way we elect our politicians.

Every time I turn on the TV, I hear people talking about street parties. And what parties they’ll be! Starting on Friday, running all weekend, and continuing on Monday, MayDay. How do I read the timing of The Wedding and this incessant call for partying? Surely it must be an elaborate collusion between Church, State, Monarchy and Media to ensure that not a single person votes in the referendum? ‘Politics – blah! Pass me the Alka-Seltzer.’

A conspiracy? But of course. After all, AV goes against everything our Big Society stands for. The current system is monogamous: a voter chooses a single politician and pledges loyalty. But AV – ranking the candidates on a list – is designed to encourage open relationships with multiple partners. Some would call it a loosening of our moral standards. Some would say that at best it’s a ‘least worst’ electoral system.

Ever since he was hustled into his shotgun marriage with Nick Clegg, it’s been clear that Mr Cameron has regretted his vow to put AV to the public vote. And now I see that the Royal Wedding is simply a plan to scupper the referendum.

Some would call this plan devious – evil even – but not me. I’m full of admiration. It’s been brilliantly conceived, carefully concealed, and skilfully executed. And I’m sure that our Prime Minister will take no pleasure in the thought of those millions of people waking up with a headache after a week of partying, far away from their polling-station, and trying to remember why May 5th was important. I’m confident that his motives are exemplary because he’s a forward-thinker and a democrat. How else could you interpret his quest for General Well-Being?

I’m convinced that, like me, the PM realizes none of the current proposals for electoral reform address the fundamental flaws in our democracy. Which isn’t democratic. He’s done his sums, I’m sure. He’ll know that even when a candidate secures a 50% majority, the voting turnout is rarely more than 70%. What does that tell us? That there will always be a majority of people who either actively oppose the winning candidate – or could care less. Surely there must be a better way.

And of course, there is.

Tell me how many people in your household voted in the last national election? How many in the last local election?

Now tell me how many people in your household use one of the social networks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, for a start? And how many of them have registered a vote for something they’ve Liked in the last 24 hours?

No contest, is it? You may have exercised your chance to vote in an election once every few years. But here on the web we do it several times a day. The beauty of it is that we don’t even have to read more than a few words. As soon as we see a smart headline or a face we recognize, all we need to do is click on the ‘Like’ button. Surely that’s how democracy was always supposed to work!

It’s only unfortunate that having reached this conclusion, Mr Cameron then commissioned a quango – the Office for National Statistics – to carry out a £2 million, 9-month research project to give him the answers he already knew. I know! I know! Old habits die hard.

But with respect, Prime Minister, may I suggest that the time for action is now – or at the latest May 6th – the day after nobody has voted in the referendum. Close down the Office for National Statistics immediately, demonstrating your firm yet even-handed control of the nation’s purse-strings, and implement these reforms. The country will thank you.

1. Abolish elections

Let the people’s representatives be those who garner the best support in the social media. Those who are most followed, most Liked. Or perhaps you could use The Independent‘s clever algorithm, which ranks Twitter users by Authority, Audience and Activity.

With your 1 million plus Twitter followers, you need have no fear for your own seat, but abolition would result in the de-selection of almost all sitting MPs. At a stroke, you’d remove the lingering public suspicion of expense-mongering. And instead of Vince Cable, Ed Balls, Theresa May for company, you’d have Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Rio Ferdinand … luminaries whose voices and opinions the people really trust.

Think of the change as a move away from end-of-year exams and toward continual assessment.

2. Abolish campaign funding

Approximately £67 million was spent on campaign funding in the UK during the 2010 election year, money that could be usefully diverted to other urgent social causes (such as my upcoming sequel to “The Social Network” – “Birdman of Folsom Street“).

Not one of The Independent’s influencers owes their position to external funding. Surely this must also increase public confidence in the integrity of our representatives.

3. Abolish parliament

My proposal is actually that we should restrict political statements to sentences of not more than 140 characters. Twitter has shown how completely unnecessary longer utterances are, and it provides the perfect platform for debate. I had a concern that replacing parliament with Twitter might lead to a devaluation of content, but research from Pear Analytics shows that in fact, the two forums are virtually indistinguishable. Analyzing Twitter content over a 2-week period in 2009, Pear organized tweets into 6 categories:

  • Pointless babble – 40%
  • Conversational – 38%
  • Pass-along value – 9%
  • Self-promotion – 6%
  • Spam – 4%
  • News – 4%


4. Sell off the Houses of Parliament

Since our representatives will communicate in cyberspace, there’s no further requirement for a property which occupies a prime development site in the heart of London on the bank of the Thames. No longer will Members need to maintain a second home in London (no more expenses scandals!), and the money raised from the sale could also be used to support my film.

5. Re-brand democracy.

The public is tired of hearing the same call to action for over 150 years – ‘One man, one vote’. That’s why turnout is often so low in elections: people expect different these days, people expect more. My suggestion is ‘One man, 104,000 Likes’.

The number has been carefully calculated. In a single week, each person would be allowed a maximum of 2000 Likes, in my view perfectly sufficient to express a point of view. More than that, and there’s a danger that campaign farms could be set up by candidates eager to wield influence, persuading followers to Like them day and night.

I’m not quite comfortable with ‘One man’. It cleverly builds on the original campaign, but perhaps we should make it clear that women have the Like too. Your suggestions would be welcome.

I’m quite certain that Mr Cameron’s thinking will be far in advance of mine. That’s what you’d expect from a man who has stated that the National Well-Being scheme should ‘lead to government policy that is more focused not just on the bottom line, but on all those things that make life worthwhile’. That he wants Britain to be ‘in the vanguard’ of efforts around the world to change the accepted measures of national progress ‘rather than following meekly behind’.

But he needs our support. So if you believe this plan could reawaken the public’s interest in tired old politics and politicians, then please click on the Like button below. Remember that in Egypt, it took only a month for social media activists to transform the political landscape. With your help, Mr Cameron could do the same.

Recent posts in The TwitFace Project:

Entertrainment
14 Ways To Make Friends With Americans

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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?

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Entertrainment

April 21, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | No comments

Spring

On a dazzling blue summerish spring day like today, there are few pleasures to match a train journey through the English countryside. Our green and pleasant land is awash with color. Bluebells and primroses cluster on the embankment; in the meadows, dense white sprays of blackthorn and cow parsley rejoice in the sunshine, while horse chestnuts have spired and turn to flower; in parks and gardens, there’s delicate pink cherry blossom and stately copper beech; and we slice through famland impossibly yellow with rapeseed.

But of course, you wouldn’t expect your roving TwitFace correspondent to notice any of that. As I travelled by rail in the late morning, my interest was in communication, the effective use of media, the quality of engagement and the return on investment.

Since my journey took me through London, I was able to observe the current status of social marketing for both the overground and the underground service. The rail authorities have kindly requested me to submit a full report of my findings ( – “If you have comments on our services, please contact us at …”). But in the meantime, here’s an interim summary.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While rail seems to understand the importance of social media and has significantly increased its output and improved its content for travellers, there are still too few opportunities for genuine interaction, as my suggestions will indicate.


Factual information and reminders.

Accurate but uninspiring. The correct routes and stations were pre-announced, and doors were there to be minded when we were told to do so. I always remembered to collect all my personal belongings when instructed.

Suggestion: work on the style of the scrolling marquee text in the carriages. Instead of:

The next station is Charing Cross

try:

OMG. Charing X next. LOL

Length

Generally acceptable, though an occasional tendency to ramble:

Good morning. This is your train controller. I’m sorry to tell you that I won’t be issuing tickets on the train today because my ticket-machine is broken. But I have alerted the main-line stations and … use your tickets … buy new … blah … blah … Thank you.

After starting well, he quickly lost our interest, and well before he came to the end, we were all back to sending our own text messages.

Frequency

I timed the silences between platform messages at an average 1 min 35 seconds (slightly shorter on the underground), which is acceptable. No travellers complained that they’d been left unattended.

But a real opportunity has been missed on the in-carriage information boards on mainline trains, where the distance between stations is considerably longer, yet no new messages are displayed for several minutes.

Suggestion: Link the information boards directly to Twitter. Then maximize exposure and feedback by creating the hashtag #amtravelling.

Originality

Poor on the underground with frequent repetition of the colourless – A good service is available on all lines.

Surprising creativity on the main-line station platform:

Parents and guardians are requested to keep children under supervision at all times. Trains may pass through this station unexpectedly and at high speed.

‘Unexpectedly’ made the announcement instantly memorable – and I duly Liked it.

Linking

Some evidence of both internal and external links.

To ensure your safety and comfort on this journey, please observe the instructions posted in the carriage.

On checking, I was pleased to see notices pointing accurately to the fire extinguisher and the alarm bell at the door of the carriage.

More ambitiously:

We would like to inform passengers that services on this line will be disrupted at the weekend due to planned engineering work as we seek to improve our services. For further details, please check our station noticeboards or visit our website at xxx.com.

Suggestion: make it possible for travellers to Like these improvements to the service.

Entertainment value

Strategically placed – right in the middle of the main-line carriage – was a woman’s group on a day-trip to the city. This was pure social marketing genius: the group was loud, brash, on-topic and ready to share with everyone.

For example, here in the UK we have a royal wedding coming up next week – everyone’s talking about it. From our women, I learned the secret history of Royal Icing – on the outside of the wedding cake. Unfortunately I can’t tell you here … because it’s a Royal Secret. But I also learnt that another way to say 2:30 is ‘visit to the Chinese dentist’. (Two – tooth … you see? Never mind. I’ll save it for Twitter.)

Suggestion: This experiment would have worked even better if fellow-travellers were able to give feedback. A button perhaps, on each seat-rest allowing us to Like or Rate each story, joke or phone conversation overheard in the carriage. Think of it as a social icebreaker.

Retweets and Mentions

The system clearly works well on the underground, and in fact I’m presenting the Samuel Beckett RT Award to the oldish gentleman with electric gray hair, gray shirt, loose-fitting trousers over loose-fitting legs, and a brown paper bag in his hand. He lurched across the platform in my direction, shaking his fist at the arriving train and all its well-socialized passengers.

Mind the gap. Stand clear of the doors.

- Min’-the-gap. Stan’ clear o’ the fuckin’ life!

Other TwitFace Project posts:

The TwitFace Plan
7 Health & Safety Tips For Bloggers
Donate A Family. Save A Writer
14 Ways To Make Friends With Americans
Shiny Happy People
What Is Web ME 2?
How To Hypnotize Readers
One Of Our Tweeps Is Missing

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One of our Tweeps is missing

April 18, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 2 comments

Ommwriter message

A disturbing message

I’m locked into a world where there’s only a blank screen.

Nothing else.

No buttons. No menus. No pop-ups. No tabs.

Blank.

Alone.

No Twitter. No Facebook. Nothing

Friendless.

Likeless.

My head is ambient. Random patterns of sound, swirling, surging, repeating, fading. Electronic leaves falling. Electronic pulse. Electronic argeggios. Going nowhere. Piped into my brain, inescapably.

- You’re a writer? Then write. It’s your only escape.

I press keys. Thinly, they echo back, as shards of sound explode around me.

The page begins to fill, as I write my way back to reality.

How did I get here?

It was Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, the writer’s friend. I trusted him. I’ve been greading his articles for years, meaning to look at them some day. Until, one day, I did.

When? I can’t remember. There are no clocks in this place, no sense of time.

I can’t even remember exactly what he said. There’s no window to the outside world, no point of reference, no way to send messages.

He said something about a writing tool. Something about concentration and focus. A recommendation. OmmWriter. Omm.

Omm.

There’s a sound sequence I recognize. I’ve been here before. The landscape becomes familiar. A friend. My friend.

- Is it enough? Have I done well, my friend?

- You must write. Always write. Only write, if you wish to escape.

They lied, and it’s a trap. They want to keep me here forever. Just writing. Word after word after word, tumbling out in arpeggios, falling like leaves.

Unnoticed.

Unfriended

Untweeped.

Help!

—————


This was the disturbing message I received, unsigned, this morning.

At first I thought it might be a hoax. You never can tell with the web. But I checked the references, and it’s true that Joel Friedlander posted an article a week back: OmmWriter Dana: My Second-Favorite Writing Program of All Time.

Now Joel’s credentials are of course impeccable. He’s written thousands of articles helping independent writers. Surely no ill can have been intended.

But I followed the trail back to the Ommwriter site, and my fears began to mount:

As mere mortals, we also face the usual challenges of daily life: a multitude of windows open on our computer desktops, messages, emails, calls, meetings, and those crazy thoughts that pass through our minds. OmmWriter emerged as an internal tool to help transport us away from the humdrum noise …

What else is this but a thinly-veiled attack upon the things we value most? Humdrum? Twitter? Facebook? Say it isn’t so. And look carefully at the name of their text editor: Ommdata Dana. Why Dana? Could it be “Download And Never Associate”.

And why are they so insistent on their mortality? Why do they claim to come from Barcelona? My mind is full of questions.

I’m convinced that my message was a genuine cry for help. So what if there was no signature, no avatar? Perhaps this hapless tweep has already been stripped of his – or her – social identity.

We’re a caring community, and I believe that we have a moral obligation to mount a rescue – to save this poor soul from a lifetime of perpetual writing. I would volunteer myself … but Monday’s always such a busy greading day for me, after the weekend.

If you’re as brave as I am, please do what you can … but perhaps you’d be advised not to go in there wearing headphones.

More from the TwitFace Project:

The Twitface Plan
Donate a Family. Save a Writer!
Shining Happy People
+ follow the Twitface Project tag.

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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.

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14 ways to make friends with Americans

April 5, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 14 comments

Uncle Sam

On my lecture tours in Europe and the rest of the developing world, I constantly remind bloggers how important it is to make friends with Americans. The US, you see, is the cultural hub of the universe (- the precise epicenter is said to be just west of Hannibal, Mo).

We writers, in particular, stand in awe of the achievements of our American cousins. Take the mighty Amazon, for example (- what humility, not to call it Mississippi!): over 900,000 books in their US online store. (In their UK equivalent, by comparison, the number was 25, the last time I bothered to check.) And what writers! The likes of Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and now Amanda Hocking – living testaments to their culture. Most of our British writers are dead.

But it’s one thing to give advice: another to get followed by our trans-Atlantic cousins. To be honest, Americans don’t Like me much.

That’s why I was delighted to find today a wonderfully informative guide from New York University, Getting to Know Americans. In just a few minutes, I found out exactly where I was going wrong.

Now at this point, non-American readers, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Because one of the first tips is to ‘spend time away from your compatriots to be with Americans’. Yes, I’m sorry. Just leave. Now! I need a little privacy here … well I don’t know, do I? … try another of the 30 million blogs out there, maybe? … AND YOU!

Right, sorry about that, but I think they’ve gone now. So let’s get down to business, shall we? Have I told you about my novel? (“Another expectation is that people are ready to ‘do business’ very soon after meeting, without much time spent on preliminary conversation.”)

Oh. We haven’t been introduced? Well, you can call me Al. (“Adults in the majority culture routinely use each other’s first names upon introduction.”)

No, from England actually. You’ve heard of it? Little island – west side of Europe. No, Europe … near Russia. Yes. Thames River, Big Ben, Parliament Building, stiff upper lip … yes, that’s it, Hugh Grant. (“Be patient if Americans are ignorant of some aspect about your home country. Use the opportunity to educate and share, just do so in a polite and brief manner.” – if you’re still struggling to place England, you may find this American writer’s description helpful.)

So, anyway, about my book … Oh, you write too, do you? Baseball thrillers? Sounds exciting. Yes, I adore baseball. Babe Ruth, eh? What a player! Joe DiMaggio. Joltin’ Joe! Marilyn Monroe. (“Know what topics Americans like to discuss. These usually include music, clubs, movies, sports, and vacation plans.”)

No, not much baseball in my book. None, really. I would have liked to, of course, but it was difficult to get a team together with just one … American in the story … but all the spelling’s American though. I wanted it to be right for your market. (“Americans often think that other countries should use their example and adopt their ways of doing things.”)

I’m working on a new vampire edition too – specially for US readers. New characters, a great new cover, and I’m raising the price to $5.99. (“Not only is the amount or worth of the material items valued, but there is often a priority on obtaining the latest version. The United States is a culture that tends to view change as good, as an improvement.”) Does your book have vampires?

No, I can see that might not work. You’re number 5 in sports novels on Amazon, you say? Up for Baseball Thriller of the Year? That’s wonderful! No, no awards really, not for books anyway. I did once get a swimming certificate. Oh, and I won the Pterodactyl award from the British Software Industry in 1990. A special award for my success in sending the industry into reverse. (“People act competitively, are proud of their accomplishments and expect others to be proud of their own accomplishments.”)

So can I interest you in a copy of my book? I see. Not enough Americans. No baseball. Right. Well, what about taking a look at my blog then? Perhaps I could get you to do a guest spot on baseball? (“Persevere through the disappointments with superficial interactions.”)

Yes, we’re very relaxed over there at Writers without Borders. Most of the time I write my posts, I’m sitting there working in my pyjamas pajamas. (“There’s a trend towards ‘dressing down’, that is, informally, in the workplace on Fridays and for Christian church services during the summer.”)

And I think you’d like the atmosphere over there. I’m proud that it’s an equal opportunity blog. (“Although there are many differences in social, economic, and educational levels in the United States, there is a theme of equality that runs through social relationships”) Anyone can write in and comment, even women. (“There is a strong feminist movement in the United States that aims to insure that women have responsibilities and opportunities equal to those of men.”) You know, one of my best friends was once a woman.

But hey, why are we just sitting here talking? Why don’t I get tickets for the Yankees-Red Sox match tonight, and we can carry on this discussion there? (“Rather than simply getting together with friends to spend time together, Americans will frequently plan an activity – any activity – and will tend not to get together without some focus to the time spent with friends.”)

Oh, you’ve already got plans? Well some other time then.

Yes, I’d be delighted to be your Facebook friend. (“Americans tend to ‘compartmentalize’ their friendships, having their ‘friends at work’, ‘friends at school’, a ‘tennis friend’, and so on.”)

And of course I’ll Like your book.

Notes:

(Unfortunately, as I was proof-reading this post, I found that the original source-article had disappeared from the NYU site. I’ll keep looking for it, and repost the link if it reappears.)

If I’ve whetted your appetite for a baseball thriller, then check out the well-reviewed Allen Schatz novel – Game 7: Dead Ball – and just to clarify, Alan and I did not
have the conversation described above. :)

Don’t miss the earlier TwitFace posts:
The TwitFace Plan
7 Health and Safety Tips for Bloggers
Donate a family. Save a writer!

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Donate a family. Save a writer!

April 4, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 3 comments

A Declining Resource

I’ve had my concerns about blogging of course. Who hasn’t?

What is the impact on the planet, when every day millions of us use thousands of words, almost without thinking, as if the supply was never-ending?

There are those who claim that the word is a re-usable resource, and that we have enough words to last the next 100 years … by then, they say, we’ll have discovered new channels of communication. But my private research indicates an approaching crisis: each time a word is used, it loses a fraction of its original lustre and intensity, gradually diminishing until it becomes a meaningless black hole.

Here’s the evidence. In just 50 years, the life-expectancy of words has been reduced by a factor of 4. In the 1950s, the average reader struggled to understand Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but was comfortable with Dickens – so words had a half-life of about 200 years. For most of today’s readers, Dickens is impenetrable – and that’s a half-life of not much more than 50 years.

My fear is that with the explosive growth of blogging and the uncontrolled use of words, the rate of decay will accelerate until, in a matter of a few years, words will become meaningless even before they are written. All blogs – and even tweets – would be reduced to unintelligible mumbo-jumbo.

My Conservation Efforts

As a writer and blogger therefore, I feel I have a responsibility to the planet – to plant a new word for every thousand I consume. You may have noticed ‘macronym’ yesterday – an acronym using two or three letters of each word instead of just the initial; my example was ‘NaPoWriMo‘ – National Poetry Writing Month.

Here’s my contribution for today.

gread [gri:d] verb transitive or intransitive | p. gread [gred] | pp. gread [gred]

sounds like ‘breed’, ‘seed’

to download, subscribe to, or otherwise acquire large quantities of free or low-cost digital content without reading it.

e.g. “I’ve just tweeted all 50 blogs I’ve gread today.”

Derivation: a construct from the English words ‘greed’ and ‘read’


Greading: The Danger to Writers

If you thought word-decay was a problem, greading is a potential catastrophe. Because it kills writers and bloggers. Kills them with kindness.

This is how it goes. Annie joins a group including 200 other bloggers. Filled with optimism and good intentions, she tweets everyone in the group, subscribes to their blogs. Many of them reciprocate, and for the first few days, Annie’s on a high. But following the TwitFace Plan, her days are filled, and there’s no time to keep up with her new friends. Day by day, there are fewer responses, and before long, she’s writing mainly for her own pleasure once again, not anyone else’s.

Ed’s a writer determined to connect with as many readers as possible, so he decides to eliminate all price barriers to his novel. He’s interested, he says, in engaging with readers for the long term. Making money isn’t important right now. He offers his work for free, and is delighted with the sudden response. His books are ‘selling’ like never before. He waits a week or two for the reviews and the praise to start flowing. But they don’t. Because his books have been downloaded with hundreds of others, and the first page has never been opened.

For anyone who writes, only two things are important. Coffee and Attention. (I suppose I could add Money too, but if that’s a primary interest, you might do better getting a job in publishing, or setting up as an agent.)

A few weeks later Annie is playing Farmville; Ed has taken up online gambling. Hopes raised, then dashed – because of greading.

Another TwitFace Solution

But, my fellow TwitFacers, never fear. Now we’ve named the problem, we can understand it. And with understanding comes the solution. A distinctively TwitFace solution, which will benefit you, your family and the world community of writers.

Here’s the issue, you see: when everyone’s a writer, nobody’s a reader. We’re all just greaders. That’s all there’s time for. Tell me, truthfully. Are you a real reader, or a blogger making the effort to read? Aren’t you a greader too? Not just a little?

So here we all are, greading furiously. 30 million bloggers and 1 million writers … but wait! That’s not everyone! What about the other 6,878,887,629 people who don’t blog or write? Perhaps they’re not all your LinkedIn or Facebook friends, or you may not feel able to influence them … so let’s set our aims lower. What about the other 2.14 members of your own household? (Figures may vary – our household was me + 2.75 people last time I checked – but 3.14 people per household is the official average.)

You may remember that in my recent Health and Safety post, I introduced Standard Operating Procedures to minimize interruptions to your important work. I explained how effective Signage could help you maintain concentration even in a high-traffic area. But what better way to energize your working environment and silence your family members than putting them to work too – not as writers, but as readers? While you’re busy with the Ultimate Blog Challenge, why could they not be involved with NaDoFaSaWriMo? (That’s National Donate Your Family To Save A Writer Month – in case you haven’t figured it out. Aren’t macronyms a joy?)

Think what we could achieve. If you donated your 2.14 family members and each family member befriended 30 bloggers for a month, commenting on their posts every two days, you could singlehandedly support Annie and Ed and 60 other bloggers – who’d get dozens of comments a day. Greading would be unnecessary because bloggers would stay busy writing, not pretending to read. Your working hours would be significantly shorter, and disturbances significantly fewer.

We would of course need to insist that all bloggers supported by the scheme should plant a new word each day, in order to sustain and replenish the existing stock. But I can’t see why any blogger should object to that.

So if you’re as excited about this scheme as I am, why not donate your family today, by signing up below?

And to get things started, let’s see who can come up with the best caption for Ed’s photo, to encourage others to join TwitFace’s NaDoFaSaWriMo initiative – and save our bloggers and writers. There’s a prize for the most persuasive entry: a week’s worth of comments on your blog.

No greading!



Earlier posts in the TwitFace project:

The TwitFace Plan
7 Health & Safety Tips for Bloggers

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7 Health & Safety Tips for Bloggers

April 3, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 5 comments



Is there a sextant in your
blogger’s toolkit? No?
Then you’d better read on.

It all started with Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote ….
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages …

Yes, his spelling was terrible, but what do you expect from a self-published author? Anyway, the point is that April was a time when people started making plans to go off on pilgrimage. And why? Well, if you’re familiar with The Canterbury Tales, you’ll know that the whole point of pilgrimage was meeting up with friends and strangers to swap stories. Tall stories, comic stories, bawdy stories, moral stories … everyone got into the act. There was just something in the air.

600 years later, we’re still telling stories in April – except that now, there’s none of that unpleasant walking. You can join any number of tour-groups from the comfort of your own PC, laptop, tablet or web-enabled phone. There’s the Ultimate Blog Challenge – where pilgrims pledge to write 30 posts in 30 days. Or the slightly less arduous A-Z Blogging Challenge for all 26 days of April ( – quite properly, they discount the Sabbath). Or, if like Chaucer, the Muse moves you to burst out into poetry, there’s NaPoWriMo (- I know! But these macronyms are popular in the US, they tell me).

If you haven’t started yet, and you’d like to join, it’s not too late. You can still catch up with us.

Now although we have none of the physical hardships of Chaucer’s tale-tellers, we should remember T.S Eliot’s warning – that ‘April is the cruellest month’. I was reminded of that this morning when I read the tale of plucky fellow-pilgrim, Raven Howard. Injured in Spring Training, put on the disabled list, and missing the start of the season, Raven has decided to make up for her enforced inactivity by accepting the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It’s a wise decision: in my experience, the perfect way to warm up for a prolonged period of inactivity is to commit yourself to writing a blog, backed up of course by all the normal TwitFace support activities.

But blogging can still be dangerous. Why, only last night I fell off my chair after falling asleep at the keyboard – and I hadn’t taken precautions. Like Raven, I could have had a nasty injury. So, since there are so many inexperienced bloggers joining us at the beginning of this pilgrimage season, it seemed a good time to give you …

THE TWITFACE GUIDE TO HEALTH AND SAFETY

1. A quiet, secure working area

Your job is demanding and requires the utmost concentration. Exposure to noise and frequent interruption while blogging causes stress, and may even result in a missed retweet or direct message. Ideally you should set up your workspace in an area removed from normal family life. But if you choose to work under the stairs or in a cupboard, make sure that there is adequate ventilation and lighting. If your only option is to work in a high-traffic area, then follow the directions in note 2 carefully.

2. Signage

Make sure that working areas are clearly demarcated and signed, and that instructions are clear and precise. ‘Genius at work’ is an example of a particularly bad sign, since it gives no indication of how the reader is supposed to behave. It may also cause precisely the disruption that you are trying to avoid. More effective are: ‘Keep out!’, ‘Silence!’, or ‘Go Away!’. Your signs need to be prominently displayed. If you are working in a high-traffic area, I have found it effective to pin signs to your headgear or writer’s jacket (as described below).

3. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

In my previous post, I demonstrated how to create a successful TwitFace Plan (and I’ve been delighted to hear that so many of you have found my schedule a useful template). But as well as micro-planning your own work, it’s important to define Standard Operating Procedures for other members of your household, and then to make sure that they understand and buy in to the plan. For example, there needs to be total clarity about when you may be interrupted. If the kitchen’s on fire or your spouse is having a nervous breakdown, at what point should you be notified, and what are the escalation procedures? For a deeper understanding of SOPs, please refer to the excellent post from fellow-pilgrim, Shilpa Venkateshwaran.

4. Ergonomics


Wanna end up looking like this?
The use that sextant!

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) are common in TwitFacers, due to poor chair and desk positioning. When setting up your workspace, check that your seating position, knees and elbows are all at a 90 degree angle, as shown not shown in the illustration. Beginners are then advised to check and if necessary recalibrate their positions every 15 minutes using a sextant. (For approximate angles, a spirit level may suffice – but it looks unprofessional.)

5. Clothing (The Writer’s Jacket)



(Back view)

Some time ago, my wife bought me the rather attractive jacket pictured – but until recently we’d never found a use for it. Now I’m a TwitFacer, it’s an important part of my writing equipment. Light, comfortable, it allows me to buckle or chain myself to the chair to prevent falls. There’s one small disadvantage: if chained in, you need a second person to release you. Earlier this week I was locked into my chair for three days before anyone noticed I was missing. That’s why I decided not to wear it last night – with disastrous consequences. A well-written SOP can help to prevent family oversights.

6. Protective Headgear

TwitFacers debate the best type of headgear for a writer. Some prefer the extra protection of a cycling helmet. I prefer a beanie, more comfortable and, in my view, sufficient to minimize damage to the skull in most writing-related accidents. I find it difficult to imagine that I could fall head-first from my chair, although encounters with the desk are not infrequent, particularly in late-night sessions.

7. Work-Life Balance

Don’t let social media take over your whole life. Remember there’s a real world out there too. Every so often, when you need a break, why not pull up the Sudoko screen, or play a couple of hands of Hearts?

Follow these guidelines and I’m sure you’ll find that blogging is an enjoyable and fulfilling experience.

Have I missed anything important? If you have any other great tips and advice, let me know, and we’ll add them to the list.

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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

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We’re Lendle-ing again – but maybe not in Japan

March 25, 2011 in News | 10 comments

Lendle-ing again

Well two-and-a-half cheers! eBook-sharing is back on the agenda again.

One day after stopping Lendle in its tracks, Amazon relented and they’re back in business again, with just a teensy bit of sync-ing goodness (‘useful but non-essential’ say Lendle triumphantly) removed. If only we could deal with all the world’s great crises so amicably!

And for indie publishers and writers, it’s an important victory too, because it leaves us the right to choose whether we want to share our books or not. If Lendle is to survive, so will Booklending.com, and both figure in my long-term marketing plan.


… With Reservations

But the news doesn’t quite get the full three cheers.

First there was a thumbs down from Shiori, the Japanese student who’s been living with us for several months now. I used ‘Lendle’ for a few harmless pronunciation exercises. Sadly, she now hates the word, and says the thing would never catch on in Japan anyway, with a name like that.

Not that she needs to worry, not yet anyway. Because when I started the sign-up process with Lendle, this was the Welcome I got:

Please note that Lendle is currently only available in the United States. We expect Amazon to allow book lending elsewhere soon.

Well, I’m a Brit, and the news wasn’t entirely a surprise. You know what we’re like, we’d be awful at returning books on time – though perhaps not as bad as your George Washington who, I hear, had a book out on loan from 1789 until last year – and then got off without paying the $300,000 late fee.

But the Japanese, the Germans, the Swedes … surely you could have trusted them!?

My guess is that Amazon will want to install a GPS book-sniffing device inside each eBook before introducing sharing outside the US, so that recalcitrant foreign libracriminals can be hunted down. Whether the expiry of the Patriot Act at the end of May will have any impact is hard to say.

But at least the principle seems now to have been accepted – that writers should have the choice whether to offer their books for sharing or not.


With big reservations

Of course, there will still be writers who think that Amazon’s change-of-heart will open the door to unspeakable evils, and this view has been eloquently expressed by Steven Lewis on the Kindle Writers blog. In an open letter to Jeff Croft, co-founder of Lendle, he writes:

Maybe I don’t have Mr Croft’s vision thing. Have I even understood your business correctly? (It is a business, right?) After all, as a publisher, I have what Mr Croft calls an old school business model, that’s the one where I expect to be paid for my work.

Perhaps you agree with Steven. That’s fine. If so then you don’t need to offer up your books for sharing. Everyone should have the right to opt out too. But before you come to a decision about it, take a look at the comments following Steven’s post. As well as a response from Croft, you’ll find other writers making a cogent case for participating in a book-sharing scheme – because they’re convinced it will increase both readers AND income.


Getting started with sharing

We’ll let the argument rage over there. Assuming you have made the decision to be a book-sharer, where do you go from there?

The starting-point is your copyright notice – and I was delighted today to get a ringing endorsement for the wording I’ve proposed from none other than Andy Woodworth, the co-sponsor of the eBook User’s Bill of Rights. So you could share this too.

Treat this ebook as you would a printed book. If you enjoy it and want to share it with friends and family – as we hope you will – then please do so. The best support you can give is by helping to spread the word about a (publisher’s) author or book. All we ask is that you respect the author’s right to make a living from his art: so please do not re-distribute this book in any format for commercial purposes, or modify the content in any way.

But that’s only the start. Just because I allow people to share my book, it doesn’t follow that anyone will want to do so. There are 130 million other books published (according to Google, whose plans to scan all of them came to a crashing halt yesterday at the end of a long-running law-suit). Over 18 million WordPress blogs – and probably as many more that are not WordPress). 200 million Twitter users sending 1 billion tweets a week, as Twitter celebrates its 5th birthday today. How has your book got a chance unless it’s either extraordinarily good – and even then maybe not – or extraordinarily bad?

That’s where we’ll start next time – with a look at how to create passionate early adopters, those who will help to launch your book out into the world.


Sources

References::

Related posts – Writers without Borders:


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