Just keep blogging. Just keep blogging...

So, last entry. I've been wondering whether I'll keep on blogging; certainly I've gotten into the habit of, when coming across something relevant, thinking 'I must post that on my blog' and it's been pleasant to think I'm sharing something (that I think is) interesting, even with only a handful of people.

Speaking of which, here's a great site which uses volunteers and book donations to build a library of books for the visually impaired. I wish I'd known about it earlier, as I think it and other sites like it would have made a good topic for the essay.

Also, my latest copy of Desktop magazine had an article about a design company using Flash-driven sites, but making them accessible to all users, which is a pretty impressive achievement with Flash, and also an article on Creative Commons, which, like that article I linked to earlier, talks about the benefits of it to artists, musicians, and writers. Since it's printed-based, I can't link to (ah, look at the limitations of that old-fashioned technology...) but it did have a couple of links I'll share:
On Line Opinion: A not-for-profit e-journal of "social and political debate" where the contributors are encouraged to publish under Creative Commons.
The Australian Creative Commons Project: all about Creative Commons in Australia; has a blog-style homepage, but plenty of info and links under 'Learn more'.

But, back to what I was thinking about - will I continue this blog? Perhaps not in the short-term, since without the impetus of a particular subject to focus on, I imagine I'll run out of steam; and currently I can't think of a replacement topic. But I may be off to live and work in either Austria or Libya depending on where my partner gets transferred, and I can see a blog being an invaluable way to stay in contact with friends and family, an e-postcard.

So...
Just keep blogging. Just keep blogging. Just keep blogging, blogging, blogging. What do we do? We blog, blog, blog...

Political control of the internet

Here's an interesting article about who gets to control the internet, from SMH:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/the-net-is-anarchy-keep-it-that-way/2005/10/23/1130006004185.html

Authors and Creative Commons

Interestingly, after the discussion about copyright and Creative Commons last week, the writing-world newsletter I receive had an article about its benefits to writers, and the editor Moira Allen wrote an editorial saying she was now making all her content available under a Creative Commons license, and encouraging other writers to do the same (assuming they have already sold the content a few times and no longer think they can profit it - Moira is a strong proponent of the motto that writers should never write for free) to increase their visibility.

The article itself was written by one Josh Smith, a writer specialising in "copyleft". He talks about how using Creative Commons can turn the risk of piracy into potential profit, because if you make your book freely available for download, you defeat the point of stealing it, while letting consumers sample your work; supporters of this method strongly believe the losses from giving some of their work away for free through e-books are made up for the expansion of the audience (which can then be targeted for other products or for the paper version of the e-book). He also discusses the Developing Nations license, which allows people in developing nations free access to material they could not otherwise afford, while making sure developed nations only have access under normal copyright rules.

I can't link to the article right now as the website is down (it's exceeded its bandwidth; very popular and useful website for writers, I highly recommend it), but I'll add the link later once it's back up... and here it is:
http://www.writing-world.com/rights/commons.shtml

The digital revolution and North Korea

Foreign Correspondent is covering an interesting facet of the "information is power" meme, where digital technologies have become the weapon of revolutionaries in North Korea.
"For decades North Koreans have been isolated, and brainwashed into believing their leader is a God. But now there is a new threat that Kim Jong-Il's Stalinist-style defences are unable to stop. Advances in technology over recent years have meant that the reality of life outside is seeping in - and people are becoming increasingly aware of the wealth, freedom and lifestyle allowed in democratic countries as close as South Korea.
DVDs, videotapes, cameras and even mobile phones are the weapons in this new battle for minds - but as Evan Williams reports, their mere possession in the North can mean a death sentence as Pyongyang tries to stop the influence of outside ideas."

I think it's really important we in the Western/democratic world realise that while we are wondering about electronic paper and e-books, digital technologies can be truly dangerous and life-changing as well. Imagine being able to spread the Samizdat electronically. The Chinese government is right to be afraid of Google; the Chinese people are right to use the Google Mirror to get around their government's censorship.

Email - a new-fangled business tool...will it ever catch on?

I was reading one of the writing e-zines I subscribe to (and the fact that there are so many free and high-quality e-zines for writers of every type, including porn writers is a testament to the revolutionary internet) and they had a discussion where both writers and editors commented on the practice of emailing in submissions and articles. Obviously, writers, particularly ones from "small" countries like South Africa and India (ie countries without the sheer number of English-language markets that the US offers) were gung-ho for email because it's so much cheaper and easier for them, and I admit I don't tend to bother with markets that don't accept at least the initial query by email. But there was a small group of writers who insisted on querying by mail because it looks so much more professional, or, more accurately, you can control exactly what the editor's going to see so it can be made to look so much more professional.

And there was a larger group of editors who insisted on mail queries only - because their inboxes are clogged up and they never get to the submissions, because they have to print the submissions anyway (meaning the cost of paper and ink is left to them instead of the writer), because of fear of attachments having viruses and of spamming - not a single one of the respondents showed any technophobia about email or writers conducting their business by email, but were more concerned about these problems associated with it (and once I heard their reasons I was much more understanding of them). The problems are not insurmountable, obviously, and email will win out eventually, but it's useful to see some of the reasons why editors are not converting instantly to it as an acquisitions tool.

Character blogs

A while ago I wondered if there were blogs maintained by fictional characters for the purposes of promotion or creating interest. Apparently there are, and they're called character blogs. Here's a discussion of it (a pretty short discussion at the moment, but it might grow):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=338988

These are not quite what I was asking about, since I was mainly thinking of blogs used to promote mainstream novels, but it is interesting that people are using blogs in this creative, non-commercial way to get their writing out into the public sphere (even if the quality's not fantastic) and possibly to force themselves to maintain the write-everyday discipline - that date stamp's a fine incentive.

These character blogs intersect in many ways with the huge fandom world of fan-fiction, stories about the characters of Star Trek or Harry Potter or Buffy off-screen, giving rise to a whole lexicon - canon, Mary Sue, slash (don't ask). Blogs are a new and fun way of exploring that world.

Lamb Print: digital technology in action

I visited Lamb Print today as a field trip for my other class (Editing and Publishing). It was really interesting to see cutting-edge high-tech machines mixed with a bit of old-fashioned low-tech employing-backpackers-to-handfold human labour. So much of their processes have been replaced by new digital technology - Lamb Print no longer use film at all for printing (it goes straight from the electronic file to be printed onto the plate), they have guillotines that are programmable with computers to the right guide measurements, many of their clients are over east or even in South Africa and send files by email or ftp, and they have these new printers which do everything automatically and in less than half the time as their older printer where the plates have to be changed manually.

One thing that struck me - our tour guide mentioned that some smaller printers still use film to transfer the digital files to the plates. I think this raises questions about inequity in access to new technologies because of lack of capital. Fair enough, if Lamb Print can afford the latest technologies, then they should buy them, but it just seems to snowball their advantage over others who can't afford this digital equipment which saves time and money, produces very reliable results for less effort and enhances the reputation of the printer. On the other hand, Lamb Print had lost power over the weekend which put them behind, and one of their plate-printing machines had died after only a few months and taken ages to repair, so it goes to show not even the best technology is 100% reliable.

I do think those beautiful old hand-printers have their own charm, too. I remember seeing one in action in an old monastry in New Zealand (of all places), and it was just lovely to watch the precision of the printers as they loaded the chase (I think) with the letters (backwards and upside down) and inked the plates and lined up the pages. I would never suggest it was a better method than the fast efficient machines used by Lamb Print, but every single non-modern book you see is a testament to the skill and patience of the old-time printers, and some of them are works of art.

Chapter 10

This reading reminded me of a book I read recently, Spoken here: travels among threatened languages by Mark Abley. It was a sad read, and monotonous in its tale of woe: chapter after chapter showcased a traditional language gradually being eroded as the native speakers watch their children and grandchildren turn to English (and English was invariably the culprit; I’m sure there’s instances where, for example, Chinese has taken out another language, but Abley as an English speaker couldn’t really investigate that). This process is not helped by the fact that the two grand media of our time, TV and the internet, are (US) English-dominated, so it was good to read of some of the initiatives towards the end of the chapter that show that other languages are getting more of a hearing.

That said, I think the author was a little unfair with the way he phrased some things: like early on when he says English speakers “took the opportunity” to establish English as the default language on the internet. That makes it sound like the everyday user of the early internet was rubbing his hands with glee at the opportunity to use English at the expense of other languages; but really, it was an artefact of the first users being American. Other users, and therefore other languages, are increasing now. It was a fluke, admittedly because of English colonialism, rather than a conspiracy.

The one thing native English speakers can do, apart from not getting in the way of other language speakers’ attempts to give their own language more prominence, is to be aware that publishing on the internet has a global reach, and to therefore be careful of regionalisms, local slang, and spelling norms.

USA Patriot Act and e-books

This is the campaign to have the USA Patriot Act amended so that Federal agents cannot access people's library and bookstore records to see what they've been reading. Librarian in particular are concerned about this because they feel reader privacy is very important for minority and underpriviledged groups, such as teenagers who want to read about safe sex in an abstinence-only culture. The groups involved are "strongly committed to an individual's right to read what he or she chooses without the government's knowledge or interference."

While the Patriot Act is not of issue to Australians (until our own government decides to follow suit), I'm pointing out this aspect of it because we already buy books from US companies like Amazon, and once digital books really get started, it'll be that much easier for governments to track what people are reading, including 'people of interest' from other countries. Of course, our online buying patterns are already monitored by marketers, and I don't particularly like that, but I find the idea that a government might watch what reading material I choose to download/buy electronically and make assumptions or decisions about me very creepy. I wonder how much these privacy issues will come to affect the growth of e-books and e-publishing, which can seem very anonymous but is actually more traceable than going in person to a bookstore and paying cash for a book about how to build bombs (for example, no intention of doing this, don't arrest me, Mr Federal Agent, sir!)

Amazon's Search Inside the Book

Here's a good article about Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature when it first came out a few years ago: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,60948,00.html.

The writer makes some very good points about a) how up till then physical books were a black spot of information off the internet, all that information lost in those pages which aren't web-pages, and b) that it never would have worked if people wanted books in digital form - but they don't, they just want to use the search-inside as an index to find more books: "The magic of the archive lies in the assumption that physical books are irreplaceable. The electronic text is simply an enhancement of the physical object."

More on E-paper and E-ink

I agree with Rebecca that e-paper is much more exciting than e-readers, mainly because they have so much more potential. Here's some recent applications, which apparently may be commercially available from next year.

This is Fujitsu paper which is wireless and can hold colour images even when unpowered.








And this is the Readius from Phillips, which features a screen that can be rolled up. I guess so a device can stay small but be expanded for text reading?




And (drumroll please) here's the Sony Librie which is an e-paper e-reader and apparently, though you can't tell from the photo, has text resolution the same as a printed book. It can also play video. It's the best reader right now but some of its other features let it down, according to net-geeks, but they're certainly getting there and perhaps will be a threat to physical books sooner than expected?

Books in the Digital Age (John B Thompson)

Books in the Digital Age by John B Thompson: most of this book is looking at changes in the publishing industry in the UK and US, focusing on the academic and higher education publishing, but Part IV is devoted to "the digital revolution".

He writes that digitisation can affect publishing on four levels: operating systems and information flows (ie the streamlining of production talked about in the intro to the C2C book); content management and manipulation (the 'content is king' argument); marketing and service provision (not just simple websites but a medium to communicate with authors and readers and to conduct market research and develop more-suitable textbooks); and content delivery (this is basically in the form of e-books, and he already talked about the lowering of expectations regarding that, for the near-future at least) (pp. 312-315) .

He also discusses the reasons why certain forms of content, particularly journals and references works, have lent themselves well to the new technologies, while 'books' as we tend to think of them still lag behind: journals because they tend to consist of short and easily read on-line or printed collections of articles that don't need to be kept together but benefit from being searchable and cross-referenced, and already had the subscription system in place; reference works because they tend to be a consultative resource that are more useful but more expensive and unwieldy the bigger they are in physical form, so that the value-adding components of digital technology - ease of access, updatability, scale (ability to provide lots of material), searchability, intertextuality and especially multimedia - all have real application. Reference works have been slower to come across than journals, mainly because the business model wasn't already there like it was with the journals (pp. 322-324).

Lastly, he points out that the forms of publishing we usually think of, that is, narratives (fiction) and pedological knowledge and sustained arguments (scholarly and trade non-fiction) are least amenable to online/electronic dissemination partly because of the forms of content, and partly because of the "nature of the institutions and social practices in which the uses of these forms of context are embedded (p. 329).

He then goes on to spend a few chapters looking at scholarly and higher education publishers and some of the successes and failures they've had with digital content, such as virtual libraries, digital warehouses, customised textbooks and new databases, and then he finishes by making the very strong point that the "digital age" has transformed, not the product as was expected, but the process - by allowing for digital workflows, content management, digital POD and short-run printing, and flexibility in the lifecycle of the book.

Readings

The Internet and the Writer: I agree that the internet and e-zines etc can be very good places for new writers to start out to try and get publishing credits, but now online markets are just as competitive as the offline markets, they often don't pay very well, and they are getting flooded with crappy submissions. Interestingly, now, 10 years later, some editors still won't accept email submissions - probably because if they did, they'd be getting 500 emails a day.

How to Write a Better Blog: good advice, for bloggers and for writers in general. While I know writing for the internet is different from other mediums, because of the way people approach webpages, the basics of good writing (be interesting, be clear) are the same.

Into the Blogosphere: I read a couple of the articles about "weblog journalism", the phenomenon where these communities of people are producing better news, uncovering mistakes and getting scoops before the mainstream news sources. I think it had to happen (or has to happen; one of the articles experiences skeptism about its real impact or potential) and it's an important and vital part of blogging, if the mainstream media is going to be biased or late.

Links

You might find this Blogspot help topic useful for avoiding spam comments:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1203


Others, from Writing-World newsletter again, which reflect some of the new uses being made of electronic publishing and access:

Publish On Demand.net
A resource for all things POD, including a reviewed list of POD publishers, comparing prices and services.

Bookner
A free service where writers can upload their manuscripts for peer review and possible attention from agents.

eBook Crossroads
One-stop writing, publishing and marketing advice for ebook readers, writers and publishers.

Authorhouse
Publisher running the Fresh Voice in Print publishing program in conjunction with a bookseller. Your book gets published and promoted for US$899.

New marketing tool

Again from writing-world (my emphasis):

Amazon sells shorts
-------------------
Amazon.com has branched out into publishing with a new program that showcases and sells short magazine-like work from established authors. Amazon shorts offers new work for 49 cents in several digital forms and print. Currently 64 titles are available by a variety of authors including Mark Crispin Miller, Kevin Anderson, Stuart Woods, Ann Beattie, Terry Brooks, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Rhodes, Danielle Steel and Gloria Vanderbilt. Amazon is aiming for 250 authors. Not all publishers have supported the idea. One prominent editor reportedly said: "Their approach of going to agents is a bit of an end-around. You never want to do something that's so big that it offends everyone else." Most agents endorsed it, calling it clever and a good sales tool, and said it would increase traditional sales.

Book vending machines

From the writing-world newsletter:

Paris bookstore chain debuts vending machines
---------------------------------------------
Parisians craving a good book in the middle of the night can get a quick fix at one of the city's five newly installed book vending machines. "We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and bookstore chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It's as if our stores were open 24 hours a day. Our biggest vending machine sellers are 'The Wok Cookbook' and a French-English dictionary." He added that poet Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" (The Flowers of Evil) is also "very popular." All books cost $2.45. Installed in four busy Metro stops and a chic street corner in central Paris, Maxi-Livre's distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books. "We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda," Chambon said. "So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely." Books are the latest in France's expanding vending machine market that offers everything from toilet paper to carnations.

Only a matter of time before they build a printer/binder into the vending machine and you can select any title you want?

Viral Marketing - for books?

The Carlton ad has been getting a lot of attention recently in the media (though it came out some time ago) and has sparked a fresh round of discussions about viral marketing, where the ad is voluntarily spread around the net and seen more as entertainment than advertising.

The other viral campaign that has caught my eye is the one for Serenity the movie; this campaign consists of a series of clips being "mysteriously" released around the net, but since the interviewer in the sessions is Joss Whedon, writer and director of the movie (and you may remember him from such TV shows as Buffy and Angel), I'd say they're pretty official. But Whedon is enjoying winking at the fans and keeping quiet about the sessions.

So I was wondering how long it would be before we start seeing campaigns like this for books using blogs and other nanopublishing media - I don't mean the manipulative kind where people are paid to give rave reviews on messageboards and to their friends, but something like the Serenity sessions, which build on the movie (the clips are not taken from the movie, they were filmed especially for this campaign).

So, for example, a character from a book might have a blog, something which is still written by the author, but is in addition to or builds on the events of the book the character is from. Or a couple of characters, arguing via their blog about what happened to them in the book - a way to build up anticipation of the book release the same way Joss Whedon is building up anticipation for the movie release. Has anyone encountered this before - not something like Bridget Jones which was a newspaper serial before being published in book form, and not a serial bit of fiction written and published through blogs (which I'm sure is out there) but an independent separate-from-the-book supposedly-written-by-a-character blog- or e-campaign designed to promote a traditionally-published book?

Expansion of the topic

I was at Alexander Library the other day looking up books for my other publishing class, and browsed through the extensive row of books under the 070 classification to do with electronic publishing. The main thing I noticed, apart from how quickly typesetting dates (there was a book in there from the late 1980s which was actually set in Courier [the typewriter-esque font] which just looked dreadful), was how the topic has gradually divided itself, from straight 'electronic publishing' titles in the late 1980s, to subjects like 'electronic publishing for the editor' and so on, and only now is beginning to move into books that look more broadly at the social impact and where it might lead (moving from what-is and how-to to applications and possibilities) - books like the textbook, which was one of the most recent books there, as well as a couple of others in the series, and others by Cope.

It's a good physical representation of how the e-publishing has been introduced and expanded until it begins to breach the boundaries of normal/mainstream thinking.

Chapter 5: Creating a Viable E-Text Market

Finally managed to read this week's textbook chapter: I like the use of the page metaphor vs the book metaphor for current Readers (I'll fall in with the reader/Reader split of the textbook). The Readers have been focused on the page metaphor and neglected aspects of the book metaphor, but, as they say on p. 135, "the design of E-Text Readers needs to reflect existing rituals", including the ritual of browsing and purchasing a physical book (though this is becoming less important than it once was). Once people have adjusted, neither metaphor will be necessary, though they may remain desirable: sensory and aesthetic pleasures shouldn't fade away.

And, also: if Xerox had just let their scientist keep working on electronic inks 30 years ago, we'd have them right now. I bet they're kicking themselves - core business, indeed.

Twisty Little Passages

I'm posting a lot today, but I wanted to mention this book I just came across while looking through new publications blurbs for work (we maintain a library of health planning books and publishers send us out lists of their new titles, which aren't all necessarily health-related).

From the blurb and his website:
Interactive fiction — the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure — has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages (the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction) is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, and interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it.

Great title, and you can browse it at Amazon if you want to read the intro:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262134365/104-6057591-9117521?v=glance