Archive for the 'Publishing' Category

I got a new mobile phone a few months ago and I’ve been slowly exploring all its functions - and in the process, I’m discovering a whole new mobilesphere (I have no idea if there is such a word but it seems an apt way to describe the world of mobile media in the way that blogosphere describes the world of blogs!). My new phone is also a mobile computer, running Windows Mobile and 80% of its front face is given over to the screen - the phone part of it has a virtual keypad for me to touch-type the phone number. It runs a mobile version of Word, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer. It has WiFi so so I can surf the internet as well as send and receive emails if there’s a WiFi service available - but I also splashed out and signed up for a monthly data plan so I could be connected wherever I am. With unlimited texting and a huge number of talk minutes on top of all that, the way I relate to my mobile phone has completely changed.

I used my old mobile phone solely for voice calls - and I did not use it a great deal as I don’t like shouting out my part of the conversation in public while I’m on the bus or in the street. I hated texting as I am not very nimble on using the telephone number keys to type out words. My new phone has a Qwerty keyboard (ie like a PC keyboard) as well as letter recognition on a touch-sensitive screen. Now I can email or SMS to my heart’s content in public - an excellent way to pass the time on the bus or wherever I am in transit!

Being a writer with this new writing tool to play with, naturally, I was curious when I came across an article about mobile phone novels. These are apparently huge in Japan. According to Wired magazine: “A mobile phone novel typically contains between 200 and 500 pages, with each page containing about 500 Japanese characters. The novels are read on a cell phone screen page by page, the way one would surf the web, and are downloadable for around $10 each.” The novelists tend to be young twenty-somethings or even teenagers who type their novels via their own cellphones. According to the writer interviewed by Wired, she can type faster on her phone than on a standard keyboard. There’s even a first mobile phone novel award - sponsored by the premier site that hosts these novels Magic iLand: might you call it the MoBooker?

There has been one author in the West who has written a novel on his mobile phone. According to a news report, “Italian writer Robert Bernocco took advantage of his idle time while commuting to and from work by train, writing his 384-page science fiction novel, Compagni di Viaggo (Fellow Travelers is the English translation), on his Nokia 6630 phone, using the phone’s T9 typing system.” The book has been published in traditional book form by Lulu.com.

I have to say, I admire the abilities of these two writers to master the mobile phone keypad. Even with the mini Qwerty keyboard and letter-recognition function of my new phone, I do not have the patience to write more than a few short text messages or emails on the fiddly thing!

It seems to me, in the West, there has not been any novel specially written for the mobile phone, as far as I know. I don’t think that the reason is necessarily the difficulty of writing on a mobile phone keypad - presumably, one could write it on a PC, blog-style, and then post it to whatever mobile phone novel site there is around. I wonder if Wester writers shouldn’t try this potential new genre. It would be a great way for a new writer starting out to write 500 words at a time. It’s great for readers as most of us have our mobile phones with us at all times - it’s a handy way to read short bite-sized chunks. Writing short, gripping prose is pretty hard, to be sure, and reading a lot of text on a tiny screen can be hard on the eyes. But I think these are excellent challenges for a writer to evolve a writing style exactly suited to this new medium - rather like writing poetry to the constraints of the sonnet form rather than just sticking a few lines together in the modern free-form style.

Would you read a novel on your mobile phone? Do you know of any writers in English who have a written mobile phone novel? Would you, as a writer, be tempted to try writing one? Add a comment or email me and share your views.

Photo: thanks to europe.htc.com

I set up my International Public Relations bookproject wiki a few weeks back but I’ve been hesitating about announcing it on my blogs. I finally blogged about it a few days ago and invited comments and input - and I hope very much that you will help me with my research by getting involved in this project. But the reason I hesitated is that having set up the wiki online, I found that I have a strong streak of “command and control” in my character.

I wrote my two novels all by myself and did not show them to anyone until I had finished typing “The End” on the last page. I did invite input from experts on some of the background information that I needed to create a real world for my characters to inhabit and I did occasionally discuss motivation and plot points with my writer friends. But I kept the bulk of the story and text to myself during the 18 months or so that each book took to write. And I felt very much in control as the author and creator.

So while the “social media”, open and transparent part of me is all for having a go with writing a book via a wiki online, the old-fashioned author in me has been feeling somewhat uncomfortable about this new way of doing things. Will people nick my ideas/ thesis? Will people give me unsupportive criticism? Will I feel pushed and pulled by others’ input? Will I no longer feel like the author of the work?

My worries took me by surprise as I had always considered myself an open and trusting sort of person. (Though perhaps my years of training as a lawyer has overlayed that with an armoury of suspicion…?) Friends and colleagues gave me differing views. Some advised, no way should I put it up online as people might steal my work. Others were more of the attitude: well, try it and see. The advantage is that I can invite the help of others who may have more expertise of a particular issue than I have and I always liked the saying, “two (or more) heads are better than one”. And since I may be approaching experts with whom I have no personal connection, I can refer them to the work online for them to get a sense of what the book is about and whether they feel comfortable contributing to it. Also, as I would like to include a strong cross-cultural focus, having an online presence accessible from all over the world can only be a good thing.

A number of much more well-known authors than me have shared their books online while they’ve been work in progress. Chris Anderson blogged his book The Long Tail and developed it with readers’ input. Marc Wright over at simply-communicate.com is also using a wiki for his book Handbook for Internal Communication, due for publication in March 2008. So I reckon, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

So far, I’ve put out a few feelers to a number of experts and I hope to speak to an Italian writer next week and also a Korean social media / tech CEO based in Japan.

Do go and check out the bookproject wiki - and let me know if you have any thoughts on any of the issues I’m researching. Drop me an email via the Contact form above or add a comment.

Photo: thanks to smackfu from flickr.com (CCL)

This is a cross-post from my arts and writing blog, Fusion View

Following from my post on SlushPileReader.com, where readers can vote for unpublished manuscripts to get a publishing contract, Amazon.com and Borders are also getting in on the act with their own versions of the democratic publishing ideal.

See the January magazine article Looking for a New Publishing Paradigm

These business models all rely on one of the characteristics of social media - user-participation. On the bookmarking site, Digg.com, you can bookmark on online article that you like and it will appear in a public page on Digg. Other readers who then follow the link to read the article you bookmarked can then vote for that item - the more votes it has, the higher the ranking on the Digg page and more readers will see it. Wikipedia is dependent on users making and editing entries.

In general, experts take the view that only 10% of visitors on a site participate in any active way eg leaving comments or other action that contributes to the site or enterprise offered by the site. Digg is very technology and sports biased. I expect that the people who populate Wikipedia are serious fans of whatever topic they are writing about and enjoy the kudos of being an expert. Many other user-generated site I’ve come across has a strong bias towards the interests of young guys with a tecchy, gadget-, sports-, or auto-focused interest. While there are many book lovers who are young guys, I have a sense that the majority are women who love books, the physical things, and may not have such a passion for reading their novels online - and have less of a fervour about being an expert. I would be very interested to watch how these publishing business models pan out and whether there’s going to be a bias towards sci-fi, fantasy and male-readership genres.

I also note that these ventures are all US based. America is notoriously self-focused when it comes to book publishing and it is hugely difficult to get your book published if you’re not American - even if, as a non-native, you write about a US setting with American characters, it’s very difficult to get it past the US literary sniffer dogs. I wonder if these ventures will let in more non-American manuscripts or if we will still find only US books getting through. (I don’t know if there’s a condition of entry that rules out non-US manuscripts - does anyone know?)

Am I portraying gender stereotypes here? What do you think? Please add a comment.

Pic: thanks to archangeli on flickr.com

Last week, I gave a presentation at the Copyright Licensing Agency’s annual open meeting about The Impact of Web 2.0 on copyright issues. It was a packed hall with over 180 people, many of them standing. The delegates ranged from authors and content producers to publishers and librarians and knowledge management professionals in education and business organisations. Althought I couldn’t make it for the whole of the round table discussion on digital information and copyright chaired by Chris Bryant, MP, I managed to catch the tail end of it. I also had the chance after the event to speak to a few of the delegates, including representatives from the BBC, a photographic rights agency, a publisher and a corporate knowledge management professional.

I’m jotting down here some of my impressions of the issues from the conference - these are no more than impressions and vignettes of the discussions as they were aired and raise more questions for debate rather than giving firm answers.

• The government is making funding available for schools to help students become more internet- and social media- literate but there are apparently delays due to concerns about schools using materials off the internet in breach of copyright. However, there are apparently special sites offering copyright-free material for schools and educational establishment for just this purpose. But, overall, can the government with all its unwieldy bureaucratic machinery be the right instrument for change is the fast moving area of online technology and networked communication and enterprise?

• Is digital rights management here to stay? Or will content producers like the BBC have to accept the fact that they will have to let go off their rights to a product some time after it’s been produced?

• At the moment, the likes of the BBC can still find a market to sell its high quality products like its natural world series etc due to the fact that pirated versions on the internet are of low quality. It is probably not long before the technology will be freely available to upload high quality pirated versions online. What then for the original content producers?

• Is there a future for book writers when digital readers become more widely available? At the moment, book lovers are still attached to the physical book but as the young techno-loving iPod wearing millenials and their children start to outnumber us oldies, will they adapt more enthusiastically to electronic book readers? If so, will that be an opportunity for “bijou” writers who don’t produce blockbusters to gain a wider readership through digital distribution because they won’t be at the mercy of the bookshops for distribution? Or will it be a threat because their work can now be easily copied and freely distributed illegally?

• Chris Bryant mentioned the estate of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The estate were apparently restrictive for a long time in granting rights for Brecht’s works to be used, quoted, performed or edited. For example, his plays in their original would run for over 3.5 hours which is difficult to market to today’s theatre-going audiences. However, they have recently been more open in rights granting and the result has been that more Brecht plays are being performed and the increased exposure generally from the dissemination of his works through freer rights has resulted in greater revenue returns for the estate.

• The panellists in the main discussion all called for flexibility in managing copyright - yes, it is important to protect and value the products of creativity and hard work but in this digital age, it’s important to be flexible to enable the sharing of information and knowledge.

• I was struck by the comment of a university representative about the difficulties of printing off 50 copies of an online article to include in a student pack for discussion on one of the university’s courses. It’s ironic in that the founding principle of the World Wide Web was that the technology was meant to make information freely available for all…

What do you think? Have you had experiences around copyright issues and social media or online digital technologies? I’d love to hear your views - please add a comment or email me.

Photo: of Sony Digital Reader thanks to askdavetaylor.com

ymcla

Today, I’m going along to the Copyright Licensing Agency to give a presentation at their open meeting on the impact of digital media and Web 2.0 for copyright stakeholders. It was somewhat last minute as their original speaker for the Web 2.0 segment, Giles Colbourne, a web usality expert at cxpartners, was unable to attend due to a conflicting engagement in the US. Giles asked me to step in last week so I spent most of this last weekend, putting together the presentation and slides.

While thinking about the issues to bring together for this talk, I found myself having a vested interest in both sides of the rights-holding debate.

As a a writer in print media, with two novels published, a third book (non-fiction) in the works and articles published in magazines to my name, I am fully in favour of my creative rights being protected by legislation. The reason is primarily to do with the monetary currency that I receive in return for my work from the bodies who publish my writing. As a professional writer, I expect to be remunerated for the work I create.

As a blogger and free-wheeling consumer of social media on the internet, I’ve got used to the idea that stuff from the web should be free - other than real-world-type things that you have to buy like CDS, books, groceries online or software of a certain level of high complexity that is worth paying money for. People create videos on Youtube and give you an embed code so you can embed (publish) it on your own site. Musicians create podsafe music for the joy of distributing their music to millions online even though they may not be able to get a record deal. I spend as much time - if not more - writing on my blog for free, compared to how much time I spent writing my novels, for which I was paid. Others offer their photos under the Creative Commons Licence so we can enjoy their creative work for free. The idea of having to pay for social media stuff in order to remunerate their creators feels like anathema.

This makes me feel strangely schizophrenic.

But I think the answer to breaking through the apparent conflict is in how we value the content we create in different media.

In my post last week on the world’s first website, I discussed the founding principle behind the world wide web and social media - the principle that information should be freely available to anyone. This is seemingly at odds with the traditional view that information and intellectual property has value and if you want it you need to pay for it.

In the traditional model, the value lies in scarcity and protection. In the new social media model, value lies in abundance and in sharing.

What I’ll be exploring in my talk to the CLA is what value the web’s open source principle has to offer to us offline content creators and publishers - and how we might look to take advantage of it, which I hope will be an interesting and useful approach for the writers, publishers and rights agents who will be attending.

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For delegates attending the CLA open meeting, you can download my presentation slides on The Impact of Web 2.0 - I will be making the password available at the meeting.

ymcla

With my background as a novelist, I’m curious to track the way the publishing industry is dealing with developments in internet and social media technology. The general trend seems to be slow. Book people seem to be still fondly attached to paper and hard copy texts.

A couple of years ago, a number of literary heavyweights loudly pooh-poohed blogs and sneered at how a teenager’s ramblings online could not possible be in the same league as great literature like Tolstoy’s works. (Unfortunately, I didn’t tag that article at the time I read it so I can’t link you to it here.)  Now, there are highly successful books derived from blogs eg The Julie/ Julia Project blog which became Julie and Julia, the book - and at least one publishing company, the Friday Project, that specifically seeks out blogs to turn into books. There is also the Blooker, an award - with a nod to the Booker - for books based on websites or blogs.

And traditional publishers are trying to catch up to new media, tentatively exploring e-books and other digital means to capture new audiences. A recent article on OhMyNews.com examines in-depth the issues facing publishers in the new media age and what some are doing to embrace the technology.

Interestingly, OhMyNews.com is a news site that draws its articles and news updates from citizen journalists - anyone who wants to submit an article can do so by signing up to be a citizen reporter. It was founded by Korean Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 as a Korean language site and has now expanded into an international English language site as well. The concept of citizen journalists is very empowering, in particular those who live in nations where the press is tightly controlled and also for anyone who would like to write and read “news” outside of the traditional avenues. Again, the evolution of new forms of news publishing online like this site must only challenge the traditional models and expectations of what publishing is all about. The site has a good FAQ section if you are interested in finding out how to become a citizen reporter.

In related news, New Media Age reports that major publishing company Random House and supermarket giant Asda are teaming up for an multi-media launch for celebrity Chantell Houghston’s autobiography, using mobile phones as the main platform for the interactive element.

Photo: thanks to James Cridland on flickr.com