A Lesson in Digital Creative Writing

We are now speaking to a number of authors and content creators about the digital opportunities and challenges that they now face. We are looking at how it is affecting them, their relationships, and the processes and activities right across the publishing value chain and life cycle from creation to public domain.

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing an author with a difference perspective, Kate Pullinger. We were drawn to Kate by the article she wrote in the Guardian last month, ‘Writers can learn a lot from the Hollywood strike. We deserve a better deal from digital publishing’. The article raised many valid points and clearly touched a spot, as it generated high number of comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/bookscomment.digitalmedia
We were interested in her digital experiences not so much from the commercial side but the writing itself. She has authored several novels, writes for radio, film and for digital media and currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. She was also the Research Fellow for TRACE online writing centre from 2002-3.

So Kate not only writes, but teaches writers and has importantly worked with new media. Kate clearly sees the glass half full and the opportunities for all in the New World, but she also recognises that the format often dictates the form. To put it another way, books are books and their size and structure are often fixed to fit the package not necessarily the content itself. Creating multi media works needs to support multi media at the beginning, during the development and at the end. It is not a case of writing the text and adding the ‘effects’ at the end.

We visited Kate’s impressive web site http://www.katepullinger.com and her latest digital work http://www.inanimatealice.com , a multi media graphic novel in episodes. We will all have our own views on whether it works or doesn’t but the one thing it certainly provides is evidence that creativity is not confined to a live in a jacket. Just as MTV enhanced music and YouTube changed video, then digitisation has the potential to change the book.

Latte and a Book to Go

When we talk about the demise of the independent bookstore we see many reasons. As we stated yesterday change happens and with every opportunity there is always a threat.

Costa coffee shops has announced that it will now do author tours, why queue in a booksops when you can get a free muffin and coffee in a coffee shop and sit and read the book at lesuire? We see Starbucks now selling books in 450 store and although this is a very limited offer it is a great and obvious way forward for them and publishers.

So where does this take us? Have bookshops welcomed coffee stores into their premises like the Trojan’s welcomed a certain wooden horse?
The reality is that this interest by coffee shops to add an extra offer into their highly competitive mix is good for business. Just as garden stores and other specialist stores sell books there is no difference. What would be different is if a coffee shop and a bookstore were to blur into one where one finishes and the other starts becomes unclear.

The interesting scenario was if Starbucks started to have a local print on demand facility after all it often takes some time to make that cappuccino and wouldn’t it be nice to have a book as well sir – freshly made too. This is not science fiction but just a case of establishing the right proposition and economics. What if they had a book vending machine in the corner, limited offer but service with no labour? What if some bright publisher forgot the tome and started selling in short stories, brand wrapped and ready to go! We also must recognise that these retailers are already wifi-ing their outlets so we can see the digital download offer could be one click away. The point is that to these retailers this is added consumer value and new money and importantly if if takes little overhead it’s a no-brainer.