Kate Pullinger Releases a New Episode of 'Inanimate Alice'

In March 2008 we interviewed Kate Pullinger, who was then creating stories that were innovative and which exploited multimedia and technology. She had embarked on a digital fiction project, ‘Inanimate Alice.’ and after a break of six years has just published a new episode. The project hasn’t stood still, has been taken up by many children around the world and has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Indonesian, and Japanese. It also remains a multimedia story which is free for all to experience.

We obviously had to remind ourselves of the early episodes before we looked at the new one.

We will all have our own views on the presentation, uses of multimedia and story itself. 

What is interesting is that what appeared just a few years ago as ground breaking and exciting, now appears to lack that same excitement and sparkle it once had. It is often said that a year is often a long time in technology and simply bombarding every sense and incorporating every technology trick isn't perhaps enough today. What once appeared as a ‘chevron clicker’ (a digital page turner) of a story and a fresh multi media experience is now looks somewhat lost. There are still frames when the story and the graphics come together but there are others when you feel it could have been more subtle and better. 

We have huge respect for Kate's previous ground breaking work on ‘Inanimate Alice’ but perhaps, it also shows that sometimes you have to know when to put things to bed and move on and that a six year break is a huge chasm to transverse in today’s technology.

'Powell's Dilemma' Equals Digital Obesity

When Guttenberg created the first press in the western world did it change just the accessibility of printed text, or the text itself? The illuminated manuscripts and the scribes who painstakingly created these works of art were no longer the mainstream, but a high end sideshow. When the Statute of Anne reformed publishing, or when Robert Dodsley and others redefined publishing, or when the Victorian age of literacy and mass reading were born, these changes went far deeper and wider that just the consumer and the transaction?

 It is safe to suggest that these and other seismic shifts were just as much about changing the content itself as changing how it was produced, marketed, sold and read.

To date much of the current digital revolution in books has been merely about pouring physical content into digital containers. We can talk about enhanced ebooks, learning object and all sorts of extensions to the text but fundamentally the text itself has stood still. It’s as if we have all assumed that the 256 page, 75,000 word economic model of the print world is perfect for the digital world. Has anybody seriously questioned it or even thought that maybe its not?

At the end of a interview in last week’s New York Times book review, Colin Powell was asked, ‘What do you plan to read next?’ and his answer was: 

Sigh. That’s a problem. I keep sending new books to my e-reader, and I don’t know which one I’ll read next. Electronic books have become such an impulse and instinct purchase that I buy them constantly and can’t remember what’s on my e-shelf. When I do look, I often see titles I don’t recognize or don’t remember wanting or buying. I’ll get to some of them.

To many this probably was funny throwaway, but it raises an interesting point we all to often take for granted and ignore. We have addressed the simple – producing digital content. We have even recognised the platform need to cover all the device bases. We have dabbled with social interaction and a consumer driven demand. But have we actually forgotten the basics and assumed that consumers just want more of the same, albeit digital or with digital extras?

It is as if we are living through the digital shift but are expecting the fundamentals to stay the same?

Many, including ourselves, have talked about the shift to subscription and rental on demand models but as an industry we still think in terms of sales, of retail and library worlds and its as if we missed Netflix and, Pandora, Spotify.

What we now will refer to as ‘Powell’s Dilemma’ is about digital obesity. In our haste to make buying simple and the books affordable have we have forgotten the reader’s ability to consume them? Its as if we can only see LPs and can’t see singles and miss the iTunes moment, can only see full length movies and can’t see YouTube.

Some would suggest that Powell’s dilemma is good as long as they continue to buy books and who cares if their virtual shelves become weighed down with the unread. Obesity is not healthy, feeding obesity is unwise and ignore the signs may well speed up to migration to on demand and some challenging commercials.

Perhaps it’s time we step back and think through what digital offers us to do things smarter and lead to a healthier and engaging diet for all readers and avoid 'Powell's Dilemma'. 

'The Bitch' Has a Message For Publishing

Sometimes the real message is not in the headlines but half hidden in the text.

The news that Jackie Collins, is to digitally self-publish a rewritten version of her bestseller,’ The Bitch’ in the US should not come as a shock. More and more authors will take their backlist and rejuvenate them digitally and pop them out at $2.99.

The interesting thing that caught our eye in the story was the quote, "If it does well, I probably will continue to e-publish, because I have a book of short stories and my publisher says short stories don't sell."

Here we either have a publisher who apparently is wedded to the print world and has failed miserably to understand digital opportunities, or one who doesn’t want to publish Collins. Short stories don’t sell if you remain wedded to the bulking up of them into collections and force them onto physical bookshelves, or you run your business based on what the form book says, ran well and sold last week, month or year. Sometime you have to look forward, not backwards and recognise that you are playing to a potentially different market, certainly a different channel and most definitely a different form factor. Did Steve Jobs make iTunes by selling albums or tracks, by adopting a million different price pints, or by adopting the norm as set out by the producers? Sometimes when you look backwards you have to understand history a bit better than just looking at the form book.

Maybe the publisher is now apprehensive about the apparent moral stance that the likes of Paypal are now taking over erotica and pornography and think that Collins may be see by some to be borderline. Mind you others would suggest even more PR can’t be a bad thing.

It’s as if there is an old guard that can’t see the new world and continues to try to shoehorn tomorrow into yesterday.

What the eDickens?

Last week we wrote about the logic of the appeal of the short story in this new digital world and yesterday we attended The Museum of London’s special 200th celebration of Charles Dickens.

What may you ask have has Dickens to do with today’s digital publishing world?
The answer is simple and is significant if we are to learn from the past and keep our literary heritage alive.

Dickens was a master of the instalment.
He not only wrote many works by the chapter, he also delivered them as ongoing works. He used the ‘penny press’ to presale the stories by instalment and in 1837 was selling some 50,000 copies of his Pickwick periodicals at a shilling a time. These contained one chapter sandwiched between pages of adverts. Many of these adverts had little to do with books or even the subject matter of the story. In fact the adverts demonstrate the diversity of the audience.

The journals appeared either weekly or monthly and given the number of chapters and volume of sales, plus the advertising revenues, should have earned him a good return. It is claimed that when Great Expectations was published in weekly instalment in 1861 it had weekly sales of some 100,000 units a week. Interestingly they didn’t diminish his book appeal but fuelled interest in the finally work.

We find ourselves again asking why we are not publishing digitally by instalment today? The Keita novels in Japan thrive through instalment and Stephen King and others have also ventured down this digital route, but why hasn’t a publisher grabbed this clear digital opportunity by the throat? Is it down to the way many write today? Has the publishing and editorial process got in the way of the instalment? Is it just too revolutionary?

Why are even short stories still seen as collections and packaged as such. Even worthy initiatives such as Quick Reads appear to be locked into what some may question as yesterday’s thinking and merely duplicating the physical offer digitally.
What is also interesting is that Dickens lived through the literacy revolution where the masses were able to read and penny fiction was a way of feeding their new habit in a digestible form.

Dickens embraced the new
The transport and communications revolution of Dickens’ time was, on reflection, as great as that we have today with technology and communications changes. He travelled extensively, especially by the new railways, used the new telegraph and postal services. Between 1858 and 1870 he gave some 472 readings of his works in the UK and US. He even had special bound reading copies in larger font and was a consummate speaker. He was a writer, social observer, pamphleteer, speaker, columnist, playwright and publisher.

Dickens enhanced his works
In Victorian times the novel was often enhanced by illustrations. The ‘Sketches by Boz’ was illustrated by George Cruikshank and as with many Dickens tales the reader was able to picture both in words and in imagery the story as it unfolded. Today we have often lost the imagery of yesterday. Does the new ebook now enable us to once again enhance and illustrate the book? There is now a new opportunity to bring back the imagery and even differentiate the different renditions.

Dickens wrote in the language of the people
Dickens was a master of not just description but narrative. He was a master of dialect and could write and express narrative to reflect a person’s origins, class and the times. He even travelled one day to Yarmouth and used the dialect he heard to paint the character he wanted. It is fascinating to hear how Dickens used the dropping of the ‘h’ , or how he could change ‘ing’ to be ‘in’ or even ‘ink’ to reflect the character. He would have been a nightmare to edit today!

But this understanding of the narrative and even the enthusiastic way Dickens would have read to his captive audiences may also be new enhanced book opportunities.

It is not hard to see the relevance of Dickens to today and why it is somewhat ironic that 2012 is the 200th celebration of his birth.

The Renaissance of The Short Story?

We now live in a sound bite word where the channel hopper often rules and where our time is often torn between many competing distractions. It is only fitting therefore that we are now starting to question and revisit the length of the story and recognise that it is just as rewarding to engage a reader on short and digestible read as a long one.

We have long argued that the digital era should herald a renaissance of the short story. As digital explodes the physical book spine, it starts to re write the economics and the need for 256 pages. No longer is it about tens of thousands of words but more about compact stories, or developing stories by the chapter.

My mother-in-law and many of her contemporaries broke into writing via short stories, which were much in demand across many magazines at the time. My Father-in-law like many started as a journalist and developed the skill of reworking, cutting back and sticking to the storyline.

Digital has started to now accommodate the short story and some such as Salt and Penguin has embraced the opportunity. The BBC has a National Short Story Award and the Quick Reads literary charity is now 5 years old and has distributed over 3.5 million ‘Quick Reads’ written by bestselling writers and celebrities aimed at engaging more people in reading.

This weekend the Telegraph dived in with a competition not based just on digital but recognising the potential to reintroduce this concise literary form that has inspired so many in the past. The British library have also launched a online service to enable everyone to enjoy the likes of Somerset Maughan, Kingsley Amis, Edna o’Brien and William Trevor reading their own works.

All these initiatives start to create a new form. Some will view them as singles that are then wrapped into a collection, others as stand alone stories that can be promoted bought and read as such and others as instalments to a greater living story. Poetry also starts to also have new opportunities to engage a wiser audience. Even those textbooks may be rented or sold by the chapter. Irrespective, the short is coming back and will give author a new opportunity to make that connection with the reader.

Can Authors Now Do It Digitally Themselves?

Is this is the long-awaited dawn of creative writing, where digital not only redefines the book, how it is created, developed, promoted, distributed and rewarded, but also stimulates writing and creativity itself? We have seen the generation shift from watching film and listening to music to making them, so are we going to see an equally significant shift in writing? Some will say it has happened and everyone now can express themselves and communicate with others without paper and the need of a publisher. Others will say that there is still the need to be ‘published’. Relationships are already starting to change and the disintermediation that many predicted is now starting to take some interesting twists and turns.

Whatever happens there will always be two key entities – the authors who create and the readers who consume and pays. The gap between them is now narrowing.

Music, film, TV, newsprint have all see intermediaries hang on, but in all the landscape has changed around them and the reality is that they have had to adapt to the fact that their world’s no longer revolve around them. In the late sixties, George Martin claimed that the album was the menu and the concert was the meal. How little he probably realised that he was predicting the music industry 50 years into the future. There will always be those artists who need a support system and are happy to just be artists, but there is now a growing band of artists who want to control their own brand and make their own decisions. Evolution is happening.

Digital technology and network communications start to create a level playing field and one which many authors can do more, control more, earn more and importantly get closer to their readers. It may not be for all but it will be for an increasing number of authors of all levels.

In the world of print, few authors could afford the money, time and effort to support the publishing process. Publishers were manufacturers offering editing, cover design, marketing support, accounting and reward in the form of royalties. However, they often outsourced much of the back end distribution to others, merely retaining the ‘creative’, sales and marketing control and also the rights management.

Physical books still dominate and authors still find they needed the publisher’s clout and resellers and fulfilment agent’s infrastructure in this channel. Self publishing has to date been in the hands of aspiring authors and has been looked down on by many as the great unwanted slush pile. However, digital has the potential to turn publishing on its head. The charts will still matter to those whose model demands high volume but will matter less to those who seek different goals and have a different model. Tomorrow’s self publishing could become tomorrow’s reading list.

We have seen authors such J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin and estates such as Ian Fleming and even agents of lucrative back lists start to take control of their rights, self publish or control their own publishing and sign up with better economic models that offer them more reward. Why shouldn’t an author start to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the current model’s offer of figures often less than 80% of that? Once an author takes control of their back list, what stops them doing it to their front list? The publisher’s fixation on new titles may well become their Achilles’ heel.

We have seen creative authors such as Kate Pullinger and Michael c Milligan, who change how and what they create and develop their novels and even use a collaborative creation approach. If publisher’s eat took control of such creative processes would we face new and complex questions as to exactly what rights belong to whom?

Amazon's Digital Text Platform and Barnes & Noble’s PubIt are examples of platforms that now let authors sell their works through major digital bookstores. The author can receive anywhere between 50 and 70% of the sale price.

Digital books are still only a small fraction of the market but by positioning themselves now authors may find a freedom that will not be available under a tethered contract in which the publisher demands both physical and digital rights.

Neil De Young, executive director of Hachette Book Group's digital division is quoted in the LA Times, Book publishers see their role as gatekeepers shrink,‘We continue to be the venture capitalist for authors, helping them to distribute their works as widely as possible. Now we do that digitally as well as physically.’ Some businesses need venture capital, some don’t and many want to only use it for a specific period and not for life. Authors are no different and publishers may wish to reappraise how they see their relationships if they want their books not to be viewed as commodities and themselves as mere gamblers.

Social networking has only just started to influence the book world but if it were to replace what some see as the manufactured bestsellers that often exists today and create social demand and connection with titles this could remove yet another layer of support provided today.

The Internet is opening up new ways for writers to connect with readers and potentially redefine the relationships that exist today. The big question is who will add the value to stay as an intermediary, or will the authors simply bypass them all and connect direct with their readers?

Libboo: Crowdsourcing a Novel

It may not be as focused, or well constructed as Michael C Milligan‘s livewriting project, but Libboo aims to achieve a similar result – a novel written by the masses for the masses.

The man behind Libboo is Harvard teacher Chris Howard and his approach is to use 'crowdsourcing' to write a book which will have no single author but a multitude of them. The first chapter will be supplied by Grub Street and will set the scene and act as the inspiration for the rest of the book.

He is hoping that the first experiment which is a romance disaster called ‘Flight of the Burning Stallion’ will attract some 1,000 active writing participants. The contributors will be able to literally write the next chapter which can then be shared between the crowd. The pen can then be taken up by someone else who writes the next chapter and so on. However they will be not one but many different chapters and story line threads, with each effectively twigging off to form a new branch and each branch offering a different and new storyline.

What is determined to be the best storyline and end up being published, will be determined by technology that discreetly tracks the most successful or popular storylines. An Editorial team will be used to ensure consistency through the various threads.

All revenues raised by the project will go to the Literacy Trust.

So like many other ‘live’ experiments we are starting to see the shoots of social writing. Whether it proves successful or falls by the wayside is immaterial, as it is about trying to hardness the creative juices of many to create new works and to judge the best story by the level of activity it generates. It raises many questions about the rewards of writing and also the moral rights of contributors and like many of the experiments taking place today is certainly worth watching.

Digital Writer's Block

We have always read about writers block and of stories where even the best of authors have found themselves ‘frozen at the typewriter’ and have become literally, lost for words. Writers block could last for days, weeks and even months.

In today’s permanently on line world of web sites, blogs, tweeter, SMS and Facebook the demand for a constant engagement and contribution questions whether writer’s block is now acceptable. Any slow down or lack of contribution no matter small can now often result in the new online readers simply moving elsewhere for their instant fix. Will authors find themselves now under increased pressure not just to write the book, contribute to the web site, answer fan mail, but also tweet and blog?

After writing close on 2000 articles we stopped this week. It wasn’t that there wasn’t news, there was plenty on Google’s ebookstore, Amazon’s cloud, Kobo’s social twist and others. It was a combination of factors which collectively demanded a stop for a breath of fresh air and then again there is Christmas shopping, painting and a party to think about.

Given it was a Saturday we thought it safe to drop our guard and writ e about our current blockage. Of course it doesn’t really matter if we write or not as we do it to understand and galvanise our thinking and share it with others. However we wonder how authors will manage in the world that demands instant and constant feeds and will the Stephen Fry multi threaded model prevail for all?

Livewriting: Community Writing

We have seen innovation and multi media writing from the likes of Kate Pullinger and her Animate Alice living story and Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation U.S. television series, multi media ‘digi-novel,‘Level 26: Dark Origins’. We now see another ground breaking approach from Canadian writer Michael C. Milligan. He is literally writing a novel live on the Internet and doing it in 3 days starting November 26th.

What is different about Milligan’s novel is his that he is not doing it by himself but with an army of unpaid followers, who through tools such as; Twitter , gTalk, meebo, Wordpress, are actively contributing to the development of the work. He is even live on video as he writes. For every chapter, the system picks five answers at random, which he needs to integrate into the next part of the story. He openly encourages questions and dialogue and even has a points reward system for contributions which will reward the top three contributors with print copies of the first book in the series ‘Tyhpoon’ and the top contributor, a name character in his next livewritten novel.


The site clearly has been very well thought out and neatly combines all the various elements in a logical and easy to follow manner. It combines advertising, user registration, multi media, merchandising and a living work. There is no other such combination we know of today that has put the author at the centre of his audience in such an accessible way whilst they create their work.


Could this approach be used to galvanise other types of writing such and special interest, live research, or replace the blog as we know it today? It certainly integrates tools into one holistic place which shows off their collective strengths in ways we often miss when used individually.


If we were Google, Amazon, Lulu, we would snap this up in a heartbeat and enlist the team that put this together to offer others a new way of creating writing, reading and social communities. It would not work for many writers, it may only work for fiction, it may not work long run, but the concept and Milligan’s execution has to be applauded as a breath of fresh air.

The best part about this exercise is that it engages and joins the author and the reader in a way that only could be achieved in the 21st century.

Who Will Win The Pooles?

We must now rethink storytelling in this new media world. This doesn’t mean we divorce ourselves from the written word, but merely from some of the economics of the 256 page book that could be argued to have straight-jacketed creativity to some 75,000 words and often a fixed text format. We have long supported adaption of the Keitai novel in the West and the multi media work of the likes of Kate Pullinger. After all the serial form was used by the likes of Charles Dickens and illustration litter many classics and bring the text to life.

The Poole Literary Festival, in partnership with The Media School at Bournemouth University, has now launched what they claim is the UK's first prize for New Media Writing.

Entrants are asked to compose an interactive narrative or poem, designed specifically for delivery online or via mobile phone. The creators of the winning entries will win £250, a brand new Apple iPad, and be advised by digital publishing specialist Creative Content, on getting their winning ideas published. The story can be any genre, fiction or non-fiction, poetry, prose or documentary.

We believe this is great initiative and along the lines that every festival should be doing. The sponsor is the bookstore, the publisher, the local University or the corporate. Encouraging works outside of the economic jacket may be a great way of creating a new wave of both writing and reading.

The winner of the Poole award will be announced at a special awards ceremony at Poole's Lighthouse Centre for the Arts on the final day of the festival, 31 October 2010. The competition is free to enter and details can be obtained from http://www.poolelitfest.com/new-media-prize.php

Will Authors Make the Digital Translation?

So you are an established author and have a healthy following, but feel lost in the midlist with reducing advances and hard battles to get published. You feel that you have something to say and more money to make. Can the new digital era offer you a way forward, or will you simply get lost in translation?

J.A. Konrath’s blog claims a way forward and also shows that authors can make it by themselves with some digital application. He's not a new author and has built an established following as a writer of mystery, horror and sci-fi. He has a backlist and has taken the wise move of owning his digital rights. His digital sales aren’t huge but respectable and growing.

Amazon is about to make him richer as they will allow him to soon earn 70% royalty. He is pumped up as he is already making reasonable Amazon, but the agency model certainly works in his favour. He is now getting his ebooks up on other sites and expects much more and is full of the enthusiasm that only doing yourself can generate. He firmly believes he can sell more ebooks at lower prices than a publisher and earn more to boot. He prices his ebooks $1.99 and $2.99 and has even moved one up to $4.99. Under the 70/30 split things suddenly get a whole lot better!

He thinks the $2.99 could become the new bargain rate for authors such as himself and one that which will look very attractive against the ‘safe’ publisher pricing. We would recommend all authors to read Joe’s blog and maybe ewalk alone.

A Story in a Sound Bite

Last night we participated in the most global broadcast of Litpoia After Dark. Its 98th show and one which brought together panellist from Cathy Murphy in Norway, Donna Ballman in Florida, Dave Bartram in the west country of England, Peter Cox in London and ourselves in Pune, India.

There was an interesting discussion prompted by Dave Bartram who on watching this clip of a car being hit by a wrecking ball in the Daily Telegraph, questioned whether we were being de-sensitized and losing our ability to empathize with others. Whether we start to get comfortable with real suffering, pain, and even death as a part of the entertainment spectrum we are beginning to lose some essential part of our humanity.

He questioned whether writing has been going the same way and whether authors are forced to push the same boundaries to find ways to stay ahead of their competitors.

The boundaries have always been pushed by artists, writers, movie makers, musicians. It is part of the evolution of expression. The challenge today is whether we are now living in the 140 character, 2 minute world of the snippet, the sound bite world of politics, the spectre of instant gratification and the power of channel hopping choice? Do we now lack the understanding of the contextual wrap that gives us the background and greater understanding? Do we jump from the narrative to the one liner?

It is interesting that technology is giving the increased capacity to store and retrieve but at the same time the greater power to sample and skip the detail. It’s like a multiple choice world where we know the question and just want to skip to choose ‘a’, ‘b’, or ‘c’.

Will writing shrink back from the economically defined 250 pages to the 10 page short story, or will it go further and live in the 140 character world of tweets. Extremes give us a wake up call and this is certainly one to watch as the YouTube world tries to now accommodate longer film and TV footage. Will their audience change and absorb, or will they click and go for the instant gratification?

The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age, No. 2 wRiting.

This is the second part of the presentation given to the Swanwick Writers Summer School, 11th August,2009. It is based on The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age.

Writing is the most controversial perspective and questions the work itself.

For the last couple of hundred years Books have been ‘straight jacketed’ between two pieces of card. The reason was simple and down to economics. The most economic format was what we see all around us today, 250 to 300 pages or around 75,000 words.But a digital age doesn’t have the same economics or constraints. The digital age has the potential to explode the spine and free writing from its current economic straightjacket.

Will it happen tomorrow? Will all books change?

It is already happening albeit slowly.

What do these authors have in common?

First we have the Keitai novel which is huge in Japan. This is a new bread of authors who are write books for your keitia, or mobile phone. These are written in instalments and in 5 years have jumped from zero to a $82 million and growing business.

Yoshi who wrote the very successful keitai novel ‘ Deep Love’ was turned into a book, which sold 2.7 million copies.

Mieko Kawakami, who is pictured, is a blogger who has been heralded as Japan’s biggest literary star. Her blog enjoys a staggering 200,000 readers every day and her third book won the prestigious Akutagawa literary award.

Next is Kate Pullinger, an established writer who I interviewed, who is now fully engaged in creating multi media stories that often evolve in instalments. It can be a shock to first see her work and you may not like it, but she recognises that stories are not exclusive to text, sound or visual and can be multi media.

Next author Stephen King, who in 1999 published his book ‘Riding the Bullet’. He did so over the internet and produced and sold one chapter at a time as he wrote it. Many derided the experiment and said it was a failure but the reality was he sold hundreds of thousands of chapters, broke new ground. Today he continues to experiment with digital and is to write an exclusive Kindle novel.

Next is our good friend Duke Redbird who is an Ojibwee Shaman and who wrote a poem ‘I am Canadian’ which he read to the Queen in 1977 to celebrate her jubilee. Scholastic have now published a book with just that one poem in it which is now going into all Canadian schools. If one poem can be a book it can easily be a rendered into many digital formats.

Poetry is no longer straight jacketed into economic collections and each poem can digital stand in its own.

Next is Kurt Vonnegut who died in 2007. His estate has just announced that 14 of his unpublished short stories are to be published as individual ebooks and then secondly as a printed collection.

Apparently Mr. Vonnegut is claimed to have told an interviewer in 1995 that he would “welcome” being called a Luddite. I think his estate has clearly taken a different stance.

Finally, let’s remember Charles Dickens. I borrow the following extract from his Wikipedia entry.

Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialised form, a favoured way of publishing fiction at the time. Dickens, unlike others who would complete entire novels before serial publication commenced, often wrote his in parts, in the order in which they were meant to appear. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one cliffhanger after another to keep the public eager for the next instalment

But it not just about how or what you write but also how you publish and promote it.

Today you need to be familiar with online content sites such as Scribd and Wattpad. These are the new generation of self publishing; they are not based on print on demand, but are online and attract huge audiences. Publishers, are also now experimenting with sites to let aspiring authors post their work on, in a hope to get noticed. I recognise that to many, this may be today’s slush pile, but we must also acknowledge that to others, it may be tomorrow’s reading platform.

Keep your minds open and decide on the basis of knowledge not ignorance. Digital writing is and will be different, will it replace tradition requests for 75,000 words and it it may suit you and your readers...

Carpe Diem

It’s the aspiration of the vast majority of the population to write a book. So has digitisation made it easier or even harder to get published today and what are the dependencies, relationships and rewards in this dynamically changing environment?

The publishing trade is shifting from one where publishers looked to cultivate long-term relationships with authors and develop their stable, to one where the greater emphasis is now to sell books. Some would suggest that it’s not a bad thing to focus on moving books rather than merely printing them. However, does that change the relationship and with it the contract between creator and producer?

Some see digitisation as just a change in output format whilst others recognise it challenges the traditional relationships. In a world where print on demand can effectively remove the term ‘out of print’ , we now have to understand rights reversals, term contracts, the line between promotional material and content itself and much more.

The changing marketplace is being driven by global economics, network connectivity and technology. Territorial boundaries that existed in the physical world are now questioned in the virtual world. Roles that controlled the physical world are being challenged by networks and what once was a unique, or highly skilled operation is becoming commodity available to all. Define an; agent, publisher, distributor, wholesaler, reseller, library and digital aggregator, then ask what the following are; Amazon, Google, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, FPD, Lulu, Scribd? Are we seeing the divergence of the market into more highly focused vertical segments or richer flatter horizontal ones? Which is better, volume through a supermarket, book club and internet sales or the traditional trade channel? Is publishing becoming more a ‘department store’, or niche and boutique? Are ‘special sales’ becoming a little less ‘special’ and what is the impact of all the above on the author?

So where does the aspiring author pitch their manuscript? Do they go the traditional route and hunt the agent? Do they put their manuscript up on the many social slush piles and hope to get spotted? Do they self publish and pay to achieve their ambitions? Digitisation certainly helps in both the availability of options and the lowering of the economics, but is it enough? The fact is that the number of titles ‘published’ by whatever means and in whatever format is going to continue to grow. The number of ‘best sellers’ are going to reduce and the traditional bookshelves will get smaller. The digital world enables consumers to be more discerning, eclectic and virtual and it also increases the potential for more consumers to read what they would never find today.

The biggest challenge is not digitisation, but its impact. We may focus on the consumer, the latest devices, even the price of books, but unless we pay equal attention to the authors of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we may find as with other media sectors, it is they that hold the keys to many digital doors. What is the appropriate royalty expectation on digital sales? In a world where pricing is ill-defined, should royalties be based on list price or net sales? When digital removes ‘out of print’ should contracts be term based? Musicians, sportsmen, entertainers have all started to take control; is this now possible in the world of the book?

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that the aspiration to write will not go away and irrespective of how it is achieved, neither will the reward sought for doing it.

You Are Never Too Old

Who said that the technology and digital revolution was only for the young? When Ivy Bean heard that a 97 year ago French woman was the oldest member of Facebook she decided to join. She soon attracted 5,000 friends and has 17,775 people waiting to be her friend. Unless you know someone older, Ivy from Bradford is now the oldest Facebook member at 103 years old and has now joined Twitter and already has 9500 followers!

Her daughter Sandra Logan, 61, said: "It has given her a new lease of life and she has met some marvellous people all over the world. She speaks to a woman in Norway who has named a cow after her."

Her latest twitters read :
‘hello im going to spend my morning reading papers ‘, ‘i have now reached 5,000 followers so im saying goodnight for today be back tomorrow thank you everybody ‘, ‘had a loverly afternoon with my friends here at hillside just had tea just having a chat with the staff.’

The PC may have past many of the older generation by and been seen by them as a mere expensive toy, the mobile may be viewed by many as a complex phone and only used as a phone, email may dominate our lives but unless you have others to email its not essential. Now thanks to new high-speed broadband connection in public libraries, thousands of pensioners are now able to only to join Ivy and learn new ways to communicate. This older group may now have found the way to start to be engaged in the digital world and influence its direction.

They may not have the disposable income but they have the time, a wealth of knowledge and experience and are historically heavy readers. Many may want to capture their own history and experiences, not necessarily for money but as a legacy, others to just find new friends. It is relatively easy to see many social communities develop that were not possible a few years ago.

Is it possible that we may start to see a shift, not only the source of content for the self publishing market, but also to break away from the current vanity publishing business models that may be seen to exploit vanity, more than encourage writing. We don’t need long works and these new tools demand shorter more focused content. Maybe it’s the older generation that will lead us to rethink the book in a digital form.

Well done Ivy and long may you enjoy twittering

One Vook Doesn't Make a Digital Library

The New York Times today asks, ‘Is this the future of the Digital Book.’ An interesting read, which talked about multi media content being the future of the digital book, digital experiments, new ventures, but unfortunately left us asking, ‘So what?’ The article mainly covered Bradley Inman’s Vook, or should that be Vook.tv. Before it even can digitally walk, Vook is proposed as the potential future for the beleaguered book industry. Vook consists today of Inman’s own thriller ‘The Right Way to Do Wrong’, packaged into a book with two dozen extra short video story extensions. Inman claims that the ebook threatens to strip traditional books of much of their ‘transportive appeal,’ but we found ourselves again asking, ‘So what?’

We have previously reported on creative writing experiments by leading multi media writers such as Kate Pullinger, but we all recognise that we are a long way from there being a ‘one size fits all’ new digital form. We know that the digital medium offers much more than the printed page, but those of us with memories, remember the CD Rom experiments of the nineties and the disasters that ensued as some ‘experimented’ with no market and lots of money. Today the digital book market shows clear shoots of growth, but they are mere shoots. There is still a long way to go before we let ourselves get seduced into believing we must redefine the content and future of the digital book.

We agree with the article when it comes to linking authors with their readers, that digital self publishing has much to offer, digital peer review and a viral slush pile are all going to make change and offer much scope for experimentation. The key is to engage on a meaningful and rewarding level that adds value to both parties. The content may change in the digital world but there is much more to do before we are hooked on Vook.tv.

‘Ugh …You Again’ an Interactive eBook for Kids by a 10 Year Old

A comical insight into a student's struggle when her ‘worst friend ever’ returns and she faces being forced to be friends with the goody-goody Vanessa.

The author is Alexis Marcionette and is 10 years old and her story will be released by K-8 online learning company BigIQkids.com in eBook format complete with interactive graphics, turning pages, "click to hear" word functionality, engaging interactive illustrations, built in reading comprehension, vocabulary quizzes and the wit and humour that appeals to today's kids.

Preview the first 2 chapters of 'UGH…You Again!' It may not be as sophisticated as many ebooks, but shows how text to speech can work and presents a different interactive book and after all it was written by a 10 year old!

Size Does Matter!

This week we read that Hewlett Packard are to release two new laptops that are lighter, thinner and have extended battery life. The EliteBook 2530p, weighs just over 3 pounds and the EliteBook 2730p is an ultra-thin computer that converts to a touch-screen pen-based tablet computer with a twist of its screen and weighs 3.7 pounds. They recognise that travellers demand true portability not lug-ability. We have already written about the iPhone applications and the ebook reader developed by Fictionwise and today read that Lonely Planet is to make its content available via Nokia mobiles.

Not only is the world shrinking through technology but the technology is also shrinking and converging. So what about the content itself? Today we joined a email discussion group supported by Peter Brantley the force behind the Pubfrontier.com.

The points we made were:
If we all agree that the short story or serialised novel or reference work is the ideal form for mobile and e content and I would venture that only a few and the brave would venture to read war and peace digitally, we have several fundamental challenges to face.

1. The economics of publishing today is skewed toward a print economic model best described as a ‘strightjacket’ binding 250 pages and x thousand words. This is economic to develop, print, market and shift. Why on earth do we simply see this shifting like a hardback to a paperback and to digital. Even the video guys saw merit in additional material! The audio guys realised that unabridged didn’t always make sense! So why not like the Keitai novels, Dickens, S King think again and also think of the consumer experience not merely replicating formats?

2. Payment models are not an issue. There are many examples of models that work on wallets, subscription, micropayments. The issues that may be more relevant are tax and price points. Consumers don’t want to know about tax so inclusive pricing helps. Price points are very interesting given iTunes and the track revolution in music – 99c a short read?

3. Marketing is not an issue as it is more about selling collections, series, brands than individual stories. Again think music and tracks, think Dickens and King and serials.

The main and difficult challenge is to generate content that is worthy and a demand for it that generates sales. Do authors write the book and then serialise it into chunks or write it in chunks? Is writing a short story the same skill set as the long novel and do we have the short story brands. Can you imagine if Harry Potter had been written and released in digital chunks first then as a book second? We would not be here today discussing the obvious! Some may ask why do publishers insist on digital experiments with first timers and unknown authors and not the block busters?

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.