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Nicholas Carr on E-Books

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media httpsiwsjnetpub Abdop.jpg.scaled500 Nicholas Carr on E Books
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Nicholas Carr has an article in The Wall Street Journal about the malleability of e-books. Because a digital edition can be perpetually edited, it is never officially finished. He muses on how intrusive school boards and dictators will tinker in otherwise “published” e-books.

The section that interested me most (as I’ve pondered the article’s subject before) was this:

What may be more insidious is the pressure to fiddle with books for commercial reasons. Because e-readers gather enormously detailed information on the way people read, publishers may soon be awash in market research. They’ll know how quickly readers progress through different chapters, when they skip pages, and when they abandon a book.

I can absolutely see publishers doing this. It could create a world where books are tailored to fit a majority, in the same way market testing has resulted in a bevy of cookie-cutter movies. On the other hand, one could argue that this isn’t so different from the modern writers’ workshop.

One issue the article doesn’t delve into is how editable e-books can encourage more collaborative reading. One could imagine people trading versions of the Bible annotated by Christopher Hitchens or popular novels with erotic fan-fic written in, or copies of The Da Vinci Code with embedded photos of the art mentioned in the story. You’d end up with a variety of specially named editions floating around.

This would all serve to add to the notion of the physical book as a collectors item. With e-books as ephemeral, the printed book may continue to exist as the authority on what the final, official draft is. In the future when print runs decrease dramatically, having a personal copy of the rare, unchanging, printed book will give its owner a certain authority on the text and having a personal library will again become a status symbol.

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Getting published: See Yourself in Print #1

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Because books are my bread and butter folks occasionally ask me how they might get into the business of being a writer. There are a lot of things you can do to get your polished prose in the hands of booksellers. Note that this isn't about self-publishing, but getting your book printed the old fashioned way.

Cat%252520with%252520Glasses%252520Reading%252520Paper Getting published: See Yourself in Print #1
Image thanks to Barbara Moldenhauer

This Week's Tip to Becoming A Bad-Ass Author: Establish Yourself as An Expert

The more you can do to convince the publisher that you're an authority in that area, the easier it will be for them to sell you to Barnes & Noble.

The simplest way to do this is to start a blog. A lot of potential author's worry about "giving away" too much info on a blog, so that there is nothing left for their book. Unless you write poetry, this is a non-issue and obsessing over it only looks unprofessional. It turns out people have no problem buying a book that reproduces the content of a blog they can read online for free. Go figure. And if consumers will buy it, somewhere there's a publisher who will publish it. Sites like Stuff White People Like, XKCD, and the Oatmeal don't worry about giving away too much.

Of course, once you're a blogger you have to start worrying about SEO and keeping up with other people's blogs and all kinds of HTML nonsense that has fuck all to do with writing your manifesto. Starting a blog is in some ways like joining a virtual, global community. If you're not interested in the existing community that exists around the glockenspiel, why would you expect anyone to read your potential book, Stop, Drop and Glock: How the Glockenspiel Will Set Your Roof on Fire? So while it is a lot of work, that work is seeding potential fans of your obsession (It is an obsession, right? If not, why bother?).

Another way to establish expertise is to write guest posts on other people's blogs, or articles for local newspapers. However, this is easier to set up if you already have a blog in the first place. Otherwise, what can you point them to that shows you have something to say on the subject?

Local organizing can be useful as well, but remember publishers are looking to sell your book all over the country. A monthly meet-up of thirty people isn't going to impress Simon & Schuster.

Building expertise is less true with fiction, but it is still true. Many writers now are experimenting with keeping up a blog about their process. This can include research notes, advice, and inspiration. There are sites like Urbis.com where writers upload pieces of their draft to be critcized by other writers. This is another way of joining communities and building a fan base.

This seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? It is. But if you've chosen your subject matter wisely it turns out to be just another way to immerse yourself in a subject you are passionate about.

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TODAY IS TOWEL DAY!

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TowelDay TODAY IS TOWEL DAY!

But why a towel? Because, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy informs us:

A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value:

you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;

you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours;

you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon;

use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth;

wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat;

wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal,
it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous);

you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course

dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc.

Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth f the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

via havecoffeewillwrite.com but actually a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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Why did I title the Crystal Castles review “A Pixie in A Blender”?

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Imagine the delicate pattern of her wings fluttering frantically. Imagine her screams for help distorted by the glass. Imagine the occasional throb of her tiny fists on the glass. Imagine the vicious never-ending whir of the blades. It goes on and on and yet you know the music of it will change in moments when the pixie runs out of tricks and breath. Now hear the interruption of those blades, the gutteral whipping and whirring, as she uses whatever magic her wand can muster. Imagine the dreadful glittery blood, her tiny bones shaking against the glass. This is what Crystal Castles sounds like.

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