The Upward Path

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You can’t find the perfect title for a mystery project

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Every so often I see a post: “Can you guys help me choose the best blog name/post title/domain name/book title/book cover?”

People at computerBecause I’m a helpful sort of person, and my skills often enable me to unlock this sort of thing, I sometimes try to engage with these.

And often I end up frustrated because the person prevents me from giving the help they’re asking for.

For instance, they give a list of four titles and ask people to pick the one they like best. But the titles sound like they’re referring to four different pieces of work. So I ask, can you tell us a bit about what your project is so we know what we’re aiming for?

Most often, that doesn’t get answered.   [Read more…] about You can’t find the perfect title for a mystery project

The age of illumination

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This piece is an excerpt from my ebook ‘Crowd/Control’, now available on Amazon.

Crowd Control coverWe had the Industrial Age. We had the Information Age, which slid into the Communication Age of putting information to use. We saw ourselves from space as one planet for the first time, and then set about making it a technosocial reality.

If you had to classify the times we’re in now, or are moving into, what sort of Age would you call it?

I’m juggling a few different words for it. It could be the Age of Consciousness, or Psychology, or Illumination.

Use the brain, Luke

I’m not talking about consciousness and illumination in a woo-woo airy-fairy sense. It’s very practical.

We’ve learned to do amazing things, and more all the time. But what we’re increasingly bumping into is ourselves.

Our brains were wired up a long time ago, in ways that don’t always suit the modern world. For instance, if you’ve ever had a panic attack you’ll know that our threat detection and adrenal response systems are not always very smart.

Our social structures are based on principles that no longer hold (and some that never did).

We routinely mess each other up.

The world, and our fellow travellers on it, desperately need us to solve problems, to redesign the way we do things, to free human potential and build for happiness. Yet our sludgy conditioning makes us pretend these things don’t exist, or to scramble for illusory advantage, or to trot out maxims that will keep things safe and stable and low-energy.

I think the tide is turning on all that. I think more and more people have had enough of it. They look at where it leads and say it’s not good enough.

This is the age when we look inside ourselves and reorder our ways of thinking and being – or get brought down by the world they have manifested.  [Read more…] about The age of illumination

London Book Fair 2013

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Show floor at London Book FairOn Monday and Tuesday I was at this show at Earl’s Court, London. It’s a great big event where the publishing industry converges to show off titles, make deals and discuss the future. I went last year for the first time and enjoyed it, so I was back again, though not for the whole three days. Here’s what I thought of the stands and the seminars I went to.

Stands

Last time I walked every aisle to soak it up, but this year I didn’t need to see all the stands by remaindered book sellers and big publishing companies. The bit of most interest to me was the digital publishing zone. It seemed smaller this time, with less stuff of interest to a smaller operator. I wonder whether that illustrates a cycle. In 2011, I gathered, the traditional publishing industry was freaking out about ebooks; in 2012 there was much talk of integrating them into their operations. Maybe now it’s just seen as part of business as usual?

[Read more…] about London Book Fair 2013

The Self-Publishing Conference 2013

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Yesterday I was at this event down the road in Leicester. I confess, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about an early start on a Sunday in the snow! I’m glad I went though. There was a good atmosphere and I would happily have chatted to people further – a good indicator for an event, and especially one running for the first time.

The conference was put together by the folks at Matador, one of the leading self-publishing service providers. (By which I mean: you take your manuscript and pay for your choice of services to turn it into a book people can buy.) They’d brought in a range of speakers on topics including choosing a self-publishing service provider, printing, marketing, design and ebooks. The programme was all about those sessions: four slots with your choice of three topics, with a panel at the end. Oh, and a rather excellent lunch!

[Read more…] about The Self-Publishing Conference 2013

On the pricing of ebooks

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I just had this experience. Someone recommended a book. Sounded interesting, might get, wondering about print or ebook format. Grabbed the Kindle sample to test it out, liked what I read. Kindle book price is £11.15. Process stops for further internal debate.

By the way, the book in question is Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sachs. It looks good and relevant enough to my interests that I will end up getting it, and if I do I’ll post a review. That price is about the same as I can get the hardback for if I look at Amazon’s marketplace sellers. Regardless of comparisons, it’s too high as an absolute number.

You must price ebooks lower than the print version, by a margin that’s notable in the mind of the customer. Yes, they offer some benefits that print books don’t, but most consumers won’t be thinking about those.

  • Customers know they’re not getting a physical thing, and they know that the physical thing has production costs. So in their heads there’s a sort of natural justice that says the ebook costs you less so it should cost them less too.
  • You own a print book, and can lend, give or re-sell it. A lot of people also think it’s  a preferable reading experience, though that’s eroding. Folks are gradually waking up to the fact that you only rent ebooks. You can’t share them freely, and if Amazon or whoever wants to take them away from you it can. (This is going to be an interesting field to watch in the next couple of years.) With print you’re paying for an object; with ebooks you’re paying for an experience.
  • Marketing of ebooks is all about speed and convenience. It’s about being able to find something that interests you, check out a bit more about it, click, payment happens behind the scenes, content appears instantly in your hand. Maybe there are people who are wealthy enough that the £10.00 barrier doesn’t trigger extra caution, but I think for most people it will. Don’t put barriers in the way of people saying yes.

Finally, of course this is all context-related. I personally sell PDF books priced at $10+ in the roleplaying game market. So maybe I’m just talking about where the expectations are set at Amazon and similar stores, and you need to think about the psychology of each sales channel’s users.

 

Word Fu

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I realised last night that I have something in common with my qigong teacher. Qigong is a Chinese system of movement to improve health. You can use a mental shorthand of “a bit like tai chi” if that helps (though of course there are reasons why it’s inaccurate, like tai chi being a martial art and qigong not).

My teacher has been doing martial arts since he was a kid. He’s said on a couple of occasions that he doesn’t know what it’s like to start an exercise-type thing for the first time in later life (mid to late thirties in my case): our journeys are different from his.

I’ve been doing things with words all my life. I’m used to getting them technically correct and marshalling them into newsletters, reports, books, etc. I fundamentally don’t, and can’t, understand what it’s like for someone who hasn’t developed those skills much. Of course, I can still help with what they’re trying to do, just as my teacher can, and enable them to get better results.

What sparked this line of thought? Bad books. I’ve seen a few interesting-looking novels on the Kindle store, grabbed the previews and found that the author has lots of great ideas but does not have the craft of writing. They use words inappropriately; there are typos, repetition, phrases that don’t ring true. Dialogue seems a particular difficulty. Instead of a smooth delivery that lets the writing fade into the background so you can get lost in the story, you’re stuck in a conflict between a continual jarring effect and the desire to find out what happens next. For me that tends to lead to abandoning the book, because of the mismatch between my standards and what the author has done.

That led me to think about how much this matters in the bigger picture. Are those “bad books” actually brave books or foolish books? The line between constructive and destructive criticism is a fine one.

Isn’t it a good thing that the internet has opened up new, low-friction ways for people to get their messages out there? Yes it is. One must also recognise that rather a lot of people don’t give a hoot about finely-honed writing, if Amazon reviews and indications around the net are to be believed. That’s probably because they don’t have a focus on writing skills themselves, so a lot of missteps pass them by without troubling them. They just want the stirring yarn. If lots of readers are happy, to what extent should we criticise a work for falling short of a formal standard? Maybe the internet, with all its easy, rapid communications, is pulling us away from standardised English toward a multitude of individual dialects – as I believe it was in centuries past. I suspect this will become a big topic of debate as the ebook phenomenon matures.

This is a point of learning and exploration for my own “teaching”. It’s the balance between making the best work possible and helping actual real people to do what they want and need. Much like my qigong teacher has to correct one thing at a time rather than trying to get the students to do what he can.

I think that if you’re going to do the thing that should involve a commitment to do it well. There has to be a first release, and if you go on to do more you’ll probably look back on it and see its flaws because your skills have developed. But there has to be a dividing line between “not ready for the limelight” and “good enough, let’s go”. Publishing is so easy now, but I don’t think that lets people off the hook of putting the work in (or getting the help) and developing the craft to make a genuinely good product. That’s not just a work ethic. It’s practical, helping you to get customers, satisfy them, and keep them coming back, rather than losing them as those ebooks lost me.

What do you think? What lines would you draw?