Predation Nation? Amazon and Pubs Faceoff (Via NPR)

Map stars' homes, map Topeka, but map your story? :: Mindmapping & the Writer

I've never been a big fan of brainstorming in general. As everyone knows, brainstorming leads to flow charts, flow charts lead to outlining, and outlining leads to the dark side of the force.


I kid.  I know some people who love to do these things and I've seen writers cover walls with flowcharts and elaborate graphs and detailed outlines that are almost a novel in their own right. It's not for me, though, thanks. But I get brainstorming. I even understand all the geneology charts and whatnot if your story is complicated enough to warrant them.

To brainstorm is human; to really screw things up (or over-complicate them, which is the same thing in my book) requires a computer. Cue the rise of "mind mappping"  software.

The Buggywhip Defense League

I'm a big fan of buggy whips, and you just can't find anywhere to buy them anymore.  Sad, really.

In recent weeks I've been accused of being a Luddite, a snob, a hipster, and a Luddite hipster snob.  Just because I prefer printed books to the digital ones.  Or was it for whining too much about Daylight Saving Time?

Might have been both.

Earlier today, someone sent me a link which implies I'm a "Book Fetishist", which has implications I don't care to delve into here.  Though here's a hint to the guys who wrote that: you're not going to win a booklover's heart by handing them a gutted book unless it was used to smuggle another book into the former Soviet Union or something.

Preferably with the smuggled book still inside.

I do love books.  I love the sensory experience of them and feel that I retain more of the text reading paper rather than the screen, but contrary to what is apparently a popular belief, I'm not anti e-book. Being anti e-book would be like being anti paperback. In point of fact, I'm fully in favor of someone making this digital marginalia idea from the New York Times a reality with all due haste.

If they do that, I will be first in line for my ticket.  Please make it available for the Kobo.


I am blessed with a personal library that runs into the thousands of books, some of which I inherited, some of which were gifts and some of which I bought when I was a bookseller and could get them at a steep discount.  I grew up surrounded by them and cannot imagine a house that feels homey without them.  Not everyone has that luxury and not everyone has the space to store them properly even if they can acquire such a collection.  Electronic formats allow someone to acquire such a collection at a significantly lower cost in terms of both money and space.

I don't think that any booklover in his right mind would begrudge someone that joy over a simple matter of silicon & pixels versus paper & ink.

Just mind those user's agreements.  Read it before you click "I agree".  Know what you're signing away in terms of rights and privileges, because you're not getting them back.

The part of the digital domain that does bother me is the part that eliminates bookstores.  And mayhap that does make me a Luddite or one of the other things I've been called.  Nevertheless, I posit that the ecosystem that grew up in support of the written word is not the Cult of the Buggywhip as it is often portrayed.  It was the support system that gave rise to our literary culture. A support system which at present, no one has presented a replacement for it that seems to have the chops to go the distance.

I'm not actually talking about publishing.  Publishing will evolve and the publishers will evolve or not as their survival instincts dictate.  Publishing will find a way to survive, they always do.  I'm talking about bookstores.  Indies, Barnes & Noble, Borders, the lot of them.

Only recently has the Googlebooks launch made it possible to buy e-books from my local bookstore (and this time I am talking about the indie bookstores such as our beloved local independant Elliot Bay)
There's nothing wrong with reading books on an e-reader any more than there's anything wrong with listening to music on an MP-3 player, but I'm not a fan of leasing any of my media.  And while the comparison between music and books is tenuous at times, I mention music specifically because of the death of the independent music store that used to be a part of the culture of every city.

To throw that away in the name of convenience is a crying shame.  When you throw out the bathwater, don't be surprised if you look down and the baby's no longer there.

And if that makes me a Luddite, a hipster, or a snob, then so be it.

A Skeptic Crosses the e-Rubicon :: E-books & Digital Rights Meditations

The other day, my wife came home with our first e-reader, a Kobo, and all my careful research on the best and rightest of the electronic readers went out the window.  Why?  Price.  The Kobo was on sale for about $75.00 at the Borders liquidation in my town.  At a price point like that, how could any ardent reader resist?

Yes, my wife bought an e-reader at the Borders liquidation sale.  A sentence so laden with irony that you'd need a hacksaw to cut it.

Thankfully, the Kobo is e-Pub friendly and does a good job displaying .PDF's which were my main requirements.  I reckon that the amount of paper I save printing out reading and proof copies of my stories will offset the cost of this new widget twice as fast as the others I've looked at.


Being cross-platform friendly is nice.  The price was nice.  In fact, I suspect the Kobo people might look back on the Borders liquidation sales as a watershed moment for their device.  Already attractively priced well below other e-readers, I suspect that many people who were on the fence about the things might make the leap based upon price alone.

Food for thought at any rate.


Digital Rights Meditations...

The e-Pub format is a nice step in the direction of creating a digital library that is truly a movable feast, but not quite the whole way.  With some effort, you can carry your library from one device to another, but you still don't 'own' your books.  Honestly, I think we've given up entirely on the concept of ownership.  Of our music, of our computers, our phones and our video games.

Honestly, even though it brands me a luddite in most circles, I find it all a bit sad.  Sony is suing the hell out of a kid who figured out how to reactivate a function of the Playstation that was on there when he bought it, the option to install a different operating system.

If you think about it, prosecuting someone who wants to update or run "unapproved" software on a Playstation is a bit like Nissan prosecuting me for dropping a new engine in my Xterra.

Actually, it's exactly like that, except that Nissan didn't force me to agree to a ream of terms and conditions before they would allow me to start the engine the first time and then update and change the way the car works periodically without my permission.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait until that does happen?

I also wonder how much case law will be on the books already when it happens, which will tell us that while we're allowed to own the cars, we're only allowed a limited license to their engines and won't be allowed to sell them second-hand because that would rob Nissan or Toyota or GM of the sale of a new one.

Think about that for a moment.

Because no matter how the advertising copy of the electronic booksellers is written, you don't buy an e-book, you buy a license to access one.  A license that can and will be amended and revised or revoked as the licensor sees fit, as many American libraries discovered last week to their chagrin when Harper Collins changed their minds on how they were going to go forward on library loans of their e-books.

And as loud as the uproar might be, Harper Collins didn't do anything wrong.  They were acting well within their rights as licensor.

All of this relates to e-readers because I've never once picked up a new author without someone I trusted first handing me a copy of one of their books to read, which got me hooked.  So when I see publishers or other authors saying that a library or book loan is tantamount to piracy or theft, it makes me wonder if they're really paying attention to which writers are doing  well with young readers in the new publishing paradigm.  Not the older readers that keep the established mega-sellers like James Patterson aloft, but the future readers that will be buying books for decades to come... writers like Neil Gaiman.



I found out this morning that a company called Calibre has made finding and listing DRM-free e-books their business model for a new site.  It will be interesting to see if they succeed on that model.  Though, I sometimes wonder what the founders of Project Gutenberg think about the many e-book purveyors who are essentially re-packaging their content and making a note of how many free e-books they have available...

Library: The Digital Evolution of An Iconic Space

Kinda strange and very cool.  It reminds me strongly of a lot of what goes on in Seattle's 'Experience Music Project'.

Fountain Pens, Paper and Stamps

In honor of Labor Day I'm going to try to entice you to do something laborious, something you've long since given up in favor of something easier, quicker and infinitely less beautiful than what you gave up.

I want you to write a letter.

Oh alright, this has nothing to do with Labor Day other than the fact that I'm spending the day home and it's raining so I can't go out and putter in the garden or have a barbecue or any of the traditional American 3-day-weekend pastimes  Which takes me to the woolly wilds of the worldwide web and an echo of something I wrote back in December.

The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword was a counterattack against the notion that hand writing something is somehow outmoded or a bad idea.  I think otherwise.  I propose the wild and woolly notion that to say that the advance of digital communication is no more an excuse for giving up handwriting than the advent of Adobe Illustrator meant we had to stop teaching artists to use a real paintbrush.

Which brings us to the undeniable brilliance of a blog called the Letter Writers Alliance that reawakened my love of the written word.  The handwritten word.  It's no secret that I'm a big fan of paper and ink and these guys have taken it to a wondrously obsessive level.

So yes, I implore you to write a letter.  You don't even have to lick the stamp anymore (though you might have to lick an envelope).


It's time to write something before we forget how.  Get a ballpoint, a fountain pen, a crayon or a piece of chalk, it's all the same to me.  I just want to illustrate how untrue is the subtitle of the New York Times article that "Handwriting is dying because it’s a slow and inefficient way of getting our thoughts out — a hindrance to thinking, given the alternatives..."

Baloney.

Does the iPad Free Us from the Tyranny of Creation?

or: Is the iPad Really the Evolution of the Personal Computer or Is It the Advent of a More Interactive TV Set?

As you all know by now, I'm sort of a tech guy.  Not in the sense that I have to own every new wireless widget to come down the pike.  Far from it, in fact. But I make it my business to know what's going on so I can have an informed opinion on exactly how it's sucking the souls out of our lives...

Of course, I'm just kidding.  (Sort of.)

So over the weekend, the age of the iPad dawned . . . on the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express.  (I don't know that this is significant, but it's worth noting all the same.)  And as usual, I think the press surrounding the thing missed the real story.

This morning's story on NPR made the iPad sound like the death knell of the free internet.  The spark that sets alight a million free-content websites.  As the masses swarm to the "gated community" afforded by Apple's restrictive content controls and the industry adopts its usual posture of chasing Apple... where does that leave us?

That depends upon how you view media.  In other words, are you a creator or a consumer?  Let's face it, Lev Grossman's assessment of the iPad in this Time Magazine article is pretty dead-on: the iPad is purpose-built for consumption of media, not the creation of media.

I take exception to all the many articles and news stories (seriously, could there be more hype?) that call it the evolution of the laptop computer, or even the "end" of the laptop.  This is just a platform for delivery, as many people describe it it's basically just an enormous iPod Touch.  In my view it's the newest incarnation of the television or radio, not the latest evolution of the laptop.  You've spent your entire life with such devices and Apple's new device just makes the things interactive.  I don't know a single author, blogger or other sort of "content creator" (as we are now called) that is ditching his or her Macbook or PC in favor of the iPad.

Why?  Because typing on a big sheet of glass that won't or can't multitask sucks.

But I think that's just fine.  Seriously, there's not a darn thing wrong with that.  Why?  Because without consumers, what are we creating content for?  Whether it's a more interactive e-reader or a delivery system for cleaner HD NetFlix downloads or just a way to read the digital newspaper, this device isn't a disruptive technology.  Far from it.  NPR is right, this is a device that harkens back to the era of hardcopy, a chance to preserve the old paradigm of "We create, you read" that has seen us through the centuries since before Gutenberg went out and MacGyvered a winepress and started printing Bibles.

I know a lot of people see the wild and woolly, freewheeling internet as the height of human social development.  Those are generally the same people who complain about all the "clueless n00bs" clogging the pipeline and generally getting in their way.  The wild west is great as long as you're one of the gunslingers, but all those pesky civilians just get in the way.

The simple fact is, there are too many content creators already.   Andre Codrescue once warned that we are a nation of exhibitionists that is running desperately short of voyeurs.  The iPad is tailor-made for voyeurs.  (As long as the exhibitionist isn't using Flash) and I say more power to it.  The iPad gives content creators the chance to create content and it relieves those who would rather consume than create relief from the tyranny of that keyboard that seems to haunt far too many with the imaginary onus to do something with it.

I posit that there are those in the world who shouldn't have a keyboard handy.  I'm sorry if that sounds elitest or not at all the PC thing to say (pun intended) but there are simply too many people who feel that they HAVE to tell their story and get out there only to find that they don't actually have a story to tell.  These are the people who Tweet their every bowel movement.

The iPad is a gated community.  It takes away the keyboard, along with its implicit exhortation to type something even if you don't have anything to type, and it restricts what you can view to Apple-approved content.  With all the constraints that Apple puts on their devices, don't be surprised if the Federal Trace Commission eventually tells them to knock it off.  The things they got away with when their market share was too small to create waves that way will eventually get them in trouble just as it did Microsoft.

But in the meantime, I think this device is going to ultimately clear the pipeline of a lot of people who would rather not have the QWERTY keyboard staring them in the face, tempting them with all the banality they can Tweet about.  The iPad creates audiences and if you're one of the exhibitionists... more voyeurs is good.

Anyway, this sense of the iPad as either the beginning or end of something new and frightening is nonsensical.  We've had gated communities on the internet before or have we forgotten AOL?

VIDEO - Oil for master's brain

I must admit that I'm torn between two reactions to this video: "I need to get me one of those" and "Oh my God, if they learn to unlock the power of the bean, it's all over for humanity!"

The first one is winning. And they shall disarm us with their cuteness...

Mightier than the sword III

Cool Tech @CES: Transparent Display "of the Future"

This would make for a wild e-Reader screen... CES 2010: Hands-On With Transparent Display of the Future - Video - Wired Posted using ShareThis

Because people don't read anymore...

Last week, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Newsweek and said he thought that while the novel would survive virtually unchanged, the ink & paper book was a rapidly-fading technology, soon to be replaced by devices like his company's Kindle e-Reader.

 He would say that, wouldn't he?

 Well, he had some daunting sales figures to back it up. He further made a pitch for the continuation of a dedicated e-Reader rather than creating convergence devices such as the proposed Apple Tablet that is rumored to be appearing at an Apple Store near you sometime this year. Before Apple could pull the curtain back on the Tablet, HP preemptively announced that they are rushing a similar tablet PC to sales floors and the product demo apparently featured the device running Kindle software.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” - Steve Jobs quoted in the New York Times: 15 January, 2008

Prognostication fail.

 You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the tech industry who still believes that and I'm sure Jobs would love to erase that quote. Almost exactly two years later, the CES tradeshow is all about the e-Reader. The Plastic Logic Que will be unveiled today and the new tablets are largely being touted for their capability as e-Readers.

3-D televisions are getting scooped in favor of the next, best way to digitally deliver books to readers. e-Readers are the hit of the season, one of the few markets where the electronics industry is expanding rather than contracting.

Bezos seems very aware of the Jobs quote when Newsweek interviewed him. He obliquely referenced that Jobs quote when he said that "...two years ago, none of us expected what has happened so far. It is [our] No. 1 bestselling product." No one knows better than Bezos that Amazon is out in front and some very very big gorillas are chasing them, desperate to catch up. Hence the pitch for the continuation of a dedicated device for reading e-Books. 

The biggest threat to Kindle is that people will actually want an e-Reader/laptop hybrid. There's a lot of debate out there about how far consumers want their devices to converge into a single omni-gadget.

 This week, comedian and YouTube vlogger Craig Benzine ("Wheezywaiter") distilled the zeitgeist into the ultimate hybrid machine, the logical evolution of the smartphone, essentially a cell phone taped to the back of his MacBook.

Is it better to do everything poorly or one thing well?

Jeff Bezos spent the entire Newsweek article effectively arguing that Benzine is right. Readers want devices that just do one thing really well. Nevertheless, readers are clamoring for full color and the current e-Ink technology used for the screens of almost all e-Readers currently on the market are incapable of going color at least anytime soon.

e-Readers continue to be rather clunky devices, and what no doubt haunts Bezos is that the fact that Apple wasn't the first company to put out an MP-3 player, they were the first company to put out an MP-3 player that wasn't a pain in the butt to use.

Apple's business model is often touted as being about innovation, but really their most successful products have all been about doing something new with existing technologies. Apple specializes in breaking into existing markets with better-designed machines and gradually dominating those new markets to the point where we forget that they didn't invent them. Amazon should be worried about getting iTuned out of the market.

Snapping at Apple's heels (maybe) are netbook innovators Asus. They have been pitching an intriguing folding e-Reader with two color screens so you would see facing pages and replicate a real book reading experience. The device was rumored to be slated for a 2009 release but it hasn't materialized and there are no updates that I could find. Critics point out that if the screens are really just standard touch screens, it won't really be an e-Reader, but another evolution of the netbook with all the eyestrain issues currently keeping most people from choosing a $300 netbook over the $400 Kindle. Of course if they can hit their target price point of <$150.00, they may pull it off, who knows? Asus seems to like snapping at the heels of the bigger companies, it's been a successful business model for them. So, what is that the future of the e-Book? Is it a convergence of gadgets into a single multi-use device, or will the dedicated e-Reader survive?

The market is groaning under the influx in a winner-take-all bout and there's no end in sight. In the meantime, save me a place in the queue for the Wheezy 1Billion.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and blogs on the interface between technology and literary culture. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Sherman Alexie on Colbert

National Book Award winner Sherman Alexie rails against the e-Book and changes to the publishing industry to Stephen Colbert. Presented for your consideration.

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eBook Update...

Always keeping an eye on the evolving eBook market (even during NaNoWriMo!) Sony says your books belong to you. Sony exec says: "Our commitment is that you bought it, you own it," Haber said. "Our hope is to see this as ubiquitous. Buy on any device, read on any device. ... We're obligated to have DRM but we don't pull content back." via BoingBoing Meanwhile, GoogleBooks is trying to thread the needle of copyright law. Anti-trust investigations and myriad lawsuits levied against its deal with the Author's Guild. Resolves some concerns about access and restrictions that will be placed upon materials in their collection that are still covered under US Copyright law. Key also was the handling of funds belonging to 'orphan works' whose authors could not be located. via Yahoo! News & Reuters Independent Booksellers in the digital frontier. IndieBound has launched version 2.0 of their ebook app for the iPhone (and presumably for the Droid as soon as it occurs to them that people are buying the things...) You can get your eBooks and support the independent bookstores in one go. via IndieBound

Kinetic Convergence?

Text has danced for quite awhile. Watching a Powerpoint presentation is sometimes a jarring experience as the data points samba across the screen, blink in and out and sometimes hide as much as they reveal about the speakers' point. Sometimes I think we're probably better off without it. But moving text doesn't have to be bedlam. Last week when I was looking at people who stepped outside the normal venues for delivering text, I remembered this video by video blogger Alan Lafustka aka "Fallofautumndistro". Alan put up an animated video of the Kenneth Koch poem 'Social Life with Friends'. This kinetic poem is done very well (I think) and I love the poem, which fits my current mood. I don't necessarily agree that it has to be an either/or proposition -- in this and in all things, finding a workable balance is the key. The reason I bring this up is the notion of delivering a story as animated words, so called 'kinetic typography'. There are a number of these poems and snippets of books on YouTube and as is the nature of the Tube, they are executed with a widely varying degree of skill. As ever, finding the workable balance is the key. Moving text can give you a migraine or it can inform and illustrate what it's trying to get across to you. In the middle of the dust-up awhile back about Kindle's 'read to me' app I started thinking about the future intersection between text and speech. Some books simply cannot be brought across as audio books. If you've ever read 'House of Leaves' you'll know what I mean, but Danielewski's acid trip of a novel isn't alone in breaking free of the stereotypical typeblock. A few weeks ago, I took my nephews to a bookstore and read over their shoulders as they browsed. I was astounded by how much even the middle grade books were straining against the format. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney especially seems to be ripe for a method of delivery that would blend animation and text. Not a full-on cartoon, but a kinetic book. Of course, your e-Reader would need a video card, but with Barnes & Noble's entry into the e-book world, we're on the doorstep of true convergence. One of the many possible definitions of "convergence", is a blend of the abilities of many gadgets into one omni-gadget. An iPhone, for instance. The new B&N site, along with the controversial Google Books site is already delivering content that doesn't require a specific e-reader in order to view it. That means you can read your e-book on a PDA, Blackberry, laptop or netbook. I'm typing this blogpost on an netbook that honestly doesn't outweigh an e-reader by that much and has the added benefit of allowing me to watch video as well as choose between working on my book or reading someone else's. I predict that at some point this force of 'convergence' will either eliminate the e-reader or force their creators to allow them to do more than just read books. As books take on new dimensions and text slips the physical restraints of ink on a page, the possibilities for a convergence of our own are virtually limitless. Words can dance, appear and disappear, and illustrations will no longer be forced into a static realm. And as the technologies and artforms converge, it will either be beautiful or absolute and unadulterated bedlam. I've prepared a Powerpoint presentation that shows why it will probably be a bit of both. . .

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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iEducate?

Several people sent me this article from Mashable, outlining the shift from a school library full of books to a digital school library filled with eBooks. This follows on the heels of a series of articles on the site tracking the future path of technology in education and the transition of textbooks to eBooks.

It's a fascinating series and well worth the read whether you work in education or just happen to have one.

On the whole I have no problem with this. When my wife & I were in school (she's an engineer) there were any number of classes where the textbook was a photocopied manuscript rife with errata and addendae and usually in desperate need of some professional copyediting. Needless to say the professor or instructor's name was usually on the 'cover' (such as it was). At the very least, a self-published electronic Textbook wouldn't force me to buy a gross of loose leaf hole-protectors in order to keep my textbook from losing pages.

Just don't give it to me on an iPhone -- as the New York Times pointed out yesterday, the screen size just isn't big enough to meet the task. What you may not know is that when I go to work each day, the main thrust of my career is to faciliate a "Distance Learning" program for my school and the state of Washington. Every day, I watch more students opt for an online path to education and my job is to help them get there.

I keep thinking about the article I linked to awhile back on Iced Tea and Sarcasm written by an independent bookseller who is skeptical of the eReader. He included a brief survey of studies that seemed to strongly indicate that retention was a problem when reading from a screen as compared to reading from paper.

As far as I know, there isn't any current data on how the current high-rez screens used by the Sony Reader, Kindle and the upcoming Plastic Logic readers fare in the same tests. The newer technologies allow for interaction with the text on a level unknown until the introduction of the Kindle. We can highlight and annotate texts as we read them and advances are even being made into digital marginalia that can be shared. If you've ever pawed through the used texts at a school bookstore looking for the one with the most lucid notes and highlighting, you can appreciate a feature like that. 

The Engineer and I - between us - carted around thousands of dollars (and hundreds of pounds) worth of books around. Engineering texts and art history books, lots of images and low printruns made them expensive and heavy. Electronic versions of textbooks are running about half the cost of their printed and bound cousins and weigh nothing. In many aways, at the core of these uncertain times, the reader is getting more choices.

And with skyrocketing tuition rates, wouldn't it be nice if there was something in scholastic life on which the price was dropping?

 ---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Three To Watch

Yesterday I asked if you could name some people who "live outside of the lines". Here are some of the people I see who are doing intriguing and risky things with their fiction, three authors who are (for better or worse) moving beyond the traditional definition of the novel. People whose innovative ideas will get across better than anything I can tell you about how crucial it has become for us to look beyond our imaginary walls -- to think outside the box. These are three people moving beyond the traditional definition of the book and taking full advantage of all that digital filmaking, websites and computer downloads can offer...

1. John Green is a young adult author I've mentioned here before. He writes smart fiction that challenges young readers and has the most loyal fanbase I've ever seen, mostly through the video blogging he does on YouTube. Green's a case study in so-called "Platform Building". That's innovative enough, but he is also re-defining what the novel is. John created something called This Is Not Tom, which is a novel posted for free on the website I just linked to, but in order to read it you have to solve a series of increasingly-difficult riddles and visual puzzles. The novel is free. But you have to solve a bunch of very difficult riddles in order to read it. So much of the writing trade is supposed to be about making it easier and easier for the reader to get through the book. Green is imposing obstacles between the reader and the book and it's working. As his story grows in astonishing directions, the readers are hooked and word is spreading. And at this point all I know is that that guy... well, he's not Tom.
2. Anthony Zuiker, creator of the hit television show(s) "CSI" is setting his creative sights on multimedia novels. "Zuiker said people's attention span was becoming shorter and shorter and that it was important to give people more options on how they consumed entertainment and books." (Reuters) I fear that this is a self-inflicted ailment and I'm not sure he's necessarily right when the younger generation of readers got their taste for the printed word by hefting the cinderblocks that JK Rowling calls novels. Regardless of the attention-span issue, Zuiker is making intriguing use of all the technological tools available to him and is betting that through shear audio/visual moxie, he can tell a compelling story that people will want to read and see. A story that crosses the bridge from just being a printed block of paper by having readers visit a website every twenty pages and typing a code into the site to view the next film clip related to the novel. How this all ties together and how the codes will be presented remains to be seen. I should hope by some logical storytelling mechanism they are inserted into the storyline.
3. Cory Doctorow. If you read Writer's Digest, there's a great interview with Cory this month that sort of outlines his philosophy and his view of how the novel is unfolding. While he's not writing novels in four dimensions like Green, Cory is a force in the movement to unleash the novel from the staid traditions of his forebears.. All of Cory's publishing contracts include the rights to distribute his works under a Creative Commons license for free download. Yes, as the books are selling on the store shelves, Cory is also giving them away. Your mother told you that if you give away the milk, they'll never buy the cow? Cory says your momma is wrong. In a move that essentially treats the electronic book as a marketing tool rather than a product, Doctorow is gambling that the people who read it for free will like the milk enough to come back and buy the cow. And so far he's right.

I don't know that any of these guys are necessarily right. I commonly tag these posts with "technophobia" because in some ways, that's exactly what's keeping a lot of us from doing what these three are doing. John Green's riddle novel is compelling, but is working in part because he has a devoted fanbase of self-proclaimed nerds who are willing to unravel the story rather than have it just laid out for them. All the same, he displays a deft hand with his subject, his format and his fans that we could all learn from. Zuiker's "digi-book" looks a little gimmicky from here, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of my time. If nothing else, we know he's capable of spinning a good story and he has always displayed a finely-tuned sense of his technologies. Cory Doctorow is as much an activist as he is a novelist. Much like Green, he enjoys a certain 'geek cache' and a devoted following of readers who make his business plan functional. Maybe the real lesson all of these guys are teaching us is how far you can stretch once you've created an audience that is willing to follow you down the rabbit hole. Or perhaps they are simply showing us that the walls that exist between page and screen are as imaginary as Les Nessman's office walls and we all need to be ready to write in a new cross between the two formats.

Nessman's Box

"Outside the box" is one of my favorite cliches. (Yes, I allow myself to have favorite cliches, sue me.) It gets across in one succinct phrase all the dangers of these artificial boundaries we erect between what we are comfortable with and what is possible. It also illustrates the benefits of being one of those who is willing to step across the yellow tape surrounding our imaginary boxes. We all live like Les Nessman from the WKRP television show. Imaginary walls that provide us with imaginary comforts. Please use the imaginary door to enter and don't forget to wipe your feet on the imaginary mat. I feel like writers and publishers are more guilty of laying tape around our comfort zones than anyone else. We live and work in an industry that has - more than any other - remained virtually untouched by the last 500+ years of technological advancement. From the scribes at their desks in the monasteries to the guy at the cafe typing on his laptop, all that is different are the tools we use to put the ink on the paper. Yet in the past ten years, the idea of the book or newspaper has changed so drastically that we sometimes forget that the tapelines that form the boundary of our imaginary worlds exist largely as a matter of tradition. And the tape is peeling. My recent series of posts here at P2T have focused on how other forms of creative storytelling can add colors to an author's palette. In this ongoing meditation, I've talked about how Commedia del Arte informs my character choices, play writing helps me hear my dialogue and role playing helped me see the story from the inside. All of these are methods by which I break down those imaginary walls. For me, this blog is yet another step across the tape -- a place where I can think out loud about these things and maybe get some feedback from like-minded folk. Do you know a novelist that works outside the traditional boundaries? Someone I might not have heard of? Talk about it in comments! I'm curious to hear from you. ---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Literary Newsday...

Saturday is newsday apparently... Lev Grossman - Time book critic and author of The Magicians and Codex - has an article in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the revolutions in literature are coming from the ranks of popular authors rather than trickling across the border from the avant garde. I don't necessarily agree with him on every point, but the overall thesis seems sound and well-argued. Well worth the read. Reading By the Numbers is a startling op/ed from the New York Times about the so-called "Renaissance Learning" software that assigns numerical values to books. Children in schools that use this software are required to read so many points' worth of books. The manner in which these points are assigned seems haphazard at best, for instance Hamlet is worth fewer points than the most recent Gossip Girl book. The whole thing is faintly appalling and hopefully the publicity can help get some things changed. If nothing else, the software designers really need to re-think how the frigging points are assigned because they seem to be missing the whole point of reading as a transformative experience rather than an exercise in cramming more words into our students' heads.

PC World on e-Books

"Sony Wireless E-Book Reader Proves Kindle Was On Target" from PC World Magazine PC World has an interesting analysis of the business & manufacturing underpinnings that make the darn things cost so much... at least if your want wireless compatability. This side of the e-book market is under-reported and explains why Sony has been forced to match Kindle's price-point despite earlier efforts to undercut it as recent as two weeks ago. Good article!

Dear Amazon...

It just had to be Orwell didn't it?

I suppose it was inevitable that this would happen eventually. You've been quietly pursuing what was no-doubt the advice of a whole bevy of lawyers (what is the correct collective noun for lawyers? I'm going with 'bevy' until proved wrong.) and deleting copyright-infringing material and quietly rebating the purchase price. Illegal uploads of Harry Potter, Ayn Rand, and finally... Orwell.

It just had to be Orwell, didn't it?

This is the point where your legal rights and responsibilities under current law get annoyingly vague. And the issues too tangled for you to defend yourself without retreating into an impenetrable thicket of legalese. In many ways this isn't your fault. Our copyright law is a mess and simply isn't keeping up with technological advancement. Fair Use is undefined, as are Parody, Satire and a whole passel of exceptions and exclusions that one would hope would be clear as day. Your DRM policies weren't written on a whim. Lawyers were consulted, copyright law was parsed, and your Kindle End User Licence Agreement (EULA) was born.

You were simply pursuing the policies that we agreed to (whether we realized it or not). You wrote it in there; you told us this could happen. And America clicked the "I Agree" button as we always do. Because if we didn't, we couldn't use your gadget, couldn't keep our libraries on a hard drive and carry them around with us. 

And one day it happened -- as it was going to eventually -- you deleted something provocative. You gave the news directors of the world a hook. From a dry subject that no one wanted to cover or discuss or read about, you helped create a rallying point.

Each of the books had been illegally uploaded to your site using the Kindle's self-publishing option and people bought them. When made aware that the books were "pirate" copies, you took them off sale as you were obliged to do. But then you went a step further.

It was a bad idea.

It scared people.

It woke people up to the fact that they were actually renting their books rather than owning them. You scared the crap out of your customers and you angered many of them.

Good for you.

No, seriously, ultimately this is a good thing. For you and for all of us.

Let me explain. While some editors and bloggers resisted spinning out a scenario built upon the plot of the book, enough of them couldn't resist that it caught and then became the zeitgeist. It's a short walk from your copyright issue being resolved to government censors demanding the redaction of the printed record. A scenario with the thought-police come electronically knocking and banned books tossed into the oubliette of history, never to be retrieved.

It could have been worse, I suppose. It could have been Fahrenheit 451.

It's bad PR and probably bad for Kindle sales in the short term. And you really should give your PR people a seat at the table when you're discussing these things if you don't already. (And if you do, find new ones who are going to say "Um... let's let this one go.") But nonetheless, we really needed this to happen. And so did you.

That it surprised so many users is mostly a testament to the number of legal documents, service agreements and heaven knows what that we all sign every day without fully understanding them if we read them at all. 

And maybe what's really alarming people isn't the fact that you did it so much as the fact that you can. And as the diversity of our market expands with Barnes & Noble's competitor site introducing an e-Reader with the chops and price-point to compete, now is the time to get this out of the way. The music industry waited to have this discussion and it nearly gutted their industry. They still haven't fully recovered.

eBooks may well be the future of publishing -- for better or worse, they probably are. The definition of 'ownership' is up for grabs and readers are just now becoming aware that these comfortable notions are not fixed points in space.

This conversation was inevitable; I'm just thankful that it's being spawned now, not two decades in the future by a government-ordered redaction or some such truly 1984 scenario. It comes at a time when these things are still in flux. A time when we've yet to go too far to easily go back. I am glad that your actions brought this to the fore now and in the framework of an explicable and understandable act of copyright protection. Because of this, this largely abstract debate won't have to happen in the abstract. And the concrete issues that prompt it will add context and frame the debate.

We're awake now. And you woke us up whether you intended to or not. And in the long run, it's good for you and the industry that you currently lead. It's good for all of us because it's drawing normal people into the discussion. It's bringing people who are not dyed-in-the-wool partisans or legal wonks into a conversation about the exchange of ideas and the future of literary culture as well as the evolution of publishing. A dry debate just got more vibrant. Will it bring up the level of rhetoric? Probably not. Reasoned debate seems elusive in our polarized culture, but the addition of voices that don't come with preconceived notions attached may temper it.

Or at least force us all to speak in layman's terms.

Sincerely,
Scott