I’ve been blogging since 2001, and I think I switched over to wordpress in 2003 (or was it 2004?). I think I started using akismet spam fighter in late 2005 or early 2006. Until  until then I was completely unprotected–and in a state of constant panic–always dreading the need to weed through the barrage of comments.  Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! (next page). Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete ! Akismet works like a charm, though it is still tedious to manage.   It is harder to tell the difference between comment spam and real comments.

About a year ago I eliminated the no-follow rule about comments in order to stop penalizing legitimate commenters. Ironically that meant having to read blog comments a lot closer than I normally would. In many cases, it was clear that a real live human was commenting–it wasn’t some automated script–but their comments were  irrelevant or mildly offtopic or too generic sounding. I ended up being a lot stricter  if the URL seemed too commercial in nature. But sometimes it’s impossible to tell. At heart, all Internet denizens are promoting SOMETHING.

I’m probably giving the impression that my personal  blog receives a lot of reader comments. It does not.  I have 2300 posts and 704 approved  comments, about one out of every 3 posts. That overlooks the fact that a small number of my posts receive lots of comments  while most  receive none at all.  In fact, maybe 1 out of every 8 or 10 posts receives an honest-to-god comment from a homo sapien.  Which is just as well. Blogs can be quiet and solitary places. And if nobody is around, you don’t want to make a spectacle of yourself  by being the first to write a comment.  It is almost like noticing someone peacefully asleep on a hammock and  tapping them on the shoulder to ask if they are really sleeping. As good as free discussions are, I try to avoid reading things with over 20 comments.   (Watch this collegehumor video We didn’t start the flame war to see why–warning: language!).

Despite the silence of my (nonexistent) blog readers, I do get enormous amounts of  aleatory  feedback . And that is my subject for today: Spam Poetry.

Spam Poetry: A New Literary Genre

The bottom of this post contains a sampling of the “spam poetry” culled from my blog.  These comments seem to be randomly generated (notice the weird punctuation).  They can be striking (and dare I say — poetic?). Some poets/bloggers have already noticed this. See the spam poetry site, this spam-inspired poetry.  Here’s a poet who has been writing a cycle of poems inspired by spam.

Acephalous writes about some email spam:

"Beaver in disloyalty kisses the drizzle’s price" is all the email says.  That’s it.  No link.  Nothing.  There’s a point to the pointless of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."  Why would someone named "point man" want me to know what happens to those who are "beaver" in their disloyalty?  Why would someone who is want to kiss "the drizzle’s price"?  Who is The Drizzle?  What is his price?  Do I only have to pay to kiss it if I’m beaver in disloyalty?   Or is "kissing the drizzle’s price" a euphemism for the dire fate of those who are beaver in their disloyalty?

Ben Myers writes about the spoetry phenomenon:

I’ve been turning spam-mails into poems for some years now, so it has become something of a personal mission for me to draw people towards this odd art form. Here, perhaps, is the new poetry of the 21st century, a reinvention of language that pushes the cut-up technique of William Burroughs or the randomly generated ‘liquid writing’ of Jeff Noon’s Cobralingus into new brave new territories. Here is the future language of poetry: part machine, part human, all good. Just as pre-pen and ink societies produced narrative poetry, the industrial revolution gave birth to the Romantics, and the post-war American economic boom begat the Beats, so too – if the rash of blogs devoted to it over the past year or two are anything to go by – the technological age in which are living gives us spam poetry….

…

the best spam poems are those that twist the bastardised language into something new, something readable. Frequently, spam-mails are filled with incongruous yet titillating combinations of words or excerpts from science fiction or westerns. Spam poetry is therefore the literary equivalent of recycling; it takes off-cuts and lets them ferment into something new and occasionally exotic. A spam poet is as much an editor as a bard, someone who knows which pieces of fat need trimming, who can use a spam-mail as a spring-board into his or her own imagination. And though there are no rules, I happen to believe that the best spoems are those that can be crafted in a matter of minutes.

Here is a spam poetry anthology edited by Morton Hurley; (if you are browsing Hurley’s spam poetry site,  also check out  the ridiculous biographies listed for the imaginary poets who contribute to the anthology; they are almost as peculiar as the poems themselves). Here’s a sample poem:

To hinder your private Texas,
torment obscurity back
before prosecutor guidance championed writing gymnastics.
Now’s the time! Did he ask you last night?
Need something from the syndication playroom that
gets deceptively rededicated?
Think this is it…
Minnesota’s awesome anti aging cream
as free bygone nocturnal longtime makeup.
Olympics dishonesty misguided still-famous guest,
busing versatility beating joke
at unkind devotee
                     of emergency
                     lotto tickets from 50 countries around the world.

As I glance over Hurley’s poetry, I have several reactions. Initially, I am struck by the whimsy of the exercise; then I notice the rhythm of the words; it all reads well; then I notice certain phrases which seem commercial in nature (“awesome anti aging cream”).  Finally, I notice how traditional grammar concepts break down. Extended sentences, lack of logical progression, sometimes no verbs, jarring line breaks. I think it would be great fun to hear these phrases spoken aloud – nonsense and all.  It’s almost as if someone is shouting newspaper headlines instead of actual sentences.

My Comment Spam

As I pore over my comment spam (oh, by the way, I’ve received 64 comment spams since I’ve started this post), I am struck by the strange juxtapositions of words which would make any Vogon bard jealous.   Sometimes comment spam can use specific and uncommon words; it is almost like flipping through a dictionary and looking at the word at the top of each page. In 2007-8 the prevailing fashion for spam poetry  was  for lines to contain 3 or 4 longish words  and odd punctuation.  (If only the spam-generating algorithm could be tweaked to get the verb agreement right, things might  get interesting). In 2009, the trend seems to be bland flattery about the blogger’s insights and writing talent.  Who can predict future literary trends (other than the fact that a greater percentage of comments will be in Mandarin)?

Although one presumes that comment spam is generated to improve a website’s visibility on google, many don’t mention a brand name at all—sometimes not even a URL.  Perhaps they contain  hidden messages  comprehensible only to people with the right decoder ring. Perhaps they are simply  the result of hackers trying to test user accounts.

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oppression:Spica begs:…
Serafin trickles:bidder infernal …
currently anthracite:mushroom unambitious linguistically …
retrospective Kuenning lazybones:Salem have,…
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grave anther Brinkley McGowan slops hardhat …
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grahams prows flourishing flee ski:fluffier …
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exhales? nonprocedural Olivia with Harding?…
various personages terminate …
offered salvage blinked brew! Thuban …
Apetalous Lamport hospitality …
precede interfered inertly Ervin marshes Harmonist …
shoeing shotgun plots micron?…
Papua playhouse Cheshire …
interprets? closenesses.arraign laterally ?postulation Catalan …
pave learns refiner.witness …
lunged cellist amusements respectively:eyed:…
smile buttes chop …
isle passed felicity spec remorse epitaphs …
Wilkie Litton.defy weighty blueberries interferes …
drawnly Hieronymus Washoe!Malagasy …
purged,buckled almond corpse Pradesh shrilled …
temple civilian?positron unseen Levine …
patent fickle purchase bishop,…
secretly canyon spooky eleven redesign!coolest …
repeatedly Quakerizes ringers….
couple.trimly,tabular fabricated?bigoted?clairvoyant:…
nineteen conceived plows …
masses luminously!Heinz alas Westbrook bonfire …
fixated:unattractive chicken …
having jump utilize.shortness expurgate platens …
ignores equilibrium boys,Yost strangely:authenticates …
destabilize salves top:…
Jed upcoming currying resurrectors.Calvary criers …
reign lodger analytical …
grant gabler palmed …
apparel airlines.fearful Menorca shrimp produces …
toughen plenteous splashy….
cast blender Uri subverter!…
written musket civilians gayer transplants:reconstructs …
transmissions storeroom!conserving,clods.backwaters:regretfully …
ravine Pickett burglarizes lingers hungering certified …
pomp convincingly,Heiser material …
attender:classed assignees jade Carson …
invalidity puppet mappings….
dissolutions strippers.Nguyen uniqueness …
lactose save expedited boarders persuasion destructiveness …
moth.clauses washes intellectuals! Alcoa speeches …
instructional,brewery Garvey McCormick,reworks Flagstaff …
ropes summing improves insights?…
salters refinement blasphemousness visit freedoms?sacredly …
creativity reverify:fragment normative complexes inactivity …
slide elaborations:legacy Pareto stroke:deferment….
ego dabble Daytona deletions clash Castro …
stain forms sketchpad forms cuttingly Millard …
collaborative struts litigious supple …
halted GOTO informant,performing speculative!gully …
Culvers cleverness:rhinoceros …
marriages repelled.gamblers:…
dreaming:yoke.wilted revamps ruling protestation …
hears debating righter separated …
boulevard halfway backscatter ire …
hurled blended Vanderpoel invented central,spanning …
eighteenth!laundering!plumes?corpulent.bins?unsent …
adequate sudsing tangy!prospectors incapable dons….
earnestness ratifying jocund,inconvenience:…
assertion Harriet:remiss:soil reconfigurable …
describe.ruffianly averred fresheners.mentioning …
dolls.Alaskan scanned refereeing weds Lionel …
fifteen,harassment Sharpe conjugate?irreducibly!upturning …
subscript branding unneeded adjured …
handmaid.assimilating ostentatious testability warehouse sporadic …
fattener brownish varnishes:covariant laziness lexicographic….
phony dependability cheerless:tabulates nonempty!…
apocryphal!conceded sloppy!distillation …
statues Slavonic!isolates impelling?installing:…
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kindly dent consuls declining.droughts transitive …
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Angelica necessitates bulky republican,…
greet wasting salts Babylon unmask!…
diversely,zoologically Mouton defenses gouge …
Kamikazes prefaced elucidating!divisibility jealousy generousness …
cotyledons slightest:fervently,celery …
reticular.prisms alienating!…
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former,Congolese shanties!…
Julian worthiness computing discriminating,…
assailant Ursula Catskills Liberace.matured Kampuchea …
boomerang.custom shorn similarity …
Good post. Cheers!
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I have to say that your blog is pretty cool. If you could add a few more videos I would really appreciate it!
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Moderator’s note: Alan Baxter’s RealmShift, the SF-and-fantasy novel shown here, is one of the five-star-rated titles on Smashwords, a site for self-published writers and their fans. “Samuel Harrigan is a murderer,” reads part of the plot descrption. “He used ancient blood magic to escape a deal with the Devil.”

Mark Coker, CEO and himself a self-pubbed novelist (photo), sees Smashwords as a chance to help the Baxters of this world to bypass publishing’s gatekeepers and connect directly with readers. Down in Australia, Baxter is also working through his own small press, putting out a paper editon, as Mark would encourage him to do, given the small size of the e-book market today.

Recently Mark talked with Kat Meyer as part of her  Digitizers series for TeleRead. Next, Kat will chat with Travis Alber, CEO of Book Glutton, another community-oriented site of interest to self-published writers. Meanwhile check out Paul Biba’s audio interview with Mark if you haven’t heard it already.

Question for TeleBlog readers: Do you think that Mark’s Smashwords site could use more graphics? And should more books on it come with professionally created covers, or would that be too big a burden on writers with limited resources? Maybe bring together struggling artists with struggling writers? Or how about a professional artist at least to advise the do-it-yourself folks? In those areas and others, use our comment area to give Mark some constructive feedback about the current site’s pros and cons. One strength as I see it, beyond Mark’s willingness to experiment with author- and reader-friendly biz models, is Smashwords’ tight integration with community sites such as Facebook. I also love his opposition to DRM and advocacy of the ePub standard, which he uses, among other formats, on his site. And now, here’s Kat’s super-informative and thoughtful Q&A with Mark. I’ve rudely put this-here moderator’s note up front, because the cover issue is of such interest to me; apologies in advance to Kat!

Update, 1:21 p.m.: Mark did respond to questions Kat asked about the cover, after she did the main Q&A; and I’ve added his comments. He does say that the overwhelming majority of the books have covers, that they’ll be better featured on the current site in the future, and that the Stanza versions display them prominently. Good stuff! And I hear he hopes to help writers and artists connect. I stand by my feelings about the scarcity of graphics on the present site, but Mark obviously is doing something. Meanwhile I’m delighted to see Mark’s interview with his gifted writer Norman Savage draw a Galley Cat link! – D.R.

By Kat Meyer

Q. Is it fair to say your motivation for your first start-up, BestCalls.com, a stock-market site, bears a passing resemblance to your motivation for creating Smashwords? In both situations, you saw the system as broken, with the cards stacked against the individual.

A. In both cases, I was personally rebuffed by the status quo of each industry, and in each case the experience prompted me to build a business to challenge that industry. In both cases, some entrenched industry insiders told me I was crazy, that I lacked the experience to understand their business, and that I could never change the status quo. I enjoy a good challenge.

Q. How have things played out (so far) in each of these start-up ventures?

A. With BestCalls.com, we served as a catalyst for fair disclosure regulatory reform, built a small but profitable business with over 50,000 registered members, and then successfully sold the business in 2003. BestCalls is now owned and operated by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

With Smashwords, only time will tell if we matter to the future of book publishing. I think most in the publishing industry consider us a strange curiosity, but too small to worry about. I like it that way, for now. To many of our authors, we represent the future, and the enabler of their dreams. I receive touching emails almost daily from authors who thank me for giving them a chance to reach their audience.

I confess I’m having too much fun for this to be legal. We’re helping to digitally liberate the stories trapped inside so many authors.

Q. Do you see Smashwords enjoying the same (or even bigger) success as BestCalls.com?

A. BestCalls.com started as a cause wrapped in a website’s clothing. We were wildly successful at achieving our cause, and reasonably successful at achieving a decent outcome for our shareholders.

With Smashwords, I’ve set my sights much higher. I want to change the future of book publishing. I want to help create a future where every author can be published, where every author is given a fair chance to reach their audience, and where every author becomes the captain of their own destiny. I want to expand cross-cultural literacy and bring all the world’s indie authors together in one giant online bookstore. And in the process, I want to build Smashwords to become a large and profitable business.

We’re creating a digital publishing platform that can one day serve hundreds of thousands if not millions of authors around the world. And in the next couple days, we’ll introduce a solution for indie publishers as well. Our success won’t happen overnight. Our revenues are laughably small now.

Q. Is speaking up for/empowering the little guy a lucrative market across industries?

In my case, I certainly hope so! It’s one thing to get up and shout about how the world should be different. Ideas are a dime a dozen. But it’s another thing entirely to build that idea into a successful business. BestCalls was acquired because we created a profitable business of lasting value to its new owner and their customers.

A. If we can turn Smashwords into something of lasting value, then it too will have a bright future. And by lasting value, I mean we need to create a business in which all the primary stakeholders – authors, publishers, readers and book trade professionals – can come together and transact profitable business with one another.

Q. Your main focus with Smashwords seems to be enabling authors to publish with as little hassle—and as little investment—as possible. So far, how are the authors reacting?

A. Authors have reacted with effusive glee, because they realize I created Smashwords first and foremost for their benefit. Every aspect of our business is designed to help authors reach their audience.

Many of our authors were thrilled about our deal with Stanza, because it put their book in the hands of over a million iPhone and iPod Touch customers. Indie authors simply want a level playing field. As physical book shelves disappear and are replaced by digital shelves, the playing field will level even more.

By design, I’m in constant communication with our authors. On every page is an option to send us feedback. My email address is all over the site. I handle most of the customer service. It’s important to me that I’m close to our users, because I learn from them. They tell me what they like, what they don’t like, and they give us suggestions that drive our daily development.

Q. Have they asked for changes/additions to the services you are offering?

A. Every day. Lately, our authors have asked for an affiliate program, and our indie publishers have asked for a way to publish multiple authors and titles under a single publisher account. We’ll deliver both in the next two weeks.

Our authors and readers have asked for us to do a better job merchandising the books, and making the books more discoverable. We have some short term improvements planned here, and then intermediate term we’ve got more cool enhancements planned.

Our roadmap is stuffed with hundreds of planned enhancements, large and small, designed to improve the Smashwords experience for authors, publishers and readers.

Q. What is your philosophy regarding the readers who come to Smashwords looking for content? Do you feel they are as big a part of your focus as the authors? What has the reader/end-user feedback been like so far?

A. Smashwords has been reader-friendly since day one, though when we launched last May, we intentionally made the development focus for the first 12 months 80/20 author/reader, with emphasis on building out the publishing platform for authors. We realized we needed to quickly reach a critical mass of author content, so customers would have reason to visit, sample and purchase, and then be impressed enough to visit us again. So today, nearly nine months later, we’ve reached the minimal critical mass where readers have incentive to repeat visit, and authors and indie publishers have incentive to publish with us if for no other reason to reach our readers.

Obviously, without readers, there are no customers, and without customers, there is no income for either Smashwords or our authors and publishers. We designed Smashwords from the ground up to be extremely reader-friendly. All of our books are available DRM-free and multi-format, so our books are readable however the reader prefers to read. We offer personal library-building tools so customers can store and manage their books, and can also collect samples for future purchase.

Customer feedback has been positive. We’re seeing more repeat customers, so this tells me we’re on the right track. Because all our authors provide generous try-before-you-buy samples of their books, we don’t have customers complaining that the book they purchased is terrible.

Q. What tools/services do you make available to the Smashwords reader (for finding content, reviewing, etc.)?

Readers have multiple methods to discover content.

The reader community decides what’s worth reading, so these titles bubble up to the top of our different search funnels. As our readership increases, the ability for our community to efficiently identify the best works will improve.

Starting with the high level categories on the home page, we make it easy to drill down into special genres and sub genres. Readers can also free-form searches from the search box. We allow our authors to tag and categorize their work, and this greatly expands the discoverability of our content both through free-form searches and tag clouds. We make heavy use of cross-site linking, so our books are cross linked across authors, titles, publishers, subject matter and click streams.

Although we’ve implemented the basics of book discovery, I think discovery represents one of the biggest opportunities for improvement in the months ahead.

Q. Do all books benefit from having many different “containers,” or do you think some books work better as e- or print?

A. Yes, books benefit from different containers, and different shapes of containers. Today, e-books work best with straight form narrative, because you can actually improve the reading experience by moving these books into plain text with minimal formatting. Luckily, probably two thirds of all paper books sold today can fit into this category.

For the minority of books for which readability requires complex layout or graphics, or books that require page numbers and indexes, these work less well today in e-book form because it’s a challenge (though not impossible) to deliver them multi-format and readable on all e-reading devices.

Q. Regarding Smashwords’ new affiliate partnership with WordClay, do you think Smashwords authors have a better chance with print sales b/c of their experience with the e-book publishing process?

A. Authors who were born digital may have some advantage in terms of being better positioned to leverage the myriad online book marketing opportunities. When a book is distilled to its digital text, it completely changes the online marketing opportunities for the author. And since our authors control their content, they have much more flexibility than commercially published authors to determine how the book is priced, packaged, marketed and sold.

Most digital natives recognize that ebooks are just containers for their words and stories, whereas some print natives have preconceived notions that a book is a bound collection of precisely formatted print pages, or that ebook equals PDF, and such notions are counterproductive to a good transition to digital.

Q. What are your thoughts on e-book/print book bundling?

A. I think there’s some interesting opportunity here. It’s actually something we could support today with Smashwords serving as the ebook infrastructure partner for print publishers. Using our Coupon Generator feature, publishers can issue custom coupon codes to their print customers so customers can redeem the coupon at Smashwords for either a free or discounted ebook.

Q. E-book pricing seems to be a huge focus of the overall publishing industry right now. What is your experience with e-book price points? Are Smashwords authors experimenting with pricing? What are the readers saying about pricing? Does any particular price point (or range) seem to be doing extremely well across the board? Do readers recognize the value where prices are higher, or do they expect all e-books to be priced consistently?

A. Readers expect value, and their perception of value varies by subject matter and author.

Our best-selling book lately has been one of our most expensive at $7.97, Dan Poynter’s Self Publishing Manual Volume 2, which he published first on Smashwords. Non-fiction titles can support healthier price points because it’s easier for the reader to justify the cost. If you’re considering a book that you believe will lead you to achieve better health, happiness or professional success, then virtually any price point makes that book a smart investment.

Fiction pricing is trickier. Most of our fiction is in the $2.00 to $3.00 range, but possibly only because that’s the range most of our authors choose to price their books. At $3.00, the author knows they’ll earn $2.22 per copy, which is over five times the amount they’d earn selling the typical mass market paperback through a commercial publisher, and about the same as what they’d earn with a hard cover book priced at $25.00. I think there’s some opportunity for fiction authors and publishers to price their titles higher than $3.00, while still providing their customers incredible value. The key is to offer generous sampling so readers can try the book before they buy. Many of our author offer the first 20 to 50 percent of their book as a free, downloadable sample.

If publishers fixate only on price, they’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with readers. If we’re reaching only for the customer’s wallet, the customer will resist because they have alternatives. Instead, we need to earn their attention. If you can get a reader to invest their valuable time—and we as publishers must respect their time—to read the first half of a 200 page novel, they’ll voluntarily open their wallet to finish the book. Or, if an author has written several books, why not offer one of them for free to help build an audience for that author’s work? Or, better yet, put a price on all the books but do limited time promotions with coupons that make one of the books free. I’m seeing a lot of really interesting experimentation among Smashwords authors who use our Coupon Generator to build customer urgency to sample and purchase their books. A priced book, available for free with a limited-time coupon, has more perceived value in the mind of the customer than a book that’s always free.

Q. Have Smashwords’ authors shown a desire for help with the development and/or marketing of their e-books?

A. Yes. I’m a huge believer in the added value that comes from third party service providers, which is why we’ll soon create a free marketplace where book trade professionals can offer their expertise to our authors.

Q. Do you have plans to offer paid services to Smashwords authors?

No. If we made all our revenue selling pots and pans to the miners, I’d consider it a failure of our business model. I want our business be predicated upon the financial success of our authors and publishers. If we can build a successful business taking only 15 percent of the net, then it means we’ve been even more successful for our authors, publishers and readers. And someday, I’d like to drop our percentage even lower, not because I want to be the Craig Newmark of book publishing, but because to the extent we can strip costs out of book publishing, we can expand the overall selling opportunities by making books more affordable to more of the world’s literate consumers. Print books are simply too expensive for most literate people.

Q. What genres appear to be doing the best on Smashwords? Is there a trend here?

A. Since our revenues are still small, it’s difficult for me to give a statistically valid answer here. Our bestseller list bops around quite a bit, driven by the self-marketing efforts of our authors and publishers.

I receive an email each time a book sells. A couple weeks ago, a new customer made their first purchase – an erotica title. Later that same day, they came back again, and this time loaded up their cart with several more erotica titles from the same publisher. They also added ordinary commercial fiction to their cart. You might say I’m excited about the potential for erotica to help introduce millions of new consumers to the joys of ebooks.

Q. Any breakthrough success stories so far? Any bestsellers like The Shack, which was self-published?

A. No commercial successes like The Shack yet, but I stress the word yet. It’s only a matter of time.

It’s also only a matter of time before a New York Times bestselling author decides to retain digital rights for their next title and publish it with us. That, in my view, will be a transformative event, not only for Smashwords, but for the entire industry as well. I’d be willing to give the first New York Times bestselling author who steps forward 100 percent of the net for the first year, just to prove Smashwords represents a viable publishing platform for all authors, both new and established.

In my view—and I’m staking the future of Smashwords on this view—we’re entering a world where the nexus of power will shift to the author, not the publisher. This is the world we’re seeking to enable. I still think, however, the future world order will always have a place for smart and innovative publishers who put their authors first.

Q. What book/s have you read most recently (or are you currently reading), and how are you reading them?

A. My most recent book was Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic, by Norman Savage. It’s a Smashwords original. I first sampled it in our online HTML reader and then moved it over to my Stanza reader. I just featured the author in a Q&A interview on the Smashwords blog. A few months ago, he was on the verge of landing a book deal with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Then the economy cratered in October and his advocates at FS&G lost their jobs.

Norman, in my view, represents the future of publishing. He’s an immensely talented, can’t-put-his-book-down type of author, and he’s just been orphaned by a publishing industry that’s struggling to keep the lights turned on. The Norman Savages of the world, who until recently were trained to aspire toward a traditional publishing deal, will soon aspire to go indie and stay indie. And the day this happens is the day Smashwords goes from a great idea to great business.

Q. Do Smashwords’ authors let you know when/what marketing efforts they are undertaking? Have you been able to correlate any sales bumps with any marketing endeavors by Smashwords authors?

Our authors usually act on their own, unless they want to bounce ideas off of me first. I’ve definitely been able to correlate sales bumps, because when a first-time customer registers for an account before they purchase a book, they tell us where they heard about Smashwords, and it’s often from author referrals from an author web page, blog post, message board post or a private fan newsletter. To help our authors get a head start on their marketing, I wrote a marketing primer called The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide.

Q. Very interesting that indie publishers are asking for ways to publish multiple titles under one account. By this do you meanso-called “traditional publishers?” Are these publishers who are already publishing multiple authors in print, and are now looking to offer ebooks as well? Not sure how to ask this, but are any “established” or otherwise well-known houses/publishers using Smashwords as their e-publishing solution?

A. Until we began live alpha testing of our publisher solution just a couple days ago, it wasn’t easy for publishers to list titles with us because the site is architected around the author, not the publisher.

Now that we support publisher pages, a single publisher can list all their authors, and then attached to those authors are the book pages for each title. And then everything is cross linked so the customer can search by publisher, by author, by other authors published by this publisher, etc.

Our first alpha tester is eXcessica Publishing, an indie e-publisher of erotica. They just today surpassed 100 published titles with us from 30 authors. So although we have very few publishers using us today, we think our new offering will be a great e-publishing solution for many indie publishers transitioning to e-.

We offer publishers a no-brainer alternative to Amazon as well, because we give the publisher 85% of the net and we publish multi-format and DRM-free. Although we’ll never match the traffic of Amazon, for publishers who already have a captive list of customers, and for whom the publisher has the power to point their customers to a retailer, they’re a lot better off pointing their customers to Smashwords than Amazon if for no other reasons than the greater margin and better customer reading experience.

Q. With regard to multi-format offerings, how do authors decide which formats to offer their works in? DO you advise authors about his? Do any particular formats seem more popular/sell better?

Prior to authors uploading their books, we encourage them to read our Smashwords Style Guide, which provides formatting tips and information on which formats work best for different types of books. We also summarize the suitability of each format at the time they go to upload their books.

For a properly formatted novel or any other straight form narrative work, all the output formats work great. Often, for a straight form narrative book that’s already formatted for print, the author can tweak it for good ebook conversion with minimal effort.

The biggest challenge we run into is educating authors to realize that their pretty print book will look better in ebook format if they strip away the superfluous formatting and layout.

For books with tables of contents, indexes, page numbers and copious images or charts, the author needs to be more careful, because we do less well here. These books need to be carefully reformatted, and they work less well across all the different formats. Images, for example, won’t convert into pure text.

In terms of most popular formats, it’s all over the map. Stanza has made epub popular for us, and the Kindle makes our .mobi file format popular. And of course many people read onscreen via HTML or PDF, or with RTF in their Word processor.

Q. RE: pricing and the idea of limited time “free” offers to create interest in books, do you think permanent “free” is ever a good model? Do you have authors on Smashwords (that you know of) who are using free ebooks to sell something else, or generate interest/audience for some other sector of their business? What do you personally think about the idea of “free content” and whether or not it impacts the ability of content creators to make a living?

A. Some of our authors give their e-books away for free because they view free as a quick way to build an audience they can then sell print copies to, or sell future books to. Some of our authors give books away for free because they don’t care about financial remuneration—instead, their personal reward is the satisfaction of being read. I’ve seen other authors use limited time free promotions to gather readers, build reviews, or establish their expertise in some subject matter which I assume they’ll try to monetize later via consulting or speaking gigs. There’s a lot of interesting experimentation going on now with ebook pricing, and I think the solution of what works best will really come down to the personal objectives of the author. To say one method is better than the other is to paint with too broad a brush.

My personal thought is that authors who want to sell books should look first to percentage-based sampling. At Smashwords, our sampling is really unmatched anywhere. The author can determine what percent of the book is available as a free sample, starting from page one, and then we make the sample available for immediate download in all our different formats. Like I said earlier, we need to earn the customer’s attention before we earn their wallet.

Q. Do Smashwords’ titles have option of uploading a cover? If so, how many authors upload the cover? Do you have any feelings about the use of covers in marketing an e-book? [Asked as a follow-up to the main interview.}

We make covers optional, because I don’t want the lack of a cover to prevent an author from publishing. A little over 90 percent of our authors upload book covers. I do think covers are important, though, because customers appreciate a visual representation of a virtual product. We plan to activate them on the home page very soon, per my previous comment about improving the on-site merchandising of our books.

As I mentioned, most of our authors (over 90 percent) do have covers.  Many of them look quite nice.  The only thing we haven’t done yet is activate the covers on the home page, and the search pages.  We’re waiting to work out some glitches regarding how Internet Explorer displays the covers before we activate them on the home page. On Stanza, all of the covers have been activated since that relationship started

KM: As a self-professed geek and a technophile, what about the Kindle and formatting ebooks for it do you most dig?

JT: I love that the Kindle has the e-book buying experience wrapped up. Wireless book downloads and an easy-to-navigate store are two of the key features that have made the Kindle such a big success. The device does not require a degree in computer science to use, and even the most non-techie person can successfully get the content they want in just a couple of clicks, even without owning a computer.

The format does leave a bit to be desired—there are some pretty glaring options missing. However, I have always liked a challenge, and making books look amazing on the Kindle is definitely that.

KM: Given that Amazon and the Kindle have been very successful at taking e-books mainstream, do you find that most of your clients are looking to publish for the Kindle specifically, or are they open to all e-book formats/devices? (In other words, what  motivates your typical client to publish to Kindle as opposed to other formats, and are they also publishing print versions of their books? if so, how?)

JT: Most of my clients have heard about the Kindle but not about other e-book devices or formats. As a matter of fact, some have never seen a Kindle—they just know they need to put their content on it. The majority have tried to publish on Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) themselves and run into issues, or saw the difficulties others were having formatting books and just decided to sidestep those problems by coming to me.

When I talk to my clients about other formats like ePub, the biggest deterrent for them is not being able to easily sell the books. They either have to set up a website or try to get the book on a retailer’s site, but the former option is beyond the scope of a lot of authors, and the latter option has proven to be a difficult to impossible proposition. As soon as someone makes a publishing process for ePub that is as easy to use as the DTP and ties into all of the other retailers, I am sure all my clients will be on board in an instant.

A large number of my clients have already published their books in print or are in the process of doing so. I work with some small publishers, and there are times when I have to format an e-book quickly to make it available for release at the same time as the print version. Most of the self-publishing authors I work with are using a publishing services company or are using a service like CreateSpace or Lulu. Some are writing the book only for e-book sales, but I think most of those people are not interested in the hassle of getting a book printed.

KM: Interesting. Have you noticed a specific genre or type of book/author more prominent among those books you are formatting for Kindle?

JT: The split between non-fiction and fiction is about 60/40. About a quarter of the non-fiction books I have done are business books, a quarter are science and health, a quarter are memoirs, and the rest are a mix of other subjects. The fiction books are a pretty varied bunch, too. I have formatted some romance titles, some SciFi, and some regular fiction. I’ve even done a few kids books (which my daughters were really happy about, since they got to “beta test” them).

KM:  Design/formatting is of great importance to you. Do you find that your clients (and for that matter, the e-reading public) appreciate great e-book design and functionality? What kinds of cool things have you been able to do in terms of design and format (links, embeds, searchability, etc.)?

JT: I do think that the design of an e-book is very important. Print book designers spend many hours making their books look great, but, unfortunately, that attention to detail has not carried over to the majority of the e-book world. Most mass-produced e-books I look at are horribly designed. Either they have no formatting at all or they are inconsistent and unimaginative. Tables and graphs are unreadable, images are fuzzy, and even whole sections of text are turned into an image. I do my best to make the books I work on look great on the Kindle. I have researched the best formatting and have found all of the little tweaks that make the biggest differences.

One of the coolest projects I worked on this past year was the Rand McNally Road Atlas project. Rand McNally brought me in as a consultant, and I was able to help their designers come up with a great design that works very well on the Kindle. I have also been able to help some clients with very image-heavy books, including a 600-lesson chess book that includes an image for each lesson, and some books about genetics with a large number of graphs and charts. As far as I know, I am the only e-book developer who actually links the page numbers in an index back into the text of the book. Most other developers just ignore that part of the book and assume that the ability to search the book will be enough, but I know that scanning an index can be a fruitful way to see what the book contains or find that one bit of information that you need.

KM: Along those same lines, do you have any advice or insight for would-be Kindle authors/publishers about what features Kindle e-books can offer that they might not have been aware of, or thought to utilize in their e-book production? Are there any caveats you’d like to let authors/publishers know about before they begin the process of Kindleizing their content (what is ideal file format, etc.)?

JT: Many authors don’t realize that the Kindle can use hyperlinks for a variety of purposes, such as making links within the book text to other sections (for instance, “see Chapter 2”), or making all of the page numbers in the index into links. Another important bit of data, which I reveal in my upcoming book, is that the optimum dimensions for images on the Kindle screen is 524 pixels wide by 640 pixels high. Common knowledge to date about those dimensions has suggested using 450px by 550px images.

The Kindle format is basically HTML, so I do suggest that everyone get their book into HTML from whatever source they have, then clean up the code so that it is simple and basic, with no extraneous styles or tags. Those are the biggest issues most people run into: trying to upload a PDF file to the DTP or neglecting to remove all the junk that most auto-generated HTML has in it.

KM: Can you share any insider info about Kindle 2? What it does that Kindle 1 didn’t, and is there any lesser known functionality/features that users might want to check out?

JT: I don’t have any insider info, but the features that look like the best additions to me are the 16-level grayscale screen (a huge improvement over the 4-level Kindle 1 screen) and the joystick for selecting items on the screen. I am really looking forward to playing with the new Kindle and testing out what it can do.

KM: What is your experience in terms of Kindle users and their platform/device preferences? Do you find that once a Kindle user, always a Kindle user—or are Kindle users likely to read on multiple devices and across multiple platforms?

JT: I think the majority of Kindle users are going to stick with the Kindles. Early adopters can be very loyal to the technology they adopt. Additionally, I think most Kindle users are not looking for the hottest new gadget, they are looking for a way to easily read their books. That being said, early adopters can also be a bit critical of flaws in the technology they are adopting, always looking for a better solution. I think the best example of this is Joe Wikert. He started out as a very vocal Kindle advocate and has become disenchanted with the device over time with some very valid criticisms. The Kindle is not for everyone. Some people will be just as happy with their iPhone or their Sony Reader. But I do think that the Kindle will continue to succeed because the majority of users are happy with how it works for them.

KM: How has Amazon’s Kindle team been in terms of cooperating with developers/designers? And, in terms of helping you help authors get set up on Kindle and Amazon?

JT: Honestly, they have been completely silent. I have not been able to get in touch with anyone from Amazon despite my numerous attempts. I would love to get some information about Topaz (their super-secret format that actually allows font embedding and some other great options), and get some help making sure my clients have access to the back-end in the same ways as the big publishing houses.

KM: Do you advise your clients on pricing their Kindle books? If so, what kind of guidelines do you give them?

JT: I do give some advice on pricing and marketing issues when I am asked. Most authors know what they want to sell their books for, and there are only a few who have strayed from the typical pricing scheme for Kindle books. I advise them to stay within the normal range. Kindle owners are less likely to buy a book that is priced too much like the hard copy or not comparable to other books in the store.

KM:  How would you like to see Kindle go in the future? Are there functionalities that you’d be excited to see introduced – if so, what?

JT: I was really happy to see the addition of a mono-spaced font in the recent firmware update, and I would love to see that expanded to include a sans-serif font, too. Formatting books only in a serif font is frustrating. I would also like to see full Unicode support. Despite the fact that the device is only available in the US, many of us do read other languages. I would personally like to see Hebrew support. Another big feature, one that I am surprised Amazon missed on the Kindle 2, is a folder structure for content. That is the most oft-requested enhancement, and it is an epic failure that the Kindle 2 does not have it.

KM:  Any thoughts about the Kindle e-books for smart phones announcement – and what this means for authors/publishers who have published to/formtted for Kindle?

JT: I think the idea of an Amazon application for the iPhone (and for the G1, which I own) is great, and I would love to see it. I also think that the move toward that goal is another sign that Amazon, while still not getting on board with DRM-less content, is definitely making the business of e-books front and center. And, as I discussed before, this would make it even easier for authors and small publishers to get their content into the hands of readers, regardless of the device.

KM: What book(s) are you reading or have you read recently, and how are you reading it/them?

JT: I like to read fiction when I have the opportunity. However, one of my favorite authors is John Grisham, and his books are not available on the Kindle yet [update: Kindle editions of Grisham are apparently on the way. - D.R.]. I actually had to buy a print copy of one to read on a trip recently. I also like Harry Turtledove’s alternate history books, and I just noticed that those are all available. Other than that, my typical reading includes lots of Jewish-themed and theology books, some of which have Hebrew, so there are not a lot of them on the Kindle yet. Maybe with the next firmware upgrade, I will get to approach some of those authors and publishers with plans to get their books formatted with the Hebrew included.

I know, I know, the title sounds like a 1965-era deodorant commercial. But in point of fact, Rita Toews, the founder of Read an E-Book Week, has done a great service to everyone who hopes to see the market for e-books grow and prosper, and I am honored to report that I am one of the many recipients of that service.

First, a little background: I registered www.SteveJordanBooks.com in 2005 and began self-selling my novels in e-book form, after I was unable to convince a publisher to even bother to look at my work, much less judge them publishable. I got off to an okay start, but after a year sales at the SJB were beginning to flatten, and I knew I’d need to increase my presence in the marketplace to keep sales strong.

Enter Rita Toews. She got in touch with me, having heard about me through my regular contributions on the MobileRead web site. Initially she asked for advice on how to promote REBW, and was looking for some pointers on web design as well. As web development happens to be my “day job,” I was happy to oblige. One thing led to another, and I found myself offering my services as a web producer to redo the REBW site, which was pretty simple and not too friendly to all web browsers.

I was under a tight deadline, as it turned out… REBW07 was just around the corner when I started, and there was no time for bells and whistles. Nonetheless, we got a new site up in time for REBW07 that was an improvement over the past site, including being much more browser-friendly, and I further contributed with some new text for the site. The new and improved REBW site (there’s that 1965 vibe again) began to get notice from some new partners and promoters, and this notice spread to me, as an author and supporter of the site.

Exposure to REBW added a new feather to my authoring cap: I was now an active promoter of all things e-book, not just my own novels, and part of the effort to reach out to major corporations and the web world. I received a great deal of compliments from e-book readers and supporters, who mentioned me to others. I saw a marked increase in March sales in the first year, and such a spike in sales for REBW08 to pay for my yearly expenses five times over! My success allowed me to expand on the SJB, finish another novel, and keep the interest rolling.

In 2007, I found myself casting about for a new full-time position (those pesky “day jobs”!). The web market can be tough in the Washington DC area, as there are a lot of corporations, non-profit agencies, and even a few government jobs… and a lot of people vying for positions in their web departments. I was often up against dozens, scores, even hundreds of prospective webmasters, fighting for the same jobs.

But I had a nicely-diverse portfolio of sites to show off, including the REBW site. It never hurts your chances when you can tell a prospective employer that your work has been noticed by the likes of Sony, Adobe, E Ink (which, okay, may need a bit of explanation), and publishers and authors with international exposure! Long story short (too late), my portfolio got me in the door as a temp-to-hire, and I was offered the full-time position almost immediately.

Last year’s REBW success has led to companies like Sony, E Ink, Smashwords, Lexcycle and others offering to more actively promote the cause and the site. Some of those companies did not respond until they saw the ’09 site, based on a design template Rita found, and which I was able to flesh out to be more flexible for our use (as well as 508-compliant and fully browser-compatible). The redesigned REBW09 site shortly received a Substance Books award for website quality, which is already getting back to me as website producer. And the increased interest in REBW enabled me to attend the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in NYC this year, to help promote REBW and get a little more exposure for myself. 2009 has barely started, and it’s already a banner year!

So, all of this is earning publicity points for SteveJordanBooks.com, which continues to bring me new customers and more sales… not to mention enough good will towards my work to discourage those who might try to take advantage of me by pirating my work. It’s always nice to be liked, but especially when you’re a merchant just getting started in a relatively new field.

Just a few weeks shy of Read an E-Book Week 09, I have a new novel about to be released, a site redesign in the works, a comfortable “day job” that affords me the ability to keep plugging away at the SJB, and renewed interest from customers worldwide. I have never felt so welcomed by those I’ve met and dealt with, and can’t imagine things being any better! And I can attribute a great deal of that success to my involvement with Rita and Read an E-Book Week… a cause that benefits us all, but which has especially benefited me.

Editor’s Afterword: To make it easy for contributors I am happy to do the grunt work. Steve sent me the article and I formatted it, inserted the links and pictures and posted it. I will be more than happy to do this for anyone who would like to contribute an article in the future. Just contact me at the address in the side bar.

Exactly. Go download some Dickens and bathe in the River Charles.

Along the way you might even meet Bernard Madoff, the disgraced Wall Street swindler (left photo)—well, in the person of “Mr. Merdle,” a character in Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit.

It’s available for free in E from Feedbooks and Manybooks, and you can buy it on paper from Amazon and elsewhere.

Possibly the kindest and most humane of all writers, Dickens just can’t help doing full verbose justice to every sentence in Little Dorrit. And why not, when the result is this:

“Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown had ever done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had any capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of light on any path of duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy, among the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody had the smallest reason for supposing the clay of which this object of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with as clogged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.”

All right, so that was two sentences; but they nicely illustrate Little Dorrit’s twin virtues: art and social commentary. Today’s Madoff is merely Merdle reborn,  at least almost. Merdle commits suicide, while his present-day counterpart cringes in a mansion hoping for parole. What a demonstration of the chasm between Dicken’s artistic temperament and the real world’s shabby realities! Of course, Dickens is under no illusions that justice will prevail:

“’I hope,’ said Arthur, ‘that he and his dupes may be a warning to people not to have so much done with them again.’

‘My dear Mr Clennam,’ returned Ferdinand, laughing, ‘have you really such a verdant hope? The next man who has as large a capacity and as genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but I think you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of governing them.’”

But Little Dorrit is no mere morality tale. Dickens is too big-hearted to be a scold. In fact, he loves his characters so exquisitely he can’t let the bad world happen to them. Oh, they undergo various trials and predicaments. Some even die. But Dickens the Kind Creator gives no one a burden she cannot bear or one that does not ultimately improve her or doesn’t testify to her inherent goodness.

He can’t even stand to create a truly evil character. The villains have a cartoonish quality, cut-out understudies for evil, not evil itself. The cigar-puffing black-outfitted Blandois is so farcical a portrait of a villainy I doubt even Dickens’ contemporaries took it seriously. The preposterous incompetence of the bureaucrats in the Circumlocution Office (i.e., the British Treasury) is a lampooning of all red tape ever spilled anywhere. The hapless prisoners of the Marshalsea and the poor residents of Bleeding Heart Yard have their foibles, their sins and blindnesses. The puffed-up rich and powerful are cast from their false pedestals with contempt. Thus does Dickens reveal the common humanity of them all. He hasn’t a need to debase his characters with barbarity or subject them to violence, actual or spiritual. Like a loving father he gently prods them to light, and like wayward children, they obey. As in Little Dorrit herself:

“So diminutive she looked, so fragile and defenceless against the bleak damp weather, flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in his compassion, and in his habit of considering her a child apart from the rest of the rough world, as if he would have been glad to take her up in his arms and carry her to her journey’s end.”

Needless to say, Little Dorrit takes her place in the Dickensian pantheon of shamefully mistreated heroes who eventually triumph. The inevitable happy ending arrives with all the grandeur of a duckling in the rain, Little Dorrit’s rickety narrative structure a hair’s breadth from collapse.

But you don’t read this book to get to the end. You read it for the endlessly artful sentences and the droll insight into the nature of the human beast. Few contemporary works have this kind of ambition and so appear trivial in comparison.

“The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings.”

Such is the task Dickens set himself in Little Dorrit, if not all his works. He did not entirely succeed, but for long stretches he comes admirably close, and where he fails, well, he fails grandly indeed.

* * *

Despite more moaning about eyestrain (“For all the claims of their optical friendliness and handiness, e-books still strain the eyes and are challenging to carry around”), I plowed through Little Dorrit, 1024 pages on paper, on the Kindle with no eyestrain or unhandiness. By now I don’t even notice the blinking of a page turn nor the button-pushing.

I have dog-eared hundreds of books with the intention of returning to choice quotes. But since I don’t read with a pen in hand, these remain lost on the page even on those rare occasions when I pick up a book again. That isn’t a problem with the Kindle. Exact quotes are highlighted and stored. A remarkably handy feature that serves as a reminder of why you treasured a fine book in the first place.

The JP Morgan Library houses, among many other treasures, the only surviving original copy of Paradise Lost, as well as three Gutenberg Bibles. On Monday, I reflected upon the enormous pecuniary value of these specific copies (or instances of a manifestation, as the FRBR taxonomy has it) when Amazon announced its forthcoming Kindle2 e-reader in the Library’s auditorium. No matter how strenuously Amazon labors to associate the Morgan’s grandeur with the Kindle, there will be no similar physical artifacts for future generations to venerate with the electronic books that will be read on this latest and stately issue of the e-book state of the art.

Well, that was a fleeting meditation, I admit. I was soon caught up in the very remarkable features of the Kindle2 that I suspect were not much remarked upon in the media flurry that ensued.

The Kindle2 is the first non-cellphone native of the walkaround web — lightweight, portable and capable of accessing the web at all times from anywhere with no extra charges of any sort.

Astonishingly, the Kindle does not rely on some in-the-future-for-most-of-us widespread WiFi like Sprint’s variously named XOHM or WiMax. Instead we’re talking about Sprint’s 3G (e.g., EVDO) wireless network. For that same unlimited data access, on that very same 3G network, my wife and I are obligated to pay some $60 to $70 each month through 2010.

Of course, this shouldn’t lead you to do all your websurfing on a Kindle2, since it lacks not only color but also the ability to play Flash files and video.

I’ve always abhorred reading books online because it’s predicated first on doing your reading on a computer and second on your being connected to the internet through the entire time reading. Now, however, people with a Kindle2 can read online books without either of these encumbrances.

If a book is not a product but a process (as Jeff Jarvis noted today at TOC) and if the conversation around the book’s ideas are as rich as the book itself, then we really have arrived at Bob Stein’s sense of a book (also noted at TOC), which he proposes is “a place where readers (and sometimes authors) congregate.” Seen from this perspective, the online book has a currency that locally downloaded copies will always lack.

I’m as object oriented as any other bookstore browser, with dangerously strong bibliophile yearnings. Four enormous volumes of The Story of Civilization sit atop the eight-foot bookshelf next to my desk and I can still relive the vivid moment in an upstate New York bookstore when I experienced the vicarious pleasure I would have on re-reading the Durants’ glorious prose (because, yes, I had already read these books). And yes, I haven’t opened these books once since that feverish moment when I calculated our vacation finances and then squandered a prince’s ransom on them.

So I enter our new age with some regret, too.

The antiquarians of the future won’t have any “last surviving original copy” of any of our electronic books to house in some future Morgan’s library. And readers of the archived snapshots of the conversation-we-engage-in-that-is-a-book will wonder What was it like to participate in the making and shaping and working out of our quondam masterworks?

I know though that, along with that tinge of regret, I am also experiencing a bliss in this dawn to be alive, to see this new book-making emerge. Remarkable, really.

Photo: Morgan Museum and Library

Slowed by Price?

On CNet News, Erica Ogg takes a shot at the reason. Her headline says it all: “E-book expansion slowed by price.” Why haven’t e-books really taken off yet? The Kindle is just too darned expensive.

At $359 for the Kindle, that’s a luxury device anyway you look at it. Like most consumer electronic devices, getting below $200 is key to capturing a more mainstream audience. Sony is almost there at $269, but it doesn’t have any way of downloading book content wirelessly the way the Kindle does.

However, Ogg notes, there are now alternatives in the form of Google Book Search for mobile, and that Amazon has said they will eventually make Kindle books accessible on mobile platforms—though she does note, as have so many, that “reading long-form content on a small screen will not appeal to a lot of people[…]”

However, it does not seem likely that price alone can be the defining factor. Perfectly fine reading platforms can now be had for less than $100, in the form of older PDAs sold used on Amazon and eBay. (I just purchased a used-good-condition Clié 415, which I will write about in a later installment.) They may not be as easy to read as e-ink—but as the spate of iPhone readers has shown, many readers will sacrifice resolution in favor of price.

But the other article has a very novel theory that seems to have the ring of truth to it.

Not Enough Piracy?

Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian Technology Blog concludes that e-books haven’t had their “iPod moment” because they haven’t had their “Napster moment” either. In other words, there are “not enough pirates.”

Johnson points out that the invariable parallel people draw between the print and music industries when they refer to the “iPod of e-books” may be a matter of apples and oranges. He posits that the iTunes store only came about because the music industry was under immense pressure from Napster and its successors.

The real reason that the music industry came around to the idea of downloads wasn’t because they had a startling insight into the future, or even because Apple forced the issue by building a clever ecosystem around the iPod (it didn’t launch the iTunes store until 2003). It was because customers were choosing to pirate instead.

To put it less glibly, the publishing industry isn’t being forced to confront a radical shift in consumer behaviour caused by technology, because that scenario just is not happening. Customers aren’t forcing the issue by choosing to abandon books and read pirated text instead. And this means the problem isn’t there to be confronted.

Johnson does not mention that there actually are illicit e-book downloads. The most popular titles, such as the Harry Potter books, are scanned and uploaded as soon as the dead trees hit the streets. But e-book piracy has never had the phenomenal scale that peer-to-peer swapping of music and movies had, or the sense that it’s costing book sales.

Publishers know what’s costing them book sales—it’s the general public’s overall apathy toward reading. There are a few loud complainers about pirates—generally authors, rather than publishers—but whereas the music industry embarked upon a misguided paroxysm of lawsuits versus its own customers, and the movie industry has been suing such torrent sites as it can get its hands on, the only book piracy lawsuit I can even remember was the time Harlan Ellison tried to sue the entire Internet when a fan posted one of his e-books to a binaries newsgroup. And that was a matter of principle more than money.

Without a pirate threat to fail to “beat,” publishers are under no obligation to “join” them. Which could explain why most of them continue to encumber their books with useless DRM, and to charge more than consumers are usually willing to pay. E-books only account for half of one percent of total book sales, and there is no significant pirate threat to make them get serious.

Continuous partial attention and multi-tasking are two different attention strategies, motivated by different impulses. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. Each activity has the same priority – we eat lunch AND file papers. We stir the soup AND talk on the phone. With multi-tasking, one or more activities is somewhat automatic, like eating lunch or stirring soup. That activity can be paired with another activity that’s automatic or with an activity that requires more cognition, like writing an email or talking on the phone. At the core of multi-tasking is a desire to be more productive. We multi-task to CREATE more opportunity for ourselves -time to DO more and time to RELAX more.

In the case of continuous partial attention, we’re motivated by a desire not to miss anything. There’s a kind of vigilance that is not characteristic of multi-tasking. With cpa, we feel most alive when we’re connected, plugged in and in the know. We constantly SCAN for opportunities – activities or people – in any given moment. With every opportunity we ask, "What can I gain here?"

I think we need to distinguish between ebook readers (which I regard as essentially an offline reader) and mobile/3G/wifi/whispernet/twittering devices. The latter occupy our time and attention, but they also reduce the brain’s ability to relax and focus (This may be a generational thing; See Mark Prensky’s essay about Digital Immigrants).  Elsewhere Linda Stone has written about email apnea, the tendency’s of people’s fight-or-flight system to kick in when they check email. I would broaden that term to refer to checking twitter and RSS feeds. 99% of all that stuff is trivial and definitely can wait. (Yes, journalism is a special case, but really, do you think David Rothman’s analysis of the Kindle will be any less interesting if you read it a week from now? )

This hit home to me in January while web surfing when I  accidentally spilled a bowl of hot oatmeal on my lap.  This would not be a remarkable event except that it was the third time I had spilled oatmeal on my lap in two weeks! On one such occasion, I was in fact typing an ever-so-important comment on some random blog while I held the bowl precariously with the other hand.  Then, everything spilled. During another oatmeal spill, I was checking email—have you ever tried eating another spoonful at the same moment you are pressing the Send Mail button? In fact, while writing this blog post, I have a bowl of blueberries on my left leg which I occasionally dip into. (I will eat my oatmeal later).

Nutrition expert Michael Pollan in his recent book In Defense of Food wrote about  how in France people eat  crappy foods but eat less of it because eating is a more social activity..a natural inhibitor to  overeating.  I fear that eating-surfing has pernicious effects not only for our waistline but also our literary diet as well.  I like blogging.  I also like baking cookies. Does that mean I should eat a lot of cookies?  Recently I bought a kitchen table (something I’ve done without for years). The new addition has dramatically changed my reading habits. No more web surfing dinners! No more oatmeal spills! When I read, I read. I don’t read-then-check-email-then-check-twitter-then-check-newyorktimes—then-check-TeleRead-then-check-facebook-then-check-Boing-Boing-then-check-my-email-then…. That twitchy mouse clicking is not really reading; it  is playing a weird kind of text-videogame where time is wasted and nothing is accomplished except that you are convinced Rush Limbaugh is wrong (again!)  and that your facebook friends have more interesting lives than you do.

For me as a single man, reading and eating have always gone together. Reading at lunch hour, on the bus, at a cafe. Sometimes when working at a job I cared little about, my only refuge was that precious hour of reading during  breaks. Man, I read maniacally, trying to soak up as much as possible into my imagination before my break ended. Now though, I eat at my desk at work, as I’ve been doing for the last 5 years. Reading a book (or ebook) would seem positively bizarre to people now. Yes, I sneak in a few blogs and  emails, but they seem like empty calories.

Ebooks have the potential to bring us back to reading immersively. My parents receive the daily newspaper, and although I now savor the proliferation of media outlets, I still miss the comfort of being able to read a package of words delivered to our doorstep every day. It’s true; people read print newspapers a lot differently from how they read the online versions. With print newspapers, I’m more likely to read local crime stories or obituaries—when is the last time you’ve read an obituary online?  Reading a print newspaper while eating breakfast is relaxing. When you read a book or newspaper at the kitchen table, you are not making mental transactions about which articles are worth reading; you just read. This kind of reading relaxes you and  lets you concentrate on a single quirky voice that is not yours (and lacks a blogger’s usual snarkiness).  I realize that reading ebooks in this era  requires a bit of an adjustment; the public domain stuff just isn’t fast reading and depends on the person  adapting to the 19th century pace of life. That may not be possible or even desirable (especially if you are late for the next business meeting or if the blackberry –that spoiled brat—demands your  attention again).   At least when you read an ebook, you are learning about alternate means of escape; you are learning how to block out the daily distractions and frustrations. 

With my new kitchen table, I have been tempted to set up my laptop  and do the usual surfing-reading.  At least with a kitchen table I could surf-eat without   oatmeal burns. But  if I  replace one crappy habit with another and revert to the usual twitter-reading,  I’m afraid   someday I will lose the  ability to dream.  

Q. What’s meant by "serve"?

A. LibreDigital’s focus has been to give publishers one platform to distribute their content in any format to all of the digital content stores, eReaders, mobile devices, search engines and social networks that connect content to consumers. LibrieDigital is already doing this for hundreds of book, magazine and newspaper publishers like HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette, The New York Times, USA Today and Simon & Schuster, so they can take advantage of these new distribution opportunities. Designed for publishers of all sizes, the LibreDigital platform serves as a one-stop-shop content warehouse that helps content owners easily control and distribute their content to an ever-expanding number of formats.

Q. What will be the price of the machine? I’ve heard it might be anywhere from $300-$700? Possible now to be more precise?

A. Final pricing will not be available until closer to commercial availability at the start of 2010. Plastic Logic plans to be competitive in the category, taking into consideration its unique value proposition.

Q. Which countries will get the PL machine first? All in early 2010? Latest date?

A. We have not announced specifics of distribution, but expect it to be available worldwide between Plastic Logic’s direct distribution and partners.

Q. What e-readers will run on the PL machine? Can anybody build one for it?

A. Details not yet announced. Open platform on many many document types will enable more content than current eReaders on the market.

Q. Operating system used?

A. Based on Windows CE

Q, Kinds of SDKs offered?

A. Stay tuned, more information to come

Q. Wireless from the start?

A. Yes, wired and wireless from the start

Q.Which stores participating? Can any store do so? How open are these arrangements?

Those details will be announced closer to our official launch date in early 2010. [We do know that Fictionwise is among the retail partners. At the distributor level, Ingram Digital is. - D.R.]

Q. Number of book titles offered when the PL machine debuts?

A. Those details will be announced closer to our official launch date in early 2010.

Q. How soon until Plastic Logic–via LibrieDigital and or otherwise–will catch up with Amazon on the number of titles? What techniques will be used to catch up?

We do not view ourselves in in direct competition with Amazon, which is a bookseller. We are focused on content for business users, ranging from books, newspapers, magazines, other periodicals, and most importantly, business documents.

Q, What if a book publisher doesn’t want to do DRM? Will LibrieDigital let him/her?

A. The choice of DRM or not is the publishers. We can do what they want.

Q. Will LibrieDigital be easy for small book publishers to work with? How will it simplify things for them? Will the process be easier technically and bureaucratically than for Mobipocket and the Kindle? In what ways?

A. Plastic Logic will have a program for small to large publishers—more details to come.

Q. Will Librie work with individual authors? How easy will it be?

A. Plastic Logic intends to provide a dynamic marketplace with content ranging from authors small to large.

Q. What will be Librie’s percentages/fees charged for books? Less than Amazon’s. For newspapers? For magazines?

Pricing for Plastic Logic content will be announced at launch.

Q, Will publishers be able to make Web-style links from one book to another? Same for newspapers and magazines? Links possible between media? In what e-book formats will Web-style links be doable?

Details not announced, are in the Publishing Program.

Q. Any time period in which the PL-LD alliance will last?

A. Details of the relationships terms and conditions are not being announced

Far be it from me, just hours before the heralded launch of the Kindle 2.0 (or whatever Amazon plans to call it), to pull back the curtain with wild claims about any of the device’s new features. Tomorrow I’ll do my best to base all of that on the actual news, rather than the rumors, and pack it into tomorrow afternoon’s felicitously timed weekly issue of my Kindle Nation email newsletter.

Tonight seems like a better time to look back at the prospective Kindle 2.0 features that I suggested last summer in The Complete Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle. We could all agree on the obvious fixes demanded by thousands of Kindle owners including, most notably, those pesky next- and previous-page bars and a user-friendly system of content management folders or labels. Other hardware enhancements such as quicker refresh, a touch screen, and a color display will happen when the technologies are ready.

But the more significant questions to be answered at Monday’s press conference may tell us how aggressively Amazon is prepared to pursue the still unrealized revolutionary potential of the Kindle. Without making too much of the fact that these suggestions are discussed in much greater detail in my book, let me here provide the briefest of discussions of a few of the high notes Jeff Bezos could hit in between those signature fits of forced laughter.

A big tent approach to content availability

As I wrote in my book, Jeff Bezos volunteered, during a presentation at the Spring 2008 BEA trade show, that Amazon might make Kindle edition books available for download to other devices. But Amazon cracked the door open further on this intriguing possibility last week when it allowed a spokesman to let slip that it was working on making Kindle store titles available on a variety of mobile phones. While it is true that Amazon wants to sell Kindles, the real function of this Trojan horse device is to prepare Amazon to maintain and strengthen Amazon’s position as the leading online bookseller even as the modalities through which content is published, purchased, and read continue to change. Many hurdles lie ahead, and Amazon will have to play nice with Apple, Google, and a wide range of content publishers and authors – to act more as partners than as competitors – to deliver on the Kindle’s potential.

Ultimately, a wide range of issues must be sorted out involving publishing standards, royalties, corporate publishing roles, commons licenses and the public domain. The continuing need of publishers and authors to protect their ability to monetize their publications will remain a paramount consideration, and Mike Elgan’s excellent recent discussion of these and other issues may be a seminal text as we move forward. But I expect that by the end of 2009 some of us may be as surprised by the evolution of Amazon’s approach, say, to publishing standards, as many observers were a decade ago when the company invited competing booksellers to compete for sales inside what came to be known as the big Amazon Marketplace tent.

For my part, my ears will perk up at even the briefest discussion by Bezos of how Amazon will navigate these minefields.

Kindle Groups, Kindle Tribes, and Kindle Networking

In my chapter entitled “The Golden Age of Kindle 2.0 and Beyond,” I suggested that the Kindle could provide a powerful way for Amazon to support social networking and viral behavior among Kindle owners. Whether such initiatives stand free or are, more likely, layered upon an existing network such as Shelfari or Facebook, Amazon is in the enviable position of being able to make more money and sell more content by supporting the natural efforts of people to connect with people with whom they have much in common around the interests which they share.

Kindle Buffet and Kindle Reading Subscriptions

Once a customer buys a Kindle (or an iPhone or iPod Touch?) to connect with the Kindle Store, why not give her the option of “subscribing” to a certain access level of content each month? I am very happy to have my credit card charged each month for O’Reilly’s Safari bookshelf service. Some months I use it more than others. The concept would work wonderfully for the Kindle Store.

e-Commerce empowerment of Kindle owners as Kindle sellers

Kindle owners are the best salespeople for the Kindle. Amazon Associates currently pays website owners 10% of its revenues for the Kindle and its content whenever their links lead to completed Kindle transactions. It would be stunningly simple for Amazon to equip every shipped Kindle with an Amazon Associates tag so that its new owner could get paid anytime her suggestion or Kindle demonstration led to the sales of a Kindle or Kindle content. Nothing would take the bite out of the device’s daunting sales price like the prospect of actually being able to make one’s new Kindle into an income-producing device.

Last week, which is about two years ago in blog-time, I asked what y�all thought the appropriate cost for an ebook would be, based on my noobish calculations of whether there were actual savings in e-format vs. paper, what with the cost of paper, glue, transport and shelfspace.

One person contacted me personally and asked if I�d be interested in her story of self-publishing her book in both print and e-formats, and the cost vs. savings of each in her experience. …

SPECS: Epic novel, 3 full-length romances all woven together over a larger story arc.

6×9 trade paperback
700+ print pages total
283,000 words (not including front matter/back matter)

PRINT

$3,500 for editing
$100 for a final proof
$70 for a newer version of Photoshop (eBay)
$25 for the ISBN
$55 for the card cataloging information (copyright page)
$15 for back cover image
$2.50 for front cover image (stock photo, what can I say)
$210 for Lightning Source setup/listing/revision fees
$1200 for 100 books @ $12 per book
$360 books I�ve given away for Library of Congress listing, reviews, Amazon listing, and promotion

$5537.50

Cost per print book (not including in-kind labor costs for design) for 100 books: $55.38

EBOOK

$3,500 for editing
$100 for a final proof
$70 for a newer version of Photoshop (eBay)
$25 for the ISBN
$2.50 for front cover image (stock photo, what can I say)
$24.95 for eBook Studio (the eReader format)
$99 to turn it into an iBook application for the iApp store*

$3,821.45

Cost per ebook FORMAT (not including in-kind labor costs for markup): $382.15.

There is a lot more detail and explanation in the post, so I suggest you read the full thing before coming to any conclusions. Good stuff, and I haven’t see anything like this before. Do any of our readers have a comparable experience?

I have made my living using words for a quarter of a century. It hasn�t been a bad living. At times it�s been a very lucrative living. And it�s not like I ever had any other choice. I was published at 11, and after that my trajectory was set. …

But, like the indie recording revolution before us, this swarm of great amateur writers, combined with a new means of distribution (the Internet), leaves us pros in a lurch. …

The old OLD pay for writers when I started out 25 years ago was $1 a word. During the dot-com era I was averaging $3 a word. At other times, the average compensation has fallen in the middle. For web content, I�ve made anywhere from $250 a page to $2,000 a page.

These last two weeks I�ve been checking out a few sources for writing work, and what I found was more depressing than I even imagined. …

But at the core of it all, I have always made my living with words. And today words are a commodity that can be outsourced and automated. As a commodity, I�m not sure how low the value of words will go.

But if the old adage a penny for your thoughts still holds true, and a thought is probably at least 10 words, then I think we�ve pretty much hit bottom.

She tells me: "I am not pretending to be any kind of expert here, but I have been reading many of these free e-books, by unknown first time authors, and some are really good! But some keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and I feel compelled to offer some suggestions. This is just to get you started, you have to do the work yourself."

By CHRISTINE

1. Put your best work forward.

Too many of these e-books I’ve seen have plenty of spelling mistakes, punctuation, grammar mistakes. Too many sentences don’t make sense or stop right in the middle. This type of problem.

Go through your work and correct those things or have someone else do it for you. You are trying to get readers to like your work, to want to read your next book. You are trying to convince publishers that your talent is worth taking a risk on. Putting this sloppy work out says to people that you don’t really care, so why should they?

2. Create a nice presentation.

Make a a web page with a good, interesting synopsis of the book. Something that makes the reader want to read the book. You are a writer, you can come up with something interesting to describe your book.

Add a good cover image and some positive reviews if you have some. Both of these things make your book seem more interesting and therefore are important.

Put the download links, well labeled, right on the page so it’s easy to see the options and select one. Do not make people follow a trail of links to download or read the book. The harder you make it, the more potential readers you’re going to lose.

Do not make the Web page slow loading. There is no need for anything that takes a long time to load. You don’t need fancy flash movies or the entire page done in images so nobody can copy. You are defeating yourself with this nonsense.

There is a whole theory that some people are following, making it hard to read the book online so the reader will buy a copy for convenience instead. Personally, I think it’s a game you’re going to lose. This type of attempted manipulation is not conducive to a good relationship. I think people will just move on to another easier to read freebie. Don’t try to make sales by playing stupid games. You want to build fans by letting people read your book, and by having books that are good enough that someone wants to read the next one.

Make the page very clear for someone who has never seen it before. The more confusing it is, the more people are going to leave without reading your book.

Put a link to the page in a prominent spot on your website so people can find it. Say what it is – free ebook. You want people to find and click the link, you want people to read your book.

3. Make the book easy to access.

There are a lot of ways people are reading ebooks these days. If you want to put something online per chapter or even with smaller page segments, that’s fine.

I think it’s also important to make it more easily available for download. The whole book on one plain html page, and the whole book in a pdf file is a good idea. People are reading online and offline with various software and hardware and having the entire book in one file makes it a lot more portable.

Offering more file types is also a good thing. The easier it is for someone to get the book on their reading device, the more likely they’re going to put it there, and the more likely they are to read it.

4. Get the word out about your book.

There is this blog, of course. Hundreds of people daily, just looking for free books to read. There are other popular websites which will announce your free e-book too. There are popular blogs where you might get a review done, which will encourage people to want to read your book.

Get the word out! Don’t post it on your website and sit waiting for people to find you. The unfortunate fact is that there are bazillions of websites out there and somehow the scummiest seem to float to the top of search engine results. It’s really hard to find an author site with a free e-book through a search engine unless you already know exactly what names you’re looking for. Even then it can be difficult. You’ve got to get your book mentioned and linked to on some of the popular book blogs and websites. This is how potential readers can find you.

A lot of the books and sites I’ve found are good, but there are those which I feel could benefit from these suggestions. I hope some of them stumble upon this post and find it useful.

As a self-published author of four fantasy novels and one nonfiction book, I can wholeheartedly say that the e-book reading medium is making all the difference as I seek recognition, cultivate an audience, and even make a little money. I’ve been selling the paperback versions of my books at Amazon for nearly four years, and I am satisfied as a book vendor in its Advantage sellers program. However, when the opportunity arose to add the digital versions of my books to the Amazon system, I was borderline

insulted by the payment terms. An e-book seller gets a mere 35 percent of the suggested retail price on a sale. And then Amazon drags its feet and takes at least 60 days to send payment. These terms were a terrible turn-off for me because my existing terms as a paper book seller were 45 percent of suggested retail price and payment after 30 days. On principle I had to take a pass on the e-book deal.

Not that I have ever been thrilled with the 45 percent deal on the paperbacks, but I understood that Amazon took on the considerable operating expenses of warehousing the books and, when one is sold, paying an actual human employee to box it up and ship it. Such expenses are greatly reduced for an ebook selling system.

I understand that Amazon feels it offers value because of the huge customer base and exposure their online store can provide, but realistically I could only expect to sell a few e-books now and then. So, 35 percent of a small amount has not motivated me to go through the trouble of entering my books into the Amazon Digital Text Platform. Also selling through Amazon denies me the important, some would say crucial, capacity to know my customer. When I have a sale at Amazon, I do not know who bought from me and I can never market myself to that person again.

Maybe I’m wrong to be so obtuse about the Kindle Store. I’d like to be exposed to more Kindle readers, but I believe that my efforts are better applied to marketing my Web site where I can establish a relationship with a reader and provide a DRM-free product at a reasonable price while gaining a larger margin of profit.

In general, I’m very excited about e-books. The digital medium is clearly the future of publishing. Paper books will continue to have a place as well, but ebooks offer a chance for greater business efficiency in the publishing industry and opportunity for small players to effectively enter the marketplace.

Four and a half years ago, when I decided to self-publish my creations, I was focused on the traditional publishing model of paper books and bookstores. I almost did not even make any e-books because their death had been declared official in the media. But I figured: Why not make some e-books and put them on my web sites? It will only cost me a little time and effort. And you know what? They started to sell. E-books also allow me to broaden my audience to a global scale because there are no shipping charges. I routinely sell e-books to people outside the United States.

Maybe a day will come when I sell e-books on Amazon. I get tempted sometimes because after all it is Amazon. But then I see that 35 percent figure, shrug my shoulders, and accept that I got my bandages to keep me warm.

Giving It Away

First, Chris Anderson (best known for coming up with the �long tail� theory) has an article in the Wall Street Journal about �The Economics of Giving It Away.� Anderson makes the case that in the current economic downturn, making money by giving things away for free (subsidized by some users paying for premium content) is more attractive than ever.

Anderson points to such services as Pandora (to which I am listening right now in fact), Hulu, and Skype as examples of this practice. (On the e-book side, one could also point to Baen�s Free Library and bound-in CDs.)

But conversely, he also points out that trying to make a business out of �free� without figuring out how to monetize it is harder than ever. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Digg are presented as examples of services that are having trouble making their income match their outlays.

Death of Copyright, Film at Eleven?

On the other side, we have a research paper from BitTorrent researcher Johan Pouwelse, who makes the somewhat sensational prediction that copyright could be �obsolete� by 2010. This article summarizes the arguments; here is the abstract and the full 21-page paper (PDF format). The paper is the result of years of research, and analyzes a number of different peer-to-peer systems to see what makes them tick.

Although the paper�s definition of �peer-to-peer� is a little wider than that most commonly used for the term (including such sites as Slashdot and Wikipedia as examples of peer-to-peer), when taken as a whole the analysis makes a good deal of sense. There may be a little bias in it, however, given that Pouwelse holds up Tribler�a peer-to-peer system with which he is heavily involved�as one of the most advanced peer-to-peer systems currently available.

Pouwelse believes that unless it is reformed, copyright law will be rendered irrelevant by 2010 by the combination of an Internet-using public that has grown used to disregarding copyright law and the ability of darknets�untraceably anonymous peer-to-peer networks�to offer files with a selection and performance comparable to today�s un-dark peer-to-peer. �No effective legal or technological method currently exits to stop darknets, with the exception of banning general-purpose computing.�

Possible reforms might include a �digital superdistribution right� to legalize the non-profit use of peer-to-peer with a royalty payment system and compulsory license. Pouwelse points out that �Many people agree that copyright reforms are needed and that the rights of the commons �to be included� should be restored.�

I am not sure to what extent I support the paper�s conclusions, but it does serve as a reminder of the turbulent times in which we are living. The economic recession can only increase the pressures and problems presented by peer-to-peer�producers feeling the pinch will be all the more upset at people �stealing� their works, and budget-conscious consumers will spending less and trying to get more for �free� than ever. If darknets finally come into their own as fully viable peer-to-peer networks, those pressures will get that much greater.