Category: Musing

Posted on

The death of the Emoticon

2206_mourning_over_dead_friend1A few weeks ago, I noticed an interesting comment from someone I follow on YouTube, which went something like this.

“This is really great news, which I feel calls for a pretty major deviation from my normal internet posting rules. I know you guys hate them, and you know that I hate them, but just this once, in honor of the occasion, I’m going to type a smiley. :-D”

In the replies to the original poster, I saw a number of people surprised (or mock surprised) at the inclusion of the smiley, and it got me thinking about emoticons in general; has there actually been a drop off in their use?

After almost a week of paying desultory attention to painstaking research on the subject, I’ve decided the answer is a qualified yes. Yes, within the group of people whose electronic communication I regularly read, there has been a marked drop off in the use of emotion-indicating text markers. They aren’t completely gone, but there are definitely fewer showing up than there used to be.

Any thoughts on why that might be?

My personal theory is that emoticons emerged (re-emerged, actually, since they were in use in other non-electronic eras) when communication over the (nascent) internet was starting it’s first major uptick, and more and more people were trying to make use of the written word, sans any other medium, to make a point or (harder still) have a conversation and/or debate. The reason given at the time was that communication solely via text was ripe for miscommunication – that text robbed the speaker of tone and inflection critical to conveying the nuances of an ironic or satirical statement. In short, they were saying they needed a smiley face so that people knew they were joking. (Conversely, readers said they needed the smiley to identify such things.)

Are people less sarcastic/ironic/satirical today? Seems unlikely. Sure, most of us use a smiley here and there, but – at least for me – it’s often to take the sting out of a particular harsh statement; less “this is a joke” than “remember we’re all friends here.” My opinion is that we (the global internet-using culture) have so immersed ourselves in text-based communication since those early digital days that we’ve collectively relearned how to clearly communicate nuance in the medium, as well as how to detect it.

We’ve become better readers. And writers.

Now if we could just get people to stop typing “LOL” as though it’s an actual word.

Posted on

Simon & Schuster reducing e-book royalties

Simon & Schuster reducing e-book royalties | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.

Doesn’t make any sense.

The main thing publishers do for writers today is handle the complexities of publishing.

The complexities of publishing are vanishing.

The complexities of e-publishing were never there to begin with. What the blue hell do publishers —

How can they justify something like that, based on services provided?

Edit to add: Further info in the comments.

Posted on

Publetariat Interview: New mediums, Twitter, and storytelling

Last week, I was interviewed by April over at Publetariat about the story I’m telling via Twitter. As one of the central touchstones for the indie publishing movement, she thought the whole idea of creating a story via Twitter — something that would really never transfer to paper in its original format — was interesting, and that’s where our conversation kind of started.

The interview went on for a bit, so it had to be broken into a couple parts, but part one is over here: Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship.

Because it went on a while (and because I’m unforgivably verbose when I get going) some bits had to be left on the cutting room floor, but I’m really happy with the thing as a whole, even if the transitions from one question to the next are a little herky-jerky, due to the necessities of editing.

One piece that makes me sound nearly intelligent:

I think it’s long past time that writers look at new mediums for their work. Paper is just a medium, and as our world (and the smaller publishing world within it) changes, it makes sense for writers to take a look at the tools around us and see if there aren’t some that we overlooked. Artists and sculptors do this sort of thing all the time; “Maybe I can paint on this building, maybe I can make something out of this old car… wait, even better: maybe I can paint on this building with this old car! Genius!” Tom Waits likes to go into hardware stores with a mallet and see what kind of sounds he can find.

What do storytellers use? Spoken words… and paper. That’s it. Very recently, people have considered the still hotly-contested idea of taking the-thing-that’s-on-the-paper and reproducing that exact same thing electronically, and that’s fine, but that isn’t storytelling intrinsically designed for the electronic medium – I mean so intrinsically designed for that medium that it doesn’t actually translate well back to paper or spoken words.

Maybe this story about Finnras is that kind of non-transferable thing – if so, I’m comfortable with that. It’s fun for me and for the people reading it.

The following sentence, which was cut for good reasons, but which I like: “People are trying to take things that were built in/for an electronic medium and force it ‘back’ into a paper format. I’m starting to think ‘maybe you can’t always do that, and maybe that’s okay.'”
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and got me thinking about things which, frankly, I usually don’t. Parts 2 and 3 go up next week.

Posted on

Twitter: No, you still don’t get it.

[This isn’t the polished examination of Twitter I was planning it to be, but I’ve got other writing to do today, and it’s gets some thoughts out there that have been cluttering up my head for awhile, so… well, there you go.]

So there’s this thing going on with people who think they get Twitter – who predict or observe one or more demonstrably false things about the service after looking at it for a few minutes… and then write a ‘news’ article about it.

There’s this other thing going on with Twitter where celebrities see that folks like Stephen Fry has over 300 THOUSAND followers, Wil Wheaton has 242 THOUSAND followers… and they think “I’m a big star — I can do that. I SHOULD do that. It’s PUBLICITY.”

(There’s this third thing where people writing about Twitter see that celebrities are joining in, and infer something doubly wrong, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.)

So I want to talk about Twitter, what it is and isn’t, and I’m going to do it in the most ironic way possible — by comparing celebrity twitter-users. (Hate to explain the joke, but: it’s ironic because ‘celebrities’ make up such a tiny percentage of Twitter, and their involvement is all that mass media seems to grasp.)

First, let’s take a look at Seth Green’s page on Twitter. Here’s some of his most recent messages:

  • News: Robot Chicken will return on April 26th with the first of 10 new episodes. Seth has also recently batted around ideas for an RC film.
  • Watch “Without a Paddle” Thursday, March 19th on TBS @ 10:00PM.
  • Last year’s Buffy reunion can be purchased here – https://www.createspace.com…
  • A sequel to Family Guy’s Blue Harvest will air on FOX in season 8
  • Seth has signed on to star in the upcoming “Mars Needs Moms,” a Disney feature adaptation of the Berkeley Breathed children’s novel.

Right. That’s about enough of that pablum.

Now (and I know this is an unfair comparison), let’s put up a few Tweets from Wil Wheaton:

  • Ok, last one before I get offline and set up for today’s D&D session: You really want to track http://is.gd/ns9A. May the Force be with you.
  • Because I’m sharing all kinds of awesome things this morning, a new shirt from @jephjacques that rocks my world…
  • RT @Lilibet “d20 dice cufflinks: http://tinyurl.com/bqu33y srsly!” Holy crap, they’re actually affordable. DO WANT.
  • GAH! Fucking Kings.
  • Many of you point out that it’s Einstein’s birthday today. Holy carp. I decree that today is Science and Technology is Awesome Day.
  • Today is GEEKTASTIC: Not only is it pi day, it’s the 15th birthday of version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel. Also, I’m DMing tonight.
  • In the time it took me to walk to the car, the Kings scored 2 and tied the game. In the time it took me to start my car, they lost it. Sigh.

Okay, class, anyone see the difference?

Lemme help: Mr. Green is basically using his twitter page to repost promotional crap. Wil is telling you what he’s thinking. One is advertising, and one is making a connection.

Which one do you think I actually give a crap about?

Who do you think I actually (actively) *like*?

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m a fan of Seth Green. He’s a funny guy, and he’s smart, and I’m sure that he’s quite engaging as a person. But I’ll never know that from his page on Twitter.

Wil? Wil is like reading posts from ME (even when he bitches about how the Kings are tanking yet another game, which is nothing I care about, but still funny in the way that your friends getting worked up over things is sometimes funny).

And he’s got nothing on the way Stephen Fry works to connect with people: the man’s got over 300 thousand people following him, and makes an actual effort to follow all of them back, then apologizes when his mouse-clicking hand gets sore after an hour of clicking ‘Follow” and takes a break. Crikey.

Now, do I care about Wil Wheaton or Stephen Fry more (or even as much) as the other people I follow? No, I do not. I don’t follow them because they’re celebrities of one stripe or another — I follow them because they post things I enjoy. If they did not, I would not follow them.

That’s true of everyone I follow. That is, in fact, what I aspire to when *I* post to Twitter. Enrichment. Connection.

And yeah… sometimes I’m just bitching banal crap about spilling diet coke into a pocket of a borrowed jacket (sorry, hon!), so no, it’s not some kind of Zen answer to Life, the Universe and [trademarked], but it’s a hell of a lot more than “What are you doing?” and much, much more than “What are you Selling?”

Posted on

Publishing is changing. Publishers? Well…

Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

So speaks Susan Piver in an article in which she implores publishers not to make all the same mistakes as the music biz.

What offed the music business—and what the publishing industry is facing—is a corporate structure built to churn out hits […]. Rather than developing artists, exploiting regional marketplaces, and building financial models that can support a mid-range list, both industries sold […] out to entertainment at the expense of art and expression. Both are in the business of selling many copies of a few items, not a few copies of many items—the kind of product that can be shot out of a cannon, dominate the retail market, and then basically disappear—because anything else is simply too complicated for a similarly bulked up corporate retail environment to track. The appearance of downloads and file sharing could almost be seen as a desperate measure on the part of consumers to listen and read in an un-mandated manner.

Figuring out how to change the way bookselling works — to adapt it to the way that consumers clearly want it to work — that is the thing that publishers need to work on. Not the best way to embed DRM in ebooks and audiobooks (hint: there is no best way – the very best DRM is stuff you’re borrowing from the music industry – stuff that was already hacked two days before it was ever released). Not teacup-sized storms over Kindle2 text-to-speech capability. Those are the sorts of things that the recording industry has gotten their privates in a twist over for the last decade, and look where it’s gotten them. More to the point; look where it hasn’t.

My guess is that in 2-5 years we’ll see a publishing industry that looks like the music business does today: Super-downsized major companies selling a product line aimed at an older demographic and a jillion new companies creating the next generation of publishers, retailers, and readers. Just like in the music business, some in publishing will be mourning the death of the business while others will be wildly excited because all they see is opportunity.

Personally, I don’t think it’s going to take that long; I think it’s happening right now. There are lots of ’boutique’ (read: “small, specialized”) literary agencies out there — the technology exists today that will allow the proliferation of boutique publishers (I emphasize ‘proliferation’, because they already exist in small numbers).

You know what has recently excited me as a reader and a creator?

  • I’m excited by The Brink, a website where JC Hutchins invites his readers to ‘get commited’ the Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital — to “inject yourself into the Personal Effects universe and become a patient”, to contribute artwork, video, and to appear on the official website for the book. JC gets it.
  • I’m excited by the Nerdfighters Ning, where John and Hank Green have assembled a group of like-minded people that publishers only understand via the label ‘fans’, who are so much more; who do and contribute so much more.
  • I’m excited when an author friend of mine says “I want to change my website into something where the readers can communicate with me and with each other more easily… where they can create. The website right now, and Facebook… everything we’re using right now, it’s getting in the way of that.”
  • I get excited when I can interface directly with the authors I read — both as a writer (which I am) and a reader (which I am) and a fanboy (which I totally am) and a person (which helps me remember that we both are). I send RPG recommendations to Wil, and a cool t-shirt recommendation to Mur, and condolences to Neil, and software suggestions to Alethea, and I steal and eat Maureen’s bacon sandwich, and exchange random bits of geeky nerdtrivia to Rob or Fred.
  • I get excited when I realize that I can’t always tell the creators from the fans, because they switch places.

And if one stops by to thank me for a link, and another sends me a private message with a link to Susan Piver’s article so that I can rant about the publishing industry when maybe it’s not very easy for them to do so, and a third wants to interview me about the flash-fiction I’m writing on Twitter, and a fourth sends me a “You can do eeet!” when I bitch about another round of revisions on Hidden Things…

That’s a community; the place where writing started, and where it’s coming back to  – despite the ‘industry’s’ best/worst efforts.

I’m not prognosticating, guys. Look around; you can watch it happening.

Posted on

I Should Be Writing #112: Mur Lafferty rants about #queryfail

Okay, to be fair, the podcast is mostly Mary Jo Pehl and Tobias Buckell Interviews, but the first 10 minutes is Mur talking about the #queryfail Literary Agent meme that swept through Twitter last week.  The short version?  Suck it up authors; act professional, this is a business.  Good stuff.

Also, listen to the ad right after her rant — it’s some kind of crazy podcast/interactive/website deal coming out in promotion for a new book and it sounds pretty damned awesome.  More authors should be doing this – more authors will be.

Posted on

(Anticlimatic) attack of the POD people

Here’s a little story for you.

A few years ago, I found out a friend of mine had written a book. A real-life book!

I was going to meet this person face to face, so I bought their book off Amazon, squirreled it away in my bookshelf, and when we met, I asked them to sign it.

The thing that was odd to me at the time was that this person seemed — almost embarrassed by my grinning enthusiasm. When I asked, they finally said “I just did it through a vanity press – it’s not from a real publisher.”, or words to that effect.

Now, to be fair, they work in publishing, so that sort of thing mattered significantly to them. (I shouldn’t use the past tense — I’m sure it still matters.) But me? I’m basically a consumer; I don’t know the publishing industry – I only know reading.

I’m closer to the publishing world than I used to be — married into it, you might say — but even so, I hardly ever hear the term ‘vanity press’ anymore, at least not in reference to reputable businesses like lulu.com. That’s partly because of the indie gaming industry and how it works, but also because I think people are starting to feel a shift coming in the traditional publishing world. Either way, I tend to look at the whole thing from the point of view of an outsider, and this is what I see with my outsider eyes:

Only people in publishing care how a book is published. The “POD” label is invisible to the consumer; they’re just looking for a good book.

This is a true statement. I know it, because I’ve been the consumer who bought a book and didn’t know (or care) that it was from a POD press until someone told me. It just doesn’t matter.

Is it a good or a bad book? That matters. Publishers, editors, and agents provide a filtration system that helps improve the quality of the products they (eventually) produce; it’s fair to say that the traditional publishing method filters out a lot of crap.

But it’s not the only way such things can happen.