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Freeconomics
Here's an interesting article sent in by Snowauthor Thomas Emson.
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Broken?
Just want to check whether the comments system of the SnowBlog is broken. Occasionally people mention difficulty in submitting comments. Sometimes they get a message that starts: "In an effort to curb malicious comment posting by abusive users, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again..." I'm going to track that message down and change it because it's not really telling the truth. Really it means you slipped up filling in your details and answering the super-secret anti-spam question. If you double-check that you've filled in all the things you're supposed to and still can't post a comment, could you let me know?
update: Well, thanks to everyone for all the detective work. It sounds like typing in the super-secret anti-spam word with a leading capital causes problems. I've changed the comments form to make it clear that capitals are bad. Sorry to anyone who'd tried to post their thoughts here and been unsuccessful. With any luck it will be a little easier now.
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Affinity Bridge on BBC WM
Well they certainly liked it!
'Like a goodie bag - something for everyone'
'The perfect Christmas present'
'Will appeal across generations'
'It's going to be a hit'
You heard it there first, folks.
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Eras passing
My dad passed away a couple of weeks ago. He worked for Woolworths for 45 years. He even ran the UK company twice, doubling its profits and giving it the most successful year it ever had. It seems very strange that the firm would fall apart so soon after he died. At his funeral I met stacks of old retailers who had put decades of hard graft into keeping that business going. I hope for those still at the company there is some sort of future and that it's not all about cuts and redundancies and selling things off.
Continue reading "Eras passing" »
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Rodent Rage
Long-time readers will know that I live in an old converted barn and some of the former residents, to wit mouses, still imagine that they are welcome to drop by. I've successfully deported three of them and instituted a crumb-less policy whereby nothing is left out for them to snack on, but the trouble is I get complacent. When there have been no mice around for a few months I might think nothing of leaving a plate on the counter to wash later or wipe down the surfaces in the morning rather than before going to bed. And somehow the mouses sense that and return.
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Anyone want to buy a really lovely house?
Lovely house for sale, with extra special historical note: Snowbooks was founded in the spare room. Roll up, roll up.
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Portrait
This interesting article suggests that the only portrait in existence of Lucrezia Borgia has been discovered. Why not celebrate this discovery by buying The Book of Love, Sarah Bower's marvellous work of historical fiction. Set against the glittering background of the court of Ferrara in the early sixteenth century, it is the heart-breaking story of what happens to an innocent abroad in the world of the Borgias.
These two posts of mine mean you can tell that I'm sitting here reading the papers. Must do some work!
Update: here's an image of Ceasre from Sarah to supplement her comment below.
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Obama, the new Cicero
I am ignorant about many things, and one of those things is rhetoric. So this article was fascinating to me. I didn't know those things had words to describe them. Poor ignorant me.
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How to sell books
I have received a number of emails of late from fellow small publishers asking for advice on how to sell books. Here are my thoughts.
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Telephonic ishoos
Oh dear. My phone is out of juice. That would be fine, though, if I hadn't just yanked the recharger cable out and the innards of the phone hadn't come with it. Hmm. I can't find any spare phones, either. Today may be quieter than usual.
Er, can you email me instead today, please?
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Quality pic of the day
brought to you by Snowblog reader and Old Pal John AW - Ta!
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Latest Ro photos
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Tra la la
Now that Rowan's grown out of his newborn clothes, I can safely say that it is perfectly possible to run a business *and* look after a newborn - I have done it and it was quite straightforward. Sure, I have a superior child (heh), but nevertheless it's possible.
The only thing is that if anything else happens, other than running the business and looking after the newborn, it all goes to pot. Last week we had visitors, which was lovely but completely threw my routine, plans and task list out. Still, all is back to normal now - emails under control, accounts done, cover designs underway and plans afoot for the next week. But sorry about the blog silence this week. Normal service hopefully resumed.
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Get up to speed
Perhaps you don't read PCPro magazine. It is, after all, full of articles about computers, rather than books - and as the name suggests, it's aimed more towards the IT professional than the home user. The latest edition (which, because of the strange way magazines work, is labelled January 2009) has seven pages on the subject of electronic books and book readers (which I tend to call e-readers, though that's probably very last century of me). They test the current crop of readers and look at the extraordinary new models in the pipeline. They discuss the different e-book formats and also look at the geography of the e-books market.
One particularly interesting section is their look at how DRM policy evolved in the music download market compared with how the e-book market is shaping up. In short, music downloads used to have tons of restrictions on them - you couldn't copy them or play them on too many computers or certain types of portable players. And gradually, with every major music company (except Apple's iTunes Store) the restrictions have been removed. Why? Because the restrictions gave the music companies more control but at the expense of frustrating, disappointing and frequently infuriating the customer. For instance, if your MP3 player or your computer broke and you got a replacement, you might find you no longer had access to the hundreds or even thousands of pounds worth of music you'd downloaded; your right to play those tracks was tied to the gadget and not its owner. The industry realised that whoever ditched the DRM first would have an advantage over competitors, so they all did it. And the PCPro article points out that while virtually the whole music industry has abandoned their attempts to sell music with built-in restrictions over when and how you can play it, the book industry seems to have ignored that painful, decade-long lesson and is all set to repeat the mistakes of the music market.
Then again, perhaps the book market is sufficiently different that customers will tolerate restrictions more readily. Or, on the third hand, perhaps it's a form of unintentional sabotage: perhaps publishers don't really want e-books to happen so they're half-hearted in making them appealing.
Anyway, if you want to get up to speed with the vagaries of the e-book market, the current PCPro is a handy way to start (look for the picture of the Sony e-reader on the cover).
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Fags, Mags and Bags: part 2
Hey, why did no one email me and Rob about this? It was just jolly lucky that Rob tuned in to Radio 4 the other day to catch a bit of pre-You & Yours listening*, and there it was!
So let the Snowblog do the work of the BBC's marketing department. Fags, Mags and Bags is back, on Radio 4, Fridays 11.30-12.00pm. Listen again here. And they have made two promotional videos which are extremely fine.
*Rob's comment: I hope it's clear from this that I was tuning in hoping that You And Yours wasn't on yet, rather than because I knew it would be along shortly. Surely broadcasting four** hours of You And Yours a day is too much, isn't it?
** Ahh, apparently it only seems like four hours.
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Best headline ever
I'm a bit tied up with non-Snowbooks things at the moment but I thought I'd share a headline that I spotted on the front cover of Yours Magazine. It's not one of my regular reads, but maybe I'll make an exception for this edition. The headline offers a 'Real Life' interview with someone who claims, "I Helped Britain's Tallest Horse Find Love."
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Breaking the rules
I mentioned a while back that Andy bought all the Peter F Hamilton books, and after casually glancing at the first paragraph of the first book in the Night's Dawn trilogy, I ended up hooked. Thing is, the first book of the trilogy has over 1200 pages. Fine for me as a reader - it didn't feel over-long and there was little redundancy - but as a publisher I would certainly have got out my 'reject' stamp. (I don't really have a reject stamp.)
I wonder what gems we've turned down over the years because they break the rules? One of my rules is 'if it mentioned orcs *and* elves in the first page, it's a no'. (I still think that's a good rule.) But we'll almost dismiss out of hand short story collections, anything under 70,000 words and anything over 130,000. Maybe we shouldn't. But as we say in our open rejection letter, publishers are like shoppers at a January sale - looking out for bargains, and quickly skimming over everything else. What's certain is that our opinion is formed as much by industry norms and conventions as anything - so a publisher's opinion of your book is only interesting if they decide to publish you. It's certainly no measure of the quality of your work.
By the way, Peter F himself writes about the writing of his trilogy here, which is interesting.
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Book of the Month
Ooh, lovely! The Affinity Bridge is BBC radio Birmingham's book of the month for November. They'll be discussing it at 2pm on BBC WM on Wednesday 26th November, so we'll be tuning in then!
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News from Aylett Towers
Filming has completed on LINT THE MOVIE, a documentary about cult author Jeff Lint, based on the book LINT by Steve Aylett. Now only several months of editing to go ... ;8/
The film includes interviews with Alan Moore, Josie Long, Steve Aylett, Leila Johnston, Stewart Lee, Jeff Vandermeer, Robin Ince, Mitzi Szereto, Andrew O'Neill, DH Wilson, Victoria F Gaitan, Bill Ectric and others, plus rare footage of Jeff Lint himself. See the myspace page here -
http://www.myspace.com/lintthemovie
(if you look at the 'pics' bit you can see pics of most of the contributors, and other screenshots)
Go! Enjoy!
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It's not just the small companies
Who need to keep an eye on their cash flow. It seems hardly possible, but General Motors is on the brink of running out of cash because, er, they aren't selling any cars. They need "immediate unrestricted access to cash just to meet their wage and supplier bills." Yeah, don't we all. My question: why on earth didn't they figure this out 18 months ago and adapt to changing demand for more fuel efficient cars? God, if I can forecast our fabulously erratic cash flow, General bloody Motors ought to be able to do theirs. And I'm pretty sure Snowbooks wouldn't get bailed out by the government if we hit a problem.
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Photos
More Rowan photos up here. Now includes all new head control!
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Prize season
Hey hey, it's prize entry season again. I've spent rather an enjoyable morning going through the last 12 months of the SnowBlog to remember what it is we've been up to. My main conclusions: 1) Rob is very funny, and 2) we relatively rarely blog about Snowbooks news. I am quite pleased with the second of those conclusions, because if every post was directing you to a review or a bit of coverage, or going on about how great we are, I imagine you'd stop reading pretty soon.
So, a question: which sorts of snowblog posts do you like the best? The politics? The occasional links to Cute Overload? The publishing stuff? The business stuff? The (gulp) XSL stuff? I would be fascinated to know.
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On DRM
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Aren't you brave?
I was just reflecting that 'aren't you brave' is a phrase I have heard a few times in my life. It usually translates as 'aren't you stupid / misguided.' I heard it a lot when we were starting up Snowbooks, and I was surprised to frequently hear it again when I was planning a homebirth. Turns out both of those things gave me the best days of my life. I imagine I'll hear it when I start talking in earnest about homeschooling in a few years time.
Have people ever used that phrase on you? I would be fascinated to hear the circumstances.
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Oh dear
I've only just realised this, but Indesign CS3 doesn't support cross references. Astonishing. I bet, actually, that Adobe fixed this in 1999 but is eeking out functionality like this across twenty years of releases so we keep paying a grand every 18 months for each new release. Bah.
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Postbag
A nice lady writes in to say "I love what you're doing with Snowbooks - they all look great, especially George Mann's new one. What's your background, have you got loads of design and editorial qualifications and stuff cos you're doing what I'd like to be doing but I can't afford to retrain! Can you offer me any advice?"
I get asked this sort of thing relatively often so thought I'd blog my response, so I can lazily point people towards it. The secret of my success, that is: great laziness.
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M Crichton, R.I.P.
There's a very measured obituary for Michael Crichton, who I'm sure you know has just passed away, in the New York Times. It hits all the points I would have made, about how he couldn't write relationships but he could sneak in lots of little lectures so that you came away a little brainier (except when his wild speculations got the better of him). Bizarrely, I think my favourite Crichton novel was the lesser-known Airframe simply because I learned so much about airplanes and their failings. I'm not sure if this NYTimes link will work or whether you'd have to register (which is free, but I'm sure you wouldn't want the hassle). It starts, thus:
Continue reading "M Crichton, R.I.P." »
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Skarlet edits
You haven't even read the book yet - but here's an exclusive taster, a deleted scene from Thomas Emson's forthcoming magnificent vampire novel Skarlet.
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FYI
I haven't lazily gakked anything straight from BoingBoing's pages for a SnowBlog post lately, so here's one. Click on that fine sign for a full-sized version. Chucklesome and vaguely steampunky. [source]
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In other news
I can't tell you how lovely it feels to have a warm, snuffly Ro strapped to me as I work. I can rest my chin on his head and sniff his warm, fresh hair. It is very good for company productivity and morale.
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The real cost of returns
Returns are bad and stupid and pointless: yes, we all understand that. But I got to wondering what the real cost of returns is, when Rob posed the question to me: are returns Snowbooks' main problem?
Continue reading "The real cost of returns" »
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Isn't it astonishing
That this job role exists? If publishers did their job even remotely well, it would be redundant. Or are publishers doing their job but Nielsen feel the need to re-classify their data? Who knows. Insights welcome in the comments.
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President-Elect Obama
Oh thank goodness. This wasn't a close election and it won't be easy to spin it that way. I've already mentioned one thing I liked about Obama: that he raised vast sums from small donations. That means he's representing ordinary people in large numbers. The other thing I like is that he wasn't supposed to get the nomination. The party leaders wanted Hillary Clinton and they didn't get their way. That's good because the Democratic leadership are a disaster.
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If only I could stay awake
I would be enjoying the election tonight. But I daren't - sleep is too precious. Here's a handy timeline of events that I could watch if I had the stamina.
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Valedictory musings
A reader writes, "And why no blog posts about David Tennant/Dr Who?" Ahhh, yes Naomi, a good question. That last season took a heavy toll I'm afraid. Producer R. T. Davies's relentlessly downbeat and nihilistic attitude did not combine well with the frantic flimsiness of many of his story ideas. It's one thing to be giddy while you're having fun, but giddy and depressed is a sour mix. I'd be thinking of leaving too.
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Creeping peril
There's a very sensible, articulate and intelligent article by Simon Pegg in today's Guardian (ooh, I forgot to mention that it's funny too) about the importance of zombies not being the sort of threat that should burst into a sprint.
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Backlash
I wonder what this election would look like if Al Gore had won in 2000. Would the mood be shifting left or right? And in 2004, I was never very excited about a John Kerry presidency except for its single magnificent selling-point of not being a continuation of the Bush administration. But think back to Bill Clinton's reign, back when America was popular(ish), solvent and at peace(ish). The Democrats didn't have the votes they needed in Congress to get a lot of their legislation passed. And then they didn't have the votes to do anything at all for the first four years of this decade. But the shift to the right back then looks to be leading to a landslide to the left in this election.
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Occasional Info-Nugget
As part of my plundering of the giant invisible underbelly of free video podcasts in the iTunes store I was watching something about visual effects. A famous effects guy called John Knoll was being interviewed and he was talking about some of the amazing projects he's been involved with. For instance, it was him and his brother who wrote the first version of Photoshop. But the story I was fascinated by was John's attempt to use the old telemetry data for the Apollo moon landings to create a realistic CGI version of the event.