Kane X. Faucher's Blog, page 2
October 8, 2013
Note-scad: writing and time
Cioran only wrote, for a time, in an explosive state, always in a feverish state. It was indeed the stealth of modesty and fatigue, the deluge of disappointments that appear to characterize the rhythm of life (of which the opposite is a surprise notable exception) that some cease to "blacken pages." It is perhaps a misunderstood state, confused with giddiness or joy, that drives some to write until, by degrees they come to realize that to write is to fill time, not watch it pass. And it is the remorse that sets in from having spent that nervous excitability under the false pretenses of writing TOWARD a truth that one comes to realize one has always been trying to write AWAY from it. To wedge reams of pages between the catastrophe of a first truth, as if a million or more words will function as the safe buffer - but the fusculum.
And still others do not write to fill time, but to extract some sort of compliance from the impossible. We may call such authors fabulists, those who press the boundary of chaos, or even the figure who suffers bitter resentment over what has not and could never be. So many types and masks write in this way.
The relationship between writing, writers, and time is a form of entanglement with so many divergent lines. Proust, the late-riser, engaging in a bit of opium before ringing for his coffee and croissant, tackled the word in the evening; Hemingway chose instead to rise before the sun to stand at his dresser and tap his rhythms into the machine, free from the interruptions of others. Orwell was given to narrating his entire life as it happened, a precursor to what so many people do on Twitter ("He reached for the iPhone to snap a picture of his scrumptious breakfast to mitigate his guilt of western affluence by dissolving it into the carnivals of frivolity and conspicuous status-enhancement found online..."). Orwell thus lived his experience at a reflective remove, widening the gap between perception and reflection, but converging on the moment of narration, It was not, as it was for Proust, the flood of memories from the spoon, but the lived memory of experience. Neither is "good" or "bad"; only different, just as a bundle of practices and approaches deviate with the smallest alteration to a method.
In all, to the writer perhaps, time possesses a certain elasticity to be compressed, expanded, and fully stackable in the papery reams of experience.
And still others do not write to fill time, but to extract some sort of compliance from the impossible. We may call such authors fabulists, those who press the boundary of chaos, or even the figure who suffers bitter resentment over what has not and could never be. So many types and masks write in this way.
The relationship between writing, writers, and time is a form of entanglement with so many divergent lines. Proust, the late-riser, engaging in a bit of opium before ringing for his coffee and croissant, tackled the word in the evening; Hemingway chose instead to rise before the sun to stand at his dresser and tap his rhythms into the machine, free from the interruptions of others. Orwell was given to narrating his entire life as it happened, a precursor to what so many people do on Twitter ("He reached for the iPhone to snap a picture of his scrumptious breakfast to mitigate his guilt of western affluence by dissolving it into the carnivals of frivolity and conspicuous status-enhancement found online..."). Orwell thus lived his experience at a reflective remove, widening the gap between perception and reflection, but converging on the moment of narration, It was not, as it was for Proust, the flood of memories from the spoon, but the lived memory of experience. Neither is "good" or "bad"; only different, just as a bundle of practices and approaches deviate with the smallest alteration to a method.
In all, to the writer perhaps, time possesses a certain elasticity to be compressed, expanded, and fully stackable in the papery reams of experience.
August 4, 2013
Preliminary Writing Aphorisms
1) Abandon the search for the perfect word; seek instead to establish the perfect relation between words.
2) In seeking the literary, locate the tenuous and ethereal strand that exists between the mechanism of the plot and the vitalism of the characters.
3) Narrative divergence is as natural as its convergence. Embrace their flow.
4) Do not write to create a closed system, for it is only there that the myth of entropy is established as fact. A book is not a system; it is an open assembly.
5) Avoid writing the flat line; write the vector.
6) Write in such a way that every component can be detached, reversed, or become rootless.
7) Do not write dialogue - orchestrate it.
8) Every moment of description is but the slowing down of dramatization.
9) Writing can operate at several speeds simultaneously, and there is no limit beyond complete inertia or the infinite.
10) Always keep in mind that the book you write may one day betray you. You are not in a relationship of parent and child with your book, but in a tentative alliance.
2) In seeking the literary, locate the tenuous and ethereal strand that exists between the mechanism of the plot and the vitalism of the characters.
3) Narrative divergence is as natural as its convergence. Embrace their flow.
4) Do not write to create a closed system, for it is only there that the myth of entropy is established as fact. A book is not a system; it is an open assembly.
5) Avoid writing the flat line; write the vector.
6) Write in such a way that every component can be detached, reversed, or become rootless.
7) Do not write dialogue - orchestrate it.
8) Every moment of description is but the slowing down of dramatization.
9) Writing can operate at several speeds simultaneously, and there is no limit beyond complete inertia or the infinite.
10) Always keep in mind that the book you write may one day betray you. You are not in a relationship of parent and child with your book, but in a tentative alliance.
August 1, 2013
Reflections on Reading and Recommendations: Retracing One’s Steps and the Vector of Reading
I must have read thousands of books in my relatively short years of existence. This was aided in part by the demands of three university degrees (all of them being directly concerned with philosophy), and a series of jobs during my undergraduate where I would be cooped up in a building for a 12-hour overnight shift with nothing else to do between security checks and card-swipes but read (I recall starting and finishing Don Quixote in three shifts). For the most part, I have read most of the entire history of philosophy, which I was tested on in two grueling comprehensive exams that involved *only* the 300 or so most canonical works. I also elected to supplement that reading with reading history, and the literature of the times.
Yet, I know for a fact that there are books in that historical lineage I only consulted portions of, focused on the most “salient” sections that were necessary to get the major arguments, or perhaps on account of a narrowed focus necessary to write a paper or article. Have I read everything that Cicero ever wrote? No. Did I ever read the three volumes of Das Kapital cover to cover? Not quite. What about the Anatomy of Melancholy, Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy, all of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, every single one of Plutarch’s Lives, or all of Juvenal’s Satires? I spot-read, for sure in these cases, varying the depth of engagement on an ad hoc basis.
There are far too many new books coming out, and I’m not talking just the flood of new novels, but books in my various fields of research interest. If one is not scrambling to keep up with new developments as published in journals, it is the full monographs, and this is made ever more challenging when one has the research interest wanderlust of interdisciplinary study that I engage. The most humbling thought is that one cannot read everything, and so one is forced by circumstance to be selective.
Looking back over my reading habits, they oscillate between tunnel-vision focus to desultory curiousity where I read more broadly. Three years ago, I decided to read the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and P.T. Barnum, in addition to a biography on Lenin, followed up by a steady reading diet of Shirer’s massive tome on the Nazis, Beevor’s Berlin, and Montefiore’s book on Young Stalin. This was “complemented” in part by a guided reading program offered by an old mathematician to get into set theory (Smullyan & Fitting, Jech, and Rudin’s helpful textbook), some deviations into reading more about the Voynich Manuscript, a few books on cryptanalysis, and the ever-present books I have to read for teaching and research purposes. In the past few years, I’ve also been paid to review faculty-produced books for our university’s newspaper of record, serendipitously being introduced to fine minds and new talents such as Canadian poet Kathryn Mockler, Faculty colleague Mark Rayner’s newest forays into satirical sci-fi, the historically lavish literary prose of Don Gutteridge, and the list goes on.
Also, looking back on my reading habits, when not in the service of writing reviews and so left to my own devices, I find that I’m just not reading novels anymore. It has been a few years that I have not elected to pick up a novel, but instead have migrated to non-fiction. I have followed the now already beaten reading pathway of a novelist I admire, Will Self, who admitted some while back that he was not reading the volume of novels he once did, preferring to focus on non-fiction. And, I have to admit, I haven’t read his fiction in a few years, either (I’ve read everything of his, but not his newest, Umbrella, that I’m not entirely taken with in terms of what the plot entails). I have, however, kept reading his non-fiction pieces with his trademark, almost ostentatious logomania.
I know some very good authors who not only have strong voices, but also produce work that is of consistent quality, and do contribute something new to literature. Of course, I rarely have the time to read their work as much as I would like to. Topping my list of living authors I wish I could dedicate more reading time to would include: Tim Horvath, James Chaffee, Kyle Muntz, Davis Schneiderman, Michael Seidlinger, and (insert an apologetic list of the names of those I have neglected to mention).
Much of the focus of the 20th century had been on the lives of authors, yet so little on the lives of readers. I see the practice of reading as a species of creativity and akin to charting a path. I characterize it as ergodic in a non-mathematical way, but it is not the pathways we navigate within a single book, but between books, that is of interest to me. Sometimes a single book will be the launching point to read others of its kind by explicit reference or simply by subject matter, and at other times it is simply lived circumstances that partially guide the process by which we select the next book in a lifelong series.
I suppose this brings me to the issue of authors recommending (their own) books. I occasionally receive these recommendations, but I do not send any of my own. I simply cannot if I have a self-imposed embargo on reading new novels. Now, I understand that authors are readers as well, but there is something that does not sit right with me in recommending my own authored works to other authors, almost as though I am trying to sell insurance to another insurance salesperson. Although I take any book recommendations according to the intentionality of the recommender to assist if ever I find myself uncertain of what book I should read next - a little like coming to a fork in the woods where there are multiple choices to be made - it is not something I need assistance with. A mix of serendipity, circumstance, and curiousity will be more than ample to assist me in what to read next. I simply don’t require the author as herald announcing, read ye, read ye, now read this! I know many authors crave new readers, and I know they could spend their efforts on someone whose reading list is not as full as mine.
But, if you who are reading this share anything in common with my reading habits, you probably maintain two or more lists of what to read, plotting and planning well in advance. I call one type of list the ideal reading list, and this includes everything that you would choose to read under the most ideal conditions (like, um, being immortal!). As we know, ideality bumps up against reality all too often, and our future reading trajectory succumbs to deviation. And this can happen for lots of reasons. One of the most common being, of course, coming upon a book you feel you must make time for NOW, thus pushing your ideal reading list a bit further down the queue. The other type of list I can think of is the To-read pile, and I mean “pile” quite literally. If you are anything like me, you might have multiple piles of books in different rooms, and even many in just one room that serve different purposes (for me, I have piles for different research projects). These piles tend to grow rather than diminish with time, or at least that has been my experience. The benefit of piles is that it gives one a physical representation of that which is designated to be read, and one can proceed serially. What I appreciate about my little contained chaos of multiple piles in multiple rooms is that, no matter where I am in the house, I always have a little textual friend nearby to give me that much needed intellectual “bump.”
Yet, all lists are subject to the possibility of the interruption, the interval, the intercalation, the displacement, the deviating line, if not also just a more innocent cause such as the pile being toppled or put away for whatever reason, by whomever. What I come to realize is this: no matter how well one plans one’s reading path, reading is a kind of vector, and unless one wants to apply the harshest discipline in micromanaging one’s reading plans to adhere to a strict regimen, it is the vectorial nature of reading that generally leads us from one book to the next.
I am personally fascinated by the choices we make in migrating from book to book, for as readers we are visitors and nomads that pass through books on our way to the next. Along the way, our highly personalized reading path becomes a defining feature of our relation to all future books. Have you ever given thought to why you are on the book you are on now, and by which path you arrived at it? What is the relationship, if any, between the book you are reading now and the last dozen? Was there some kind of unconscious line that you may have followed, a thread connected to a subject matter, an author, a style, or even a barely perceptible cadence or rhythm? I am probably over-thinking this, but it is this unique and highly personalized history of readers and the sequence of what they read that might prove interesting to explore.
My reading plans? Ideally, I am searching to fill holes and gaps in my historical knowledge, or to have what I know embroidered with more detail. There are entire fields of knowledge I would like to acquaint myself with. Maybe I’d like to read about ancient travel, or how to pickle (or how they did it in the middle ages), or understand more about the nature of moths, or brush up on my untidy knowledge of how countries instituted programs for the transition of military to civilian life. From this desk, I see Horace’s Odes winking at me, and I think a book-length essay on colophons has just made a pass at me. The sad binding on a biography of Vermeer seems to beg that I read it again, more carefully this time, but it is the stony non-gaze of the dry-as-dust Foundations of European Art that wants to guilt me into plodding through its turgid prose. And then there are chattering blocs of semiotics, symbolism, irony, Marxism and deconstruction, that only unite in their one refrain of read me now - before it is too late! And then there are the sad yet stoic books with their reams of lore that are etiolated by ever more dust. Surely they implore me to read them, or perhaps are resigned in the fatalism that I simply will not get to them.
This brings me to a few rules that I abide by, for what they are worth:
1) Never recommend books UNLESS one’s recommendations are solicited, or the topic of discussion deals with a subject matter that would permit one to recommend a book on that subject.
2) Never recommend one’s own books, for it is about as unbiased as a reference letter from one’s parents.
3) Never assume that others do not know what to read next; chances are that was planned long ago.
4) Never assume that what one recommends, the other will follow through.
5) Never carpet-bomb a recommendation to an entire list of contacts; being selective rather than indiscriminate about who one recommends a book to shows respect for the person for whom the recommendation is being made. Anything less is a little like spam.
Yet, I know for a fact that there are books in that historical lineage I only consulted portions of, focused on the most “salient” sections that were necessary to get the major arguments, or perhaps on account of a narrowed focus necessary to write a paper or article. Have I read everything that Cicero ever wrote? No. Did I ever read the three volumes of Das Kapital cover to cover? Not quite. What about the Anatomy of Melancholy, Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy, all of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, every single one of Plutarch’s Lives, or all of Juvenal’s Satires? I spot-read, for sure in these cases, varying the depth of engagement on an ad hoc basis.
There are far too many new books coming out, and I’m not talking just the flood of new novels, but books in my various fields of research interest. If one is not scrambling to keep up with new developments as published in journals, it is the full monographs, and this is made ever more challenging when one has the research interest wanderlust of interdisciplinary study that I engage. The most humbling thought is that one cannot read everything, and so one is forced by circumstance to be selective.
Looking back over my reading habits, they oscillate between tunnel-vision focus to desultory curiousity where I read more broadly. Three years ago, I decided to read the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and P.T. Barnum, in addition to a biography on Lenin, followed up by a steady reading diet of Shirer’s massive tome on the Nazis, Beevor’s Berlin, and Montefiore’s book on Young Stalin. This was “complemented” in part by a guided reading program offered by an old mathematician to get into set theory (Smullyan & Fitting, Jech, and Rudin’s helpful textbook), some deviations into reading more about the Voynich Manuscript, a few books on cryptanalysis, and the ever-present books I have to read for teaching and research purposes. In the past few years, I’ve also been paid to review faculty-produced books for our university’s newspaper of record, serendipitously being introduced to fine minds and new talents such as Canadian poet Kathryn Mockler, Faculty colleague Mark Rayner’s newest forays into satirical sci-fi, the historically lavish literary prose of Don Gutteridge, and the list goes on.
Also, looking back on my reading habits, when not in the service of writing reviews and so left to my own devices, I find that I’m just not reading novels anymore. It has been a few years that I have not elected to pick up a novel, but instead have migrated to non-fiction. I have followed the now already beaten reading pathway of a novelist I admire, Will Self, who admitted some while back that he was not reading the volume of novels he once did, preferring to focus on non-fiction. And, I have to admit, I haven’t read his fiction in a few years, either (I’ve read everything of his, but not his newest, Umbrella, that I’m not entirely taken with in terms of what the plot entails). I have, however, kept reading his non-fiction pieces with his trademark, almost ostentatious logomania.
I know some very good authors who not only have strong voices, but also produce work that is of consistent quality, and do contribute something new to literature. Of course, I rarely have the time to read their work as much as I would like to. Topping my list of living authors I wish I could dedicate more reading time to would include: Tim Horvath, James Chaffee, Kyle Muntz, Davis Schneiderman, Michael Seidlinger, and (insert an apologetic list of the names of those I have neglected to mention).
Much of the focus of the 20th century had been on the lives of authors, yet so little on the lives of readers. I see the practice of reading as a species of creativity and akin to charting a path. I characterize it as ergodic in a non-mathematical way, but it is not the pathways we navigate within a single book, but between books, that is of interest to me. Sometimes a single book will be the launching point to read others of its kind by explicit reference or simply by subject matter, and at other times it is simply lived circumstances that partially guide the process by which we select the next book in a lifelong series.
I suppose this brings me to the issue of authors recommending (their own) books. I occasionally receive these recommendations, but I do not send any of my own. I simply cannot if I have a self-imposed embargo on reading new novels. Now, I understand that authors are readers as well, but there is something that does not sit right with me in recommending my own authored works to other authors, almost as though I am trying to sell insurance to another insurance salesperson. Although I take any book recommendations according to the intentionality of the recommender to assist if ever I find myself uncertain of what book I should read next - a little like coming to a fork in the woods where there are multiple choices to be made - it is not something I need assistance with. A mix of serendipity, circumstance, and curiousity will be more than ample to assist me in what to read next. I simply don’t require the author as herald announcing, read ye, read ye, now read this! I know many authors crave new readers, and I know they could spend their efforts on someone whose reading list is not as full as mine.
But, if you who are reading this share anything in common with my reading habits, you probably maintain two or more lists of what to read, plotting and planning well in advance. I call one type of list the ideal reading list, and this includes everything that you would choose to read under the most ideal conditions (like, um, being immortal!). As we know, ideality bumps up against reality all too often, and our future reading trajectory succumbs to deviation. And this can happen for lots of reasons. One of the most common being, of course, coming upon a book you feel you must make time for NOW, thus pushing your ideal reading list a bit further down the queue. The other type of list I can think of is the To-read pile, and I mean “pile” quite literally. If you are anything like me, you might have multiple piles of books in different rooms, and even many in just one room that serve different purposes (for me, I have piles for different research projects). These piles tend to grow rather than diminish with time, or at least that has been my experience. The benefit of piles is that it gives one a physical representation of that which is designated to be read, and one can proceed serially. What I appreciate about my little contained chaos of multiple piles in multiple rooms is that, no matter where I am in the house, I always have a little textual friend nearby to give me that much needed intellectual “bump.”
Yet, all lists are subject to the possibility of the interruption, the interval, the intercalation, the displacement, the deviating line, if not also just a more innocent cause such as the pile being toppled or put away for whatever reason, by whomever. What I come to realize is this: no matter how well one plans one’s reading path, reading is a kind of vector, and unless one wants to apply the harshest discipline in micromanaging one’s reading plans to adhere to a strict regimen, it is the vectorial nature of reading that generally leads us from one book to the next.
I am personally fascinated by the choices we make in migrating from book to book, for as readers we are visitors and nomads that pass through books on our way to the next. Along the way, our highly personalized reading path becomes a defining feature of our relation to all future books. Have you ever given thought to why you are on the book you are on now, and by which path you arrived at it? What is the relationship, if any, between the book you are reading now and the last dozen? Was there some kind of unconscious line that you may have followed, a thread connected to a subject matter, an author, a style, or even a barely perceptible cadence or rhythm? I am probably over-thinking this, but it is this unique and highly personalized history of readers and the sequence of what they read that might prove interesting to explore.
My reading plans? Ideally, I am searching to fill holes and gaps in my historical knowledge, or to have what I know embroidered with more detail. There are entire fields of knowledge I would like to acquaint myself with. Maybe I’d like to read about ancient travel, or how to pickle (or how they did it in the middle ages), or understand more about the nature of moths, or brush up on my untidy knowledge of how countries instituted programs for the transition of military to civilian life. From this desk, I see Horace’s Odes winking at me, and I think a book-length essay on colophons has just made a pass at me. The sad binding on a biography of Vermeer seems to beg that I read it again, more carefully this time, but it is the stony non-gaze of the dry-as-dust Foundations of European Art that wants to guilt me into plodding through its turgid prose. And then there are chattering blocs of semiotics, symbolism, irony, Marxism and deconstruction, that only unite in their one refrain of read me now - before it is too late! And then there are the sad yet stoic books with their reams of lore that are etiolated by ever more dust. Surely they implore me to read them, or perhaps are resigned in the fatalism that I simply will not get to them.
This brings me to a few rules that I abide by, for what they are worth:
1) Never recommend books UNLESS one’s recommendations are solicited, or the topic of discussion deals with a subject matter that would permit one to recommend a book on that subject.
2) Never recommend one’s own books, for it is about as unbiased as a reference letter from one’s parents.
3) Never assume that others do not know what to read next; chances are that was planned long ago.
4) Never assume that what one recommends, the other will follow through.
5) Never carpet-bomb a recommendation to an entire list of contacts; being selective rather than indiscriminate about who one recommends a book to shows respect for the person for whom the recommendation is being made. Anything less is a little like spam.
July 1, 2013
All 3 books in one Kindle volume
For those keen on completing sets, the entire trilogy has been bundled into one volume (for Kindle only). This includes The Infinite Library, The Infinite Atrocity, and the recently released The Infinite Grey. My publisher has given me exclusive rights to create ebook versions, so if the formatting is not perfect, that remains this author's error and not the publisher. The "value pack" is set US$9.95, contains over 700k words, and is available here:
http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Trilog...
I have not migrated The Infinite Grey on its own yet to Kindle, but it is on the list.
I may also re-release the complete trilogy in a "premium" edition, but only my readers can tell me what they would like to see in it.
Thanks, and have a great summer.
k
http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Trilog...
I have not migrated The Infinite Grey on its own yet to Kindle, but it is on the list.
I may also re-release the complete trilogy in a "premium" edition, but only my readers can tell me what they would like to see in it.
Thanks, and have a great summer.
k
May 12, 2013
Black Market Books
I don't mind injuring my potential sales and sabotaging my "lucrative" royalties by plainly stating that any book I have seen published is probably available for free download somewhere on the web.
With the advent of e-readers, and despite some of the possibly half-hearted efforts of ebook content providers, all it takes is just one savvy person to "jailbreak" a Kindle edition book and splash it on P2P sites in whatever format the readers desire.
There are protections that attempt to put a drag on the less-than-legal black market of pirated books, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Agreement (DMCA) which has its pros and cons. Yes, it can be used to de-list content that has been filched without any consent of the publisher and copyright holder, but DMCA's cousin, Digital Rights Management (DRM) prevents us from being able to make backup copies of content we've already purchased.
I am going to use the word "copying" here instead of "stealing" since digital book piracy is not technically stealing. It is COPYING a book file without the express authorization and consent of the publisher, author, or designated copyright holder. The book is intellectual copyright and there are rules that govern intellectual copyright (some of them are downright creepy, like patenting genes, but that's another story).
So, imagine that you have just published a book, and sales are just starting to get brisk. You Google your book to see what others are saying about it, and there pops up pages of search engine entries for your book. Fabulous? You discover that these are not links to reviews, but links for free download. So you contact your publisher and ask if they've implemented some kind of promotional freebie but didn't bother informing you. Your publisher is as perplexed as you are. No, there had been no promotional freebie planned: those are copied works.
When The Infinite Library came out, it was about six months later that it appeared on at least 20 or more P2P sites (in a nastier mood, I like to call these pirate-to-pirate rather than peer-to-peer networks). In an effort to clamp down, I dutifully filled out all the DMCA forms on each of these sites, a process that is fairly time consuming.
But it was like playing whack-a-mole. Just when I got confirmation from one site that they would remove the content and possibly ban the user, another listing went up. The users who post this content have names like natali_be-77774, which are really just toss-away accounts, of which they probably have several and so are not terribly concerned when the account is suspended.
My peeve is not financially motivated. I'm fairly honest with myself to know that I don't rake in mega-profits from the kinds of books I write. That's not the point at all. The point is this: I'm not a popular author like Stephen King or George R. R. Martin, and I don't publish with major houses like HarperCollins or Penguin. When these digital parasites copy my books, I find that pretty low in so far as they are copying from small, indie presses and indie authors. There is nothing noble or heroic about copying from the little guy. There is no plausible justification here of fighting the capitalist dragons and corporate big-shots by making the content free. No, you don't hurt the mega-profit engines by robbing the mom and pop store or plundering the kid's lemonade stand.
I think the saddest part of all of this is that I'd be more than happy to give free copies to anyone who simply asked. But I was not asked. My copyright was violated. When my books start appearing in the thriving digital black market without my consent, and I have to fill out bundles of DMCA forms, I find my patience wearing thin.
Perhaps this is just the new reality and I should just accept it. There is very little any one person can do to stem the tide of pirated books. I can only hope that the people who engage in this practice have their "aha!" moment in realizing that violating the copyright of indies is pretty low on the ethical scale. Again, I don't mind my books being free, but ultimately I would love to be asked first. I don't think that very basic courtesy is asking too much of anyone.
I would not argue against book piracy from a revenue perspective because, really, there is no way I could actually prove that x number of sales would have gone forward if x number of copies were not pirated and downloaded. That is entirely speculative, for it could turn out to be true that my sales may have been the same or less regardless if the book was free to download. I think here of individual users who, for reasons known only to them, will not purchase a book under any circumstances but will choose to download them. So, if said people did not have access to a free download, one cannot assume they would be resigned to just buy the book. The people who do argue about potentially lost sales have to understand that the law cannot prosecute on the basis of "what ifs."
I also would not argue against piracy in general. I think most of us have been "naughty" from time to time. Maybe it was a cool photo for our desktop, maybe a favourite song we remember from an old LP, maybe streaming an episode of South Park. It is easy to think these are harmless, victimless crimes, and many of us are not unique in taking exception for ourselves. Sure, we might believe that getting content free without consent is a bad thing in principle, but in personal practice we might make the odd allowance for ourselves. And not all acts of piracy automatically mean a lack of sale; there are people out there who pirate something, but then choose to show appreciation by purchasing it legitimately. In that case, it is less piracy and more just "borrowing" for a short time before committing.
Now, if my books were being pirated and distributed to poor schoolchildren in Indonesia, then I might have less to quibble about. That might be a noble cause (although being asked first would mean that I'd be a willing collaborator in facilitating such an action). But, it is doubtful that very poor people who can barely get enough to eat or cannot gain access to clean running water are going to own the computers, mobile devices, or reader tablets necessary to read those files. Pirated ebooks favours those who live on this side of the digital divide.
And digital piracy will never really go away. No matter how ironclad and prohibitive the laws may become, there will always be someone who can operate just outside those laws. There will always be someone who can jailbreak a device or set up a shadow network for the sole purposes of trafficking copyrighted files. It would be folly to an extreme to believe we could stamp it out entirely any more than creating stricter laws will somehow magically bring theft and murder rates to zero.
I suppose my thinking on the matter is that book piracy is not something I can stop, and that I should just cherish the honest people who do make legitimate purchases. Possibly, I could go the value-added route to reward honesty by offering to give the reader a free book.
And perhaps, again, once some time elapses, I can beat the pirates at their own game by making the book free. I already stand by my own principle that anyone who wants at least a digital copy of any of my books would certainly get one with my compliments. In this way, the book is already free - all it takes is for someone to ask me, the author. If someone cannot take the time to send an email to request a copy, then I doubt they would really prosper from reading my books in the first place.
With the advent of e-readers, and despite some of the possibly half-hearted efforts of ebook content providers, all it takes is just one savvy person to "jailbreak" a Kindle edition book and splash it on P2P sites in whatever format the readers desire.
There are protections that attempt to put a drag on the less-than-legal black market of pirated books, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Agreement (DMCA) which has its pros and cons. Yes, it can be used to de-list content that has been filched without any consent of the publisher and copyright holder, but DMCA's cousin, Digital Rights Management (DRM) prevents us from being able to make backup copies of content we've already purchased.
I am going to use the word "copying" here instead of "stealing" since digital book piracy is not technically stealing. It is COPYING a book file without the express authorization and consent of the publisher, author, or designated copyright holder. The book is intellectual copyright and there are rules that govern intellectual copyright (some of them are downright creepy, like patenting genes, but that's another story).
So, imagine that you have just published a book, and sales are just starting to get brisk. You Google your book to see what others are saying about it, and there pops up pages of search engine entries for your book. Fabulous? You discover that these are not links to reviews, but links for free download. So you contact your publisher and ask if they've implemented some kind of promotional freebie but didn't bother informing you. Your publisher is as perplexed as you are. No, there had been no promotional freebie planned: those are copied works.
When The Infinite Library came out, it was about six months later that it appeared on at least 20 or more P2P sites (in a nastier mood, I like to call these pirate-to-pirate rather than peer-to-peer networks). In an effort to clamp down, I dutifully filled out all the DMCA forms on each of these sites, a process that is fairly time consuming.
But it was like playing whack-a-mole. Just when I got confirmation from one site that they would remove the content and possibly ban the user, another listing went up. The users who post this content have names like natali_be-77774, which are really just toss-away accounts, of which they probably have several and so are not terribly concerned when the account is suspended.
My peeve is not financially motivated. I'm fairly honest with myself to know that I don't rake in mega-profits from the kinds of books I write. That's not the point at all. The point is this: I'm not a popular author like Stephen King or George R. R. Martin, and I don't publish with major houses like HarperCollins or Penguin. When these digital parasites copy my books, I find that pretty low in so far as they are copying from small, indie presses and indie authors. There is nothing noble or heroic about copying from the little guy. There is no plausible justification here of fighting the capitalist dragons and corporate big-shots by making the content free. No, you don't hurt the mega-profit engines by robbing the mom and pop store or plundering the kid's lemonade stand.
I think the saddest part of all of this is that I'd be more than happy to give free copies to anyone who simply asked. But I was not asked. My copyright was violated. When my books start appearing in the thriving digital black market without my consent, and I have to fill out bundles of DMCA forms, I find my patience wearing thin.
Perhaps this is just the new reality and I should just accept it. There is very little any one person can do to stem the tide of pirated books. I can only hope that the people who engage in this practice have their "aha!" moment in realizing that violating the copyright of indies is pretty low on the ethical scale. Again, I don't mind my books being free, but ultimately I would love to be asked first. I don't think that very basic courtesy is asking too much of anyone.
I would not argue against book piracy from a revenue perspective because, really, there is no way I could actually prove that x number of sales would have gone forward if x number of copies were not pirated and downloaded. That is entirely speculative, for it could turn out to be true that my sales may have been the same or less regardless if the book was free to download. I think here of individual users who, for reasons known only to them, will not purchase a book under any circumstances but will choose to download them. So, if said people did not have access to a free download, one cannot assume they would be resigned to just buy the book. The people who do argue about potentially lost sales have to understand that the law cannot prosecute on the basis of "what ifs."
I also would not argue against piracy in general. I think most of us have been "naughty" from time to time. Maybe it was a cool photo for our desktop, maybe a favourite song we remember from an old LP, maybe streaming an episode of South Park. It is easy to think these are harmless, victimless crimes, and many of us are not unique in taking exception for ourselves. Sure, we might believe that getting content free without consent is a bad thing in principle, but in personal practice we might make the odd allowance for ourselves. And not all acts of piracy automatically mean a lack of sale; there are people out there who pirate something, but then choose to show appreciation by purchasing it legitimately. In that case, it is less piracy and more just "borrowing" for a short time before committing.
Now, if my books were being pirated and distributed to poor schoolchildren in Indonesia, then I might have less to quibble about. That might be a noble cause (although being asked first would mean that I'd be a willing collaborator in facilitating such an action). But, it is doubtful that very poor people who can barely get enough to eat or cannot gain access to clean running water are going to own the computers, mobile devices, or reader tablets necessary to read those files. Pirated ebooks favours those who live on this side of the digital divide.
And digital piracy will never really go away. No matter how ironclad and prohibitive the laws may become, there will always be someone who can operate just outside those laws. There will always be someone who can jailbreak a device or set up a shadow network for the sole purposes of trafficking copyrighted files. It would be folly to an extreme to believe we could stamp it out entirely any more than creating stricter laws will somehow magically bring theft and murder rates to zero.
I suppose my thinking on the matter is that book piracy is not something I can stop, and that I should just cherish the honest people who do make legitimate purchases. Possibly, I could go the value-added route to reward honesty by offering to give the reader a free book.
And perhaps, again, once some time elapses, I can beat the pirates at their own game by making the book free. I already stand by my own principle that anyone who wants at least a digital copy of any of my books would certainly get one with my compliments. In this way, the book is already free - all it takes is for someone to ask me, the author. If someone cannot take the time to send an email to request a copy, then I doubt they would really prosper from reading my books in the first place.
May 5, 2013
The Infinite Grey
Seven years ago today, I had just begun my two month visit to Romania, meeting some incredible people along the way. Back then, The Infinite Library was little more than a short story published on Copious Magazine, and there were no plans to write out a hefty trilogy.
Seven years later, I have submitted the edited typescript for the third volume of the trilogy. It goes live this week, most likely. And it is somewhat difficult for me to entirely dissociate my own personal journey from that of the books I attempted to fashion along the way, a braiding of a plot-stream and narrative arc that tramps along the well-worn trope of "development." As a fan of Borges, there is no definitive line that separates fact from fiction as both seem to emerge out of the same diegetical reservoir, and converge in uncanny moments, one cutting transversally across the other like wild, tangential vectors.
Seven years ago, I was a bit of a devil-may-care PhD student living in a sketchy downtown apartment. Seven years later, I am a married prof living in an edge-of-town home abutting a forest with my cats and my books and my garden. The details are not important to any beyond my small circle, but it is the trilogy that is nested in me, just as much as I am somehow embedded and entwined with the trilogy itself.
Much ado is made of the "author being dead" a la Roland Barthes. And this is true, to a point. As an author - qua role as author - I lived as I wrote the books, and then ceased "to be" once the books were complete. That is when the author "dies" or otherwise reverts to just plain, ordinary self. As I wrote these books, I lived (in) them. This is not to say that I acted out everything the characters did, as if I tried on their lives for a while and then wrote a report. It is not that simplistic. I lived the books in an abstract way, experienced various events in an entirely conceptual sense. I hunkered down behind the eyes of the characters, playing the wire-puller in their fictional neural circuitry, a little like Kleist's marionettes. Now that the books are done, my authorial person is now the dead trace.
What now? - the kind of question that is between me and the horizon of future meaning that only I'm responsible for inscribing. Another trilogy? Maybe, maybe not. Something different? Most likely. The trilogy is the capstone of effort, but also the tombstone of the author function.
Someone asked me what plans I had in marketing the newest book. I replied I had no such plans. I stumble across so many discussions and posts on the "hot tips" for authors to market their books. A lot of it is retread, or otherwise some minor novelty in leveraging social media to lure potential readers/buyers to the book. There's something about taking on such a task that seems to disagree with me. I have no idea how to be my own PR flack, but that is just deficit of knowledge in that area; more importantly, I have no desire to do it. I see my "job" in simply trying to write the best books I possibly can. I just can't mix different purposes, and so I either attempt to write good books, or I attempt to make money from writing. Do I want people to buy my books? Well, sure. Will I gnash my teeth and tear at my beard if sales are weak? No. Will I spread the word to every writers' forum to announce my newest where everyone is doing the same thing? No. Will I try to entice friends and family to write nice things on review sites? No. Will I sign on to do whirlwind book signing tours? Will I sign up to Twitter to make 140 character plugs for my book? Will I set up a Facebook page so that I can get a whole gaggle of passive "likes"? No, no, and no.
I must be in bad faith when it comes to the whole marketing angle. Some people have the stomach or drive for it, but I am not one of them. I have been told that is the primary reason I will never become a "successful" writer. But I suppose it comes down to how we operationalize such terms as "success." Writing a book is not a victory or conquest: it is just an attempt to tell a story in a particular way. I am generally saddened when I see some of my writing colleagues drink the marketing kool-aid, and I can only imagine what it must be like to have that "will-to-market" haunting them most of the day, crouching inside them as they try to write, checking their sales data several times a day, cooking up new plots - not for stories - to drive sales. I couldn't endure that constant pressure.
I'm rambling, and not really addressing the purpose here which is to perform a dilute, half-measure at marketing by saying "the book is done and will be coming out this week." Well, I've done that. There will be no staged book launch, no author party, and perhaps nothing to mark the occasion. I will, however, show fidelity to not making sales my purpose to writing by making the prior two volumes free on Kindle this week. If people don't Kindle (I certainly don't), and if said people would be interested in getting a PDF, just message me and I'd be happy to oblige.
Ok, now that I've performed by due diligence in "marketing," I'm off now to do something far more fun and wholesome. I've got peppers and tomatoes to plant.
Seven years later, I have submitted the edited typescript for the third volume of the trilogy. It goes live this week, most likely. And it is somewhat difficult for me to entirely dissociate my own personal journey from that of the books I attempted to fashion along the way, a braiding of a plot-stream and narrative arc that tramps along the well-worn trope of "development." As a fan of Borges, there is no definitive line that separates fact from fiction as both seem to emerge out of the same diegetical reservoir, and converge in uncanny moments, one cutting transversally across the other like wild, tangential vectors.
Seven years ago, I was a bit of a devil-may-care PhD student living in a sketchy downtown apartment. Seven years later, I am a married prof living in an edge-of-town home abutting a forest with my cats and my books and my garden. The details are not important to any beyond my small circle, but it is the trilogy that is nested in me, just as much as I am somehow embedded and entwined with the trilogy itself.
Much ado is made of the "author being dead" a la Roland Barthes. And this is true, to a point. As an author - qua role as author - I lived as I wrote the books, and then ceased "to be" once the books were complete. That is when the author "dies" or otherwise reverts to just plain, ordinary self. As I wrote these books, I lived (in) them. This is not to say that I acted out everything the characters did, as if I tried on their lives for a while and then wrote a report. It is not that simplistic. I lived the books in an abstract way, experienced various events in an entirely conceptual sense. I hunkered down behind the eyes of the characters, playing the wire-puller in their fictional neural circuitry, a little like Kleist's marionettes. Now that the books are done, my authorial person is now the dead trace.
What now? - the kind of question that is between me and the horizon of future meaning that only I'm responsible for inscribing. Another trilogy? Maybe, maybe not. Something different? Most likely. The trilogy is the capstone of effort, but also the tombstone of the author function.
Someone asked me what plans I had in marketing the newest book. I replied I had no such plans. I stumble across so many discussions and posts on the "hot tips" for authors to market their books. A lot of it is retread, or otherwise some minor novelty in leveraging social media to lure potential readers/buyers to the book. There's something about taking on such a task that seems to disagree with me. I have no idea how to be my own PR flack, but that is just deficit of knowledge in that area; more importantly, I have no desire to do it. I see my "job" in simply trying to write the best books I possibly can. I just can't mix different purposes, and so I either attempt to write good books, or I attempt to make money from writing. Do I want people to buy my books? Well, sure. Will I gnash my teeth and tear at my beard if sales are weak? No. Will I spread the word to every writers' forum to announce my newest where everyone is doing the same thing? No. Will I try to entice friends and family to write nice things on review sites? No. Will I sign on to do whirlwind book signing tours? Will I sign up to Twitter to make 140 character plugs for my book? Will I set up a Facebook page so that I can get a whole gaggle of passive "likes"? No, no, and no.
I must be in bad faith when it comes to the whole marketing angle. Some people have the stomach or drive for it, but I am not one of them. I have been told that is the primary reason I will never become a "successful" writer. But I suppose it comes down to how we operationalize such terms as "success." Writing a book is not a victory or conquest: it is just an attempt to tell a story in a particular way. I am generally saddened when I see some of my writing colleagues drink the marketing kool-aid, and I can only imagine what it must be like to have that "will-to-market" haunting them most of the day, crouching inside them as they try to write, checking their sales data several times a day, cooking up new plots - not for stories - to drive sales. I couldn't endure that constant pressure.
I'm rambling, and not really addressing the purpose here which is to perform a dilute, half-measure at marketing by saying "the book is done and will be coming out this week." Well, I've done that. There will be no staged book launch, no author party, and perhaps nothing to mark the occasion. I will, however, show fidelity to not making sales my purpose to writing by making the prior two volumes free on Kindle this week. If people don't Kindle (I certainly don't), and if said people would be interested in getting a PDF, just message me and I'd be happy to oblige.
Ok, now that I've performed by due diligence in "marketing," I'm off now to do something far more fun and wholesome. I've got peppers and tomatoes to plant.
April 23, 2013
The Art of Cover Art
I'm pleased to report that the tedious, gruelling, but highly necessary line edits and final rounds of content + copy editing for The Infinite Grey was completed a few days ago. But I'm not here to talk about the contents of the book, but its cover.
Those of you who have followed the trilogy so far may or may not have noticed some interesting cover art. These covers were not made with Photoshop by some overworked graphic design donkey commissioned by my publisher, but are supplied by bona fide artists. This is a practice I very much endorse for any indie publishing house, and one that honours the spirit of collaboration and spreading the word on the artistic practices of others. Let me give praise to the artists who have, or will, supply the art for this trilogy:
Vol. 1, The Infinite Library
"The Never-Ending Corridor of Books" (photo detail, installation piece at the Palace of Old Books. Medium: lightbox and mirrors).
Nicolas Grospierre
http://www.grospierre.art.pl/
An artist mainly situated in Poland, Grospierre's work challenges what is meant by space and territory. His photographic work plays with concepts of trompe l'oeil, as well as focusing on now abandoned post-Soviet spaces (see, for example, his photo shoot of an abandoned Soviet waterworks and one of an old bank). The "Bank" series in particular reminds me in part of Louise Nevelson's shelf series, but without the homogeneity of tone juxtaposed against the bric-a-brac of clutter. Instead, Grospierre brings out the depth of spaces alongside the homogeneity of contents with an aesthetic that bends rectilinear form.
Vol. 2. The Infinite Atrocity
(untitled. Medium: photograph altered in the darkroom using some kind of mysterious overlay and exposure techniques that are most likely the artist's secret)
Matina Stamatakis
http://matinaltamatakis.blogspot.ca/
I've known Stamatakis for several years as a collaborator on post-code poetry and sundry digital lit places we used to inhabit. Stamatakis also supplied the cover for my Jonkil Dies (BlazeVox Books, 2010), and when I saw this series of images, I just had to have one of them for the cover. Stamatakis' work is more than some pastiche of Duchamp meets Burroughs cut-up at the junction of surrealism. Her focus is largely indexed on texture and uncanny integrations of form to create composites using various techniques in the dark room I am fairly certain are her trade secrets. Fans of her photographic work may be interested in her book, Sensoria (which I reviewed some while ago in Unlikely Stories).
Vol. 3. The Infinite Grey
(Photo detail of, "Palimpsest." Medium: sculpture, fused type pieces).
Dale Dunning
http://www.daledunning.typepad.com/
Another instance of "when I saw it, I just had to have it." Just a note: the current cover for this volume is only a placeholder until the cover is finalized in press. A lot of what drew me to Dunning's work was his masterful practice of creating sculpture out of found materials, salvaging them in such a way that it is not the Michelangelo-esque "rescuing the form from the raw marble," but more of a repurposing objects to grant them new form and organization. In this way, his "Palimpsest" is aptly named given that the "traces" of the metal type's function do remain in the reformulation of those pieces in the construction of something new. He is perhaps far more Deleuzian than he knows! For a fantastic discussion on palimpsests from a deconstruction standpoint, do read Derrida.
These capsule summaries of the artists who have supplied their art for the covers of the trilogy are woefully too brief and lacking in the thematic details that would better capture their respective practices and aesthetic philosophies. I would encourage those of you reading this blog entry to visit the links to their websites to see for yourself.
Those of you who have followed the trilogy so far may or may not have noticed some interesting cover art. These covers were not made with Photoshop by some overworked graphic design donkey commissioned by my publisher, but are supplied by bona fide artists. This is a practice I very much endorse for any indie publishing house, and one that honours the spirit of collaboration and spreading the word on the artistic practices of others. Let me give praise to the artists who have, or will, supply the art for this trilogy:
Vol. 1, The Infinite Library
"The Never-Ending Corridor of Books" (photo detail, installation piece at the Palace of Old Books. Medium: lightbox and mirrors).
Nicolas Grospierre
http://www.grospierre.art.pl/
An artist mainly situated in Poland, Grospierre's work challenges what is meant by space and territory. His photographic work plays with concepts of trompe l'oeil, as well as focusing on now abandoned post-Soviet spaces (see, for example, his photo shoot of an abandoned Soviet waterworks and one of an old bank). The "Bank" series in particular reminds me in part of Louise Nevelson's shelf series, but without the homogeneity of tone juxtaposed against the bric-a-brac of clutter. Instead, Grospierre brings out the depth of spaces alongside the homogeneity of contents with an aesthetic that bends rectilinear form.
Vol. 2. The Infinite Atrocity
(untitled. Medium: photograph altered in the darkroom using some kind of mysterious overlay and exposure techniques that are most likely the artist's secret)
Matina Stamatakis
http://matinaltamatakis.blogspot.ca/
I've known Stamatakis for several years as a collaborator on post-code poetry and sundry digital lit places we used to inhabit. Stamatakis also supplied the cover for my Jonkil Dies (BlazeVox Books, 2010), and when I saw this series of images, I just had to have one of them for the cover. Stamatakis' work is more than some pastiche of Duchamp meets Burroughs cut-up at the junction of surrealism. Her focus is largely indexed on texture and uncanny integrations of form to create composites using various techniques in the dark room I am fairly certain are her trade secrets. Fans of her photographic work may be interested in her book, Sensoria (which I reviewed some while ago in Unlikely Stories).
Vol. 3. The Infinite Grey
(Photo detail of, "Palimpsest." Medium: sculpture, fused type pieces).
Dale Dunning
http://www.daledunning.typepad.com/
Another instance of "when I saw it, I just had to have it." Just a note: the current cover for this volume is only a placeholder until the cover is finalized in press. A lot of what drew me to Dunning's work was his masterful practice of creating sculpture out of found materials, salvaging them in such a way that it is not the Michelangelo-esque "rescuing the form from the raw marble," but more of a repurposing objects to grant them new form and organization. In this way, his "Palimpsest" is aptly named given that the "traces" of the metal type's function do remain in the reformulation of those pieces in the construction of something new. He is perhaps far more Deleuzian than he knows! For a fantastic discussion on palimpsests from a deconstruction standpoint, do read Derrida.
These capsule summaries of the artists who have supplied their art for the covers of the trilogy are woefully too brief and lacking in the thematic details that would better capture their respective practices and aesthetic philosophies. I would encourage those of you reading this blog entry to visit the links to their websites to see for yourself.
April 12, 2013
On the Trilogy
Three hefty volumes come to their conclusion soon. The author is duty-bound to resist the desire to explain the literary components and connections engineered in this trilogy, preferring to leave the still water of the surface text intact while allowing readers to determine if there are swifter currents below. The danger of discussing what the book means is not only in condescension of the reader, but it places the author in the position of taking on the pedantic airs of the mediocre English literature teacher. I will violate my own principle here just a little.
These books are embodied in the environment of the day, and so a variety of topical sociopolitical issues permeate the porous enclosure of the narrative. This is by no means a literary innovation, and many of the authors I admire (specifically Sinclair Lewis and John Barth) manifest this principle of cross-fertilizing current events with fiction. The desideratum of the trilogy may in fact be populated with issues of importance to myself, including the fate of libraries, the effects of digital technology, the triumph of the id, political gamesmanship, propaganda tactics, alienation, environmental degradation, overconsumption, precarious labor, the lasting effects of neoliberalism, and the lack of research into chemical sensitivities. In this way, the issues by themselves define my political persuasion. I can only hope that I have presented those viewpoints via the dialogue of characters in a non-dogmatic and non-doctrinaire way. These are issues that are of importance to me, and I fully respect that they are not shared by many others.
For me, setting the boundary of a trilogy proves challenging if only because it proves abrupt to bring a project to conclusion given that one is accustomed to a certain momentum that wishes to persist. However, I must now answer the call of other, long-neglected projects. It is an almost unreasonable demand in this age of high speed expectations and demands for brevity for readers to dedicate themselves to nearly a million words distributed over three rather large books. It is for this reason that I expect little to nothing...
It is the egotism of authors to delight in talking about their work. I was no stranger to this practice, and there are readers who equally delight in the process notes and tattle of the author. However, as I have grown older in my practice, I find that talking about my work is not enjoyable or even necessary. Any “wisdom” I may have about the practice of writing will have been said a thousand times before by thousands of others in a thousand different ways. I am not interested in the practice of fetishizing the author as celebrity personality or as some precious and special being imbued with “an important mission.” Such practices of author fetishization are indexed uncomfortably close to marketing, and such acts belong to the distant periphery of the author’s central goal: in attempting to write good books. It is the work that is important, not the author. Authors, on the whole, and if we strip away all self-aggrandizing behavior, are generally unglamorous in life, if not also mundane. The stage actor is interesting when acting; offstage, he or she is a regular person. Writing is a performative act, and ultimately the best words one can get out of an author ought to appear in the work itself – not in interviews. My best words appear in books that I have spent time crafting and developing, not necessarily in offhand remarks where I have not been afforded the time to craft. Unlike acting, writing does not (nor ought not) permit the appearance of the author as if on stage, so that the author is more the hidden force or text’s wire-puller. The name is on the spine, and in the front-matter, and that is the author’s trace. Writing is much closer to architecture than theatre, and so perhaps the author builds books, and the words are the performers within the edifice raised.
Very few people around me take much interest in what I write. Or, if they do, it is regarded as simply something I occupy my time with. There is no excessive adulation or praise, nor do I seek it. In fact, many are those around me who do not know that I have a recent book unless someone else informs them. I like it this way. My work as an author plays very little role in my social interactions. I do not ask friends or family to purchase my books or write favorable reviews. I keep quiet about my writing practice unless directly asked, which rarely happens. The world is a vast welter of other things to talk about, and within my various circles there are more pressing issues than to go on an extended session discussing the contents of my books.
There are plenty of authors in the world who are committed to the social apparatus of writing – joining writers’ forums online, going to writers’ conferences, submitting works with regularity and discipline, crafting their image as an author, making connections and alliances in the literary circles, chasing after awards and grants, attending highbrow literary soirees, and packing their schedules with appearances to read and sign books. It just so happens that this type of author is not me. Does this suggest that I am not in good faith with a literary community? Perhaps. And, perhaps I want to avoid a lot of the acrimonious politics that occur in that industry – I experience my fair share of politics in other aspects of life.
A frequent complaint among those who specialize in experimental literature is having such a small pool of readers. The more belligerent of the self-proclaimed experimentalists denounce the popular tastes of the masses that are indexed on frivolous and banal content, absolutely formulaic and catering to sex and violence without any substance. I largely share their view from a critical theory perspective, but this must be squared against managing one’s expectations. Firstly, if one writes niche fiction, one should not expect to attain coveted bestseller status. It would be as sensible as writing a for-specialists book on quantum physics and bemoaning the fact that only a handful of people will buy it. If one writes literature of more sophisticated integrity which demands a lot out of readers, one ought to be content in making a mark among that very particular readership. To demand fame and fortune – a rarity in writing – is unrealistic, and is largely powered by the vicissitudes of a strong marketing strategy that is selective in what it chooses to popularize. As well, berating readers as a whole for failing to engage with challenging works is terribly unhelpful; if one wants to persuade or entice people to broaden their reading horizons, telling them they are stupid will not achieve the desired outcome. We all have our axes to grind with respect to mass consumer culture and the corporate popularization / engineering of taste, but caustic critics of popular taste have been with us for centuries and there is little else new to add beyond remarks on how new technologies are employed to continue the cultural divide.
To that end of experimental literature, there is a precedent for crafting works that appeal to a wider audience which includes more general and more sophisticated readers. Shakespeare did it. He wrote plays that appealed to the more surface features that a less-literary crowd could enjoy, as well as planting themes and concepts that appealed to an audience that had a different approach to reading. I hope this trilogy has done precisely that. If not, then my aspiration will be to improve. Just because most of popular culture leaves me cold, or preemptively by its choices shuts me out, I only repeat their error by shutting out readers of the popular. However, integrity demands that I do not pander. In fact, that I might demand a great deal of a reader in terms of assuming they catch scholarly references or have a juggernaut of a vocabulary is, in my view, the highest form of flattery I can give a reader: I will simply assume that they are far more knowledgeable and literate than I am, and so not commit that most heinous of authorial sins: condescension.
My very brief take on experimental literature owes its definition to what experiment means in science: an experiment, by definition, is guided by hypotheses, and can succeed or fail. Technically, all books are experimental; that is, it is an attempt that has as much chance of succeeding as it does failing, and if it does fail, do what the scientist does: change some of the controls, try again.
The first book in this trilogy, The Infinite Library, received polarized reviews. Those who loved books as precious objects, libraries, and bookish subjects tended to appreciate my contribution, whereas those whose reading tastes more sided with popular fare, “chicklit”, and formula-based genre stories took a dimmer view of my attempt. This is not a judgement; as the library sciences thinker Ranganathan once said, to each book its readers, to each reader his or her books. I will not quote reviews of the work that are freely available elsewhere, but through those reviews - positive and negative - I learned a great deal about my own book; other readers found touchstones or thematic threads throughout that I may not have noticed, and so it is like I am among the readers, on the outside looking in, since I have ceded control of the book as it is an object floating freely, an object liberated from its author and in the hands of readers.
The second book in this trilogy, The Infinite Atrocity, did not receive much attention, and there is no point in speculating as to why this is the case, and no point in trying to artificially drum up an audience immediately for it. It is what it is, and like the first book, I have also ceded control over it to the readership who will act as its judges.
This brings me to book number three, The Infinite Grey, another big brute of a book that I am currently doing final line edits for to be ready to release it into the textstream.
The future university effectively becomes the hulking grey tombstone of knowledge. By focusing on the microcosm of the university as the setting for a future feudalism, I am admittedly being selective in following one effect of neoliberal ideology (tempered by neoconservative evangelical philosophy united with militarism and nationalism as the new social bond to replace more naturally human arrangements). I am inspired here by a medley of works which include those of Thorstein Veblen, Lewis Mumford, David Harvey, Christopher Lasch, Jean Baudrillard, and a host of other theoretical inputs. Literarily, the inspirational nexus would include John Barth’s Giles, Goat-Boy and Donald Barthelme’s Snow White. These two in particular function as parodies of the reformist notions of postsecondary education taken to maximalist extremes, but in such a way where the parody eerily resembles the current raft of trends in higher education.
There is more to education than the narrow financial arguments of being a potential “economic driver.” There is something to be said about intrinsic value of education – not as a product, but as a process, even if this is to stake an antiquated claim. But intrinsic value is lost when the mysticism of “economy” naturalizes all discourse according to its myopic evaluation of existence. In such gamified environments, deep learning is sacrificed for strategic, instrumental pursuit of grades, and that education becomes akin to the tedious level-grinding of the role playing game genre.
I don’t conceal my own political stance here. I make myself the easy target of right-wing pundits by my insistence that we deemphasize business interests and focus more on community-building. The books in this trilogy, which carry the baggage of ideological concern by arguably taking a speculative leap from an alarmist anti-neoliberal point of view by showing the possible consequences of current trends, are certainly my literary attempt at a warning. Given that socialist has become a dirty word, an epithet to denounce “radicals” and “extremists” (ironic given that neoliberalism is in itself built on uniting the radicalism of market deregulation and evangelicalism), the pundits can tell me to go pound salt. But I have never bought into the argument that freer global markets would magically produce affluence and prosperity for all; in fact, the trend has been in cultivating further disparities and inequalities. More exploited labor. More deregulation of environmental protections. In the game of global capital, there are winners and losers, and those on the losing side are not stuck there – contrary to what pundits say – because of some personal failing. These are systemic failures. The game may in fact be rigged, and like a perverted form of economic Calvinism, some people are just born damned.
Just as a staid, even dogmatic, book will drag the same stale message into view for a reader, there is sometimes something surprising that happens in the margins. It is there that the reader inscribes the different, a flight of interpretation, a disagreement, a lateral association. Just as it is in the marginalia of books, so it is in the margins of a society. Just now, as I type this, I continue to see a more robust push-back against anti-democratic procedures, against rampant and mindless consumerism, a turn towards community engagement, the growing of one’s own organic gardens, a demand for better environmental protections. Not everywhere, of course. And although movements like Occupy seemed to be a rhapsody of confusing or conflicting messages, the spirit of such things has not dampened. It may also be heartening that the very logic of neoliberalism is moving the deregulated and predatory market system steadily towards its own ruin. I can only hope that the signs I see indicate the twilight of such a ruinous system.
These books are embodied in the environment of the day, and so a variety of topical sociopolitical issues permeate the porous enclosure of the narrative. This is by no means a literary innovation, and many of the authors I admire (specifically Sinclair Lewis and John Barth) manifest this principle of cross-fertilizing current events with fiction. The desideratum of the trilogy may in fact be populated with issues of importance to myself, including the fate of libraries, the effects of digital technology, the triumph of the id, political gamesmanship, propaganda tactics, alienation, environmental degradation, overconsumption, precarious labor, the lasting effects of neoliberalism, and the lack of research into chemical sensitivities. In this way, the issues by themselves define my political persuasion. I can only hope that I have presented those viewpoints via the dialogue of characters in a non-dogmatic and non-doctrinaire way. These are issues that are of importance to me, and I fully respect that they are not shared by many others.
For me, setting the boundary of a trilogy proves challenging if only because it proves abrupt to bring a project to conclusion given that one is accustomed to a certain momentum that wishes to persist. However, I must now answer the call of other, long-neglected projects. It is an almost unreasonable demand in this age of high speed expectations and demands for brevity for readers to dedicate themselves to nearly a million words distributed over three rather large books. It is for this reason that I expect little to nothing...
It is the egotism of authors to delight in talking about their work. I was no stranger to this practice, and there are readers who equally delight in the process notes and tattle of the author. However, as I have grown older in my practice, I find that talking about my work is not enjoyable or even necessary. Any “wisdom” I may have about the practice of writing will have been said a thousand times before by thousands of others in a thousand different ways. I am not interested in the practice of fetishizing the author as celebrity personality or as some precious and special being imbued with “an important mission.” Such practices of author fetishization are indexed uncomfortably close to marketing, and such acts belong to the distant periphery of the author’s central goal: in attempting to write good books. It is the work that is important, not the author. Authors, on the whole, and if we strip away all self-aggrandizing behavior, are generally unglamorous in life, if not also mundane. The stage actor is interesting when acting; offstage, he or she is a regular person. Writing is a performative act, and ultimately the best words one can get out of an author ought to appear in the work itself – not in interviews. My best words appear in books that I have spent time crafting and developing, not necessarily in offhand remarks where I have not been afforded the time to craft. Unlike acting, writing does not (nor ought not) permit the appearance of the author as if on stage, so that the author is more the hidden force or text’s wire-puller. The name is on the spine, and in the front-matter, and that is the author’s trace. Writing is much closer to architecture than theatre, and so perhaps the author builds books, and the words are the performers within the edifice raised.
Very few people around me take much interest in what I write. Or, if they do, it is regarded as simply something I occupy my time with. There is no excessive adulation or praise, nor do I seek it. In fact, many are those around me who do not know that I have a recent book unless someone else informs them. I like it this way. My work as an author plays very little role in my social interactions. I do not ask friends or family to purchase my books or write favorable reviews. I keep quiet about my writing practice unless directly asked, which rarely happens. The world is a vast welter of other things to talk about, and within my various circles there are more pressing issues than to go on an extended session discussing the contents of my books.
There are plenty of authors in the world who are committed to the social apparatus of writing – joining writers’ forums online, going to writers’ conferences, submitting works with regularity and discipline, crafting their image as an author, making connections and alliances in the literary circles, chasing after awards and grants, attending highbrow literary soirees, and packing their schedules with appearances to read and sign books. It just so happens that this type of author is not me. Does this suggest that I am not in good faith with a literary community? Perhaps. And, perhaps I want to avoid a lot of the acrimonious politics that occur in that industry – I experience my fair share of politics in other aspects of life.
A frequent complaint among those who specialize in experimental literature is having such a small pool of readers. The more belligerent of the self-proclaimed experimentalists denounce the popular tastes of the masses that are indexed on frivolous and banal content, absolutely formulaic and catering to sex and violence without any substance. I largely share their view from a critical theory perspective, but this must be squared against managing one’s expectations. Firstly, if one writes niche fiction, one should not expect to attain coveted bestseller status. It would be as sensible as writing a for-specialists book on quantum physics and bemoaning the fact that only a handful of people will buy it. If one writes literature of more sophisticated integrity which demands a lot out of readers, one ought to be content in making a mark among that very particular readership. To demand fame and fortune – a rarity in writing – is unrealistic, and is largely powered by the vicissitudes of a strong marketing strategy that is selective in what it chooses to popularize. As well, berating readers as a whole for failing to engage with challenging works is terribly unhelpful; if one wants to persuade or entice people to broaden their reading horizons, telling them they are stupid will not achieve the desired outcome. We all have our axes to grind with respect to mass consumer culture and the corporate popularization / engineering of taste, but caustic critics of popular taste have been with us for centuries and there is little else new to add beyond remarks on how new technologies are employed to continue the cultural divide.
To that end of experimental literature, there is a precedent for crafting works that appeal to a wider audience which includes more general and more sophisticated readers. Shakespeare did it. He wrote plays that appealed to the more surface features that a less-literary crowd could enjoy, as well as planting themes and concepts that appealed to an audience that had a different approach to reading. I hope this trilogy has done precisely that. If not, then my aspiration will be to improve. Just because most of popular culture leaves me cold, or preemptively by its choices shuts me out, I only repeat their error by shutting out readers of the popular. However, integrity demands that I do not pander. In fact, that I might demand a great deal of a reader in terms of assuming they catch scholarly references or have a juggernaut of a vocabulary is, in my view, the highest form of flattery I can give a reader: I will simply assume that they are far more knowledgeable and literate than I am, and so not commit that most heinous of authorial sins: condescension.
My very brief take on experimental literature owes its definition to what experiment means in science: an experiment, by definition, is guided by hypotheses, and can succeed or fail. Technically, all books are experimental; that is, it is an attempt that has as much chance of succeeding as it does failing, and if it does fail, do what the scientist does: change some of the controls, try again.
The first book in this trilogy, The Infinite Library, received polarized reviews. Those who loved books as precious objects, libraries, and bookish subjects tended to appreciate my contribution, whereas those whose reading tastes more sided with popular fare, “chicklit”, and formula-based genre stories took a dimmer view of my attempt. This is not a judgement; as the library sciences thinker Ranganathan once said, to each book its readers, to each reader his or her books. I will not quote reviews of the work that are freely available elsewhere, but through those reviews - positive and negative - I learned a great deal about my own book; other readers found touchstones or thematic threads throughout that I may not have noticed, and so it is like I am among the readers, on the outside looking in, since I have ceded control of the book as it is an object floating freely, an object liberated from its author and in the hands of readers.
The second book in this trilogy, The Infinite Atrocity, did not receive much attention, and there is no point in speculating as to why this is the case, and no point in trying to artificially drum up an audience immediately for it. It is what it is, and like the first book, I have also ceded control over it to the readership who will act as its judges.
This brings me to book number three, The Infinite Grey, another big brute of a book that I am currently doing final line edits for to be ready to release it into the textstream.
The future university effectively becomes the hulking grey tombstone of knowledge. By focusing on the microcosm of the university as the setting for a future feudalism, I am admittedly being selective in following one effect of neoliberal ideology (tempered by neoconservative evangelical philosophy united with militarism and nationalism as the new social bond to replace more naturally human arrangements). I am inspired here by a medley of works which include those of Thorstein Veblen, Lewis Mumford, David Harvey, Christopher Lasch, Jean Baudrillard, and a host of other theoretical inputs. Literarily, the inspirational nexus would include John Barth’s Giles, Goat-Boy and Donald Barthelme’s Snow White. These two in particular function as parodies of the reformist notions of postsecondary education taken to maximalist extremes, but in such a way where the parody eerily resembles the current raft of trends in higher education.
There is more to education than the narrow financial arguments of being a potential “economic driver.” There is something to be said about intrinsic value of education – not as a product, but as a process, even if this is to stake an antiquated claim. But intrinsic value is lost when the mysticism of “economy” naturalizes all discourse according to its myopic evaluation of existence. In such gamified environments, deep learning is sacrificed for strategic, instrumental pursuit of grades, and that education becomes akin to the tedious level-grinding of the role playing game genre.
I don’t conceal my own political stance here. I make myself the easy target of right-wing pundits by my insistence that we deemphasize business interests and focus more on community-building. The books in this trilogy, which carry the baggage of ideological concern by arguably taking a speculative leap from an alarmist anti-neoliberal point of view by showing the possible consequences of current trends, are certainly my literary attempt at a warning. Given that socialist has become a dirty word, an epithet to denounce “radicals” and “extremists” (ironic given that neoliberalism is in itself built on uniting the radicalism of market deregulation and evangelicalism), the pundits can tell me to go pound salt. But I have never bought into the argument that freer global markets would magically produce affluence and prosperity for all; in fact, the trend has been in cultivating further disparities and inequalities. More exploited labor. More deregulation of environmental protections. In the game of global capital, there are winners and losers, and those on the losing side are not stuck there – contrary to what pundits say – because of some personal failing. These are systemic failures. The game may in fact be rigged, and like a perverted form of economic Calvinism, some people are just born damned.
Just as a staid, even dogmatic, book will drag the same stale message into view for a reader, there is sometimes something surprising that happens in the margins. It is there that the reader inscribes the different, a flight of interpretation, a disagreement, a lateral association. Just as it is in the marginalia of books, so it is in the margins of a society. Just now, as I type this, I continue to see a more robust push-back against anti-democratic procedures, against rampant and mindless consumerism, a turn towards community engagement, the growing of one’s own organic gardens, a demand for better environmental protections. Not everywhere, of course. And although movements like Occupy seemed to be a rhapsody of confusing or conflicting messages, the spirit of such things has not dampened. It may also be heartening that the very logic of neoliberalism is moving the deregulated and predatory market system steadily towards its own ruin. I can only hope that the signs I see indicate the twilight of such a ruinous system.
April 5, 2013
Ranking Practices
It is heavy grading grind season for me as the semester ends when I receive stacks of student essays that I must soldier through and tattoo with a mark. Martial metaphors of grading aside, I freely admit that I have always been uncomfortable with numerical evaluative instruments which I find fairly rigid and filled with unspoken assumptions on what the numbers mean. What is the difference between a 68 or a 73? Transmuting qualitative or subjective impressions into quantitative and quasi-objective numerical grades is a strange kind of alchemy, or an exercise in hopeless translation between two non-corresponding series.
If I had my way, I would just give textual feedback on papers and turf the numbers. So, what does any of this have to do with books, seeing as this is a Goodreads blog and not "professor kvetching about grading practices"?
Do you see stars? Here on Goodreads, elsewhere on Shelfari, LibraryThing, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, etc., etc., there has been the obsessive convention of assigning some rigid numerically based standard in terms of prompting readers to make a decision to ballot on books as being 1-star up to 5-stars. Goodreads does its part to try to define what those stars mean, but it is still an arbitrary designation without operational definition.
What are those stars? A flashed up Likert scale, really. What purpose do they serve? Gauging popularity for some, value for others. Could we do without these scales? Absolutely.
The use of such Likert scales is a form of influence-leading toward creating a persuasive experience. So, for example, a majority of potential readers may see a book that has 1,000 people having given the book 5-stars and be more likely to be persuaded that the book has intrinsically high value (we leave to one side sock puppetry, etc.). In this scheme, the rich might get richer, which is to say that a book may rise in popularity on account of having more positive rankings, thus garnering more attention, and thus gaining more rankings. The cycle perpetuates itself until some saturation point is reached.
Perhaps there is a hidden laziness in relying too heavily on rankings. There may in fact be a case to be made that it is an example of selective exposure: we as readers might be inclined to read only the 1-star or 5-star reviews as though by reading at the absolute extremes of praise and censure that this will suffice to assist us in making a decision as to whether or not we wish to pick up the book. These rankings may be of lesser value to readers, and of more value to the sites upon which they appear, for there has yet to be an algorithm that can process pure subjectivity, and so must make use of numerical markers to sift and sort data.
The illusion of an objective scale is dispelled when we apply just a bit of pressure to the way in which we decide to assign a certain number of stars. Is my 3-star ranking of a book the same as yours? Doubtful. The constraint here is fairly obvious: I am to filter all my subjective impressions of a book's value, according to a whole bunch of criteria that may include all sorts of separate things, into a single, numerical "grade." Whenever we "grade" books, we are effectively doing so by means of comparing to what we consider the highest standard, whatever that is. It is entirely possible that I can give a 3-star rank on a book that I thought was very good, but did not compare to another book written in the same genre which was much better in my view. I could compare books according to how they stand in relation to the great canonical works of fiction, or I can grade the book by taking into account its very unique standing, measuring it on its own merits. Does the cover or layout push the rank up or down? How about the general concept of the book, even if the concept was not fully developed or delivered? What about length? There are several means by which a book can be evaluated just as there are several interpretations one can have of it that it really is a tug-of-war from both ends of the 1-star and the 5-star.
To absolutely distort and corrupt John Lennon, Imagine there's no rankings. Imagine all the Goodreaders just supplying a text review and ignoring the ranking system. Imagine sites such as these where emphasis is shifted to talking about rather than grading books. Indeed, you may say that I'm a dreamer, but I hope I'm not the only one!
Just as assigning single numerical grades on student papers is so dissatisfying and fails to capture all the little nuances that deserve mention, I am starting to question even my own book-ranking habits. I'm tempted to go through my Goodreads library and just remove all those stars that, ultimately, seem to be arbitrary mechanisms of hierarchizing numerically what cannot be numerically expressed. Is that not what "rank" means, a kind of hierarchical organization like "ranks" in the army?
As we click and tap our way through a largely controlling digital environment, we are constantly faced with prompts to "like", "rank", and "rate" whatever images are thrown at us. We have become a digital society afflicted with "ranking fever," and perhaps some of us place too much trust or emphasis on trying to evaluate everything using arbitrary measures. It has the look and feel of mechanizing opinion. There are some books that one might feel it is not appropriate to "rank." You might not have enjoyed your experience in reading Joyce's Ulysses, but does your low rank actually reflect how you might appreciate its contribution to literary experiment even if you did not personally enjoy the book? And what of those who simply rank a book without qualifying their opinion by means of supplying a review? Such ranks appear somewhat empty of meaning, especially if ranking is already somewhat arbitrary to begin with.
The only person I can prescribe practice for would be me. And although I am not permitted in the university context to refuse assigning numerical grades to student effort, I can from this point on refuse to give stars, pips, stripes, thumbs, moons, clovers, diamonds, etc., on any content whether I like the content or not. Stars are generally immaterial, but textual expression does (for me) have more substance.
If I had my way, I would just give textual feedback on papers and turf the numbers. So, what does any of this have to do with books, seeing as this is a Goodreads blog and not "professor kvetching about grading practices"?
Do you see stars? Here on Goodreads, elsewhere on Shelfari, LibraryThing, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, etc., etc., there has been the obsessive convention of assigning some rigid numerically based standard in terms of prompting readers to make a decision to ballot on books as being 1-star up to 5-stars. Goodreads does its part to try to define what those stars mean, but it is still an arbitrary designation without operational definition.
What are those stars? A flashed up Likert scale, really. What purpose do they serve? Gauging popularity for some, value for others. Could we do without these scales? Absolutely.
The use of such Likert scales is a form of influence-leading toward creating a persuasive experience. So, for example, a majority of potential readers may see a book that has 1,000 people having given the book 5-stars and be more likely to be persuaded that the book has intrinsically high value (we leave to one side sock puppetry, etc.). In this scheme, the rich might get richer, which is to say that a book may rise in popularity on account of having more positive rankings, thus garnering more attention, and thus gaining more rankings. The cycle perpetuates itself until some saturation point is reached.
Perhaps there is a hidden laziness in relying too heavily on rankings. There may in fact be a case to be made that it is an example of selective exposure: we as readers might be inclined to read only the 1-star or 5-star reviews as though by reading at the absolute extremes of praise and censure that this will suffice to assist us in making a decision as to whether or not we wish to pick up the book. These rankings may be of lesser value to readers, and of more value to the sites upon which they appear, for there has yet to be an algorithm that can process pure subjectivity, and so must make use of numerical markers to sift and sort data.
The illusion of an objective scale is dispelled when we apply just a bit of pressure to the way in which we decide to assign a certain number of stars. Is my 3-star ranking of a book the same as yours? Doubtful. The constraint here is fairly obvious: I am to filter all my subjective impressions of a book's value, according to a whole bunch of criteria that may include all sorts of separate things, into a single, numerical "grade." Whenever we "grade" books, we are effectively doing so by means of comparing to what we consider the highest standard, whatever that is. It is entirely possible that I can give a 3-star rank on a book that I thought was very good, but did not compare to another book written in the same genre which was much better in my view. I could compare books according to how they stand in relation to the great canonical works of fiction, or I can grade the book by taking into account its very unique standing, measuring it on its own merits. Does the cover or layout push the rank up or down? How about the general concept of the book, even if the concept was not fully developed or delivered? What about length? There are several means by which a book can be evaluated just as there are several interpretations one can have of it that it really is a tug-of-war from both ends of the 1-star and the 5-star.
To absolutely distort and corrupt John Lennon, Imagine there's no rankings. Imagine all the Goodreaders just supplying a text review and ignoring the ranking system. Imagine sites such as these where emphasis is shifted to talking about rather than grading books. Indeed, you may say that I'm a dreamer, but I hope I'm not the only one!
Just as assigning single numerical grades on student papers is so dissatisfying and fails to capture all the little nuances that deserve mention, I am starting to question even my own book-ranking habits. I'm tempted to go through my Goodreads library and just remove all those stars that, ultimately, seem to be arbitrary mechanisms of hierarchizing numerically what cannot be numerically expressed. Is that not what "rank" means, a kind of hierarchical organization like "ranks" in the army?
As we click and tap our way through a largely controlling digital environment, we are constantly faced with prompts to "like", "rank", and "rate" whatever images are thrown at us. We have become a digital society afflicted with "ranking fever," and perhaps some of us place too much trust or emphasis on trying to evaluate everything using arbitrary measures. It has the look and feel of mechanizing opinion. There are some books that one might feel it is not appropriate to "rank." You might not have enjoyed your experience in reading Joyce's Ulysses, but does your low rank actually reflect how you might appreciate its contribution to literary experiment even if you did not personally enjoy the book? And what of those who simply rank a book without qualifying their opinion by means of supplying a review? Such ranks appear somewhat empty of meaning, especially if ranking is already somewhat arbitrary to begin with.
The only person I can prescribe practice for would be me. And although I am not permitted in the university context to refuse assigning numerical grades to student effort, I can from this point on refuse to give stars, pips, stripes, thumbs, moons, clovers, diamonds, etc., on any content whether I like the content or not. Stars are generally immaterial, but textual expression does (for me) have more substance.
March 29, 2013
Goodreads + Amazon = ?
It is somewhat auspicious that my last week's Goodreads blog entry was focused on Amazon, and that news has come in recently that Amazon has plans to acquire Goodreads. Given that the details of the acquisition have not been fully disclosed beyond a few vague statements, Goodreads users/readers might be curious as to what might be in the pipeline with respect to possible changes that would arise on account of this acquisition.
In one of my recent posts here where I attempt to defend the purpose of this site as being for readers, I may have neglected to emphasize that in many ways Goodreads functions as a kind of "walled garden" for readers to discover and discuss books. One of my worries about this acquisition is that it may start to change the character of Goodreads in a way that narrows the gap between appreciation and the commercialization of the site.
Amazon is no slouch when it comes to acquisitions and partnerships. Now considered the global leader in book sales above competitors like Barnes & Noble, Amazon has steadily increased its market share of more than just books as it now battles for dominance against Google and Apple. Amazon's success story is partially due to its diversification: Amazon carries more than just books, and one can find all manner of products for sale that have absolutely nothing to do with reading. In addition, Amazon's marketplace empowers individuals to sell their own wares, and Amazon's Kindle exclusively matches their specific hardware and software to ebooks. Already, Amazon has a partnership with Shelfari, another readers' site.
These games of capitalist empire aside, what will become of Goodreads once the acquisition is a fait accompli? Will Goodreads simply become another sales channel for Amazon? One of the founders of Goodreads, Otis Chandler, has claimed that the acquisition will improve efficiency for readers, but does not qualify what is meant by efficiency which can be understood in a variety of contexts. Does Chandler mean efficiency in terms of the buying and selling of books? I am unclear how this new deal will improve the READING of books. I question if Goodreads will have much autonomy left after Amazon folds it into its juggernaut machine.
Donning my prediction swami headgear for a moment, allow me to peer into the crystal ball and speculate what it is that I see in the smoky glass.
1. Expect a more integrated and robust mechanism for readers to purchase books from Amazon prominently displayed as a highly visible button on any book page.
2. Do not be surprised if Amazon insists that the search function for acquiring the book de-lists competitor sites like B&N.
3. Reviews of books posted on Amazon might make their appearance on Goodreads' book pages.
4. Goodreads users might be able to add their credit card details on Goodreads for the purpose of buying from Amazon without having to navigate away from the Goodreads site.
5. To "seal the deal," Goodreads users and Amazon customers may be merged into "superusers," and so signing into Goodreads might also simultaneously sign one into Amazon.
6. Will it go both ways? Imagine, if you will, all the Goodreads readers' reviews suddenly populating the Amazon point-of-purchase (PoP) pages for each book.
7. As an extended metric, Amazon might insist that the sales rank appear on Goodreads for each book.
8. If Amazon is feeling a bit tyrannical, any listed books on Goodreads that do not appear on Amazon may be removed from Goodreads, and this would also include ebooks published exclusively with other services like Kobo, Smashwords, and iBooks.
9. The adoption of a "verified purchase" mechanism here on Goodreads in an effort to maximize the appearance of credibility of reviews.
10. Banner ads, links, and so forth to other Amazon products prominently placed on Goodreads.
Don't get me wrong: I thrill at the knowledge that readers buy books, and especially that they take the time to read them. However, I do have my reservations about making the discovery and discussion of books subordinate to the commercialization of books. To my mind, this would possibly privilege authors over readers. However, it is not as though Goodreads does not already have installed mechanisms for sales of a sort through its services: authors and publishers can pay for advertising on the site. Goodreads *does* have to make a little bit of money to sustain its operations given that it is not running a charity.
If I had Otis Chandler right here, I might question what "efficiency" means, and how the existing Goodreads site architecture is somehow deficient in this regard. Efficiency of search and retrieval? Efficiency for linking or merging data? Efficiency in terms of server storage and speed? My followup question to Chandler would be this: "how much autonomy will Goodreads maintain once the ink is dry on this friendly takeover?"
Crusty neo-marxist critic that I can be, I'm still very much suspicious about any action that seeks to monetize reading, if not shifting the balance of power away from readers to advertisers. I'm also suspicious of the continuing monopolization tactics of Amazon to either edge out or absorb competitors, if not also barging into any successful readers' site with its bags of money.
Just as Haruki Murakami tells us (and that is also similar to the epigraph of my book, The Infinite Library: "cave ab homine unius libri"), those who only read one book are going to think in one way, and so this may map analogously to this situation where "those who access books through just one venue are restricted to what that venue deems valuable or important."
Until the deal is done, we simply will not know what changes may help or hinder Goodreads. As readers, none are better disposed to the art of reading between the lines. And that is what I think a lot of us will be doing.
In one of my recent posts here where I attempt to defend the purpose of this site as being for readers, I may have neglected to emphasize that in many ways Goodreads functions as a kind of "walled garden" for readers to discover and discuss books. One of my worries about this acquisition is that it may start to change the character of Goodreads in a way that narrows the gap between appreciation and the commercialization of the site.
Amazon is no slouch when it comes to acquisitions and partnerships. Now considered the global leader in book sales above competitors like Barnes & Noble, Amazon has steadily increased its market share of more than just books as it now battles for dominance against Google and Apple. Amazon's success story is partially due to its diversification: Amazon carries more than just books, and one can find all manner of products for sale that have absolutely nothing to do with reading. In addition, Amazon's marketplace empowers individuals to sell their own wares, and Amazon's Kindle exclusively matches their specific hardware and software to ebooks. Already, Amazon has a partnership with Shelfari, another readers' site.
These games of capitalist empire aside, what will become of Goodreads once the acquisition is a fait accompli? Will Goodreads simply become another sales channel for Amazon? One of the founders of Goodreads, Otis Chandler, has claimed that the acquisition will improve efficiency for readers, but does not qualify what is meant by efficiency which can be understood in a variety of contexts. Does Chandler mean efficiency in terms of the buying and selling of books? I am unclear how this new deal will improve the READING of books. I question if Goodreads will have much autonomy left after Amazon folds it into its juggernaut machine.
Donning my prediction swami headgear for a moment, allow me to peer into the crystal ball and speculate what it is that I see in the smoky glass.
1. Expect a more integrated and robust mechanism for readers to purchase books from Amazon prominently displayed as a highly visible button on any book page.
2. Do not be surprised if Amazon insists that the search function for acquiring the book de-lists competitor sites like B&N.
3. Reviews of books posted on Amazon might make their appearance on Goodreads' book pages.
4. Goodreads users might be able to add their credit card details on Goodreads for the purpose of buying from Amazon without having to navigate away from the Goodreads site.
5. To "seal the deal," Goodreads users and Amazon customers may be merged into "superusers," and so signing into Goodreads might also simultaneously sign one into Amazon.
6. Will it go both ways? Imagine, if you will, all the Goodreads readers' reviews suddenly populating the Amazon point-of-purchase (PoP) pages for each book.
7. As an extended metric, Amazon might insist that the sales rank appear on Goodreads for each book.
8. If Amazon is feeling a bit tyrannical, any listed books on Goodreads that do not appear on Amazon may be removed from Goodreads, and this would also include ebooks published exclusively with other services like Kobo, Smashwords, and iBooks.
9. The adoption of a "verified purchase" mechanism here on Goodreads in an effort to maximize the appearance of credibility of reviews.
10. Banner ads, links, and so forth to other Amazon products prominently placed on Goodreads.
Don't get me wrong: I thrill at the knowledge that readers buy books, and especially that they take the time to read them. However, I do have my reservations about making the discovery and discussion of books subordinate to the commercialization of books. To my mind, this would possibly privilege authors over readers. However, it is not as though Goodreads does not already have installed mechanisms for sales of a sort through its services: authors and publishers can pay for advertising on the site. Goodreads *does* have to make a little bit of money to sustain its operations given that it is not running a charity.
If I had Otis Chandler right here, I might question what "efficiency" means, and how the existing Goodreads site architecture is somehow deficient in this regard. Efficiency of search and retrieval? Efficiency for linking or merging data? Efficiency in terms of server storage and speed? My followup question to Chandler would be this: "how much autonomy will Goodreads maintain once the ink is dry on this friendly takeover?"
Crusty neo-marxist critic that I can be, I'm still very much suspicious about any action that seeks to monetize reading, if not shifting the balance of power away from readers to advertisers. I'm also suspicious of the continuing monopolization tactics of Amazon to either edge out or absorb competitors, if not also barging into any successful readers' site with its bags of money.
Just as Haruki Murakami tells us (and that is also similar to the epigraph of my book, The Infinite Library: "cave ab homine unius libri"), those who only read one book are going to think in one way, and so this may map analogously to this situation where "those who access books through just one venue are restricted to what that venue deems valuable or important."
Until the deal is done, we simply will not know what changes may help or hinder Goodreads. As readers, none are better disposed to the art of reading between the lines. And that is what I think a lot of us will be doing.
