Chris Joseph and I are currently in discussion with award-winnng educational publishers Rising Stars over a big new multimodal story project.  We are hoping to get the green light for this soon.  Rising Stars approach publishing in a radically different way than what I’m accustomed to; they do extensive market testing prior to commissioning all their projects.  They travel the country talking to teachers and giving seminars and presentations; they take stands at the important industry fairs; and they produce glossy brochures that outline the projects in detail.  They green light a project when they can make a seriously educated guess about how the project will sell to schools.  With our project, ‘Lifelines’, they’ve been going through this process over the past three months - so we are almost there, but not quite.

Chris and I produced a little promotional demo for them to show people; it’s up on their website now.  You can take a look at it here.

Interesting discussion, ‘Myopia:  A Tale of Two Companies for 2009’, on thedigitalist.net, Michael Bhaskar and co’s blog at Pan MacMillan.

Just to add to the mix, writers need to be innovating, or at least thinking about innovating, too. Very few of the Creative Writing MA programmes up and down the land pay any attention at all to this stuff; this is probably because, like everything, these courses are market-driven and most aspiring writers aspire to write books. This may change as the born-digital generation comes of age. Of course, not all writers pass through the MA programmes, and there are plenty of writers out there who are at home in the digital environment. But it would be good to see already established writers coming up with ideas that, in turn, push their publishers to innovate.

There are some aspects of academic publishing I find totally baffling.  First off, they don’t seem to pay anyone for anything, secondly, they demand you give up your copyright for whatever you write for them, and thirdly, the books they produce are insanely expensive.

For example, I contributed an article to the fabulously titled Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies.  The article in question was co-authored by a small research group I’m part of, transliteracy.com.  We weren’t paid for the article, and I scratched out the bit in my contract where they asked me to give up my copyright forever and a day.  The book, which will come out next month, costs $265 US Dollars.  $265!!!  Clearly only university libraries will be able to buy it.  In the world of academic publishing, this is common practice.  What’s this about?!  What does this mean?  Where does this kind of publishing fit in with the Future of Publishing?  More importantly, where’s my free copy?

Just before Christmas I submitted a proposal to Turbulence.org;  they are commissiong five writers to contribute chapters to ‘Networked:  a (networked_book) about (networked_art)’.  Here’s my proposal:

‘Fiction and that 2.0 thing: what the network means to storytelling’

The concept of the networked book of non-fiction is not new and there is a long history of new media fiction works that include user-generated content.  But there are few fiction projects that from the earliest, research phase attempt to harness participatory media and audience generated content in the way that ‘Flight Paths: a networked novel’ is currently, and ‘A Million Penguins’, the Penguin/DMU wiki-novel, which Kate Pullinger led in collaboration with her MA students and Penguin UK, did in 2007. With that in mind, Pullinger would relish the opportunity to write a chapter for ‘networked’ that draws upon her considerable experience in this field.

Kate Pullinger is one of the only well established print novelists in the UK who is also involved with creating born-digital works of literature. She is closely involved with debates and discussions around issues to do with the future of the book, as well as writing and the internet. She helped set up the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, the first degree of its kind, at De Montfort University in Leicester, where she is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media (a half-time post). At DMU she facilitated a collaboration between Penguin UK and a team of MA students to manage ‘A Million Penguins’, the Penguin/DMU wiki-novel; the wiki opened for contributions for five weeks in Feb-March 2007 and had over 1500 contributors and 80,000 readers. The success of this project, and the tremendous volume of debate it engendered, showed that participatory media is of huge importance to the future of both writing and reading.

Pullinger’s work on the multi-award winning ‘Inanimate Alice’, an on-going digital fiction in episodes, co-created with digital artist and writer Chris Joseph, has demonstrated that there is a desire for good quality interactive online story-telling among readers and educators. With ‘Inanimate Alice’, and the pedagogical community that is growing up alongside it, Pullinger has demonstrated her ability to reach large audiences across the world, covering a broad range of age and interest groups. ‘Inanimate Alice’ shows there is a deep hunger for involving stories, meaningful narratives, and content online that moves away from the promotion of consumer goods.

Pullinger’s other on-going fiction project, the Arts Council England funded ‘Flight Paths: a networked novel’, also co-created with Chris Joseph, attempts to explore the potential for writing, collaboration, reading and viewing online. ‘Flight Paths’ builds upon Pullinger’s established track record; while the world of traditional book publishing has been slow to respond to the opportunities afforded by the internet, ‘Flight Paths’ is a serious literary endeavour that seizes upon the possibilities for participation and inclusion that the network can provide.

Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph began working on ‘Flight Paths: a networked novel’ in November 2007, collecting and creating stories, fragments, ideas, RSS feeds, news items, videos, photographs, sound files, and memories through www.flightpaths.net. By opening up the research and creative process to this net-native participatory media project from the outset, they have invited, received, and curated a range of reader-generated contributions, while continuing to create content for the project themselves. ‘Flight Paths’ resides in and on the network; it has no true life away from the network and is as far removed from the traditional print novel as fully-featured instant messaging is from the fax machine.

However, Pullinger also continues to write books; her new book, ‘The Mistress of Nothing’, a historical novel set in Egypt in 1864, is coming out in the UK in July 09.

Pullinger has yet to have an opportunity to step back from her experience of these projects in order to reflect upon the act of writing fiction in a networked context. The commission to write a chapter for ‘networked’ would enable her to do that, within a net-native, transdisciplinary framework of peer-review and collaboration. She would examine her own experience as a writer who has made the transition from writing for print to writing online across the network while continuing to write for print; she would look at issues around copyright and curation that arise from participatory projects; she would look at what it means to create a project about refugees, immigration and asylum in the context of crowdsourcing and mash-up; and she would look at what the network can bring to the traditional art of prose fiction.

I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat.  I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track.  I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky.  And I see him.  It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at.  He is falling from the sky.  A dark mass, growing larger quickly.  I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can’t move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth.  I have no idea how long it takes €“ a few seconds, an entire lifetime €“ but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until€¦

He crashes into the roof of my car.

From ‘Flight Paths: a networked novel’

I finished my novel, again!  This time, I think it really is finished - I sent it off to my agents and publishers, so let’s hope they agree with me.  At Serpent’s Tail they’ve started to work on the cover - I’ve tried to upload the image here but wordpress won’t let me for the time being. I will have one more opportunity to read it, and make changes, when I get the proofs sometime this spring, but the book is pretty much done and dusted now.  I started working on it in 1995, which is 14 years ago now.  Getting it right, or, at least, getting it to work as a readable text, has taken me… some time.  The fact that it took me so long to write isn’t a virtue, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing either - for the book itself, of course, not my bank balance.  I lost all objectivity and sense of proportion over it years ago; I alternate between thinking it’s sad that someone could spend so long on something that’s so crap, and thinking that it’s a work of genius that will win prizes and sell mountains of copies.

So the next phase with this book, ‘The Mistress of Nothing’, involves a lot of waiting.  Waiting for the cover, waiting for the proofs, waiting to hear what my publishers want me to do to help publicise it, trying to come up with publicity ideas myself, waiting to find out if I’ll be giving readings from it… Publication dates are July in the UK, October in Canada; haven’t made any other territorial sales yet, so we’ll see. Publishing a book is such a weird anti-climatic but nail-biting thing to do - so much time and hope invested in those pages.  I’m very glad I have such a huge juicy pile other stuff on my plate, especially the on-going digital projects which are, in a fundamental way, so much more immediately rewarding in terms of reader-writer interaction, so much less loaded with literary expectation. It still surprises me to find that most aspiring writers focus entirely on the book and don’t look toward the digital or the electronic in any meaningful way.  Our literary book culture is horribly complex and, in many ways, debased now.  But many many people - and I meet them on writing courses all over the country, in many countries in fact - still feel that having a book published represents a solid, unassailable achievement.

Still, I was cheered up yesterday by reading in the paper Clay Shirkey’s simple maxim for the future of publishing - print on demand, with one ‘browsing copy’ of a book available in the bookshop, for those among us who still like to browse an actual shelf.  Bring it on, soon please.

Just back from Tunis where I spent a couple of days working as part of the Medi-Cafe group for the British Council.  We had a productive time, mixing discussions about the art and craft of writing with discussions about the Maghreb, in particular, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria.  As always, the Tunisians were great hosts - we spent our working sessions in a palace on the sea in Carthage.  Seriously. A palace on the sea in Carthage.  I sat by this window for a while during one session - I could hear the sea outside and the sun shone on my legs.  Sun!  In November!  Why do I live in northern Europe?  Why did that seem like a good idea at the time?

An issue that arose during some of our discussions was this:  the Tunisian government has taken to banning websites, including You Tube and the Daily Motion, two of the most important sites world-wide for sharing videos. One of my students was telling me that she can’t access most of the videos on ‘Flight Paths’ and we wondered why… but of course many of those videos are hosted on You Tube and linked to from there into the Netvibes Universe that hosts ‘Flight Paths’.  Chris and I will need to rethink the strategy of keeping videos on You Tube.

Banned sites has been a bit of a feature of my teaching of late, as on the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media we’ve discovered that our students in Oman and Ethiopia can’t access Skype - banned by the gov’ts who have done deals with phone companies to prevent access to free telephony.  We use Skype a lot in our teaching, but will find alternatives now.  Also, Oman bans googlegroups. Banning You Tube seems particularly draconian.  But that’s the Tunisian gov’t for you.  Maybe being allowed to live in northern Europe isn’t such a bad thing after all…

Despite our reputations as innovators in the world of creative writing and new media, my colleague at De Montfort University, Sue Thomas, and I sent the following e-mail out to our students and colleagues on the MA in Creative Writing and New Media earlier today.

We are very sorry indeed to have to tell you that the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media will not be taking any new students and will close once this year’s intake have finished their studies in 2010. The MA is taught by a highly-experienced team with visiting lecturers drawn from some of the best new media writers and artists around the world, but we have been told that the degree is losing money and in the current economic climate De Montfort University cannot afford to subsidise it, so the Faculty of Humanities has taken the decision to close it. Today we’ll be announcing the situation more widely but we wanted to tell you first.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll work to make sure that each of you is fully informed about your personal route through the degree. Full Time and Second Year students will progress through as normal. It will take us a little more time to decide how to proceed with the First Year programme - please bear in mind that we did not know about the decision to close the programme until late yesterday afternoon so it will take us a little while to digest. But do rest assured that we will make sure everyone has a very good experience right to the end.

We have both put a great deal of effort into devising and teaching this degree, and have broken much new ground both in online teaching methods and in the development of new media itself. We’re proud of working with all of you €“ each one of you is a high-level creative innovator and we are hugely enjoying our time together. We’d like to thank you for your hard work and commitment.

If you have any questions about the financial or administrative implications of the course closure, please contact the Graduate Office. Other questions should be directed to myself or to Kate.

Incidentally, if you have friends who were thinking of applying for next year, do tell them that there will still be opportunities to study with us via an MA by Independent Study or via a PhD, and we hope that you yourselves will consider a PhD with us once you have graduated from this degree. There is still a great deal of new ground to be broken in this area, and we plan to continue that work.

Very warm wishes.

Kate and Sue

I have no desire to become a publisher, not even a self-publisher, though of course I might be driven to it one day, either because no one will publish me anymore (hasn’t happened yet, fingers crossed) or because I figure out a way to do it while retaining some kind of foothold in the market.  Though I am very very weary of the whole ‘future of publishing/future of books/end of books/end of reading as we know it’ discussion, it still annoys me to hear publishers complaining about the cost of converting their business to the digital.  I understand that the costs of creating fully digital content accessible across multiple platforms is substantial, but the truth is that all digital formats, when delivered electronically, dramatically cut the costs of publishing, once you take warehouses and shipping out of the equation.

So why are ebooks so ridiculously expensive?

In the past year I’ve been to a couple of events to discuss the future of publishing at large mainstream UK publishers and each time I look around at the gorgeous, high-tech, central London, HUGE buildings we are in and I think, oh, oh yes, this is what they call ‘overheads’.

Surely someone is about to start up a light-weight, streamlined new type of publisher in their kitchen, with a brand new economic model:  offer books in as many digital formats as feasible, including print-on-demand, broker deals with the retailers who are pushing ereaders and print-on-demand technology, offer writers a risk/profit share in the takings, undercut all the mainstream publishers on the price of ebooks - and bingo, bob’s your uncle.  I know, I know, it isn’t easy - but why not try it?  When is a publisher going to stand up
and suggest that charging the same price for an ebook as a print book, and in many instances, MORE, is just plain highway robbery?  Readers and writers revolt!

Chris Meade from if:Book London and I will be teaching a week-long course on Writing and New Media at an Arvon centre next week.  Our guest will be my collaborator Chris Joseph. We are hoping to have decent connectivity while there, but if not, we’ll find ways to recreate the internet at Arvon, albeit on a smaller scale than the real thing!  My connectivity problems here in my new office are solved, but in the bodgiest way possible - a dongle booster wrapped in plastic hanging outside the window, with the hub placed in the most inconvenient place possible (with the exception of under my pillow, I guess) inside the house.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting to Lumb Bank - it is a most wonderful place, and even if it pours all week we will have a good time.