http://www.katepullinger.com/ en hello@katepullinger.com Copyright 2012 2012-01-25T13:42:36+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/a-million-penguins-five-years-on/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/a-million-penguins-five-years-on/#When:13:42:36Z This post was written for the TRG blog, at www.transliteracy.com.  Well, without dipping into too many cliches about the passage of time, it is nearly five years since the DMU/Penguin wiki-novel experiment, ‘A Million Penguins’, took place.  The project ran from 1 Feb 2007 for five weeks, and all of us who were involved with it remember it as a time of chaos and great entertainment.  Yesterday I was down at Goldsmith’s College, in London, where I was the external examiner for a PhD candidate, Amy Spencer; her PhD was on the Networked Book.  She built her thesis around three case studies of networked books that are also works of fiction, ‘Paddlesworth Press’ , ‘The Golden Notebook Project’, and ‘A Million Penguins’. It’s a solid and interesting piece of research.  Reading Amy’s thesis promoted me to look at the current status of ‘A Million Penguins’ online.  We heard early last year that Penguin was going to give up hosting the project, and we didn’t have the time, or the resources, to figure out how to archive the massive wiki, with its many many pages, ourselves.  I regret this, though it is hard to see how we could have saved it in time.  So the original site no longer exists. However, a good portion of ‘A Million Penguins’ was archived by the amazing people at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, and you can find these pages by searching for it via the Wayback Machine.  During Amy’s viva we talked a bit about the phenomenon of the networked book itself.  Amy pointed out that during the noughties there were a significant number of projects that called themselves ‘networked books’, both fiction and non-fiction, my own on-going project, ‘Flight Paths: a Networked Novel’ among them of course.  Amy wondered if the networked book concept has had its day.  I think that we are now seeing trade publishing approaching publishing fiction in a manner that owes much to the networked book concept, although of course, all in the service of marketing.  Social media marketing campaigns are now being built around books; these campaigns include bespoke web content, games, extra content, author interviews, etc.  These campaigns aim to foster reader engagement around a newly published book, whereas the networked books of the noughties all sought to foster creative engagement with text and other forms of media.  The networked book emphasis was on collaboration and contributing, whereas, of necessity, a trade publishing networked social media campaign is about sales.  Transliteracy 2012-01-25T13:42:36+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/our-stuff-and-our-things-1/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/our-stuff-and-our-things-1/#When:18:13:36Z I’ve been working on my new novel, which is called ‘Our Stuff and Our Things’, for about a year now - had a good chunk of writing time in May/June/July last year, and am embarking on a new chunk of time now.  The story takes the premise developed in my digital fiction, ‘Flight Paths’ and develops it further.  It tells the stories of the two characters in ‘Flight Paths’, Yacub and Harriet, and it tells the stories of a number of other characters as well.  At the risk of over-complicating this description, if not the project itself, the novel will have three chapters that will be published in bound book and ebook format, and one stand-alone chapter, a multimedia digital fiction I’m working on with Andy Campbell of Dreaming Methods, called ‘Duel’.  The weird thing is that I am finding the writing process fun.  Really a lot of fun.  I have no idea why this time around it is fun.  Maybe it’s because ‘The Mistress of Nothing’ was such an epic research job, and while ‘Our Stuff and Our Things’ does require some research, it’s nothing compared to MoN, where I even attempted to learn Arabic (six months of 1-1 lessons:  I know four words).  The writing process - and this peculiar experience of ‘having fun while writing’ - reminds me a little bit of when I wrote my novel ‘Weird Sister’.  That was the only other novel I’ve ever written where I knew pretty much where to start, where to go next, and how to end, before I started writing.  Hmm.  Maybe there’s a lesson there.  Or maybe not. So, doubtless now that I’ve written this blogpost, it will all go horribly wrong.  But I just wanted to put it on record - writing can be fun.  There, I said it.  Our Stuff and Our Things 2012-01-13T18:13:36+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/mcgill-drop-out-gets-phd-for-real/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/mcgill-drop-out-gets-phd-for-real/#When:15:12:45Z Back in July 2011 I underwent the Viva exam for my PhD by Published Works.  I passed, with minor amendments, which in the real world means I passed, but they wanted me to make a few changes to the essay, and to show those changes to the internal examiner within six months.  The changes weren’t vast, but they involved re-focussing the essay into three case studies built around three of my published works (The Mistress of Nothing, http://www.inanimatealice.com and http://www.flightpaths.net) and getting rid of some of the more ranty bits where I sounded off about trade publishing vs digital publishing, copyright, etc.  So, I spent time over the autumn re-drafting the essay, posting it off to the university between Christmas and New Year, and have just had word that the internal examiner is happy!  I’m happy she’s happy, and as for all of you, well, now you really will have to call me DOCTOR PULLINGER!!  I’m available for most surgical procedures (fiction only).  HOORAY!! 2012-01-09T15:12:45+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/two-thousand-and-twelve-or-is-it-twenty-twelve/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/two-thousand-and-twelve-or-is-it-twenty-twelve/#When:09:10:58Z A new year.  This week I’ve found the idea of a whole new year rather exhausting.  My family and I went into deep hibernation after Christmas - a full week of doing pretty much nothing at all, blissfully - and I’ve found the whole emerging-blinking thing rather hard.  2011 was a good year; I was still riding the GG wave for the first half of the year (that was a big wave, and it lasted a long time), and the second half of the year washed away swiftly.  What’s with these similes?  See - I’m not really awake.  But now we’re in 2012.  I’ve got a few goals.  I’m going to finish my new novel.  I’m going to work with Andy Campbell on our digital fiction Duel which we’ll launch in November at the ELMCIP conference and exhibition.  I’m not going to travel as much.  I’m hoping my PhD amendments will be passed by the internal examiner so that at long last I can lord it over everyone by making them call me Doctor.  I’m going to figure out how to get my backlist published as ebooks.  The three grant applications I’m involved with will all be successful and then I’ll have work coming out of my ears.  The various Inanimate Alice projects I’m involved with will come to fruition.  From next Monday I’ll be teaching a weekly class as part of the Guardian/UEA masterclass series.  It’s a six month course called ‘How to Tell a Story’.  I’ve got 12 students for this, and I’m looking forward to getting started. Mentoring 2012-01-06T09:10:58+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/writing-in-the-digital-age-cortes-island-september-2012/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/writing-in-the-digital-age-cortes-island-september-2012/#When:15:52:14Z It might seem like a long way off, but next September I’ll be teaching at Hollyhock on Cortes Island - a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, one of the Northern Gulf Islands.  I’ve never been to Cortes, but I spent my teenage years on Vancouver Island, and we used to visit the more southern gulf islands regularly.  When I was a kid Hollyhock used to be a place called Cold Mountain Institute, where my friends’ parents used to go to find themselves.  But that’s another story… Writing in the Digital Age, 28 Sept - 3 Oct 2012. Mentoring 2011-12-20T15:52:14+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/the-future-of-publishing-again/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/the-future-of-publishing-again/#When:09:57:15Z There’s been a flurry of future of publishing conferences of late, none of which I’ve attended, unless you count following tweets which, in some instances, is just as good, perhaps even better, than actually attending.  I’ve missed out on the socialising and networking, however, which is at least half the point of attending such things.  Yesterday saw a conference in Bristol, put on by Media Futures and Plymouth University, where Alastair Horne, of Cambridge University Press - otherwise known as @pressfuturist - launched his report, ‘The Future of Publishing:  A Report on Innovation and the Future of the Book’.   It’s recommended reading, very up-to-date, a succinct and comprehensive look at publishing today, with a keen eye on what needs to happen for publishers to survive.  It features a few quotes from, ahem, me, and lots of other quotes from plenty of people with insider views on the industry.  For me, one of the most interesting points Alastair makes is the digital skills gap within the publishing industry, and how they face a rather stark and expensive choice between training current staff and outsourcing digital skills.  The digital skills gap in the industry is enormous, but it runs throughout, from editorial, agents, through to many writers as well.  I feel as though I’m forever trying to interest publishers in my digital projects, though the truth is I probably gave up on this last year after a meeting with my editor at Simon & Schuster in NY, a very senior, very savvy, publisher with many years experience, who looked completely blank when I started to talk about my new digital fiction project, before informing me that S&S has an entire floor devoted to ‘that stuff’.  This is not meant as a criticism of this editor, who has since been further promoted within the firm and I’m sure has quite enough to do without having to completely reskill.  But it depressed me, and made me think, yet again, that the divide between digital innovation in the realm of fiction, and traditional publishing, is as vast as ever. Alastair includes within the report a quote from me where I managed to make a point about, or get a plug in for, the vast community of electronic literature, digital fiction, and epoetry practitioners who have been innovating away around form and content for many years now, on the other side of that digital divide.  So that’s good.  Future of Publishing 2011-12-09T09:57:15+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/to-self-publish-own-backlist-as-e-books-to-not-to-self-publishe-own-ba/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/to-self-publish-own-backlist-as-e-books-to-not-to-self-publishe-own-ba/#When:09:33:26Z For ages now I’ve followed the debate about the level of royalties publishers offer writers when it comes to ebooks.  About every six months I found myself getting VERY AGITATED about it all, usually when I come across an article that does the math, crunches the numbers, and shows, exactly, precisely, and in great detail what a LOUSY deal a 25% net royalty is for writers.  The last time this happened was when I came across a blog post from the Author’s Guild in the US, ‘E-Book Royalty Math:  The House Always Wins’.   It happened again this morning when I came across this lengthy piece by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, ‘The Business Rusch: How Traditional Publishers are Making Money’.  A couple of weeks ago I received my first royalty statement from my US publisher; this was the first statement I’d received where I could see a volume of ebook sales set against those of hardcover sales (in the period covered, 25% of units sold were ebooks).  The book, The Mistress of Nothing, sold fairly well (for me!) in hardcover and got up into the top of the escalating royalty rate for hardcovers, 15%.  A hardcover copy of my novel at a 15% royalty gives me $3.31 per copy, whereas the ebook at the decent sounding, but actually lousy, royalty of 25% net, gives me $1.92 per copy.  There we have it.  That is the math.  These figures don’t take into consideration the fact that the ebook might have reached readers who would never buy a hardcover, indeed, might have reached readers who no longer frequent bookshops and only read in digital formats.  But even so, it was interesting to see the figures laid out plainly.  For several years now, publishers have been banging on about how the move to digital costs them money, how there are many extra steps added to the workload when it comes to publishing ebooks alongside bound books.  But publishers are rarely transparent about these extra costs.  S&S’s statement, quoted in Rusch’s article, “Strong growth in the sales of more profitable digital content was offset by lower book sales” is revealing:  more profitable digital content tells writers all we need to know about actual production costs when it comes to ebooks.  Looks like it’s time to get agitated, again.  Future of Publishing 2011-11-23T09:33:26+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/digital-stories-workshop-a-sea-change/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/digital-stories-workshop-a-sea-change/#When:11:00:13Z On Saturday 5 November, I ran a digital stories workshop at the Free Word Centre in London, for Spread the Word.  A really interesting group of people showed up for it, and we spent the day thinking about using technology to find new ways to tell stories, combining photographs and text, generating ideas and questions.  It was an enjoyable day, but for me it felt quite significant in that I thought the level of discussion had moved up a peg or two from workshops of this kind I’ve run in the past.  This group of people was ready to talk, ready to collaborate, ready to think about what it really means to put text on a screen, what the possibilities are for combining text with other media.  I did not discuss publishing, digital publishing, and/or the digitization of books and, these topics did not emerge during the day.  Instead, the focus was firmly on thinking about new ways to tell stories, and how the participants could use technology to tell stories in their creative and working lives as writers, journalists, and editors.  We collaborated as a group on a googlemap story - you can find it on the Digital Work page of this website.  I showed a selection of digital stories to get us thinking and talking - those links are over on the Resources page of this website.  One of the participants, Alexa Radcliffe-Hart, wrote a great blog post describing the day on her blog, Services to Literature.  Alexa is currently immersed in NaNoWriMo, so best of luck to her with that!  Future of Publishing 2011-11-08T11:00:13+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/a-curious-dream-published-today/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/a-curious-dream-published-today/#When:06:55:23Z My new book, A Curious Dream:  Collected Works is published today in Canada.  Hooray!  Slightly odd, in that I haven’t seen a copy of it yet - should do in the next few days.  Also, I don’t know if the book will be published outside Canada yet - it’s only just gone to my publisher here in the UK for them to consider.  For those outside of Canada who are interested, try ordering it online from Indigo Books.  2011-10-25T06:55:23+00:00 http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/writers-union-of-canada-a-writers-bill-of-rights-for-the-digital-age/ http://www.katepullinger.com/blog/comments/writers-union-of-canada-a-writers-bill-of-rights-for-the-digital-age/#When:12:46:04Z I saw with interest last week that the Writers’ Union of Canada (@twuc), of which I am not a member (I’m a member of the Society of Authors here in the UK), has published on its blog ‘A Writers’ Bill of Rights for the Digital Age’.  Here is what they propose: To Respect the Rights of the Creators of Literary Works in Canada: 1.  Copyright legislation shall ensure the protection of intellectual property and appropriate compensation for rightsholders. 2.  Exceptions to copyright shall be minimized. 3. The publisher shall split the net proceeds of ebook sales equally with the author. 4.  The author shall retain all electronic rights not specifically granted to the publisher or producer and shall have approval of any modifications made to the work. 5.  The publisher shall not exercise or sublicense ebook publishing rights without the express authorization of the author. 6.  When a book is out of print in print form, continuing sales in electronic form shall not prevent a rights reversion to the author. 7.  For ebooks, the publisher in its contract shall replace the traditional “out of print” clause that triggers a rights reversion with a sales volume clause (e.g., less than a specified quantity of ebooks sold in a specified number of royalty periods) and/or a finite term of license (e.g., five years). 8.  When rights revert, the publisher shall provide the author with the digital file of the book. 9.  The Public Lending Right Commission shall provide author payments for electronic books and allot additional monies to this end. 10. Libraries shall acquire digital copies of works in their collections only from rightsholders or their licensing agencies. 11. Ebook retailers shall require the rightsholder’s permission for any free preview or download of an electronic work, and the rightsholder shall specify the maximum amount to be made available. 12. Agents, publishers, aggregators, retailers, and libraries shall ensure that works in digital form will be well protected and will not be shared, traded, or sold outside the boundaries authorized by the contract. I think this is an excellent list of rights and it covers many complex issues succinctly.  There are a few things that seem to me redolent of wishful thinking:  ‘3. The publisher shall spit the net proceeds of ebook sales equally with the author.’  This can happen, and indeed I have had this happen with one of my books, but that publisher was unusually transparent about the costs of producing the book, as well as the cut the retailer would be taking, etc.  6 and 7 are both excellent, but ‘8. When rights revert, the publisher shall provide the author with the digital file of the book’ also seems to me to be… optimistic, not the least because if a publisher has invested in design, layout, etc for an ebook, the question over who owns that digital file is a little murky - obviously the writer owns the text itself, but do they also own the file that the publisher has paid to create?  ‘10. Libraries shall acquire digital copies of works in their collections only from rightsholder or their licensing agencies.’  Paired with 9 and PLR, this should work.  But there’s a larger question about libraries and digital files:  a library system only needs one copy of a digital file, if that file can be accessed across their entire digital network.  Publisher, libraries, and writers still seem to be pretending that a digital file is the same thing as a single copy of a book.  I think this is an area that would benefit from creative thinking.  I love the idea of a bill of rights for the digital age, and its great to see TWUC taking a well-aimed stab at it.  Future of Publishing 2011-10-10T12:46:04+00:00