Week 12: Writers and Publishing

What does it mean to publish in the web 2.0 world?

Some key terms we will discuss during this  session:

• digital storytelling
• affordances
• new media platforms
• audience
• open source
• print on demand
• self-publishing
• e-readers

Open Publishing

When thinking of “open publishing” the first things to probably springs to mind are people like Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow and Tom Reynolds who have all persuaded their publisher to allow them to release electronic versions of their books at the same time as the physical dead-tree version. (More on those three later.) In all cases, this seems to have been to the benefit of the book, but to give your book away at the same time as you put it up for sale is a bit of a leap of faith. Why would you take that risk? It’s far from being a proven economic or promotional strategy.

I think Chris Saad gets to the heart of this very quickly, when he asks, Am I being heard? He says there is:

“A fundamental human need that I think podcasting, blogging and all forms of social/citizen journalism speaks to… the need to be heard. People just want to feel connected and understood.”

~http://www.touchstonelive.com/blog/2006/04/am-i-being-heard.html

At a very basic level, Larry, Cory and Tom share in common with me, you, and pretty much everyone else a desire to be heard, to be read, to have the things that we’ve laboured over appreciated.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail, also confesses that he just wants to be heard (although he doesn’t seem to have published an ebook version of his book):

Anderson, however, tangles up a few threads in his piece, the first is a discussion of equivalence: ebooks are assumed not to be equivalent to books; digital audiobooks are assumed to be equivalent to CDs.

Reading an ebook isn’t currently a great experience (the iPad however might be the game-changer). Specialised e-book readers are expensive, and most people don’t like reading on-screen, so the ebook is seen as not equivalent for a paper book, i.e. people are more likely to go and buy the paper version if they like the ebook. Thus it is beneficial to release a free ebook so that you can reach as wide an audience as possible, as you stand a good chance of converting ebook downloads to paper book sales.

Conversely, it doesn’t really matter whether you have an unlawfully downloaded copy of an audiobook, or the real thing, whether bought as a download or as a CD, because either way you are probably going to listen to it on your iPod, computer or other MP3 playing device. The assumption is that giving away ebooks encourages sales of paper books, but giving away audiobooks, or allowing unauthorised downloads, will cannibalise the sales of the legitimate ebook. This is exactly the same logic as used by the RIAA and BPI for suing file-sharers, and the rest of the music industry for attempting to slap DRM onto everything in sight. It’s a very compelling and sensible looking argument, but it’s based on unproven assumptions behind the motivations of the downloader/buyer.

Right now, there are more questions than answers. The publishing industry is being pushed into experimentation in a way that the music and movie industries are not (one example is  the Million Penguins wiki-novel). Authors are forcing publishers to do things that might seem counterintuitive, and we’re slowly starting to figure out, through trial and error, what all this means. Still lots to find out, though, about this open publishing idea.

Update Nov. 2010: Lawrence Lessig responds to the “outrage” about his talk on a panel at Vimeo's Festival+Awards. The title of the panel was "Know your digital rights." See Lessig’s response in the 17^th Nov. 2010 Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/the-imbecile-moron-respon_b_764725.html

Q1. Participatory Media

Not being well versed in theories around the roles of the audience, I spent some time reading up on it and found that Katz, Blulmer, Gurevitch’s (1973) Uses & Gratifications theory does well to address the relationship between audience and text in new media technologies (NMT). www.mediaknowall.com summaries Blulmer and Katz’s work to four audience/text purposes:

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

On a personal note, I can easily find myself using NMT within these purposes. I look NMTs like twitter as a diversion when killing time, to see what’s up, Google to help direct my search for support when creating class lectures or support for seed questions. Upon occasion, I see something I “like” in my traverses.  Also get the sense that people use NMT such as Facebook a more “one-stop-shop” for all four purposes - diversion, personal relationships, identity, and surveillance. Youtube is excellent for diversion but less so for personal relationships. Wikipedia in its entirety would present an opportunity for all four as well – diversion when bored (read, create, edit, or comment on pages), develop relationship to those creators behind the scenes, to new users as the comes in to add content, create an identity within the culture, draw out new things from the viewing of diverse pages.

How have new media technologies resulted in a more participatory media culture? Simply put, NMT provides the opportunity by its ability to provide access to the masses and for contribution from the masses. Gone are the days of only specialist publishing (the scribes, the telegraph employees, the book publishers) transformed by NMT to a world where Epictetus', Greek Stoic philosopher, words can be actualized by and for the masses "If you wish to be a writer, write". 

With the prolific nature of Web 2.0, I would say that it has increase the number of eyeballs and the number of contributions but not necessarily the quality of the contributions.  What I mean here is that much of what exists in NMT makes me think of Metcalfe’s Law is a redirect: that retweet of someone’s work, an article with a link to a great video, a new study, a new interview, a like or dislike thumbs up/down, a comment in response to presented ideas…

However, I think this is all relative - I am thinking of Pareto’s “80/20” law…

-       Of the audience, 80% are the are readers, 20% are participatory

-       Of the 20% “participatory”, 80% are “reposters”, 20% are content generators

-       Of the 20% content generators, 80% are reworking already established ideas (ie newspaper articles, Wikipedia content adders) 20% are creating  orginal content.  

In a nutshell, I think NMT is further reaching - but this is relative across the level of participation...  I propose it remains in a constant 80/20 balance.

References

Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). USES AND GRATIFICATIONS RESEARCH. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509.

No author. (n.d). Key Concepts in Media Studies. In http://www.mediaknowall.com. Retrieved February 9, 2012, from http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience.