I’m a sucker for practice. I hear some people complain about practicing like it’s some kind of time waster. Hey, if you want to improve your skill at something it should require work, shouldn’t it?

A couple days ago I shared the finger perils of not enough guitar practice and have referred to this blog numerous times as writing practice, so it should be no surprise that I’m also into typing practice.

TypeRacer joins the chorus of websites that lets you practice your typing skills. If you’re a busy person who needs more time but still love to write, just think what increasing your typing speed could do?

With TypeRacer you can compete against others to see who is the fastest keyboard masher of the pack. The results of my first time playing are pictured above. Third place for a little over 30 words per minute. My current typing speed is around 45-55 wpm.

How fast is your typing these days? And do you practice?

Chris Webb Executive Editor, Wiley Publishing and Wrox asked a couple intriguing questions this morning:

Should book publishers be involved in social media, or just concentrate on publishing books?

More intriguing because of where he asked the question: Twitter. Now don’t sigh, some decent questions and conversations do appear there from time to time. Being among his group of 280 friends/followers prompted me to write: “@chriswebb aren’t you doing that here and now? Maybe you should be telling us why you should be engaged in social media? Not asking “if.”

Chris repilied:

@TDavid here @chriswebb is just me - Chris Webb, Editor. I’m thinking of ways to get my huge 200 year-old company more involved gobally.

And then his follow-up response to his own question (emphasis mine):

Thanks for the responses. Let me try asking it slightly differently. How should book publishers be engaged in social media?

I try to avoid marketing buzzwords, so I’ll forgive Chris for using the slippery term “social media.” People love to buy, but don’t like to be sold. If only every salesperson would understand that, they’d move a lot more product.

Let’s peel back the onion and look at what I think Chris really wants to know: how can book publishers stay relevant? If Chris doesn’t want to know this answer, his “200 year-old company” probably does. Book publishers want to sell more books, period. Authors want to have a publisher that helps promote the book and becomes a partner of sorts. Readers want books which scratch an itch (entertainment) or solve a need (how-to, reference, self-help, etc.)

In this day where anybody can publish a book on Lulu and other services veteran publishers need to focus on their weaknesses and accentuate their strengths. Here are some ideas how book publishers can stay relevant:

1. More interactive, wired and wireless editors. Get them involved like Chris is doing. The fact that he has his own blog (ckwebb.com) and is working Twitter shows he is at least trying to be plugged in. For the venerable editors who stubbornly refuse to get connected? Encourage them to focus more on the details of the book process and get more web-savvy and friendly editors to be the conduit to the web. A good publishing house needs highly skilled editors, and the longer somebody does something they will have skills that newer less experienced editors don’t have, so don’t try to push for a younger, more trendy crowd of editors. Instead, try to analyze and focus how your talent pool is used and add where necessary.

Now what could editors like Chris do to help show the company the value of being more connected? What books are currently being edited? Where is the inside juice on books with authors? How about podcasts by each editor with the author during the publishing process?

2. Promote and reward reader interaction. Look at what Hollywood does with movies. We’ve been hearing about Iron Man for ages. Books need a similar promotional path that uses the web and current technologies. O’Reilly had a good idea with Rough Cuts but they charged instead of discounted people for getting involved. Big mistake. You want promotions that reward not punish interaction and effort from others.

3. Start opening up the publishing process as early as possible, share early pieces of early drafts and have some open dialog. Have countdown widgets (cross OS and especially new devices like Chumby) made for the book launch date or key intervals in a project. Allow those interested to have input and interaction during the process of publishing the book and give them something that they can’t receive by simply buying the book once published. Go reality book publishing style. That means some of the projects will fail. I remember a message from Chris that one of the books they were working on got canceled. Stories are there for publishers brave enough to share them.

4. Sell ebooks in open format. If ebooks are to succeed it will be because they are open and easy to share as physical books. Treating customers like thieves has never been a successful business strategy, just ask the RIAA. Instead, publishers should spend their energy and promotion on providing as many different ways for people to read the books and in formats that they like.

The signpost ahead: courage this way
There is a real danger that the music publishers are facing now because they didn’t realize what music fans wanted soon enough. Book readers have their own set of desires and needs. Fulfill them.

I would offer one final piece of advice to book publishers: don’t be afraid to experiment and fail. Traditional book publishers tend to be extremely conservative and some or maybe even all the ideas I mentioned above might sound radical. How will you ever know if something works if you don’t try?

I’ve waited to weigh in on the writer’s strike mainly because I hoped it would be settled right away, that both parties would reach an acceptable deal and that it would be a minor entertainment speed bump. It’s dragging into week four now, the holidays are looming and TV shows already shot from completed scripts are running out. If something good is going to happen, the next couple weeks of negotiations are critical.

Readers already know I’m pro-writer and if they don’t, they’ll learn quickly from past posts like Another Sweatshop Blog Emerges. Those who have been writing in the blog format for any length of time and consistency fully realize it’s work. And for any kind of legal work, I strongly support fair, reasonable pay.

Writers, by and large, are not paid fairly. Sure, there are exceptions and please spare naming them in the comments. Stephen King is more than fairly compensated. Dean Koontz makes good money. Danielle Steele isn’t suffering. Once you break through like these writers have, and huge kudos to them for doing so, being compensated fairly for each project is no longer an issue.

To better understand the disequity the star on the silver screen (think Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston) making millions for what essentially is a few months work versus a writer making significantly less who spent at a minimum the same amount of time and probably much more. Actors aren’t brain surgeons and writers aren’t the also largely underpaid nurses. Once you factor in disparity in residual income from creative works and the current dispute: web income, one can better comprehend why writers are striking.

Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity and other fine works writes eloquently:

It’s always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should… the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple.

History of writer strikes
Mark Evanier has a good piece detailing the history of Writers Guild of America (WGA):

It’s always been like this, right down to the producers’ rhetoric and the suggestions that they can live well without us. That’s what they were saying back in 1933 when ten top crafters of movie scripts agreed to organize. Immediately and predictably, the studios resisted … In 1951, the Guild began to represent the writers of that newfangled thing called television … The strike of 1960 - which lasted 151 days, making it the longest strike in Hollywood until the Writers Guild later bettered its own record - was the one that secured a pension plan as well as residual payments when a movie was run on television … It wasn’t until a threatened strike in ‘77 that we began receiving [TV residuals] in perpetuity … In 1981, there was a three-month WGA strike to establish compensation in the then-new markets of “pay TV” and home video … The strike of [1988] year lasted 22 weeks - one day longer than the strike of ‘60. [In 2007] the burgeoning import of Internet delivery and other new technologies meant that we had to take a stand. There are too many dollars at stake for us not to establish our place at the table.

I’m hoping this gets settled much sooner than the 151 day strike of 1960. When it comes to episodic television, even though we haven’t had TV in our home for over 500 days, we eventually watch TV as it trickles down to DVD format and/or appears (legally) on the web. This situation could suck worse for those who pay to have cable or satellite and need to endure a steady diet of unscripted TV and game shows.

To play devil’s advocate, this could have more people making the move like our family: canceling TV altogether. As big a fan of internet video as I am, the general population isn’t ready for crappy, pixelated web video to replace episodic television.

When will the strike end?
A deal will get done. I think it most likely happens in the next couple weeks before Christmas. If not, then this could drag on like 1960 because the sense of urgency and compassion for writers will begin to deteriorate when the holidays pass. Not from me, I’m with the writers all the way. Give them a fair, reasonable deal.

Which side of the strike are you on?

Update 11/19/07 11:23am: You can now check out / buy the Kindle at Amazon (affiliate). There are 96 reviews and so far the Kindle is netting 2.5 out of 5 starts. Not stellar.

Here comes another attempt to challenge print books. This one from the internet’s (world’s?) largest bookseller.

Newsweek has an article spanning seven pages on Amazon’s new e-Book reader gadget called Kindle. Unless it’s Tuesday 11/20/07 Monday 11/19/2007, don’t expect to find it anywhere on the Amazon website yet, but the article goes into some depth about what Kindle will do. It also manages to stay away from providing some additional, important details.

Rafat Ali of Paid Content seems miffed over honoring a Kindle embargo that Newsweek seemed to have broken (with permission?) and outlines key features.

- price: $399
- weighs 10.3 ounces, about the size of a book with a 6″ screen and doesn’t get hot, according to Bezos
- e-books will cost $2-$10 with 88,000 at launch and the Kindle can hold 200 books
- comes with EVDO-style always-on network functionality (a service called Whispernet) and can function independent of the PC. You can shop directly from the device for new books. Pricing is not mentioned for Whispernet. Is it free?
- provides 30 hours of reading time and two hours to fully charge
- can also subscribe to some newspapers, magazines and “select” blogs at $0.99 - $1.99 a month
- can follow links on blogs, perform Wikipedia and Google searches which suggests there will be some type of handicapped (?) browser built-in (Opera?)

Gizmodo has a picture of Kindle which looks like a white, thin version of See and Spell or a wafer-thin fax machine. Some are already calling it ugly, without benefit of holding it in hand, which caused the writer of Newsweek piece, Steven Levy to write that it’s not “beastly.”

Scoble has a post that starts with “I’m held by NDA until tomorrow” and then he goes onto talk about how Bill Gates wanted to do something like this badly with the Tablet PC and then adds:

All I’ll say until tomorrow is you gotta try this device. It’s not perfect, but for long-form reading it is a wonderful device. I am going to buy one of my own.

Rob Bushway wonders if anybody is going to try out the Kindle. I’m somewhat interested in the device, although I don’t like the price point or the fact that it’s yet another eBook DRM scheme. Haven’t they learned from the DRM in music that people don’t like DRM?

I asked the person in our family who reads the most, my wife, what she thought of Kindle? She said she wouldn’t use it. Why not? She likes books that she can hold. Perhaps she’d change her mind once she actually saw one?

Too many unanswered questions.

Today various publications are reporting Marvel comics online at marvel.com for $9.99/month or $59.95 a year with some freebies. Only problem? Marvel servers are not protected by their own superheroes.

Funny seeing Spider-man on a cell phone. Who does Spidey call for server help? The Geek Squad? Incredible Tech Support? Wonder Admin?

To help sell the experience to an audience unaccustomed to paying for content, Marvel will offer a free sampler of 250 titles. Asked why people would pay for superheroes when newspaper websites have been unable to charge for content, Buckley says, “You can get the news anywhere. We’re the only ones who have Spider-Man.”

Caveat: when we can handle the load. Seriously, being a fan of Iron Man and Incredible Hulk comics, I’ll be coming back to check this out. Would like to see how this looks on the Tablet PC in particular.

November is becoming the month for writers of all shapes and sizes. Literally and figuratively.

In November every year a bunch of writers take place in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge: write 50,000 fiction words in the month of November. I tried this in 2004 and, despite having previously written and completed seven novels (unpublished), came up short. Also, bought the book by the creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and joined a bit in the NaNoWriMo forums. Every year I think about the NaNoWriMo fondly, it’s a great writing exercise. If you’re a fiction writer, published or unpublished, it’s worth checking out.

Now comes the idea to run National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo.com — hat tip to a strangled duck) concurrently with NaNoWriMo. The concept: post every day to your blog — no required word length — in the month of November. It’s not by the same folks as NaNoWriMo from what I can tell. They are using Ning for the social network platform surrounding NaBloPoMo.

Must admit, and this is only my own writer perspective, that I’m not as excited about NaBloPoMo as NaNoWriMo. Why not? The goal is less challenging writing on a blog without any monthly word count or genre requirement versus writing 50,000 words of fiction in a calendar month that has a holiday (Thanksgiving) and only 30 days. Heck, writing 50,000 words of anything that makes at least some sense in a single month is an achievement.

The NaTwiTweMo idea
The cynical voice anwers: how long before somebody comes up with a National Twitter Month (NaTwiTweMo) where the goal is to Twitter every day for a month? Don’t laugh too hard, if 50,000 characters was a goal in this hypothetical and fictional (as far as I know) NaTwiTweMo, that would be a mere 358 Twitter messages, or using the cornier term tweets with the full 140 characters over the course of a month.

140 characters x 358 tweets = 50,120 characters
358 tweets over 30 days = 12 tweets a day (rounded up) of full 140 characters

Let’s assume you’re not full on 140 characters with every Tweet, that’s maybe 15-20 tweets per day, every day in the month of November. I believe there are many Twitterers doing that right now.

Confession: I’m not being completely serious on the NaTwiTweMo thing, but if anybody wants to run with that idea, have at it. The domain is probably still available. Let’s get back to being serious.

A more challenging monthly blog goal
Writing 50,000 words on a blog and posting every day in the month of November would make the NaBloPoMo more challenging, but that’s not how NaBloPoMo rolls. Word length does not matter.

Hmm. Why couldn’t it be? Warning: navel gazing alert!

Curious, I looked over these blog archives to date to see how many months I’d reached 50,000 words. Had I ever done that? According to my TD Word Count plugin, yes, twice before: September 2005 with 53,103 words in 125 posts and then again in June 2006 with 51,591 words in 120 posts. Most words in a month in 2007 thus far has been May with 37,501 in 75 posts. My number of posts has decreased over the last year. The average number of words per post is actually higher, but the quantity of posts has decreased. Still averaging over a couple posts a day, but it’s been over a year since there has been more than 100 posts in a month published here (July 2006: 108 posts 47,045 words).

(Sidebar: looking at the plugin screenshot, I’m seeing a month sorting bug I need to sort out.)

Time to set a new single month word goal.

Goal: 53,104+ words in November 2007
Rather than suggesting blogging every day over the course of a month is easy — and hopefully that’s not how this is coming across because I don’t think it is — I am suggesting it is easier for me than writing 50,000 words of fiction in a month. But talk is cheap, right? So I’ve decided to challenge myself and have joined the NaBloPoMo challenge for next month.

I’m joining the 1,354 others taking the challenge of writing and posting at least one blog post every day in November 2007.

However, I am adding one additional goal for myself that is not required by the NaBloPoMo: beat my best personal word count at Hmm to date by posting at least 53,104 words.

I’m also considering a contest where readers can get involved and either cheer along with or jeer at me next month. It’s past time to do some sort of contest with one or more prizes here anyway and this sounds like it could be fun and engaging. Even if I don’t succeed with the writing goal, it will be a good writing exercise and hopefully a little interactive for readers. Readers who enjoy my longer, more pensive pieces, or enjoy a higher volume of posts with varying lengths should hopefully get treated to that in November if the goal is achieved.

Maybe I was too constrained by my past fiction writing experience instead of letting the words flow freely when I failed completing the 2004 NaNoWriMo challenge. In this blogging challenge, I won’t feel remotely as constrained however, 53,104 words is still an average of 1,770 words per day (rounded down). That’s not an unrealistic goal, but a good challenge.

I encourage fellow blogger readers to challenge themselves with some sort of writing goal in November 2007, either by joining NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo or just telling your readers: here’s my writing goal for November 2007 — and then charting your progress. One of the main goals behind National Novel Writing Month is to teach participants that the novel you’ve been saying you always wanted to write will never get written unless you sit down and stroke those keys.

Blogging is fun, but can be work too. Words used and time spent are both mechanisms by which we can judge progress. I’m not suggesting that by merely writing 50,000+ words in a month one is any better writer from a quality standpoint than somebody else who writes 5,000 words the same month. It’s possible the blogger who carefully vets and edits those 5,000 words will be more successful in the craft than the one writing 50,000. But in both cases there’s one important similarity: both writers are doing something.

When you stop and think about the difference between people who are successful versus those who aren’t, you can usually spot an abundance or lack of effort and activity (practice, practice, practice). Action versus words. We can sit around and talk about all the things we might have done or could have done or want to do in life — or could be out there spending time actually doing all of them. Checking them off a list. One. After. Another.

Action equals results while inaction equals decay and eventually death. When you’re staring down death in those final fleeting sands of time, how do you want to look back? As the person who had many wonderful unfulfilled dreams or someone who did everything in his/her power to make those dreams come true?

The future
Some year, health and spirit willing, I’d like to try that NaNoWriMo challenge again — and I will try my best to be victorious next time. Positive thinking, right? I have been working behind the scenes on a few fiction-oriented projects and that still remains an unfulfilled dream on the list. I’m sure readers here will be among the first to know if/when this dream is realized. Hopefully it’s not posthumously.

Lights, cameras, action.

Google is green, but not just with money from their higher stock price (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock), they also dig solar power.

As mentioned last October 30% of Google’s power needs at its home office in Mountain View, CA are handled by the solar panels it installed on the rooftops. Check out their Google Solar Power web page (gotta love the solar panel over the logo) which shares comparable energy stats like how many loads of laundry or dishwasher cycles one could do with the power from the panels.

My Library
For those who want to keep track of the books owned by ISBN number, Google now offers My Library available through books.google.com in your account. My Library allows import and export (extra points there).

We don’t have many books any more. Most have been given away or donated. My favorite Mac program, by far, for inventorying CDs, games, movies and books is still Delicious Library (no relation to the Delicious bookmark program from Yahoo).

Google Reader adds search
Strange as it may sound a comprehensive search feature for Google Reader wasn’t made available until this week. I continue to be a Google Reader holdout, preferring reBlog and my own server. I like the idea that when I click through to a site the referrer is one of our sites and not Google, as well as being able to keep track in my own database the posts and pages I’m most interested in.

You can search keywords by folder, all items, shared items and starred items. It seems to work fairly well although when you have a lot of results it doesn’t return an accurate number, instead showing the rather worthless “thousands” result.

AOL continues to face hard times. Or though it would seem by the news coming out.

Yesterday, I peeked up briefly from working on a new site launch to read speculation that AOL might be planning lay off over 2,000 employees. I don’t like hearing about people losing their jobs and hope this doesn’t happen but a gig at AOL doesn’t exactly spell job security to me. You?

This morning I read that the Netscape digg clone idea that Jason Calacanis and crew masterminded is being moved … somewhere:

Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away! We will keep you updated on where you will be able to find the social news site as we get closer to making the switch.

Why wouldn’t they want to announce where it’s going? If I was part of the Netscape digg clone crew, I’d be toning up the resume now. Quickly. Calacanis bailed before there was time to evaluate the fruits of his second labor (the digg clone results). He now has the convenience of saying that if he was there this change wouldn’t have been made.

Sadly, it’s in the AOL DNA to fail. Just as they’ve ruined other properties like Winamp and put too much stock in dial-up when broadband was the future. Here’s something I’ve written before and might sound a little crazy, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Engadget and the rest of Weblogs, Inc properties end up being deprioritized or sold off too. AOL doesn’t seem to know how to take care of good people, good products and good ideas.

Hold on now, I must add the disclaimer that I didn’t think the digg clone thing for Netscape was ever a great idea, but once they chose to go that route they should have stayed the course. Now they just look like they can’t make up their mind about what they want to do with a once great browser and website. What happened to the Netscape browser is shameful.

AOL and writers: a firsthand story
When Weblogs, Inc sold to AOL I wrote a rather lengthy post that deals with how AOL handles writers and the talent behind their web properties. What do I know about this? I was a volunteer at AOL back in the nineties, my first gig on the web you might say. The following post has been sitting in the preview bin for some two years and this morning I decided to finally publish, unedited. You’ll note, for example, that today is not Thursday and it’s not 2005. Readers can judge if this should have stayed in draft status or is tangentially related. I think it is, and adds a first party dimension to life inside AOL in the early phase of their business when many thought they could do no wrong. Life behind the walled garden wasn’t exactly roses.

As the AOL acquisition of WeblogsInc (WIN) continues to circulate the web today, I continue to ponder the unspoken part of this story that I’m sure at least weighs prominently on the minds of the 130+ bloggers at WIN: what will happen to us?

Writers are always wondering about something. The hard drive mind never stops clicking and whirring. That’s what we do. We think, dream, research, plan and at then write. We don’t always think of the business side of things, which might be the ultimate subtext to this story, but I guarantee the writers in that WIN group are thinking. And what are they thinking about?

Will I get a raise out of this deal? Will AOL come in and change the editorial guidelines? Will there be an emphasis put on more profit-producing material than material I find interesting?

Some of the braver writers will ask these questions, most will keep quiet because the money they do earn, however small or large, they need to pay for roof over head and food on table.

Some might even quit over the deal.

Apparently an internal WIN memo has already gone out explaining that the deal is real, WIN management will be staying, no AOL filtering of content will be instituted, but a new contract will need to be signed.

The alleged kicker? No raises. There is some vague reference to making more money, allegedly.

That is the WIN side of things, but what about the AOL side? AOL has been downward spiraling for some time, their dialup business on fire (in a bad way), their controversial process of not letting customers leave easily and perhaps their most positive move to date: the decision to open up their members-only content to the web. And remember what happened to Nullsoft?

So what does AOL think of writers? Really?

I know something about this from personal experience. We have to get in a time machine for a little bit though and go back 8 or so years ago when a 28k connection was considered fast. Remember those wonderful times?

Close your eyes and let’s travel.

One of my first writing-related gigs on the internet was at AOL in their keyword: novel area marked the Amazing Instant Novelist area (AIN). This area was a delightful place for writers to hone their craft and I immediately gravitated there. This was a period that ran from 1996-1998. I became so involved in this area that I was eventually invited to be one of their NOVLs. I was and remain (at least to my knowledge) the only NOVLWrite to exist on AOL soil. Seemed odd to me that nobody else would have chosen that NOVL name and perhaps it was pretentious on my part that I would be the only NOVLWrite on the web, but my AOL screen name actually had “write” in it too, so it made sense. I had to be NOVL something. I supposed I could have been NOVLHmm … but that would come much later.

From the minute I got online, the first thing I wanted to do was share my creative writing with others. So I sought out places to do that within our ISP, which happened to be AOL. Back then I remember how you had to fight to get connected, particularly in the evening hours, as everybody wanted to be online and there weren’t that many dial-up numbers available.

So, who are NOVLs and what did they do at AOL? NOVLs were the gatekeepers, TOS enforcerers and contest judges in the keyword: novel area of AOL. These people chose who won or lost the various weekly writing contests. There wasn’t a lot of words to work with. First it was 250 but it later would be expanded to 1,000 words.

250 words is about the size of an average blog post — to tell a short story! Easier said than done.

The prizes for winning were quite unspectacular and so was the NOVL pay (zero pay for the writers). NOVLs like I only had our AOL accounts comped, no actual money changed hands. Still, I enjoyed this place immensely. It was a place to work on the craft of writing and maybe win some “points” which if you had a zillion of them you might actually be able to redeem for some prize. I never cashed in any of the points I earned before or after becoming a NOVL.

Once I became a NOVL I couldn’t compete in the regular writing contests any longer, but I was able to compete in the NOVL competitions which were even more challenging.

Ultimately, I found that the time involved in being not only a NOVL and contributing short story fiction writer to be too time consuming and I had to move on to other things. You know, that business stuff. Our business couldn’t suffer because my time was being increasingly absorbed volunteering at AOL. Even if that volunteer time was spent doing something I enjoyed. Writing, I love, that is no secret. I also enjoyed working with newer writers, fostering them, encouraging them and reading new works of fiction.

This would be the last chapter in me writing fiction for the next six years. Totally backburnered fiction writing, in fact. I haven’t published any fiction since leaving that area which now makes it 7 years. That’s not AOL’s fault, of course, that’s mine. I spent that time building and expanding our business ventures online. It was a tradeoff in time that up until last year I had accepted.

Such is the cosmic truth of writers and writing: that those of us who love to write are often pushed and pulled in other directions because of real world finances. The real world is much colder than any of our fiction landscapes, no matter how arctic and inhospitable.

Meanwhile we continued working our growing offline business (totally unrelated to writing). I didn’t absolutely need to leave this AOL area to make money in other business online, but I wanted to do so because I felt on the business side of things AOL was getting the best deal. I wanted some of that ad revenue in exchange for content.

Just couldn’t see being part of the free content machine any longer for AOL. Here, AOL was getting all this content and an area that was run primarily by volunteers for almost nothing. There was never any discussion about sharing ad revenues with writers, only those pretty much worthless points that could be win for first place, second place and third place each week in the writing contests.

Sure, a lot of the writing in this area was trash. Hey, it was filled with writers of all skill levels, most of which were unpubished beginners, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Maybe not a huge number of serious, professional writers were contributing to this area, but some of the material that came through was at or darn near pro-quality, particularly from the NOVLs. All this content AOL got in exchange for bandwidth, comping some accounts and paying The Amazing Instant Novelist, Dan Hurley and a few of Hurley’s people. I’m guessing Hurley himself scored the biggest deal because they used his name for everything. All this time, AOL could run its own advertising deals around the area and in a small sense this was their Adsense program. Remember, this was before Google even existed, must less their Adsense program. AOL was pretty smooth about those ads too. And I remember hearing complaints more than a few times that there wasn’t much money to run better contest prizes.

Maybe “the area” (AIN) didn’t have much money, but AOL was doing just fine. The cries of poverty for AOL nobody really believed. Perhaps an early sign of greed?

The business side of me started believing that this AOL area wasn’t such a great deal for the writers after all. Yeah, a decent place at the time to get some exposure and to hone the writing — perhaps with a nom de plume — but not a significant place to build any professional credentials. Heck, years later blogs would provide a significantly better avenue of getting public exposure than any fiction piece published in the keyword: novel area at AOL. And definitely not the place to make any money from the writing. No Stephen King stories to speak of coming out of there.

There were stories of a couple writers who landed book deals, but I’m not sure if these deals were as fictitious as the content inside AIN. No idea if any of those authors ever actually got published or were just deals that died. So many books “almost” get published. My guess is there was at least one marginal success story, but I don’t know of any success stories at all.

The reality is this area was a business area for AOL, but not a business area for the vast majority of writers who frequented it, despite the fact that it was billed as this great place to learn the craft, cut your teeth, compete in weekly contests, oh, the community, yadda, yadda. Reality: a moneymaker financially for AOL and a fun place for dreamers and writers to compete against each other.

Before anybody except maybe Dave Winer even knew what blogs were, before RSS, before much self-publishing and promotion on the web really.

As it turns out, unfortunately, AOL didn’t do a very good job of archiving or promoting the writers who won these contests either. It was like you won something inside a vacuum which mattered primarily to the other writers but didn’t penetrate outside the walled AOL garden. They pretty much left the area run by Hurley and the NOVLs as long as nothing violated their sacred TOS. So much content, some great, some good, most bad, locked behind the door of subscription and not seen by the rest of the web.

I wonder how many writers thought: hey, if I share my writing here and win contests maybe it will get me noticed? That’s the irony. The model set up writers for the exact opposite. They weren’t going to get noticed unless they went out and promoted themselves beyond the AOL walls. AOL wasn’t going to do it, the AIN area wasn’t going to do it, it was as it always has been: the responsibility of the writer him/herself to do the real PR work.

At best these contest winnings were accolades to put on the writing resume or in a bio. This was a learning lesson for beginning writers, so I suppose on that front it was successful.

Also, because a lot of those contests winners, myself included, became archived and ultimately rolled off the AOL backend third party verification was difficult if not impossible. The WayBackMachine wasn’t going inside AOL’s member’s only areas. So if a prospective publisher or agent had actually wanted to validate the existence of these contest winners they would have a difficult time doing so. Screenshots to the rescue, I guess. On our word of honor. “Yeah, you know, that contest I won at AOL’s area … the one that isn’t there any more .. or maybe it is, I won that back in 19xx”

As for digital rights? Uh oh, murky topic. Did AOL own the digital rights because it was published there first in their contest? Or did the author own the rights? Hmm, indeed.

Now let’s jump back forward in time to today, 2005.

Blogs are all the rage and these blog networks created a new type of AIN area, although the focus being on non-fiction, not fiction. A place where writers could come and then be compensated in some more meaningful, real world way than “points” and comped internet accounts. Blog networks like WIN would pay a reported $4 or so for those same 250 or less words. I guess $4 is better than points. Some progress has been made.

WIN sells to AOL and what does AOL do next? Does AOL try and replace the WIN writers with volunteers? “Just look at the exposure you’ll get now!” Nah, I don’t think that will happen. The volunteer writing model doesn’t work any more as I believe some of these new startup blog networks who rely too much on playing the exposure card will find out over time.

I don’t have much faith in AOL, the company, and I already know from firsthand experience that they don’t really seem to care or do much for writer promotion, especially if it doesn’t benefit their bottom line. So for these reasons, I wonder what will happen to the writers. Maybe AOL has changed, heaven knows they don’t have the market cornered like they once did. It’s a new world of sorts and maybe AOL can learn from WIN something about writer promotion? Maybe now they will do a better job promoting the writing, the content. For WIN writers’ sake, I sure hope so.

We can’t use that time machine to go ahead from here and see what really happens, all we can do is predict and dream. That is what brings me full circle to the writers, because it is — and will always be — the writers that help to shape the future of publishing. Without their content, no advertising or business can or will be conducted.

Am I giving writers far too much credit? Maybe, but businesses live and die. Businesses get sold or fold all the time. Someday this blog will be sold or fold. On this subject, I know only one thing for certain: creative works can and do live past the sale or the failure. The text can outlive its creator and copyright owner. The writing itself lives until it is burned, deleted and forgotten from the minds of those who have read.

Deep thinking for a rainy Thursday here in the greater Seattle area.

Yes, I think about the real writers and wonder what will happen to them because without them, there could be no sale to AOL or anybody else. Wiithout good content — and many times even with good content — readers will not come. They do not come to the area to read the ads. If they did then websites would consist of only ads. Some sites did consist of only ads at one time, just domains with banners ads only, but now people call those ‘websites’ spam. There was a time where one could put up a domain with only ads and would make pretty good money.

If AOL remembers the past and focuses on paying writers what they are worth, then a bright future could be in store in this deal. However, if the writers are used like a neverending, low value commodity — a frequent disease contracted from publishers — then this will be yet another painstaking chapter in a future AOL fire sale. I’m no Johnny Smith from the Dead Zone, but I don’t need his powers to touch the keyboard and see the vision.

As for my writings in the AIN area at AOL? Are they gone? Lost? Deleted?

I’m not sure if these writings exist there any more … or if the area itself exists any more (I don’t have an AOL account currently and though I did think about joining to research it for this blog entry, I didn’t want the hassle over cancelling later).

Note to readers with AOL accounts: go to keyword: novel and do a search for NOVL Write and see if you can find some of my old writings. Let me know what you find, if any, in the comments. There are over 100 original fiction stories I posted there during the nineties.

Recently I registered a couple new domains that I intend to republish most of what I put up on AOL in the nineties, so maybe I should thank AOL for running the material off their servers (last time I checked it seemed that way). Also, on this new domain I’d like to publish material — mostly fiction I’ve written — that has never been published, including at least one of my finished novels.

Next month is the NaNoWriMo 2005, and I’ve got an idea that maybe this year I can actually finish if I join — yes, I’m still undecided about it. Last year I choked at 26,670 words, about half-way to the 50,000 goal. I think this year’s idea is somewhat unique and curious and actually focuses on the end goal number of 50,000 which is really novella-length, not novel-length.

Like my fellow writer bretheren, I’ll keep thinking, dreaming, researching, planning and then, good health willing, writing. Hopefully at least some of these words, while the business trades continue, won’t be forgotten.

Earlier this year I pondered why our kids don’t read and this morning I’m reading the CNN article with a study that found 1 in 4 people haven’t read a book in the last year. Not just the kids who aren’t reading, adults are guilty too. Could be a classic case of monkey see, monkey do.

With the new Stephen King / Richard Bachman hardcover book Blaze by my bed itching to be read, I’m looking in the mirror and trying to finger specifically what is to blame. My wife doesn’t have any trouble finding book reading time. We used to read together all the time but at some point over the last 10 years, my reading became dramatically more internet-related than book related. And when I’m not in front of the computer, I’m watching movies or playing games. Reading has become the odd man out.

The last books I remember reading cover to cover were Jose Canseco’s Juiced (2005) and Pete Rose’s My Prison Without Bars (2004). I didn’t read any book completely in 2006 and none have even been started thus far in 2007 with almost three quarters of the year gone. I started reading my first eBook Cell by Stephen King but only made it through the first 125 pages or so. Bad reader, me. I love reading too.

Where is your reading time going online?
I decided to break down the different communication areas online and rank the reading time spent on each. I’d be curious for those Hmm readers that read books how you are doing in these areas and how we compare. Let me know in the comments below.

1. email - daily, checked every five minutes. I’ve cut this back considerably from what it was five years ago but it’s still #1 for absorbing time every day. It’s not primarily reading the email, it’s responding to it. I tend to want to respond to emails as I read them instead of filing them to respond later.
2. RSS - daily, checked hourly. I spend at least an hour every day in my RSS reader. It allows me to skim through a lot of information and whittle down to reading specifically what interests me.
3. web non-news sites - daily, checked throughout the day. I visit lots of different websites, read through the content every day throughout the day, not only our own for work but lots of other websites. A lot of it is for research for future work, whether it be blog posts or products/services that might save time (isn’t that ironic) or money. Then there is the financial sites which I’ve started watching more closely since my wife and I started a friendly stock competiton (she’s kicking my ass in case you haven’t been following).
4. blogs - daily, checked throughout the day. Once I’ve identified through the RSS blog posts of interest, I visit blogs and will often read the posts there. Sometimes, I’ll stick around and read a few pages in the archives and if the blog search is good I might even peer deeper into the blog’s past, subscribe and/or leave a comment. I’m always on the lookout for a new read to subscribe to. This is one area where I could reduce time spent surfing blogs and make some time for reading books.
5. search engines - daily, 20-25 searches average daily. Google Trends reminds me that I spend a fair amount of time Googling every day. I’ve tried other search engines, but Google always draws me back (disclaimer: I own Google stock). I can’t see reducing my time spent in search engines, will have to take time away.
6. IRC / IM. I don’t spend much time doing any sort of chatting, so I lumped in with the IRC channel where I hang daily. Probably spend more time chatting in IRC on a daily basis than in all the other IM clients put together including the new wave chat places like MySpace, Twitter, Pownce, etc. Maybe I could curb some of my IRC time, but it’s not that significant.
7. Skype - daily / voice and chat. This is 95% essential communication for business primarily. No cuts can be made here. I’m not hanging around for many Skype random chats.
8. news sites - sporadically. Since I get my news via RSS I rarely visit news sites that aren’t already in my RSS reader directly. When I do hit news sites, I start at Google News and go from there.
9. messageboards/forums - infrequently. Messageboards used to be a regular haunt for me. For 6+ years I moderated and administrated a board, but this time is spent elsewhere. One of the few messageboards I visit with any regularity is the Stern Fan Network, a board for Howard Stern fans. I still don’t get that involved in there. There are other messageboards I visit here and there, but mostly this time has been allocated elsewhere. Nothing to cut here.

I’m leaving out some other things like groups, which might as well go with messageboards/forums. Newsgroups or mail lists would be categorized under email. It’s amazing sometimes when you look at the clock how much time went by. It’s lunch time here and I’m just kicking out my first blog post of the day.

I might have to start checking out the Getting Things Done (GTD) crowd to see if I can free up any more time for reading, or dare I say, just learn to unplug earlier in the day. I could also cut back on the movie watching. We watch 3-5 movies a week on average. That probably steals more time than any other leisure activity, including gaming. As for those reading wondering about TV? No time wasted there, our family has been without TV for 428 days and counting. Sports is my main regret there, especially with the Mariners in a pennant race and a new Seahawk season getting kicked off.

I’m spending too much time on the internet. Time to claim some back. What’s your story? How many books have you read so far in 2007? How many in 2006?

Quite the subjective list of blogging cliches courtesy of Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror. Why the superstitious number? Why not 14 or 12? Step on a crack, break your momma’s …

And then he violates his own cliche list with #10. His entire post is blogging about blogging, but spoiler alert: he admits to breaking his own list at the end. I’m going to break even more than that, out of order. Non-conformist style.

Violating #10
Let’s begin with #10 (”blogging about blogging”), because I realized while leaving a comment on Sterling’s post that my words had eclipsed the length of his post. Fellow blogger readers, you’ve done that before, haven’t you? I don’t mind doing that in my own comment section, but prefer to use a post with trackback for other blogs. I’m sure Sterling appreciates the response either way.

Violating #2
I won’t violate #2 (”Random Images Arbitrarily Inserted In Text”) with a picture of me doing something somewhere, but the thought skittered across my brain. Check that, this picture fits this post and is intentionally not random. Neener, neener, Mr. Atwood.

Ahh yes, this is where we traveled last weekend. Over 6,000 feet above ground, up through a creepy moving fog. A first riding a ski lift when there was no snow and I got some video footage for a future Hmmcast (vacation days on Friday and yesterday, BTW). What does this have to do with Jeff’s list of blogging cliches? More on this in a bit.

Violating #8
Difficult to locate bylines and information about the author (#3) somewhat contradicts #8 (”this isn’t your diary”).

Wrong. It is your diary that you are sharing with your readers. Your voice. Your story. The following statement doesn’t apply at all to my reading habits: “your readers aren’t coming to your blog to read about you.”

Then from who’s perspective are they coming to read? Or are they only there to read about a story with no characters? Boring story, if that’s the deal. In Atwood’s comment section he sort of takes this back.

I subscribe to blogs because of the subject matter and the authors. Because I’m interested in you and how your adventures and experiences impact and influence whatever subject you’re writing about. If you are excised from the piece it would be less interesting to me.

Given a choice between a blog that has more interesting subject matter over a more unique voice and steady, reliable flow, I’m more likely to skim the former and read/subscribe to the latter. Machines can deliver us topics and subjects contextually, people are what make the pieces interesting and memorable. Stories are incomplete without the characters that inhabit them. People aren’t cliches, they are unique.

I’m thinking Jeff is buying into cliched thinking on the whole diary spiel. One of the major descriptions that almost nobody disagrees with when describing the characteristics of a blog are that the posts are in diary format that employ a relaxed voice stylestically.

Who is writing this, what are his/her experiences and biases how do they affect the piece? Some of what we do in life can more potently impact a piece and make it more compelling and sticky. That seemingly random picture can hook readers in like a seductive novel cover. The payoff better be the content though as readers do not like being cheated.

And then there are bloggers like dooce.com who have built a very successful following — a lot more readers than Coding Horror, I’m sure — completely off the diary format. People are twittering their daily happenings back and forth and while I think too many inane daily happenings are annoying, not interestinig, that’s up to the author to weave the textual tapestry.

Violating #9
Excuse for not blogging, or #9 (”Sorry I haven’t written in awhile”) in and of itself is annoying and I agree.

However, when a blogger leaves for an extended period of time without an explanation of where they went or why they left, it does leave an awkward hole in the flow of the ongoing narrative. Again, I don’t care for single posts with excuses about why the author hasn’t been blogging — that is a cliche — it’s very easy to weave in a one or two sentence explanation before leaving or after getting back to explain the lack of flow and post frequency. It’s a little like expecting your favorite TV show to air every Monday night at 9pm only to show up or have the DVR in place snag some sort of special in its place. Why was it preempted?

Probably my biggest complaint with Kent Newsome’s blog is the posting schedule. Hate to be a selfish reader, but if we’re being honest, we’re a demanding lot. We get used to expecting quality content with at least some desirable frequency. Kent has heard me on this one before and I hope he knows enough not to take this personally, but this bears repeating because he has indicated that he’d like to expand his readership. Posting frequency is like a fine wine formula, it takes time to get into a consistent, reliable pattern. Too much posting and people will choke on the firehose and too little and readers will be starved.

I enjoy Kent’s writing, especially his longer, more pensive posts like this recent one on online utopias and he’s awesome about responding whenever he’s linked to, but his post flow and frequency is conversely unreliable. He’s gone for awhile, then comes back, then disappears again. Watch his comments on posts where he leaves and you’ll see people stop by wondering if he’s ok. Pulse checks are usually a sign that readers are worried about you.

Being gone a few days isn’t too big a deal, that’s taking days off, being gone weeks or months is significant. With that in mind, a lot of people are worried about you, Donald Crowlis. We continue to hope you are ok. Give us a sign, smoke signal, something. Please.

I’ll never get totally engaged or engrossed as a reader with infrequent writing output, no more than somebody showing up for work when they feel like it impresses the boss. I want to be your blog fan, subscriber and reader but you have to throw me a bone. One laced with consistency.

There is a good reason why major authors follow a time release schedule with novel publishing (hardcover comes out, paperback of last hardcover available for sale). A reliable publishing cycle. Blogging can be a cycle too if you want to grow readership. I add that because some bloggers clearly state they post when they feel like it and they don’t care about number of readers. For those who do, you know what at least one prospective reader cares about.

Back to my chair lift picture above. At the beginning of 2007 I made a promise to try and publish a new Hmmcast video every weekday, but one wasn’t published last Friday nor yesterday, two chosen work days without explanation. The weekends and vacations are mine and I post when I feel like it during those times, if at all. The work days, however, gaps need to be explained.

I feel obligated to mention why that happened for continuity and flow, but don’t need to make an entire excuse post. Instead, I can weave in a teasing picture about a future post. Foreshadowing, yes, that’s it. Ahh, there I am in the post, not random, not unintentional. A picture near text in a post doesn’t always have to be about that very post, it could be a series or part of a greater collection.

I think Atwood is looking too much at every blog post as a single, separate work which is flawed for those of us who see our blogs as ongoing stories. Frequent readers, especially long time subscribers might see it that way too. Bloggers can help by referencing related posts so new readers and visitors understand the chronology.

When does your blogging journey end? When does mine end? Only one of two logical scenarios: when I’m finished writing here or death, whichever comes first. The former is unlikely as there are too many exciting stories to tell and new things to explore, and the latter is certain. Current mortality tables give me roughly 40 more years (2047 or thereabouts until the reaper stops by). But even death doesn’t mean a friend, family member or both won’t take over the story and keep sharing their adventures.

Not violating #1, 3-7
I’m totally in Atwood’s corner on #3 (”no information on the author”) the importance of a clear byline. Hiding and/or not providing some details about who is writing what is like hiding the football from the quarterback. Always give readers context about who, what, where, when and how.

As for the calendar (#1 “the useless calendar widget”), the sidebar and other stuff (#4 “excess flair”, #6 “nebulous tag cloud”) I find most of that more valuable to authors than readers and think that should be handled by a conditional template or switch. One could always display a different template with all the useful components to the author(s) and another to readers/visitors/SE with a one line conditional. In WP template code terms, something like this:

As for #5 (”the giant blogroll”), that’s more efficiently handled with an OPML file as Atwood suggests and/or link to a single dedicated page to share the linklove which is Sterling’s thinking. I link to mine off the homepage so it’s only one link away from home. No, that’s not as good as having every link on the homepage, but again, I don’t think readers mind making the extra click. Yes, other bloggers would rather be on the homepage, but those on my reading list have a greater chance of being linked more than once inside posts and every link there shows up on the homepage for a short time.

I’m split between Sterling and Atwood as to these lists sometimes being spammy. The way AOL/Weblogs, Inc does it is spammy. They are clearly interlinking all their properties for a certain purpose, relevance be damned. That’s not the same thing as Sterling, Atwood or I sharing our actual reading lists.

And now we arrive at a pet peeve of mine, #7 (”excessive advertising”). I try very hard to find the right balance with ads at this site. It’s ultimately up to readers to grade the use of advertising more than it is to me. Some readers might define “excessive” as any ads period, but that’s not realistic for a blog with any sort of traffic and reach. The more traffic, the more bandwidth burned, the more time spent working on posts, the more money is required to at least break even. I’d hazard a guess that most blogs operate at a loss when the time spent is factored in. Not losing one’s shirt while sharing seems reasonable to me. That’s where I put advertising in as a perspective. This blog is expected to turn a profit and thanks to you, friendly reader and visitor, it does. We don’t need to be greedy about it and try not to be, but again, readers will decide what is and isn’t excessive.

It’s kind of silly with ad blocking tools to make your site too ad excessive anyway. Readers will just turn on the plugins to block all the ads and there goes any chance of making some ad revenue. I prefer respectful, related advertising as a reader, not intrusive, unrelated advertising.

Violating #12
Lists like the one that inspired this one and hence the response are violating #12 (”Top (n) Lists”). I disagree completely with Atwood that lists are “a substitute for critical thinking.” Look at sites like Mashable.com who lately have been publishing tons of lists. People love reading, bookmarking and sharing lists. Adding to my to-do list that I should be making more lists.

My favorite non-violation: #13
Hopefully you won’t ever see this blog violating #13 (”No Comments Allowed”). I believe strongly that a blog should be a conversation — and practice what I preach — which means giving you an equal floor to correct mistakes I’ve made or disagree with my opinion as I’ve done with a number of items in Mr. Atwood’s list. If those corrections become too long then add them to your own blog and trackback in. Both methods of continuing the conversation are welcome and encouraged.

Violating #11
Good place to end by violating #11 (”Mindless Link Propagation”). The thing that makes the web different than traditional press are links. What’s “mindless” about regular people commenting on the news? I like hearing different perspectives about the news.

No, I don’t want to read dozens or hundreds of different bloggers simply restating the news with nothing new or personal added (revisit the diary violation: how did this news impact or affect you?), but carefully consider the excellent point Mike from Techdirt mentioned yesterday in the post titled: People Want Analysis Of The News, Rather Than Just Facts:

In fact, despite the claims of an internet “echo chamber,” one of the things that makes the internet such an interesting medium, is the idea that anyone can respond and discuss stuff. If someone disagrees with our interpretation of the facts, we want to know about it, and we want to discuss it. That’s how we all learn and we all become smarter.

Maybe Atwood wants the facts from vanilla brand news agencies, but a growing number of people actually like receiving news from bloggers colored by their individual perspectives, experiences and opinions.

Score card summary
Let’s see, think I’ve violated six of Atwood’s thirteen cliches. Does this mean he will dismiss my rebuttal because it’s ridden with too many cliches? Don’t know. I do know that whatever the subject matter, leaving you out of a blog post makes it less interesting to me.

Oh, the horror!