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By David Rothman

Pagan KennedyA photo of a blonde teenager, “smashed on vodka,” popped up after Pagan Kennedy, author and ex-zine publisher, did a MySpace search under the writer’s distinctive name.

“The drunken girl was an anomaly,” Kennedy says in the New York Times. “People read my books sober! I spied on dozens of my fans’ pages and found out weirdly intimate data about them: what they eat (vegan peanut-butter – cream-frosted cupcakes), what imaginary businesses they’ve started (a magazine called Stupid American) and what they collect (miter saws, leg warmers, ‘cartes de visite with good mustaches on them,’ tattoos). I even started reading their blogs.” Er, yes, the nonblonde in the photo is a sober Kennedy, not her fan.

Beyond PR spiel and the inevitable “Buy the book” links

Writers on the Web are nothing new—as far back as 1995 I myself was pushing my book NetWorld online, complete with a free first chapter—but it’s refreshing to see more and more of them paying attention to their readers rather than just tacking up PR spiels, bios and the inevitable links to booksellers.

The real question I have is, “How long until savvy writers pester publishers to let them do interactive e-books?”—where readers’ comments can appear in relevant places in the texts or elsewhere in the books. Imagine the possibilities for smart nonfiction writers and those in dream-with-me genres like romance fiction.

Conversations, please, not huckstery

The technical capabilities exist, and ideally the IDPF will come through with annotation standards in a timely way. For me, such a future is just as exciting and perhaps even more so than video or audio in books. Instead of just regarding e-books and the Net as marketing mechanisms, writers need to think of them both as settings for conversations—platforms for genuine communities of fans.

A community approach is worthwhile in itself, but along the way would reduce losses to piracy. You’re less likely to steal from someone whom you and your friends respect. What’s more, forum participation could be among the rewards for those who paid voluntarily for books distributed under Creative Commons licenses.

Not for all writers or all books

No, I’m not saying interactivity is for all. Let’s not inflict it on the John Updikes and J.D. Salingers and others who would rather simply follow their private muses and not be distracted by the crowd. I also wonder about the risks of writer’s forever being interactive with individual books. Put yourself in the place of someone with 20 books. How much time will you spend writing books and how much time interacting?

Other links of interest:

–Sony, or at least certain programmers, is at it again with a different kind of rootkit-related security vulnerability. Product involved is the biometric Micro Vault USM-F thumb drive.

–Will a Google deal with four major wire services “torpedo newspapers”?

–Amazon is reducing the amount of information it provides on the number of books in stock, and understandably writers aren’t happy.

 
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