The danger for content providers is a surfeit of good enough
From a Dec. 24 New York Times story on the continued attempts of publishers to extract more value from libraries when it comes to e-books (or just sit out the e-book library lending game all together):
While many major publishers have effectively gone on strike, more than 1,000 smaller publishers, who don’t have best-seller sales that need protection, happily sell e-books to libraries. That means the public library has plenty of e-books available for the asking — no waiting.
This is an aside to the main thrust of the article, but it’s the most important bit. Because here’s the thing: as long as library collections (or Netflix streaming or Hulu or ebooks that cost $7.99 or less) have enough works that are good enough, consumers are going to go the cheap and easy route. Yes, there are still premium titles that some consumers will pay old-content company prices for. But more and more, it’s clear that there is a surfeit of good enough.
To speak more directly to the library vs. publisher tug-of-war detailed in the article: my library system has gone on an ebook buying spree this past year. I have the Overdrive app on my iPhone. Yes, there are a select few books that I will buy or that I will check out from the library in hard copy, but I also find myself reading books that may not be the number one choice on my list of to-reads because they are available as an ebook from my library. It’s just so easy to check it out and read it on my iPhone.
My wife and I also decided to drop our DVD plan with Netflix and just pay for streaming. Yes, there are things that may not be available. But between Netflix streaming and Hulu (the free, non-plus version), we have more than enough shows to watch. We have a surfeit of good enough. And that’s a problem for publishers and studios stuck on the old ways of generating revenue.
Design felicities: new Twitter
I have yet to decide how much I like the new Twitter. Or rather I’d say that, as of now, I like the new Twitter iOS app very much, the new Chrome Tweetdeck rather much, and the new Twitter on the web somewhat much. But one thing that stood out right away that I like is the design felicity present in some of the new icons. In particular, I like the progression from opening the app, to opening a dialog box for posting, to how you actually make the post. The progression looks like this:
I like that we go from the bird to the quill (which is a change from the previous icon, and, which, of course, more strongly carries through the bird theme) to the simple word “Tweet”, which is the sound the bird makes (and it’s even better in the iOS app because the it carries through the blue theme instead of switching to gray). The metaphor carries through visually, but it also goes in a metonymic progression. It may seem like a small thing, but I experienced that progression, when going through it the first time, as something felicitous because it both looks good and makes sense. In particular, I like the change from the pen to the quill. Very minor to be sure — yet, that small change ties the entire UX together. It’s a metaphor, and thus branding, that works.
Embargoes: collusion or coercion?
All of the points made about the Denby-Rudin dust-up are correct:
- Embargoes give journalists time to turn in their copy.
- If you agree to one, you should keep that promise.
- It’s the price of early access.
But here’s the thing: while embargoes can be a good thing, a benign collusion that maximizes and maximally times coverage for the company/organization and gives all journalists/critics time to (hopefully) put together a good story or review, they can also be instruments of coercion in which access is used to play favorites or at least weed out those who don’t play the game.
And whether or not an embargo feels like benign collusion or icky coercion depend quite a bit on the skill and professionalism of the PR people involved in arranging it, and the willingness of the people at the center of it to be cool about the subsequent coverage and not feel it’s their right to say how their research or announcement or cultural product should be received/reviewed. And the more it feels like coercion, the more likely something will go wrong.
Why I now have a third Twitter account
First there was the Twitter account that is associated with this blog. Then there was the one for my Mormon arts and culture group blog. Now I have added a third.
Is that crazy? Is that brand dilution? Is that spreading myself to thin? Perhaps. But I think it also makes a lot of sense in relation to how I personally prefer to use Twitter.
For many folks, and the current conventional wisdom now that we’re past the early adopters stage (and that was a nice stage — remember when everybody was following everybody else?), is that Twitter is mainly for broadcasting. It’s most useful for organizations, brands and public figures who can garner a ton of followers and then push out links and calls to action to them.
Call me a throwback, but I prefer Twitter as conversation. And I have begun to realize that Twitter makes me happiest when I’m interacting with just a few people who I either have offline social ties with or with whom I have a lot of overlapping interests. Or in other words, for me Twitter is about the @. And while, yes, I could use lists, that only helps me — it doesn’t do much for those who only want one side of me.
As a result, when I found myself wanting to talk more about comedy, literary and genre fiction, the publishing business, and writing fiction in general, I decided to add the third Twitter account. Along with that I followed several accounts from my other two that fit better there — or in some cases, double followed. And I’m going to let things grow slow with the new one. Also: I’ve pruned some follows out of my first two accounts. I also think that about 250-350 per account is the max that makes sense for me personally to follow.
And so far it seems to be working.
Delivering bad news
What happens when you need to deliver bad news? How are people going to receive it?
Back when I was in my early twenties, I had to deliver some bad news to a friend about someone he had trusted who did not deserve that trust at all and in fact had been actively misleading him. Not only that, but, serendipitously, I found out about the situation and found him and delivered that news to him just as he was going to visit this other person. His response to me was: I’m so glad it was you. If it had been somebody else, I’m not sure I would have really believed it.
No organization never has to deliver bad news. So when that time comes, are the people who you have to deliver the bad news to going to react the way my friend did? Have you (and here I’m especially talking mainly about higher ed communicators) developed that level of trust with reporters, alumni, faculty, staff, donors, legislators and neighbors so that when you do deliver the bad news it is believed? Have you developed a style and personality that’s suitable to that kind of communications situation? Are you going to be received with patience and trust? Or are you going to be met with suspicion, outrage, impatience or scorn?
There are many reasons to engage in transparent, responsive, patient, relevant, authentic media and public relations (including social media outreach). Being able to deliver bad news in a way that doesn’t weaken you and your organization is yet another one.
The basics require the right technique
It is only in the past year that I have been able to truly fry an egg, bake a potato and make an omelet that is consistently, almost perfectly done. A big reason is that for so long I was using the wrong technique. For example, I always wrapped potatoes in foil before baking them. That doesn’t bake them — it steams them. Once I read (in a Cooks Illustrated recipe for twice-baked potatoes) that it’s better to rub them with a light coating of vegetable oil and bake them in their jackets, I knew the right technique and the difference was remarkable — the skins crisp and brown, the inside fluffy.
With frying an egg and making an omelet it was both a matter of knowing the right techniques AND practicing those techniques enough to get them down. In particular, I had to learn to: use the right amount of butter or oil; get the pan the right initial temperature; allow for the additional cooking will take place after plating; not be afraid of taking the pan off the heat; season generously but not go overboard; and maneuver the egg (or beaten eggs for an omelet) in the pan.
For so many years I had done these basic cooking tasks without the proper technique. The result had been rubbery eggs, omelets that were more like scrambled egg patties, and baked potatoes that had tough skins and mealy odd-tasting insides.
The analogy to higher ed marketing and public relations should be obvious: the basics are important, but even more important is to know how to execute the basics with the right technique and to get enough practice with the right technique.
And here’s the tricky thing with the right technique: you not only have to know how to do it mechanically, but you also have to understand the philosophies behind it because even though it may outwardly look the same, every time you execute there are small variations in the variables involved that if not accounted for can keep you from the perfect execution.
That’s why even though pitching reporters and bloggers may be one of the basics of media relations, it doesn’t work to blast out the same pitch to every person on the list. If you really want to do it right, you need to account for the extra variables. The same is true for a Twitter account or Facebook page — certain basic best practices are important, but it’s the simple variations in response to your audiences that really make the difference (and I admit that this is not something that I myself have truly mastered — in fact, all too often I find myself lapsing in to the lazy rendition of the basics).
But here’s the thing: once you have mastered the right techniques for the basic tactics/tasks, they become incredibly interesting in the execution because you are attuned to the variations/variables. In addition, they can be safely, productively experimented with. That’s the fun of true craftsmanship.
Yes, I do want a MacBook Air
A couple of months ago I went to the Apple Store at the Mall of America with one purpose in mind: to spend some significant time with the iPad to see if it would be a useful writing device. I typed on it for at least five minutes. I held it in a couple of positions. I typed some more. The verdict: no, it’s not really good for serious, in-the-zone, crank-it-out writing. And no, even with a keyboard, it’s too awkward to use for serious writing sessions.
So I wandered around the store and eventually found myself fondling the MacBook Air on display and hefting it and clacking away on its keyboard and the thought came: this would be the perfect device for writers if it was smaller and cheaper. So what does Apple do today? They come out with a cheaper, lighter MacBook Air.
Of course, I’m not going to actually buy one. But only because I’m a cheap son of a gun. And a lazy writer (outside of work — at work I do just fine with my MacBook Pro). And a short-form writer. And ambivalent about being tied in to Apple’s ecosystem. But if I were serious about cranking out a novel or a screenplay and could come up with the cash? Totally.
Now here’s the thing: I know all about the Apple premium and the underpowered specs and the lack of this and that and the other thing. I get that. I’m rocking Linux on my home box and do my own hardware and software upgrades on it. I run OSX with Parallels and Windows 7 at work on an older MacBook Pro that still has better specs than the new Air models. But if we’re talking about just a machine for writing, for being productive at getting the butt in the chair and the words on the page, all you really need is a document editor, a music player (I’m one of those writers who sometimes likes listening to music while working), and an internet browser (with maybe some light photo editing tossed in and the ability to video chat).
What’s more, what writers really need in a computer is:
- A really good keyboard — I know there are chiclet haters out there, but I test keyboards on laptops whenever I’m in Costco or Best Buy, and the ones on the Apple laptops have good feel and spacing, in my opinion.
- For it to be truly portable — the lighter the better, especially when you are travelling or commuting by public transportation or home early from work or at a coffee shop, etc. Being able to have something there that gets you in to writing mode right away but isn’t a pain to lug around is really helpful. Lately, I’ve been tucking a mini legal pad or two in my messenger bag with an outline pasted to the front page, and it is helping me write more fiction, but the problem there is that I don’t have every project and every draft at hand. There has to be no hesitation about, well, I might have some free time at some point during the day to write, but I don’t really want to drag my laptop around. That’s the case with those that are in the 5-6 pound range. In fact, I have small hands and slim fingers — I’d prefer an even lighter, more compact 10-inch version.
- For it to be durable and solid and aesthetically pleasing — I don’t know about other writers, but with me, an aesthetically pleasing, solid-feeling tool for writing with helps; it’s why good paper and a good pen are a must when writing by longhand.
- For it to have excellent battery life — the Air doesn’t have quite the lengthy between charge times as some netbooks, but 5 hours is enough for most situations.
- For it to come instantly on and do fast, automatic saving and backups — anything that reduces the amount of time between when things start to coalesce and flow in your head and when you are actually typing words on the page is good. In addition, depending on how Lion works, if you could have a writing app that is right there where you last were as soon as you open up the laptop and that autosaves both to local storage and the cloud (maybe via Dropbox), that’d be awesome.
All those attributes fit the MacBook Air. They are why it’s not stupid for some consumers to want one. It’s why it may be worth paying the Apple premium. And it’s why I wish the netbook manufacturers hadn’t gone away from the original SSD devices running Linux. I probably will end up buying a cheap netbook at some point. But I would love for Lenovo and HP to come out with their own netbook/laptop/notebook that is lower-powered, but comes with fast boot times and a slim OS, an SSD, more than 4 hours of battery life, a great keyboard, and a solid but lightweight body. Especially if they can bring it in at $500-600. Heck, drop the SSD to 32 GB if that brings the price way down. All I need to store on it is text/document files and music.
So yes, I do want a MacBook Air. Or something very similar. Because I’m a writer.
Metadata Blues
Why can’t I associate a caption with a .jpg or .png file and have it recognized (and, if appropriate, displayed) no matter what file browser, photo manager, photo editor, layout program or web publishing platform I use and no matter which operating system I use?
How come we still don’t have a standard for e-books and web pages that represents a page-like unit of text so that it’s easier to reference where one is in an electronic text no matter the font size?
Why doesn’t WordPress auto-de-dupe the tags that are only off by a misspelling, shortening of a word, or the use of hyphens?
Why doesn’t every e-mail program (web or client-based) have an option where you can add tags to and file to a folder to an e-mail you are sending right before you hit the send button?
Why are tables of contents in e-books so lame?
Why do content management systems still spit out incomprehensible URLs?
How come stories on newspaper websites don’t thread over time? (or at least: why are the “suggest” or “related” features on newspaper websites so often incomplete or irrelevant?)
How come you don’t get both a “last saved” and a “last edited” timestamp that’s easy to view on all OSes with files of any type that displays in the same way across operating systems?
Why don’t people add metadata to PDF files, like ever? (even people who should know better)
I don’t know for sure. Perhaps it’s that technology, especially search, makes allowances for us. Perhaps it’s that there are no consequences to the lack of speed and piling up of un-indexed or un-easily-searched image files and documents and e-mails. Perhaps metadata doesn’t have the right branding*. Perhaps we simply don’t expect the same sense and consistency across products that we do from, say, prescriptions or ingredients labels. We just don’t have the same expectations for electronic files that we have for physical objects.
Of course, when augmented reality — when the internet of things — really takes off, well, we’re going to be singing the blues with much more feeling if everyday users (and the companies that sell to them) don’t embrace the smart use of metadata.
*Maybe we need a metadata button (like an rss button or the x that means “close this window”) that displays metadata when clicked
Wm’s Twitter stream- morriswm: @tsand Well, yeah. And that's not my college, but still... January 25, 2012
- morriswm: RT @MLAnews: The #MLA opposes the #RWA: http://t.co/OJ6EhLGz January 25, 2012
- morriswm: @tsand While Facebook is free, if they want higher ed to advertised w/them then maybe they should listen to us. January 25, 2012
- morriswm: @Kim_Siever I can understand that. In my ideal world, it's an email pitch w/an attached text file w/details + link to download images. January 24, 2012
- morriswm: @Kim_Siever I suppose it's because some people still feel like it isn't a "real" news release unless it's formatted like that. January 24, 2012
- morriswm: @Kim_Siever I don't get it. This should be basic PR. Only attach things you have to (like photos). Nobody cares about the formatting. January 24, 2012
