There were two sessions that were pretty closely related as they turned out, The first was "Did the Future Just Arrive: The E-book and the Publishing Industry", followed by "The Writer and the Audience: Online Interaction and Public Personae". First ebooks:

Did the Future Just Arrive: The E-book and the Publishing Industry

Panel members: Cory Doctorow, Kate Eltham, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Alisa Krasnostein

E-books have been promising a lot, and indeed were being talked about as being the future more than a decade ago, yet still we have a situation where the e-book is seen in a confusing spectrum of lights from the brave new world to the end of civilisation. There have been a lot of false starts that have further put the e-book into the "too hard" basket of some. The panelists try and look beyond the hype and see where the e-book fits and what it means to modern publishing.

The discussion started with Cory suggesting that from his perspective it seemed that the big publishing houses were not taking small experiments and trying to learn how the audience would react but instead appeared to be looking at the problem as being able to provide the full answer up front, in such a way as they have everything covered and to try not to upset the status quo. This position seemed at odds with Cory's experiences on the internet where fast response to feedback gets you a lot further down the acceptance track than thinking you know what people will want at the start.

While some publishing ventures have been able to see e-books as starting to fill the gap in revenue created by the global financial crisis too many of them have been shopping out the production of the e-book to people who have done a quick-and-dirty job resulting in average to poor quality that has harmed the user experience and hence the uptake.

Some discussion took place over what the product was in the case of e-book, was it in fact a repackaged print version or were consumers expecting something more? There are benefits to e-books, like information density, searchability and the like, but are these in fact enough on their own to entice people? One thought was that setting the price point for e-books at a lower point than traditional printed books may well see the rise of short stories, analogous to the iTunes phenomenon of cheap songs, and you build out your own collection.

Many publishers now are sinking money into e-books to see where they will go, even though there is no obvious revenue stream. Some expectations are that the new technology will offer up new ways of presenting material that will provide a richer experience. Perhaps not the "director's cut" or commentary tracks on DVDs, but limited hyperlinking, related information, background information, etc. could in fact make sense.

The situation was likened to the early days of the web where a lot of stuff was tried that never made it mainstream (like VRML) and the early sites were a world apart from what is available now.

An interesting anecdote was that the "Enhanced Edition" of Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Monro was more interesting because of the data that was able to be collected about reader behaviour than any revenue that came from it. Using the app, it was possible to find out when people read it, where, and even down to if they skipped parts or spent more time on some pages than others. This sort of instrumentation is of enormous value to a publisher and even to an author, but it could be a two edged sword as readers may not want to give up rights to privacy for the sake of a more convenient format.

Even with the rise of DRM this itself has created opportunities with the prime example being Cory Doctorow's use of DRM free versions which has allowed him to get new readership.

Small publishers are engaging in small test projects with the representative on the panel finding that completely online failed. There needed to be both electronic and physical forms. One thing that is seen as promising though is to get around the tyranny of postage, potentially increasing overseas readers.

This led to a discussion on the territorial model of publishing, and how audio books can suffer from stupidity in the regard with a user purchasing a title and getting all the way to the checkout before being told they cannot download the book. If nothing else is accomplished the breakdown of territorial rights would be a good thing for both the author and the reader.

Richard Nash was quoted as saying that the 20th century for books was solving the problem of supply, while the 21st century needs to solve the problem of demand. Currently traditional publishers have a single product at a single price point, perhaps they should be looking at a range of products across a range of price points starting from $0.

The concept of Fan Fiction then came into the discussion, and how fan fiction really is a response to the characters now living in your readers heads and wanting to continue on that existence. FanFic is often seen as a negative, but with the right mindset could become a positive interaction between author and fan.

An example of a publisher that is doing things right was O'Reilly - the technical book publisher with their Safari Books Online service. One of the things they do is to test the waters and react, building out features as required and this is a key point. Publishing houses will continue to exist, and continue to have a similar number of staff, but some of those staff roles will be different and it is likely that some of them will be coders.

The Writer and the Audience: Online Interaction and Public Personae

Panel: John Berlyne, Peter V Brett, Cory Doctorow, Mur Lafferty, Howard Tayler.

This was an interesting discussion about the role of social media in the life of an author, and the role of the publisher in that interaction.

It was interesting that John Berlyne, an agent, would always Google a prospective author before taking them on and his advice was to ensure you have a footprint. Howard reiterated this suggesting the most important thing was to try and grab a domain name that is your brand even if you just park it or get a friend to put up a simple page linking to social networks. This results in publishers seeing less work they have to do, so making yourself more attractive.

The discussion ranged over what role the publisher has in all of this with those on the publishing side suggesting that the author would do well to use the new technology to sell themselves while those on the creative side suggesting that the author should be able to stick to what they know and look to a publisher to help with the mechanics of publicising the work. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as the tools have become easier to work with over time and the author can take an active part in their own success.

The question though came down to what if anything the publishers can actually help with, given that they quite often don't understand the technology or the mores associated with social networking and stuff it up. They should be doing better, and the general consensus was that they are the right people to do this for the author.

The concept of privacy and a work/private life divide were also discussed with again the agent suggesting that the blog should be just about the work, while the artists countered that this ends up just being spam and can alienate a potential audience. So private details do get into blogs and this creates problems of its own - how much do you reveal, how can you keep some things back. The real problem here is that the larger your audience becomes the statistics mean that you are likely to get your share of nutters, and this can be truly scary.

Mur then asked "this stuff is fun, what happens when you want to talk about stuff (political, personal), do you create another persona or just shut up?"

Howard related the story that at one convention he was at he saw photos of himself as a fat slob in Hawaiian shirt and shorts. He decided he needed a change of wardrobe and to lose weight and made it a business priority. So for him the things he liked doing (eating the wrong foods and lazing around) had to stop as they didn't help his public persona.

John asserted it was the writer's choice. If your main impetus is to raise interest in your novels, perhaps you should be using your blog to market your work and not yourself. John's partner (an editor) has a personal page and a work page - keeping them separate. If you are a public persona then you may have a more difficult choice.

Peter failed initially to separate personae on social media, making it difficult to change. He worries he has set himself up for no privacy, and it may be too late to do anything about it. Peter does introduce some personal elements if he sees it as entertaining or relevant.

Cory has had a high online profile for a decade. His point is that if you talk about your work you inevitably reveal some of yourself, so you can never really have a brochure-ware site. Art is personal. Even writing just brochures, as a person you end up writing personal stuff. He did provide a counter example of Neil Stephenson who in a form email response tells readers that reading him you go on an adventure with him, he didn't go on it with you. "I'm writing this book ..." almost demands that personal information follows. Cory keeps personal and public as separate as possible, although it is inevitable that it will leak. One thing he does do is turn off any location revealing data and only uploads photos a few days after returning from a trip.

The question was then posed about podcasting and how it is a more identifiable and personal medium and how that affects the relationship with your audience. With a few amusing anecdotes the conclusion appeared to be that it was nice to be recognised, if a little scary at first. The biggest problem though is that the audience think they know you, even though you don't know them.

The final word goes to John when asked what the minimum level of social media is required of an author. Paraphrasing he said "There is no rule that says it is all or nothing. These are tools that work for you, you don't work for the tools. Find your comfort zone, but it is important to have a presence. If it becomes a chore, then it is not worth doing."