4

Pharmacy Clonazepam

30/03/09

It would appear that I will be part of a panel discussion at the London International Book Fair.


The discussion Pharmacy Clonazepam,  - or at least, my bit of it - will be about digital self-promotion.

[Edit: the title of the seminar is Online Publicity: Making the Most of Digital Media, and the brief is as follows:

Traditional outlets for book publicity are changing, and as they narrow in both scope and numberthe role of the digital media is infinitely increasing. This seminar will give an overview of the recent changes, ordering Clonazepam no rx, current challenges and future possibilities of the ever-evolving digital world. It aims to deliver insight and advice on how to make the digital media an essential, integral part of every publicity campaign.]

I feel entirely fraudulent talking about this, Billiga Clonazepam apotek, in the first place because I am a neophyte on that score, a tadpole, a barenekkid internet starter baby; in the second, because I don't really see all this as self-promotion. I mean, order Clonazepam online cheap, sure, I want you all to rush out and buy everything I write, and vote for me at the BSFA Awards, Ordering Clonazepam online, and hang with limpid eyes and perky ears upon my every utterance, however meagre. 

However.

That's not what this is (primarily) about, pharmacy Clonazepam. This blog is where I get to mouth off about stuff I care about or which amuses me, and I know that a few people will read it and agree or disagree or find it funny or what have you, and maybe we'll get into a conversation, buy Clonazepam cheap. Maybe one day, if I am good, it will be like Scalzi's, Alaska AK , and I will need a Mallet of Correction and a dedicated server. Or maybe it won't.

And that, I think, is the most important thing I'm going to say at this panel discussion:

The Internet Is Not A Broadcast Medium.

A lot of author websites and suchlike are flat, buy Clonazepam without prescription. Pharmacy Clonazepam, They show you a pretty picture of a book, they tell you where an author is signing, and that is all they do. Many of them feel like a digital version of the adverts you see on the underground, or TV commercials.

That isn't what this here internet malarky is, Acquistare online Clonazepam, folks.

Social media are not ways in which you, the author or the publisher, beam information into the malleable brains of the general public and trigger a reflexive BUY response.

Although, Clonazepam farmacia a buon mercato, just in case: BUY THIS BOOK. And what the hell, BUY THIS ONE TOO, because I'm enjoying it.., pharmacy Clonazepam. (God, I hope that doesn't work, Cheap Clonazepam, or I'm going to look like an idiot at this panel thing...)

Social media are about connection. They are about actually being there. For example, take Twitter...

Twitter Is Not A Microblog.

The whole thing in The Times about narcissism and such - it's based on a misunderstanding, Clonazepam prices. Pharmacy Clonazepam, Yes, sure, there are no doubt a hundred celebrities out there (who, by the way, don't get it) laying out updates to a hundred thousand followers and paying little or no attention to the people who read them. That's not what Twitter is. 

Twitter is like a vast, unruly pub discussion with some of the most interesting people on Earth. You get to choose who you want to sit next to - though so do they, Acheter Clonazepam discount, so you won't always be able to persuade them to talk to you. I love Twitter. It's speed-dating for the brain. 

If you treat it as nothing more than an opportunity to sell, you're doomed. And you damn well should be, too, pharmacy Clonazepam.

It's all about the dialogue.

Here's an interesting notion I won't get to touch on at the panel discussion unless something insane happens and we're all trapped in a time-loop for a month and get so bored we decide to talk about the intricacies of the Reader-Writer relationship at a theoretical level - which is frankly unlikely, where to buy Clonazepam.

Look: a piece of written work is a dialogue. It appears to be the writer talking and the reader listening, but it isn't. Goedkope Clonazepam apotheek, The reader interrogates the text, demands answers, ponders it, enlivens it, collaborates with it, buy generic Clonazepam. Pharmacy Clonazepam, And just because the writer's part of the dialogue comes before that doesn't mean the writer isn't responding to those questions - because the writer spends a lot of time in the first place trying to generate those questions and then answer them. The dialogue between the two of them is dislocated, disjuncted in time, but it may be better than a face-to-face dialogue between people who aren't really listening to one another. Connecticut CT Conn. , It's a dialogue which stays within very specific boundaries, but it's not an illusion. Many of the people coming to find you on the internet just want to continue that dialogue - be it through more fiction or through contact.

So: get stuck in. 

The people who have a serious internet following are people who use the internet as part of their lives, who interact with others as equals, generic Clonazepam, and who genuinely put something of themselves online, be it more of what originally brought browsers to the site - writing, photography, Osta Clonazepam online, music, video - or a real sense of themselves.

Some things I'd like to try:

Crowd-sourcing my blurb.

Blurbs - the mini-synopses on the back of a book - are infuriating, pharmacy Clonazepam. At least, when I'm buying a book to read, they infuriate me, Clonazepam pharmacy. They're never quite right, they always sound forced. The process of writing one for the hardbacks of The Gone-Away World was really tricky. Order Clonazepam online, What did people need to know, what did they need not to know. Pharmacy Clonazepam, What would make them want the book. Even more important, perhaps - what might put them off.

We had some endless discussions about that last one, ordering Clonazepam overnight delivery. Mimes, politics, and love were all proposed as sales-killers at one time or another by someone. Buy Clonazepam online, So I'd really like to see what would come back if we kicked it out into the world and said: "Okay. What was the book you read about, pharmacy Clonazepam. What was the good stuff. (No spoilers!)"

If the art departments at Knopf and Heinemann weren't so damn awesome, I'd even be interested to do the same with jacket design.

But maybe we should let a smart crowd pick the most appealing of the designs the art departments come up with, purchase Clonazepam. Or maybe if TGAW gets reprinted in a new edition down the line, we could look at actually letting the cloud come up with stuff.

Publishing short stories in eBook formats. Pharmacy Clonazepam, Self-explanatory, this one. DRM-free, Arkansas AR Ark. , obviously. If you want a commercial reason: advertising, teaser, taster, and gateway drug, Clonazepam online cheap. But also just because it's neighbourly and because I want to share.

And when you've talked about all this, realise you're being hopelessly conservative... what about... tagging the world using Fire Eagle.

You know what I wonder?

How many people in my thing at the LIBF will have seen this post...

_________________________________________________

Things I looked at while I was thinking all this:

Good & Bad Kinds of Crowds

Twitterprompter

Celebs who get Twitter (and those who don't)

Fire Eagle.

Similar posts: Ordering Tafil-Xanor no prescription. Cheap Alprazolam online cheap. Tafil-Xanor prices. Virginia VA Va. . Buy cheap Alprazolam online.
Trackbacks from: Pharmacy Clonazepam. Pharmacy Clonazepam. Pharmacy Clonazepam. Massachusetts MA Mass. . Ordering Clonazepam online cheap.

4 Comments to “Pharmacy Clonazepam”

  • Gary Gibson said on March 31st, 2009:

    Maybe not a reflexive ‘buy now’ response, but certainly a ‘check it out and add to Amazon wishlist because it sounds interesting’ response, which is what happened when I followed the link to Doomsday Men. It does look rather good.

  • Matt H said on March 31st, 2009:

    I hit the blurb issue when writing myself.

    Perhaps it is because it is such an unnaturally forced step in the process of getting ideas out of heads and onto mediums.
    I have written many things, yet never has an essay called for a blurb or a journal entry required a quick summation.

    It is possible that all we need to do is practise some blurbing in our everyday lives.

    “I would like a large mochachino please.”
    “That will be four dollars.”
    “The man who bought a beverage.”
    “What?”
    “Just blurbing.”
    “Fair enough… A normal day at a mundane job until… someone came in who changed his life… with a simple verb”
    “You used too many dot dot dots there.”
    “I know. But at least practise makes perfect!”
    “You used the verb form of ‘practice’ when you meant the noun.”

    I looked for your book in stores based on a review I read, and then bought your book based on reading the first few paragraphs. A blurb is made terrible by the fact that it is fretted over so much and needs to be run past publishers and publicists and public test-audiences [or so I assume]. It doesn’t tell you whether or not someone’s writing will make your eyes commit harikari [using tiny little samurai swords fashioned out of eyelashes and tears].

    I find blurbs are kind of fun to read *after* you read the book, then you can go “Oh. Yeah. While I disagree with that summary, I suppose it could be about that. Isn’t it weird how people can think different things about a subject matter.” And you can also laugh at the ridiculous amount of adverbs.

    And then you can feel alright with the world.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    In this comment to Nick’s blog, Matt has cleverly interwoven a hypothetical and quite hilarious conversation into some touching personal moments as well as a revolutionarily, arbitrarily abstract idea in order to create a perfect piece that argues an argument of some kind and he does it well too…

  • Nick Harkaway said on March 31st, 2009:

    *chortling*

    So, drawing the sense from the, er, other stuff…

    (In this reply to Matt’s self-referential comment, Harkaway retains the sense of Ludus so deftly employed by his interlocutor…)

    This whole auto-blurbing thing has to stop.

    Drawing the sense from the other stuff:

    This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Maybe there’s just no point having a mini-synopsis. Maybe we’re wrong about what people use them for.

    And yes, you’d think they’d be audience-tested, but as far as I know, they’re not. I’m reasonably comfortable with that, because sooner or later someone’s going to suggest that books should themselves be audience-tested, the way films are, and then there’s going to be discussions like “well, the book comes out well over all, but the middle chapters test slow and the ending doesn’t bite with 18-24 year olds, so we think it needs re-working…”

    Which is exactly the kind of crap I do not want to have to deal with.

    On the other hand, it wouldn’t be awful to know which demographic responds in what way to a given book or segment of a book. It’s just the idea of writing directly to the test I have trouble with, because a) people reading in order to assess read in a different way from everyone else and b) not everyone who has an opinion about why the did or did not like something is right, or right about what would make the experience better for them. I might blog about that some time, but for the moment: it’s like giving someone the cheat codes to a video game. The difficulty is the fun…

  • Matt Keefe said on March 31st, 2009:

    I think the basic premise of blurbs probably is flawed, yes.

    I’ve written various forms of blurb and I’ve come to the conclusion there’s essentially three kind of information a blurb is likely to include: 1) a summary of the story, 2) some idea of who it’s likely to appeal to, and 3) an attestation of the thing’s quality.

    The thing is, these don’t tend to appear in any particular order or with any real understanding of the different function each fulfils. The effort also tends to be duplicated – likely appeal is encapsulated not only in the blurb but also in any genre labelling the book may carry, the place it ends up in the bookshop and any quotes on the cover comparing it to other books and authors. The quality of the book is also usually attested by cover quotes but the blurb seldom escapes without a few adverbs stressing the point. It all begs the question of what is the blurb there to do, and if the blurb is intended to do all these things, then what are the cover quotes doing there? And so on, and so on…

    I think the short answer is that all three of these things are useful in selling a book and making sure it finds its way to appreciate readers, but which of them actually need to be on the book – and how they’re best put there if so – is an open question. I’ve just been sent a book to review which is the first one I can recall seeing that has a quote on the spine of the book, as well as on the front and back covers. I imagine the logic behind it is that it can be seen when the book is stored conventionally on a shelf, and not commanding space to show off its front cover, but I’d say it’s equally true that such things are heaped onto the covers of books in as large a quantity as possible much more than they’re the product of any real subtle understanding of what blurbs, quotes, and indeed covers and titles, are there to achieve.

    Is it really the summary of the story that convinces a potential reader this book is for them, or is it actually the book’s apparent style which wins them over? Are the overt stylings of genre enough on their own? For many, I suspect they are. Many synopses are terribly confused in any case – is the blurb intended to be a description of the themes, a quick teaser of the central concept or premise, or a rough outline of the whole story? All three are used, often intermingled with forgettable results. I think the whole thing needs a lot of whittling down.

    I am currently writing a novel for which I have included an epigraph. It simply says:

    “When the First Man was created, he turned out to be evil; so Nzambi buried him and made a new one in his place.”
    - Bakongo creation myth

    I’d wager that, with a suitable cover, that and the book’s title would be more than enough to draw in the right kind of reader – that’s the point, because that’s essentially what I’m using the epigraph for within the narrative; as a hook. (I realise, of course, I’ve just publicly divulged my wondrous sell-a-million opening epigraph, but I think it’s worth it by way of illustration.) I don’t think the understanding of the blurb’s purpose is as clear in the mind of the publisher as any given plot element’s purpose is in the mind of the author. I think there’s a bewildering array of factors which influence a book’s success, its potential appeal and breadth of audience, and overwhelmed by this the poor old blurbists really try to cover as many bases as they can: blandly, in most cases.

Add your comment: