Reading Massimo Carlotto’s crime novel The Goodbye Kiss, I was once again reminded how intriguing an unsympathetic main character can be in fiction.

My own novel No-Brainer features a main character some readers find too hard to like. However, I do ascribe to the accepted truism of writing that the reader should care for the main character and preferably like them enough to root for them. I also wrote elsewhere that one of the reasons I don’t like reading books about serial killers is that I don’t want to spend time with sickos.

So why did I enjoy Carlotto’s book so much when the main character is a lying bastard, robber, serial abuser of women and commits a string of murders?

For one thing, he’s not a sicko. He commits these crimes, but unlike the serial killers I detest, he doesn’t derive particular pleasure from doing so. Although he does confess in one place to always having enjoyed murder, that is not the motivation for his actions. He is simply trying to look after number one the best way he knows how. He is callous and cruel, but not sadistic.

The way the book is written, with its incredibly fast pace, is also not indulgent. You never get the feeling that the narrator is enjoying the gore or is hoping that the reader will get kicks from descriptions of violence. The violence happens, matter of factly, and the story moves on.

Massimo Carlotto reminded me of nobody so much as Jim Thompson, whose main characters can also be morally corrupt. Both these authors write lean and mean fiction… and these words are not just chosen because they rhyme. There is a commendable, merciless quality to the writing of both these men.

I read The Goodbye Kiss without as much as a glance at the blurb. I saw the book at a second hand store, liked the look of it and decided to simply open on page one and start reading. It is only afterwards that I read the blurbs and discovered the degree to which Massimo Carlotto’s life story mirrors that of the protagonist in this book. (Presumably the author is not really a murderer, though he did spend five years in prison before his conviction on a murder charge was overturned.)

While Carlotto’s biography can be considered to lend credence to his work, I believe that’s neither here nor there. What you read in the book is the work of someone with a hard-nosed approach that is clearly not put on. (I’m so bored with narrators who pretend to be tough. Isn’t it far more compelling to read stories, especially crime stories, courageous enough to show vulnerability?)

Interestingly, I also recently read two other books where the main character didn’t entirely win my sympathy: John le Carré’s Absolute Friends and James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce.

In Le Carré’s case, the character was a victim of larger forces and should’ve evinced more sympathy. Yet somehow he just never came alive to me, despite all the pages and all the information and everything that was done to him. A spark of life was missing. Brilliant writer though he is, I think Le Carré didn’t quite get this character to come off the page.

The title character of Mildred Pierce was more appealing, at least at first, though her actions made one care about her less as the story progressed. Still, it is a marvellous book and one I can almost not believe has been as successful as it has been. It certainly doesn’t follow the popular pattern. It’s actually an incredibly brave book.

And one cannot consider unsympathetic main characters without a nod to Nabokov, whose works feature a succession of them. In his case, the trick is that you recognise the humanity of these characters. You may not admire them, but you feel you know them and, however begrudgingly, are willing to indulge their weaknesses. And, of course, there’s that Nabokov style to make the reading a pleasure.

Which brings me back to Massimo Carlotto’s book. If the writing is good, then the book is a joy to read. As Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.”

Say Books author Zirk van den Berg’s acclaimed crime novel Nobody Dies will be published in Afrikaans translation in South Africa in 2013.

Nobody Dies was originally published by Random House New Zealand in 2004 and then published as an ebook by Say Books in 2011. On its original publication The New Zealand Herald named it one of the top five thrillers of the year.

Nobody Dies is set in South Africa. It tells the story of a policewoman in charge of the witness protection programme who finds it easier to kill her charges rather than set them up with new lives. As they are between lives while in her care, nobody misses them and her crimes go undiscovered. Then an innocent man enters the programme and forces change.

South African publisher Kwela (part of the country’s premier Afrikaans publishing group, Media24) approached Van Den Berg, proposing an Afrikaans translation of the book. Though Nobody Dies was originally written in English after the author had migrated to New Zealand, Van Den Berg’s first language is Afrikaans and he made his debut writing in the language. He is undertaking the translation himself.

“The translation is surprisingly challenging in parts, especially the more poetic passages,” says Van Den Berg. “One of the real difficulties was translating the title. A direct translation or anything close to it simply didn’t work, so we ended up opting for something completely different.”

The Afrikaans title, ’n Ander Mens, can mean both “another human” and “a different person”, as in someone who has changed.

The book is slated for publication in May. Meanwhile, the original English version is available from Amazon and directly from Say Books.

Visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair this year was special of course because New Zealand was Guest of Honour. I  loved the quiet spaces at the New Zealand Pavilion where dreams of water, myths, stories, and history swirled in sounds of dark and light. (For once, the word ‘twilight’ in a publishing context didn’t conjure up visions of vampires.)

Inside the New Zealand pavilion

My week started with my participation in a panel on The Evolving Role of Readers at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. I am interested in online publishing for books, with a particular interest in using fanfiction as a business model. My fellow panelists were Allen Lau and Amy Martin of the online writing platform, Wattpad, and the moderator was Ami Greko of Kobo. Wattpad is a phenomenal success, with numbers of readers and writers in the millions, and viewing minutes in the billions per month. This is the future of reading (and possibly publishing), most of it on mobile. Even Margaret Atwood is a fan.

That evening, I attended the Official Opening Ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair and I wore my silver fern brooch with such pride. Bill Manhire’s speech was quintessentially ‘Kiwi’ and his easy going, intelligent and kind and generous words resonated with everyone. Bill English and Joy Cowley also gave good speeches, and it really was a good night to be a New Zealander.

I spent one day enjoying the sites of Frankfurt and had the bizarre experience of reading Fifty Shades of Grey (it really was research for our panel) at a café on the river and then visiting the nearby 12^th century Cathedral called the Dom. #wordsfailme #definitionofirony

The Fair itself is larger than one can even begin to imagine, and even though I’d been there last year, I was still amazed.

Just one of the many Halls. Shuttles ferry tired visitors between the Halls

Digital played a much larger role this year, with several stages devoted to discussions of digital publishing of one sort or another, and the StoryDrive Conference was a magnet for many.  I also attended an excellent presentation on Networked Publishing arranged by Helmut von Berg of Klopotek, moderated by David Worlock, with a distinguished panel of speakers (Brian O’Leary, Fionnuala Duggan, Ingrid Goldstein and Christian Dirschl) which looked beyond digital product.

The actual footprint of digital products was still small in comparison to the still almost overwhelming focus on print. In the ebook survey conducted by Bowker (discussed in a keynote at the Tools of Change Conference), New Zealand had one of the lowest uptakes of ebooks, but I imagine our presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the resulting demand for New Zealand titles might well drive quicker exploration of digital in New Zealand too.

The New Zealand stand bustled with activity every time I stopped by. It seemed everyone at the fair was interested in New Zealand as a whole, not just in its publishing. We are so far away from nearly anywhere else, that it seems almost a mystical place to many people.

It was truly a memorable  experience to be at the Fair this year. And congratulations to all who were involved in creating the wonderfully creative and wide-ranging representation of New Zealand culture.

Home sweet home

Digital publishing moves quickly, and a while back, I wanted to see all the posts I’d written over the past year or so to see how they held up [pretty well I think, she says modestly] and it was easy enough to do, but not as easy as it might have been.

And then I thought of Pressbooks and also thought it might be nice to have all my posts available in one easy-to-read place. So I’ve compiled them into a [free] online book here Musings on Digital (thanks Pressbooks).

I’ll update it as I write new blogs.

Anna

First of all, let me say I am SO delighted to be going to Frankfurt when New Zealand is the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair!

In finalising things before leaving for the Tools of Change Conference and the Fair, I have been pondering again my dual working life (explored fully in my last post).

I have a foot in both the Tech and the Publishing businesses. Working at a software company keeps me on my toes and reminds me that no matter how much I’ve achieved in the past or how well I’ve done academically, there is always more to learn. I’m not yet fluent in the language of SQL servers, networks, and computer infrastructure, but I can hold a decent conversation. I’ve also learned just how important communication and tacit knowledge is. What people take for granted is often the thing that is the hardest to explain: it’s so ‘known’ that the words are not there. It’s been fascinating to see the theory of Knowledge Management (a postgraduate paper I did last year), borne out. And I am only fully aware of this in this environment because I’ve come from the outside in. I’m no longer the one with all the knowledge.

The proverbial other side of the coin is why it is precisely those from outside an industry who may see the opportunities. We know that the tech startups have much to offer the Publishing industry. However, it’s not just because of their tech skills, but because they are outsiders, with new perspectives. I explore some of this ‘rewriting of narratives’ in an article just published in Publishing Perspectives called ‘Why Fanfics are like Startups‘.

All my new and my own tacit knowledge come together here at Say Books, where I explore my passion for online publishing, and can establish close relationships with authors and readers. I love one on one conversations (Susan Cain, yes!). Of course in the Castle fandom, and with people who share my enthusiasm for publishing, I can be mistaken for an especially outgoing extrovert!

Hello, Frankfurt!

Or ‘Anna ruminates (endlessly) about who she is in an online world and how to deal with multiple online identities’

I have a relatively complicated, online life, which goes counter to my recommendations for integrated digital strategy! But what I’ve realised, is that this ‘messiness’ is also a reflection of human reality, where subjectivity is neither clear cut nor perfectly integrated.

Bear with me …

Working life

Say Books

For most of last year, I was a Postgraduate student of Business and Administration (Bus Info Systems), and in mid-year co-founded Say Books, our digital publishing consultancy and now also publishing company. This is where my interest in ‘book’ publishing is invested, where I experiment with new business models based on the premise that online is (nearly) everything, and where I blog about digital publishing. It is the account I use to tweet about digital publishing (@saybooks), and the ID I used for posting on LinkedIn in early 2011. It is in this role that I present at publishers’ conferences (Publishers’ Forum, Berlin, O’Reilly’s Tools of Change Conference, Frankfurt in 2011, 2012), and write articles (see Publishing Perspectives here and here).

Author-it Software Corporation

My interest in digital publishing is complemented by my other work, but is separate from it. In September last year, I started working as a Consultant/Project Manager for Author-it Software Corporation, the innovative company in the enterprise content authoring, managing and publishing space. Ever a devotee of content management and technology for publishing, I was immediately attracted to their slogan when someone referred to them in a LinkedIn discussion: One Source. One Solution, and sought them out. It is wonderful working in an environment where innovative thinking, content management and technology is part of the very fibre of the company. (I don’t tweet about Author-it from my @saybooks account because my affiliation with Author-it is not transparent there, and I like to be scrupulous about disclosure.)

Geeking out on Twitter

Another part of my life is devoted to following popular culture and in particular the TV Show, Castle. I tweet about Castle with other die-hard Castle fans using a pseudonym, as do many fans.  Now however, my two Twitter worlds are beginning to merge because my interest in Castle has led me to fanfiction and publishing (see the Publishing Perspectives article). Because of my interest in this, some people now follow me on both my Say Books and my Castle accounts and don’t initially realise I am one and the same person, so I tell these followers about my ‘dual identities’.

Twitter personas

What I’ve found interesting is that I’ve realised I interact completely differently when using my Castle Twitter persona than I do as @saybooks. As @saybooks, I am reserved, tend to post without too much comment, don’t start up conversations with people I follow but am very happy to chat to people who approach me. My Castle Twitter ID brings out my playful side which in real life manifests most when I’m talking to someone who shares a particular interest of mine (my interests are rather eclectic). I can see though that from a business social media perspective, my Castle Twitter persona is, ironically, more suited to building a social media presence than is my Say Books persona.

Thinking a lot (too much?)

Then I start wondering whether I should have these two identities or not.

Would people who follow me on Say Books appreciate all my Castle-related tweeting; probably not! Would they judge me for my fangirling? Possibly.

And perhaps people in the fanfic world who are currently unaware of my fangirl authenticity in the Castle fandom may see me as a cynical business person coming to exploit them, rather than as a fellow fan who appreciates their writing and would like to both support their original writing, and make a business from it.

Then I think, if my interest in publishing is largely around online possibilities, communities of interest and using fanfiction as a model, wouldn’t it make sense to fangirl and show my genuine interest about all this on my Say Books account?

And so I go round and round in circles.

LinkedIn (still thinking too much)

Then there is LinkedIn.  In the first part of last year, I was an avid contributor on LinkedIn book publishing-related forums. Most of my posts were Manager’s Choices at one time or another, probably because I had an interest in both technology and the editorial side of book publishing, which at that time was an unusual combination in Publishing. People tended either to be technical or artistic. I’m ever a mix of left and right brained (an aptitude test many years ago recommended I be an architect).

Once I joined Author-it my position at Author-it became my professional public identity on LinkedIn, but I wouldn’t be representing Author-it when talking about Publishing. I wasn’t sure how to resolve this dichotomy between my public LinkedIn profile and my posting profile. Ideally, I’d really like to have two separate LinkedIn accounts (which isn’t possible), but then I’d encounter the same problems as those in my separate Twitter accounts. And also of course, the fact that I work at an innovative software company specialising in content management, technology and single-source publishing for global markets does inform my comments about book publishing.

After much thinking …

So after all this ruminating I have decided to do the following.

1. Consider making ‘Say Books’ my top level ‘affiliation’ on LinkedIn for the time being so that my LinkedIn identity more closely represents my affiliation when participating in book publishing discussions (and disclosing my affiliation with Author-it when relevant to the discussion).

2. Add a bit more of my ‘Castle fan’ persona to my Say Books tweets.

3. Reveal my Castle fan Twitter ID to a few more people, and maybe one day just make it my personal account with my name.

In the meantime, if you are a publishing person who also follows Castle, and want to know who I am on Twitter in my Castle fan (dis)guise, just DM me @saybooks or email me.

And Nathan Fillion, feel free to contact me any time, even in person. I’m generous like that.

The chapters have been written, all have been uploaded, and Fences, our first online subscription novel, is now published and available as an ebook (on Amazon, AllRomance, Kobo and our website).

What did we learn?

We learnt that experimenting is great fun, a lot of work, more time consuming than we’d imagined, and that people are generous and supportive (there’s always an exception).

We used Pressbooks™ because it is a simple web-based book production system for presenting long-form narrative online, has a commenting system, has the facility to sign up subscribers, and produces valid epubs. These points were key. Although Pressbooks isn’t currently set up for the subscription model I wanted, the basic infrastructure gave me sufficient leeway to create an ecommerce model that would work for us. Hugh McGuire was, as always, at the ready to help out with tech issues to do with activating subscribers (an area outside of our direct control, and handled by Pressbooks).

The other important part was that because this was our own publishing venture, I was free to experiment. The only guarantees we needed in order to proceed were that we could deliver what we promised and that payments were secure. A few subscribers had hiccups related to receiving activation emails for the subscriber site, and some struggled with downloading the final zipped ebook files, but in general things worked pretty seamlessly, with the ecommerce part working perfectly. I’ve become friends with quite a few subscribers in the process too.

The other key was to have an author who not only understands the online world, but for whom writing online to an actively participating audience is the norm. We were thus very fortunate to have Laura Bontrager writing for us. She is a very good writer, widely read, an extremely warm-hearted person, very respectful towards all the subscribers, and much loved by her fans.

The numbers

Almost half of the subscribers donated more than the $5 required to receive an ebook in the end, many of those donated double than that, and only a handful of people donated less than $2. Most subscribers seemed to like the idea of supporting a writer’s work and efforts, and really did embrace the idea of being a patron of the arts. Let me also make clear that for this particular project, Laura is earning the lion’s share. We will revisit the contract for Laura’s next book, but our intention is always to treat our partnership with our authors as exactly that: a collaborative effort with the royalty reflecting that.

It was great having access to Google Analytics for the various sites (including our own website) and that gave us a good indication of interest. Clearly there was a spike on the first day, and until Google blocked our bulk emails, we got a similar spike every day when we emailed the update regarding the latest chapter. (We will be using something like MailChimp for bulk emails next time.) We got similar traction with our daily reminder tweet. (I’m not sure how our usual followers felt about these tweets as they are used to getting tweets from us about digital publishing.)

What’s next

We will be meeting with Hugh to discuss everything in more detail and to see how we can work together to ensure a seamless subscription service, particularly regarding activation of subscribers. We’ll also simplify things for ourselves in terms of maintaining the Pressbooks sites, and we’ll probably continue with the same ecommerce system, which worked well.

While we assume that most readers buying the files from our website (which provides Laura and us with greater revenue) will have the technical nous to install the relevant ereading apps etc, we may need to provide some generic instructions for subscribers about downloading files to the different platforms, how to install Kindle and iBook apps, ADE, etc.

We’ll also look at ways we can engage with our readers even more.

It has been a great couple of months, we’ve had a ball, and I can’t thank Laura, the subscribers, all our readers, and Hugh, enough. We’ll keep the subscriber site open for a while to new readers. Existing subscribers will continue to have access to it for the foreseeable future.

Here is a link to a flash file of the improvised (you’ll see what I mean) musical version of Improvising Madly: Jazz, Agile workflows and Integrated Digital Strategy, the presentation I gave with Brian O’Leary at the recent Publisher’s Forum in Berlin. The music is ‘Take the A Train’, played by the great Duke Ellington and his band.

The presentation illustrates some of the points I made in my article, Let’s Improvise!, published in Publishing Perspectives.

Anna

I attended the recent Publishers’ Forum in Berlin for the first time this year.

axica conference and convention centre, designed by Frank Gehry

I was impressed with how the presentations intelligently intersected in interesting and relevant ways. The sense at the end of the two days was of a dynamic network of intelligent content, created by people with vision and energy.

Helmut von Berg of Klopotek was an indefatigable host and organiser and was as passionate about the subject as any of the speakers. It is commitment of this sort that will lead the way.

Brian O’Leary’s keynote address ‘Context First Revisited’ was as relevant today as when he first presented it in 2010, although now the word ‘container’ is simply a term we all use when talking about books. That his terminology has become part of the currency of digital publishing demonstrates how important his insights were and still are for us all.

All the sessions I attended were worthwhile and had something to offer. (As an English speaker, the German sessions were not an option, but looked very good too.) One of the English sessions that made a particular impression on me was that by Gregor Wolf and Christian Kohl, ‘Integrating deGruyter.com e-commerce with the back office software’. This is a side of publishing that most prefer not to think about; social media for instance is so much more exciting to talk about (and yes, as important). But it is precisely this kind of work behind the scenes that is crucial to the success of digital publishing. The presentation was focused, to the point, and the system they described seemed deceptively simple: a mark of true elegance, thorough analysis and hard work.

I want to thank my co-presenters, Ingrid Goldstein, and Brian O’Leary, who are both a joy to work with. I was privileged to have had this opportunity to present with them.

This conference gave me renewed confidence in the future of ‘book’ publishing, whatever the ‘book’ may look like.

Note: This post also appears on the Forum website.

Fences, the debut novel by popular fanfiction author Laura Bontrager, will be the first novel on the PressBooks™ platform to be serialized for online reading on a subscription basis.

Laura’s readers are used to reading her fanfiction online, with new instalments appearing regularly. We’re going to continue in the same vein, making her novel available to readers in daily instalments over the course of a month or so.

We love using PressBooks for ebook production and jumped at the opportunity to also use it as a reader interface and an online reading platform for subscribers.

Commenting on the initiative, PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire said, “It’s been great to have creative publishers like Say Books thinking of new ways to use PressBooks. There are so many possibilities as we start to better understand digital book publishing, and in the end publishers like Say Books will drive innovation.”

How it works is that the first chapter is freely available to everyone – visit http://fences1saybooks.pressbooks.com/. At the end of the chapter, readers are invited to subscribe to gain access to further chapters as they are released online. Becoming a subscriber entails paying an amount of their choosing via a link to PayPal. They are then given access to the Fences subscriber website on PressBooks, where a new chapter of the book will be uploaded daily, starting on 12 April 2012. Any subscriber who pays $5 or more is also eligible for a copy of the eBook when it’s complete.

Readers are welcome to comment at the end of each chapter, creating the opportunity for interaction with Laura and some interactive development of the text.

At the end of the process, the book will be published as an eBook, sold via estores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. It will also be available directly from this site.

Fences tells the story of Emma Fox, a sculptor from San Francisco who travels to Tennessee at the invitation of the grandfather she has never met. She doesn’t like him much, but as for his farm manager… Emma discovers that falling in love is the easy part – staying there is the adventure.