Lying to Your Users

I've heard from several in my Facebook circle about how much we all hate how many ads we are seeing on the site these days, especially in the mobile apps.

I started wondering why ads on Facebook frustrate people, when ads in traditional media, if not accepted exactly, are at least tolerated. But I think the answer goes something like this: Facebook lied to us.

In The Social Network, the de facto canonical history of Facebook's founding, advertising is mentioned in the early days, but is jettisoned because it "isn't cool." And Facebook being "cool" was a key element of its meteoric rise. So users of Facebook thought they were dealing with one kind of company (a non-advertising company), but they weren't. What's more, Facebook knew that not having advertising made the company more attractive, and to gain users, they held off on having ads.

That's not to say that Facebook is wrong to have ads now, but it got me thinking about all of these sites and services we use that don't have stated business models. How many of them are lying to us, in the form of running on investment money and having their business look fundamentally different than they eventually will?

When Book Riot went live in October of 2011, we didn't really have much in the way of advertising in place, but we knew that it was going to be how we supported the site. Rather than keep ads off the site, we went ahead and put our ad slots up there, even though they weren't making us much, because we wanted to be clear about what the site was and what it was going to be.

As a result, we've never had one complaint (to my knowledge) that there are ads on Book Riot. Maybe it's cost us readers (though I doubt it), but I'd rather never earn a reader than fool them into reading.

Passing the Torch (Should Someone Want to Take It)

BEA is fast approaching, and I've been asked a couple of times if there will be a Book Blogger Uncon again this year.

After thinking about it for awhile, here is my answer:

Maybe, but I won't be running it.

There are a few reasons for this.

First and foremost, I don't have the time and energy to do it well. (Second kid coming, teaching, Book Riot, etc).

Second, I'm not (and haven't been for awhile I suppose) deeply embedded in the book blogger community, and while I read blogs regularly, I don't think I have quite the pulse of the current state of things to shape a good Uncon.

Third, as I unfortunately predicted last year (and which led directly to the development of the 2012 Uncon), the official Book Blogger Convention didn't seem to be particularly well-received. However, the organizers appear to understand that things need to change if they want the event to be attractive to bloggers. This by no means guarantees that this year's version will be better, but it does decrease my interest in providing an alternative. 

This, however, does not at all mean that I think a Book Blogger Uncon is a bad idea this year; all it means is that I myself don't have the motivation to put it together. Someone who has the time and excitement to spearhead a 2013 (or thereafter) convention will do marvelously.

If you are that person and I can be of any assistance, please don't hesitate to get in touch (Twitter is best: @readingape). Be warned; there is no official torch to pass, so you (or you and small group of organizers) will have to build it, though I'd be happy to send an email to the people that expressed interest in last year's Uncon once you've got a tentative time and place.

A Portrait is a Portrait

Gertude Stein posing next to Picasso's portrait of her. Fantastic.

Post-Facto Ethics

The Atlantic issues formal guidelines in response to its Scientology disaster:

Although The Atlantic will evaluate whether to work with advertisers on a case-by-case basis, some examples of advertising The Atlantic will not accept are the following:  

• Advertising that The Atlantic believes, in its opinion, is indecent, vulgar, suggestive, profane, or offensive.   Advertising for illegal products or services, including drugs, illegal substances, or any related products or services.  
• Advertising that The Atlantic believes includes hateful or violent text advocating against any individual, group, or organization. 
• Advertising that The Atlantic determines to be inflammatory. 
• Advertising that The Atlantic determines represents a personal attack against an individual, country, or organization.
• Advertising that The Atlantic believes will undermine the intellectual integrity, authority, and character of its mission and brand.

Translation: We're going to try not be complete idiots in the future.

Is App Censoring the New Book Banning?

At TechCrunch, Apple bans app for making it "too easy" to search for new photos:

The Apple reviewer told the company that the update couldn’t be approved because it allowed users to search for nude photos in the app. This is correct to some extent, but 500px had actually made it tough to do so, explains Tchebotarev. New users couldn’t just launch the app and locate the nude images, he says, the way you can today on other social photo-sharing services like Instagram or Tumblr, for instance. Instead, the app defaulted to a “safe search” mode where these types of photos were hidden. To shut off safe search, 500px actually required its users to visit their desktop website and make an explicit change.

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The battleground over censoring ideas and information is moving from books to software. We don't bristle at making applications less available in the same we do when a school board takes Fahrenheit 451 off the shelves, but maybe we should.

"My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can."

James Dickey's, "The Strength of Fields, read at Jimmy Carter's inauguration:
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Moth-force a small town always has,   

          Given the night.

                                           What field-forms can be,

         Outlying the small civic light-decisions over

               A man walking near home?

                                                         Men are not where he is   

      Exactly now, but they are around him    around him like the strength

Of fields.    The solar system floats on

    Above him in town-moths.

                                             Tell me, train-sound,

    With all your long-lost grief,

                                             what I can give.   

    Dear Lord of all the fields

                                             what am I going to do?

                                        Street-lights, blue-force and frail

As the homes of men, tell me how to do it    how

    To withdraw    how to penetrate and find the source   

      Of the power you always had

                                             light as a moth, and rising

       With the level and moonlit expansion

    Of the fields around, and the sleep of hoping men.

       You?    I?    What difference is there?    We can all be saved

       By a secret blooming. Now as I walk

The night    and you walk with me    we know simplicity   

   Is close to the source that sleeping men

       Search for in their home-deep beds.

       We know that the sun is away    we know that the sun can be conquered   

   By moths, in blue home-town air.

          The stars splinter, pointed and wild. The dead lie under

The pastures.    They look on and help.    Tell me, freight-train,

                            When there is no one else

   To hear. Tell me in a voice the sea

         Would have, if it had not a better one: as it lifts,

          Hundreds of miles away, its fumbling, deep-structured roar

               Like the profound, unstoppable craving

            Of nations for their wish.

                                                      Hunger, time and the moon:

         The moon lying on the brain

                                                    as on the excited sea    as on

          The strength of fields. Lord, let me shake   

         With purpose.    Wild hope can always spring   

         From tended strength.    Everything is in that.

            That and nothing but kindness.    More kindness, dear Lord

Of the renewing green.    That is where it all has to start:

         With the simplest things. More kindness will do nothing less

             Than save every sleeping one

             And night-walking one

         Of us.

                   My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can.

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To my mind, the most interesting of all the inaugural poems.

What If We Didn't Pay Novelists?

In Salon, Annie Lamott with some real talk for aspiring writers:

"..almost no one makes a great living as a writer. You have to be willing to take a real job, to finance your writing life. I cleaned houses and taught tennis lessons on the one court in Bolinas, Calif., for most of my 20s. Before that, I worked as a clerk typist at Bechtel, and as an assistant at a magazine.But I got to write for a few hours every day — which was, and remains, The Prize: so keep your eye on it. Figure out a way to have the best possible life, with as much integrity and good company as you can manage, so you can write after dinner a couple nights a week, and on weekends.

Then just do it. No one cares if you write or not, so you have to."
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What she says is true---it's damn near impossible to make a full-time career out of writing books. And yet there is so much talk and anxiety about writers getting paid.

It makes me wonder: does it really matter? That is, if there were some law enacted tomorrow that no novelist would ever be paid again for their work, just how reduced would the number and quality of new novels be?

Put another way: do most novelists write despite the low-pay or do they write with the hope that they will be one of the lucky few? I get the sense that the writers I really admire would keep writing, that it's part of how they experience the world.

Don't misunderstand, I want writers to get paid. But clearly it isn't a necessary condition for good writing to happen.

Yea, and well Hiter was a Vegtarian So There

From The New Yorker's 1936 profile of Adolf Hitler (via Jason Kottke):

Dictator of a nation devoted to splendid sausages, cigars, beer, and babies, Adolf Hitler is a vegetarian, teetotaler, nonsmoker, and celibate.
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Is Germany known for being particularly FOR babies? And that's not even the third strangest thing about this sentence.

The Digital Handsell

At paidcontent, a report from Digital Book World:

Sixty-one percent of book purchases by frequent book buyers take place online, but only seven percent of those buyers said they discovered that book online, while physical book stores account for 39 percent of units sold and 20 percent of discovery share.
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The piece goes on to argue that to narrow the discovery gap between digital and physical, publishing should do all that it can to protect brick and mortars by either opening new retail chains or somehow safeguarding the existence of those that remain.

This is like telling someone who can't jump as high any more to just get younger. Yes, online discovery seems to yield less than in-person browsing, but that's irrelevant because physical stores aren't staging a meaningful comeback....that 61% of frequent buyer number (who comprise a huge segment of all book purchases) have moved online is the leading indicator of future buying habits for all buyers.

I'm waiting for someone to do a curated online bookstore. Don't carry every book in the universe, but give me a rich browsing experience. Have a selection of say, 2000 titles, but there is more around each title. Make it beautiful and personal. Develop online hand sellers, using video, chat, personalized recs, and connections to the amazing wealth of content that exists out there. 

6am: Hot Tub, Dove Bars, Champagne, Fettucine Alfredo

From The Associated Press, a page from Hunter S. Thompson's day planner (via Evan Morgan)

4:15pm - cocaine
4:16pm - orange juice, Dunhill
4:30pm - cocaine
4:54pm - cocaine
5:05pm - coffee
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I am guessing that coffee was not a decaf.