Russell Davies

reader

I'm a big fan of ebooks. I've had a Rocket ebook. A Franklin eBookMan. Still got them somewhere. And I've read books on my palm pilot, my clie, my phone and my psion and newton (I think, but I might be imagining the last two.)

Apart from all the usual reasons for liking them I have particular requirements of ebooks. I love to fall asleep reading, I've always loved that thing of reading until your eyes are closing on their own and the book falls from your hand and you fall straight asleep with no time for left worring about tomorrow. Unfortunately my eyesight is now so bad that I have to have contact lenses, glasses aren't powerful enough. Which means that as soon as I get to that state I have to wake up enough to remove my lenses, which is a palaver, and then I'm awake again and I'm staring at the ceiling. Curses.

So ebook back-lighting and the option to make the type HUGE are perfect for me. But things like the Kindle and the Sony Reader aren't because they've got no back lighting. And they're pricey.

And then along comes Stanza for the ipod/iphone. It's lovely. Quick, free and simple and it's easy to download stuff.  The type goes big, the lighting works.

But then you discover you can't turn the rotation off. So when you're lying down, the text is oriented the wrong way. It seems I'm not alone in wanting to be able to do this. It's not a big thing, and you can make it work if you're very slow and careful and don't jog the accelerometer, or whatever it is. But it's a shame. And it's another little example of the way the ipod/iphone is such an attention-demanding device. It doesn't orient to you, it orients to itself. Ah well.

UPDATE/CORRECTION

Well, it turns out Stanza's even better than I thought. You can stop book rotation from within the Stanza settings. You just can't do it for your ipod overall. Thanks to Tom for that.

tales from the long fail

Well that's a bit depressing. I know (think/suspect) there are about 15,000 of these in a warehouse somewhere. Yet some combination of Harper Collins and Amazon can't find them. Maybe they've been pulped. On a more cheery note someone seems to be selling a copy for £500.

demanding books

I was listening to this episode of On The Media the other day; all about the future of books, publishing and the media. None of it's especially new stuff but it's all interesting. I was especially struck by the conversation about the Espresso book making machine and how it might re-orientate book selling back to the specialist book-seller/lover. Maybe.  (I really like the invention story primarily being about glue. That's the great thing about invention; the problem you have to solve is never the one the outsider imagines it would be.)

And then I was at Borders on Oxford Street the other day and realised they're already practising for this world with their software on demand store. And it's a simple and good experience. It takes them about five minutes for them to knock you up your software, which isn't a pain because you're in a bookstore and you can have a pleasant browse around in the meantime.

tales from the long tail: graph paper time

Its always a sign you're getting over-involved in something when you break out the graph paper.

This is a record of what happened to my Amazon rank since I mentioned the book on the 10th and Adrian built the ranktracker into twitter. (It looks like, to start with, the blog mentions has elevated it from the millions into the hundred thousands.)

I think it's all fairly self-explanatory, if you can be bothered with it. The tracker reports every three hours, but I've only graphed one per day. (Noting on the right if I managed a higher score at any point during the day.) You'll see I ordered  the twenty books on the 20th. Seven were dispatched on the 24th (which are now on their way to some people) and thirteen were dispatched today. 

All I think I can learn from this is that mentioning the book on the blog seems as, if not more, effective, as ordering and paying for twenty of the blighters.

And, if I've mislogged anything, got my scales wrong, or committed some crime against statistics or information design I can only apologise. It's late and I'm old.

tales from the long tail: in which I fail to understand amazon rankings

Last night, just before I ordered 20 copies of ebcb, my Amazon ranking was 96,026.

It's been steadily falling ever since. It's now 123,215. What does this mean?

Has every other book in the world been selling extraordinarily well? Is the ranking just a random number generator? Do they somehow penalise you for bulk orders? Are they deliberately trying to destroy the morale of authors for some unclear but evil reason? Or is it all just statistical sloshing around at the bottom of the rankings barrel?

I don't know. But I'm not pleased.

UPDATE: Maybe this is a clue. I got this email last night: "We are sorry to report that the following items have been delayed: Russell Davies (Author) "Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans: 50 Great Cafes and the Stuff That Makes Them Great" [Hardcover] Estimated arrival date: 03/03/08 - 06/03/08". That might explain the rankings disaster. Maybe they're not counted as sales yet. For some reason I have an image in my head now of an Amazon man in a flat cap and a brown warehouse coat sending a boy on a bicycle round to HarperCollins for a parcel of books wrapped up in brown paper and string.

tales from the long tail - sales / self promotion news

Big thanks to everyone who asked me for a book in the badge, signature etc promotion event. I was going to order them on Friday but then I noticed that merely mentioning the book on the blog seemed to have sent my Amazon ranking from 180,029 to 14,710. That's an impressive leap in some ways, though even at best it means that there were 14,709 books selling more than EBCB. (I think that's what the ranking means.) I presume this is the result of some kind person just buying the book for themselves. (Or it's a statistical anomaly that just happens randomly, a kind of tidal effect in rankings.) This must be what life in the long tail looks like. Tiny moves are magnified into excitement as you whip up and down the tail, all to little effect in the real world.

Unless you pay a lot of attention to your ranking on Amazon you don't really notice this stuff. I only spotted it because Adrian was kind enough to build a ranktracker into twitter.

Anyway, I thought I'd wait until the number had settled down again before I ordered 20+ books, just to see what happens. So I'll do that in the next couple of days. Sorry I've not replied to all your emails yet, I'll do that once the books have arrived and they're ready to be posted (and for people who interested in postage to the States etc I'll work out what that might be and work out whether I can afford it or whether I might have to ask you for a contribution.)

tales from the long tail IV

This piece about HarperCollins allowing Neil Gaiman to offer one of his books for free online reminded me that I had a post to write about Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans, the book. So here it is.

I asked my agent (I know, I know) to talk to Harper Collins earlier in the year letting them know I was going to try and boost sales via the blog as a bit of an experiment and asking them if they would be willing to a) let me give away the book online b) let me have copies to give away and/or c) sell me some copies at a discount so I could give them away. They got back to us a while ago and said a) no. b) maybe, a few and c) no answer.

So I think, well, bugger 'em.  And here's my plan now:

Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans is currently  £6.59 on Amazon. (A bargain) And is currently ranked 181,230. I'm going to buy 20 at the end of the week, to use as blog promotional stuff. If anyone would like me to order them one as well then I will (I'll charge you via paypal) but I'll ship it to you free, signed, with an exclusive and delightful promotional badge and some random ebcb moo cards.

Since I've already given an audio version of the book away once (ie you can listen to me read it out here) I figure I may as well do an electronic version as well. The only way I can think of for doing that is to use the various pdfs that I got to approve as part of the production process. I'm not 100% sure where they are but I'll have a root around on various hard-drives and see if I can find them.

I'm interested to see if either of those activities does anything to the mysterious Amazon ranking, so I'll be trying to keep an eye on that too. Does anyone know of any automatic tools for doing that? Can I get a twitter feed of my Amazon rank? I can imagine a lot of authors understanding the need for twitter then. Otherwise I'll use screengrabs and flickr.

If you'd like the book for £6.59 inc badges, signature and moo cards email me - russell at russelldavies.com

tales from the long tail III

I've just been listening to Chris Anderson talk about his 'Free' idea on IT Conversations, specifically about books and how they might get free. I'm not sure I agree with him that an analogue book is necessarily better than a digital one, but I like his entrepreneurialism in using freeness to increase his sales. It's well worth a listen, and it's reminded me that I need to get on with doing something about eggbaconchipsandbeans. More soon.

caff eh?

I've been neglecting both eggbaconchipsandbeans and agoodplaceforacupofteaandathink recently. I think because I've been cycling to lots of places. When I walk I find I notice more cafes and pop in more frequently. So I'm going to try and rectify that - it seems an essential first step if I'm going to create any long-tail splurge for the book, and frankly, I miss it. Here's a start then - The Islander in Uttoxeter and Bridge The Gap down Vauxhall/Battersea way.  Picture above is the always glorious Bar Bruno.

tales from the long tail II

Rob at Snowbooks has been kind enough to write good things about ebcb but his review hints at one of the problems I think the book faced, and I pass it on as a potential aid for future writers of bits of amusing fluff. No-one knew where to put, or find, the thing. It's officially classified as 'humour' (which personally I always find is a bit of a kiss of death when tearing open the Christmas presents, I'll read that one last) but of course the name suggests you might find it in 'food', or maybe if you knew it's guide-booky nature maybe 'travel'. I'm not sure there was a lot we could do about that, but it's worth thinking about if you're planning on writing a book. Where in the shop will it go? Somewhere obvious, or all over the place?

The good thing is, I don't think that matters in the long tail, it just means there are more places to play.