Author: Matthew Iden
Storm warning: Bookwhirl
My wife recently received a call from someone from Bookwhirl.com asking for me. They wanted to talk about my “book” and marketing plans they could offer. My wife said she’d take their number, pass it on to me, and get back to them if we were interested. The caller was polite, spoke decent English, and didn’t push.
The End of Television
I’m not a futurist, but as an indie writer with a tech background and a serious thing for video games, it’s difficult for me not to think about the consumptive future of story-telling.
That’s a made-up term I just invented, but the concept is simple enough: the vast majority of consumable entertainment—movies, books, video games, and television–manifests itself as story-telling. And, thanks to the internet, media is now in the early stages of ubiquity, which is to say:
If you have a computer and an internet connection, all story-telling, in any form, will be made available to you.
There is nothing original in this statement—I won’t even take credit for it, because I’m sure it’s just me putting words to a standard and accepted form of groupthink.
But I didn’t think I’d see the physical manifestation of it so soon, and in the form of paradigmatic shifts that, I believe, we will be seeing in 2-3 years.
Amazon vs. Hachette: The Cliff Notes
If it’s one thing I despise–in me when I catch myself doing it and in others when I hear/see it–it’s an empty-headed, knee-jerk argument.
Whether it’s from a lack of knowledge, a confirmation bias, or intellectual laziness, when one side of a debate has bothered to gather supportive facts and present a considered argument and the other just parrots old information or rehashes only what they want to hear, it makes me want to pull my eyes out (or my ears, if I have to listen to it).
I feel particularly frustrated when I’m the one that’s factless in an argument…and twice that if it’s something I care about.
Quirky: Need a little help!
Hey folks!
I have a big favor to ask that has nothing to do with writing. I recently submitted an invention idea–the ChargeBar–to Quirky.com (a site that solicits new product concepts from the public, chooses the best, then takes them to market).
At this stage, the public can vote on the idea and–if it gets enough support–it will be forwarded to a review session of the Quirky staff. If it gets the green light there, then it goes into prototyping and production!