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News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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Wise words »
A timely and poignant blog post from Seth Godin expands on the ideas expressed in our last email newsletter.
Ideas Mooted
If you read Moot 01 sent out last week you will be interested in this. If you don’t yet subscribe to Seth’s email posts we recommend you do. He hits the nail on the head just about every time.
Disruptive thinking
This latest blog post, simple and concise as ever, races through ideas that will disrupt the publishing industry and favour authors. We’ve touted these ideas before but true to form, Seth does it so much better.
Subscribe to Moot
You can also subscribe to Moot, our regular email newsletter here.
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‘Love where you work’ scores a hole in one »
The very first applicant to respond to the new employer brand for Notting Hill Housing has been offered a job and is already in post.
Loving the success factor
Now, it’s possible that this is just chance - but let’s enjoy it while it lasts. We’ll be watching closely to see how well other positions are filled but for now, we’re loving the 100% strike rate.
Read more “Love where you work”.
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What’s next for text »
Words. It’s difficult to express how important they are. In the age of the internet words are gaining in value, as new ways of using them emerge.
Hyperlinks offer a complete system for navigating the web, search marketing demands that you anticipate the terms people use to find you, and you can even own certain words online if you’re prepared to pay.
Writing is breaking free of the margins as, arguably, the most potent tool in digital communications. And if the web is an ongoing conversation then business needs to rethink how to use words and writers. Honesty, openness, integrity and transparency are sweeping away old style corporate control and the droning tone of voice from on high. Only businesses that understand this change will thrive in a world where words reign supreme.
This article appeared in Moot 01, June 2008.
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Man Booker and books »
The new Man Booker website helps readers engage with authors and the prize in fresh and exciting ways.
It’s no secret that the most revered prize in English literature has come in for some flack this year. Anne Enright’s winning novel was seen by some commentators as a lofty and elitist choice. But then the prize has always attracted criticism and stimulated debate.
Critical situation
The future of the prize, what it represents and how it is administered is one cause for hot debate. Such is the passion and strength of opinion in publishing that everyone gets it in the ear at some point – booksellers, authors, critics, publishers, readers and, of course, Richard and Judy.
Word wide web
In the meantime, while the debate about books rages, along comes the technology to fit the writers’ craft. The internet is the most efficient distributor of text ever invented and yet the publishing industry seems at a loss to know how to use it. We all love books – they are objects of rare preciousness and symbolism, but they are also, principally, a means of distribution. If Dickens was around today he’d no doubt be a blogger.
Universal appeal
The internet can make stories available everywhere. It is unbound by shops, stock, printers or price. New writers and narrative formats will undoubtedly emerge to use this medium intelligently and satisfy and engage readers in unexpected ways.
Long tailed tales
The new Man Booker Website, launched late summer 2007, is pulling in readers from 200 plus countries. This is the long tail in action and it demonstrates that there is an appetite for quality fiction via the internet. While visitor numbers are still modest, the level of engagement is high. Some writers will soon find that the speed and reach of the web will make them seriously think about this as a means to connect with a readership the scale of which a book could never reach.
Visit the Man Booker Prize website.
This article appeared in Moot 01, June 2008.
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What the hell is hypertext? »
Find out from filmmaker Mike Wesch.
Thinking about 2.0 and text being a navigation system, we intended to write something pithy, inspirational and, above all, useful.
Thing is, these two films from Mike Wesch at Kansas State University do it so sublimely well. Watch and wonder.
Web2.0…The Machine is US/ing Us
This article appeared in Moot 01, June 2008.
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Why we need fiction to flourish »
Novelist Belinda Seaward on the writer’s craft.
It seems crazy now, but I believed for years that the literary novel was on its last legs. I felt that it would be a matter of time before it was read by only an eccentric minority. That is readers like me: the kind of people who do not need the internet or the iPod to feed their souls; people who would live by candlelight if it weren’t so hazardous. Holed up in a cabin (or attic) somewhere, us diehard readers would feast on our fiction addiction in splendid isolation, leaving the rest of the world to digital seduction. The literary novel, we mistakenly believed, was a dying art-form and that gave it a special kind of romance.
I think we were just scared. We were worried that the technological age would sweep away everything we loved: all the old shabby things, especially books which were destined to become the one-eyed teddy bears of the play box – fondly remembered, but rarely picked up. Things were speeding up so quickly we thought we had no choice but to let go of anything that slowed us down.
It is true that we lost many slow pleasures: LPs and plays on television; films with intermissions; dial telephones. For those of us bought up on Dave Allen and Dixon of Dock Green, today’s fast shows seem a product of an alternative universe. Even the once innocently harmless Eurovision now warns viewers about strobe effects. But we were determined not to lose touch with books.
It is rather wonderful that we are still enthralled by fiction. We make special time for it: holidays, weekends, evenings, or when travelling. Many of us still really cherish a pool of time in which we surrender to literature. We moan when we haven’t been able to read.
One of my book-loving friends says this is because we enter into a relationship with fiction. We spend time getting to know characters and settings and emotionally invest in stories. To read a work of fiction properly requires some hard work on our part; for the time you are with a book you are almost married to it. You cannot read fiction passively and claim to have experienced it. You must feel the pain, the sorrow, the excitement, enchantment or fear. Perhaps right now in our world of mind-numbing choice, we need fiction that pierces our being more than ever: work that cuts through the noise and wakes us up; stories that remind us how incredible it is to witness another mind thinking and making decisions. When we read we put ourselves in intense imaginary situations we would never dream of in reality. This enriches us. It frees us. We may be late for work, held up again by train delays, but the book in our hand gives us a chance to become more than we are. We may be late, but we can still dream of wolves or kite runners or time travellers. We can wear other periods of time close to our skin as we drink our coffee or check our email. Powerful well-written narrative has the power to transform us, and not just for the moment.
Fiction is important to us because we have decided not to abandon it. We have kept our respect for it and we want to talk about it. Witness the world-wide phenomenon that is the reading group. We are hungry for new ideas, for new experiences and for change. Great fiction can often offer us this with minimum hassle. Is there a simpler way of changing your life than reading a book?
Books have slipped into the twenty-first century with grace. Many new literary titles look ravishing with their smooth almost edible packaging. Bookshops are elegant, streamlined places and libraries seem to have got brighter and better, too. I find myself quite taken with the idea that I can pick up a fine novel for the weekend in the supermarket. It seems to fit with the way we live now.
Books need to be visible. They need us to celebrate them and pass them on to others with words of encouragement or warning. They need, just as we need, to keep moving.
The beauty of the novel as an art form is that it is such a wide open space. A lot can happen. A good novel is always generous to its readers and we appreciate this and take books to our hearts. Each time we read a story that touches us we create something better for ourselves. In this way we enlarge ourselves. And that is what keeps me reading and writing: there is just so much to explore and discover.
Belinda Seaward’s novel Hotel Juliet is published by John Murray.
Buy it from Amazon.
This article appeared in Moot 01, June 2008.
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