How Indigo’s e-book promoter just shot himself in the foot

On Wednesday, the Globe and Mail featured a story about Indigo Books and Music’s plans to launch Shortcovers, an e-book service that is set to transform book sales the way iTunes revolutionised the music world.

The brave new world of e-books, Michael Serbinis, Indigo’s VP of info technology, marketing and online business, embraces the fact that people are reading differently, are “info-snacking”, leveraging downtime while waiting for a bus etc.

Leaving aside the whole dying romance of curling up somewhere quiet with a book, in favour of nibbling on bytes from your e-book in between sending texts and tweets, the deeply disturbing thing about the e-book revolution is in the tail of the Globe piece.

Serbinis proclaims the best part of the Shortcovers service is that “We’ll know exactly what you’re reading, how often, whether you’ve read the whole book that you’ve bought or not.” The marketing VP calls that “engagement information.” And isn’t shy about admitting they will use that to try and sell you your next e-book.

I call that invasion of privacy.

Even librarians know that what people are reading is deeply personal and private information. Librarians across North America have been great warriors protecting details of people’s reading habits.

So I’ll take the library for my info-snacking any day. As well as my feasting, my nibbling and my potlucking. And Shortcovers can keep their profiling and data-mining to themselves. Sorry, brave new world. I’m not ready for you yet.

25 things about you, me and our gallery of invisible friends

Facebook’s latest meme, “25 things about me”, has probably landed in your updates page by now, if your face is on the book. Between Jan 26 and Feb 2, it manifested 5 million times. Commentators are heckling it as narcissistic, inane, and as dangerous and fast-spreading as a wildfire… but then, those commentators are also writing their own “25 things about me”, which they’re publishing in forums like the LA Times, so maybe they’re just jealous that the spotlight has shifted from them, for a moment, to ordinary people.

Here’s what the 25 things suggests to us – our own stories are fundamentally interesting to us. And typically neglected. Carving out the time to do a bit of fossicking into our ids and egos, is weirdly gratifying, and people are compelled to share. (“Hey look at this little bit of rock/nugget/shard of something ancient and dirty that I just excavated from the p-trap of my mind!”)

And for writers, what a great tool. Why not start every story with a 25 things brainstorm… a grocery list of odd facts and detritus about your character. Cos’ the truth is, every bit of mindexploding art and poetry started when someone saw the banal, and held it up to the light…

PS In case you need it spelled out – that’s exercise 7. Create 2 characters. Construct a 25 random things list for each of them. Turn the page. Now lob them into a common encounter – shared cab, double-date as moral support for friends, first on the scene of a car accident…

140 character tweets make 250 words seem verbose

The great literary challenge for 2009 might be to tell stories of moment and meaning with a series of 140 character tweets.  Makes those 250 word postcard stories seem like the new era version of War and Peace.

For anyone who’s been in a coma for the last 6 months, the Boston Globe today explains the Twitterverse. Lexicographer, Erin McKean, also blogs at www.thedictionaryevangelist.com.

Why not try, for this week’s workout, to write a 250 word postcard story as a series of tweets… an opus for the attention-deficit multi-tasking web 2.0 prophets out there…