The publishing game is a funny one. You’d have thought that writing a book was one of the hardest things you can do, but you’d be wrong. The really hard bit is getting it published.
Most UK publishers won’t even look at your book unless you’ve got a literary agent, although some authors have done it the other way around (Iain Banks, for instance). So you have to send off the first three chapters of your magnificent octopus* to literary agents along with a letter outlining why it’s interesting and a synopsis of the book itself. You also have to enclose an SAE (stamped addressed envelope). Agents are aggressively analogue and won’t respond by email. 98% of them won’t take submissions by email and they are really, really picky about people following the rules, Manuscripts should be double spaced, printed one side, loose bound. Letters should be straightforward and informative, not quirky or different. And so on. Agents make aspiring authors jump through an awful lot of hoops. In the right sequence, too, if you don’t mind.
The putative author is lucky to get any response at all beyond a photocopied rejection slip. Most agents don’t even bother reading the contents of their daily ‘slushpile’ – the 40-odd envelopes that land on the agency doorstep every day. I rather suspect many give the job of going through these submissions to the secretary or an intern.
Some are better than this. But they are in the minority.
So it’s a soul-destroying process. You send off batches your manuscript (or MS as it’s called in the trade) and get batches of copied rejections back for your efforts. If you’re really lucky – and everyone involved will tell you how lucky you are to get this – you’ll get some feedback, a few lines of encouragement and perhaps even a tip or two on improving the book. Writers buffeted by constant rejection receive these occasional flashes of light with an almost pathetic gratitude. And all this, mind you, to get someone to agree to bother representing you and therefore take 10-15% of your earnings.
Enter a bit of Web 2.0 thinking: publisher HarperCollins has launched a brilliant new website called Authonomy. Writers can post their work up on Authonomy, anything from 10,000 words to a complete book, and people can visit the site and read their books. If people like a book, they can put it on their virtual bookshelves, which increases the book’s ranking. Every month, HarperCollins’ editors skim the top 5 books off the pile and take them off to read. Getting an HC editor to read your book is, particularly if you’ve been drowning in the shitty stench and mush of the slushpiles for a while, probably worth a finger or so.
So, new talent gets a chance and the slushpile gets disintermediated. And it will, if others follow this example. On Authonomy, new authors can support each other, read each other’s work and comment, as can readers in general. People can be as critical as they like or as supportive as they like. And, the theory goes, over time good work will get recognised and make its way to the top of the tree. There are also forums on the site where people can discuss writing and publishing in general, plug their books or make recommendations. Not bad, huh?
There are question marks, of course. Isn’t this all a bit demeaning, a sort of literary ‘Big Brother’ where people are scrabbling over each other, all pretending to be nice to each other as they seek out that top five slot? Yes, there are elements of that. Does it replace the slushpile? No, it doesn’t – but it’s a first step for a business that has remained maddeningly crusty, dusty and analogue.
Why do I know all this stuff about writing or even give a damn? Because my book’s up there with over 1,000 others. It’s called ‘Space’ and I wrote it a few years back because voices in my head told me to do it. It’s a wilfully self-destructive and scabrous little thing, intended to make you laugh and to generally behave as badly as a book could behave. It’s also been rejected by pretty much every agent in the UK. Irritatingly, it made all those that read it laugh, but many felt it was too different. I do hate that.
Anyway, do feel free to wander over to Authonomy and have a read of Space. If it makes you laugh, feel free to put it on your bookshelf and help propel me closer to getting an HC editor to read the damn thing.
Similarly, feel free to have a look at Keefieboy’s book, ‘Travels in Xanadu-du’, which is also up there!
* Magnum opus. It’s a Black Addder joke...
Monday, 15 September 2008
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Glass
I’m raising a glass as I write this. It’s a very sad glass, but I’m smiling through that nasty prickly feeling you get in the corners of your eyes.
Thousands of pupils at the Lycée Français Georges Pompidou, known in Sharjah as ‘The French School’ will remember Ginny Taylor. And, actually, if you know anyone that works there, let them know that Ginny lost her 7-year battle against cancer last week. They’ll remember her: you’d find it hard to forget that rogueish smile, instant friendliness and, behind it, a thoroughly devil-may-care attitude to life, fun and laughter. Ginny was about as Irish as you’d want to get: an instinctive dislike for formality a lust for life and a woman never more than a step away from the next smile.
The family moved from Dubai to France, to the beautiful village of Larroque in the Tarn Valley, a tumble of terracotta and whitewashed walls that clings to the valley-side, with forests where you can hear the dogs hunting boar as you sit on the patio overlooking the village and wonder at the majestic vista down the valley punctuated by medieval bastide villages. It had long been their dream to live there: the family spent every summer there working on the house and so when Paul announced he was intending to retire from his job as communications director at Dubai Petroleum and that the Taylors were going to decamp to Larroque, it seemed like a dream end to an expat stint.
The news that Ginny had breast cancer came hot on the heels of that decision.
Ginny did what we expected she’d do. Behind that constant smile and dancing eyes was a wiry, tough character you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. She beat it.
And then it came back, in her head. Thankfully Paul says at no stage was she in pain: miraculously, the most they had to give her for the pain was paracetamol. Unlike in the UK, where they’re still making an awful mess of the decision, the French gave Ginny Herceptin, the wonder drug which helped her make it through to see their two girls, Niamh and Roisin well into their teens.
From offroading on the old Masafi rally route to hilarious dinners together, swimming in the lido and drinking wine as the sun set on Larroque (a sight that would make Terence Conran weep), to barbecues, parties and celebrations (any excuse), birthdays and even helping out with the Bac oral over at the school, we shared an awful lot of laughs with Ginny. We also shared a love of Bali, where the family would go pretty much every year on leave; of camping out in the sands and of the ‘old’ UAE. But our abiding memory of Ginny will be her laughter.
She’s over my shoulder now telling me to stop being bloody stupid. It’s her wake today. So, although we can't be in Larroque with everyone else, we're raising a glass here instead.
Bye kid.
Thousands of pupils at the Lycée Français Georges Pompidou, known in Sharjah as ‘The French School’ will remember Ginny Taylor. And, actually, if you know anyone that works there, let them know that Ginny lost her 7-year battle against cancer last week. They’ll remember her: you’d find it hard to forget that rogueish smile, instant friendliness and, behind it, a thoroughly devil-may-care attitude to life, fun and laughter. Ginny was about as Irish as you’d want to get: an instinctive dislike for formality a lust for life and a woman never more than a step away from the next smile.
The family moved from Dubai to France, to the beautiful village of Larroque in the Tarn Valley, a tumble of terracotta and whitewashed walls that clings to the valley-side, with forests where you can hear the dogs hunting boar as you sit on the patio overlooking the village and wonder at the majestic vista down the valley punctuated by medieval bastide villages. It had long been their dream to live there: the family spent every summer there working on the house and so when Paul announced he was intending to retire from his job as communications director at Dubai Petroleum and that the Taylors were going to decamp to Larroque, it seemed like a dream end to an expat stint.
The news that Ginny had breast cancer came hot on the heels of that decision.
Ginny did what we expected she’d do. Behind that constant smile and dancing eyes was a wiry, tough character you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. She beat it.
And then it came back, in her head. Thankfully Paul says at no stage was she in pain: miraculously, the most they had to give her for the pain was paracetamol. Unlike in the UK, where they’re still making an awful mess of the decision, the French gave Ginny Herceptin, the wonder drug which helped her make it through to see their two girls, Niamh and Roisin well into their teens.
From offroading on the old Masafi rally route to hilarious dinners together, swimming in the lido and drinking wine as the sun set on Larroque (a sight that would make Terence Conran weep), to barbecues, parties and celebrations (any excuse), birthdays and even helping out with the Bac oral over at the school, we shared an awful lot of laughs with Ginny. We also shared a love of Bali, where the family would go pretty much every year on leave; of camping out in the sands and of the ‘old’ UAE. But our abiding memory of Ginny will be her laughter.
She’s over my shoulder now telling me to stop being bloody stupid. It’s her wake today. So, although we can't be in Larroque with everyone else, we're raising a glass here instead.
Bye kid.
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Thursday, 11 September 2008
SiteMeter
I posted a strange searches post the other day and a few people have asked, on and offline, how I found out what search words had led people to this dim and far-flung cupboard somewher at the back of the dazzling global repository that is the Web. The answer is a little 'widget' called SiteMeter.
SiteMeter is a neat little utility used by many bloggers. It comes in two flavours, a free to use version and a more 'functionally rich' paid for version.
SiteMeter tracks visitors to blogs, reporting on the number of visitors to a blog per day and reports on traffic by day, month and year. It also evaluates the number of page views a blog is achieving and tracks visitors to the blog.
SiteMeter lets you see who's visiting, when and from where - how long they spent on the blog and what things interested them most.
Few people appear to realise that bloggers using SiteMeter can also obtain a lot more information about visitors. Their IP address, for instance - as well as the browser, operating system, language, Java version and even the screen resolution their system supports.
SiteMeter tracks the time of visits and the visit 'path', letting you see which pages a visitor entered on and which ones they visited, left comments on and exited from. It lets you see where they came from (hence the ability to 'track back' Google searches) and where they went to on the way out.
SiteMeter also lets you analyse traffic by search engines, referring sites and so on.
It can be a slightly invasive tool in the wrong hands, but it's generally a useful and interesting way to get a snapshot of what's happening with your blog. It's also how bloggers can work out when people from corporate companies leave 'anonymous' comments on their blogs!
SiteMeter is a neat little utility used by many bloggers. It comes in two flavours, a free to use version and a more 'functionally rich' paid for version.
SiteMeter tracks visitors to blogs, reporting on the number of visitors to a blog per day and reports on traffic by day, month and year. It also evaluates the number of page views a blog is achieving and tracks visitors to the blog.
SiteMeter lets you see who's visiting, when and from where - how long they spent on the blog and what things interested them most.
Few people appear to realise that bloggers using SiteMeter can also obtain a lot more information about visitors. Their IP address, for instance - as well as the browser, operating system, language, Java version and even the screen resolution their system supports.
SiteMeter tracks the time of visits and the visit 'path', letting you see which pages a visitor entered on and which ones they visited, left comments on and exited from. It lets you see where they came from (hence the ability to 'track back' Google searches) and where they went to on the way out.
SiteMeter also lets you analyse traffic by search engines, referring sites and so on.
It can be a slightly invasive tool in the wrong hands, but it's generally a useful and interesting way to get a snapshot of what's happening with your blog. It's also how bloggers can work out when people from corporate companies leave 'anonymous' comments on their blogs!
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Ha!
Delighted to note that UK environmental blog Climate Change Corp picked up on my holiday rant about the Marks and Spencers 5p bag greenwash. The CCC piece was derived from a wee piece in Ethical Corporation Magazine.
Slightly unsettled to note, from the same piece, my back-of-the-envelope calculation of costs etc passing into the record, but never mind!
I do sincerely hope this is the start of a backlash against retailers such as M&S gouging customers for 'green' initiatives that are purely in the financial interest of... errr... the retailers.
You never know. But isn't it funny how a (marginal) Dubai blog can start a niggle at a UK retailer!!!!
The cost of this negative publicity so far? 5 pence sterling!!!
Slightly unsettled to note, from the same piece, my back-of-the-envelope calculation of costs etc passing into the record, but never mind!
I do sincerely hope this is the start of a backlash against retailers such as M&S gouging customers for 'green' initiatives that are purely in the financial interest of... errr... the retailers.
You never know. But isn't it funny how a (marginal) Dubai blog can start a niggle at a UK retailer!!!!
The cost of this negative publicity so far? 5 pence sterling!!!
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Search
As you may be aware, I (like many other people with blogs) do like to occasionally amuse myself by taking a peek at the strange searches that led various people to swing by this dank and cobwebby corner of the Internet.
People do search for such very strange things. Thanks to the arcane and mysterious illuminati of Google, some of the strangest searches rank this silly little blog as a world leading authority on some very random things indeed. But then people are looking for some wacky things, too...
Fake windscreen crack
There really are some pranksters out there, aren’t there? What a hoot, eh? Just add this simple plastic crack decal to your friend’s windshield and then watch his horrified face as he contemplates the $500 bill to replace it! Good grief. Not available here...
The Stranglers in Dubai
Yayyy! October 3rd! Not a strange search, but certainly a result!
Twisted chicken
This was a picture search. Strange people! I do like ‘twisted chicken’, though – a chicken rendered cynical and vengeful by a lifetime of failure and frustration or a fowl smashed on an insane cocktail of Bacardi Breezers, amyl nitrate and veterinary strength Quaaludes?
Fakhreddine restaurant Amman
I remain amazed that searches for this most revered and excellent of Arabic restaurants, famed throughout Jordan and, indeed, the whole region still lead to Mr Daft’s Blog. Damn!
And if that’s not bad enough, another top 20 search result is that pesky Fat Expat!
Look, I give up. It’s strictly against the rulebook of this blog, but I feel guilty about this one. Here’s some useful information:
Fakhreddine Restaurant
1st Circle
P.O.box 840524
Amman 11184
Jordan
Tel: 4652399 / fax: 4641792
Tel: 5515419 / fax: 5535170
Was Lawrence buggered by Turks?
How’s that for a result? Admittedly you have to search through five pages of sites that aren’t nearly as authoritative as this one, but someone not only did that but actually clicked on the link here, too! No answers here, of course, just some silliness. Damn!
Under the sink tap mineralisation
The winter nights must simply fly by, no?
Ramadan at Al Awir Central Jail
I still don't know how they got here...
Non-animal enzyme powdered cheese
Apparently this blog is the fourth most definitive place in the world for people searching for non-animal enzyme powdered cheese. Which I take as an enormous and deeply strange compliment!
du du du dah dah dah
Imagine – you think you’re about to get the lyrics of the Police’s slightly nonsensical single or even a sneaky MP3 or two and all you get is me whingeing about telephone companies in the UAE. Damn!
"All my thoughts and fancies are concentrated on you"
Isn’t that the oddest collection of words to search the Internet for? What’s more, all your search results are concentrated on this post, too – all one of them!!!
Less strange, but still possibly interesting:
Russian girls Dubai
A long time ago I wrote about a Russian girl called Alla Khrapovitskaya, who had been horrifically attacked in Satwa. Ever since, I’ve been picking up searches for all sorts of Slavic peccadilloes and some unpleasant searches which came here because of the description of the nature of the attack. And no, I’m not repeating the words again.
Chelmsford Club New Delhi
You want to become a member of the poshest, most ‘back in the Raj’ style club in new Delhi and so you look for it on the Internet. And all you get is me having a laugh. Damn!
Acer Gulf
Much to my delight, having slagged them off mildly last year for a daft promotional campaign that saw tens of thousands of puzzled Gulf News readers in receipt of a small, black and (as I subsequently proved) utterly useless stone, when you search ‘em you still get me hanging out of a tree, hooting and throwing nuts. Damn!
And finally... searches that actually worked!
5p bag m&s customer reaction
A top ten search result – this leads to my grumpy post complaining about Marks and Spencers’ £12 million greenwash. And I am glad.
For some reason people have actually been searching for the ‘Du test’, as well!
I’m delighted to say that if you search Aquafina UAE or Aquafina TDS or many other things Aquafina, you get to my less than complimentary posts about that insidiously augmented bottled water product. Added to that, a lot of people have searched for various things related to consumer concerns about Pringles and, I hope, found some pertinent information here. At least one should aspire to being occasionally useful rather than purely frivolous, no?
People do search for such very strange things. Thanks to the arcane and mysterious illuminati of Google, some of the strangest searches rank this silly little blog as a world leading authority on some very random things indeed. But then people are looking for some wacky things, too...
Fake windscreen crack
There really are some pranksters out there, aren’t there? What a hoot, eh? Just add this simple plastic crack decal to your friend’s windshield and then watch his horrified face as he contemplates the $500 bill to replace it! Good grief. Not available here...
The Stranglers in Dubai
Yayyy! October 3rd! Not a strange search, but certainly a result!
Twisted chicken
This was a picture search. Strange people! I do like ‘twisted chicken’, though – a chicken rendered cynical and vengeful by a lifetime of failure and frustration or a fowl smashed on an insane cocktail of Bacardi Breezers, amyl nitrate and veterinary strength Quaaludes?
Fakhreddine restaurant Amman
I remain amazed that searches for this most revered and excellent of Arabic restaurants, famed throughout Jordan and, indeed, the whole region still lead to Mr Daft’s Blog. Damn!
And if that’s not bad enough, another top 20 search result is that pesky Fat Expat!
Look, I give up. It’s strictly against the rulebook of this blog, but I feel guilty about this one. Here’s some useful information:
Fakhreddine Restaurant
1st Circle
P.O.box 840524
Amman 11184
Jordan
Tel: 4652399 / fax: 4641792
Tel: 5515419 / fax: 5535170
Was Lawrence buggered by Turks?
How’s that for a result? Admittedly you have to search through five pages of sites that aren’t nearly as authoritative as this one, but someone not only did that but actually clicked on the link here, too! No answers here, of course, just some silliness. Damn!
Under the sink tap mineralisation
The winter nights must simply fly by, no?
Ramadan at Al Awir Central Jail
I still don't know how they got here...
Non-animal enzyme powdered cheese
Apparently this blog is the fourth most definitive place in the world for people searching for non-animal enzyme powdered cheese. Which I take as an enormous and deeply strange compliment!
du du du dah dah dah
Imagine – you think you’re about to get the lyrics of the Police’s slightly nonsensical single or even a sneaky MP3 or two and all you get is me whingeing about telephone companies in the UAE. Damn!
"All my thoughts and fancies are concentrated on you"
Isn’t that the oddest collection of words to search the Internet for? What’s more, all your search results are concentrated on this post, too – all one of them!!!
Less strange, but still possibly interesting:
Russian girls Dubai
A long time ago I wrote about a Russian girl called Alla Khrapovitskaya, who had been horrifically attacked in Satwa. Ever since, I’ve been picking up searches for all sorts of Slavic peccadilloes and some unpleasant searches which came here because of the description of the nature of the attack. And no, I’m not repeating the words again.
Chelmsford Club New Delhi
You want to become a member of the poshest, most ‘back in the Raj’ style club in new Delhi and so you look for it on the Internet. And all you get is me having a laugh. Damn!
Acer Gulf
Much to my delight, having slagged them off mildly last year for a daft promotional campaign that saw tens of thousands of puzzled Gulf News readers in receipt of a small, black and (as I subsequently proved) utterly useless stone, when you search ‘em you still get me hanging out of a tree, hooting and throwing nuts. Damn!
And finally... searches that actually worked!
5p bag m&s customer reaction
A top ten search result – this leads to my grumpy post complaining about Marks and Spencers’ £12 million greenwash. And I am glad.
For some reason people have actually been searching for the ‘Du test’, as well!
I’m delighted to say that if you search Aquafina UAE or Aquafina TDS or many other things Aquafina, you get to my less than complimentary posts about that insidiously augmented bottled water product. Added to that, a lot of people have searched for various things related to consumer concerns about Pringles and, I hope, found some pertinent information here. At least one should aspire to being occasionally useful rather than purely frivolous, no?
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Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Dosh
An interesting piece in today's The National by Angela Giuffrida regarding the developers vs blogs debate. Apart from quoting that idiot McNabb, the piece does well. But the following quote is something I thought other people posting on blogs might find of interest...
While there are no defamation laws in Dubai specifically governing online content, an online author found guilty of making false accusations against an individual or company faces similar penalties to those charged with defamation using other forms of media. “The penalties for such crimes are imprisonment of between one and six months and/or a fine of up to Dh5,000,” said Miriam McGregor, an associate at the law firm Clyde & Co.
So I hope you've all got a spare Dhs 5,000, just in case. The full story's here. Sorry about the PR bloke in it...
While there are no defamation laws in Dubai specifically governing online content, an online author found guilty of making false accusations against an individual or company faces similar penalties to those charged with defamation using other forms of media. “The penalties for such crimes are imprisonment of between one and six months and/or a fine of up to Dh5,000,” said Miriam McGregor, an associate at the law firm Clyde & Co.
So I hope you've all got a spare Dhs 5,000, just in case. The full story's here. Sorry about the PR bloke in it...
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Planners
Have you ever noticed how often new things are dug up again? Roads that have just been laid that suddenly have teams of people turning them into trenches, gardens that seem to attract JCBs the second they're established?
Following that trend, the road that stretches from the infamous National Paints roundabout to the delightful seafront mangrove swamps of Khor Kalba, the Mileiha Road, is now being dug up. The road itself is less than ten years old, with the intersection currently overlooking the digging having been completed some three years ago. Why they are compelled to dig it up again is a mystery.
But that's not the good bit. The good bit is that they've been working on the road for months, slowly coming in from the desert and now reaching the road between Sharjah English School and the University City.
Presumably the planners thought it was a good idea to dig up the roads outside a school with all the attendant traffic chaos, misery and increased risk to the kids during term-time, rather than completing this work in the summer months and then doing the desert stretch away from the school now.
Yes, yes, I know. What planners...
Following that trend, the road that stretches from the infamous National Paints roundabout to the delightful seafront mangrove swamps of Khor Kalba, the Mileiha Road, is now being dug up. The road itself is less than ten years old, with the intersection currently overlooking the digging having been completed some three years ago. Why they are compelled to dig it up again is a mystery.
But that's not the good bit. The good bit is that they've been working on the road for months, slowly coming in from the desert and now reaching the road between Sharjah English School and the University City.
Presumably the planners thought it was a good idea to dig up the roads outside a school with all the attendant traffic chaos, misery and increased risk to the kids during term-time, rather than completing this work in the summer months and then doing the desert stretch away from the school now.
Yes, yes, I know. What planners...
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Monday, 8 September 2008
Gumpf
Well, General Motors certainly don't think much about the treatment they've been getting at the hands of bloggers.
According to a report in the Financial Times, carried today by Gulf News, GM's spokesman Tom Wilkinson reckons, "We've found that the travails of the auto industry have spread beyond the business pages to the general media. Bloggers and others tend to pick up misinformation and recycle it endlessly."
So here, perhaps, is an example of a company that didn't just sit back and sulk when it doesn't like what's happening out there in the Internet. It got off its bum and did something about it. GM's GMfactsandfiction.com website not only directly addresses hard questions, it even asks readers to submit rumours!
"If you’ve read or heard something about GM we’d love to know about it so that we can have an opportunity to address it."
It's certainly an agressive and targeted outreach effort that pulled major global media hits when it was announced on the 5th September. The editor of GMFactsandfiction.com is, incidentally, one Tom Wilkinson!
If you Google General Motors Blogs, you'll find that at least the first three pages of results are utterly dominated by GM's own blogs: a nice effort at SEO domination, for sure. A quick search of other coverage shows much of it is 'on message', too. Top marks for GM?
Well, let's not be so quick to go clapping backs.
It's actually quite hard to find the 'negatives' that GM has reacted so strongly to. So at first glance, we've got an impressive piece of PR work that got GM's story out there and shouted down the critical voices quite neatly, apparently addressing their assertions and restoring 'balance' to the debate. But it's done so with such efficiency that there's no debate at all to speak of...
And the GMF&F site doesn't allow people to post comments. So it's not really dialogue: it's just big-budget shout it from the rooftops assertion. And the trouble with that kind of assertion is that you can't really take a realistic tone and address the debate as a participant - you're just blaring your viewpoint and not listening to others. And that's not polite conversation.
There's this blog, for instance, which accuses GMF&F of 'cherry picking' and then goes on to take a sharp cutlass to the site. And, in fact, there is an increasing volume of comment on blogs of a similar nature, although the tone of response is generally cautious and wary rather than condemnatory.
As one forum comment put it: "I looked at that website. It's sad when a formerly proud American corporation resorts to peddling half truths like that on a website. No solid facts are provided about their dire financial situation and yet GM has the arrogance to try and dupe the public into believing they aren't receiving a government handout. Sad, sad, sad."
Perhaps interestingly, the day before the outreach on facts and fiction started, GM apparently recalled almost a million vehicles due to a fire hazard... the recall is also carried on the US NHTSA database under NHTSA Campaign Number Although GM appears not to have issued a release on that... Almost a million fire hazards wouldn't be as important as 'addressing myths'.
Or am I just being too cynical again...
According to a report in the Financial Times, carried today by Gulf News, GM's spokesman Tom Wilkinson reckons, "We've found that the travails of the auto industry have spread beyond the business pages to the general media. Bloggers and others tend to pick up misinformation and recycle it endlessly."
So here, perhaps, is an example of a company that didn't just sit back and sulk when it doesn't like what's happening out there in the Internet. It got off its bum and did something about it. GM's GMfactsandfiction.com website not only directly addresses hard questions, it even asks readers to submit rumours!
"If you’ve read or heard something about GM we’d love to know about it so that we can have an opportunity to address it."
It's certainly an agressive and targeted outreach effort that pulled major global media hits when it was announced on the 5th September. The editor of GMFactsandfiction.com is, incidentally, one Tom Wilkinson!
If you Google General Motors Blogs, you'll find that at least the first three pages of results are utterly dominated by GM's own blogs: a nice effort at SEO domination, for sure. A quick search of other coverage shows much of it is 'on message', too. Top marks for GM?
Well, let's not be so quick to go clapping backs.
It's actually quite hard to find the 'negatives' that GM has reacted so strongly to. So at first glance, we've got an impressive piece of PR work that got GM's story out there and shouted down the critical voices quite neatly, apparently addressing their assertions and restoring 'balance' to the debate. But it's done so with such efficiency that there's no debate at all to speak of...
And the GMF&F site doesn't allow people to post comments. So it's not really dialogue: it's just big-budget shout it from the rooftops assertion. And the trouble with that kind of assertion is that you can't really take a realistic tone and address the debate as a participant - you're just blaring your viewpoint and not listening to others. And that's not polite conversation.
There's this blog, for instance, which accuses GMF&F of 'cherry picking' and then goes on to take a sharp cutlass to the site. And, in fact, there is an increasing volume of comment on blogs of a similar nature, although the tone of response is generally cautious and wary rather than condemnatory.
As one forum comment put it: "I looked at that website. It's sad when a formerly proud American corporation resorts to peddling half truths like that on a website. No solid facts are provided about their dire financial situation and yet GM has the arrogance to try and dupe the public into believing they aren't receiving a government handout. Sad, sad, sad."
Perhaps interestingly, the day before the outreach on facts and fiction started, GM apparently recalled almost a million vehicles due to a fire hazard... the recall is also carried on the US NHTSA database under NHTSA Campaign Number Although GM appears not to have issued a release on that... Almost a million fire hazards wouldn't be as important as 'addressing myths'.
Or am I just being too cynical again...
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Sunday, 7 September 2008
Warned
Aren't blogs funny? It never rains but it pours. Some days you've got nothing at all to add to the world, some days things you want to get out of your system just come tumbling out.
Some people read this post. I'm sure quite a few more read it when it ran on Arabian Business. Some even heard me blithering about it on the radio (and were kind enough not to complain).
But, surely, this poor berk wasn't among 'em - otherwise he'd have thought twice about the way he tried to handle disappointed consumer Moryarti when he posted his 5th September grumpy blogpost about a hotel Ramadan tent that failed to live up to expectations. Yes! Cue relentlessly positive comments from someone quite obviously working for the hotel in question. And then some rather... acid responses from the Moryarti himself... a fun read!!!
They can't say I didn't try to tell 'em, can they? >;0)
Some people read this post. I'm sure quite a few more read it when it ran on Arabian Business. Some even heard me blithering about it on the radio (and were kind enough not to complain).
But, surely, this poor berk wasn't among 'em - otherwise he'd have thought twice about the way he tried to handle disappointed consumer Moryarti when he posted his 5th September grumpy blogpost about a hotel Ramadan tent that failed to live up to expectations. Yes! Cue relentlessly positive comments from someone quite obviously working for the hotel in question. And then some rather... acid responses from the Moryarti himself... a fun read!!!
They can't say I didn't try to tell 'em, can they? >;0)
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Ma’am
Has anyone out there realised what a mad month December’s going to be in the UAE? It’s certainly great news for certain teachers I can name: National Day falls on the 2nd/3rd of December (1 day for the private sector), then Eid Al Adha will likely fall from the 7th-10th December. And then the English schools break up on the 18th December!
So they’re getting to work a whole seven days in the whole month! And while they’re swanning around on the beaches complaining about being bored, the rest of us have to negotiate a highly disruptive ‘day on, day off’ month at work.
Grrr. I’ve never really liked teachers...
So they’re getting to work a whole seven days in the whole month! And while they’re swanning around on the beaches complaining about being bored, the rest of us have to negotiate a highly disruptive ‘day on, day off’ month at work.
Grrr. I’ve never really liked teachers...
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