Must Use Bigger Elephants

I'm over in Australia today rabbiting away about my remarkable tally of rejections from the British publishing industry on Ozzie Sci-Fi writer Patty Jansen's brilliantly titled blog, Must Use Bigger Elephants.

It's all part of Patty's 'Blog Tour', a brilliant scheme writers have evolved to share space on each others' blogs and therefore give each other access to their readers for a day. I've guest posted on a number of other writers' blogs (and gladly hosted them on this one), mostly because of the international community of writers I've stayed in touch with since we all met on Harper Collins' Authonomy website.  Few us still visit Authonomy, but a great number of us still stay in touch.

It's interesting, Authonomy could well turn out to have had a demonstrably important and wide-ranging effect on writing and fiction that was completely unintended by its founders. And one not entirely in their interests, as many of us have thrown up our hands at the publishing industry and gone it alone. Tools like blog tours give writers access to global audiences as well as giving readers access to new writers. And of course self-publishing means you can reach global audiences far more easily than all the printing, shipping, distributing and stocking involve in 'traditional' publishing.

So do please be my guest and pop over to MUBE and have a root around and perhaps, if you're into science fiction, take a look at Patty's work. Don't forget to behave well while you're there and wipe your feet before going in...

The Death In Advertising

Image via Wikipedia

For some reason, the people at Dubai-based document imaging company Xeratek think using the sound of an ECG flatlining followed by someone wailing 'Nooo' in their advertising is a smart idea. I'm probably over-reacting here, but I really, really take exception to having the sound of someone's death forced on me during my morning drive to work.

I have moaned before about the use of unpleasant sounds in radio ads, the National Bonds campaign used a woman suiciding, a couple arguing and so on. I've posted about the awfulness of radio ads in the past, too. Nobody's ever popped up to defend any specific ad or, indeed, the industry in general. Oh, now I tell a lie. Some blithering idiot from Kellog's ad agency tried astroturfing this post, resulting in this act of SEO-driven revenge.

Much of the awfulness is mired in agencies trying to use 'picture power' to make the ad stand out and help it get its point across. I can see them in my mind's eye, clustered around the client (a small, fat balding man in a suit, somewhat hapless looking and a little off-colour) urging him to take their advice and illustrate the product, make it come to life for the listener. This is what they call 'the creative'. Let's take a concept and put it into living sound in the most imaginative and attention-grabbing way, really disrupt the listener and then get our message across, they babble excitedly as Mr Klienman looks uncertainly at them (he's actually wondering if he remembered to feed the dog and if Pauline would notice again. Damn dog's her pride and joy, loves it more than me, he's thinking as he watches the people from the ad agency work themselves into an evangelistic frenzy. One of them has fallen on the floor and appears to be having some sort of seizure.)

I don't doubt that a calm, factual announcement wouldn't work as well as a colourful, illustrative and entertaining treatment. The trouble, I suspect, is that the advertisers so constantly fail to provide the latter. And then there's the issue of what concepts you actually pick to illustrate your company's products and services. Those concepts are associated, after all, with the brand you're promoting. So the sound of death, the ultimate worst fear of the human race, the cessation of our time on this planet, is perhaps not the smartest idea. Someone just died. Yay. Buy our product.

Hey, it's just a joke though, isn't it? I'm taking it all too seriously, it was just meant to get the ad running and bring a smile to people's faces, surely? I don't remember what the punchline is, though. I was too busy being unsettled by the sound of a death.

Klienman is looking doubtful as the exec on the floor starts to shout in a strange voice, semi-words that sound English but somehow don't make sense, like a Sigur Ros vocal. The account director whips out a pen and a sheet of paper and Klienman, remembering now that he hadn't put water out for the stupid mutt either, signs distractedly. His mobile rings and, sure enough, it's Pauline who's come back to the house and is shouting at him about mistreating the dog. Miserably, he watches the account director licking his lips and folding the paper into his pocket as the creative team help their spittle-flecked colleague up. They've won and the client agreed to the death concept. Kleinman watches them bundle excitedly through the door as he realises Pauline has just told him she's leaving him.

Olives On Sale In Beirut

Two of my favourite places come together today as Olives - A Violent Romance (a book set in Jordan) goes on sale in bookshops across Lebanon.

You'll find it at Libraries Antoine stores (as well as at Antoine Online linked here!),El Bourj, Way In, Librairie Orientale, Librairie Internationale, Malik bookshop and other good book stores.

And I am glad.

A big thank you from me to Therese Nasr and the team at Levant.

Libro Non Grata

Image via Wikipedia

As I shared over on the Olives blog last night my debut novel, Olives - A Violent Romance, is not to be available on sale in Jordanian bookshops after distributors have declined to stock it.

The reason for their reticence appears to be my choice of name for the female character in the book, Aisha Dajani. The name is a common one all over the Levant, and the name of a large family originally from Jerusalem. The name was appropriate to the character for that precise reason, given the book itself is set in Jordan and deals with a Palestinian family and their history.

I've been shut down before, in a former life as a publisher of magazines (for a negative review of a computer in a PC magazine. The computer company CEO turned out to have 'wasta'). I've spent countless hours in various Ministries of Information (before they were all given more 'user friendly' names). I've been passed by numerous censors in one form or another but I have never actually been censored, in print or blog. I learned early on how to do that for myself. This would appear to be one instance where I've got it wrong.

As Kamal BinMugahid points out in his thought-provoking post today, honour is paramount in the Arab World. A family's good name is taken very seriously indeed, sometimes to the point where the mania spills out into murder, the so-called honour killings which tarnish the whole Arab World's good name to save the 'good name' of single families.

I have seen my work rejected by many people over the years, for a variety of reasons. But never before has someone knocked me back because of fear. Fear of the reaction of people with the same family name to a character in a work of fiction.

Olives is, indeed, libro non grata in Jordan...

A Worrying Journalistic Twend

Image via CrunchBase

From decrying Twitter as lacking the context and analysis they, exclusively, provide, journalists have increasingly embraced the medium in their reporting. Part of the reason for this is that many journalists have taken to Twitter like wee ducks to water, finding it a valuable tool in a number of ways. For many of the UK-based journalists I follow on Twitter, it would appear to provide an ideal platform to bitch about each other. Elsewhere, journalists find it a useful tool for crowdsourcing as well as keeping up with local events. Tweet about a terrible car crash or massive factory fire and chances are you'll soon pick up a news journalist asking for more information.

Eye witness reports have long been a mainstay of local news reporting and Twitter merely makes those eyewitnesses easier and faster to access. What I find mildly worrying is the increasing number of stories being filed out there that are 'stood up' on Tweets. It would seem that all a journalist has to do is find a few outraged Tweets and before you can spell veracity backwards we've got headlines like 'public rage' and 'Internet outburst'. The great thing about this is there's no seeming need to actually quantify 'public rage', and making the assertion can now be backed with a couple of tweets from Furious of Guildford and Angry of Barsha. Even worse, the tweets from those with an opposing or more moderate viewpoint get left out because they don't help the angle the journalist has taken - we none of us are interested in that. As I have long said, we slow down to look at the terrible accident, but we never slow down to look at the happy family having a picnic. What sells newspapers (or clicks, which in many ways are worse for preserving news values than the pressure to sell papers) is drama, outrage and the like.

And when you can tap negative public reaction, all too easily expressed on Twitter but almost always only half the story as online opinions are almost invariably balanced by others weighing in, you've got a nice easy story that really doesn't require much work at all to put together. As long as you don't muck it up by presenting the whole picture and actually bothering to produce a professional tone analysis rather than a few selected tweets...

Amazon Book Pricing Fun

Image via Wikipedia

I discovered today that Olives - A Violent Romance is now on sale in the UK through The Book Depository. One of the things I did when setting up the international edition was plump for Amazon's Expanded Distribution Channel, which costs a few dollars but which opens you up to distribution through bookshops, libraries and the like. Amazon doesn't actually do a very good job of describing quite what this means, hence my surprise to see The Book Depository selling the book for £7.61 on amazon.co.uk, which is considerably less than its $15.99 US price tag (The book should cost £10.16 at today's exchange rate). I went and did a little digging to find out who The Book Depository are and why they were able to sell my book for less than the US list price.

The Book Depository is actually an Amazon subsidiary based in the UK. They'll sell you a paperback copy of Olives, with free delivery worldwide (including anywhere in the Middle East) for £9.98, despatched within 72 hours. You can order it here.

This means buyers of Olives in the UK and elsewhere get a better deal than those in the US, which is no bad thing. It also means you can walk into any UK bookshop and order a copy of Olives, as well as buying it from Amazon or have it delivered to your doorstep anywhere in the world for under a tenner!

But how can they sell a book for less than I'm charging for it on Amazon.com? Because the Expanded Distribution Channel pays a different royalty, in fact 60% of the cover price of the book goes to Amazon, so it gives them a lot of 'wiggle room' to sell books profitably at lower prices, in fact about $13.50 of wiggle room.

In other words, Amazon is actually undercutting me!

In related good news, they've stuck a promotional discount on the Olives Kindle Edition and you can now buy it for £3.99. Look, I'll even include the link for you right here! :)

Olives - The Blog

The inevitability of it all! A blog of the book, a place for looking at some of the characters, locations and issues contained in that little 262 page slice of word-arrangement that is Olives - A Violent Romance.

It's linked here for your clicking pleasure.

How To Upset Your Customers

Image via Wikipedia

I'm not sure I am aware of any organisation that is quite so skilled at ineptitude of the highest order as my bank, HSBC Middle East. As I have had reason to remark before, I cannot think of one aspect of personal banking that has not at some stage caused me problems, been mishandled or generally failed to deliver as promised. This is not generally considered to be a good thing.

You can search the blog for 'bank' if you want to steep yourself in the most recent five years of blthering idiocy, but it's been something like 18 years in total now since I first walked into the British Bank of the Middle East and admired the two gun-wielding bedouin guards at the door.

These days, I try and avoid going to the branch at all costs. It makes me physically angry even to walk in. (So please do take my remarks with a pinch of salt, I am not my usual calm and Zen-like self when it comes to issues related to banking.)

It's one reason why telephone and Internet banking has been such a Godsend. The vast majority of transactions can take place in a nice, automated phone call or browsing session. I actually only use phone banking because I can't remember all the passwords, PINs, forgettable questions etc. And even then, HSBC asks that you remember (and key in) your 10 digit personal banking number or your 12 digit bank account number, your date of birth, your six digit personal identity number and the average velocity of an African swallow.*

Now they've found a new way to get to me. They have started playing an advertisement for some financial service or another to their customers when they call up to use phone banking. The advert not only drones on in English, but is then repeated in Arabic. While.we.wait.

You can only imagine what kind of drooling nincompoop would have thought that interrupting customers using a service that's part of a service package they are paying for (and we pay plenty) and rendering them helpless to do anything other than wait out the interruption would be a good idea. It's frustrating, irritating and annoying. It clearly demonstrates the bank has nothing but disrespect for its customers, their time and their convenience. And it's clearly symptomatic of a failure to understand the nature and role of corporate communications at the most fundamental level.

Irritating and inconveniencing your customers is not smart marketing. It just shows your contempt for them.
 * Okay, so I made the last one up.

Amazon Remittance - I Am A Wealthy Man

Image by Ethan.K via Flickr

I'm dumbstruck. I don't know whether to do little jigs, run through the streets crying 'Eureka!' or just make myself a Vesper. Actually, let's face it, it's a no-brainer. Vesper it is.

You remember me mentioning that some of the 'big' moments in this self publishing thing have been the ones you'd least expect? No? Well, they have been. Getting the book from the printers wasn't a 'big' moment for me, sighting my first copy in a shop wasn't, either. But seeing the cover was and seeing Olives - a violent romance on the Kindle for the first time was. And this one is, too. A real wowzer moment.

I've just got my first remittance advice from Amazon. It's not much money, about twenty quid, but that's not the point. I just made money from my books for the first time. People actually went out and paid good money to own the book that over 100 agents turned their noses up at. What's more, people have been reading and enjoying the book. Some have let me know, personally or through reviews on Amazon and GoodReads. Nobody's asked for a refund either.

And now I'm looking at an email that says I made money from my writing.

I am inestimably happy and thought I'd share the joy. I'm off to make the down payment on a 50 metre luxury yacht now...

The Shipping News

Last year, you may recall two ships landed on the beach outside our front door after their crews had lost control in bad weather. The two grounded around a week apart and became something of a tourist attraction.

A couple of recent spats of windy weather has once again wreaked havoc in shipping circles, with not two but three ships falling foul of the inclement conditions. An Iranian tug has landed on Ajman beach, while the 'Lady Moon', a small tanker, sank just off the breakwater at Sharjah's Hamriyah port last week. Now Hamriyah has a second sinking, the supply vessel Hatem II, according to Gulf News.today.

The Lady Moon was lucky - the 30-metre ship had offloaded its cargo of diesel, which could have resulted in a nasty little spill. Its crew were taken into custody, while the captain of the Hatem II has apparently hightailed it and is nowhere to be found. Presumably he tripped and fell into a lifeboat.