The Nameless Horror

As Malcolm Gladwell has been saying during the past few years, the internet is good at forming weak, not strong links. Commitment on the net is shallow. This is the same for events and for purchase of books, and also for reading the content of any post. People click “like” on articles they’ve never read, befriend people they’ve no connection with.

The arrival in Harrogate is always something of a culture-shock after London. Hordes of savage brutes roaming the night-time streets, knuckleboys on the rampage looking for blood and carnage – ugly scenes that would make even the most hardened war correspondents run screaming straight back into their mothers’ arms.

I wasn’t there for "Tossergate" at Harrogate, but I’ve seen the story making the rounds today and read Stephen Leather’s response (and, unlinked, seen talk of how he said he uses sock puppets on blogs and forums to promote and review his own books - another thing for another day). But not being at a place has never stopped anyone on the internet writing ill-informed responses to things, and happily mine were written months ago.

1. On pricing and cheap ebooks: this and this. (Verdict: agree largely with the baying mob.)
2. On piracy and DRM: this (Verdict: agree largely with Leather and apparently with Steve on DRM.)
3. On not needing proof reading “because fans will do it for you”: @Suw covers it somewhat in a comment on her Forbes piece here - “Don’t treat readers like beta testers.” (Verdict: anyone who does get their - usually paying, definitely non-volunteer - readership to fix their shit because they can’t be arsed to do it first is a tool.)
4. No one, anywhere, ever, should write the word as “eBook”. It’s not a proper noun or a bloody trade name.

And now back to eWork.