Music, sound effects and all that Jazz in Books

This morning I was watching BBC and they introduced the concept of Booktrack, a soundtrack to your ebook. I was at first astonished, then disgusted, then numbed, and then resigned.
Ok, Ok, Iet me tell you something. I'm a very musical person. I've been singing before I could speak and even though I'm no Annie Lennox I think I know how to pull a note straight. Unfortunately I have no other musical abilities, I know the basics of guitar and bass guitar, but that's about it. This is quite frustrating, since sometimes my head comes out with such amazing songs and riffs, that if I could able to put them into real music, I'd be the best musician on the planet...and I'm being honest.
All this to say that when I read I think about people voices and faces. I think about how they dress and they move, and yes, I think about sounds and music too.
I don't know if this happens because I'm so into music, or if also other people do the same. The point is that, as I've previously mentioned, when I'm reading I zoom out of reality. It doesn't matter if I'm in a bus full of people or at home with people watching TV, if the book is good I just don't notice anything or anybody. Why, then, would I want something that distracts me? I know it's meant to follow exactly how you read and go with the story, but I think it's too much, I got movies for that.

So let's talk about Booktrack for a minute. 

Booktrack represents a new chapter in the evolution of storytelling, and an industry "first" in publishing, by creating synchronized soundtracks for e-books that dramatically boost the reader's imagination and engagement. The company's proprietary technology combines music, sound effects and ambient sound, automatically paced to an individual's reading speed. Funded by investors including, Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, and member of Facebook's board of directors -- and in partnership with the largest publishing houses, best-selling authors, and award-winning composers and musicians -- Booktrack is already well on its way to creating a new genre of entertainment.

Ok, now let me just  share some thoughts on all this:

• The synchronized soundtrack sounds amazing, but that's not bound to be perfect and accurate at all times. Basically, for what I understood, you'll need to read a sample and the computer will register your average reading speed. So far so good. What about when you receive a text and you stop reading to check it? Will the music and effects go on? How does the computer know when to stop? Probably you have to push a button or something, which is pretty annoying. But even more annoying is when you're not really focused on the book, or the text makes you think about other things, about landscapes, poems you had forgotten, memories...and you're so lost into it you need to re-read the same line 100 times (it happens to me, a lot!)! How does the computer know what you're doing in your mind!? How does the computer know how slow or how fast you'll read a certain book? Because my speed depends on the author, on the story, on the literary style. 
• 'Dramatic boost to the reader's imagination': I appreciate how some sea noises could be impressive during the reading of Moby Dick, but if you can't imagine those sounds in your mind without the help of a reading device, then you're sad. Really sad.
• When somebody on BBC Breakfast claimed that sometimes the noises and sounds were too literal (i.e. while reading Marching Powder aka cocaine, the noise of marching feet came up), and therefore not 100% reliable, the company said that they work closely with authors so that the soundtrack for each book will be just right. How many books do you think will then be developed in this way? It would take a massive amount of time, money and resources in order to 'translate' each book, or even a year's worth of books into booktracks. So I don't think it'll be very reliable, and that sounds will be add automatically by some computer.

I appreciate the fact that this has been thought for commuters, who already listen to their music while reading in order to isolate themselves from the crowd. I personally couldn't, I would get so distracted by the music that I would start singing and lose the plot. Music is the only thing that distracts me! But I see how this idea could work for them. 

I also think it would be great if the sounds and noises were added to a normal audio book, so you'd get to listen to the reader's soothing voice, wherever you are, and immerse yourself into the story, literally. I think that would be great and would definitely work with kids...but then again, that's not really a book, is it?

Competitive Reading, Marketing appeal and Intrusive Publicity.

I'd like to apologise for my long absence. In my defence, I've been quite busy, but also I don't like to write useless posts, just for the sake of it! I like to be interested in what I write and at least -hopefully- contribute to the hottest debates.
So, I was attending a few very interesting sales meetings by some of the publishers we represent with the agency. I must admit I'm a sucker for conferences, I love them. I could spend my life taking notes and eating at buffets. But, yes, there's more to it than food and free tea and coffee (weirdly enough)!
What happens at these conferences is that the editors present their products and the ideas behind them. The marketing team will then explain the campaign that will be in place in order to sell, sell, sell. Hopefully. I must say that apart from a couple of big, fat marketing campaigns for big titles, the rest was pretty much confined to 'social media marketing'.
Is social media marketing still the big thing? I don't know if you could simply rely on it, fact is that you need your title to go VIRAL. This means that the more the title is out there - through a transmedia campaign -, and people talk about it, the more that title should be well-known and ultimately sell more.
Anyhow, a publisher, speaking of targeting sales, came out with a name I had read around the net a few times, but never really bothered to check out: KOBO.
You might have heard of it for its readers and apps, and the fact that it allows you to buy ebooks on any given device. But Kobo is so much more than this. For what I understood, it allows readers to check-in their books, earn badges, and keep track of their reading stats — and share all of these activities to their Facebook profiles etc. It's a proper Social Reading Device!
There are many social media communities focused on books out there. For instance I've been registered with Anobii for ages and, even though I'm not really using it anymore, I thought it was a great idea! A way to share your passion for books (physical ones at the beginning!) with other readers. Exchanging reviews and rates, and the thrill that comes with seeing your huge virtual library right in front of you, for the world to see (and for you to brag about!).
I love how it's possible to search the books you have in real life and add them to your virtual shelf. I have a lot of fun writing reviews and rating titles, discovering books I had forgotten and comics I wish I had known already.
So let's see, would you like an app on your reader, or even just an option on your Anobii profile to suggest you what to read next?
Sure, they already tell you, Amazon-style, what other people who have already gone through the book you're reading just now, moved to next - but is that enough? What do you think if they actually tracked you down, compared notes (FB, MSN, four squares, G+) and made their own profile of you and send you personalized suggestions? And what if they sent it to you via email, in your own personal space, when you're a few pages away from the end of your beloved book?
If you're like me you probably have another 50 books lined up for the next read, and you'd be terribly disturbed by the invasion of technology, but I bet a lot of people would actually pay attention to it. Maybe people who are pretty straightforward in their literary choices and preferences.
I'm definitely not that easy to read or to study, my dear tech device. I have trouble finding something I like in a book shop. I'm so bad I get desperate before going on holiday because I don't know which books I should bring with me, and consequently end up with random stuff. An example? My latest holiday in Greece randomly featured a thriller by Rick Mofina, the autobiography of a lesbian-feminist-republican writer, a fantasy tale by Neil Gaiman, and a fictional story of violence and incestuous relationships in London. (I can give you the titles if interested!).
I mean, not very common, straightforward stuff!!
But in a world where everywhere you go and wherever you buy (especially online) things get suggested to you non-stop, would book suggestions make any difference?
I probably wouldn't like it. Reading is some sort of past time for me, something I do to unwind and relax, something I do in the privacy of my bedroom or in a solitary corner, and I don't want any intruders. That's why maybe I wouldn't register to a website that tracks your reading progress. This is not a competition! I can be a terribly slow reader (it depends on the book and on how tired I am), or a tremendously fast one, but I don't need to push my limits in order to impress my peers online or in real life. Because we all know how it works. You start befriending your co-workers, your friends, and then people you don't really know but who are working in the industry and you're following on Twitter.
That's probably why I'll never have a reader. It'll happen, you'll see. You buy and download your ebooks, and they'll send you first chapters of this and that. Sure, you might discover some amazing new books you would otherwise never hear of, but it's more likely something big publishers have paid big money to publicize.
It'll be like fake suggestions in bookshops - well, in chains like Waterstone's and WhSmith - where the publishers pay quite a lot for their books to be in the front shelf, or in the suggested list.
I don't want that. I want to get lost in a book shop and being attracted by a cover, a title, a format.


Am I just an old, grumpy elitist?

Books or Videogames? Gamebooks!

While I was twittering along last week, I came across the tweet-up of the Book Hackday which took place in London on the 14th May.

I was quite taken aback by some of the topics and ideas expressed there, even though I had anticipated them in my head a while ago.

The main idea that really has made me think, for a while now and even before finding this tweet-up, is that of a customised book.

During the Book Hackday one of the mentioned projects was the House of Stories, an app that transforms the book into an interactive and gaming experience for the reader. For what I understood the stories are commissioned and customised for the reader.

@DigitalDanHouse (at the conference) then tweeted about a book that would re-arrange itself in order to follow the twists and turns of the reader's mind. Basically the book that reads the reader's while this one reads. Easy-peasy right? I think this is quite scary in a way, but that it would also be amazing if well put together!

One thing came to my mind straight away, a recollection from my childhood: a Gamebook or CYOA (choose your own adventure books). This was very famous in the 80s and I remember having a few of them, mostly D&D themed (I was a geek at the time as well!). 

They're books which allow the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative, which branches down various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Easier done than written, trust me. You're simply facing a choice - like at the labyrinth you go left or right - and from then you just go to a different page and something happens.

I never really liked that sort of books because I thought that it was awful to leave so many unread pages behind, therefore I would go back and read also the other option consequently getting confused a million and losing the plot. I'm like that, I need to know.

It really is like role-playing, but you have to play by yourself - for what I know - and obviously you can't have infinite choices. So books have been trying in a way to imitate videogames since the late 70s (and then kind of quitted), so what would the result be with digital books? I think if we had a graphically enhanced book, then, yes, it would probably be the same thing as a videogame and the book would lose its literary connotation, preferring the more interactive visual elements.

But if the ebook content was 'merely' written and you could just decide to skip to different chapters, then it would be more similar to a Gamebook. The format would then allow the author to write more twists and different plots, and the reader could re-read the book again and, depending on his mood, make different decisions whilst read a totally different work of literature.

Would this format suit any literary genre or only thriller/horror and adventure? I don't know if women would ever buy a Mills&Boon book where they decide how the Sultan cheats on his belly-dancer...actually, probably they would!

Do you think it's possible for a gamebook to ever win a Booker Prize? And if not, wouldn't that be literary racism?

There's also another practical issue that concern me. How many ISBN would you need for one book if, at the end of the day, it's more than one depending on who reads it? Things get even more complicated if the author gets to update and add plots once the e-book is online and you can download updates (or upgrades like in videogames!).

I don't think we'll ever reach the point where the e-reader reads the reader and changes the story accordingly. That would be extremely creepy, but also extremely fascinating because the stories would differ from reader to reader, depending on their levels of fantasy and imagination. 

If this could actually happen, then, what would the role of the author be? Would we need an author if we could read our own fantasies?

Think people, think!!!

Advertising in Books - How to kill the fun, smash the dream and ultimately distract the reader?

When I started typing this post I was going to go for an anger-filled article, almost a proper rant.
I wanted to scream and condemn unwanted advertising. However, I decided to grow up, admit my mistakes and publicly change my mind. Maybe.


It's a tough life for books lovers who work in sales, marketing and publicity.
You need to reach your targets, sometimes knowing that what you do would terribly annoy you as a customer and/or a reader. Now, in an ideal world you'd be able to do things in a subtle, subdued way, and sneak in a trigger in everything you say or write, which will then make people buy your product.
In the real world, things are not quite going that direction. Things are blatantly in your face - love this sentence, even though I don't think it's semantically correct. Meh.
When I read about the new, cheaper, ad-supported Kindle - the Kindle with Special Offers -, my heart sank. I know, I know, this shouldn't have come as a surprise. We're so used to ads everywhere, from Facebook, to websites and apps; I know this is the price to pay for the abundance of brands on the market and also for the cheap or free apps you download on your phone. Someone has got to pay for the product, I get it. And unfortunately when I want to complain about how unfair is modern life, my first, pathetic, argument would simply be, this is a book. Books shouldn't contain ads!
But what about those examples from the past? When Dickens' stories were serialised, they were surrounded by publicity for related and unrelated products:
They were usually bound in green paper, and - after the first two monthly instalments of THE PICKWICK PAPERS - always included precisely 32 pages of text, two engraved illustrations, and, usually, 16 pages of advertisements.(source)
16 Pages of ads, it's a lot! But that's what pays the bill, and what allowed common and the poorer people to access the finest literature of the time. If you think about it in this way, advertisements in books and Kindles don't sound all that bad, right? But then again, is the Kindle cheap enough for most people? In my opinion, it isn't. 


I think that if they really want to annoy us with ads, like they already do on the TV, in cinemas, on the phone, in magazines, and on the radio, they should at least give it away for a killer price. It seems like the UK won't see this version of the Kindle for a while, and it'll be sold in the USA, starting May 3rd. For what I read on a couple of English blogs, people don't really seem to be against this idea. So I'll give it a go, I'll try to look at it from a logical (my) point of view.

It's worth pointing out just how annoying these ads really are. For what I understood they would only pop-up when your Kindle goes into screensaver mode, or as banners at the bottom of the reading list. Fair enough, they allegedly aren't that intrusive, but to me this changes the whole conception of book and of the reading experience.
Could it just be that even though I love gadgets, and futuristic useless stuff I can't live without, I still cannot accept the fact that books are going - well, are already - digital?
I can't really admit I'm pro-ereader; I take what technology brings me day by day, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I love, or even like, the idea of it all.
I know that if I had a thing popping up or just appearing on the screen whilst I'm reading, it would just immensely piss me off - excuse my French! Also, if the ad is appealing enough, I would almost certainly look at it, browse around a bit, and lose the concentration I personally require in order to dive in the story in front of me.
The solution seems quite simple, really: buy the normal Kindle.
But then again what if people who cannot afford the normal Kindle can't also stand ads popping up on the screen? The answer is simple: buy a REAL book.

I could spend the whole day talking smack about ads in books and in the end it wouldn't do any good whatsoever. The only thing I'm sure of is that I love regular printed books, where the only advertisements you see are the other titles written by the same author or published by the same publisher. I can accept that, it's relevant useful information.
What I can't accept is external futile information on other products such as moisturisers, credit cards and cars. I'm not trying to condemn all kinds of publicity here though, I just want to put this problem in perspective. I love reading glossy magazines, filled up with amazing pictures and outstanding fashion ads. But that's a specific market. Take for example Vogue; you know what to expect when you buy it. A few articles on beauty and fashion trends, maybe some 'deeper', well-worded thoughts about the latest hot topic, and then pages over pages of pictorials and ads. It markets a specific audience, who buys -or in my case would love to buy but can't afford - up-market products. The ad, in this case, is basically the main content, it's almost a form of art.

What I'm really worried about is the cheapening of ads and of products which will most likely occur in time on ebooks. Right now Amazon is saying that their ads will 'look attractive and engaging, and will be going for screensaver images like landscapes, scenery, architecture, travel images, photography and illustrations' (source). Fair enough, but like everything else, they'll try and make as much money out of it as they can, selling ads space to anyone who wants to pay. How lovely it'll be to have a flashing penis promoting Viagra pills while you're reading Catullus' erotic poems! I don't think I'm exaggerating here, because sure enough they'll justify the amount of new, less posh ads, by saying that the products promoted are relevant to the genre or topic treated of the book.

Give it time and they'll send exasperated readers back to normal books, and I'll be in my corner laughing maniacally! OK, enough ranting.