Medium and the Message
A debate is raging in e-publishing circles: should content be encrypted and protected (the Barnes and Noble or Digital goods model) - or should it be distributed freely and thus serve as a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin's "ideavirus")? Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free "cracked" e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion.The more paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to co-opt the emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. "Publishers" - goes this creed - "are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection measures at the very inception of the digital publishing industry. They ought to learn the lesson."But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and text. In music, what matter are the song or the musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine, as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and the faithfulness of reproduction of the listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.Not so with text.Content is only one element of many of equal footing underlying the decision to purchase a specific text-"carrier" (medium). Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will still fare differently. Hence the failure of CD-ROMs and e-learning. People tend to consume content in other formats or media, even if it is fully available to them or even owned by them in one specific medium. People prefer to pay to listen to live lectures rather than read freely available online transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have subscribed to the full text online versions of the very same publications. And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase books in print rather than their e-versions.This is partly a question of the slow demise of old habits. E-books have yet to develop the user-friendliness, platform-independence, portability, brows ability and many other attributes of this ingenious medium, the Gutenberg tome. But it also has to do with marketing psychology. Where text (or text equivalents, such as speech) is concerned, the medium is at least as important as the message. And this will hold true even when e-books catch up with their print brethren technologically.There is no doubting that finally e-books will surpass print books as a medium and offer numerous options: hyperlinks within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference works, etc., embedded instant shopping and ordering links, divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines, interaction with other e-books (using Bluetooth or another wireless standard), collaborative authoring, gaming and community activities, automatically or periodically updated content, ,multimedia capabilities, database, Favourites and History Maintenance (records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions and much more), automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities, full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities and more.The same textual content will be available in the future in various media. Ostensibly, consumers should gravitate to the feature-rich and much cheaper e-book. But they won't - because the medium is as important as the text message. It is not enough to own the same content, or to gain access to the same message. Ownership of the right medium does count. Print books offer connectivity within an historical context (tradition). E-books are cold and impersonal, alienated and detached. The printed word offers permanence. Digital text is ephemeral (as anyone whose writings perished in the recent dot.com bloodbath or Deja takeover by Google can attest). Printed volumes are a whole sensorium, a sensual experience - olfactory and tactile and visual. E-books are one dimensional in comparison. These are differences that cannot be overcome, not even with the advent of digital "ink" on digital "paper". They will keep the print book alive and publishers' revenues flowing.People buy printed matter not merely because of its content. If this were true e-books will have won the day. Print books are a packaged experience, the substance of life. People buy the medium as often and as much as they buy the message it encapsulates. It is impossible to compete with this mistique. Safe in this knowledge, publishers should let go and impose on e-books "encryption" and "protection" levels as rigorous as they do on the their print books. The latter are here to stay alongside the former. With the proper pricing and a modicum of trust, e-books may even end up promoting the old and trusted print versions.About The AuthorSam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com
Five Tips to Launching a Successful Message Forum
Forums a.k.a. "message boards" can be great marketing tools for your website. They attract repeat visitors and provide a meeting place for them to share their thoughts, ideas, questions and concerns.Unfortunately many webmasters that attempt to launch a board on their site, end up closing it down due to lack of activity and popularity.So what's the key to success, you ask?Below you will find 5 quick tips on creating and promoting a message board for your website.1. You Need Plenty of TrafficIf your site is receiving small amounts of traffic per day, then it will be very hard to get the conversations going on your board.Keep in mind not everyone that comes to your site will even notice or visit your board, and those that do stop by may just browse without posting. In fact, the majority of the visitors to your board will only look around.Your site should be getting at least 1,000 unique visitors per day before you even launch. Don't open it up prematurely because it can make your site look uninhabited if no one posts.2. Create Some Starter ConversationsOnce you've created your board, post a few questions to get the ball rolling. This may coax people to jump in and post some comments.And if you are using a free board like http://www.phpbb.com, you can create polls to spark participation. People like interactivity and to give their opinion. Post a few polls and allow your visitors to vote on topic.Also, don't be ashamed to talk to yourself. What I mean by that is you may want to create a few usernames on your own and have them post questions and answers. It may sound silly but if you're lacking activity, this may help get some conversations going. No one will know they aren't real people, except you! 
3. Promote! Promote! Promote!Don't just provide one or two links to your message board. Link to it from every page on your website. Include it in the signature of your emails, and if you have a newsletter, devote a special edition to the launch of your board.On your "Contact" page, suggest that your visitors post a question on the message board as an alternative to emailing you. This will force some people to browse the board and possibly find the answer they need. If your visitors begin finding the board useful, they'll return often and hopefully will start posting.4. Keep The Categories to a Minimum In The BeginningA big mistake that people make with new message boards is that they create too many categories. Remember that for most new forums, the number of posts are going to be small at first. So if you have 10 categories and only 1 or 2 are being used, it makes your board look scarce.Try creating just one or two in the beginning and then once the traffic starts coming in you can add new ones.5. Make The Board Easy to UseDon't force your visitors to search for instructions on how to use your forums. If they have to figure things out, they will be discouraged and leave. Be sure to use a script that is neat and intuitive.I recommend http://www.phpbb.com. Not only are they free, but the setup is easy and the layout is nice and clean.Hopefully these quick tips will help you as you launch your new messaeg board. Again, don't forget to promote it like crazy. If you can build an active community, it can be quite the marketing tool for your website.About The AuthorLisa Irby is the author of 2 Create a Web Site -- a site that encourages you to plan accordingly before diving into the web site creation process.http://www.2CreateAWebSite.com
A Simple Contest with a Strong Message: Wake Up Your Writing Spirit
The Blogfest 2005 Writing Contest has only been running for two weeks and already the results are overwhelming. And not because we're getting far more entries than we expected. It's because along with entries, we're also getting heartfelt messages from writers all over the world. I've run a few contests before and received quite a few entries, but I've never been personally emailed and thanked by so many writers.What's the difference with this contest? I think the main reason is that the idea actually came from writers. Even though the writers at our company work in publishing, they find it a little sad that there's so much focus on writing what can sell instead of writing what truly matters to you. They wanted a contest that would allow people to write whatever they wanted to write.From that idea came Blogfest, a contest designed to encourage all writers to get the project of their dreams done. Unlike most contests, we decided not to offer publication and not to pay the prize for a completed work. Instead, we decided to offer the prizes based on how much the writing project means to the writer. This is one contest that isn't about whether or not your work can sell or about what your writing will mean to someone else. It's about what it means to you.To enter, we asked writers to tell us about the one thing they've always wanted to write and to tell us what it would mean to them to write it. Now, after only two weeks, we have an inbox full of emails from people. Entries so far have included grandparents wanting to write their life story for their grandchildren, aspiring novelists, professional writers looking for the chance to write something for themselves and not for money, and a young woman wanting to capture and preserve her mother's family recipes.These people have entered and then sent us an extra email just to thank us for the opportunity. They've told us how just writing about the project has made them so excited and full of joy. They have enthusiasm and feel delight just for thinking about finally writing. And we've started reading the entries and the joy is there too. As a publisher, I'm used to reading submissions and contest entries. It's often a joy but there's rarely as much life as there is in these submissions. Reading them, I can feel that people have that spark of excitement that is only motivated by something much greater than money or even publication. It's the joy of doing what your heart's always wanted to do.There is more to writing than publication and money and this competition is bringing out the real spirit of writing.My message to all writers is to think about what matters to them. Think about that one thing you've always dreamed of writing. I challenge you to write down what completing that project would mean to you. If you feel that spark, I challenge you to commit to your project and get it written. Not because you can make money from it, but because it means something to you.This contest has made me see more clearly than ever that there is far more to writing than making money. There will only be a few winners to Blogfest, and choosing them is going to be the toughest job we do all year. But I hope this idea can reach further than that. I hope all writers will listen to their hearts and complete their projects. I hope that just thinking about actually doing it will wake up that writing spirit that is in so many people.Shelley Wake is one of the organizers of Blogfest 2005 and the manager and editor of Writing Stuff ? the site that offers everything a freelance writer needs to succeed.
http://www.writingstuff.com