Archive for February, 2010

You might have heard that here in the DC/Northern VA area we received a snowfall somewhat larger than usual this past weekend. Snowmageddon! The Snowpocalypse! Ragnarok is at hand…

Over on Twitter, The Washington Post Book World’s Deputy Editor Ron Charles (@RonCharles) put it into perspective when he commented that his “saintly mother-in-law” closed the local Christian Science Reading Room because of the snow: “The last time was Pearl Harbor, I believe.” Pennsylvania Avenue is deserted. The Metro isn’t running above ground. Even (gasp) Tyson’s Corner Center closed early yesterday!

Gracious, gracious; what WILL we all do? Seriously: First we must take care of family, friends, neighbors, and strangers who don’t have power or shelter. 

But after that? Snowball fight! Then back inside to read, knit, cook, talk, drink, read some more, and watch movies. Mr. Bethanne and I have been alternating stories in print with stories in Technicolor. Since Friday, I’ve read “The Seven-Year Bitch” by Jennifer Belle, “The Pluto Files” by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and finished “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. We’ve watched “Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Great Escape,” “The Lives of Others,” and “Out of Africa.”

It was the last which inspired today’s post (you might have been able to guess that from its title). You might believe that I’m going to write about Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Karen, Baroness von Blixen) and her beautiful prose (and I do love her prose), but that’s not what struck me on watching the movie. (Tangent: While Meryl Streep’s performance as Karen Blixen is wonderful, Robert Redford’s Denys Finch-Hatton is a caricature, and the 1980s faux-backdrop cinematography in some scenes set my teeth on edge.)

One of the “signs” that Karen is intrigued by Finch-Hatton is when she wanders into his room at Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club and discovers his well-stocked bookshelves. When Berkeley Cole surprises her in the midst of her snooping, she sighs over Finch-Hatton’s “beautiful books” and asks “Does he lend them?” 

My brain itched a little after that scene, but it wasn’t until a later one in which Karen and Denys are putting his books away on shelves in her beautiful farmhouse when I realized why I felt that itch. None of the books had jackets!

Well of course none of the books had jackets. The story takes place in the early 20th century. Book jackets as we know them, including blurbs, artwork, sometimes an author photo, and always some form of publisher promotion (even if only a colophon), weren’t commonly manufactured until the 1920s. The books that Finch-Hatton and Blixen owned were still lovely and often individually distinguished items: Their endpapers, marbled edges, embossed covers and stamped spines make those volumes special.

However, even if the covers of those pre-advertising-explosion halcyon days give you title, author, and publisher, they don’t give much of a hint about what’s inside.

How did people find out what to read?

I suspect that word-of-mouth and book reviews had something to do with it. Bear with me for a second; I come not to bash paper books, but to consider a possibility. One of the things many readers and folks in publishing have derided about the rise in e-readers and digital publishing is that e-books don’t have dust jackets/book design/information (of course, eventually they’ll have all that and more…), things that readers have come to take for granted over the last decades.

I wonder: If we don’t have the same number of immediate ways to evaluate a book, might there be a resurgence in reader reliance on reviews and word-of-mouth marketing? What do you think?

As of today, February 1st, I have been using Twitter for one full year. Before I tell you about what’s gone on in the past twelve months, let me offer a couple of comparisons:

In May 1996, I’d been using email for a full year. It was pretty nifty, but not much had changed for me.

On the other hand, by May 1997, I’d discovered eBay — and that totally changed my life and views of what the Internet might accomplish. In fact (and no one, save a few hardy, hoary souls, will remember this), I went to BEA that year and pitched a radical new idea: an online-only bookstore called Prioress Books (my idea was to sell books in my academic specialty, medievalia). I never wound up actually stocking/selling from that virtual store, but I knew which way the wind was blowing very, very early.

My point is that some tools make life easier (email) and other tools change life dramatically (online commerce) — but the ones that change life dramatically nearly always depend on something that came first. If we hadn’t had email, there wouldn’t have been any eBay.

Similarly, if we hadn’t had Facebook, there wouldn’t be any Twitter.

Let me try to explain without going too far down any particular social media rabbit holes. Basically, Facebook (which is considered obsolete now by many people) had one component called a Status Update, a little box where you told friends what you were currently doing. The Twitter developers realized that the Status Update all by itself might be a kind of “money shot” (forgive me!), an instant win.

They were right.

In 12 months of tweeting, I’ve learned more, made more contacts, and accomplished more professionally than in the previous 12 years, all because of Twitter, and I’m not kidding. Let me quantify it for doubters:

– I’ve made new friends. To try and list everyone who has become my friend would be futile: Some are friends and colleagues, some one or the other, some are just acquaintances, and others seem to exist just to amuse me. After all, that’s the beauty of Twitter. Each user gets to decide who makes it past the gate. But many of the new friends I’ve made are people with whom I’ve now spent time in real life and with whom I’ll continue to spent time in real life. Twitter has connected me to real, true, interesting friends who live both near and far that I never would have met without the app.

– I’ve engaged in new endeavors. Chief among them is Megaphone, the “Get the Word Out!” Division of Book Maven Media, but Twitter also inspired the burgeoning #FridayReads, #TwitterBookClub, and the fabulous Roundtable Luncheons (now in NYC and Boston!).

– I’ve made it into media, including blogs, magazines, and Page Six of the New York Post — all because of conversations and situations I’ve jumped into on Twitter.

– My profile has grown in ways I could never have dreamed of with traditional media/networking methods. To my delight, I now have more than 5500 followers on Twitter. Since I only follow 800 of those people, I know that my tweetpower isn’t simply due to autofollows. I’m providing some kind of value to my followers, and that may be the most exciting thing of all to result from Twitter.

Some tools help us to communicate — other tools help us to change our behavior. Twitter may not last forever (and Twittermania certainly won’t), but its effects on the ways we connect online and offline will reverberate for a long time.

If you’re reading this because of Twitter, or if you’re reading this and you love/hate Twitter, tell me: What has Twitter done for you? Do you agree with me, or not?