Russell Davies

tales from the long tail

Seeing two new books that I really like the look of emerge from the web (Cooking With Booze and How To Worry Friends And Inconvenience People) dragged up memories of my own adventures in publishing land, and I realised it was just about two years ago this week that I excitedly posted this picture of Egg, Bacon Chips And Beans on the big front table in Borders.

I remember excitedly following my sales rank on Amazon (though I can't remember how high it actually got, above is what it is now) and comparing them with a friend who's a real author. And there were all the nice reviews and interviews and the short-listing for the Blooker thing. And the occasional warm glow from an email from someone who'd actually bought one. Or from seeing one in one of the cafes I'd reviewed.

And then, nothing. No-one bought one.

It seems that year everyone bought bucketloads of Does Anything Eat Wasps and Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shite? (especially in Tesco and Asda where it counts). And no-one bought EBCB. I got a statement the other day from my lovely agents. Harpers printed 20,000 copies and they tell me that gross unit sales were 7,428 and net unit sales were 4,702. (I'm not really sure what gross and net means in this context - does this mean there are about 3,000 books to be returned? Not sure.) So, not no-one, obviously. But it wasn't a hit. And very quickly after Christmas though there was still a bit of press interest in it, I realised that Harpers weren't bothered any more. Everyone who'd worked on it was now doing something else. That was it. EBCB (the book) was over.

And don't get me wrong, I loved doing it, I'd have done it if I'd only sold one copy. And I got a very generous advance, so financially it was splendid. But you know, it just seems sad that there are some 15,000 books in a warehouse somewhere. Not being bought. Not being remaindered. Not being pulped. (I don't think, do they have to ask me if they do that?)

Anyway, I was rather inspired by the stuff that James has done for Cooking With Booze, he's put it online, he's built a mobile version, he's done videos and everything. So I've decided I'm going to stop moping and face up to my long-tail status, and see if I can't do something to knock that sales rank up a little. Not sure what yet. Maybe more regular posting on ebcb would help. But I'm sure I'll think of something.

In the meantime if you'd like to buy a copy to help me out, you can get one from here, or maybe here. As my agent described it 'it's the ideal Christmas gift for the man in your life you don't know very well.'

coffee

Just to give those that want to come lots of notice, let's do coffee morning on the 16th. That's a week on Friday. Normal plan. 11am. The Breakfast Club, D'Arblay Street. Anyone can come.

vote pepys

Pepys's Diary is one of those lovely ideas you wish you'd had yourself. But it's a good job you didn't, because you wouldn't have done anything about it. ('You' here, meaning 'me'.) But fortunately we didn't have this idea, Phil Gyford did and he's actually done something about it and created something fantastic; the sort of thing the web is great at and should be more full of. Now, this isn't exactly new news, it's been around for a while, but I mention it because it's been nominated as one of the best literature blogs and you should vote for it. If you want to.

bonfire night

This is what we need more of in the world; things that seem dangerous, but are, basically, safe.

more jump

These seemed to strike a chord so I thought I'd add a few more. This Peter Ustinov.

Audrey Hepburn.

Hugh Gaitskell.

John Steinbeck.

Aldous Huxley.

microwinners

I asked Jeremy, the esteemed digital publisher at Penguin to judge our fine self-generated microtrends. He's chosen Dave, John, John (Dodds), El Gaffney and Tom. But since Tom seems to be John Dodds again I'll nominate Brandon for the fifth prize. Thanks to everyone for entering. I thought there were some great things there. Penguin people - how about us doing the follow-up for you? If the winners email me (russell at russelldavies.com) I'll point you in Jeremy's direction so you can claim your winnings.

timez attack

Arthur's been playing Timez Attack recently. It seems a really good way to do your times tables, just to get that basic, reflex knowledge of multiplication in your head. You defeat monsters by getting the sums on their chest right. (You're the little green fellow at the front.) And this is exactly what a hard exam question feels like.

And this is what getting it right feels like.

But then, although Timez Attack does seem to be a great way to get some simple rote stuff into your head, I wondered if presenting a sum as a monster to be defeated is quite the right way to get someone excited about the beauty of numbers. I never quite got that myself, I can see the joy in the patterns of music but not quite in numbers. But if Arthur stands a chance of getting that I'd like him to. I wonder if there's a game that lets you explore that. Anyone know? Or maybe I shouldn't worry about it. He's only 7. Or maybe we should be playing maths games in the sun with twigs and pebbles like a proper Dad would do.

chicken-sexing, expertise and 10,000 hours of something

I got to the end of a note-book today and found my notes from dconstruct, which reminded me of all sorts of things I wanted to think/write about, and triggered all sorts of thoughts. The first one was from the presentation that Jared Spool did.

He spent a lot of time on the idea that interaction design could be learned but was not available to introspection; ie You can do it well without knowing how you do it. And it can be learned, but not explained. He used the example of chicken-sexing:

Apparently it's quite useful to be able to sex a chicken at an early age. So you can separate male from female and feed them differently. But it's very hard to do, so people who can do it are highly prized. They can stand in-front of a conveyor-belt pointing at chicks and get a 98% accuracy rate.  But they can't explain how they do it. And when they want to train someone they get them to stand next to an expert and the novice starts pointing at chicks and guessing. When they get one wrong the expert hits them on the arm. After a few weeks the novice gets up to an 80% accuracy rate, after a year they get up to the 90s. They've created someone else who can do it, but not explain it.

That's, roughly, the story he tells. A bunch of people thought it was a bit banal ('do something a lot you get better at it') but it rather struck a chord with me. I guess because I've spent quite a lot of of time trying to pass on whatever it is I've learned about doing ads and stuff. And I find it incredibly hard to do. Many's the time I've sat there trying to explain why I think we should do A rather than B and not really knowing how I know. Mostly I assume it's some sort of pattern recognition, you see a situation enough times, get it wrong a few times, get it right a few times, you develop some sort of muscle memory about what to do.

Which struck a chord when I watched this video of Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker conference. He starts off by talking about different ways of solving hard problems (which we'll get to later) but in the middle he talks about expertise, and how it seems that 10,000 hours of doing something will make you an expert in it. (Sort of) It takes 10,000 hours (or 10-years) of dedicated 'heavy-lifing' and application to be a pro-tennis player, or violinist, or chess-master or anything. And I reckon I've probably done about 10,000 hours of useful planning thinking stuff (given that I've been doing it for about 20 years, but I've spent a lot of time in stupid meetings and making cups of tea.)

The thing I find myself worrying about is 'expertise in what?'. What have I spent 10,000 hours learning? As I do more and more stuff that's not advertising I think I'll start to find out just what it is I've learned. I'm looking forward to that. But, more importantly, what are we asking people at the start, or in the middle of their careers, to spend 10,000 hours doing? Will it be any use to them 10,000 hours later? Are we making them experts in something that won't be around 10,000 hours later, or are we giving them expertise in something that will last? That seems like an important thing to wonder about.

Anyway.

 

interesting south

I'm really enjoying how Emily and the folks are approaching Interesting South. They've just stuck a line-up on the blog and it looks brilliant. You even get a hint at what people are going to talk about, made me realise that was probably a thing I messed up on. This was the only line-up we had for Interesting at the Conway Hall.

new contender for best tagline ever