Oh, balls balls balls ... this wasn't meant to go on the list. Sorry
everyone. What a prat!!
Dylan
On 1 Feb 2009, at 17:06, Dylan Harris wrote:
> Hi, Chris,
>
> I hung around Cambridge for a while, and took advantage of rather
> too much of the free plonk you gave away at book launches. I've
> bought books directly from Salt. I've read around Europe. I run Wurm
> im Apfel, wurmimapfel.com, in Dublin with Kit Fryatt (as an aside,
> if you have some poets who want to read in Ireland, talk to us).
>
> Before you say NO NO NO to the subject question, let me explain why
> you should:
>
> 1. Poems are adverts for the book, they should be broadcast, not sat
> on;
> 2. Some of the greatest ancient poetry is collaborative; copyright
> has blocked that in our times, IMHO a loss;
> 3. The electronic book is coming.
>
> I'm going to justify each of those statements. The "poem is the
> advert for the book" is from my blog of 27/12/8
> ( http://dylanharris.org/front/see%20nerd)%20log/1A11DDD1-7DE6-4280-B2A9-0429C034EDA2.html
> ):
>
> <<
>
> I’ve decided, finally, to look at my poetry to see if I can throw a
> collection together, one that might interest a publisher.
>
> There are complications, such as that this site will stay up, and
> the poetry (not the collection) will remain here under a Creative
> Commons Non-Commercial Licence permitting derivation, sharing and
> reuse of the poems. I’m not scared of home recording technology for
> books & literature, I’m looking forward to it. It’s done immense
> good in music, there’s far greater access to choice for consumers
> and musicians. There’s great opportunities for all the industry:
> consider Radiohead’s In Rainbows. The only losers, by their own
> hand, are the tyrannosaurs, with their idiotic suing of prospective
> customers for listening to what are now marketing channels.
>
> The primary product is no longer what someone buys, they get that
> free; you sell them extras. Listen to an MP3, like it, buy a better
> MP3, buy a CD, buy a gig ticket, buy a T-shirt. Read a poem, like
> it, buy a book, buy a T-Shirt (you just wait!), go hear the MP3.
> Hear a poem, like it, buy a better MP3, buy a CD, buy a book, buy a
> T-Shirt! Run software, like it, buy extras, buy support, buy the
> box, buy a T-Shirt, buy a stuffed Tux.
>
> See a poem on a website, a fairly badly presented website to be
> honest, go buy a beautiful book? The poem is not what people buy,
> it’s the book, the poem’s the hook to buy the book. Put that hook
> out there, out everywhere you can, don’t hide it in artificial
> scarcity. Would you refuse to put an advert out because lots of
> people might see it?
>
> As an aside, I’m getting nearly enough visitors here for advertising
> (maybe 420,000 hits this year, doubling every year or so, that’s
> approaching the magic million). The poem’s the free content to
> attract the paid for advert, an established Internet funding
> mechanism. With the Internet and digital copies, the poem is no
> longer the thing you buy, it’s the hook to the book, the MP3, the T-
> Shirt, the gig .... Mind you, what will probably stop me taking
> adverts is animation, movement, intentional distraction. I won’t
> accept that, it’s rude, it’s the stink bomb in the lift. I
> appreciate the people who come to my site, I won’t annoy them.
>
> Now, I’ve got music on this website, photography, as well as poetry.
> You know which content gets the most hits? The photos? No. The
> photos of beautiful woman sans clothing? No (which surprises me).
> The written poetry? No. The music? Well, sometimes. The recitals?
> Yes, it’s usually recorded poetry, my recitals, recently tin rush ::
> po, this month it’s an engineering rush (i) :: the argument. Now,
> given I’m not well known, this could be the artefact of the MP3
> indexes that refer users here, but, every month, people come, they
> return. I think it’s more than just random links. The poetry, the
> recordings of the poetry in particular, bring the success. You can
> bet, incidentally, I’ll be doing something about that: watch out
> tunecore. I just need the time.
>
> I wonder if I can find a publisher who’ll get this. Or at least
> who’ll risk it.
>
> So, anyway, the collection. I went back through my old poems
> expecting to find they were pretty awful, and most should be
> dropped. What I actually found is most are pretty good. There are
> indeed some crap ones, and one or two seriously dire, but most are
> pretty good. Obviously this is my opinion, and I wrote the dratted
> things, so I might just be very biased, but, whatever, I was
> surprised by what I found.
>
> So instead of assembling a possible collection, I’ve assembled a
> possible seven collections. Urk.
>
> This ignores my existing home made chapbooks, and their assembly
> into three existing apparent collections. But those collections
> don’t count; they’re home made (they’re not even self-published),
> they’re not selected, they’ve not been edited independently.
>
> There’s a lot of work to do with these possible collections. The
> poems need tightening, some with thumbscrews, before I let them near
> any editor. They need ordering, some more than others. But they’ve
> taken a basic form.
>
> So wish me luck ...
> >>
>
> My website got 70,000 hits in January 2009, about 1/20 of Salt's
> hits per month for 2008, if my math is correct. Not bad for an
> unpublished poet, I think :-). Those figures are calculated by
> AwStats.
>
> Secondly, collaboration:
>
> <<
> poetry :: Copyleft
>
> Homer, this pub philosopher’s heard,
> created to sing The Odyssey,
> but ‘only’ edited all The Iliad
> combining Hellene colleagues’ poetry myth.
>
> These, the songs that began written epic,
> became his world’s Kernighan & Ritchie,
> are older than Christianity’s crutch
> and every foolish looping nationalist ‘us’.
>
> Yet we, we only hear the single voice.
> Works, once published, are inviolate.
> This fat respect prevents relay creation.
> We adore The Odyssey. We ignore The Iliad.
>
> With ‘copyleft’, not for the empty, hated by empire,
> programmers reuse and revise others’ recipes
> causing original and imitative solidity;
> it could prime a time–long poetic chiro–blast.
>
> Collaboration, writing united, is not the same;
> each ego can veto the other’s invention.
> A copyleft author can declare and decamp;
> others may sooth a clash–cultural chaos.
>
> This gnu idea, it bypasses the island man’s blindness;
> he cannot stop a work deepening through
> lives cultures genders generations histories worlds.
> Consider the Mahabharata.
> >>
>
> Thirdly, the electronic book:
> http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11/04/review_ebook_readers_round_up/
>
> The technology needs someone to do an iPod before it'll really take
> off, I think. If it does, the PDF, probably, becomes the MP3 for
> words. Things are not quite the same, it's much more difficult to
> transfer a book to an ebook at home. Even so, sites like Project
> Gutenberg, and google, allow out of copyright texts to be read
> without cost. On top of that, I don't accept the whorey old argument
> of the romance of paper, I believe in the romance of words,
> independent of the technology used to deliver them. I believe the
> electronic book will take off.
>
> If you are willing to consider publishing Creative Commons poetry,
> which remains up on a website, then, purely by coincidence, of
> course, I just happen to have some. If I put out a book, I'd want to
> produce recital recordings too, to be sold in MP3 stores online, for
> reasons noted in that blog entry. It's arguable that the editor of
> the book would be entitled to a consideration, because they'd be the
> editor of the recorded recitals too. Presuming the publisher does
> the editing, there's scope for extra collaboration, and extra
> income, with the poet.
>
> What's your opinion? Do you have time to form one?!
>
> Dylan Harris
>
> ---
> http://dylanharris.org/
>
> iTunes podcasts: "seen, heard) poetry", and "devon garde".
Dylan Harris
---
http://dylanharris.org/
iTunes podcasts: "seen, heard) poetry", and "devon garde".
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