The machine speaks, machine to machine, deep in the hard codes of transfer protocols and on the surface in automated twitter feeds, robotic blog comments and broken emails – “Hello Dear how are you doing”, “I write to confess”, “I am pleasure to know you from Internet”, “I am romantic”, “How big do you want to get?”
I've never noticed how humorously poetic these occurrences were...
A planet-wide digital infrastructure; mobile devices; pervasive connectivity; social and private networks and other forms of communication; all point to a world in which the virtual intersects with the physical at every moment. This is what I mean by “the network” – not the internet, but us and the internet, interleaved with one another.
Humans as technology - how we're inseparable
Publishers can also opt in to host promoted posts, in which a brand sponsors a post on a Medium feed.
From what I understand, this is like on Buzzfeed where you will often stumble across articles built around promoting a sponsorship product. For example, something like 5 Ways to Wash Your Windows Better that suggests using a certain brand's product.
Already, they’re increasingly dependent on Facebook and Twitter to get attention, and they must constantly tweak their social strategies to stay ahead of evolving algorithms.
It seems ever since social media became the norm, everyone is still trying to figure out how to provide and manage content all in one place. Facebook is no longer just a way to keep in touch with friends, but a multi-functional platform used to keep track of and to access many things. I wonder how much more it will evolve to accommodate different areas of life.
Thinking about sales while creating art rarely produces anything good.
I wonder what publishers would think about this. Also, with the tracking of reader habits, would sales and reader data start to change the way writers produce content more often?
The way authors get paid is simple. On Scribd, if the reader reads more than 10 percent but less than 50 percent, it counts for a tenth of a sale. Above 50 percent, it is a full sale. On another service, Oyster Books, now shut down, it was simpler: once a person read more than 10 percent of the book, it was officially considered “read.” After a book was considered read, it equaled a full sale for the publisher or author.
How data on reader behaviour is currently used in determining author earnings: examples of payment schemes for self-publishing platforms. E.g. 10-50% tenth of sale vs. > 50% full sale
Print vs. digital purchase - more difficult to make sales?
Loopholes found by authors - blacklisted
In the event of glitches, could this lead to inaccurate compensation? E.g. https://teleread.org/2016/10/08/amazon-kdp-select-authors-are-losing-page-reads-apparently-due-to-software-glitches/
Creativity
Big Data may not just be useful on a marketing level (e.g. determining where to sell to your demographic), but could affect the creative writing process of the author (interpreting data and changing writing content).
Tracking reader habits using tech: Good or bad for readers and writers?
Point: As data mining is involved in much of the technological activities we engage in, how data mining reader behaviour is also potentially a privacy issue.
announcements
Point: how big data may help compensate for a lack communication and feedback from readers about books, other than a few online reviews
If a title doesn’t move, dump it in favor of some other title that does.
How does this strategy affect the discoverability and exposure of lesser known authors with these small stores being dedicated to a few blockbuster titles/authors?
To compete with Amazon, bookstores should go small By Chris Meadows - October 26, 2015 440 3
Summary: On the topic of how dying physical bookstores should change their strategies to what Pocket Shop does in Sweden and Finland because smaller stores in high-traffic areas focus on selling popular books tend to be more successful, rather than having a large, flexible selection. Having a large, flexible selection can make it difficult for buyers to find less popular titles and should be left to companies like Amazon. Book stores should take the convenience store approach to browsability- focusing on the convenience of having stores stocked with a small number of popular titles on hand available in your area, which is one of Amazon's weaknesses. This way, stores won't be stocked with tons of books that are hard to move.
The mouse and thepen-based interface allow the user the immediacy of touching, drag-ging, and manipulating visually attractive ideograms. Immediacy issupposed to make this computer interface “natural” rather than arbi-trary.
Thoughts I've gathered so far: I think a contemporary example of remediation is the evolvement of the screen interface. User-interface interaction has developed further to increase immediacy through touch screen technology. This technology allows manipulation of on-screen objects to be less removed and more direct by affording direct touch; and this is arguably more "natural" and an improvement of the original medium. Technology becomes an extension of human ability more seamlessly with immediacy-driven design. Reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extension of Man (1964). E.g. iGlasses an extension of sight. What do you think?