The Penguin Blog

Tagged Penguin

A little video we made using the wonderful Tag Galaxy.

Tagged Penguin from Penguin Books on Vimeo.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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Once Upon a time...

... in an office building on the Strand, we had an idea to make a story that was a game and a game that was a story. We called it We Tell Stories and tens of thousands of people looked at the site and wandered around St Pancras station and followed fictional characters on Twitter.

Well, the third story is now up and running and if you like your fairytales both personalizable and dark you will enjoy this. Kevin Brooks, author of the brilliant Black Rabbit Summer, has constructed the building blocks for a traditional, yet melancholy fairytale. Putting them together is down to you. Go have a play and let us know what you think.

In other news, those wags at the BBC today announced the discovery of flying penguins. Of course we didn't fall for this lame April Fool gag here at Penguin Towers. Everyone knows Penguins can't fly.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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His first words were free

Last year I gave - hang on, let me count them up - yes, I gave fourteen books as gifts. All of these were books I'd read. Books I'd really enjoyed. Books I thought my friends and family might love or enjoy as much as I did.

How many books did I receive in return? None. Not a one. I've counted. Twice. It didn't take long.

But let's hold back those cries of 'tight-fisted, illiterate buggers!' There is a good reason for this unfortunate state of affairs. You see, the trouble with working in publishing is that everyone who doesn't is too scared to buy you a book on the somewhat unlikely grounds, considering how many books come out each year, that either you have read it, or, if you haven't, you already know all about it and have decided you'd rather stick pins in your eyes.

Even if you're not in publishing, people are often wary of buying you something on the much more sensible basis that they can never be sure that you'll like it.

This is a shame since receiving a book from a friend by an author you've never read is usually the best way to discover something wonderful, new and unexpected. Especially if you are anything like me and have become increasingly risk-averse in your reading habits. These days I will on no account buy a book unless I've read some of the writing within. No really. I don't give a damn what the blurb writers - a pack of miserable, tricksy curs (I know, I live inside the head of one) - have written. Or what the FT thinks about it. Even what Martin Amis has penned on the matter. Sure, all those words - if they're good - together with a decent cover have a great chance of getting the book off the 3-for-2 table and into my hands. But I want to get a taste of what's within if I'm going to commit.

This is why you'll find me at lunchtimes in bookshops, cracking open the covers and reading the first few pages of any old rubbish. If I'm going to devote some time to a book then I want to hear the author's voice, I want an idea of what sort of story it is right from the start. Surprise me, thrill me, have me begging for more.

Which brings me to Penguin Tasters. From today (or actually from six months ago if you were sniffing around some of our new novels on the Penguin website) you can download the opening chapter (or chapters) of all Penguin's new fiction for free. Yes, that's right. FREE. For nothing. In pdf form - which you can print, email, view on your PC screen or a Blackberry, Palm or iPhone - these Tasters offer you the very beginnings of Penguin's latest novels. You can get your mitts on some great stories without having to give a jumped-up calculator the keys to your bank account. It's an entirely risk-free way to discover new authors, to read new stories (and to pass them on to your literate friends).

New Tasters will be added as each title is published. Currently, we have 53 up there for you already. So if you've been tempted by Marina Lewycka's novels, but haven't yet been persuaded to take the plunge - and BTW why not? I worked hard on that blurb - then just click here and you can download and read the opening 25 pages. What are you waiting for?

If you like it, you've discovered a wonderful new author for yourself. If not, then there are 52 other titles for you to try. And more coming every month.

Let book-drool commence.

Colin Brush
Senior Copywriter

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Stories and Games

I'm sitting in Austin Airport trying to digest what has been a really interesting SXSW Interactive festival. Last year the big buzzy items were twitter and Second Life, but this year, while every single attendee seemed to be twittering furiously, I heard nary a mention of Second Life. How fickle the tech world is! There seemed to be a few more publishing types in attendance this year, but still a very tiny number relative to the amount of chatter in the book world on the impact that technology is starting to have on our business. The big talking point in Austin this year wasn't actually a technology announcement, but the controversial interview of Facebook CEO (and the world's youngest billionaire) Mark Zuckerberg.

By far the most thought provoking session I attended was Jane McGonigal's session on Reality, Games and Happiness; 'Reality is broken. Why aren't game designers trying to fix it?' is her basic question. She began by talking about research into 'happiness' which showed that there are four basic needs that promote a happy life; fulfilling work, the experience of being good at something, time spent with people we like and the chance to be part of something bigger. Multiplayer games, she proposed, deliver all these things whereas, unfortunately, real life often cannot. Game designers, she argued, were in a good position to deliver increased happiness in real life, because they already have the experience of creating 'happiness engines' in the games they develop. (There was lots more meaty stuff in this talk - check here for a full transcript).

This chimed with the session of Henry Jenkins, who when asked about the growing issue of internet addiction, argued that a) addiction was not a helpful word to use and b) that people spend so much time online and in alternate realities because they don't have sufficient opportunity to express themselves creatively in their day to day lives and work. An increased amount of attention is being given to the roles of games and play in encouraging creativity and developing skills and as our tools for online exploration and collaboration continue to develop, it is certain that we will see some exciting, challenging and, well, game-changing blendings of the real world and alternate realities in the months and years to come.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS Penguin's own foray into games that are stories and stories  that are games (produced with game designers extraordinaire Six to Start) starts next week. Sign up here to be alerted when the game begins...

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Puffin away

When your younger sibling does something impressive it can provoke not just pride but also jealousy. So it is for us with Puffin, for the brand new Puffin website launched yesterday and it's typically precocious. All shiny-shiny and oh-so-cute with mini-games and author interviews and a newsletter and a brand new blog – everything you could want from the publisher of some of the best kids' books, old and new, there have ever been.

So we will watch carefully and with familial pride as they grow and develop, wishing them all the best and singing their praises to all who'll listen. And with just enough jealousy to want to dig out embarrassing pictures to remind them they weren't always so darn adorable.

Alan
Copywriter

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Nonlinearity

There has been plenty of chatter in the last few weeks about ebooks and ebook readers, technologies which might or might not dramatically transform how we buy and read books. But there has also been the odd item here and there speculating on the future of reading, examining how internet usage might affect how people actually look for and absorb information.

There is a school of thought that says that Gutenberg's invention of the printing press - leading to the demise of the illuminated manuscript and the transfer of knowledge by linear type - actually affected the way that people absorbed ideas and information and that Western Rationalism might not have taken hold without the orderly presentation of text. So it is not implausible to imagine that as more and more knowledge and information is transfered via the internet, with popup windows, embedded video, infographic boxes and all the other eye-catching frippery competing for attention, we might witness significant changes in the way we read, and perhaps in the way we actually think.

This is probably already happening - in The Observer John Naughton quotes a report which described information seeking behaviour as 'horizontal, bouncing, checking and viewing in nature.' Teenagers, I was told today, start reading at the centre of a website moving outwards from the middle when something captures their digitally native eyes.

Of course not all books are linear - our sister company, Dorling Kindersley for example produces the most wonderfully designed and illustrated guides and reference books, but for fiction, generally, linearity is the rule. Beginnings, middles and ends. Words following words.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that in a few weeks Penguin will be embarking on an experiment in storytelling (yes, another one, I hear you sigh). We've teamed up with some interesting folk and challenged some of our top authors to write brand new stories that take full advantage of the functionalities that the internet has to offer - this will be great writing, but writing in a form that would not have been possible 200, 20 or even 2 years ago. If you want to be alerted when this project launches sign up here - all will be revealed in March.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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Special Guest Post - Why User-generated Content Mostly Isn't

At Penguin we're lucky to come into contact with some of the finest minds around - our job, when it comes down to it, is to get the product of those fine minds into as many hands as possible. So it's been a real pleasure to see how enthusiastically early proofs of Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky have been spreading round the office and how the ideas he espouses have become part of our conversational currency in Penguin.

It's also very appropriate for Clay to write a guest post here on the blog - as a teacher, writer and consultant on the social impact of technology we can certainly use his advice! Here Comes Everybody is concerned with the social changes we are witnessing today as the technology which allows individuals to rapidly disseminate and share news and views becomes more common and more sophisticated by the day.

We want as many people as possible to read this book, and we've got some advance copies to send out - so if you are a UK blogger and if you want to read Clay's book and share your views on it with the world, send us an email with your name, address and blog url and 'Everybody' in the subject line and we'll get a book over to you.

Now, over to Clay...

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

The Social Life of Books

"I Don't Want To Consume Media That I Can't Interact With

That's the bottom line. When I come into contact with media, I want to do something with it. Tag it, post it, reply to it, comment on it, favorite it, share it, gift it, quote it, whatever...

When are people going to understand that digital media, be it a book, a song, a film, an article, or whatever else, is not passive media. That was analog's gig."
Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson reacting to the Amazon Kindle

When I was 6 the school playground was full of clusters of kids crowding round the lucky few who had been given digital watches with games on them. I asked my parents for such a watch for my birthday, but they didn't quite 'get it' and I received a decidedly analogue Timex. My mother says she realized her mistake when I unwrapped the watch and with a cry of anguish, demanded "But what does it do?".

All of which is a roundabout way of saying the Amazon Kindle, which was launched with a great deal of media hoopla last week does lots of things, and doesn't do others, and perhaps we should be asking ourselves what we want books to do and be as we hurtle towards a near-future where all media and all content consists of ones and zeros.

I haven't seen or played with a Kindle yet, but there is plenty of online coverage to be found here, here and elsewhere and it has certainly brought ebooks into the mainstream like nothing before. Undoubtedly the Kindle, and particularly it's wireless delivery system, is a revolutionary way of putting books in the hands of readers. But, I wonder, is that enough?

It's quite instructive to read some of the comments in the Fred Wilson post above, and also comments on uberblogger Robert Scoble's anti-Kindle rant - clearly there is much debate over whether books have to be social objects. This debate occasionally surfaces here at Penguin Towers where the book lovers among us (and there are one or two) argue the point that to immerse oneself in a book is to isolate oneself from interactivity - books should not necessarily be a shared experience, they say, and there is interaction between reader and text.

Almost lost in the noise about the Kindle was the release of a lengthy report from the National Endowment for the Arts entitled To Read or Not to Read. The conclusions are sobering for anyone in the book business. Basically, Americans are reading less and this is especially true of teens and young adults 'who are reading less often and for shorter amounts of time than other age groups and Americans of previous years'. Now I am not about to claim that this is solely because of Youtube, Xbox and Myspace and other forms of interactive digital media. But perhaps we publishers and book lovers do need to think about whether books need a social life and work out how to satisfy those who want simply to disappear into a story and those who won't consume media that they can't interact with.

 

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS I know what I want out of an ebook reader - a vast library, accessible anytime from anywhere, a decent screen and the ability to share my discoveries with others and see what my friends are also discovering. Internet access would be pretty necessary, and one of those neat touch screens like the iPhone has. I pretty much want it all, and I actually think we're nearly there (maybe not for this Christmas though). But what do you want from an ebook reader? And, in fact, do you want an ebook reader at all? Leave your comments below...

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Cold Turkey - Day One

The day that my sister-in-law told me she had managed to look at my work colleague's holiday photos was the day I realised that enough was enough. Facebook is a pain, not a tool - it's a waste of my time (time spent checking friend's status and researching the good times of parties I never went to), and it's time I'll never get back. Both the curmudgeonly nature of my feelings and the creeping sense that Facebook, MySpace et al. make perfect sense to a younger generation make me feel upsettingly old, and it's time to make way for those who appreciate these amazing technologies. We've had enough arguments around here on the "Should employers ban Facebook?" debate, and it boggles my mind that newsworthy "employee representatives" can honestly justify the defence of these things with the idea that employers ought to accept that people have a life outside work. That's right. Outside it, simpletons.  It was a real lurch to click that Confirm Deactivation button (even if it did make me feel like a Bond villain) but I feel I've done the right thing. Working on titles like EU Law and the Dictionary of Human Biology means that I simply have no room for frivolity in my life - if you need me, send a note up to my garret.

UPDATE: Factual information on this here.

Sam the Copywriter

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Objects of Beauty

Since returning from holiday I've been involved with probably a dozen conversations about ebooks - about the hardware, Digital Rights Management, suppliers and technology partners, e-ink, about whether the era of the ebook is finally dawning. We've been publishing a small line of ebooks since 2001, but press speculation, fueled by the blogosphere, is that Amazon will join Sony in releasing an ebook reader in the near future, with digitised texts also viewable via Google Booksearch and perhaps on the iPhone and iPod Touch also.

I've long been a big believer in onscreen reading - in the approaching age of always on broadband connectivity the idea that all the world's texts can be accessible, searchable and portable is, I believe, a very compelling scenario. While the book as an object will not become redundant technology for a while, I cannot see why the book industry should be immune from the disruptive changes transforming the music, film, newspaper and TV business, where everyday more and more people access content online.

But repeatedly perusing these images of some of the world's most beautiful libraries has given me a little pause for thought (do check out the whole set of images here - and tell us why Portugal has such a collection of amazing libraries!). The experience of reading in one of these is surely in a different league from booting up an ereading device and waiting for the page to refresh, even if the etexts are fully searchable. Is convenience enough to cause a massive shift in reading habits and perhaps encourage greater use of traditional book content? Do the extra things that ebooks could and should do (annotation, bookmarking, search, customization, integrated multimedia) make up for the fact that the aesthetic experience is different from (and less than?) that of cracking open the spine of a new book.

In his provocative article, Scan This Book, Kevin Kelly says

Yet the common vision of the library's future (even the e-book future) assumes that books will remain isolated items, independent from one another, just as they are on shelves in your public library. There, each book is pretty much unaware of the ones next to it. When an author completes a work, it is fixed and finished. Its only movement comes when a reader picks it up to animate it with his or her imagination. In this vision, the main advantage of the coming digital library is portability — the nifty translation of a book's full text into bits, which permits it to be read on a screen anywhere. But this vision misses the chief revolution birthed by scanning books: in the universal library, no book will be an island.

Kelly imagines a future where texts are 'liquid' - taggable, mashable, hyperlinked and above all searchable and findable. This 'universal library' he posits, will once again make books central to the culture (as they were when most of the libraries here were built) and provide value for readers, writers and the publishers who get it.

I think that Kelly's idea of 'Books: The Liquid Version' is beyond the imagination of most publishers at this point in time (though there are those actively exploring the possibilities). We're still working out how to make ebooks work, how much content should be available online for free and who the players are in this brave new world. So happily, despite the buzz around electronic books it seems that the printed book, the ebook and the beautiful temples to reading shown in the photographs will coexist for some time yet.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

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