Sean McManus's blog

New book and newsletter

2009-07-01T15:42:00.004+01:00

If you've been following me on Twitter, you might have seen that I've just signed a book contract. It's a non-fiction book that will be coming out early next year and I'll have more details to share soon.

In the meantime, I'm starting a free email magazine. Once a month, I'll write a short newsletter about interesting stuff I've found online. I'm looking forward to writing some snippets about online games, music reviews and so on and I'm hoping that the newsletter can work as a publication in its own right.

It will also provide me with an opportunity to tell people about my books when they come out, and hopefully to help start word of mouth around them where appropriate. The email newsletter will also enable me to keep in touch with people who don't visit this website regularly or don't subscribe to the RSS feeds or Twitter feed, but the focus will very much be on adding value. I want this to be a publication that people enjoy receiving and reading.

If you'd like to subscribe (thank you!), there's a form on the right hand side of this page right now. Just enter your name and email address, and (optionally) let me know what content you're most interested in on this site. When you click the button, you'll be sent an email with a link in it. You need to click that link to confirm your subscription, to make sure that people don't sign others up.

If you previously subscribed to one of my mailing lists, I'll drop you a line, but please do sign up using the form if you've got a couple of seconds. It'll save me a lot of time! Thank you!

Michael Jackson, David Miliband and me

2009-06-27T10:55:00.007+01:00

Most people who are into pop music have a Michael Jackson memory. Michael Jackson's "Bad" was one of the first tapes I had, and one of the albums I came back to when writing UoD. Back in 1987, I remember listening to the singles from it on the Radio 1 roadshow, while I was writing Amstrad games in the school holidays. I also remember myself and my brother being allowed to watch the then-new video for "Thriller" when a friend of my parents brought it around on a VHS.

I didn't expect Jackson to do his 50 gigs at the O2, but I didn't expect him to die either, so it's a bit of a shock to hear he's gone. In the same way that my parents' generation remember where they were when Kennedy and Lennon died, many in my generation will remember where they were when they heard that Jackson had died.

For the music industry, the passing of Michael Jackson must have been a day of mixed emotions. As a performer, he was electric. His dancing was so distinctive that many videos showed him in silhouette. Who else can get away with that? "Thriller" is the best selling album of all time (and probably always will be), and Jackson is one of a handful of performers who are cultural icons.

On the other hand, I'm willing to bet the Jackson records are on display prominently in every record shop this weekend. For a music business that's struggling to adapt to the new online economy, the sales boost that comes with a major star's death will be seen as welcome by some. Yesterday, Jackson had the top seven bestselling albums on iTunes, and held about 10-20% of the top 100 song downloads.

It's always struck me as odd the way record sales peak after a star's death. The fans already have the records, so these sales are driven by people who just never got around to buying the albums for the last twenty years or so, and then suddenly decide they quite liked some of them when the star dies.

Social networks played a big part in spreading the news of Jackson's death, and people's reactions to it. When Princess Diana died, online social networks weren't around as we know them today. Because most of my friends shared their views on Jackson's death, through status updates in Facebook and tweets on Twitter, it felt like a shared experience. As Jackson sang, "You are not alone".

Both The Times and The Telegraph leaped upon the Twitter feed of UK foreign secretary David Miliband, in which he said: "Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael." Only, it wasn't the real foreign secretary. It can be difficult to validate celebrity Twitter feeds (Valebrity attempts to fill that gap, and Twitter has started to validate some accounts itself). But a little common sense goes a long way. Some of the tweets from the fake Miliband include:

Another idea from Eyebrows, sack all the drivers and use McDonalds staff instead. He reckons Reagan would have done it. No Al!

Many of the other tweets are gently satirical, but there are enough clues there for a journalist to work out they're looking at a fake. Even with the complexity of identity today, and the way that many people will have a professional and informal persona in different places, journalists are supposed to be skilled at fact checking. It's one of the ways they can add value in a world where information is increasingly free. If they can't filter the fakers from our own government ministers, how can we trust anything else they write?

Book review: Brand New Day

2009-06-18T09:28:00.005+01:00

Business autobiographies are usually written by household name entrepreneurs, and marketed with the promise that you too can achieve riches beyond your wildest dreams. Most of the investors from Dragon's Den have spent some time on the bestseller lists and Richard Branson has three books to his name.

These books are often inspiring, revealing how far you can go with the right mix of entrepreneurial flair, hard work, creativity and a little luck. But they're also written by people who started their businesses decades ago, and so tend to be light on the early history. The mental gulf between a millionaire and a reader who hasn't yet made the first sale is hard to cross.

With her book Brand New Day, Lara Solomon builds a bridge. The book is her diary from 2004 to 2007, and shows how she set up a new business from scratch. By the end of the book, the company has six staff and has turned over AU$250k (£120k) in three months. The book is inspiring, in part because the steps Lara takes are small steps anybody could take, if they were comfortable with the risk and had equal drive.

The product is a mobile phone sock, available in a wide range of designs, with a different one reproduced in the corner of each page (nice touch). To be honest, it's not a product I could believe in and not one I could see myself buying. But one thing that's made Lara's business a success is that she's persevered even when others didn't share her enthusiasm, and she's created a market in the process.

Key themes throughout the book are the challenges Lara has recruiting and retaining good staff, the emphasis placed on building the Mocks brand, and the extent to which Lara has to work outside her comfort zone to get things done. The book reads like an honest account of those first entrepreneurial steps, and provides a rare insight into what goes on in a smaller business. Laroo, the company behind the Mocks, is based in Australia so there are a few cultural references I didn't get, but most of the lessons are applicable internationally.

Lara's self published the book, so if you'd like to read a sample or order a copy, head over to the Brand New Day website.

For more small business advice, check out my book Small Business Websites That Work.

Jean-Michel Jarre In-Doors at Wembley Arena

2009-06-09T07:42:00.002+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Jean-Michel Jarre at Wembley Arena for a show that combined the best of his back catalogue with the spirit of last year's Oxygene tour. You can read my review of Jarre's 2009 tour here.

History of the internet updated

2009-06-05T07:07:00.003+01:00

I've updated my timeline of the history of the internet. It was originally written in 2004 and hadn't been updated since then, so I've now added in the major developments of the last five years. Incredible to think that social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are all less than five years old.

University of Death - now on Amazon.com

2009-06-03T18:47:00.004+01:00

Lulu is making my novel about the music industry University of Death available on Amazon.com. This will increase the convenience of the buying experience for many readers because they won't need to register for a new Lulu account to order it.

You can find the book through my new Amazon Author page here. You can still read the reviews, download sample chapters and get your copy signed over the internet at the book's mini-site.

The ebook edition is still exclusively available through Lulu.com. I was delighted to hear from someone who's reading it on their iPhone at the moment - for avid users of iPhones and similar devices, ebooks can be the ideal format.

A novel solution to book piracy

2009-06-02T10:42:00.004+01:00

As ebooks become a larger part of the book industry, publishers and authors could face the same challenges from piracy that record labels and musicians have over the last ten years.

A piece in the Bookseller last week said that the Publishers' Association had identified 800 illegally uploaded works and removed 90% of them using a new anti-piracy tool.

What caught my eye about the story was the suggestion that publishers might adopt similar spoofing tactics to those used by the music industry, where fake copies of a work are uploaded by the copyright owner to confuse the pirates.

The commitment that people make to a song is minimal compared to the commitment made to a book. If you're playing a song and it turns out to be a lecture about how you should be buying it instead, you could just click 'stop'. How annoying would it be if you were 200 pages in to a pirated copy of some romantic fiction novel, when a bunch of pirates swing in on ropes yelping like Tarzan and just start killing everyone? (er... in the book, obviously). I can see a lot of creative opportunities for authors who work with publishers to create spoofed versions of their works...

Is there a future for the music industry?

2009-05-04T18:12:00.002+01:00

I've just published an extended version of an article I wrote for a general interest magazine recently. The article is about how the record industry can fight back at a time when sales of recorded music are falling, and the industry has lost its monopoly on reproduction and distribution.

The article uses examples from Marillion, Radiohead, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, U2, Oasis, Depeche Mode, Erasure and others to show how the landscape is changing, and highlights the need to create fulfilling experiences around the music.

I wanted to do something 'serious' using some of the research I gathered while writing University of Death, so this piece is a snapshot of the challenges the industry faces today and some of the recent changes and innnovations it's seen.

London Book Fair review

2009-04-30T18:51:00.004+01:00

Last week was the London Book Fair, attended by publishers, authors and Flanimals (pictured, right).

It was interesting to see how digital books were received at the fair. There was an area at the back of the hall given over to ebooks and digital publishing, and the seminars there were packed out. But it seemed to be led by the technology, rather than the content. There were plenty of firms who could help you to repurpose and distribute your content for mobile platforms (including the iPhone and Sony Reader), but I didn't notice anybody promoting digital content.

I didn't see any discussion about how ebooks can be different to print books. A certain amount of this is built into the device (eg searchability), but there is lots of potential to create new types of content based on the written word. Mindsportlive is developing iPhone apps based on its card packs, including '52 Ways to Beat Stress', but it was very much the exception.

It's partly the nature of shows like this that means major publishers would sideline their digital offerings. If you're negotiating rights, a printed book looks more impressive. Experienced publishers can get a measure of the content quickly. With ebooks, you can't tell how big they are, how well proofread they are in the middle, whether the book's consistently structured and so on without flicking through a lot of virtual pages. There's not a 'flick through until something catches my eye' button on any of the devices I've seen. Also, since the ebooks are often sold directly, they probably don't belong at a show that's partly about negotiating print book distribution and sales with intermediaries.

One company from Russia has an interesting proposition for interactive physical products - it markets hardback comic books for adults, with an enclosed music CD and CD-Rom. On the CD-Rom is a Flash animation that brings the comic book to life, and the CD contains atmospheric music that goes with the story. The project has been led by the music, with the creator being a musician first and commissioning illustration to expand on his work, which is an interesting way to create value at a time when it's increasingly difficult to sell music. For more information, check out the Ylotana website.

The Espresso Book Machine for printing on demand attracted a lot of attention. The Blackwell bookshop in Charing Cross Road will now be able to print books on demand using the machine, which was demonstrated at the fair. The device is a great way to increase effective footage in an expensive store, and it means many books need never go out of print. But it also transforms the bookseller into a book distributor. Surely the point of a bookshop is that you can browse and discover new titles you wouldn't have otherwise read? Isn't the idea that the bookshop can sell you books you didn't already know about? Print on demand is likely to require the shopper to ask for a specific book to be printed, although it is theoretically possible for displays to be mounted to showcase print-on-demand books, enabling infinite sales based on one shelf copy.

Other news from the show: Simon Pegg's writing a book for publication in October (hurrah!). It's an autobiography/memoir (err... okay). Enid Blyton is coming back from the dead with six new stories being ghostwritten in her (presumably trademarked) name. She wrote over 700 stories when she was alive, so you wouldn't think there would be a need for this. I wonder whether we'll see the day when John Lennon^TM releases a new album? Perhaps we have more respect for the personal creativity of songwriters than we do of book authors. Or perhaps it just needs another fifty years before The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zepellin and Abba become brand names attached to ghostwritten work.

While at the show, I got some useful feedback on my novel University of Death from successful self-publishers, including Pauline Rowson, who writes and publishes crime fiction and business books. She has given me some great ideas for how I can make the book (or my next book) more marketable. Shows like this are always a good opportunity to pick up new ideas - I came back home with more ideas than I know what to do with.

What's a press release for?

2009-04-30T18:00:00.000+01:00

The press office at Internet World today was giving out press packs, including all press releases, on USB keys instead of on paper.

These digital copies are useful for when a journalist returns to the office and might want to cut and paste together material from the press pack to incorporate it in a story (come on, let's not pretend that doesn't happen). But the real purpose of a press release at a trade show is to direct the journalist to the stand to find out more. Isn't it?

Without having the press release in an easily readable form, there's a risk a journalist might miss an opportunity to follow up on a story because he or she didn't know about it until after the show closed.

New look website launches

2009-04-29T20:28:00.004+01:00

I've just relaunched this website, with a new look and feel. I recently got a larger monitor and the old design wasn't easy to use on that, so I've made this design fluid within certain parameters. I've taken the opportunity to update the layout, fonts and colour scheme, and to add a few fun/random interactive features. I've tried to integrate the different types of content better, so that it's possible to more easily move between the different experiences the site offers.

I've still got some stuff to tidy up and check (but do let me know if you spot anything that's broken), and I've got a few pieces of new content in progress at the moment.

The site should work acceptably on most screen sizes and I've tested it on the PC using IE7, IE6 (shudder!), Chrome, Firefox and Safari. It doesn't look the same in them all (it's best in IE, because I've used font embedding extensively), but it works fine. Let me know what your experience is like (particularly if you're using a Mac).

The Apprentice: where's the customer service?

2009-04-08T20:27:00.005+01:00

So far in The Apprentice, we've had a cleaning task and a catering task, and there have been interesting parallels in both.

Firstly, the programmes have made a strong case for the value that professionals bring to a job. You wouldn't think it would be hard to clean cars or make sandwiches, but they managed to screw them both up. Since I work in a profession (writing) that some people think is easy, that struck a chord. (I remember a woman at a party telling me that she thought she might change jobs to being a writer because it looked pretty easy. She was a teacher at the time, so I told her I'd often thought about moving into schools myself. "It's just talking to a bunch of kids. How hard could it be?")

The programmes have also focused on profit to the exclusion of everything else. Doubtless there will be the usual creative tasks in future episodes (starting tonight, I think), but where's the customer service? Alan Sugar's company Amstrad had great customer service and quality back in the 80s. Without it, it could never have entered the home computer market as late as it did and seized the market share it did. But he's encouraging his apprentices to look only at the immediate sale. There's no respect for the customer, no real drive to create a transaction that customers appreciate: just a push for a quick buck. To close the deal, the apprentices argue with customers, serve up shoddy products, and sell products they can't deliver. They don't seem to care (or even believe) that with every sale, their own reputation is on the line.

One of my writing customers is also in an agency type business and he says that in the current economic downturn, companies all need to love their customers a little bit more. They need to make sure they're focusing on the long term, and building a relationship that will survive the recession.

Wouldn't it be great if The Apprentice had an episode where the success was judged on how happy customers were at the end? If the apprentices had to try to truly delight the customer and build some desire for repeat business?

That's the kind of apprentice any company needs today. Cutting corners is easy. Delighting customers takes that extra spark of creativity and enthusiasm. Sometimes it will be less profitable in the short term. But in the long term, it's the only strategy that pays.

(I wrote a review of Alan Sugar's book after the first series, and co-wrote The Customer Service Pocketbook. The Apprentice is on iTunes now if you can't get it on proper telly).

Prince's new website: Clicks hard in a funky place?

2009-03-30T13:04:00.008+01:00

Prince has just launched his new website, Lotusflow3r.com. He's had a few websites over the years - one was a club website, where subscribers were posted some exclusive CDs throughout the year; another was a virtual shop, but the music was all DRM-crippled, so there are lots of reports of people who aren't able to play the music they've bought any more.

The new site has a somewhat vague proposition: $77 buys you downloads of the new triple album (which is retailing for $12 in the US, price in the UK to be determined), plus a t-shirt and early news of forthcoming gigs. There are said to be videos too, but it's unlikely you can download them, and there's no indication of how often they'll be updated. I'm not convinced, to be honest. And I'm a massive Prince fan.

The biggest mistake, though, is that Prince has overestimated how important his website is to other people. He expects people to spend a lot of time playing with a tricksy interface just to hand over their money. If you want to register, you have to mouse over and click things until you hit a 60x30 pixel image which opens this:

Aha! That looks like my ticket in. But what do I type into the boxes? There are no clues - you have to keep typing in things until you get it right. The answer is to close the ticket again, go and watch the video on the telly on the homepage, and then type in '1986' and 'Los Angeles'.

Why make people do that? Was it a fun experience? Not particularly. Did it make it easier to get to the real site content? Absolutely not.

If you're selling something, whether it's music or shoes, you've got to make it as easy as possible for people to buy. Just get them to bash in their contact details, their credit card details, and then let them get on with their lives. The content is supposed to be the entertainment. Not the interface.

(For more tips on creating successful websites, see my book Small Business Websites That Work).

The Independent and indie music - free Mongrel album

2009-03-09T07:57:00.003Z

The Independent newspaper gave away the album "Better Than Heavy" by Mongrel on Saturday. It's billed as "A CD that makes history", the first time that a band has launched itself by distributing its debut album with a newspaper. The album itself is a hybrid of hip-hop and indie, and boasts 16 rappers on the track "Alphabet Assassins".

This development isn't quite as amazing as the Independent might have us believe. The group is made up from members of Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, and Reverend and the Makers. So the giveaway has a strong promotional hook inside the conventional record industry.

The model of distributing music for free with newspapers does threaten the conventional music industry. As the focus shifts towards the live experience, the value of recorded music is falling. But until newspapers start taking the risk of breaking genuinely new bands, that nobody has ever heard of, there will always be a place for the record label. A brave newspaper could take on the role of breaking new talent, but for now it's the name on the CD that sells the newspaper, and not the other way around.

(There's much more about the future of the music industry in my novel University of Death.)

Light and Shade

2009-02-26T07:33:00.000Z

Light shining through the stained glass windows at Gloucester Cathedral onto the stonework inside

The Power of Less for writers

2009-02-25T07:08:00.000Z

Leo Babauta is the author of 'The Power of Less', a book that aims to help everyone cut through the noise and clutter so they can focus on what really matters. In this exclusive interview for my website, Babauta reveals how the principles of his book apply to writers.

How socks work

2009-02-24T07:28:00.001Z

A shop photographed in Gloucester this weekend

I don't know what bothers me more - the fact that they felt they had to explain how socks work, or the fact that this "offer" is only subject to availability.

UoD in Commodore Free

2009-02-19T18:36:00.003Z

If you've read University of Death, you'll know that a Commodore 64 computer plays a starring role in the story. The latest issue of online fanzine Commodore Free has recently been published, and includes an interview with me about how the Commodore came to feature in my plot. You can download the fanzine as a PDF, text file or read it online in HTML here.

This issue also carries news of the thriving C64 music scene, pointers to some C64 demos and short documentary films, news of a new strategy game for the VIC20 and a Dragon emulator for the Amiga, and lots of tips on tape preservation.

University of Death: Now available in ebook

2009-02-11T20:44:00.005Z

I've released an ebook edition of my novel 'University of Death'. It costs £5, half the price of the print edition, and is available now at Lulu. There are no shipping costs (obviously), and it is available for download immediately after payment. You can pay using paypal if you don't want to use a credit card.

This move is partly in response to an email from Sven Augustin who says he likes to read ebooks on his hacked PSP on long train journeys because it means there's less stuff to carry around. He uses the Bookr PDF reader.

University of Death on a PSP. Photo by Sven Augustin

Clearly, the way that people choose to consume content is changing. Nintendo recently released 100 Classic Book Collection for the Nintendo DS. It includes a library of many books you know you probably ought to read, but it's a shame there's no option to read PDFs of your own choice. Amazon's Kindle ebook reader (only available in the US) has made it to a second edition and does offer the ability to read your own PDFs, as well as providing downloadable content. Amazon warns that the PDF conversion is experimental, but it nevertheless creates greater opportunities for authors to distribute their content to Kindle readers. I blogged about some of the problems of distributing Kindle content via Amazon previously.

By providing 'University of Death' as an ebook, I hope I'll be able to give people more options for consuming the content as they wish. It also makes it possible for people to access the content more quickly, and to save money on ordering (no postage or print costs). People who wish to can print their own copies to read on paper.

Pricing ebooks is tricky, but at less than the cost of some music magazines, I think £5 represents fair value for the entertainment provided. People tend to think that there are no costs in ebook publishing, but actually the cost of content creation and promotion is the same as it is for printed books. Feel free to leave any comments on the pricing of ebook below.

There's no biz like snowbiz

2009-02-03T09:15:00.004Z

A sculptor made a snow family on a disused petrol station forecourt in Chiswick yesterday. His mother (who was also there taking photos) said that he'd been working on it from 11am (the final photo was taken at 5.45pm). "Make my son famous!" she said. "He's an artist!" Posting these photos here is the best I can do...

Snow on a bird feeder

2009-02-02T07:59:00.002Z

Snow piled high on the bird feeder in my garden this morning

Obama inauguration photos

2009-01-27T21:10:00.003Z

I was working from the Boston (US) office on the day of Obama's inauguration this week and we watched it streamed over the web. From his opening line ("My fellow citizens" - reaching out to everyone living in America, not just the born or naturalised Americans), it was clear that this was the start of an era of change. There was a great spirit of optimism in everyone I met. At a concert in a local bar on Friday, the biggest applause was not for the band, nor the singer, but for Obama namechecked at the end.

When I returned home, the Amnesty International magazine in my post tray was calling on Obama to close down Guantanamo. He'd already started. It remains to be seen how much he can achieve how quickly, but he promises a return to values-led politics, something which has been lacking in the US (and the UK) for too long.

Obama's face carved in snow on a pillar of the Widdener Library, Harvard University, on the morning of the inauguration.

Obama merchandise in Borders includes a jigsaw puzzle of the Boston Globe front page on the day he won the election, t-shirts, and numerous books, including two written by Obama himself. Whether you want to read Obama's own take on politics, or just wear the icon on your chest, Obama is there for you.

This deli and grocery store was decorated for the occasion. A small crowd was gathered around this shop window watching the news again as I walked home in the evening. The inauguration took place the day after Martin Luther King Day and the shop's other window had a picture of Martin Luther King alongside a picture of Obama.

Viral marketing for musicians, and flash games

2009-01-14T08:30:00.000Z

I've written a new article about viral marketing for musicians, which reviews some examples of how major acts are igniting word of mouth online. It includes an embedded platform game in which you have to help Lily Allen to escape The Fear.

I'm also hosting a version of Space Invaders and an official clone of Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, the game for the DS.

BBC Radio 4 mentions 'University of Death'

2009-01-11T10:59:00.004Z

My novel University of Death was mentioned briefly on Radio 4's Saturday Live, yesterday (at approximately 44:30mins if you want to listen again). I emailed the programme to ask Joanna Trollope for tips on writing titles for novels, given that the title 'University of Death' has put off as many people as it has intrigued.

Joanna's advice was that she follows the model of the 19th century novel, and keeps the title short, plain and descriptive, but she says that the music industry might need something a bit more hip than her book titles. I already have a one word title in mind for my next novel, which follows Joanna's guidelines closely, so perhaps I'm on the right track with that.

As well as getting some free advice from a leading author, it's nice to get a short mention on Radio 4 for my book, including the author, title and subject matter. Radio 4 has 9.45 million listeners, and it's extremely difficult for independent authors to reach an audience of that size.

New York City photographs

2009-01-06T18:51:00.002Z

Happy new year everyone.

In December I visited New York City, and I've just uploaded my gallery of New York City Photographs. It was a great time to be there - the city was decorated for Christmas, including giant baubles and giant Christmas tree lights. There was also a great vibe around Obama's recent election - some people had their Obama campaign stickers left on their jackets with pride, and he was on the cover of nearly every magazine, and on t-shirts on many a street corner.

Here's one photo that didn't make it into the main gallery:

According to the shop owner, there are actually three wigs in this window display. Incredible.