On radio silence.
by Pablo Defendini
I’ve been struggling to find the right words to blog about why I haven’t been blogging on here (yeah, how meta is that?) recently, apart from the fact that I’ve really been too busy at orim to do much of anything else; leave it to the formidable Kassia Krozser to sum up my feelings exactly (read the whole thing; aside from this snippet, the rest of the post is spot-the-hell-on, by all accounts):
Though everybody is writing about ebooks and the digital experience these days, I find I don’t have much new to add to the conversation; I’ve said it all before. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, sometimes I evolved. I still absolutely believe that user experience is — after the content of the book — the most important place for publishing types to focus their attention.
I’ve given up on reading banal analysis and wild conjecture. I ignore anything with the word “killer” in the headline or lead. If there’s a question mark in the headline — Will the iPhone Destroy How We Cook Dinner? — I don’t even bother to click through. I presume it’s a question the writer is asking himself, not actually bothering to consider with any depth. It’s just vague punditry designed to fill the web equivalent of column inches.
Others seem to agree, which is heartening. I feel like the publishing industry is at a place where the pundits have said what they needed to say, some in a nice, evenhanded and measured manner, some, not so much.
We’ve been talking the talk for years (at least some of us have been), now it’s time to walk the walk. More to come (maybe. maybe not).
Comments
wow…
i have even dropped off twitter… too busy, yes, but the signal-to-noise ratio on social media and email list serves has been really low lately. I agree, many of us in the day-to-day struggle to come up with new ideas 6 months or a year ago, have moved on to the new day-to-day struggle to make some of them a reality.
count me in the camp who is focused on the doing rather than the dreaming. not that latter isn’t valuable. it excites me to see bright minds attacking these problems. i’m simply at the point where we’ve talked and we’ve talked, and i’m eager for action.
i’m even more eager for meaningful conversation. with one side remaining (largely) silent, it’s hard to communicate.
agreed. the silence is frustrating, although not quite vexing, since the motivation for business-as-usual isn’t hard to suss out, however misguided (and some—like me—would say utterly, foolishly irresponsible). it is, however, quite unfortunate.
Thank god someone said what we’ve all been thinking about Mike Cane.
Don’t knock him too much. He may be rude, cantankerous, combative, and a smartass, but that doesn’t mean he’s not often right.
mike cane is a hyperactive clock.
unlike the storied “stopped clock”
– said to be correct twice a day –
mike is right about 12 times daily.
of course, he is also _incorrect_
all of the rest of the time, meaning
you cannot depend on him. at all.
but you other people?
you’re wrong just as often, and yet
very rarely right, and then only in
the most trivial of ways. plus you
aren’t _nearly_ as entertaining as
mikey. so it’s totally refreshing that
many of you have stopped blogging.
-bowerbird
[...] There seems to have been no end of discussions and ideas for the last two years in the publishing industry about the fate of books, the rise of eBooks, and the demise of bookshops. So much so, that it seems like people have run out of things to say. [...]
Absolutely right, Pablo. It’s been interesting – a lot of what I’ve been hearing lately has been ‘what’s up with Sleekness?’ and to be honest, it’s been difficult to think of what to say that hasn’t already been said.
Do people really want to hear about what we *think* is a good/bad/pass/fail or do they want to see what we can do? I’m thinking the latter. Though it’ll never stop me from opening my yapper.
Looking forward to your projects, P!
K
I am really liking all the work you’ve put into this blog-Very awesome