Oisín McGann's Blog
Wondering Aloud

This is something a lot of writers must wonder about from time to time, particularly those who write crime, thrillers, horror, dystopian science fiction or other variously dark, violent, paranoid or unpleasant stories.

I am always a little curious, when doing one of my many online searches, about what kinds of flags I’m raising in the hypersensitive, communications-monitoring headquarters of the world. To give you a flavour, research for my stories has included: terrorists; a wide variety of experimental weapons; more conventional weapons such as guns, bombs and knives; instruments of torture; pathology; crime scene forensics; aviation engineering; surveillance techniques; hacking; radioactive material; police procedures; confidence tricks; and details about a whole selection of violent injuries. On the other hand, I have actually pulled short of looking for sites that show you how to make a bomb, even though it would have been useful in a couple of my books. That just seemed like a tiny step too far.

If you were to believe some films, this blog post alone would be enough to get me black-bagged and carted away in an unmarked SUV with tinted windows. Hang on, what’s that outside? Wait a minute . . .

No, it was nothing.

Colin Wratten, producer of the BBC series, Waking the Dead (one of my favourite shows, like, ever) covers this topic in one of his blog posts. I also learned from his post that there is such a job as a fly and maggot wrangler. I’ll be Googling that before too long. But it was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one indulging in a bit of idle paranoia.

My new book, ‘Rat Runners’, is set in a near-future surveillance state, so I did a lot of reading on that kind of stuff. What I discovered is that much of what a science-fiction writer might dream up to feature in the kind of state apparatus run by WatchWorld is actually already in operation somewhere in the world. The kind of stuff that the East German’s Stasi’s wet dreams were made of. The more I read, the more I started thinking about what I was typing into that little Google box.

In the end, I actually had to simplify some of the stuff I was putting into ‘Rat Runners’, because the real technology being used in surveillance was so pervasive and so sophisticated, that showing the ways of beating it would take pages to explain – not good for storytelling. And besides, I’m no Cory Doctorow. If you want to see proper anti-police-state hacking, check out his novel, Little Brother. It’s technical, but excellent. Doctorow knows what he’s talking about, and is passionate about the subject. He’s probably on some of those intelligence lists for real, the trouble-making sod.

Anyway, I didn’t want to write an entire story based on hackers, even if hacking was a necessary part of the storyline. It’s extremely hard to make a guy sitting at a computer sound dramatic, even if it can be in real life. It’ll only appeal to people who are into that stuff – people who most likely have heard a lot of it already.

So, there I was, researching surveillance so that I could write a story about a surveillance state, while becoming increasingly aware of how much surveillance I was under every day, and how much more could be applied to my life, without me knowing, if I attracted the wrong kind of attention. Observing something changes it. Observing the means of observing something – and realizing you could be the ‘something’, changes you a bit too.

Now, what exactly is a ‘dirty bomb’?

Let me Google that . . .

Okay, I don’t believe in being an alarmist about hacking, but if you’ve got an Amazon account, a Google account or an iCloud account, you need to read this chilling Wired article. In the space of a few hours, tech reporter Mat Honan had his iPhone and MacBook wiped (including the only copies of all his photos of his one-year-old daughter), lost two email accounts and had racist rants broadcast on his Twitter account. Later on, he ended up communicating with the hackers. For them, this attack was nothing personal – they had no grudge against him, and they had no use for any of the data on his phone or computer. They basically did it for laughs and a choice Twitter ID. Here’s a taste of how the they went about it:

‘In short, the very four [credit card] digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.’

And:

‘It turns out, a billing address and the last four digits of a credit card number are the only two pieces of information anyone needs to get into your iCloud account. Once supplied, Apple will issue a temporary password, and that password grants access to iCloud.’

And though the caution includes Amazon, it also applies to any services that deliver:

‘If you have an AppleID, every time you call Pizza Hut, you’ve giving the 16-year-old on the other end of the line all he needs to take over your entire digital life.’

Maybe you’d wonder about the kinds of malicious bastards who do this level of damage just because they can – but they’re real and they’re out there. Anyway, the golden rule seems to be to back up off your hard drive regularly and don’t connect all your accounts together with related names. Or you could lose the lot.

When it comes to technology, I often think companies with powerful new applications can fail to see the difference between ‘can we?’ and ‘should we?’. As private companies develop increasingly bottomless resources for storing our most personal information, we, their customers, should constantly be asking how much of this is really necessary, and how much are we giving away by letting it happen.

Back in 2010, Geekosystem reported that Facebook were introducing facial recognition software into their network’s functions. Combined with the tagging function that can be used on photos, this software could be used to ‘recognize’ all your friends in all your photos and tag them accordingly.

I found an article in ‘ The Guardian’ a while back that confirms it’s full steam ahead for the internet giant’s new facility. And an article in ‘PC World’ explains why this is a profoundly creepy development. Facebook have long shown that they can play fast and loose with their members’ privacy. Given that private communications with your friends is a big part of the service Facebook offers, this carelessness can result in deeply personal stuff you thought was treated as confidential, ending up on view to the world.

This type of software has been in use across the world in law-enforcement for some time, but Google, Apple, Sony, Microsoft and other private companies are putting it to use too.

For those who’ve never come across it before, facial recognition basically works like this:

Computer software analyzes the features of your face in a photo and breaks the information down into a mathematical algorithm. It can record the proportions of your face – the relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. It then simplifies the information in the image down to the bare basics needed for identification. Another version might identify you by the blemishes in the surface of your skin; or there are even approaches that record the physical shape of your face in a 3D model. What it boils down to, though, is your face can be recorded in systems of numbers that can be identified and cross-referenced much faster than an image can – just as law enforcers worldwide can already do with fingerprints.

Except you can’t fingerprint someone as they pass you on the street.

A writer on Zippycart discusses how, in the near future, this technology could be used to target you with advertising when you’re out and about, or perhaps even get you arrested in a police state because you were once photographed in the wrong place, or with the wrong people.

Facial recognition software is already being trialled for use in schools, to replace the roll call, including one school in Dublin. I have a major problem with this – not the technological monitoring of kids’ attendance as such, but the taking and storage of children’s biometric data by a private company. I went into some of the issues around this a while back, when I learned about new systems being used to fingerprint kids in school libraries.

I have always been curious about, and interested in, new technology. But my real interest is in our relationship with its functions, and the practical ways that this affects our lives.

This introduction of facial recognition into our everyday lives is just at the early stages, and at this level, it’s still a rather fumbling, benign presence. The success rate varies, but is often much less than 50%. It can be foiled by such minor things as sunglasses, long hair, low or unconventional lighting, poor resolution and even facial expressions. If you’re on camera, give it a big smile and it might not be able to read your face.

So it’s easy for calls of caution to be dismissed as paranoia. But I figure it’s better be cautious now, rather than frustrated and powerless later. And the fact this technology doesn’t work properly yet, but is already in widespread use, is a cause for concern in itself. If this it doesn’t do the job properly, why use it? Before we create massive honey-pots of information that can be lifted from a computer by anyone with the savvy to do it, misused through incompetence, or just mislaid by some eejit, let’s figure out if it’s the best way of doing things, and make sure the process doesn’t compromise our personal security.

I do harp on about this a bit, but there’s one fundamental principle I always keep in mind when I’m dealing with my information online:

Once you put something up on the web, it’s gone. Once the world has access to it, you can no longer consider it yours. And I don’t care who says what about the privacy they can guarantee online. Nobody can guarantee privacy online. Encryption can be extremely secure, but people aren’t. I always assume any online lock can be unlocked. And that’s working on the theory that the company supplying the web service to you, isn’t going to take it upon itself to do something dodgy with your information. There’s no guarantee of that either.

So when some big company tries to sell you a flash new service, but it involves using some of your most personal information – and biometric data is as personal and as important as it gets – ask not just what you could do with that technology, but what that technology could do to you.

This post is a tribute to my Power Mac G4, a machine with which I have had a long and tumultuous working relationship; a machine I have cursed almost as often as I’ve admired. Hold onto your hats, ‘cos this could get a bit nerdy.

Despite the numerous break-ups (and one or two break-downs) this Mac and I have endured, I have listened with bemusement to other people who have bought PCs and found themselves replacing them a year or two later. It’s hard to fathom anyone tolerating a situation like that. Whatever faults this stubborn git of a computer might have had, quitting wasn’t one of them.

For anyone who recognizes this model and is gaping at its venerable age, yes, I bought it new, and have been using it constantly as my main computer ever since. Yes, it is the Quicksilver model (the 733 MHz one). Yes, that model was released in 2001. And yes, it was getting painfully slow towards the end.

After nigh on ten years, I’ve finally given in and retired it from active service.

I’m sorry to say that I’ve met another machine – the inevitable newer model (not completely new; refurbished and upgraded, but new to me) one that can offer me some mystery, some excitement and . . . dare I say it . . . a smoother ride. I’m writing this post on that new Mac, as my old workmate sits disconnected in the corner of the room, awaiting a new life as a back-up drive.

There were times when I wanted to take a hammer to the old ****er, but when it comes down to it, it has served me well. It’s taken me from a career in freelance illustration and design, into one as a writer-illustrator of more than twenty books. We’ve done a lot of late nights together, moved house/studio four times, worked on painted artwork, digital art, websites, speeches, online teaching courses, workshop materials, research, books and any number of other tasks. We never played games together (except for the psychological ones) – it was always strictly business. But then, this is a passionate business.

I handle the minor maintenance stuff myself. The G4 has failed me completely only once (the result of a power surge I failed to guard against), and I’ve had the RAM and hard drive upgraded just the once too. On both those occasions – and when it came time to transfer everything on the hard drive onto the new computer – I went to the lads in Back From The Future, on Aungier Street in Dublin. Combining just the right mix of expertise, friendly service and character, they sell a great range of new, refurbished and end-of-line technology. And best of all, they don’t just fix computers, they fix Macs – and with a minimum of fuss. A rare breed. They’ve been a main street business for nine years, they now have a second shop open in Dun Laoghaire, and Colin, one of the owners, does technology reviews on TV3. So despite competing with big-name retail branding power, they’ve well and truly staked out a place for themselves in the market. And as the publishing world goes increasingly digital, we’re going to need down-to-earth people to make sense of the ever-increasing mass of technology that our industry will depend on. If you have a computer problem, if nobody else can help . . . sorry, that’s the wrong eighties screen phenomenon. Anyway, Back From The Future – they’re good.

Which is just as well, because when you have to disconnect the machine your whole business is running on and leave it in someone else’s hands, it can be a bit unnerving. Backing stuff off is all very well, but not having my work computer just leaves me feeling so exposed. Maedhbh warned the kids to tread carefully around me for those few days. But now I’m back! And I still have all my books and files and everything.

On a rather fitting note, the first TED talk I checked out on the new Mac was this one, about using Google’s reservoir of millions of digitized books – an unprecedented historical record – to look at the changing trends to be found in that ocean of text. Some are profoundly important, like proof of rising sea levels and a demonstration of the effects of censorship in Nazi Germany. And then some are downright silly, like the levels of frustration demonstrated by the word ‘argh’, from those with just one ‘a’ to those with eight. Intriguing statistical information, delivered with comedic timing.

The illegal copying and distribution of digital books. We knew this was coming – in fact, it’s been possible for a while. Ever since book production went digital, and distribution went online. But thanks to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and some handy pieces of dodgy software, any git with a smidgeon of computer savvy can now rip off somebody else’s book and sell it as their own . . . in industrial quantities.

This is what publishers have been gnawing away at their nails about for the last few years. Margins in the book industry are small enough without someone nicking your stuff and copying wholesale.

You can get DVDs showing you how to do this. There are online courses.

Amazon has been marketing itself as an easy means for writers to publish themselves – angling to become a producer as well as a distributor. On one hand, it’s a smart move, and a real boon for writers (albeit one that offers no filter of quality). But the internet giant is facing a serious problem with what has become known as ‘book spam’.

Online cowboys are getting hold of content through what is referred to as Private Label Rights. This is where you buy text, including the right (a rather arbitrary term in this case) to use it, reformat it, change it or even claim it as your own. People are copying-and-pasting what is often poor quality content in forms such as a cookbook, a diet plan, a get-rich-quick scheme or a travel book into an ebook format which they then put up for sale cheap online, using platforms like Amazon’s and programmes such as Autopilot Kindle Cash.

As far as I know, this isn’t technically illegal – it just means Amazon and the like are publishing a wave of garbage that book-buyers have to wade through in search of anything of value. But some pirates are actually pulling the content from existing books, removing the author’s name, changing the cover and passing it off as their own work. This takes very little work, so even a few sales can make it worthwhile. I’ve heard different figures, but apparently Amazon pays between 30%-75% of the price of the book to the author, depending on the size of the book. And it seems you can even just add irrelevant or repetitive text just to bulk it out and make it look like the book is better value.

Amazon and other distributors can use software to detect when two ebooks have exactly the same text, just as search engines can detect when the same piece of text has been used on more than one website and filter it out during a search. But some book pirates use a process known as ‘spinning’, where they use a piece of software – an ‘auto spinner’ – to alter the text, changing and replacing words, so that it looks just different enough to fool the search engines.

This is fast becoming a big business. According to Reuters, 302,000 conventional books were released in the US in 2009, versus 1.33 million non-traditional books, including ebooks. Contrast this with 2010, when 316,000 traditional books were published, compared to almost 2.8 million non-traditional books (quoting Albert Greco, a publishing industry expert at Fordham University’s business school). That’s a massive jump in one year, and it’s just going to keep growing. If book pirates can grab even a small percentage of that with little effort, especially if a lot of the work is automated, they can make a fortune.

This is a big deal for authors too. I publish about a novel a year (the publisher’s schedule, not mine), along with a few other different projects. Even after I’ve finished writing the book, it usually takes about a year before it reaches the shops. Someone else can dump a load of content into an ebook in minutes, with the same title, even sticking my name on it, and put it online. Worse still, they can just rip off my story and publish it under another name. Then they can switch to automatic fire, replicate it over and over again, just slightly differently each time, and blast it out there as often as they like.

Amazon are not sitting still on this – after all, it’s bad business and it’s doing serious damage to their brand. And it threatens to do the same to others who’d like some of that business, like Barnes and Noble, and no doubt Google at some point too. Companies like these are determined to offer this self-publishing service – and who can blame them, when you consider most of the people who read books would love to be able to write one? But these firms  are quickly going to find themselves in the same boat as the film and music producers.

This uncomfortable trend for ripping off books could quickly become a hoard of spammers and pirates armed with spinners and PLR and all manner of other dastardly devices. Filtering them out will mean proper detection systems (that’s a link to the best article I’ve seen so far on this subject), but also human resources – real live people, sifting through this stuff and getting rid of the randomly-generated garbage, and the scale of that job is going to increase exponentially.

I’ve been all for this digital revolution, but I’ve been saying for a long time that the publishing industry needs to take the reins, rather than letting our futures be decided by the people who design the technology (see ‘Seizing the Means of Production’ Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).

‘Waiting to see what happens’ is not a strategy. And approaches such as Digital Rights Management (which controls access to a given file), holding ISP’s responsible and copyright breach lawsuits are next to useless if we don’t get the consumers on our side. It’s no point trying the punish ‘wrong-doers’ if everyone is doing wrong, because they can get the same quality product quicker and easier for free from an illegal source. Here are a few points to think about, just from the production point of view:

1. With the mass of both quality and garbage on the web, people want their choices made easier. Publishers need to hold themselves up as filters of quality. At the moment, most people don’t know or care who publishes what book. Publishers need to be become more aware of how to use their brand, so that consumers will look to them as trustworthy producers of quality.
2. Digital Rights Management should be carried out in a way that makes it easier to get hold of the right stuff, rather than making it more difficult. No reading device should be restricted to reading one type of file, or locked in to one supplier. I don’t want to be dictated to about where I buy my books.
3. Perhaps, as things lean more and more towards the online aspect of publishing, we should look at subscribing to a service, rather than buying a product, particularly for mass market stuff we don’t necessarily keep on our bookshelves once we’ve finished with it. Think on-demand television rather than buying the DVD – but with no need for a schedule. And yes, sometimes you do want have those special ones to keep. It might be a case that booksellers and libraries would have to merge functions in some areas, or draw firm lines between each other’s turf.
4. And finally, a point especially relevant to children’s books: We need to come to think of publishing as producing content in a range of forms, not just a printed book, or an electronic version of that printed book. Even as the manuscript is being turned out, and the design is being conceived, we need to ask ourselves: ‘What other formats do we need to think about? How many other ways can this story be told, can it be presented?’ Hook readers in by producing a more comprehensive product – not every aspect of which is sold as a complete unit such as a book. There can be online, interactive elements, involving social media, clubs, book forums, access to imagery, short stories or research materials, possibilities for fan-fiction and the like. Readers can be encouraged to take part in something, rather than just buy it.

We can produce this stuff far better, and offer far more, than the pirates. And it should be much easier for us to earn our readers’ trust and loyalty. But to do this, we need to convince them that we can provide them with these books in a way that is substantially better than the one which might offer those readers the same books much cheaper, or even for free.

We won’t beat piracy by focussing all our efforts on punishing the criminals who are beginning to steal our books. We have to beat these pirates by stealing their customers. Selling books is our business. Let’s show them how it should be done.

In its ongoing crusade to make as much of the world’s information available online (an act that is not entirely altruistic), Google have teamed up with the British Library to release 250,000 books online, from the library’s stock.

‘The Telegraph’ reports that the books will cover the years from 1700 to 1870, so the copyright issues  that Google has had with other aspects of its library project won’t be a major concern.

About 40 million pages will be digitised, meaning anyone who’s interested, can read books by writers who witnessed the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of rail travel and the abolition of slavery.

When people look back at the revolution that’s happening right now, I wonder will they be reading about it on paper or on-screen? And which will offer the most ‘authentic’ experience? Or will they even be reading at all?

To recap from Part 1 (of my ambitious and epic blog trilogy) what a publisher traditionally does for a writer is:  first, they take that story on. That approval is, in itself, a recognition that the story is of a reasonable quality. Then they hone it into something they can sell, produce the printed matter and distribute it to reviewers and the shops. Shops treat books from well-known publishers far more seriously than they do self-published books.

You write stories on your own, you publish them with a team, but you sell them with a community. Contrary to popular belief, writing is not a solitary occupation.

The single biggest change to the world of publishing is the fact that anybody with a web connection can now publish text online, and it is increasingly easy to get an ebook accepted by mainstream outlets such as Amazon. In fact, why bother with an ebook? Just stick it on a website, or in a blog, or in an email, on your Facebook page . . . hell, just slap it in a text on your mobile. What’s the difference, when you get down to it?

So publishers no longer control distribution – access to the market. Desktop publishing and design software offer anyone the ability to put a book together themselves. And with people reading more and more online and onscreen, printing is becoming less important, so publishers no longer control the means of production.

And given that most books do not benefit from any major promotional work from the publisher (the bulk of the marketing money and effort is reserved for the top 5% of authors), this is normally left to the creators of the work – the writer and/or illustrator. Particularly nowadays, when a children’s writer is expected to also be a children’s entertainer if they want any chance of a career – see my last post. So publishers do not, for the most part, control the promotion of a book.

In fact, much of what a modern publisher does control – or contribute – can often be sub-contracted out to freelance professionals. Publishers long ago stopped printing their own books, even though this is how the oldest companies started off. Publishers used to be printers. That work is now farmed out to printing firms – it is no longer where the publisher can add the greatest value, and therefore make the most money in the publishing process.

But editors, designers, marketing and PR people are also increasingly working for themselves or smaller, specialized companies. More and more  full-time publishing employees work from home. If you really wanted, you could bypass the ‘publishers’ altogether and hire what freelancers you need directly, and then keep all the money your books earn for yourself. That’s one theory. However, as I said before, with the technology available, it’s possible to do the whole shebang by yourself. Writer, John Scalzi, takes a dramatic look at these propositions on his blog.

There is a point in the future where my name – my ‘brand’ – might become recognizable enough for me to say: ‘Why bother with a publisher and distribution system that takes 80-90% of the money from the sale of book, when I can do it all online myself and cut them out of the picture? With print-on-demand, including marvels such as the Espresso Book Machine, I can even send people printed versions of the books if they want them.’ If my publishers seem to be dragging their heels when it comes the seizing this new means of production, why don’t I just do it myself? If I made enough money, I could pay a few experts to do the tricky bits for me, and then manage the whole thing and take most of the money for myself.

As an author, I already have far more direct contact with readers than my publishers do. I also have this blog and this website as an online means of contact, but other authors go further, giving out email addresses, having Facebook pages and tweeting regularly on Twitter. The line between linear stories and more interactive formats such as online role-playing-games is starting to blur – as is the divide between author and reader. I’m no programmer, but I am an illustrator and designer. I can handle much of the production of an ordinary book myself and I have people around me who can do most of the rest of it. So why not?

To be blunt, even in the digital world, self-publishing is incredibly hard to do properly. Publishing your own work requires a wide range of skills to do effectively, is ravenously time-consuming (leaving you little time to write) and can be hideously expensive once high-end production for printing becomes involved. I know – I’ve tried it. It actually went okay; I published the first issue of a comic entitled ‘Twisted’ (go find that one, you comic fanatics!), but then started getting real illustration work and that was that. I managed to get the cost of printing covered by a business partner and selling advertising. But I never made enough money on the sales to cover the cost of the time I spent writing and illustrating the comic. Mainly because, back then, I didn’t understand a thing about marketing or distribution.

That said, I find normal publishing isn’t very different – you get published, and then do a lot of the selling work yourself. Despite all the difficulties, self-publishing does work for some people. And now there is an astounding number of people taking up the challenge. Many aren’t interested in making a living from it at all – they just want to get their work out there. Sometimes it couldn’t even be called work. They just want to throw their voice, their text, out into the wilderness and see if anyone answers. We’re becoming addicted to this random, stream-of-consciousness stuff. It feels raw and immediate, and is often entertaining. But like watching MTV, it never quite satisfies. You’re always hanging on to see one more bit, in case that has what you’re looking for.

And there is still the issue of quality. I believe there is a serious risk that, if we fail to adjust to the new modes of reading that come with all these changes, the measures of quality that are accepted across the publishing world will become irrelevant to young readers who are effectively starting from scratch in a new medium. This is already happening in the world of news – look at how commentary has already taken over from investigation. The old media are making less money, so they have less to spend on digging up facts – and anyway, it takes too damn long. It’s easier to read the press releases from those in power and pass them on with a bit of commentary – or indeed, getting a group of journalists together to discuss them at length. As I mentioned in an earlier post,  Charles Stross talks about this and other points in his blog.

And I hate the idea that the fantastic developments in production and distribution could lead to the discarding of much of what is still good in publishing. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Except, in this case, it’s the baby who’s throwing us.

Like Charlie Stross, Eoin Purcell talks about the race to the bottom in the world of digital publishing. He questions whether there could ever be ‘an iTunes for books’ and asserts that the demand for quality writing could force internet service providers to start paying people to produce good stuff – to keep people clicking through those all-important ads. Such desperate measures could be called for, since the ‘all-information-should-be-free’ philosophy extolled by some will ensure that few good writers will be able to spare the time to produce that good stuff on a regular basis. They’ll all be off finding other ways to pay the rent.

Eoin has subscribed, tentatively, to the belief that, to keep consumers glued to their screens, ISP’s will have to start investing in talent. That would be nice (and overdue). I think there’s a lot to be said for the concept, but I’m not sure if that’s how it’ll come about – at least the bit about the ISP’s doing the paying.

Some of the people who once preached the virtues of the ‘all-information-should-be-free’ philosophy have started to change their minds. Probably because they are having to face up to the fact that they need to make a living too, and now that the idea is no longer a revolutionary one, there is less demand for it on the lucrative lecture circuit.

So, we know who needs the money in order to keep producing decent quality work: the creators of the content and those who help them produce it: everyone from investigative journalists to literary novelists and the organizations who support them. If we look beyond the traditional market to the digital one, we have to look at where that money is going to come from.

The consumers, obviously, but we already know that digital tip jars and PayPal accounts are not the answer. If people can get something as easily for free as they can while paying for it, most will take it for free, or won’t pay enough. Even if you can convince people to pay you enough to make a living from it, your success could mean you become more desirable to the pirates, and there goes your income again.

Some authors have tried getting sponsorship, or even investors, a kind of ‘crowdfunding’ to help them cover the expense of the time it takes to write a book. There have been suggestions that writers start releasing stuff in a drip-feed fashion, waiting for a certain number of subscriptions to their site before releasing the next episode. But it’s a shaky way to do it, and demands that you write serials with constant cliffhangers. It’s a tough way to go about writing a book.

Everybody is trying to figure out how they’re going to make their money in this scary new digital future. Newspapers have tried the subscription model, failed, and now seem to be giving it another go in a slightly different form. Even iTunes is starting to steer in that direction. Rock bands have tried releasing their new albums online and asking their fans to pay what they think the music is worth, but this only seems to work at all if the band is already huge, and makes plenty of money from performances anyway.

As an author of children’s and young adult fiction, I do a large number of events every year. If I was a musician or a storyteller, I would be trying to make my living from these, but that’s not my goal. I am having to learn the skills of an oral storyteller, but I’m trying to promote books.

Except I’m not. Not any more. In fact, I never really did. I sold stories, each of which I wrote in the format of a book to be printed, to be marketed in a certain category, for a certain market. But I was happy for those stories to be sold in other formats, even though I rarely got much say in how subsequent formats were produced. Why didn’t I get much say? Because the people who bought the rights all took the printed book, not the story in my head, as their starting point.

My books have been published as audio-books and ebooks. I have sold film rights for one of them, and would be delighted to sell more. The same goes for other kinds of broadcasting, including console or online computer games. I will soon be releasing my first ebook novella free online. I have read, performed, my stories for audiences of children. Excerpts from one of my novels have been performed as drama presentations. As ebooks, my stories can be read out loud by text-to-voice software for the visually impaired.

Do I want to even attempt to self-publish into all of these formats? Not bloody likely. So I need a publisher. Not a company that bases its business on printed matter, but one that can help me hone and adapt my stories for different formats, either for different audiences, or the same audience that wants to be able to enjoy my stories in different ways. Kids in particular, expect their favourite brands to stretch across different media. The story they sat up all night reading on paper by the light of a lamp, they want to continue reading on their phone while being driven to school in the morning. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have it, except that the publishing industry has so far baulked at making it possible.

In an article for the Computerworld website, Michael Elgan puts forward the idea that publishing must change its very shape. He suggests that when a book is sold, it could be offered at each outlet in any format the reader wants, or indeed, as a bundle. So instead of having to buy the ebook, the audio-book and the printed version individually, they could be bought as one package. And if you’re talking just about digital files, this would be easy, and makes complete sense. That’s what makes digital stuff so great. You can keep it all together in the same place, but use it in different ways.

Elgan goes on to talk about being able to borrow or rent audio-books (a service some libraries already offer) and books that can download the updated version on a regular basis – not just your newspapers, but books, particularly useful for things like academic texts, manuals, law books etc. He argues for ‘social books’, where a book has its own website for discussion about it, although I think online book groups serve this purpose better and cheaper. But the book could still be used to take you to a relevant online world to enrich the reading experience. He questions why ebooks are released at the same time as printed books, when they are obviously much quicker to produce.

But books are no longer solid, static things. Soon, they may no longer have a single size, and could have multiple layers. How do you pay once for something that comes in different forms, or is constantly changing, renewing itself? Well, you don’t pay for that one thing.

Google are pushing for a model where we stop downloading stuff altogether, that we stop storing everything on our own computers and just access everything online. You don’t pay for individual bits of software, or for the products you use online, you just pay a subscription for the whole service.

All right, as a human being who likes his privacy and independence, the ‘putting my whole life online’ idea does give me the shivers. And I certainly don’t want Google becoming the purveyor of all media – or indeed, all knowledge, as they claim their ambition has always been.

But it brings me back to the idea of subscription. The idea that we no longer seek to own a version of story, we just pay for the right to read, listen, watch as much as we like in a given time, and put up with having to look at a few ads along the way (If you do absolutely have to own it, you can still buy a printed version). We use this license or subscription model already, every day of our lives, and it has produced some of the best (and worst) writing in any media. It’s called television.

And even though television programmes and fims are ripped off and distributed widely on the web, most of us still sit down and watch the box, rather than trying to download free stuff on the computer. Why? Because it’s easier. And our televisions are becoming so versatile, so multi-functional, that even the free means of downloading individual files isn’t enough to draw us away from the box that we can work from our armchair with a simple remote control. We don’t want to know what’s on the world-wide web each evening when we come home from work. That’s too much hassle. We want a fairly restricted menu of options that suits our tastes, which won’t demand too much thought. And I’d still rather rent a box-set of DVD’s than try and download them off the web. I am happy to pay for that convenience, for something that gives me pleasure.

Now think about how much easier and cheaper it is to produce text, or even illustration and design, compared with your average television show.

It’s not just about the service. In terms of a means of accessing stories, text and any related files, we don’t need a wide array of gadgets for reading in different forms. We need one that can manage all kinds of text in a simple way. I had high hopes for the iPad, but I think it’s fallen short (I’ll cover that in another post). But we’re coming close. The key is the combination of the reading device and the service. Perhaps Kindle will crack it, perhaps Google will get there first. Maybe Apple will even come up on the inside and steal the prize. Hopefully they’ll all produce different types and we’ll actually have a choice of what to use. But these companies create formats, devices. Not content.

I believe that the publishing industry needs to get together, from the likes of giants such as Random House to small independent firms like the O’Brien Press or Barrington Stoke, and figure out how to move our industry online in a unified, forward-looking, strategic way. We must seize the means of production before it is foisted upon us, and we end up having to figure out how to work within an alien system, while we lose our increasingly more tech-literate young readers to those who have mastered the medium, but not the content.

If publishers are to remain in business, and maintain the standards that excite such devotion, intensity and passion in a bizarrely untenable industry, they must become what most creators of content cannot and do not want to be. They must act as hubs of expertise in all kinds of formats and media, helping the creator adapt their story, their book, to each one. They must ensure that the outlets they choose to work through are so easy to use and access, and offer such opportunities to become more involved with each book, that pirate material– which will always exist – cannot become mainstream.

As a writer, I want to make a living from my work, so I can spend my time doing it and so I can remain productive throughout my life. But I also take a keen interest in how stories are told and spread and how they mutate and take new forms – along with the information and inspiration that they carry. I believe it is vital that we meet the developing needs of our readers, so that they do not see our industry as becoming increasingly irrelevant as they are led away by forms of reading that offer more fashionable, eye-catching snatches of entertainment, but less technique, less investigation, less thought, less depth and perspective.

For the sake of our industry and our audience, we must stay relevant in their eyes. I appeal to the publishing world to seize these new means of production, and stop being afraid of them. These are merely tools we need to learn how to use. Painting is not restricted to those who can manufacture canvas or brushes. Let’s not get left behind.