originally this was a commentary: response to Bob Miller HarperStudio Announces New E-Book Policy
we are living in the future of possibilities – even though its april fools day and offering in your HarperStudio Announces blog comments Seth Godin foot rub for some sounds intoxicatingly delirious… to some – i think the idea of trying to humanize and socialize this adventure of your HarperStudio experiment is a good idea in testing the waters in e-book pricing and bundling of formats and as you say In response to such proponents of free as Chris Anderson and Seth Godin, HarperStudio’s e-books will be free to anyone who agrees to review the book on Twitter. is a good stab at getting in the blood stream we will see how it works but its not enough – i want more…. i think its not enough in today world given the systemic meltdown of the economy/trust – free is not free – never is was or will be it always comes with strings attached – a deal that is too good to be true is too good to be true!!
i think the future will be built on trust – twitter is the seeds of a trust society – building a trust mom and pop style brand which aren’t the advertised brands of yesterday but are sustainable goods and services that are driven by word of mouth and propelled by trust not in products or companies but in and by you by me by we the people
there are a lot of marketing pr people on the internet and magnetized by twitter and most of them are trying to milk the cow but most have objectified it and don’t understand that you have to feed the cow in order to milk the cow – to keep it you have to give it away
you need to abandon marketing as marketing to numbers to bottom line – corporations aren’t the humans’ that we thought and wanted them to be and we the people can be fooled some of the time because we want to believe but ask yourself what and who do you really believe in and trust – products that were marketed with a bottom line driven mentality are often products which were designed to work just past warranty with planed obsolescence even before they were designed – we have to ask ourselves do you/i/we trust big biz, gov, media to tell us the truth – we the people know what is going on but we go along to get along even though its wrong but we know when and who not to trust – and we respond to it in differnet ways – some people pretend they are zombies, some eat, drink, smoke, drug, watch tv, shop themselves into oblivion and other mostly the young fight for their future
we need to go deeper into ourselves into the blood stream of yourself too and ask yourself would you buy into what you are selling – would you do business with yourself and why? -
we live in a culture that has collective A.D.D. suffering from over exposure to multi tasking – most onliner’s are addicted and virtually mainlining, replaced their blood stream with steady twitter stream, facebook, email, snail mail, phone etc marketing and books, media are competing no longer with each other but how much available time we have – the online commuter is no longer a 9 to 5 day slave we are an always on generation 24/7- but even more we are excited by the possibility of the impossible – in addition with twitter and citizen journalist we have real people on the ground reporting real stories about events that effect their lives directly – not some journalist who comes in looking for sensational stories and misses the real people stories – its known that today’s books news and newspapers are old news by the time they get off the presses or even on news media web sites often its already history – the bleeding of the print media is because it wrote the handwriting on the wall but couldn’t decipher it because they had their head in the sand -
as many of us especially, you, already know the future of books is going to be very different with lots of unimaginable options of interactivity – photographs will speak to us and have sounds, words will having moving images at the touch of a link they will be read but also come alive with lots of unimaginable options including in the authors voice, you will be able to almost touch, taste, smell, hear the sounds and food being prepared, you will be able to ask the author what something means or he/she means via chat or email – and more intimate engaging options then being a spectator - so though this is e-book promo is clever and your dinner and foot rub are playful and good fodder i think you need to invite your audience into helping discover the future of how we are going to experience the media – how we are going to live together – how we are going to survive and create a harmonious and creative world in all walks of life – we are living in the future of possibilities – we who know about the feel of getting our hands covered with newspaper ink and the feel of a books written on the wings of butterfly wings as the first books were called love the experience but today’s and tomorrows kids are brought up sucking at the mother internet nipple of the future – there is more to this then meets the eye – some food for thought – geo geller