The start of 2021 has been a little crazy. Actually, make that a lot crazy! This post isn’t going to hash out all of the turmoil of the last few months – that would be too much ranting – but instead I’ll focus on the big thing related to this blog: Shifting Sands. You may have seen the posts on Twitter or Facebook noting that there have been problems. If you have a copy, you’ll probably also have noticed that it hasn’t updated while the version on Amazon has. It’s been a fun couple of weeks! Inspired by this youtube video that mentions the idea of showing your work, however, I figured I should indeed show my work. So, let’s talk about the problem with Shifting Sands and how I’m moving forward.
Plans versus Reality
Way back at the start of this blog, I talked about what I wanted Shifting Sands to be. It was supposed to be an e-book that changed overtime. It was supposed to play with the stability of the book. And, from all my research, there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do that. Yeah, Amazon doesn’t allow coding that makes the process automatic, but it does allow updates, right? Like, from an academic perspective, this was one of the issues highlighted with the e-book. It’s not permanent. Amazon has abruptly changed or taken content that readers purchased in the past. All my research said that I could change the e-book when I wanted to. Like this post from Amazon itself. It would be a slower process than I’d ideally wanted but should be easy enough. Until it wasn’t.
I researched a lot before launching Shifting Sands on Kindle. Amazon is a bit of a monster but it’s also the platform for e-books. The content analysis I did prior to starting this author performance said publishing on Amazon was needed. It seems, however, that I would only know what I was searching for after the problem arose. Amazon apparently has very strict reasons for letting established readers see updates now. As a result, Shifting Sands has been updated to show the next wave, but those who have already bought the book can’t see the updates. How long this policy has been in place, I’m not sure. I’ve tried asking them for more information/support with the issue, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m frustrated with Amazon over it but this is 100% my fault.
Moving Forward
With the continuing aim of being as honest as possible and showing my work, it only seems right to talk about the plans for sorting this right now. As I had signed up to Kindle Unlimited and they expect exclusivity for the next three months, the current wave is a bit stuck. I may know the author though, so if you send me a message I can help get it to you. For the further future, however, I have a few different ideas bouncing around.
Newsletter distribution.
Did everyone else know you can have multiple different newsletters on your blog? This may not be new information to everyone else, but I had no idea. I obviously already have one that gets updates every so often. With this particular idea though, I could have another that is solely used to send out the different waves.
Pros – readers get to keep the e-book and read it offline. I can also have multiple file versions to suit different eReaders and apps.
Cons – effort for the reader, having to load it onto their device. It’s also not really an unstable e-book anymore and is instead many fragments of one story in different e-book files.
Web App
This was a suggestion from some very kind and helpful friends who dealt me abruptly breaking into a sob-fest one evening. Basically, I could make a simple web app that shows the text and should have offline capability.
Pros – I’m in control. And it would be easy enough to have a link or QR code attached to the Kindle e-book version to make it easy for readers to get to it.
Cons – learning curve. My brain doesn’t seem to want to understand it. I’ve now watched hundreds of tutorials and the basic coding part all makes sense to me. Everything else? Nope!
Plug-in
My research into web apps made me wonder why wordpress – the place this website currently lives – hadn’t done something like that before. It seemed easy enough, at least, even if I was struggling to get my head around some parts. It turns out that there are indeed a few plug-ins that work kind of like what I’m envisioning! I plan to test out version on here soon. Be prepared to see some exclusive content while I play.
Pros – ease. If this works the way I think it does, this is by far the easiest solution from my perspective. It can evolve the way I want it to, it should be easy enough to access from a reader perspective, and works like an e-book (just on a website).
Cons – I don’t think it can be accessed offline, which is disappointing. Readers also can’t own it, instead having to choose to access it.
I’m going to play about with each of these solutions over the next few months until the Kindle Unlimited period ends. In the meantime, anyone is welcome to ask for Wave Two when they’re ready and I’ll be able to send them a copy. It’s a hassle, for all involved, but I want to make this all right as best I can.
Showing My Work and Research
Obviously this was not how I wanted things to go. I thought I was coming to the end of doing the practice side of my PhD, with everything else just being maintenance of the author performance/instability part. But 2021 hates me and has decided that I must have more to do in all parts of my PhD. I’m not stressed enough already, you know? This blog has, however, been the place where I have been able to discuss both the practice and the research side – I figure that if any of you are interested, I can give you a snapshot of how this issue has affected things.
Amazon
I really didn’t want to have to write too much about Amazon! I knew I was going to have to touch on them (and there’s so much juicy, juicy history there) but I ended up pivoting away from that discussion while writing my lit review drafts. Honestly, Amazon is probably worth a dissertation in itself because wow. But from my research perspective, this whole incident has been an example of the industry trying to keep the e-book as a shadow of the physical codex. The e-book has so much potential to do other things and have its own special traits but it isn’t free to be that. I should make clear that this isn’t just an Amazon issue – I contacted other e-book distributors after the problems arose to find out if another platform would let me do what I’d always intended. The answer is no.
This all gets particularly interesting when you think about e-lit authors. Those writing E-lit, or Electronic literature, tend to use lesser known platforms or create their own. They might use Twine, make an app, or just use a normal webpage, but not really e-books. I can only really think of one person doing cool things with e-books. But it makes sense. E-lit is all about pushing boundaries, particularly in terms of what can be done with digital devices that can’t really happen in print. Amazon (and others) seems to have pretty firm boundaries that are apparently hard to push against.
Authorship
My original plans for discussion chapters were heavily tied to the autoethnographic aspect of the practice and the content analysis together. The actual practice itself was more of a contributing factor to an experience that seems much bigger in terms of authorship. Other books – whether in print or e-book only – are supposed to be fixed but, with the increased connection to authors through social media, they aren’t really anymore. An author can add detail or change the meaning through a tweet. And if they’re tweeting through the writing process, as so many authors do, you can see that the ideas change and grow over time. But, if I’m talking about this issue as I probably should, I’m going to have to work out how to angle that discussion.
Honestly, as I’m showing my work here so you may as well know my thoughts, it’s probably going to come down to the author as the centre of the text idea. With all of the plans for moving Shifting Sands forward, the reader needs to connect to me in some way. I am the gateway into the text. The author is the uniting focus of the fragmented parts. We can see this happening elsewhere too, the most notable example being, of course, JKR. The movies, the books, Pottermore… it all comes back to her. I’m still building my thoughts on this but it could be an interesting discussion.
Showing My Work (Even When it’s Full of Flaws)
Hopefully that’s you all caught up on where things stand at the moment with Shifting Sands. All research projects have their ups and downs, so I guess I should have seen this coming. Unfortunately for me, it came after a long string of hard knocks and felt very weighty given the fact people have invested in this project. I’m picking myself up and trying to make things better though. All I can do is apologise for the problems and thank you all for staying with me in this. It’s a long trek, and there will probably be other pitfalls, but I’ll try to keep you up-to-date. Showing my work, you know?
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