David Maybury | Blog

The Irish Twitterati were featured on Gadget Republic yesterday – including @eoincolfer and @clairehennessy – as Irish writers embrace the twitter:

realising that the cliched image of the Luddite scribe, writing with a quill by candlestick is not going to help boost book sales or get their name out there.

The clever folks in GR featured some other lay about (me) too:

It isn’t about what you had for breakfast. It is about communication with a lot of people, sharing information, ideas, articles and anything else you come across. For writers it is a gateway to people (especially anyone facing deadlines and can’t leave the keyboard). For booksellers it is a goldmine – have a look at how Chapters, Eason and Ravenbooks are using it. Publishers and marketing gurus are everywhere – offering advance copies, spreading the word on new titles and building excitement about upcoming authors.

Those young enough to be going back to school are donning uniforms, pulling on shoes and strapping up bags and it looks like a few publishers are pulling up their socks too. Specifically, Children’s Books Ireland, David Fickling Books and Barry Cunningham’s Chicken House are all mid-makeover.

DFB is first out – with a stylish and very easily navigated site. There’s plenty of new content – including chapters 1 – 5 of Mark Haddon’s new tome Boom! And if that wasn’t incentive enough – the nice marketing people at Random House are giving away 500 copies of Philip Pullman’s Once Upon a Time in the North.

CBI launched their cb info resource – a massive addition to the site with articles from reviewers, publishers, authors, agents, teachers, librarians, funding organisations and pretty much every other facet of Irish children’s books. Have a read of Robert Dunbar’s Reviewing of Children’s Books – ye won’t be sorry!

And if all that wasn’t enough to keep ye going, Chicken House are poised to follow suit – their new site goes live on 1 September…Keep your fingers on the refresh button folks!

Irish writers, readers, publicists, booksellers, companies and other who-be-whats-its are joining twitter – and I’ve come across truck loads more in past two weeks considering the idea. (And then the questions start…  How does it work and why would anyone want to know what I had for breakfast?)

It isn’t about what you had for breakfast. Nobody really wants to know about soggy cornflakes with no sugar (no, sugar?! euch)

It is about communication, with a lot of people, sharing information, ideas, articles and anything else they come across. Have you found a book that you couldn’t put down? Or a press-release that you can’t wait to share? Send it out in 140 characters or less (just like a text message) to people who are interested.

For writers it is a gateway to people (especially anyone facing deadlines and can’t leave the keyboard). For booksellers it is a goldmine – have a look at how Chapters, Easons and Ravenbooks are using it. Publishers and marketing gurus are everywhere – offering advance copies, spreading the word on new titles and building excitement about upcoming authors.

Then there are the gazillions of readers who debate books, suggest titles, ask questions about writers/publishers/booksellers. And if you’re not there – you can’t answer those questions or tell that terrible joke you heard at lunch last week.

I can think of at least a dozen Irish YA and children’s writers who should be online – and I’d love the chance to ask ‘em questions.

Log on, say hello and get talking.

(Have a click here for a list of 100 interesting book tweople – just to get ye started or click below for some of the Irish contingent online)

(more…)

The Arts Council has announced a one day conference, New Media, New Audience?,  aimed at Arts Council funded organisations and policy makers that are interested in “the potential that new media has on the way in which they work, and in the way it can attract and broaden audiences.”

The conference is free and has some really great speakers – including Charles Leadbeater, Damien Mulley, Conn Ó Muí­neacháin, Dermod Moore and plenty more who-be-whats-its of web the world, including yours truly.

Plenty of topics and workshops to get people looking at new media formats – so if you want to know your twitter from elbow; or your facebook from your bebo then you probably should tag along. There is a website to boot – and all of the talks and discussion will appear as podcasts after the curtain has closed.