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(Midgets & Widgets)

Wired guru Chris Anderson has identified what he calls ‘The Long Tail’ phenomenon which suggests that our culture and economy are shifting from the steep curve of over-hyped big hit products to a long tail of niche products - lots and lots of them.
Charlie Brooker describes pretty much the same thing when he calls this ‘an age of dazzling consumer choice in which the customer is routinely indulged like a spoilt medieval prince’.

Driving the change is the rise of the internet and a corresponding increase in the time people spend in front of their computers. The PC is the new goggle-box, or rather, Google-box.

It’s all a bit scary for paunchy middle-aged ad agency types who are being forced to reinvent themselves: remembering to wear their baseball caps backwards and learning to speak techno as the world lurches from traditional aggregated media to a more fragmented landscape.

For everyone else it’s enormous fun as we become aficionados of midget Jello-wrestling and discover our very own Pentonville handles at prisonbitchname.com (Harry Hung Horse, in case you were wondering). There’s a site for everyone. And his dog (shorty.com/bonsaikitten/).

In many ways the online space is the perfect environment for products like books and CDs - bands like the Arctic Monkeys established a huge fan-base through online file sharing, Suze Orman’s publishers shrewdly allowed a million or so copies of her new book to be downloaded for free through Oprah’s website generating massive buzz. In theory well-marketed niche products can now punch well above their weight without requiring an advertising budget the size of Lichtenstein’s GNP. In theory.

The problem is, the Long Tail. There’s just so much stuff out there.

Authors have been quick to take advantage of the cyberspace opportunity with some excellent websites and blogs. But the question remains, how do we channel potential readers to our little asteroids in the first place?

In truth consumers are actually behaving more like the Princes of Serendip than aristocratic medieval brats - not so much lounging back on veleveteen cushions waiting for the world to pop a sugared comfit into their slack jaws, as active, engaged and square-jawed as Dan Dare. They’re out in cyberspace looking for new stuff to trip over.

And this is an important distinction. Consumers prefer to believe that there’s an element of serendipity to their latest discovery. The new generation has become quite resistant to the traditional push dynamic. The trick is making potential readers feel that they’ve found you as a consequence of good fortune and their own sagacity. And what’s more, they’re one of a select and discerning few.

In cyberspace everybody wants to be Neil Armstrong.
Nobody wants to be…whatever his name was.


For the launch of The Sleepwalker's Introduction to Flight I’m preparing two websites: one for the novel, the other for one of my characters.

One of the tools I’m planning to use to tempt potential readers is a thing called a QR (Quick Response) Code. It’s basically a 2D bar-code for your mobile phone. If you’re on a 3G network and a groovy young thing you simply point your camera lens at a weird square object and your phone instantly gratifies you by converting it into interesting information.

In my case one of two things can happen: your WAP-enabled phone pops up the url for my novel – or your phone automatically links to a WAP page featuring my first chapter.

The reader now can now bask in that Eureka Moment; ululating with savage joy at being one of the few who have genuinely discovered something wonderful, before rushing to buy my book. Or they can admit to being a numbskull with no taste.

I suppose I ought to point out a third possibility: you’re a sad old technophobe, you point your phone at one these devices. Nothing happens until you remember that your crappy old phone doesn’t actually have a camera. You limp away, shaking your fist at happy young people and smelling horrible.

If all this sounds a bit overly techno, it’s not. A QR Code is simply a machine link between print and online media, or if you prefer, a printed device which enables people in the real world to dip in and out of cyberspace using their phones. It’s a glorified barcode, albeit one which contains about 300 times more information than the stripy things in Tescos.

QR Codes are de rigeur in Japan, almost mundane. They hit the UK around August 2007. The first big promo to use them was the film premier of 28 Days Later where they erected a gigantic QR Code billboard. Underneath was a printed url for their website, which is more or less a classic example of belt and braces.

But just so you know that I’m not mad, the Beeb is using QR Codes for programming right now so they’re good for early adopters. Personally I think there’s still enough intrigue attached to make them worthwhile for us first-time authors to engage with a young-ish target audience. They can be printed up as stickers, leaflets, T-shirts, scarves, underpants, temporary tattoos, anything you want really.

My launch will take place at the wonderful Goldsboro Books in Covent Garden in May. I shall have all of these things available, including QR-tattooed maidens and studs.

I’ll be the guy whose phone doesn’t work.

www.clavadistaloco.com

This post also appears on the Picador blog. See links.