Source: Il Sole 24 Ore

We had a chance to meet and talk with Alessio Jacona at the Ebok Lab Italia conference, which took place at the beginning of March in Rimini. The article appeared on the 10th of March in Il Sole 25 Ore, a top Italian national daily business newspaper.

Every author has a story. There are inspiring ones, like that from Amanda Hocking, but in most cases there are stories like mine: about trying and failing and trying again.

Please find below a good Google’s translation to English:

If the bestseller is a do-it-yourself

Piotr Kowalczyk writes short stories. Two years ago it had produced enough to fill four books, but could not get published because – says fun – according to publishers today, “nobody wants to read short stories. The audience loves the novels. ”

A response ruthless in front of which Piotr has not lost his nerve: he has become self-publishers – or to put Italian, publisher of himself – and started experimenting. “My short stories have become free for iPhone stories – he explains – and the music is now changed, with the English version that has reached 50 thousand downloads. Once the attention he sought, Kowalczyk has reissued these same stories and put them on sale at various online stores including that of the U.S. giant Amazon, where he still “going pretty well.”

The self-publishing, which is the total disintermediation of the traditional publishing industry, is made possible by the Internet and the multiplicity of services available to all. The history of Piotr it is a good example, and is not an isolated case: Amanda Hocking, 26 year old American writer, has just become the symbol of self-publishing because it sells more than 100 thousand per month ebook on Amazon. Last January was less than 18 self-published books in the top 50 of the Kindle store, but “natural selection” is relentless: only 0.01% of the self-publisher comes to success.

Who can not be entrusted to one talent: “To get ahead you have to constantly innovate – says Kowalczyk – developing new forms of narrative and new formats.” In this way the author takes on an experiment which, as noted by Antonio Tombolini Simplicissimus Book Farm, it is worth the whole sector, but that no traditional publisher would now be able to support financially. In addition, the self-publishing has the merit of disintermediation that for publishers is the most difficult and demanding task, namely to identify talent. That said, the question arises what should be the role of publishers in the new context. According to Mark Carrara, expert blogger digital publishing, “the publisher will be responsible two main tasks: to select and secure their brand with quality, aggregate and provide services for authors, who are in need of editors, and especially the cover of good translators ‘. With their help, and thanks to the internet, it will be easier to open up the global market.

Related posts

• 17.01.2010 -- Interview: Nick Name
• 05.01.2010 -- Interview: Mobile ebook author
• 22.12.2009 -- Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 17.11.2009 -- E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications

"Interview About Self-Publishing for Il Sole 24 Ore" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Reviews made by professionals are still very important, but they’re definitely not the major decision trigger any more. With free search tools we are getting better and better with finding stuff we’re passionate about.

What turns out to essentially matter is a feedback left by Internet users: not only reviews or comments, but also faves and a sheer number of times the video was being watched, the blog post read and a file – downloaded.

I’m a happy man. My e-book with tech-fiction stories was downloaded more than 30,000 times from Feedbooks. I’m not a famous author and I don’t want to be a 2,097,309th Dan Brown. The genre is not obvious. It’s not a pure science fiction. It’s not even a speculative fiction.

It’s something between fiction and reality – where absurdity and humor meet. Geek fiction, tech fiction, tech absurd. Something to dismantle this bomb armed by Windows Vista earlier today. The title says is all: Password Incorrect.

If you feel interested, go check the book. It’s free, available in pdf, ePub and mobi with a Creative Commons licence. You can download it via web or get it directly into you tablet or smartphone through e-reading applications: Aldiko, Stanza, Ibis Reader or Bluefire Reader.

Additional stories you can find in the books showcased below.

Related posts

• 08.06.2010 -- “Hasło niepoprawne” – centrum pobrań
• 02.06.2009 -- I Killed Myself in 1969 and It Works
• 25.05.2009 -- How to download a book directly from a tweet?
• 13.12.2008 -- Stanza – cudo, które robi z iPhone’a czytnik e-booków
• 26.11.2008 -- W czołówce autorów Feedbooks.com

"Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Who exactly is Nick Name or is his identity being kept secret for a creative reason?

Nick Name is a person or a team, rather, who wants to be a living example of something which is happenig in front of our eyes – people are getting more and more identities. In times of mighty Internet, people select, adjust, create who they want to be to what they want to achieve – and they are just using this possibility of being anonymous to put different faces around. Each one of us has several Internet nicknames, personalities. Nick Name is just the opposite – several people try to have/can have/have one personality. It’s an artistic experiment, early stage, we’ll see how it evolves.

How would you define ‘absurd’ short stories? Is this kind of humour the result of post eastern bloc Soviet politics, something newer, or older?

It is definitely deep rooted in communism-related absurd, and we here in Poland have a great name for it – it is Slawomir Mrozek, famous around the world for his theatre of the absurd. At Soviet times the literary absurd (especially Mrozek’s short stories published in a Polish large-coverage weekly magazine) was a smart way to criticize communism as censors didin’t spot anything wrong wth it. So the literature absurd’s potential to put in between the lines something which was forbidden was something very specific for our Polish culture – I could call it a “Polish absurd pattern” – we like absurd in literature, because it used to address absurd in real life – usually in a form, where laughter is included.

How popular are short stories in Poland? In the UK the novel gets most of the literary attention? Is it the same in Poland?

Short fiction is not very popular in Poland, and it’s probably the same as everywhere else – novels, novels, novels. The thing is, that long-time reading in times of RSS feeds, no matter how exciting it is, seems to be an outdated way of spending time. At Indigo we believe, that its good to start a discussion on the new type of a reader – the one, who doesn’t have time to read big volume novels, is used to swallow short, on-the screen information, is eager to consume pleasure in short, but finished forms (YouTube films, etc.), is eager to read selectively, and gets satisfaction from a short time pleasures. This new type of a reader, we call him “Intereader”, all his reading habits gest from Internet and expects the rest of reading to be like that. As we learned, whose who like the books with short stories, mark the book they bought as “read” even if they have read ONE or TWO stories, they got satisfaction with. That’s a very interesting learning – there are people ready to buy a book just to consume a little part of it – but very intensively.
That’s a nice theory to share with you. But in terms of sales figures – here in Poland we are still are at the times of long-paper-hardcover-bigname readers. There is still a lot to be done to rediscover reading as a part of modern living pleasures. At this moment we must have a lot of belief in short stories:-)

Although the stories are available as printed books there’s a free sampler version available from Feedbooks.com. Is this a marketing device or do you have a particular passion for eBooks?

Books are going into public domain, we are very much into it. As a publishing house targeting Intereaders, we want to go into areas other publishers don’t see any benefit yet. So – it’s a promotional tool to draw attention to what we do, especially of those who consider reading books as a waste of time. The case of our book “Password Incorrect” addressed to iPhone users through Feedbooks.com/Stanza is a good example, that it works. We promoted the Polish edition of a book as a first Polish book for iPhone users and in no time got attention of major media in Poland. The very interesting thing is that it was technology guys who got deeply interested, not literary guys. In two weeks we had around 1000 downloads from feedbooks.com and the good thing is that this free iPhone book has boosted sales of all paper books by Nick Name – number of copies sold in October is almost four times bigger than in September. The conclusion: 75% of our readers come from technology world, not book world.

The stories often involve a fair amount of high tech and gadgets. Do you see your work as gadget-lit or tech-fiction?

The selection of stories in “Password Incorrect” is tech-oriented as this was the whole idea – to create a paradox: a book designed to be read on a hi-tech gadget, which is showing you the absurdity of using such gadgets. For us technology&science is one of the major sources of absurd and it’s good to be aware of it before we fully accept all the advances of civilisation. But absurd surely can be spotted in politics, entertainment, social relationship as well as other areas, and Nick Name is trying to deal with all of them, what is easy when using short stories as a tool.
The most important thing is that we don’t want to go into a typical science-fiction. As one of Nicks said once “Fiction is something which doesn’t exist, but makes sense. Absurd just the opposite.” So we want to talk about things, which are probable to happen – and we want to exaggerate to deconstruct absurd behind it. So it’s close future rather than typical futuristic fiction thing.

Do you have a translator? Or do you write in English?

I write in Polish. “Password Incorrect” is a first translation made. We wanted to check whether the fact, that the Polish book is already translated into English helps or not. Helps a lot:-) You know, people are snobs. But this translation we made is also a first step into an area of promoting what we do abroad.

Most of my favourite books were translated into English from another language. Sometimes I read the same book translated by two different translators. One I love and the other does nothing for me. Translation is a very tricky thing. And for those writers who are fluent in English as a second language there are colloquial terms and expressions that can be difficult. Do you worry about these issues?

Yes, we are fully aware that the the translations are a drawback. And they will always be. As already said, literary absurd is all about talking behind the lines, so associations can be made to real world. In lots of Nick Name’s Polish stories those associations are clear only for Poles. We lose some one-third of the meaning just on translation.

Have you thought about promoting your work more in the US and UK?

When it comes to such a niche area as absurd it’s only the question of time to at least try reach short fiction absurd lovers around the world, and obviously English is a language of first choice.

The book market in the UK is competitive and commercial. What is it like in Poland? Is it dominated by large business? Are there many independent bookshops? Is it easy for a writer (especially doing low volume, short fiction) to walk into a bookshop and get them to stock his or her book?

Large business, big warehouses, very big chains – this is the reality. There are small publishing houses like ours, but it’s really difficult to access the mainstream of a book distribution channels, so they do what we basically do – a lot of buzzmarketing, a lot of no-budget activities designed to get public’s attention. For a small publisher an e-book is a real choice. You can have a book published, there are no big costs involved, and the book is already there, so you can at least test the popularity, get first comments, this is good, this is helpful.

What is Nick Name planning for the future?

More absurd chasing, more fun:-)

Blog: http://www.passwordincorrect.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/namenick

Feedbooks: http://feedbooks.com/search?query=nick+name

Related posts

• 05.01.2010 -- Interview: Mobile ebook author
• 22.12.2009 -- Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name
• 28.11.2008 -- Graham pisze o polskim absurdzie literackim
• 06.04.2011 -- Interview About Self-Publishing for Il Sole 24 Ore
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?

"Interview: Nick Name" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Continuing our series of interviews with inspirational authors, today we have Nick Name or Niżej Podpisany in Polish.
These are the pen names of Piotr Kowalczyk from Warsaw, Poland who I met on Twitter . Here is the interview with him which is basically unedited to preserve his unique (and brilliant) expression!

Tell us a bit about yourself

My real name is Piotr Kowalczyk. I love absurd fiction. Call myself a late follower of Roland Topor and an early follower of Etgar Keret:) My Polish nickname/pen name is Niżej Podpisany (Signed Below) – to spot the major characteristic of a human at the times of Web 2.0 – many identities you can use to sign your opinion, post, comment. It works even better in English, although I realize that it may sound obvious.

I started to write short stories about three years ago after an operation (backbone). Before that I worked as a copywriter and art director – and still continue – this is where not only satisfaction comes from;) 3 years ago I decided to start a publishing house to issue my books. This was a great experience with one single conclusion – if you’re not big, you’re basically dead.

What do you write?

I write books in Polish. By now I have created more or less 219 short stories, but not less than 187 and not more that 259. This was enough to collect some 4 to 5 books.

However, my book “Password Incorrect” is translated to English, a selection of my best tech-absurd stories. My publishing house and me have decided to do it as we realized, that this kind of flash-fiction is not gonna be very popular in my homeland until all my grandchildren die. The book was published through Feedbooks.com, a great platform offering free e-books for mobile devices. As the number of English downloads has exceeded the Polish version, it seems there are a lot of absurd lovers around the world.

25 short, sometimes funny and sometimes mean stories ideal to rediscover the joy of reading a book as shiny and beautiful as a brand new cell phone.A look from a distance at the absurdity of our present day lives: fights with the less and less comprehensible equipment, pursuit of the latest technological news, pitfalls of our modern lifestyle, useless inventions and issues racing in all directions at a breakneck speed.

A lot of entertainment and a little food for thought. Just perfect for the moment when you’re finally bored with exploring the alarm settings on your new iPhone.

How did you publish your book on the iPhone?

My books didn’t get to the shelves and majority of sales were generated through internet bookstores. This is where I started to look at producing books for the iPhone. When the iPhone was introduced to Poland I decided to make a no-budget promotion: select short stories on technology-related absurd, make a nice cover perfectly fitting into the screen and feel of the iPhone, and tell it not to the literary people but to tech people. This was a big success. Major news portals were featuring the story, and it helped to increase sales of my paper books. Technically this was easier than expected. There is an application for iPhone called Stanza. When you have it you can download books directly to your phone. You know: “another great content”. People were downloading lots of stuff anyway, so why not books?

I learned that you can personally upload your book to Feedbooks . At that time, in October, a section of user-created books was fledging so I decided to go into public domain. I had to “kill myself” – put the date of death, otherwise the system wouldn’t let me through;-) and this was it. One press release, a couple of jpeg files.( http://www.feedbooks.com/author/694 ).

At that time I also realized, that if you’re small/basically-dead maybe the recognition abroad would help to get the recognition here in Poland. I decided to spend 1000 EUR on translating the stories to English. I think this was my best idea as a publisher. What I achieved is a single mind click: if this author is recognized abroad this must be the most interesting about him. I’ve started to build a direct audience around my blog, where I position myself as a writer 2.0, who can be a living example of a self-publishing failure – or success. This is why Warsaw is so close to Brisbane:)

Why do you think ebooks on mobile phones are going to become more popular?

This is coming from my belief, that mobile devices, like smartphones can really reinvent the pleasure of reading. They are as convenient as paper books, so why not starting to use them as an e-book reader. Steve Jobs said “people stop reading”. Well yes, he’s now greatly surprised, with a huge success of an iPhone+Stanza combination. Generally I think that mobile e-books (I think they deserve their own name: mo-books) can help to bring fiction literature back on tracks.

Non fiction e-books are natural to be used/read on a computer screen. They’re part of a job. But the biggest problem with e-books is that people don’t associate them with free time.  This is about to change – thanks to mobile devices.

There are two major factors:
- It’s my toy, I carry it everywhere, use it intensively, more often – for playing and free time activities – like fiction books
- Mobile phones, especially touch screen, have screens big enough to stop complaining about eye tiredness

So in other words, instead of saying to people “go back to this past tense pleasure as reading books”, we can say “why don’t you download another piece of great content to your beloved shiny smartphone”. What I like about it is that we can be appealing to people who don’t read a lot, or at all. Those who usually read books will probably prefer p-book to a mo-book.

How can people find out more?

My website and blog is here http://namenick.wordpress.com/ You can also follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/namenick and check out the YouTube advert – very funny!

Related posts

• 17.01.2010 -- Interview: Nick Name
• 22.12.2009 -- Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name
• 06.04.2011 -- Interview About Self-Publishing for Il Sole 24 Ore
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 17.11.2009 -- E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications

"Interview: Mobile ebook author" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Feedbooks is my favourite website for self-published authors and mobile e-book fans. If you haven’t been there yet, it’s high time to do it right now!

Nick Name is a tech-absurdist from Poland. His ironic short stories show how deeply our lives depend on technology. Runs litexperimental projects including Twitter’s #hashtagstory and Google-translated fiction. Guest writer at TeleRead, Publetariat and Fiction Matters. Believes in mobile e-books. They can bring the joy of reading to those, who don’t feel like consuming books the old-fashioned way. His dream is to be a default fiction author for any mobile device with eReading capabilities.

Hello Nick Name, you write both in Polish and in English. How hard is it for an author to write in two languages ?

My mother tongue is Polish. Beautiful, rich, melodious language. On the other side I don’t think I’ll ever feel good enough to write stories in English. But web 2.0 opens so many doors for a writer, that I decided to spend some money on a professional English translation of my stories. This was after I discovered Feedbooks and all the great things an author can benefit from. So now I have two versions of the same book – in Polish and in English. This gives me one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare chances of reaching readers at home and abroad.

What’s the current status of the e-book market in Poland ?

We are months behind the leading countries. Existing e-book stores offer publications in pdf format. Polish readers are not ready for e-books as they haven’t actually seen e-books in action and there are few people who feel obliged to explain e-benefits. Publishers aren’t rushing into e-publishing, because they are afraid of piracy.

In general in our country there is a strong, traditional approach to selling and reading books.

But currently there are two factors, which can bring e-books closer to tipping point. A first one is an International Kindle. Polish opinion leaders already have them. Words spread. More people get interested. Less people feel reluctant.

The second factor is much more important. It’s the launch of the Polish e-book platform, which in many aspects is similar to Interead’s Cool-er. The project is called eClicto and officially starts on 10th of December. This is surely going to redefine our e-book market. It will upgrade it to the “ePub phase”.

You define your works as “tech absurd”, could you explain why ?

A first beauty of publishing 2.0 is that a niche writer has bigger chances to succeed than the one, who tries to join an army of Dan Brown’s followers. That’s why I don’t describe my stories as sci-fi or speculative fiction. Yes, those tags say more, but they are actually not so to the point. People compare my writing to Topor, Vian or Keret, and it makes a lot of sense – I love that kind of literature. And I hope I’m bringing some fresh air with my focus on technology, which was always an absurduum-mobile.

For many people “absurd” is something wrong and unpleasant, something to avoid. But there is another point of view. Alfred Hitchcock once said: “absurdity can be only overcome with humor”. This is exactly my world. I don’t want the reader to escape from reality into a fictional world. I want the reader to recover from stress, to turn into laughter those little absurdly ridiculous things, which don’t deserve to be stressful.

So, I call myself a tech-absurdist and my stories are tech-absurd. If I use “tech-fiction”, that means that in this particular moment I just have lost faith. It’s very rare – as there is a second beauty of publishing 2.0.

The second beauty of self-publishing is that you can find your readers in any place in the world. Being niche in one country usually means no readers. Thanks to Feedbooks, “Password Incorrect” was being read by almost 10 000 readers from all over the world! I was never expecting that much!

How do you reach out to this niche and help them to discover your book ?

I’m using social media to get to the potential readers. My favourite network is Twitter. It’s informal and simple, what allows to combine a large variety of messages/tools. For a non-English writer it’s also the least stressful place to write. And actually it’s a great place for inspiration. The paradox is that 140-character limit has caused an explosion of creativity. In case of literature it’s twitter fiction. I am glad, that I can be a part of it – with my own #vss stories, as well as an original #hashtagstory project. The idea behind the latter one is very simple – I put together the stories from current Twitter hashtags. A crazy way to write fiction in English without actually writing it.

At Twitter I share my fiction tweets, but also promote a new approach to reading, which is involving all advances of technology. I’m sharing news about e-books, eReaders and everything, which helps to switch from a mobility of a paper book directly to a mobility of a new generation e-book – just jumping over the old computer screen e-book.

But Twitter is not the only social network I use. With my addiction to web 2.0 and technology, I’m just chasing for any new tool possible, and If I find one, I grab a username, start a profile and get pinged from Twitter. What I’m doing sounds like a semi-bot , and I sometimes feel like that. Currently I ping messages to 18 services. All of them are linked back to my blog and a 10k-download book at Feedbooks.

Another thing is Google Translate. English writers don’t need it. Writers should avoid using it professionally. But I’m a tech-absurdist, and this gives me some kind of license to do weird things. Google-translated fiction, as you might guess is a litexperimental project, where I involve translation script into writing process. My latest idea is to write a short story in such a way, that it could be easily translated by Google Translate. Just imagine: one story, written in a single language, available without any costs to 40 foreign language speakers!

So, you’re not only writing about the absurdity of technology but use it too to turn your writing into something different ? Would it still be tech absurd if you distributed your book on paper rather than as an e-book ?

This is exactly what I’m trying to do. We live in such times, that writing about them is just not enough. Technology is giving us so many tools to get involved, that writing no longer is a remote kind of activity. Especially if you are writing about how technology affects our lives.

When it comes to the form of a book, I’m already on the “e” side with no need for an emergency escape to paper. Because paper is not good for a book any more. It’s the books, which brought human civilization so far. I just don’t understand why we should keep them in a form, which is 600 years old.

The book has to change. Comparing to other forms of spending free time, reading seems to be less and less attractive. I believe that enriching the content with interactive elements, which engage you to watch, hear and share is the best way to evolve.

So probably instead of paper I’ll go for nano technology or in-the-eye reading component to have my book published. This would be the essence of tech-absurd.

And the last question. Why did you choose “Nick Name” as your pen name?

At first I wanted to have a universal name with a hook. Nick Name was a perfect choice to suggest a technology issue. Another thing is that nowadays every single person has many identities, and actually the one in ID card is not the most important. The web presence of a person means in many cases different nicknames for different purposes. Such a web-based personality split is a common denominator for our times and I wanted to grab it for myself.

When I started to self-publish, “Nick Name” received another meaning – you just need to register (for example to Feedbooks) and you can have your book published. There are lots of fantastic authors, who don’t have big chances to be spotted by big publishers. Now we can self-publish, and this is the best possible way to be spotted by people far more important – the readers.

In other words: you don’t need to have a big name to have your book published. A decent nickname is enough.

Find Nick Name on the Web: http://www.passwordincorrect.com/

Related posts

• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 17.01.2010 -- Interview: Nick Name
• 05.01.2010 -- Interview: Mobile ebook author
• 03.06.2009 -- Pięć nowych książek w Feedbooks. Dlaczego?
• 02.06.2009 -- I Killed Myself in 1969 and It Works

"Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

The brief I issued to myself was simple: get an attention of geeks with a message: “technology is wonderful, but…” (oh, and check the bottom bar for options).

Related posts

• 03.10.2009 -- How to Turn Wordle Into an E-book Cover Generator
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 27.08.2010 -- A geeky banner to Amazon Kindle Store which deserves its own blog post

"E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

W tym wpisie chciałbym podzielić się kilkoma uwagami o tym, jak system działa w praktyce, zdradzić swoje plany, a także poprosić o pomoc.

Zarządzanie książką

Publikacjami zarządza się z panelu w Smashwords. Po ukazaniu się książki w katalogu B&N zmieniłem jej cenę z 4,95 USD na “free”. Zmiana została odnotowana jedynie w Smashwords. Tak więc pierwsza konkluzja jest taka, że książka jest wprowadzana do B&N na piechotę i trzeba liczyć się z tym, że wszelkie zmiany będą odbywały się w ramach kolejnych tur kwalifikacyjnych.

Druga sprawa to konwersja. B&N zamienia format ePub ze Smashwords na swój format (ereader), co jest o tyle dziwaczne, że przy okazji Nooka sam zapowiada przejście na ePub. Konwersja powoduje, że książka, którą sformatowałem zgodnie z przewodnikiem Smashwords  wygląda po ściągnięciu na komórkę zupełnie inaczej niż w oryginale. Następnym razem nie będę wrzucał dokumentu .doc, ale albo .txt albo .rtf z pogrubionymi jedynie tytułami opowiadań.

Ciekawie została rozwiązana sprawa numeru ISBN. Książki w Smashwords oczywiście go nie mają. W B&N numer zostaje nadany automatycznie. Jak na razie nie widzę przeciwskazań, a jedynie ułatwienie dla autora. Inna sprawa, że wszystkie książki z oferty księgarni, również e-booki, dostępne są jedynie na terytorium USA. Ma to związek z prawami autorskimi. Ale w przypadku książek ze Smashwords, dostępnych przecież za zgodą autorów na całym świecie, trochę to bez sensu.

Plany

Do oferty B&N chcę wprowadzić dwie książki zamiast jednej. Po pierwsze dlatego, że Password Incorrect ze Smashwords niewiele różni się od darmowej wersji książki z Feedbooks. Byłoby nieuczciwie w jednym miejscu książkę rozdawać, a w drugim sprzedawać. Po drugie – opowiadań przetłumaczonych na angielski mam 50, jest więc materiał na dwie książki o podobnej objętości i strukturze. W każdym z tomów będzie dodatek w postaci kilkunastu hashtagstories.

Pierwszy tom będzie się nazywał jak publikacja darmowa – Password Incorrect. Drugi to Failure Confirmed. I tu docieram do trzeciego powodu: jedna książka to przypadek, dwie – już nie. Wierzę w to, że seria pozwoli zmienić odbiór mojej twórczości.

Zmieniłem również okładki. W porównaniu z oryginałem, który miał ładnie wyglądać na ekranie komórki (i nic poza tym), te okładki mają sprzedawać myśl, że technologia wygląda pięknie, ale co chwila czai się jakiś (przepraszam że po angielsku) – fail. Zależało mi też na tym, by konsekwentnie być kojarzonym z telefonami i innymi urządzeniami mobilnymi. Jak już chcę być pisarzem mobilnym, to muszę drążyć temat. Oto efekt pracy, nie było łatwo, ale rozbawił mnie OoopStore (prawy dolny róg) i potem było już z górki:

Niedawno poprosiłem przyjaciół z Twittera o wybór wersji Password Incorrect i na podstawie okładki wybranej w twittokratycznych wyborach przygotowałem Failure Confirmed.

Prośba

Mam jeszcze gorącą prośbę. Staram się określać siebie, jako autora tworzącego tech-absurd, bo to najlepiej opisuje ton i tematykę opowiadań. Ale z drugiej trony absurd dla wielu ludzi kojarzy się z czymś “be” i zanim dotrze do nich informacja, że to to lektura łatwa, przyjemna i wcale nie chodzi o absurd z wiadomości TV, to jest po sprawie. W związku z tym zastanawiam się, czy nie lepiej podać “tech-fiction stories”.

Jeśli mielibyście się zdecydować na kupno książki, to który opis bardziej by was przekonał? Z góry dziękuję za odpowiedzi, a także za sugestie w komentarzach.

Related posts

• 17.11.2009 -- E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 27.08.2010 -- A geeky banner to Amazon Kindle Store which deserves its own blog post
• 15.09.2009 -- Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories
• 07.09.2009 -- Nie dało się w Merlinie? Zawsze można w Barnes&Noble

"O planach związanych z Barnes&Noble" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Court Merrigan
Originally from Nebraska, Court Merrigan has lived in various places East and West and is currently back in the US with his family. His short stories have appeared in Blackbird, Weber Review, Porcupine, Evergreen Review, The Summerset Review, Dublin Quarterly, The Kyoto Journal, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, and Angle, among others. He is currently working on a novel. He blogs at Endless Emendation

Password Incorrect is a truly zany collection of “tech-absurd” short stories by Nick Name, pen name for Polish author Piotr Kowalczyk, which only a networked world could have unleashed. It’s available for free from Feedbooks.

Start with the title story to see the absurd in action. My Kindle sat untouched for a couple weeks while I transitioned back to the U.S. from Thailand.  When I got back to my Kindle’s homepage again, I did a double take—Password Incorrect?  What password?  I never needed a damn password before!—until it all came back to me.  My reaction is strikingly similar to the befuddlement of the uniformly oddball characters of Password Incorrect confronted by the unexpected repercussions of their tech-doings.

Nearly all the 25 stories are flash fiction; that is, under 1000 words.  My favorite was “Wishes Shovel Best.”

On Christmas Eve Slawek Przekosniak received an SMS with these wishes: “Wishing yo good ping super new”.  He didn’t know who sent him that surprisingly enigmatic message.

Inspired, he creates software to manufacturing randomly bizarre messages, starting an online phenomenon that makes him the 67th-richest man in Poland.  Until a curmudgeonly official is offended by an SMS which reads “Wishes shovel best” and turns him over to the Inquiry Board, the Board of Inquiries, and the Special Security Agency.  Black limousines appear at his house on the night he is to receive a lobbied-for Site of the Year Award.  In the Age (Moment?) of Twitter, this seems less a merely imagined story than another possible permutation of reality.

Evening elementary school

“Part-time Evening Elementary School” features a school designed for kids “too busy to learn during the day due to the time spent on the difficult task of maintaining our country’s high ranking in the very competitive field of computer games.”  A school where PE classes are for stretching the spine and practicing joystick skills and English is considered vital because it allows “for quick mastery of games not yet translated into Polish.”

“Happiness in a Four-Pack” is about a revolutionary new product, “ingestible energizing happiness”.  Unfortunately, after an initial burst of popularity, sales soon collapse.  Consumer studies reveal that “customers don’t want to be happy.  They are much more effectively motivated by misfortune.”  Not to worry.  “That’s Sad” quickly comes on the market.  Its wide popularity causes the company’s owner to throw himself from a bridge in, you guessed it, a fit of happiness.

Outlandish characters are the order of the day. A sampling includes a professor from the Department of Westernmostenatatious European Polonisation, hockey-playing bacillus, and a Dr. Kaliszewski: “He entered the room happy as a lark, which normally accompanied him when he was happy as one. Now the lark was somewhat tense and you could feel it in the air.”

These are the sort of tropes, I think, that a native-English author would reject out of hand as clichés, but in Kowalczyk’s hands, manage to find new life. Gustave Flaubert, in teaching writing, counseled writers to find the “unexplored” element in the commonest of things, and I think this is what Kowalczyk has done here.  Password Incorrect abounds with literary dexterity without ever sinking to the merely clever.

A couple of the pieces don’t quite measure up, as in the one featuring a middle-aged man who regresses into an embryo and the one with a talk show host who is “So sensitive and so sweet at the same time.  Handsome.  Appetizing.  Just like a spring onion.”  Kowalczyk stretches quirky to the very edge of its readable definition, and, in a couple cases, beyond.  The collection would not have suffered from having only 20 stories.

Translated from Polish by Anna Etmanska, there are several spots where the English is, well, quirky.  Generally these are very minor, but still noticeable.  For instance: “He imagined Czeslawa Ceracz using this liquid and kept dreaming for good.”  Truth be told, I’m of two minds about this.  On the one hand, these are nothing an editor couldn’t quickly fix up.  On the other, they seem to me characteristic of the international English that is the world’s actual lingua franca, as opposed to that of the Queen.  So long as the text is readable, I don’t see any point in standing on ceremony.  The English of Password Incorrect reflects its origins in the mind of a non-native speaker, and the idiosyncrasies never seriously detract from the meaning or humor of the stories.  Therefore I don’t mind them.  Just bear in mind that as you read these stories, you will notice them.

We have so quickly come to take the internet for granted that I think we forget just how recent and radical a phenomenon it is.  As much as anything, these stories serve as a reminder.  Issued up from the heart of Poland by a wired writer in translated English making absurd light of situations unimaginable even a decade ago, ones fraught with the danger of banality.  But this nimble writer deftly zigzags to humor and sheer wackiness.  It has been suggested that multimedia “books” could be literature’s future, and that may well be.  But I think more likely candidates are the sort of short stories you’ll find in Password Incorrect, which exploits the networked world’s novelties while remaining true to the universal commonalities of the human experience.

You not likely come across anything quite like Password Incorrect any time soon.  Unless this work receives the wide audience it deserves and imitators spring up.  By  which time, I hope, Kowalczyk will have delivered another collection to our e-readers.

Note: For more of Piotr Kowalczyk’s tilted take on the world, including a one-second book promo, see his blog Password Incorrect.

Related posts

• 20.04.2009 -- Password Incorrect – mobile flash fiction
• 28.11.2008 -- Graham pisze o polskim absurdzie literackim
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 03.06.2009 -- Pięć nowych książek w Feedbooks. Dlaczego?
• 02.06.2009 -- I Killed Myself in 1969 and It Works

"Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Merlin, czyli “bardzo proszę”

Moje książki to książkowy przypadek funkcjonowania rynku wydawniczego w trybie 1.0. Trzeba prosić i prosić i prosić. Z czterech wydanych do tej pory tomów opowiadań, po przedostaniu się przez wszechmocne hurtownie, do oferty Merlina trafiły trzy, z czego dwa widnieją z N. Podpisanym jako autorem, a jeden (Małe bure skakadło) autora nie posiada, bo komuś poważnemu na dystrybucyjnej ścieżce nie spodobał się pseudonim, więc został wycięty w pień. Mimo kilku prób zmiany stanu rzeczy, zostałem potraktowany jak powietrze, czyli dokładnie tak, jak traktowanych jest 90% drobnych literackich ciułaczy, którzy wciąż wierzą, że ich książki chwycą. Dodatkowym elementem krajobrazu są “trudności w realizacji zamówienia książek” (czyli w skrócie: nie ma ich w ofercie), mimo, że w ofercie widnieją.

Barnes&Noble, czyli “proszę bardzo”

Inaczej ma się sprawa z Barnes&Noble, największym dystrybutorem książek w USA, który intensywnie działa również na rynku książki elektronicznej. Parę miesięcy temu opublikowałem Password Incorrect w serwisie Smashwords  (przeczytaj, jak to zrobić). Smashwords podpisał umowę z B&N na dystrybucję swoich publikacji. Moja książka zakwalifikowała się do pierwszej tury Premium Catalog, a to oznacza automatyczne pojawienie się w ofercie partnera. I już. Ani razu nikogo o nic nie musiałem prosić.

Teraz wnioski, czyli co daje autorowi Web 2.0:

Pozwala myśleć w sposób bardziej ekspansywny :. Jeśli nie da się opublikować książki w jednym miejscu, z pewnością da się w innym. Trzeba tylko trochę pobuszować w Internecie. Autor nastawia się na poszukiwanie nowych możliwości, zamiast poświęcać zbyt dużą część swojego czasu na zabieganie o to, by książka znalazła się w ofercie lub by z oferty nie zniknęła.

Pozwala wyeliminować pośredników :. Autor pojawia się ze swoją publikacją sam, jako użytkownik serwisu (takiego jak Smashwords, Feedbooks, Scribd, itd.). Do opublikowania książki nie jest potrzebne wydawnictwo ani hurtownia. Wystarczy jedno kliknięcie.

Pozwala na pełną kontrolę nad swoją publikacją :. Autor sam wprowadza informacje o książce i sam zarządza jej ekspozycją. W grę nie wchodzą upodobania osób trzecich. Twoja książka będzie tylko tak dobra, jak sam ją opiszesz.

Pozwala zarabiać :. W Smashwords zarobiłem znacznie więcej na jednej książce niż w Merlinie na trzech. Mimo, że “jedynie” tłumaczenie i “jedynie” forma elektroniczna. Spodziewam się, że przy zasięgu Barnes&Noble powinno być jeszcze lepiej.

Mówiąc w skrócie: Web 2.0 pozwala, na realizację celów, które wydają się nieosiągalne – zwłaszcza w porównaniu z celami, które wydają się osiągalne, a osiągane nie są. W moim przypadku dystrybucja w Barnes&Noble to zrealizowane marzenie, którego wcześniej nawet nie miałem.

Related posts

• 17.11.2009 -- E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 07.11.2009 -- O planach związanych z Barnes&Noble
• 15.09.2009 -- Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories
• 03.06.2009 -- Pięć nowych książek w Feedbooks. Dlaczego?

"Nie dało się w Merlinie? Zawsze można w Barnes&Noble" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Below I’m comparing two Google-translations of a single short story. The story in its original Polish version is fixed, but it’s improving at a pace of Google Translate. I must say that recently there has been a substantial development. Probably it happened at the time new languages were added to the service. That’s why a current version of GT-fiction is 1.09, not 1.0009.

I’ll make frequent updates to this 1GT-ed story, as this is showing another dimension of digital literature: it can change (hopefully improve) without the participation of an author. A literary text is no longer ultimate. It’s dynamic, flowing and unpredictable. With my passion to tech-absurd–it’s technology which is improving it or killing it.

And here is another idea I want to share–soon I’ll write a new story in a way to eliminate as many miskakes as possible at the process of Google translation.

If you want to check how the following story currently feels in your language, please go to this page and use a Translator tool from a sidebar. And if you have found this post a bit Google-interesting, please subscribe to GT feed.

Related posts

• 20.01.2009 -- I’m starting a “Google-translated fiction” project
• 20.01.2009 -- Best wishes shovel [3Google-translated]
• 20.01.2009 -- Best wishes spade [1Google-translated]
• 20.01.2009 -- Wishes Shovel Best [Human-translated]
• 09.02.2011 -- Transtories – Google-Translated Stories v. 2.0

"Google-translated fiction v.1.09" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.