F.S. Publishing helps fiction writers and publishers market test novels, build readership and make more effective marketing and distribution decisions. Leveraging detailed analytics to chart reader engagement levels throughout the course of a novel, we provide a valuable “pre-publication” service to minimize expensive market errors in the book industry.
Theme based on Catching Elephant by Andy Taylor
Eric Schmidt, the Chairman of Google is fond of stating, “Did you know that every two days as much data is created as was created since the dawn of civilization until 2003?”
Most of the publishers I speak with each week are astounded when they hear this. They immediately stop and think about how big these numbers really are. Then, just as quickly, they forget about it. They dismiss the implications for their businesses – and get back to their daily to do lists.
This is a serious mistake.
Ok aspiring fiction writers, if you’ve ever wondered how to write a successful novel, the secret is here: kill off your characters. Of the handful of books that won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2011, all 13 novels had the common theme of putting to death main characters… it’s a lot like the plot of Will Ferrell’s Stranger Than Fiction… everyone knows the story won’t be as good without a solid death.
This beautiful graphic designed by the literary heavy “slow journalism magazine” Delayed Gratification, traces the dominant themes from last years winners, showing that not just a few, but ALL the winners featured overriding themes of death. What followed that? In distant second we have themes about love and then betrayal… both subjects that can get the blood boiling, but obviously don’t guarantee a win. Oh, and don’t forget some of the less popular plots about escaped tigers, nanny trust issues and homicidal cowboy brothers.
Why Facebook Should Buy The Nook From Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble just got some new, potentially activist shareholders. Earlier this year, analysts speculated that its shareholders could force the company to sell off its Nook e-reader. If that were to happen, who should buy it?
In a word: Facebook.
Facebook has already declared its intention to be the key platform for social interactions and personal publishing. It’s also expanding, having bought Instagr.am for a well-publicized $1bn.
With the Nook, it would gain an e-book publishing platform, a new revenue stream, become a major player in the broader content-publishing industry, and deepen its relationship with an audience of mostly older readers.
It would also give the company a boost in its rivalry with Google, which continues to struggle to get much traction with Google Books (now Google Play), and perhaps give it the option of a high-street presence, if the deal with B&N happened to include somehow promoting its new services in store for the first few years.
I have no insider knowledge about any such deal, but if it were to happen, here’s how it could develop - and why it might prove to be Amazon’s worst nightmare.
It’s in development under the title How to Quit Playing Hockey. If everything goes well it will probably be published October-ish, but if you can’t wait apply for access to read the draft. I think Isa still has a few spots open for people to read and give feedback.
That’s the beauty of reading for pleasure. When you turn the final page and shut the book, that heady blend of sadness and joy you feel can quickly ripen into a hunger for more. I like to think of bestsellers as a gateway drug. Once you’ve found one you love, books will forever hold a special allure. All comers welcome. No special education required.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether there is a larger or smaller market for great fiction and nonfiction than there used to be. But I think the onus is on those who think we have experienced a decline to prove it.
Changes~
In addition to the new charts, made some smaller changes you may want to take note of:
- You can now use prettier username based urls to direct to your profile. Ex: http://www.fluffyseme.com/user/index/isakft
- I formally deprecated some features that users weren’t interested in: LJ cross posting and Twitter Influence maps <— I may bring this back at some point if I can figure out a better way to design strategy recommendations with it.
- Yes, social sharing data with be back! I haven’t quite figured out how best to fit it into the new chart organization just yet, but— like revamping the organization of the comment data— it’s on the top of the todo list. Web traffic data, on the other hand, I’m not sure about. Did anyone really use it? It might be useful to work the data into some kind of visualization about number of people who visit your work -vs- number of people who actually read but I may have to think about that a bit more.
As always, good development comes from the feedback of vocal beta users. So don’t hesitate to reach out either via email or Twitter @fspublishing :)
Now that I’ve solved the ugly graph problem, things are moving along at a pretty good pace :) Added scene-by-scene breakdowns. When you click on a bar, all the scenes in that chapter will be graphed out, hover over one of the pie charts and a tooltip with the first few lines of the scene it represents will pop up.
Here’s what’s left to do before the newly revamped system goes live:
- Integrate engagement comparison data. This replaces a lot of our old charts, allowing you to mix and match data like sentence complexity and length with ratings types (so for example you could look at whether sections with longer sentences get skimmed more by readers). The graph templates are ready to go. It’s just a matter of writing the model methods that are going to take the data from the database and arrange it in a d3-friendly format.
- Add tutorial overlay (CSS blergh!). With a click of the button little boxes appear that explain each element of the graph you’re currently viewing.
- Add something cute to display when there is no data!
- Add some ajax loading gifs and maybe a few pretty transitions
Look Ma! Pretty charts!
You may remember that last we left off I was struggling with the terrible unprettiness of the new d3 charts. They looked fine with test data, but like shit when I gave them real data. Well after trying out various modifications to the scale I decided to just throw out the stacked bar diagram altogether.
“Wonder if I can do gradients in d3?”
Low and behold you can. This is what the new overall charts look like with real data. The colors shift depending on ratio of positive to neutral to negative ratings. Chapters with the highest engagement ratings (no skips or skims) have the brightest colors.
The blue boxes on the top mark chapters where readers admitted to skimming and clicking them will pull out more information comparing engagement to word complexity, sentence length, etc.
Clicking on the bars themselves will pull up the specific breakdown for each scene in a chapter— Yeah, this is turning out to be a very cool revision. Charts will include interactive options to explain various parts of the graph you’re looking at and help walk you through your story data.
This may be the greatest book lover’s invention since paper 8D
(Source: albatrosbookmark.com)
