Marshcast #3: Congrats winners, Free chapter, JM.net updates and Amazon kindle - Transcript
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KC Webb: KW
AR Puttee: AP
Introduction Music
AP: Welcome to marsh cast, the office pod cast of johnnymarsh.net. The home of Dream Raider, A Johnny marsh adventure.
Intro music
AP: Hey guys, this is marshcast episode three, its actually Christmas time “09” right now. It’s boxing day and we are just recording the third podcast, it’s been a little while since the last one Kev.
KW: Yeh it has been a while, we have been pretty busy, with work and stuff but and working on the book…
AP: The second book
KW: Yes yes for sure
AP: There has been lots of updates with the website and there has been lots going on behind the scenes with the website as far as getting it with the RSS feed up there, working and trying to get the podcast on iTunes as well.
KW: And we are also busy on face book and twitter and that keeps us pretty busy too.
AP: Yeh it does. So we have hit bookstores now, they would be in stores about a month now?
KW: I think its around six weeks now, since I saw it on the shelves. To actually walk into an Angus and Robinson bookstore and to see it sitting on the shelves there.
AP: As I said to you a little earlier before we started the show, they have it in the new Dymocks in the city (Brisbane) that is great to see.
KW: Yeh, yeh it’s very very exciting think I gotta tell ya. It really is exciting to actually walk into a bookshop and see it sitting there
AP: Yeh, its just great to see it in all the book stores, so I think its in Dymocks at the moment, you can order it at Borders, Dymocks, Angus and Robinson.
KW: Yes that’s right and there are many of the little independents that actually have it too.
AP: Yup
KW: All around Australia, its available world wide on Amazon
AP: Amazon that’s right and also Booktopia as well
KW: Seekbooks as well
AP: Probably get into the news and what’s been happening with the website and Johnny Marsh. So recently we have had the 10 free-signed books giveaway close up.
KW: Congratulations to those winners, and we hope you really enjoy the novel.
AP: Hopefully for those who were those winners by the time you actually read the book, lets us know what you think on the website or facebook, drop a comment.
KW: Yeh yeh for sure.
AP: Another big news item is we have the free first chapter up on the website, which has been a big one coming.
KW: Yes, we have got the PDF version available for you guys to download and including the pictures from the first chapter as well, which we get a lot of feedback, and a lot of people comment about page 15.
(Both laugh)
AP: They love that one don’t they? If it’s the first thing people actually mention. It comes up in conversation all the time when we are talking to readers, its very popular.
KW: It was always popular with us, I mean we have had this in vision this drawing with us well over..
AP: years...
KW: oh yeh well over 10 years. Very first time I saw it I just went oh my god I don’t know if we can use that but its such a great picture.
AP: Well we weren’t sure if it was going to get into the book at one stage.
KW: No, well we didn’t know if someone would say something or the government might say something, we didn’t know.
AP: We didn’t know if it was going to make it into the book really.
KW: That’s right, so we were just unsure we did actually tone it done.
AP: Yeh it has toned down.
KW: Believe it or not it guys it has actually been toned down.
AP: It needed to be.
KW: I still don’t know whether it needed to be, but the point is Anthony was concerned about it, about it been too graphic and stuff like that.
AP: Well as well as the first chapter PDF there is also an audio reading we did as well Kev, where you actually reading the book which is really cool. You can actually listening to that while you following through the PDF yourself and enjoy the images as well, and following you (Kev) as you kind of reading it, its pretty cool. If you guys listen to the audio cast as well leave us a comment and drop it lets us know what you think. We’re really interested to know, because we had a lot of fun doing it.
KW: Well we did and you might be able to tell us, a little nervous I’ve never done it before, never actually read anything out for the public before. So I was a little bit nervous I hope it comes through pretty well.
AP: It was a good reading. I was obviously uploading it and I obviously listened to it and it was great you know, it was really good.
KW: Well that’s great.
AP: That was a good taster for any of you guys that want a bit more of an insight to what the books really about apart from the blurb well that was a taste of it, that was the reason for the chapter.
KW: Good for you if you want to make up your mind to buy the book or not, it should be a good indication to you whether you to buy the book or not.
AP: So a couple of other things as well, those puzzles we put up on the website, those word search puzzles we put up there. To kill a bit of time.
KW: I like those and quite enjoyed playing around with them.
AP: I was uploading them and really wanted to get the Java applet on the website, you can jump rather then printing them out and then doing them by hand. It’s much cooler. The puzzles the actual jigsaw puzzles were, have been really popular so just new puzzles on there I thought try something different, just go for the word search.
KW: It all adds up, which is great, big hand to Anthony for getting that out and doing it with our theme in mind.
AP: So if there is any other ideas from any of you, come and visit the website anything you like to see buzz us and let us know happy to consider them and about putting more stuff up on the website. Also Kev, we recently got a kindle in the office, a couple of weeks ago.
KW: Yes I saw that they were available to the worldwide market.
AP: Well finally released to the worldwide market, it’s been a long time coming.
KW: They have been in the States for a few years now and have heard good things about them, I use to be a lot more of a reader until I started writing and the reading sort of took a back seat to the writing.
AP: (laughing) There are so many hours in the day.
KW: That’s right.
AP: But now it’s portable you can download the book. How have you found it Kev, because you have spent more time with it then I have?
KW: I’ve found it to be sensational. I know there are a lot of purist’s out there saying I can never read one of those because it’s not a real book. But what I find is that it is so convenient, so easy, so quick. Within one minute you have your book downloaded and start reading it. You don’t have to go out and buy the book, you don’t have to source it, and all you do is search through the internet, which is already connected to the kindle itself. You don’t pay anything extra for it; it’s already there.
AP: It’s using the wireless 3G networks.
KW: Yeh that’s correct. So you don’t actually pay for it, of course you are paying for it but its included in the price of the books. But there are no upfront costs of it. You don’t actually pay for unless you purchase a book. I have brought 3 books for it now and they were all $4.95 each, which, how cheap is that.
AP: Apart from the upfront costs of getting the kindle itself …
KW: Yes which was Australian $259 at the time, but then they drop the price down to about $239 and they sent me back the extra $20 spent in the mean time. Which I thought was pretty cool. It thought it was pretty good of Amazon to do that. Even though I had already purchased it at the price they sent me back the $20.
AP: That’s cool. Well I have a friend of mine apart from us that has brought one and she’s got it because she’s going overseas travelling for a year. So she’s quite a big reader and she is starting to build up her catalogue on the kindle and obviously for the fact she doesn’t want to lug around all the books in her bag, because of the weight. Weight is everything you know.
KW: It can hold 1500 titles in the kindle itself, that’s quite a lot so I mean you can hold that much information, the other thing I really, really like about it is that the fact you can make notes on the pages, like you wouldn’t ordinarily, but if you are doing research or whatever you wouldn’t ordinarily write on the book or whatever. You can with kindle. You can write and actually make notes on it. So you can go back and refer to those notes anytime you want, you can bookmark it, you can bookmark where ever you want when ever you want and if you turn it off then it takes you back to the page you were. You can read in the direct sunlight which is what they said in the advert, you sort of go yeh can you.. So I took it out in the bright sunshine and you can read it perfectly, its quite amazing technology.
AP: it’s a different type of ink print technology isn’t it… its not a direct LCD screen.
KW: No its not, its not like a normal computer screen or something like that where sunlight hits it and it fades out. It is black and white, some people are complaining about that..
AP: I do say I do look forward to the coloured version, it’s to be able to see images, book colours and stuff like that. I do miss that.
KW: Because Anthony’s so visual too and with his work and with what he does is very visual so that’s why he is looking forward to that. But I mean most books are just written black and white, so, black on a page, but I think what Anthony is looking forward to is being able to display the covers, the book covers
AP: Well yeh because its like your DVD collection, if you have a DVD collection and your quite proud of it, you have your selections and you like all your covers there and you like to be able to flick through them and I think that’s the same for books as well. I think that is part of it for me.
KW: I think a lot of people are looking at the kindle as an enhancement of their book collection, because a lot of them have said even though I can get it on kindle I still really want a hard copy of the book.
AP: I’m one of those I have to say, I embrace technology but I do like the smell of a good book and to be able to sit there out in the sun and read it you know. Without having to worry about the battery power.
KW: And the other thing about it is how can you get authors to sign your kindle copy … You cant!
AP: That’s very true.
KW: You can’t can you so that’s a bit of contention there.
AP: We can sign your kindle.
(Both laughing)
KW: If people are wanting you to sign there kindle. (Laughs) But I actually have a collection of books that are signed by various authors and I proudly hang on to those. I suddenly thought with the kindle if I just buy the kindle version I couldn’t get my favorite authors to sign these books. So that’s something else you sought of have to take in.
AP: I do look forward to a coloured screen that would no doubt be one in time.
KW: The Barnes and Noble has one on the bottom, it has the nook but there are some very mixed…
AP: Reactions..
KW: Yeh they reckon…
AP: I do like the idea of flicking through a colour catalogue though.
KW: Yes
AP: You know be able to spot the book cover you want, I mean you are reading the book in black and white txt, but I do like having the idea of having … flicking through your catalogue like a DVD.
KW: I have no doubt that it will come, I mean look we are in like second or third generation.
AP: It’s taken off. EBooks and Ereaders have really taken off and the more popular they become the more likely you will see more modules come through.
KW: Who know’s? Who knows what we will be reading, what we will be doing in ten years time. No one. Some people have an idea on what they would like to happen there is no way in this world that I could look back in ten years. Look forward and go well what sort of computers will we be using and that sort of thing. There is no way I could imagine that the technology we are using today would be available to us. The technology that we all have in our little bedrooms these days and rooms or whatever is the stuff that like NASA had.
AP: Well five years ago we didn’t have iPhones did we?
KW: no no ..
AP: I love my iPhone
KW: The technology is incredible its just is quantum leaps. Everyday there is something new and there is some new gadget to play with. Personally I love it, if you look around this room it’s all just packed with gadgets and I just love them.
AP: Well something else are looking at is reading getting EBooks onto the iPhone as well, mobile phones.
KW: Yeh that’s right, there is an application that allows that anyway.
AP: There is at the moment. I have just done a little bit of research to reading into the popularity, you know the amount of people reading books on iPhone and how time is cost affective. Its good to be able to do that, but if there is demand for it, it will be another avenue of book publishing. Simply just enjoying your books in a different way.
KW: Yeh exactly, when you look at it, books have been around since the beginning of time. Since man could write on a tablet. Or scratch something there has been books or information around one sort or another. To be honest it really hasn’t changed a lot, you know books have not changed a lot over many of hundreds of years, everything else around it had, and now there has been this massive change in books and are resisting it and people are thinking like I don’t really want this to happen but its like everything else its going to happen either you get left behind or you move with the times and see what’s around you and you embrace it and also still have that option to come back to the books.
AP: I don’t think in this day and age it’s going to be replacing books. I think its just another way to enjoy stories I think.
KW: Because the kindle does actually read to you as well, although its an monotone.
AP: It’s an automated tone that reads to you like this. (Robot voice)
KW: It is, its still not a voice that’s a long the lines of the computerized robotic voice. It’s a little more humanized but doesn’t rise and fall with the action and stuff like that. I was laying in bed the other night and had my earphones on and listened to 45 minutes while it read to me and I quite enjoyed that, I enjoyed the fact that I could enjoy the story being read to me.
AP: That’s why people enjoy reading audio books.
KW: That’s right.
AP: And you get it read by a note person or an actor doing the voice or the author themselves. If they can incorporate that into the actual book you download.
KW: It will happen. Then you will have a choice of which particular person you want to read it to you. Male, female or if it’s a certain actor or whatever, I'm sure that’s all going to come along. It will be like a DVD where it has five or six different sound tracks and you can pick which one you want to listen to it.
AP: Yeh.
KW: I’m sure that’s going to happen.
AP: There are some great things I would like to do, but I'm not really seeing anyone doing it yet, and I have talked to a couple of people in publishing that are very interested in this kind of thing. It’s on of those new technologies now everyone is grasping it and working out how ….
KW: Wrestling. There still wrestling with it. Publishers are really wrestling with the fact that EBooks are coming in, so they are all worried about it, are we going to have jobs in the future and everything else because of EBooks. I think there will always be a publisher of some sort.
AP: I think they will always be there. The hierarchy. The way production goes about from getting a book manuscript looked at getting it actually printed and to get it approved that’s going to change, the process is going to change.
KW: Lets face it Ant we been in this game now, we have been attacking this for thirteen years and we have been through virtually every publisher and I look back and see is a lumbering dinosaur that has been holding onto the old ways for a very long time and not prepared to embrace change.
AP: Change.
KW: Diffidently not, and now its coming and they are starting to panic because they have not been embracing this, looking for it and haven’t been looking towards the future and thinking how can we improve what we are doing. They haven’t really worried about it because they have had such a corner on the market for so long. No one has really worried about it. So now its coming and change is happening around them and they are sort of going oh what are we going to do? Is there going to be room for us.
AP: It’s a great opportunity for up and coming for innovative authors. Old and new to really grasp technology and really come up with some really creative and unique stuff for readers I think it’s a great opportunity now.
KW: I’m on the social network twitter quite often and I see independent authors now have a voice, where they were just alone in the wilderness up until a couple of years ago, no one would listen to them no one would because we didn’t have distributers or whatever you wouldn’t be listened to or taken seriously and that has changed to an extent now.
AP: And it can be reached globally, twitter now has been used for programmers to gather surveys for big product companies.
KW: It is quite amazing people tend to write it off as being frivolous, I’ll tell you know after being on it for around six months now I have learnt an awful lot about it and I have seen how powerful it is.
AP: You have met some great people from it.
KW: Its incredible have made some great friendships I know some terrific authors through it and there is also publishers using it
AP: And this is regardless of what industry or where you work, there is a place for it. Where you can talk and interact
KW: Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what your interest is in life there is a twitter circle that is there to cater to you, so whether that be fruit picking…
AP: Selling soft drink, publishing books
KW: It doesn’t matter so yeh, you will find someone there who is interested in your interests and the good thing about it is that you are all there because you have an interest that is common to you all you get to learn an awful lot more about it because people are bringing new things to the table all the time.
AP: Well can start wrapping it up Kev, oh something else that I just wanted to mention was marsh mail just with people subscribing to marsh mail it would be good just to leave your name to because it helps us categorize it for if your ever eligible for any competitions and give a ways and things so we know who to address to for emailing you guys.
KW: Just make sure you put your name down there for us so we can easily track you down and get something out to you if we need to.
AP: Well it’s nearly the new year upon us and we are looking at a good new year ahead to Kev. We are looking at book signings and appearances happening within the next quarter of the year.
KW: Well we will keep you informed about that and keep an eye on the website and Facebook for that and we will let you know. And we plan on recording the events so you guys can keep an eye on us and see what’s happening with it.
AP: Well we just wish you guys all the best in the new year.
KW: Happy new year everyone.
AP: Happy new year and enjoy you Christmas break wherever you are
KW: We will see you in the next year, well in the new year.
AP: New year, what it’s only a week away?
KW: And it’s kind to you all.
AP: Take care and happy reading
KW: See ya guys
AP: See ya.
AP: Thank you all again for listening just remember if you would like to contact us with any questions you can use the handy feedback form by clicking on the contact us link on the johnnymarsh.net home page. Talk to you next time. Bye bye.
Music and lightening sounds
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