Publishing is very concerned with web 2.0, as everyone in Publishing is modishly calling it. Presses have websites, authors have blogs, people throw around names like LibraryThing and ReadySteadyBook and all the other exceptionally-well-known sites that make it into the Bookseller and the Guardian and places like that. So it was a little jarring, but really quite funny, to go to the SYP conference a few weekends ago and be told, very early on in the first panel by Mark Thwaite (of the aforementioned ReadySteadyBook), that most publishers’ websites are rubbish. And most authors only blog a couple of times before giving up. And, in a majority of cases, for all the talk, Publishing doesn’t know what to do with web 2.0.

Of course, there are some publishers who are doing interesting internet things- Penguin, for example, of We Tell Stories and The Shadow War – but a great deal of the very interesting things are happening on sites like CompletelyNovel. Site like CN are using the internet as a means to continue doing all sorts of things that people like to do already – reading books, writing books, hanging out with people who like books – but doing them better. CN is doing something particularly unique with its combination of reading and writing communities. My friends are, as Bill Hicks would have it, Readers, but I couldn’t have a conversation about first lines of great novels with them. My bookshelves in real life are not nearly so organised as they are on my CN profile, and I simply can’t get the hang of showing off my reading in such a stylish and natural way offline. And I certainly wouldn’t have come across a wonderful novel like Gateshead Grace anywhere but CN – I wouldn’t have picked it up without the reviews and recommendations of the people on the site, whose tastes I know are similar to mine because their profiles show me so.

All of which is a very long-winded answer to the question Anna suggested I write a blog entry about: why I was interested in doing work experience with CompletelyNovel.

Typically, when you think of a student doing a work experience placement, your mind conjures up images of endless coffee making, stapling and hours spent doing the thankless task of filing. At other placements I have done in the past, some or all of the above have been applicable. I was therefore ever so slightly apprehensive about spending another two weeks of un-paid hard work in order to become a fully-fledged super-stapling maestro.
However, I needn’t have worried. As I come to finishing my first week at CompletelyNovel, I can safely say that I haven’t had a dull thing to do all week. Just some of the stuff I’ve been able to get stuck into includes writing articles for the website, compiling questions for the organiser of a book club and reading through submissions to CompletelyNovel’s short story competition. As you’ll probably agree, these are all really interesting tasks that you wouldn’t typically associate with someone doing work experience to be graced with.

Ok, this is my first attempt at a blog entry as the new work experience gal for CN…actually, my first attempt at a propr blog entry ever, for anything, so it may all end in disaster.

When I first heard what CN was all about, my first thought was how I could shower all my loved ones (mainly my parents) with a proper bound, real-life-looking published version of my very own writing…then I realised how narcissistic this sounded and decided that maybe my dad would just prefer a cd and a nice pepper grinder for his birthday.

So, instead I am testing out the website and bulking it up by adding things to my own profile (worringly- for my sanity, not CN’s popularity-doing this is a lot like updating your profile on Facebook), and writing reviews. This is something I haven’t done since secondary school, (and was probably much better at then than I am now). I feel like I am writing mini essays instead of smart, to the point, summaries that the Time Out guide would be happy to print, like I should be. (I apologise if anyone else reads these reviews and also feels like this!)

Also, to carry on another blog?/ post? (I still need to learn the correct blogging lingo), I read about the idea to ‘murder your darlings’ after seeing it on here, and I too find this an intriguing concept, as I am one of those many people who tend to read and re-read any of my own work I find particularly good; I keep it in a draw in my room and take it out if I’m feeling particualrly uninspired or just rubbish. So when I read this idea I imgained taking a lighted match to this draw of my precious precious work and watching all the years of past writing disappear… and realised I could never ‘murder my darlings,’ not entirely, not all of them, so I take off my literary hat to those who can and have.

That’s enough of my waffling blog entry for now then, I will get back to researching and image finding.

So, I’m here as the resident English and Creative Writing student, doing work experience at CompletelyNovel in order to investigate today’s publishing world, particularly that part of it that resides online.

Things That I Have Learned include:

There aren’t as many sites like CN as one might think. There are Print On Demand sites like Lulu.com, which allow you to publish a book but not to discuss it; there are writing sites like Authorsden.com, which allow you to discuss a book but not to publish it; there are reading sites like shelfari.com, which allow you to discuss previously-published books. To my surprise, I’ve been unable to find a single site which combines all three.

It rains a lot in London. This is probably invariably true whether or not one is working in the cause of publishing.

Self-publishing isn’t as silly an idea as I once thought. Since the chances of any writer being picked up by a publishing house is very low, the chances of that writer being you even lower, and the chances of your work being successful (regardless of merit) are even lower than that, why not give your friends, family and anyone interested in your writing something to read in the meantime, and without the effort, loss of control or demand to make a profit required in so-called “real” publishing?

There appears to be no index to the Internet as regards to writers. Every community appears to be small or unstructured, and will rarely have links to anywhere else. Perhaps CN can shake this up a bit…

Wow…it feels like much more than a week since my last post. Lots of stuff has been going on recently so this could be a long one!

We are really excited to have our first users on the website, having a bit of an explore and helping us to develop it into the best service for books and book-lovers ever! It’s fairly raw as a website at the moment and it’s been a little strange for the first users to be on a community website…where there is a limited amount of community! But they are coping very well so far and the important thing is that the framework is all there for us to add lots of things in, which is exactly what we will be doing over the next few weeks. Already we’ve noticed a few things that we will be changing to make the site easier to use. So, what else has been going on…?