Going Tribal

I have been intrigued lately with people referring to themselves as members of a tribe overseas.

The term seems to be gathering momentum as a convenient way to describe a social network group. This week the international forum group I belong to had a member create a twitter account calling us a tribe. (actually twibe...oh yuck...)

Is the world becoming so small that we need new ways of identifying each other...?

Of course here in New Zealand we have a closer identity with tribes and the implications of tribal alliances, wars.... etc, as our history is so much younger. Although that said, I’m affiliated to the Old Worlds, McKenzie tribe of the Scottish Highlands and the Davin tribe of the Irish West Country...grew up in the tribal lands of the Tuhoe and am now in the Fighting Bookworm Tribe...its a group of people that hang out in the Children’s Book Insider Clubhouse.

I belong to the Catholic tribe...the Wellington Children’s Book tribe...and probably a few more I haven’t recognised...

For those people in my tribe who might be interested. Online voting for the Montana Book Awards has opened here and you can go and vote for one of our tribal brethren to win the Peoples choice.

My marketing friend, Justin, sent me a great link to a post from Jon Dale (Agent of Change) about How to save the Publishing Industry....

We should be tribal...

Johanna Knox has her new blog up and running and there is an interesting interview with two priestess’ of the Spinning Gold Tribe....Go have a look if you have ever wondered why I only post once a week. (I’m being tribal...)

maureen

if you google search image tribal you come up with the most amazing tattoos...

I have a life?

“I have been wondering why my life has been so manic lately?”
“Like duh!” says a school mum, as we watch our respective kids hanging upside down. “Look at what you’re doing...you are choosing to have a life...if you didn’t have a life..it would be a lot less stressful.“

I have to say she is right...oh well, putting up with the stress...Thursday blog day rolls around and I am feeling slightly more productive than usual. Tax done...Yippee. Church work done...Thank God.

Interview questions answered....Fellow blogger Johanna Knox wanted to interview the convenors of the Spinning Gold conference. (I wonder who they are....?)

I have been catching up on my scientific reading...

We even got away for a little holiday over the long weekend...It was a wrench leaving the computer, the phone, and all the requests for a little bit of our time...not .

But there are a pile of things to do here and this blog will never get written if I run around noticing them like the back yard which is still covered with debris from the last storm, the big tree in the back yard needs three broken branches removed but I’m not looking....not looking...and the husband doesn’t see them in the dark which is the only time he see’s the back yard....

So a couple of links for you today...It is nice to receive positive comments from friends who say my links are great and they pass them on to others...

Book Expo America is over for another year. The Writers Digest conference the day before had the usual accolades...

Janet Reid has written an extra ordinary post about a session where she received fifteen pitches in public on a stage in front of 500 people. And critiqued each one as a learning tool for the audience...Reading the comments of people in the audience witnessing fifteen people with the courage to put themselves out there to do it, is amazing...

And here is something to contemplate about e publishing from Mike Shatzkin of Idealog.

Complicating things further is an entirely different sort of offer coming up from Google. Everybody else, whatever the differences (and there are many!), is selling you a downloadable ebook file which you “own”. Google is selling you access to a file which they will stream to you. What’s the difference? Two big ones.
* When you close your web browser, you no longer have the book.
* Because of that, any concern about piracy goes away. If you can’t grab the file, you can’t “share” it.
This is game-changing in a very dramatic way. If you’re reading on a web browser, then there are no format issues. And if you don’t have the whole file, there are no piracy issues.

These ideas were discussed at Book Expo... a wake up call for the industry who thought book trailers on YouTube were the latest things in e publishing...

Of course the conference work keeps going and going...with two more blogs to manage as well as meeting agendas to prepare for...
I got a couple of rejections in the mail... life goes on...same old... same old...

That’s why I have a life....

maureen

Pic is from the website career realism...