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Authors: Are Your Readers Zoning Out on You? It May Not Be Your Fault
Like many publishing professionals I've trained myself to step outside of my mind while I read a manuscript and monitor the intensity of my involvement in the work. In a perfect reading experience my disbelief, in the famous phrase of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, will be willingly suspended from beginning to end and I will never become conscious that there is a world outside of the one I am reading about. Unfortunately, perfect reading experiences are as rare as perfect experiences in every other field of endeavor.
And so, sooner or later as I turn the pages of a manuscript, I will become aware of a police siren or the sound of a television program in the next room, and the spell of the book I'm reading will be broken. If it's a good book I'll plunge back in and soon lose myself again. If it isn't, my monitor will sound with growing frequency. I will make a mental note of the places where my attention flagged so that I can help the author analyze where he or she lost me.
Non-professional readers - the public at large, that is - may not have the same powers of self-observation, but they have little trouble speaking up when a book fails to hold their attention. "Boring." "Couldn't finish it." "Put it down, never picked it up again."
In most cases the responsibility for failure to keeping readers interested rests with the author. But not always. An article by Carl Zimmer in Discover magazine informs us that distractability is far more normal than we may realize. Zimmer cites an experiment conducted by a team of University of California Santa Barbara psychologists led by Jonathan Schooler. The test had to do with a book, and not just any book: "In 2005 he and his colleagues told a group of undergraduates to read the opeing chapters of War and Peace on a computer monitor and then to tap a key whenever they realized they were not thinking about what they were reading. On average, the students reported that their minds wantered 5.4 times in a 45-minute session."
Wandering minds are one things, but zoning out completely is quite another. Here's what Schooler and his colleagues discovered:
"Schooler and Smallwood, along with Merrill McSpadden of the University of British Columbia, tested the effect of zoning out by having a test group read a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which a villain used a pseudonym. As people were reading the passages discussing this fact, the researchers checked their state of attentiveness. Just 30 percent of the people who were zoning out at the key moments could give the villain’s pseudonym, while 61 percent of the people who weren’t zoning out at those moments succeeded."
One of the most striking discoveries repoat imbibing a moderate amount of alcohol actually sharpened concentration. However, before you reach for the vodka bottle, note that there is evidence that a wandering mind offers many significant benefits. "The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks," Zimmer explains. "One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain’s activity toward important goals."
"The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future."
So, next time you find your mind drifting off while reading a book, it is appropriate for you to ask yourself whether it's the author's fault for failing to keep you involved; or is it, rather, just you reflecting on a matter of great importance or solving a problem you couldn't master before you started reading.
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Discover magazine.
William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty novels, some of which have been reissued by E-Reads. Recently he was invited by the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Bulletin to write a bi-monthly column called "Words for Hire," exploring the world of media tie-ins and novelizations. The articles demystify a fascinating genre and we're delighted to reprint them as a regular feature in these pages. RC ****************************** William C. Dietz introduces his third column:
My last two columns were focused on the ultimate source of most tie-in work: the film, television and gaming industries which typically create and produce the properties that novelizations and tie-ins are based on. Now it’s time to consider the publishers who purchase the rights and produce the actual books. Continue here.
When I was a young man apprenticing at a literary agency, our boss sent me and several fellow staffers on a confidential mission to the offices of a prominent and flamboyant publisher. His company had just published a novel represented by our agency. The publisher handed us envelopes containing cash and instructed us to visit one of several large New York City bookstores and buy a copy of the book. We were then to bring our copy back to his offices, go to another store and do the same. And again and again until we had spent all the cash. The object, he explained, was to inflate sales figures and put the book on the bestseller list. The ploy succeeded.
This little piece of chicanery came to mind when I read a New York Times story by Stephanie Clifford that Microsoft had brought a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court in Seattle against a number of individuals and corporations that Microsoft alleged had manipulated clicks on an Internet ad. The corporation is seeking at least $750,000 in damages. What exactly did these folks purportedly do to incur MS's wrath?
The offense is called click fraud. Fraud is broadly defined as deliberate deception committed either for personal gain or to damage someone else. It's a serious tort (violation of civil law) for which one can be sued, or a serious crime for which one can go to jail, or both.
The Microsoft case has to do with the way companies measure their ads' exposure to viewers who are potential buyers of the advertised products and services. The effectiveness is gauged in cost her click. Clifford cites an outfit called Click Forensics as asserting that "about one in every seven clicks on an advertisement is estimated to be fraudulent." If the dodge is so commonplace, why would anyone spend a lot of money suing? "Microsoft is trying to make that kind of deception more expensive for perpetrators," says Clifford. Making an example of click fraudsters, in other words.
Here's how the reporter explains what happened.
"Advertisers bid on what they will pay to appear in the paid-search results for certain key words. The more an advertiser pays, the higher they are on the list, and advertisers usually pay for each click on their ad.
"In March 2008 several audo insurance advertisers began complaining to Microsoft that traffic to their ads was spiking suspiciously...And clicks to the advertisers appearing at the top of the paid-search results listings for those terms were high. Although traffic appeared to come from different computers, it was actually coming from two proxy servers, which mask the original address of a click."
Clearly, if the charges stick they will show that this was not a bunch of students in a dorm room earning beer money for repeatedly stroking "Enter" on their keyboards, but rather powerful robot servers that MS investigators tracked to various accounts registered to the defendants. The complaint stated that one of them "directed traffic to competitors' Web sites so [Microsoft}] would pay for those clicks and exhaust their advertising budgets quickly, which let the lower-ranking sites that he sponsored move up in the paid-search results," writes Cliffor. You can read more about the investigation and lawsuit here. Click fraud is as old as the Internet, according to Stefanie Olsen, writing in 2004 for CNET News. "The practice...began in the early days of the Internet's mainstream popularity with programs that automatically surfed Web sites to increase traffic figures. This led companies to develop policing technololgies touted as antidotes to the problem."
Nor is Microsoft the first company to take action over click fraud. "In one recent example of the problem," Olsen wrote in 2004, "law enforcement officials say a California man created a software program that he claimed could let spammers bilk Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program." Considering that advertising is the foundation for Google's fortunes, it will come as no surprise that the firm has taken the most stringent actions to protect itself. Olsen quotes a statement issued by Google that it has been "the target of individuals and entities using some of the most advanced spam techniques for years. We have applied what we have learned with search to the click fraud problem and employ a dedicated team and proprietary technology to analyze clicks." Olsen called it the "Google Fraud Squad."
Though click fraudsters are fiendishly clever and possess powerful tools and weapons, the good guys are well armed to combat them. You can visit the website of the Click Fraud Network, "a community of online advertisers, agencies and search providers working together to develop an industry solution to the click fraud problem. Network members that provide data to the network receive free access to online campaign and risk assessment reports." Among other services the Network offers are a "Click Fraud Index™" tracking click fraud rates by quarter and even a "Click Fraud Heatmap."
Though the commercial reasons for such aggressive warfare are plain, there's another less obvious but extremely important one. As newspapers and magazines desperately fight for their lives, they are turning to online advertising as a possible key to salvation. If the metrics are unreliable, however, that door will be closed to those industries. Says Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, the company sponsoring the Click Fraud Network, “Click fraud activity continues to grow especially on made for ad sites, parked domains and on the content networks. Advertisers, publishers and search engines need to take notice because content networks are becoming the fastest growing source of click fraud. Ensuring their quality is essential for the pay per click advertising market to continue its growth.”
Looking back at that bit of skullduggery committed by the publisher years ago, I wonder if, today, we would have been asked to perpetrate some variety of click fraud to boost his book's fortunes. Knowing what I've just learned about the consequences, I'm certain I'd think long and hard before I started clicking.
Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.
The Holy Grail of screen technology is the gesture-activated virtual screen portrayed in Stephen Spielberg's 2002 blockbuster futuristic film Minority Report. Technologists inspired by the brilliant effects have been laboring ever since to interact with screen images, getting them to do what we want them to do by a mere wave of the hand or point of an index finger.
The iPhone's introduction of multitouch was an astounding innovation that brought Spielberg's vision closer to actualization. But the Apple device still requires physical contact with the surface of the device, whereas the next generation of virtual screens will liberate our hands from any contact whatsoever. Where are we on the continuum between touchscreens and Minority Report's magic one?
Rebounding from an Apple-led consumer flight to handhelds, a number of PC manufacturers are developing applications designed to lure consumers back to their desks and, according to Ashlee Vance of the New York Times (PC Touch Screens Move Ahead), high on the list are touchscreens. For instance, Hewlett-Packard is pushing the TouchSmart, a desktopper with an upright screen on which you can access every function with your stylus or index finger. TouchSmart offers a variety of great applications. Vance points out that "Customers can turn these machines into bespoke kiosks for, say, ordering merchandise at a sporting event or flipping through a menu while waiting at a restaurant." Indeed, touch screens are commonly used for keeping track of tables and food orders at restaurants. They can also be embedded in homes to control lights, music, thermostat, etc., and in he kitchen to follow recipes.
However, after you've worked an iPhone screen with multitouch, one-finger functionality feels pretty limited, and we have to wonder how practical the TouchSmart approach is for business offices. Here's a simple test: next time you're sitting in front of your desktop monitor, try stretching your arm out and poking the screen every time you want to open a file, drag, drop, highlight, cut and paste or perform some other task. Do we really want to reach out to our screen every time we want to move something around or shift to another function? Don't be surprised if your arm grows weary and your back strained. Let's face it: some functions are best left to keyboard commands or mouse navigation. And - sitting at a desk is not necessarily where today's sedentary or peripatetic computer users want to be. If you're thinking about students, so am I. We'll get to them in a moment.
But soon, even five digits may be passé. Enter advanced multitouch and an Israeli outfit called N-trig. Its advanced PC screen technology called "DuoSense" enables users to use both hands as well as a pen.
N-trig is the only industry provider to offer a combined pen, touch and multi-touch solution, having overcome the technological hurdles of combining the two seamlessly in a single device. DuoSense is an intelligent digitizer, fully compatible with Microsoft natural input standards. N-trig's DuoSense digitizers are are easily integratable, support any type of LCD, keep devices slim, light and bright, can support numerous applications, and can be implemented in a broad range of products ranging from small notebooks to large LCDs.
For a cool demo check out this video of N-trig. By the way, if you're fascinated by the possibilities and have some clever ideas of your own for Windows 7 apps, N-Trig offers a $900 touchscreen kit that software developers that can use to develop their own. Note that N-trig's demonstration is being performed on a tablet computer, as well as on a convertible laptop/slate. Why tablets? Aren't they just a niche? So far, yes. But that's going to change big time. There's a whole population of computer users that is simply not deskbound. It's called students, and, as we have stated in these pages again and again, the only viable computer product for students is the tablet. "Textbooks and other illustrated books simply cannot be crammed into anything smaller than a screen close to the size of a laptop," I wrote. "Tablets have all the virtues of laptops PLUS touchscreen functionality. For students, reading books on an e-reading device is highly desirable but not as imperative as the ability to handwrite notes on their device's screen."
Students will certainly give N-trig's DuoSense two thumbs up, plus the other eight digits as well. "Such touch software can handle lots of fingers hitting a screen at once rather than just relying on one or two digits, as most of today’s touch screens do," writes Vance.
In anticipation of a major push into the tablet market, Microsoft is reported to have invested $24 million in N-trig, and the forthcoming Windows 7 (look for it in 2010) "supports gestures such as pinching and fingertip scrolling,"reports Wired. "Other Windows programs, such as Paint, will also include new brushes designed for multi-touch and features such as panning across a page in Internet Explorer." But the outer limits of known touchscreen tech is Microsoft Surface's Cynergy Labs, and it's likely that Surface will dominate the field until 3D replaces it. Check out these dumfounding videos.
Microsoft's Surface is probably the direction consumers will go over the next few years, but shimmering on the distant horizon is a means of projecting action onto a screen without any contact whatever. We caught a glimpse of this with the wearable "Sixth Sense" device demonstrated at a recent TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference. But for a mind-bending look at the state of the art of virtual, check out Project Natal by Microsoft designed for XBox 360. Stephen Spielberg, eat your heart out.
Richard Curtis
This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times. Every blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers. Without them our free society would not only be impoverished but imperiled. We must strive to find a way to rescue the industry, even if it means nothing more than buying a paper on the street. Support your local newspaper.
Losing Bidder in Cheney Book Auction Offers Advice to Winner Matalin
Ms. Mary Matalin Threshold Editions c/o Simon & Schuster
Dear Mary Matalin:
Richard Curtis here, CEO of E-Reads, the publishing company that made what we thought was an irresistible offer to Dick Cheney to publish his book. In case you missed our proposal you may read it here.
But I don't want to sound like a sore loser. If I had to lose a bidding war, I'm relieved it's to you. I was terrified it might end up with Harper, who would probably do the same kind of trashy treatment they did for Peggy Noonan's The Case Against Hillary Clinton, with those made-up internal monologues and transcriptions of speeches Hillary never made. At least I can be confident that your approach to the Cheney book will be utterly responsible, something along the lines of your superb editorial job on Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation.
You described that book as "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that," and I could not agree more. Your impeccable vetting of Barack Obama's extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, his Communist and socialist mentors, his close associations with members of the Weather Underground, his involvement in the slum-landlord empire of a notorious Chicago political fixer - well, Mary (if I may), reading that meticulously documented work was an inspiring reminder of why I went into the publishing business.
Nevertheless, I hope you will not be afraid to be stern in your dealings with Cheney. If there's one thing I know about him, it's that he has the utmost respect for those who hold people's feet to the fire.
I realize that my role as underbidder for the Cheney book does not entitle me to any special consideration. Nevertheless, I am happy to share with you some of the suggestions I made to Mr. Cheney in my original pitch to him, and I hope you'll adopt them. For what it's worth, here's what I think Cheney needs to discuss to make this book a blockbuster international bestseller:
How he helped President Bush to deceive Congress and the American people into buying into a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraq government under Saddam Hussein
How he misrepresented available intelligence
How he outed covert intelligence officer Valerie Plame and got his Chief of Staff Scooter Libby to take the fall
How he steered no-bid government contracts to Halliburton, a company in which he has a multimillion dollar interest that has appreciated by thousands of percent since the war began
How he undermined the Constitution
How he suspended the right of Habeas Corpus
How he subverted the rule of law
How he instituted secret wiretapping and email monitoring of American citizens
How he scammed America's allies with Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction"
How he created a secret cabal of oil and other energy lobbyists
How he sent thousands of young men and women to death and maiming in the prosecution of a "phony" war whose real goal was to exploit Middle East oil
How he leveraged his office to create a policy of torture and brutality
Do these correspond to your own ideas? Have I missed anything?
Also, since it's no longer of any use to us, I might as well give you the title that we'd planned to put on the book had we won the auction:
GO FUCK YOURSELF My Life in High Crimes and Misdemeanors by Dick Cheney
What do you think, Mary? Is that a winning title or what?
I invite you to reply to this open letter and I promise to promote your response in the widest public forum.
Like many publishing professionals I've trained myself to step outside of my mind while I read a manuscript and monitor the intensity of my involvement in the work. In a perfect reading experience my disbelief, in the famous phrase of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, will be willingly suspended from beginning to end and I will never become conscious that there is a world outside of the one I am reading about. Unfortunately, perfect reading experiences are as rare as perfect experiences in every other field of endeavor.
