Poor old Kodak. There are lessons here for us all

In March 1995, when I was still writing technology for the Sunday Times and trying to develop my career as a novelist, I got an invitation that was simply too hard to refuse. How would I like to spend a few days in San Francisco learning about what Kodak had in mind for meeting the new world of digital photography head-on?

It was a dream freebie, much appreciated since I was working on my second novel, Epiphany, which is partly set in the city. They flew us business class, picked us up at the airport, deposited us in the Four Seasons on Nob Hill. Then left us to ourselves. None of the round of constant, tedious briefings from breakfast till midnight that most tech companies demanded.

All Kodak wanted was our presence at an event in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to hear a fancy, very expensive presentation. Forty five minutes or so and that was it. They weren’t even offering briefings afterwards. How can you say no?

Actually I nearly wished I had when they told me I couldn’t meet George Fisher who was running the company then. I wanted a story to write. That was my job. And the presentation was so baffling* it needed someone to explain it. Kodak was a huge company at the time, one of the best-known brands in the world. Most of us used one of their film products. Many their cameras. Hardly anyone the inkjet printers they were starting to ship.

Kodak’s digital strategy was, as far as I understood the presentation, incredibly half-hearted. The company was setting up a digital division. But it was very much a fashion thing. No one seriously believed that digital cameras and printers would, in the near future, wipe out film processing. After all, the quality was poor and the technology expensive.

I remember bearding someone and asking the key question: is the new digital division going to be an independent entity free to pursue its own future and compete with Kodak’s mainstream film business? Or will it be told: invent something but don’t damage the cash cow?

There was no straight answer but it was pretty clear the latter was the case. I seem to recall I wrote something saying that this was bonkers and digital was the future (and getting an obscene email from the managing director of a big UK film processing house as a result).

‘I told you so’ is never a nice thing to say, especially when one of the biggest company names in the world is filing for Chapter 11, as Kodak is now. But well… I told you so, and lots of other smarter people did too. In the end Kodak produced some nice cameras and apparently some good printers. But it doesn’t matter. They were too late. ‘Kodak’ doesn’t mean what it was. The brand has been catastrophically devalued, and while someone will doubtless pick it up, the opportunity to lead digital photography, the way it led the world of film, has been lost.

That’s technology for you. Who, a decade ago, would have said the biggest music retailer in the world would, within a few years, be a then struggling computer company called Apple? Or that the likes of Nokia would be knocked off its perch by that same company, and firms like HTC which were once just assembly lines for western names who used them to knock up bits of hardware?

This is a world in which things change at dizzying speed. You either keep up with them or you fail. Yes, you may make the world’s best fax machine, and sell it for the lowest price around. But it’s still a fax machine. And in case you never noticed… no one wants one any more.

Here’s what Kodak should have said to its new digital print division seventeen years ago: Go and put us out of business. Compete like crazy, with us most of all because we are the market leaders and want to stay that way. Save the company by destroying it and building something new in its place.

Sadly it didn’t learn that lesson till it was too late. The battle was lost, I suspect, back in that day in 1995 when it was a fat, comfortable, lazy company deluded into thinking the future would always be just around the corner.

I wonder: how many publishing companies will we be saying that about ten years from now?

*Here’s the press release from that event — judge for yourself.

Carnival for the Dead, now out in audio

Today was the official publication date for my eleventh Italian novel, Carnival for the Dead, out now from Pan Macmillan. As you can read in the link above it’s a standalone story for one of the popular characters from the Costa series, Teresa Lupo.

I’m also delighted to tell you the audio version of the book is out at the same time. You can find it at the publisher, WF Howes, on CD, cassette and in large print too. You can also find the audiobook available worldwide through Audible. It’s in the Audible US store here, and the Audible UK store here.

Since this is Teresa’s story through and through the book suits a female narrator (don’t worry, the inimitable Saul Reichlin has something else on the cards for me). Teresa’s tale is in the very competent hands of Juanita McMahon, whose other audio credits including Sarah Waters and Val McDermid. You can here a sample of her narration on all the sites above.

A lot of American readers are asking: when will there be a print and ebook edition available in the US. The straight answer is: we’re working on it and hope to have an answer for you soon. In the meantime you can find print edition in import stores and order directly from Amazon UK who will do international shipping. You can find the book here. 

The book thieves now have a 'religion' of their own

The world is mad. OK, you knew that. But did you know exactly how mad? Here’s one example: in Sweden the authorities have given full religious status to a ‘church’ that makes the theft of books, videos and music (and anything else digital) it’s central credo.

Unless the story above is a joke (one can but hope) the ‘Missionary Church of Kopimism’ describes itself as ’ a religious group centered in Sweden who believe that copying and the sharing of information is the best and most beautiful that is’.

According to a press release from this ‘church’…

For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore, copying is central for the organisation and its members.

Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution, says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

The Church of Kopimism is a religious organisation with roots from 2010. The organisation formalizes a community that’s been well spread for a long time already. The community of kopimi requires no formal membership. You just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy. To do this, we organize kopyactings – religious services – where the kopimists share information with eachother through copying and remix

Maybe the Swedes will next give religious authority to the National Church of Shoplifters and Pickpockets, since they doubtless take great joy in taking things they’re supposed to pay for without stumping up for them too. One imagines there are very few genuine authors, musicians and film makers among this outfit’s ranks.  You have to wonder what the idiots in the Kammarkollegiet, the Swedish authority behind this mad decision, think they’re doing.

But there’s piracy for you. An awful lot of ordinary middle class people really don’t get it. I was talking to a friend who’d bought Kindles for himself and his wife recently. They went to see relatives at a dinner party and told everyone how happy they were with them.

One smart-ass chirped up, ‘I hope you’re not paying full whack for your books.’

He then demonstrated how he used ‘a man’ in Uzbekistan or somewhere. All he had to do was email asking for a book. The chap found it for him. The ‘buyer’ stumped up the princely sum of 50p — through some suspect east-European version of Paypal — and got a file back in return.

Apparently it was often a bit worn around the edges and needed some conversion and other work before he managed to get it onto his Kindle. But what the hell? He’d avoided paying £3.99 and got his ‘book’, not quite pristine but mostly there, for only 50p.

‘If you buy books from Amazon you’re a mug,’ this charmer said. I do hope he feels the same when the criminals who run these syndicates — and they are criminals, make no mistake — get round to taking his credit card details on a fun run to the Urals.

I’m pleased to report he got his ears blasted in return. But who are we talking about here? A teenage layabout? Someone on benefits? No someone approaching fifty in a senior job in the public sector, part of a dinky couple earning enough money to take them on several foreign holidays a year. As I’ve said a million times before book theft’s not about money. It’s about being able to take something without paying for it, safe in the knowledge you probably won’t get caught (if he was he’d doubtless lose his job by the way).

And now the Swedes have given these thieving idiots their own ‘religion’.  I’m an atheist myself but I can’t help but wonder what people in real religions make of this. Sometimes the world is run by clowns.

All Kindle books are not made equal

I had a sudden hankering to read Dickens’ Bleak House last night. Being lazy I thought I’d look it up on Kindle. My, are there a lot of different versions there, including the one with the cover on the right.

Only 77p for a Dickens book with a cover seemingly from Japanese anime? How can you go wrong?

Well, I guess you can’t really. As far as I could work out this is a genuine copy of the original. Just with a very odd cover. You’ll find lots of other books like it, some with identical text here. If you’re wondering what’s going… let me offer an explanation.

As most people now know anyone can publish to Kindle with very little effort indeed. So if you want to find an out of copyright classic painstakingly put together by someone in their spare time then released an open source material for free… you can. Then you put a cover on it, stick it on Amazon and hope someone will fork out 77p for the thing.

An awful lot of the stuff you see is precisely this. And the source is generally that excellent service Project Gutenberg, which will let you have it for free, in many different formats, usually delivered accurately.

Here, for example, are Project Gutenberg’s listings for Bleak House. All you really need. Though you don’t get that Japanese anime, which is what you’re really paying for I guess.

The morale of this story is: if you want free classics, take care. Some of those on Amazon have been very well put together, with additional material you won’t find on Gutenberg. These are the work of responsible publishers. Others are just people trying to make a quick buck out of out of print material.  And some of them clearly don’t even read the material they up either, since I’ve found a few things that are full of scanning errors and gibberish.

As always on the internet, take care and ask a few questions. And if you find someone peddling other people’s work I hope you’ll complain.

Mr Newhouse's Proposition: a seasonal short story

Mr Newhouse’s Proposition is a short story commissioned by the Daily Express for release today. You can find it in print inside the paper (the best medium, naturally), online here, and listen and watch to an audio version above. 

It’s a seasonal tale about a young Englishwoman lost in Venice at New Year, finding herself in the company of an interesting yet mysterious stranger. The video is in HD by the way, which you can best watch by following the link to the original Vimeo file (where it is watchable through an HD TV if you’re up to it).

If you like it you may care to take a look at my new novel, Carnival for the Dead, in which Teresa Lupo, a regular in the Costa series, finds herself similarly in Venice and assailed by curious short stories.  The print book is out in the UK on January 5 but you will find the ebook available now. We hope to have a US release date for the book shortly. 

Many thanks to Caroline Jowett and her team on the Express for this, and to my son Tom Hewson who managed the audio of the narration and wrote and played the music you hear. The photos are mine from many years of visiting Venice.