With the residency I was looking for ways to expand my use of Web 2.0. The eBook Generator provides a useful format in which to distribute essays to those who prefer not to read longer pieces online. Therefore I was looking to integrate producing eBooks with my activities on social networking sites such as Facebook, while simultaneously drawing some of the audience that exists for the eBooks as a project in itself towards my own online activities.

My approach to this was to produce material that I felt would be of interest to my audience both on social networking sites and beyond them covering new(ish) material on subjects I’ve had a long interest in, including the London art world and psychedelic drugs. However, I adapted my material after discussion of the eBook project with Giles Lane. Giles not only showed me how to use the Generator, we also had several long conversations about building an audience for this project and how what I was doing might fit into this.

Taking part in this process reinforced my view that it is possible, if sometimes difficult, to move an audience from one web based content delivery platform to another. Sometimes this is a matter of moving with shifts in web usage. I moved to Facebook ahead of much of the audience I’d previously built on MySpace – but as the shift from the latter social network to the former built, most of my old audience followed me. Getting people using Facebook to download from the eBook Generator or to look at material on other social networks such as YouTube is not as difficult to get them to look at traditional websites. However, the overall lesson was, as ever, persistence pays off. Rather than changing the way I worked, this reinforced my view that I’d been using the internet in an intelligent manner.

In the future I’d be interested in looking at ways in which I might use the Generator to develop my work as a novelist. It would be interesting to create a serial style novel to be delivered chapter by chapter via the Generator. This would, however, be a major commitment and in my view would require some extra funding to promote it in order to reach a large enough audience for the amount of effort involved to be worthwhile.

I found Giles and his team very productive to work with, but also great fun – and I enjoyed my free ranging lunch break conversations every bit as much as the actual work!

Stewart Home
September 2009

The eBooks
Dope smuggling, LSD, organised crime & the law in 1960s London
On The Death Of Julia Callan-Thompson
Bourriaud’s ‘Altermodern’ – an eclectic mix of bullshit and bad taste
Click This? MySpace & the Pornography of Corporately Controlled Virtual Life
Negotiating the Level 2 Project Space at Tate Modern
Very Naughty English Lady
Cunt Lickers Anonymous
A Journey To The Far Side Of Solipsism