What Bloggers can Learn from Sony’s E3 Conference

Early this week, Sony took a step toward teaching its video-game industry competition how to deal with demanding customers: listen to them.

For those who don’t know, this week is E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) during which, amongst other things, the big video-game companies announce what will be upcoming from them over the next year. This year Sony (Playstation) and Microsoft (XBox) are talking about their new consoles coming out this holiday season: the Playstation 4 and the XBox One. There have been a lot of interesting bits of information floating around on these consoles for a while now, but over the past couple of days Sony has all but secured their place in the consumer’s hearts (and wallets).

How did they do it? They listened to their customers.

Microsoft’s reveal was marred by a slew of announcements that had the consumers raving mad. Amongst these were:

– major restrictions on “used games” including that only pre-approved retailers will be allowed to take your trade-ins (meaning there’s less competition and you’ll end up getting less money for them) and that used games can only be sold once, at which time they are locked to that buyer’s Microsoft account for all time.

– games will be restricted to the Microsoft account that has purchased it, meaning that you can’t lend a game to a friend; it won’t work on their system because they didn’t pay for it.

– the XBox One must been connected to the internet, even if you aren’t using it. You must “check in” using the internet at least once every 24 hours, or your games will literally stop working. Yes, that includes single player games that do not require internet access in order to play.

– the console carries a starting price tag of $499.

All this, plus a few other startling concerns (the One has a camera and microphone that can never be turned off…look out folks, Big Brother Microsoft is watching!) combined to create a swirling storm of rage in consumers’ bellies. “When I buy a game it’s my right to resell it when I’m done!” they cried, “And checking in via the internet daily? Are you insane? What if I don’t even have the internet?! And I can’t even lend a game to a friend? What the hell are you getting at? And for all this I’m expected to shell out $500 before even adding on the cost of games and peripherals?!”

And then Sony came along, and they did this:

For those who didn’t watch the video, here’s what Sony did in a nutshell: the exact opposite of Microsoft. They announced that they will be supporting the used game trade; there will be no restrictions on selling or buying used games. In addition to that they announced that your game is in no way restricted to your account; you can happily lend your game to a friend. Finally they announced that you will not require an internet connection to make your games work (unless, obviously, it’s an online multiplayer game) – you can play offline without restriction if that’s how you like to play. To top it all off, the PS4 is going to be $100 cheaper than the XBox One.

You see what Sony did there? They watched Microsoft, listened to all the complaints that consumers raised as a result of Microsoft’s announcements, and then went on stage and addressed those issues. Now, chances are that most of these issues were things that Sony had already addressed previously, but the fact that they brought them to the forefront, and effectively promised that they won’t be doing all the things that Microsoft is doing, is extremely effective marketing. E3 has barely begun and already people all over the Internet are saying that Sony has “won”. I tend to agree; I think Sony has done an excellent job of netting themselves the majority of gamers for this next console generation.

Now, would you believe that I’m going to turn this discussion around and make it about writing? Watch me.

Writers can take a cue from what Sony has done this week. In particular, I am referring to writers who blog, which is a kind of business in which you struggle to get, and keep, readers. Blogging can be a very fickle mistress. Sometimes you will spend a ton of time and effort pouring your heart and soul into a post, only to look at your site’s stats and find that no one has read it. Such a thing can be a huge slap in the face, but it can also be a helpful kick in the pants. Instead of sulking about the posts that barely got any views (and certainly no comments), focus on the ones that did get decent traffic, the ones that people seemed to enjoy. In other words, listen to your “customers”. Look at what they looked at, listen to their comments, and plan future posts accordingly. For instance, a while back I noticed that whenever I wrote about motherhood and little things that I’ve learned from my daughter I tended to get more visitors that day, so I began to make it a regular thing (“Things I Know About Kids”). Another example is how I noticed that posts (mine as well as other bloggers’) that feature at least one image tend to wind up with more visitors since people, even readers, are visual creatures; so I recently began making a point to try and include some kind of media into every post.

It’s a pretty simple concept, when you really think about it… Whether you’re a small-time blogger or a multi-billion dollar corporation, if you neglect to give the consumers what they’re looking for they’re going to go looking elsewhere. Microsoft failed in that lesson this week, while Sony leaped in with a grin on their collective face and showed that they did, in fact, have their ears open to the public. This excellent decision on their part, along with several bad ones on Microsoft’s, will mean a lot when it comes time for gamers to choose which of the new consoles they’re going to be spending their hard-earned money on. Take that lesson and apply it to blogging, and your ability to listen to the readers will determine which blogs they spend their hard-earned time on.

Will you take this lesson, learn to listen to your readers and give them what they want? Or will you be the blogging version of Microsoft, hanging your head and sulking in the corner while all the attention goes to someone else?

5 Reasons You Should Be Writing Fan Fiction

As I mentioned yesterday in my accountability post, for the next little while I’m setting aside my work-in-progress and picking up my Final Fantasy III/VI novelization fan fiction. Now here’s the thing… There are a lot of writers (and readers) out there who think very poorly of fan fiction. They think its not “real” writing, or they associate it with a bunch of creepy, sweaty fanboys/girls sitting in a dark room, plucking out a wish fulfillment fantasy where a disturbingly perfect character who just so happens to have their exact name gets it on with Buffy or Edward Cullen, or one of the My Little Ponies (*wigged-out-shudder*). And yes, that stuff does exist, and there’s a special place for it far, far away from me, but there is also a lot of good fan fiction out there if you care to look for it, and I personally believe that fan fiction serves several very important purposes in the writing community.

1. It gives you a break and let’s you enjoy writing for a while.
Even those of us who love writing with all out heart and soul want to smash our computer against a wall and/or burn all our notebooks every now and then. Things happen (writer’s block, bad critiques, lost work that wasn’t backed up, etc) that enrage us and make us want to give up on writing forever. That’s where fan fiction can be helpful; it’s easy (because the world is already created for you), it’s fun (because you get to write your favorite characters), and it keeps you moving forward. You might even find, while writing fan fiction, that you come up with a great idea to continue that original fiction you so recently considered tossing off a cliff. Seriously, give it a try…you might find that writing a bit of fan fiction considerably lowers your writing-related stress.

2. It gives you practice and let’s you get the “bad” out.
Yes, I’ll admit it, a lot of the fan fiction out there is beyond awful. But have you ever heard that oft-repeated adage: “Practice makes perfect”? Lame, perhaps, but true. No one ever wrote a masterpiece on their very first try. With the vast, near limitless options to toy with, fan fiction offers you that ability to keep practicing and practicing and practicing, which can only help you become better. Scrawling fan fiction helps you to get down your bad writing, see that it’s bad, and then make it better. Any writing will do this, of course, but fan fiction makes it easier because instead of struggling with your one story over and over again, or constantly wracking your brain to come up with new ideas, you can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.

3. You can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.
Some people say that nothing worth doing is easy. I beg to differ. Yes, effort is a big deal and most things in life are going to be difficult, but sometimes, to keep ourselves from going mad, we have to find the easy out. Fan fiction is that in spades. This is a whole world that has already been created for you, with established characters who have already had tons of work put into them. All you have to do is think of something for them to be doing. That’s it. Play away. Have some fun! Explore! As children this is how we learn and grow, but as adults we forget the importance of real play. Take a page out of the book of babies and toddlers and learn via good old fun and exploration!

4. The community is extremely powerful.
There are lots of websites out there for sharing fan fiction, but the one in particular that I use is FanFiction.net. It’s a great site with a great community, and chances are if you share something there someone is going to find it, read it, and comment on it, and that is pure gold for a writer. We crave feedback, even if its not necessarily good feedback. We want to know, at the very least, that someone is reading. Fan fiction is wonderful for this because of the vast numbers of people who enjoy it. For example, years back I wrote a Harry Potter fan fiction featuring the Marauders. I finished that story years ago, and to this day I get the occasional review landing in my inbox. It might not sound like much, but a single review on a story you wrote ages ago can really mean a lot when you’re currently struggling with your current works. Community is important to keep a writer sane and moving forward, and the fan fiction community is a surprisingly strong one.

5. It keeps you writing.
When you’re a writer (or you aspire to be) actually writing is the most important thing to do. In this brave new world of writing conventions, social media, and author platforms, writers tend to forget that the real deal is putting words to paper. Fan fiction helps with this. Any kind of writing – even the creepy kind I mentioned earlier that I have a restraining order out against – is worth doing if it keeps you putting words to paper. There is no writer without the process of writing, so whatever you can write to keep that process moving forward is a good thing to write.

So now that I’ve thoroughly convinced you, what are you waiting for? Fan fiction could be just the thing you need! I know it’s what I need right now, so I’ll see you all on the other side of a new chapter of Returning Hope.

Epic Fail

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

37. What to do if you’ve failed at the goals you set

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You’ve just gotta get back on the horse”? If you have, you should understand what I’m about to talk about. If you haven’t, what rock have you been living under for the past hundred years?

Everyone fails at goals. Maybe not all the time, maybe some more often than others, but everyone at some point in time fails at a goal they’ve set for themselves. It’s the nature of the situation that even if we have all the best of intentions, things will go wrong, other issues will intrude, and any number of problems will arise to keep us from reaching the end of the line. Maybe it’s something we can’t control, like the fact that our new job requires us to work 70-hour weeks and we can’t work on our goal if we want to be able to eat and sleep as well. Maybe it’s something absolutely controllable, like being just plain lazy. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is. It doesn’t make you a better or worse failure. Failure is failure.

But failure is also just a chance to start over again. Failure shows us what we’ve done wrong, which issues we failed to take into consideration, and what we have to change to do better next time. If you’re a really optimistic type, failure might even be motivation to try harder. If you’re the pessimistic type, things might be a little more difficult, but the same points still apply.

And excellent example of failure and moving on from it is rejection in writing. An author can put their heart and soul – and a ridiculous number of work-hours – into a manuscript, only to have it rejected by the publisher…and then rejected by another…and another…and another. Regardless of how good a manuscript may be, it is almost certain that the author will receive multiple rejections before (hopefully) receiving a publication offer. This situation really defines the whole “get back on the horse” thing because if these authors were to just give up, where would we be? Were you aware that J.K. Rowling received 12 rejections for the first Harry Potter book before finally getting published? We all know now that the Harry Potter books are well-written, well-loved, and have ultimately sold bucketloads. So why did she receive so many rejection letters? There are any number of reasons, but the point is that she had a goal set (to publish that damn book!) and she didn’t let failure upon failure stop her from continuing to try and try, getting back on the horse again and again.

It’s definitely hard sometimes…humans are naturally depressive and easily-discouraged creatures…but if the goal you’ve set for yourself is something that’s important to you, something that you know you’re not going to be happy just giving up on, then you have to press on. If you’ve done something wrong, figure out what it is. If outside issues are holding you back, figure out a way around them. And if the problem is just timing, situation, or reliance on others to react the way you need them to, you just have to keep trying, trying, trying, until all the puzzle pieces fall into place. In the end you’ll be better off for having to have worked for it, and the end of the line will be that much more beautiful when you reach it.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself, and I hope you’re able to hold on to that hope as well. 🙂

Things I’ve Learned Through Blogging

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

11. What you’ve learned through blogging

A few things:

– That sticking to a schedule is not as easy as it sounds.
– That coming up with ideas for things to write about is not as easy as it sounds (thus all the challenges).
– That it can be a great way to network and meet other people in your field, so long as you’re willing to put as much effort into reading other peoples’ blogs as you are putting into writing your own.
– That it’s a great way to keep your writing muscle flexed.
– That seeing your stat page count visits to your blog can be a ridiculously awesome high.
– That sometimes, unfortunately, you’ll put your heart and soul into a post and have no one read it.
– That it’s difficult to keep your train of thought on a post when you’ve got a toddler poking her head around your laptop and saying, “Elmo? Elmo?” 🙂