All change - part 1: My new job in publishing

The last few weeks have been crazy, and the last few days crazier still. After eight and a half years of living in Cardiff, I've just this weekend upped sticks and moved to London. Mad, right? But more on that in another blog post. What I really want to talk about now is the reason for my move...

Tomorrow I start as Assistant Digital Editor with Hodder and Stoughton. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that at last - at long last - I have a job in publishing. It's ten years ago this June since I first stayed in London, and that was to do work experience with Michael O'Mara Books. It's a little over a year since I did my stint at Seren Books working on ebook conversion, and since then (slightly off and on, due to changing personal circumstances) I've been applying for publishing jobs. And now I've got it, with an amazing publishing house and all sorts of exciting books!

A couple of weeks ago, I was keeping up with the London Book Fair online via Twitter and various websites. One of the themes that came through was the need for "digital natives" in publishing. I think I certainly fit that bill, having grown up in equal measure a computer geek as well as book geek.

Reading the advice on "Getting into publishing" felt really weird at that stage, after being offered the job but before starting it. Part of me kept expect the whole thing to fall through or to turn out to be an elaborate hoax, a belated April Fools' Joke!

Looking at that advice also gave me a strange feeling of survivors' guilt. I've been wanting and working to get into publishing for so long, and I know how competitive it is, that I almost feel bad about having succeeded in getting in.

But I also know that I have worked hard for it, and I am really well suited to my new job. And more than just a job: this is where I get to begin my publishing career in earnest. So I'm mostly just pleased, thrilled and excited! (I've been doing little victory dances when I think no-one is looking).

In terms of advice on getting into publishing, most of it has been said very well already by far better qualified people than me. The one thing that I'd like to point out is how easy it is to get to know what's going on in an industry you're trying to break into in the age of the Internet. You don't even need to afford a subscription to trade magazines like The Bookseller - you can read the headlines online, and get news and analysis on many different blogs and sites. Follow publishers, authors, booksellers, app creators and anyone else connected with publishing on Twitter and other social networks. It's never been easier to listen to, and join in, the conversation.

Moving to London has been all kinds of crazy, and I hope to tell some of those stories soon. But next up is my first day: leave the house, go to the Tube station,  tap in with my new Oystercard, navigate my first commute in the London rushhour, find the office, meet my colleagues and start learning the art of assistant digital editing! Hard work I'm sure, but I can't wait...

Lincoln movie review

I'm a big fan of The West Wing, and this was rather like a period version of Aaron Sorkin's political drama. In many ways, that's high praise, but there's something rather small-screen about this film. My friend James argued that it never quite shakes the feeling of being a glorified TV movie, and it's certainly a talker.

Director Steven Spielberg restrains himself from giving it a more epic cinematic sweep and scope to focus on Lincoln's fight to abolish slavery. But it can't make up its mind whether to focus on being a biopic of Lincoln or on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. It tries to do both, but doesn't quite succeed in finding the central focus it needs.

Daniel Day-Lewis puts in an impressive, Oscar-winning performance as Abraham Lincoln. It hints at some of the complexities of Lincoln's character and political career - his relationship with his wife gets a fair amount of screen time, and some of his more controversial actions such as suspending various legal rights and liberties in the course of the war are referenced briefly. But overall it's very reverential - this is Lincoln the American icon.

This reverence may come at the expense of historical accuracy. Lincoln is portrayed as an implacable, lifelong opponent of slavery. I'm no expert on the man or on the American Civil War, but from what I understand, Lincoln's initial stance on slavery was quite moderate rather than one of lifelong opposition. He came to oppose slavery, but his overriding motivation was actually the preservation the Union. The film has Lincoln willing to prolong the war and risk peace in order to ensure the abolition of slavery, which might make for heightened drama but may be an idealisation of the character.

The film poses an intriguingly complex moral question regarding bringing an end to slavery through underhand political wheeler-dealing. Does the overwhelming evil of slavery justify all the political shenanigans to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed? The film doesn't really allow any answer other than "yes" though. When the Thirteenth Amendment does finally pass, it's a wonderful moment of joy, as liberty rings out across the land. This is as it should be, of course. I'm profoundly grateful that slavery did come to an end, and it carries with it a foretaste of the Gospel hope of the day of freedom for all captives everywhere.

But perhaps the film makes the situation too neat and tidy: the passing of the Amendment is built up as a crucial make-or-break, now-or-never moment. The film doesn't voice the possibility that it may have been better for slavery to have died more slowly, rather than amid the humiliation of defeat. Was it really worth the violence of the Civil War to bring about the end of slavery, or could there have been another way, one that could have led to a less bitter road to civil rights and racial reconciliation in the 20th century? Uncomfortable questions, but I'd rather the film explored these complexities rather than simply presenting the end as justifying the means.

I'll have to read up on this more before coming to a fully informed judgment though. I've never properly studied the American Civil War, but it's one I could do with understanding better. The film may err on the side of hagiography, presenting us with Saint Lincoln, Lifelong Abolitionist, but it's an engaging and compelling window into this vital moment in modern history.

Cineworld Unlimited + Orange Wednesday = Movie Watching Win

At the start of this month, I browsed through IMDB making note of the various films that I'd like to see this year. There were enough of them for me to feel it was worth treating myself to a Cineworld Unlimited card. It allows me to see as many films as I like for a flat monthly fee of £15, for a minimum subscription of a year. If you're seeing two films a month or more, it's likely to be worth the cost. I really enjoy films and seeing them on the big screen with great sound, and

Conveniently, the Unlimited card can be used with Orange Wednesday. Both my wife and I are on other networks - T-Mobile and Three respectively - so I ordered a free pay-as-you-go SIM from Orange and popped it in an old phone we keep as a spare.

But I discovered that I can use this pay-as-you-go number to register the Orange Wednesday app on my Android smartphone. I can now get the 2-for-1 code directly on my normal phone even though it's on the Three network - a handy loophole that I hope won't get closed too quickly! The upshot is that on Wednesdays, I can go to the cinema with my wife for no extra cost (unless it's a 3D film, in which case there's a surcharge.)

In this first month, I've made good use of the card, seeing roughly a film a week: Lincoln, Warm Bodies, Argo, Wreck it Ralph and Cloud Atlas. I'm planning on catching up with reviews for at least some of those - my Lincoln review is almost ready to go.

One of the nice things about having the Unlimited card is that it removes the sense of risk about taking a punt on a film that I'm not quite sure about. I probably wouldn't have seen Warm Bodies without the card, and went in with moderately low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it. Anyway, stay tuned for more movie-related reviews and opinions here on my blog!

I also used to usually go to see films on Tuesdays, when tickets are cheaper. Having the card gives me the flexibility to go when I like without paying anything more, though Tuesday and Wednesday are often still preferable if I'm going with my wife and/or friends.

(If you're interested in signing up for an Unlimited Card, enter the following referral code to get an extra month free for both me and you: RAF-26ZS-62PX-51WA-29KU.)

MOOCs and the Digital Future of Higher Education

Image: stock.xchng

There's a lot of interest at the moment in Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), such as those offered by Coursera and Khan Academy - for example, this article from a US perspective about How to Save College, or this Times Higher Education article about Edinburgh University getting 300,000 students on its Coursera courses. On the latter, one commenter accused it of destroying the HE sector from within. They said this as if it were a bad thing, but really the reality for universities is evolve or die.

If universities don't cannibalize their own business by taking education online, someone else will. As broadband becomes ubiquitous and tuition fees increase, online alternatives will become increasingly appealing and attractive. Companies and organisations that try to preserve their old business models rather than adapting to new ones will go the way of Blockbuster and HMV, who if they had the vision early enough, they could have become what Netflix and Amazon are now, but came far too late to the digital party to catch up.

But I don't think the MOOC model is a sustainable model of education. You need real interaction and intellectual community, which isn't as easily scalable, and which is what people will end up paying for. But new and different models are already emerging, and the digital revolution will be as painful for higher education as it was and is for the music, newspaper and publishing industries.

There are other forms of online education that offer a better model. There are some institutions, such as the Mythgard Institute and Signum University, that offer some content for free, but charge a small fee for auditing a course, and a larger fee (but still much less than bricks and mortar education) for doing the course for credit with weekly small-group seminars with the course leader.

There are some kinds of learning that can be done simply by watching lectures, keeping up with the reading and doing some exercises, but the best higher education learning experience requires real interaction with both leading academics as teachers, and with peers as intellectual community.

The Internet is revolutionary for education in removing barriers of time and geography, making it much easier for people to fit in ongoing education in their lives wherever they live, and to have access to the best in their field wherever they happen to be studying.

But real interaction isn't scalable to tens of thousands. You also need to pay for academics to actually get on and do research, so that they are producing new knowledge, ideas and insights to teach. MOOCs are one model and will have a place in the emerging online education marketplace, but they aren't the only or best future of digital education.

The same challenges face many other sectors - publishers are going through many of the same problems of adapting to new digital realities. How long will it be before there's an educational equivalent of self-publishing like Amazon's Kindle Direct programme, where academics can offer courses directly to students online and get paid a decent amount for it? Will the university as we know it remain relevant in the digital age, or will it usher in a new era of the "independent scholar", with students mixing and matching learning from the best minds in their area of study, wherever they are in the world, regardless of institutional affiliation?

As the supposed traditional Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times".

Choosing a mini-tablet

In the run up to Christmas, I'd been admiring the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Google Nexus 7 and, of course, the iPad mini. I wistfully played with them in-store, trying to find a reason to justify the purchase. I couldn't really afford or justify it out of my spare income, so I wasn't expecting to get my hands on one any time soon.

But a work Christmas bonus - specifically for a mini tablet - suddenly put me in the market for one of these cool little devices. Thank you to my boss! So which would it be?

The first tablet I eliminated from the equation was the Kindle Fire HD, simply because it's very similar in price and specs to the Google Nexus 7, but runs Amazon's own version of Android with a smaller selection of apps, and with Amazon's services baked-in to the system. Given that you can download Amazon's Kindle app on other devices, and the Nexus 7 comes with the latest version of Android Jelly Bean and direct updates from Google, I'd much rather go with the Nexus.

Which left the Nexus 7 and iPad mini, the latter of which is at least £80 more expensive. If I'd just been buying for myself, then as a price-conscious type, I'd probably have gone for the Nexus 7 - it's a great device at a great price. But with the Christmas bonus in play, the pros and cons were more finely balanced.

Since already having a good Android phone, a Nexus 7 would perhaps be too much a bigger version of the same, whereas an iPad gives me access to the Apple ecosystem - there are lots of interesting book apps that are iPad only or a long time in coming to Android, and some apps are better on iOS, such as iPlayer (which is something I watch a lot on tv via my Playstation 3, and occasionally on my phone). It would be better if the BBC could make a great Android app, but having wedded themselves to Flash for video delivery on Android due to some weird political DRM security theatre, they've dug themselves into a bit of a hole. Fact is, iOS still has the edge on tablet app selection. Android is catching up, but isn't there yet.

Also, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket (whether that's Google or anyone else), but get a spread of devices to get the best overall range of options. I have Windows and Linux on my desktop and netbook, an Android phone, and a Kindle ereader - an Apple tablet would allow me to cover all my bases, pretty much!

I prefer Google's open approach but I'm also a bit uneasy about a "free" system based on advertising and monitoring your personal information and behaviour. I don't like Apple's walled garden, but I also admire the cohesiveness that Apple can deliver by controlling hardware, software and ecosystem so closely.

One very specific feature that Android doesn't currently support is using a USB microphone for audio input, so a Android tablet would be more limited in terms of using it for podcasting than an iPad, which can use one with an adapter cable. That's a fairly niche requirement, but handy for me.

Nexus 7 had in its favour compatibility with my existing phone apps and purchases, a sharper screen and cheaper price. The 16:9 aspect ratio screen on the Nexus is better for video, but I think the iPad's 4:3 is probably slightly better for reading and browsing, though I haven't had chance to test this theory. From what I gather from reviews, the iPad mini is more of a premium feel in aluminium, but that extra bit of width makes it just that slightly less easy to grip in one hand.

It really is a close-run thing. I'd have been very happy to get a Nexus 7, and for many people I'd recommend it over the iPad mini as just as good at a much better price. But for my particular preferences and requirements, the opportunity to get an iPad mini was too good to miss.

So I went ahead and asked for the iPad mini, which I got just before Christmas, despite the slight nagging feeling I was selling out in getting an Apple product. Had I made a good choice, or fallen prey to the Apple hype machine? In my next post, I'll recount my experiences with the device since then...

Review - Sophie Scholl: The Real Story, by Frank McDonough

Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler by Frank McDonough

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I recently finished this moving account of the life of Sophie Scholl, a German student who bravely resisted the Nazis. The book does a good job of telling the story of Sophie's life and the events that propelled her into speaking out against the Nazis.

The White Rose group of which she was a part published leaflets trying to stir the consciences of German people to resist what the Nazis were doing. They did not have clearly defined political objectives - it was a moral and philosophical protest, motivated for many of the group, including Sophie, by their Christian faith. Sophie and her brother Hans were eventually caught, in the end due to recklessness, but faced their death sentences with courage and hope.

The main weakness of this account is that I didn't really feel it got inside Sophie's head that well - the biographer keeps saying that the White Rose group had these in-depth theological and philosophical discussions about what to do. But McDonough doesn't give as clear a sense of how Sophie's thinking and Christian faith developed and informed her actions as much as I would like - though it does include translations of the White Rose leaflets.

I'd like to find an account the White Rose group that focuses in much more depth on what they believed and how that shaped their actions - any recommendations?