On September 14, 2008, eHarlequin held an event in Second Life called International Ball. Users’ avatars, which are 3D representations, danced to live-streaming music on Harlequin Island, which was decorated with scale-model versions of famous monuments, such as the Eiffel Tower. There was also live chatting, door-crasher coupons for Harlequin books, and sample-chapter giveaways to promote Harlequin Presents books. Take a look at some screen shots of the party.

Harlequin also holds book launches through Second Life, which allows them to do things they couldn’t do in the real world, such as recreate a setting from the book itself. Here is an excerpt from a great article in Fast Company magazine with Harlequin’s Brent Lewis on eHarlequin’s work with Second Life and Web2.0: 

That’s one of the big advantages for Harlequin–what I term relationships. At Harlequin, we’ve had relationships with our customers since the business began, like reader parties and book clubs, because our brand evokes strong feelings in people. Web 2.0 allows us to use technologies to have relationships with more people and, more importantly, to allow our readers to talk to one another. Harlequin readers love to talk to each other.

In Second life, we’ve been experimenting with virtual worlds. We had our first event in September, a reading by M.J. Rose, which by Second Life standards was quite successful. One of the key objectives for us was to build custom environments in Second Life to facilitate the readings. With M.J. Rose, we did a piazza, which was from a scene from the book. In the second reading, for Deanna Raybourn’s Silent in the Sanctuary, we built an abbey. The book is a mystery based in Victorian England. We had Deana doing a reading from her book. We actually had a Victorian costume party that was incredibly successful. People were lined up at the door–the virtual door–to get in.

In the world of online magazines, CosmoGIRL! has also entered the metaverse. They held their first virtual prom March 27, 2008 in CosmoGIRL! Village, a world created by There.com, in partnership with ABC Family and ACUVUE Contact Lenses. The event was a huge success and included everything you would find at a real prom and more, including dancing, a prom king and queen competition, prizes and give-aways, and avatar makeovers (with coloured contact lenses from ACUVUE, of course). CosmoGIRL!’s Associate Publisher Eric Schwarzkopf said, “Prom is a high school girl’s biggest night of the year and we wanted to find a way to celebrate in both the real world and the virtual world. A virtual prom enables us to offer cutting edge ways to engage our readers with the brands and events they love most.”

Have you ever attended any virtual events? Do you think they will become a much more common marketing strategy for brands and products in the future?

Not being very Web 2.0 savvy until I took an Online Magazines course at Centennial College, I was shocked to only recently discover Ning, a create-your-own-social-network platform that was launched October 2005. The unique thing about Ning is that anyone can create a new network, which Ning then lets you customize with different templates, colours, themes, and a wide variety of widgets. You can also include feaures like a blog, photo and video-sharing, and an events page. I tried it and it was super easy to do. I was actually really excited and impressed by the way Ning was taking read-write web to a new level. It felt empowering to be able to design and originate my own personal network that way. Something more unique and specialized than a Facebook network or group. Because it is so customizable, it seems perfect for more defined groups like a family, a class, or a club.

(An interview with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini.)

Ning sites are hosted with Ning (meaning their name will be part of your url), but they also offer a url masking feature for $5 that will eliminate the .ning. Also, for those who want more control, Ning allows developers to change some features and underlying logic of their networks. Ning also supports Google’s OpenSocial API, which allows you to make social networking sites interoperable.

Although Ning is not as established as Facebook, its popularity is growing exponentially. An article called “Ning’s Infinite Ambition” from Fast Company magazine explains that Ning’s creators calculate that “each person signed up for a Ning group is worth, on average, 2 people, compounded daily … which is how Ning has been able to grow at a daily average of more than 0.4% and add 500 new groups a day, doubling roughly every 137 days.” This “double viral loop” effect means that every network creator is a user and any user can become a network creator.

It will be interesting to see if Ning will be able to rival Facebook. Do you think Facebook has officially won the social networking wars? Have you created or would you ever consider creating a Ning network? Why or why not?

Lots of popular titles, plenty of shelf space, an extensive gift section—oh, and, of course, a Starbucks. Sound familiar? To the average book buyer, it should. Put all of these things together and you’ve got an Indigo, the Walmart of bookselling. Throw in the deep discounts online giants like Amazon.com are able to offer and that amounts to some pretty fierce competition for the small bookseller. It’s no wonder there have been scores of closures since the ’90s, not to mention countless declarations that the independent bookstore is dead. But, somehow, despite all of the odds, a handful of indie bookstores in Toronto are still holding out against the homogenizing giants. Here’s a look at what makes some of the city’s quirky independent bookstores so unique compared to the competition—and why they’re worth supporting.

Pages Book and Magazines
256 Queen Street West

As their motto goes, Pages has been “fiercely independent since 1979.” The store is known for its “counterculture” selection of contemporary literature, art and design, cultural theory, and gender studies. Pages also distinguishes itself from other book retailers by avidly supporting small-press titles, which the store features in a separate section.

A distinctive piece of the actual bricks-and-mortar store is the Pages Art Window, which faces out onto trendy Queen Street West and displays the (often provocative) work of local artists. Pages proprietor Marc Glassman accepts submissions via email and displays the chosen pieces for free.

In 2003, Pages expanded its roster of literary and cultural events with a new programme in conjunction with Eye Weekly called This is Not a Reading Series (TINARS), which presents writers and artists with new books. Take a look at the TINARS manifesto for a better idea of the series’ eclectic, conversational vibe.

Toronto Women’s Bookstore
73 Harbord Street

By fostering and promoting feminist and anti-oppression politics, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore (TWB) is more than just a bookstore—it’s an important cultural institution. This non-profit bookstore has been operating since 1973 and considers its mission is “to provide books by women writers, especially marginalized women.” The TWB also stocks hard-to-find magazines, journals, and zines, plus music and locally crafted jewellery.

As a destination for activism and education, the TWB offers regular community-based programming reflecting its values, including workshops, classes, and readings. The bookstore also stands by its dedication to the community and progressive social change by donating 10 per cent of its sales to a different community organization on the last Friday of every month. Groups the TWB has supported in the past include PEN Canada, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, and the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention.

Type Books
503 Danforth Avenue

Run by two University of Toronto PhD graduates, Type Books has been incredibly successful, considering the odds. The first Type Books opened in May 2006 on 883 Queen Street West, followed by a second on 394 Spadina Road in November 2007, and then a third location on 503 Danforth Avenue in May 2008. Co-owner Samara Walbohm describes Type as “the ideal library: a combination of classic books that are very familiar to you and the books you dream about owning.”

Each location is unique though, shaping itself to the interests of the surrounding community. Where the flagship Queen West location is hip and edgy, focusing on art and design, with a gallery space in the basement, the latest Danforth site caters to the neighbourhood’s demand for cookbooks, books on the environment, and, most of all, children’s books. The room above the store is a Kids Lounge where Type holds events such as art classes and children’s book readings. Their most exciting event so far was the launch of Mélanie Watt’s hit Chester’s Back!

David Mirvish Books
596 Markham Street

David Mirvish Books, which focuses on high quality books on the visual arts, has remained the place to be for artists, art lovers, and anyone looking for an amazing coffee table book for over thirty years. David Mirvish, son of the late Toronto businessman and philanthropist “Honest” Ed Mirvish, opened the store in 1974, just over a decade after opening the David Mirvish Gallery in 1963, which specialized in the American abstract painters of the ’60s and ’70s.

Unfortunately, as of February 28, 2009, the bookstore will close and David Mirvish Books will live on through its website sales alone. The building the store has called home since its expansion in 1975 is a piece of art in itself, designed by architect John Andrews (best known for his work on Scarborough College and the CN Tower).

Inside, the fifty-foot long painting “Damascus Gate, Stretch Variation” by postwar American minimalist painter and print-maker Frank Stella occupies the back wall of the bookstore. There’s no word yet on what will happen to the building or the painting.

To their visitors and faithful customers alike, these independent bookstores are more than just retail locations—they’re community spaces where people and ideas come to meet. What are some of your favourite independent bookstores and why? Do you think they’ll be able to survive the coming years?

In the world of magazines and newspapers where timing is everything, it seems logical that so many publishers are turning to Web 2.0 tools as a way of keeping user-readers updated and engaged with the most current content available. I started to wonder though: are the benefits of social media services just as applicable to the world of book publishing? That is, are tools like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs just as useful to novelists as a primary method of content delivery, not just as a gateway to their printed publications (i.e. as marketing strategies)?

Some writers are starting to experiment with microblogging their fiction on Twitter, either as stand-alone short stories or in installments as a serialized novel. (Twitter messages are a maximum of 140 characters.) This new genre has been dubbed TwitLit.

The Japanese, it’s no surprise, were already ahead of the trend with mobile novels, some of which have become so popular with readers that they’ve been published or made into movies. Authors deliver their stories a few lines at a time and then readers send them feedback about what direction they want the plot to turn. Wired covered the craze way back in 2005 and it continues to receive media attention.

The microblogging phenomenon has spread to North America, and it has sparked interest not just in would-be writers but some seasoned professionals as well. For example, in August 2008, Matt Richtel, a journalist/novelist, announced in an article for the New York Times that he was experimenting with Twitter, for his next thriller—what he calls a Twiller. He currently has 919 followers and 220 updates to his Twiller. TwitLit extra-short story challenges have also garnered some publicity, like the one sponsored by CopyBlogger‘s Brian Clark in May 2008.The winning story, by John Gould, is a perfect example of the impact a good author can pack into the TwitLit form: “‘Time travel works!’ the note read. ‘However, you can only travel to the past and one-way.’ I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.”

It’ll be interesting to see if microblogging becomes a more mainstream way for writers to compose fiction and for readers to access it. The brevity and real-time spontenaiety of the new medium could really open up a lot of creative possibilities. But the thought of authors incorporating feedback from their followers into their stories also raises a lot of issues about how we define creative integrity.

Do you think microblogging will transform the way we experience fiction? Is it just another fun way to waste time online or will it become a creative pursuit in its own right?

This is my Web2.0 Analysis for my Online Magazines course. I’ve chosen three magazine websites to review.

Vogue

The online version of Vogue offers a “Style File” blog that user-readers can comment on. The purpose of the blog is to offer the user-reader bonus content that provokes discussion and doesn’t appear in the print version of the magazine. It also encourages the user-reader’s active engagement with Vogue, creating a strong read-write culture for the magazine. By following the blog regularly and commenting on the posts, user-readers feel like they are contributing to the shape of the magazine’s personality as well as dialoguing with other user-readers with similar interests and opinions. In turn, this benefits publishers, editors, marketers, and advertisers because social participatory tools can potentially strengthen the user-reader’s sense of identification with and loyalty to the magazine’s brand.

Style.com provides bookmarking tools for yahoo!buzz, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, facebook, myspace, and del.icio.us. There is also an RSS feed option, including videos and forums, and even mobile alert services. By taking advantage of these tools, user-readers can easily keep up with new content and integrate Vogue quickly and conveniently into their busy schedules, no matter where they are. User-readers create more value for themselves by being able to customize the magazine’s content to best fit their needs and wants. Publishers, editors, marketers, and advertisers might all be able to learn crucial information about who their user-readers are and what they want from the publication because the bookmarking tools and RSS feeds can track trends in content popularity.

Salon

Salon, an online news magazine, offers some truly exemplary Web2.0 tools and services. Aside from bookmarking and RSS options, the website provides a public beta feature called Open Salon, a social content site that allows members to set up a blog and interact with other user-readers. According to the description on their website, the home page for Open Salon “functions like a real-time magazine cover,” spotlighting the best member-generated content. Their tagline is “You make the headlines.” Salon is creating the ultimate user-reader by giving them an equal share of creative power, which sends a message to the user-reader that the publication values their opinions and experiences. They can become an integral, rather than just a peripheral, part of the magazine.

With these social participatory features, the Salon brand is telling its user-readers that inclusivity and collaboration are its top priorities. This message could benefit publishers, editors, marketers, and advertisers if user-readers make Open Salon their home base for sharing information. A vast community of user-readers directing and investing in the content of the magazine will only strengthen the Salon experience by ensuring its continued relevance and success. In turn, if Salon and Open Salon becomes popular online hangouts, the high traffic exchange of ideas will draw advertising dollars to the website, allowing the company to expand.

The Walrus

The online version of The Walrus also offers customizable RSS feed options as well as bookmarking tools to post articles and videos to your blog or social networking websites. Again, the user-reader benefits from these tools by being able to receive instant news updates, thereby staying informed in an efficient and accessible manner. User-readers can tailor the magazine’s content to fit their lives. Publishers, editors, marketers, and advertisers may also benefit by collecting statistical feedback from these Web2.0 services regarding what kinds of stories are the most in demand. In turn, they will be able to shape future articles and advertisements according to the typical user-reader’s interests.

The Walrus website also features over 30 bloggers who provide extra content for the online magazine, much quicker than they would be able to do in a monthly print publication. The blogs update the magazine’s content, making it that much more relevant to the user-read who is depending on the website to keep them clued-in to what’s going on in the news. Podcasts, which user-readers can subscribe to via iTunes, are another interesting Web2.0 feature that the online Walrus offers. Again, this service makes information that much more portable and accessible to the user-reader. In particular, iTunes benefits from the podcasts because of the added traffic they gain for their store, potentially increasing sales.