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There's a PaperCamp heading to a city near you. If that city happens to be New York, anyway. One in San Francisco is being mooted, with maybe more to come elsewhere. You could always set one up yourself… Yes, you.

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Further to the questions I asked at the end of this post on creating new readers, I found Pete's suggestions on local blogs helping local business full of useful ideas and information, and a possible approach to getting started that we hadn't considered, especially his last point:

"Above all, start small. Don’t try and run a local media outlet from the outset. Gradually build to being a local media outlet as you add more people to the team. If you just have 5 or 10 posts a week that’ll be fine. Once people know there’s a venue for their news they’ll bring it to you."

Maybe that's the best way to start a UK version of the 826 National; find a community centre or something with an attached cafe and begin small, rather than trying to find ways to set up a shop with no capital. Another interesting model is the one that the LUC guys used last year, using a market stall for outreach, and getting beyond the usual market of people who would buy and read comics. Might be something to look into (though maybe later in the year when there's no need to stand around all day in the freezing cold). It could be a good place to start selling crazily-themed toys and stuff to make money for the project, though, rather than trying to rent a shop. Once the things have been designed and made, of course.

One thing I've been learning is that it's better to start small and have something to show, than to wait for someone to bring you something big. It's the same attitude Pete mentions in point 9 that made me ask "what next?" immediately during the session on Saturday. Lots of people at these things say, "wouldn't it be great if…?" or, "someone should do something like…" and everyone says, "oh yeah, great idea!" but half the time you know they're all thinking, "as long as I don't have to do it."

One really simple place to start could be to set up a blog, with all the people who attended the session invited to have posting permission if they wanted to continue the discussion/brainstorming — that way, no one person is entirely responsible for trying to get the thing off the ground all on their own (I don't want to wrest control away from Kevin, since it was his idea, but I'm pretty sure he would be keen to have the collaborative input, as it's a pretty daunting idea to have to undertake all on your own). Plus, other people who want to get involved with the discussion have a place where they can take their own comments and ideas, and somewhere to link back to in order to spread the information. It might even give an idea of how much interest there would actually be in a project like this, outside of a small group of book geeks. (Probably quite a lot, but I suspect most of it will take the attitude mentioned above, that they'll be interested as long as someone else is doing the work.)

As I said after Amplified last year, all the really interesting conversations were going to take place outside of the realm of the main event(s). The only trouble with that, even though I expected it, is that it's all too easy to lose track of where the conversations are and what action is being taken. I guess Kevin's idea was the first one that got me excited enough to want to do something (or at least suggest something) proactive myself, instead of doing the usual thing of waiting for someone else to do something (or suggest something).

So: a dedicated blog might be a useful place to dump ideas and get discussion flowing. What do you think? I think one of the first things is to find a good, catchy name for the project rather than just "826 wannabe" — any suggestions? (And apologies to Kevin for posting this here without discussing it with him first, but hopefully it's at least an idea he'll think worth considering.)

- physicality
- fixity
- boundedness
- authority
- universality

The physical shape of books is underlined by the cost of production and thinking in units — how many you can fit into a shipping box or bookshelf. Books as physical objects are bought and sold by unit, so making money from copyright is logical, but if you are selling content on the web which is not confined by physical shape, you need to find new business models.

There was a pretty interesting discussion generated from this, with some useful input from Cory Doctorow who provided legally recognised definitions when we were struggling to define ideas, but sadly had to leave halfway through to do his share of looking after the baby (which was disappointing for the session, but also lovely for his wife, I think). I was taking part in the discussion quite a lot myself, so my notes from this point don't make a lot of sense, but here are some of Mary's ideas I wrote down:

Web-based stuff "almost needs redundancy" to make it believable. There is always something more interesting to look at on the internet, which incurs the need for short, tactical posts to grab the attention. Printed matter conveys authority; even vanity publishing conveys more authority than online writing if the printed word is considered more valid than non-print. An interesting example of publishers who confer status is science publisher Nature who don't even pay their authors, because getting published by them confers so much status that writers don't mind (which could actually be the biggest scam around, if you stop to think about it!)

Instead of fixity on the web, there's version control, but even (for example) the Wayback Machine is an unreliable record of what went before. "People don't publish for posterity; they publish to share" so it doesn't seem to matter to them that it disappears after a while. There has to be a space for people to engage with the work or it's not going to work.

This stuff makes sense to me, but there were some ideas that I didn't agree with because they oversimplified into an either/or scenario that was a bit didactic. For example, the idea that "the web is searchable which makes knowledge ambiguous" seemed specious, as libraries are searchable, too; full of physical books that can be referred to on every subject). The idea that, online, "you have to write as a character" is another one I have to take issue with, as there are no hard and fast rules about writing online; you don't have to do anything, and in any case most print-based writing is often done with a specific tone or "voice" that represents the character of the author, so it's not just limited to web-based writing.

There was also a brief look at the interesting development of formerly analogue material that has been digitised and then turned back into analogue material, with the amazing BibliOdyssey blog cited as an example, which amused me, considering the way people had been venerating the written word over imagery, as it's very image-heavy, basically an art gallery of a blog. Curated by the mysterious peacay, who hunts through online archives to find interesting illustrations and posts them on the blog, a selection of which have now been collected in a lovely hardcover book published by FUEL (I was lusting after it just before Christmas, and almost bought it for my mum just so that I could have access to it myself!).

This was another great session inspiring me to think about lots of good stuff, although I am sad that attending it meant that I missed some interesting presentations upstairs at PaperCamp, especially Sawa Tanaka's incredible illustration work with edible paper, glow-in-the-dark ink and thermochromatic ink, which sounds amazing.

First up was a session suggested by Kevin O'Neill (not that one) to discuss the creation of a UK project along the lines of the McSweeney's-affiliated 826 National in America, which has created a series of themed shops run by volunteers, that host writing workshops and education sessions, often run by professional writers. These workshops have produced collaborative books inspired by local observations, professionally illustrated by cool artists and designers. The interesting thing about the 826 National is that it is the shops and the design of them (e.g. the Chris Ware mural in San Francisco) and their products which initially brings people in. They are exciting, unusual and playful, full of fun objects and entertaining ideas to catch peoples' imaginations.

Everyone agreed that starting a project like this in the UK was a great idea, it was just a matter of hashing out essential issues like logistics and cost. We also thought i was a good idea to extend the remit to literacy for all, the same way that Roddy Doyle's Fighting Words project has done in Ireland. This was a really great, inspiring session, which caused me to get so excited that I may have dominated the discussion a little (although later someone came up and thanked me for all the things I said, so it might not necessarily have been a bad thing). One of the things I suggested, and felt needed reinforcing, is that it was focussed on the written word at the expense of visual storytelling, which still has a place in books. This is especially true in the case of books for young children, which are almost always illustrated, or in the case of art and photography books.

This way of ignoring visual media was something that I found myself having to reiterate several times at BookCamp, actually, and it became something of a bugbear with me. I'm a very visual person, so obviously I'm a bit biased, but lots of people are visual, and we do not live life in non-visual terms¹. Images have always been used to illustrate wordy ideas all over the place, from advertising to newspaper stories to book-jackets to comics etc. and it's long past time people stopped thinking about books in terms of text only (it was an attitude prevalent at Amp08, as well) and started to remember the illustrated aspect. Literacy is not just about words, there's a visual literacy of symbolism and ideas that is just as important, especially as more communities are filled with people who don't all speak the same language.

Actually, there are a couple of good stories which, ahem, illustrate my point, linked to at The Beat: one story about a "reluctant reader" who discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid (a sleeper hit that's been racing up the best-seller lists), and was so hooked that he polished off nearly 450 pages in two days; and another about the similarities between medieval illuminated books, and contemporary graphic novels ("both genres were designed to make the written word accessible to everyone, and both combine words and art". This is not an original idea, and they seem to have mistaken genre (stylistic content) with platform (typically the medium used to present the genre), but it's a timely link anyway).

Right, getting off my high horse, now, and back to the session in hand. As I said, everyone was enthusiastic, as only a bunch of book geeks can be, and we came away with a list of things to consider if the project is to get off the ground:

* finding out about getting available shop space for low rent
* registering as a charity
* recruiting volunteers. This includes
– people to work in the shop(s)
– designers to create fun artefacts
– authors to run workshops, or at least promote the project in interviews etc.
* what "theme" a shop could take (e.g. in America they have a pirate shop, a superhero shop, a robot shop etc.)

Kevin's posted his own list here.

So, one last question on this subject before I finish the post and start writing up the next session: is anyone reading this interested in this project? Can you help? Do you know someone who can secure it funding, or how to cheaply rent a shop? Do you know how to run a shop? Do you want to volunteer to run workshops? Do you just want to big it up to everyone you know because you like the idea too? Please let me know in the comments.

¹Except for blind people, obv. And that brings up something I hadn't thought about on Saturday: braille. Maybe someone who's more of an expert than me can do a session on that at the next BookCamp?