Live author chats - they're coming back!

Chris OConnor

Live author chats - they're coming back!

We're going to soon start filling our calendar with some live author chat sessions again.

Erik J. Wielenberg is already scheduled for the end of first quarter. Expect an exciting chat session on Thursday, March 23 at 9:00 pm eastern.

I'll be inviting E.L. Doctorow (The March) and Michael Gazzniga (The Ethical Brain) this week. While I can't promise anything, we have a pretty good track record of getting our authors for live chats.

If you know of any potential guest authors you would like for a live chat please post their information here in this thread. We can discuss them and decide if enough people have an interest in attending a chat.

MadArchitect

I think now would probably be a good time to consider some ideas for ways to moderate the chats so that they run more smoothly. I scanned through a couple of archived author chats a few days ago, and was struck by how lost the authors tend to be. Part of it we can probably chalk up to their relative unfamiliarity with the IM chat format, but even an IM pro would likely find themselves out of their depth attempting to type out replies to a dozen or more people, all posting questions, comments and arguments in the same forum.

Even just having some agreed upon conventions might help. One person could serve as moderator. The moderator's text would appear in an agreed upon color -- say, green -- which no one else would adopt, and the guest author would know ahead of time to pay attention to the green text because the moderator is serving to focus the conversation.

Whatever we come up, I think we need to bring a little more order to the chats, especially if we're going to be increasing the size of the audience/participants. The author chats are a great draw, but only so long as the author can actually keep up and participate.

Chris OConnor

Mad

I'll agree that we need to improve on our author chats, but I'm still not sure how to make it happen.

Who would moderate? Who would accept the burden or basically conducting an interview? I don't want the job. I don't have 5 hours to prepare for each author chat where I come up with questions, and when I ask members for questions very few post any.

Ezboard doesn't provide any real moderation abilities. I cannot silence people without booting them from the room.

We do have way too many people entering and exiting the room at staggered times, and when they do enter or leave they are greeting everyone or saying goodbye. This is not appropriate in an author chat.

Chris OConnor

I'm researching chat software to see if we might invest a bit in a different chat program that allows moderation.

tarav

Chris said, "We do have way too many people entering and exiting the room at staggered times, and when they do enter or leave they are greeting everyone or saying goodbye. This is not appropriate in an author chat."

I agree. However, I do think it is appropriate to welcome the author/guest with a quick greeting and to thank him/her for coming before departing. I motion that we make an author chat rule saying, "No greetings or goodbye's, except those directed at the author/guest". What do you think?

MadArchitect

Chris OConnor: Who would moderate? Who would accept the burden or basically conducting an interview?

Maybe that could be part of the discussion leader's job. If they're not willing or able to perform that duty, it could be passed on to a volunteer.

I don't have 5 hours to prepare for each author chat where I come up with questions, and when I ask members for questions very few post any.

I don't think it would take that much preparation. I'm not suggesting that the moderator come in with a set of questions. To me, it seems like the big appeal of the author chats is that it gives the chatters an opportunity to interact, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them.

The chat would go on as it always has, as I see it. The moderator just serves as a kind of beacon for the author. When things get too harried for the author to keep up -- and it looks like they usually do -- the author could just look to the moderator, who would presumably be typing in an agreed upon text color. The moderator's job would be to filter through the conversation and draw the author's attention to direct questions or comments of particular interest. The author would still be able to respond to whatever comments he happened to read, but would no longer necessarily feel the burden of keeping up with a dozen conversations at once.

I cannot silence people without booting them from the room.

I don't think it's necessary to silence anyone -- just to give the author some help in filtering through it all.

I'm researching chat software to see if we might invest a bit in a different chat program that allows moderation.

This, I think, would be ideal, although I think we should also look at ways to moderate chats on EZBoard, in case it turns out to be less than viable to use some other software.

tarav: I motion that we make an author chat rule saying, "No greetings or goodbye's, except those directed at the author/guest". What do you think?

Sounds reasonable to me. I think we should also encourage people to use other chat rooms for sidebars, whenever possible. I'm sure that happens already, but it still seems that there's a lot of tangential conversation taking place in author chats.

Chris OConnor

I hear ya. The solution, IMO, is to buy chat software that allows moderation. I've reviewed several and know it would work well. But it costs more money than we have coming in and I am not going to add any additional expenses to this community until I see some growth.

Moderated chat software allows me to temorarily silence everyone other than the guest, myself, the moderator, and anyone else I want to give "voice." I can control all aspects and we would no longer have chaos.

Your idea will probably make a smoother chat prior to us acquiring better chat software, and I'm open to the suggestion. But there is no way getting around the fact that everyone will continue to type in "Hello everyone!" and "Ok, folks, Gotto go. Blah, blah, blah." This might not seem like a big deal, but it royally screws up the chat experience.

With a full room of people everyone having voice is never going to work. We can decide ahead of time about different colors for text for the guest and for the mod, but way too many people will never read or listen to this. Most chatters are not active enough in the community to care about following such rules. So then they will speak out, thus spamming the chat window and drawin attention away from the guest. Then I ask them to refrain and they apologize and I say "No problem" and we now have 3 inches of unnecessary chat text.

It is far superior to have better chat software and soon we will. It costs between $20 and $40 per month. But it allows for more exciting chats due to all sorts of additional features. We had better chat software before, but I got rid of it as it costs too much cash.

MadArchitect

Okay, well let's look at some options for financing such software. As I see it, there are basically four ways open to BookTalk at the moment.

1) Book referral fees from Amazon. To get that to work we'll need more people buying books, which means two things: a) more regular contributers, and b) more people buying the books through the links rather than other avenues. I'll 'fess up to being part of the problem here -- of the three current discussions which have their own forum, I bought exactly one of the books through the link. But the fact is, I don't intend to change my decision making process in regards to buying books. I buy books that I think I'm likely to use again or pass on to someone I know. And the fact of the matter is, most of the books that have been picked in the last year haven't been books that I'd keep. This isn't simply a matter of money -- my concern is more one of waste. That's a personal issue, of course, but I wonder if maybe it doesn't reflect a more general problem -- namely that the books we're picking aren't drawing in more people. Incidentally, if it is ever possible to get referrals high enough to cover software costs, going onto the monthly staggered system we discussed last month might make it easier to parcel out the monthly cost of software.

2) Direct contributions. This is probably harder to count on, but I will say that I'd be more willing to contribute directly to a monthly fund to maintain chat software that I would be to buy books that I'm not interested in keeping. And it would probably work out a hell of a lot better for BookTalk if the people who aren't going to buy the books, but do plan on contributing to the discussions, would contribute even half the cost of the book directly to the community. Think of it as a system of compensation, built on an honor system. But I don't see that catching on much past me.

4) Cafe press sales. Which you would know more about than I would. But I would say that there's probably only so much revenue you can expect from that -- people only need so many T-shirts and coffee mugs, whereas they can be more easily enticed to buy the 8-16 books that we'll be reading on a yearly basis.

3) Advertising. This will probably be the most reliable of the three ways I've suggested. The trick here is implementing the ads in a way that leaves Booktalk as accessible and attractive as it is now. It wouldn't help the site much if the ads were so garish and distracting that people felt less inclined to visit.

Chris OConnor

As we currently stand we're bringing in enough money from Amazon.com book sales to pay for the recurring monthly fees, but no more. Until book revenue, donations, or my personal income increases I won't buy the chat softeware. But I do see it in our future.

Yes, we need to advertise and we'll do so when we have a sidebar. I have been far too slammed with work to think about the sidebar lately, but we'll discuss it in time. The sidebar will help with just about all of our problems. We will sell more books because we'll have book links permanently in the sidebar. We'll increase traffic because we'll use keywords repeatedly in the sidebar. More traffic = good. We'll sell Cafe Press merchandise because the link will be permanently off to the side.

Naturyl

I really shouldn't have blathered on about this. It wasn't my place and I was acting silly by dispensing "authoritative" advice.

I'm not upset or anything, I just often second-guess posts and remove them. This is one such occassion.

Best wishes to BookTalk, and I'll keep checking in.

Edited by: Naturyl at: 2/5/06 1:17 am

MadArchitect

I don't think Chris is looking to profit from BookTalk. I think he just doesn't want it to endanger his ability to pay rent.

Everyone's full of good advice, and I'm no exception. I would say that Chris interests would be best served by delegating as much responsibility as it takes to allow him the leisure to participate more. If BookTalk is his passion, he should work more to enjoy whatever fruits it can bear right now. He doesn't get much of a chance to really chime in on the quarterly book discussions, and I think that's a crying shame, given how much work he puts into making it available to others. And the more effort he puts into the discussion, the more notice I think he's likely to see BookTalk get from others. A thriving discussion board needs, above all else, discussion.


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