Out of the Inbox

It’s been obvious that I’ve not been posting as much on Alterati. I have an excuse… I’ve been writing a book. Well, actually I’ve been writing two books, and a comic, but the important book at the moment is The Art of Memetics.

The novel and the comic, they’ll be coming out later and they’ll be properly copy-edited, this book is the one I’ve spent about a hundred hours over the last two weeks re-writing and re-writing, and frankly I’m glad it’s done–although it still has to be copy-edited. This is not free of typos, and is not a first edition. I had a lot of fun with the footnotes, and making sure the citations all matched up, but even those might change, and I hope the font changes as well. Edward and I covered a lot of ground, and going from Habermas to Hine to Gladwell to Jenkins was an argument we had a lot of fun constructing.

This book combines marketing, magic, theory on group minds, and memetics, while using the concept of networked complex systems (cybernetics) to explain how ideas, goals, and desires can manifest in one’s environment and through social interaction. It’s in many ways an engineering book for magicians on synchronicity. We believe that taking these tools from marketing, institutional control systems, and giving them away freely in a book written for the culture jammer, will only strengthen the community internally (plus we do want to sell a few books… we’ve worked on this book for over a year.)

We don’t have a sales page or website for the book yet, and what is available is available for friends and people who’ve kept up with this blog. What is available is nearly the final first edition (still contains typos) and includes Introduction by J. Matheny, table of contents, Forward by Taylor Ellwood, over a hundred footnotes, and an extensive bibliography. When the first edition comes out (complete with Index and ISBN number) the cover price will be $24.99 USD. What we now have available is at the lower price of $23.23 USD, and a digital copy is only $5 is free.

However, we know that it only takes a few clicks and suddenly everyone’s out there sharing your book on the torrents. The Art of Memetics itself is about using and riding the distribution paths of rhizomatic networks, and as such we were developed a Pirate Edition, accessible here. It’s the one that you can feel good about giving away to anyone who’s interested. This copy is enabled with live links to allow the reader to go directly to the page and buy a physical copy at full price if they want.

I don’t want to speak too much about what the book itself is… I feel that I’ve said most of what I wanted to say about memetics in the text itself, and you’re more than welcome to read it. Along the way we had a lot of help, hopefully all of which is reflected in the front of the book itself. I personally thank Shira Chess for her suggestions in the last few days which helped me get in the footnotes, and follow-up on some needed quotations. Let Edward and I know what you think, and follow up on the bibliography if the book is not enough. Buy two copies of the physical book now though, because once the First Edition gets back from the copy editor and graphic designer, this Mastermind Edition will be phased out, easily growing in value as a collectors item in future manifestations of ebay-ish sites.

So, that’s it. One of the biggest projects I’ve undertaken (or endured) to date is finished, and both Edward and I are very happy with how it has come together. You’ll see more regular posts from me now that this text is out of my inbox and on my shelf.

Updates to this post 04-14-08:

• Seth Godin references this post as a good example of “How to write like a blogger“
• Joseph Matheny interviews the co-conspirators of this meme in a recent GSpot Podcast.