Wisdom of crowds?

I'm not sure why this story in the Wall Street Journal, "Writing a Book? Amazon Offers a Crowdsourced Critique" makes me a teeny bit uneasy.

Amazon, through its "Write On" service allows authors (or would-be authors) to receive feedback from the wider crowd of Amazon users. In the words of the WSJ, to turn manuscripts into 'salable titles'; in Amazon's words 'to make good stories great and great stories better.'

I know writer feedback groups (creative writing workshop, anyone?) and audience testing have been going on for ages, and this is just a way to use technology to do the same thing but with a wider reach.

And I know crowd-editing and direct publishing sites exist already for writers, such as Wattpad and FastPencil.

And yes, it would be great if this allows writers to discover new audiences, and new ideas can flourish.

And yet.

If too many authors disregard their internal drive and seek wide feedback before publishing, do we risk hovering around the median of consensus, rather than uncovering the unconventional voices? Isn't the internet meant to be just the thing for the long-tail, the unknown?

Then again, if you walk into any bookstore today, you can see the publishing world narrowing around blockbuster 'brand-name' authors, as it has been for years now.

So at least if a few more unknown authors can use these platforms to develop independent works and reach new readers... well... hopefully my unease will prove misplaced...

As Mark Ritson says... It's good to TALK (er, or was that BT?)

How often do you hear a brand talking about 'putting the customer first' or 'built around our customers' needs'... but how often are those same brands actually talking with (or to use the more digitally-friendly word) 'engaging with' their customers. Frankly, openly, and with no agenda other than understanding.

As usual, Mark Ritson puts his finger on it in his latest Marketing Week column, and the answer is 'not often enough.' And, as he says,

'People come up with all kinds of excuses not to talk to consumers: they don’t have time.; it will cost money; it will stifle innovation; Steve Jobs didn’t do it. The excuses are endless.'

He goes on to say:

Forget about content marketing and bloody Facebook for a minute. They are mere cake decorations on the top of the massive gateaux of market orientation.

And yet (and perhaps this is semantics) -- shouldn't we be even more interested in talking 'with' our customers? And isn't that something digital interaction can allow on a greater scale than ever before? 

So by all means and absolutely go talk with your customers in person. And at the same time, use social media, which can certainly be more than mere decoration.

What makes both of these interactions valuable? Intelligent listening. It's not enough to talk to your customers -- how often have we seen customer views discounted by someone who's *convinced* their idea is the right one, and their customers just don't know it yet (which of course then gets bolstered by the Steve Jobs example.)

So, talk with your customers and listen intelligently -- using *all* channels at your disposal. And then distill that information, sometimes conflicting, sometimes disjointed, into a cohesive strategy that *also* takes on the knowledge you as a producer has built, but in a way open enough to new ideas.

Easy-peasy, right?