Christmas competition: What did Santa say before 'Ho-ho-ho'?

As we're going away tomorrow in search of some sunshine, I don't expect to be posting much until the end of November.

Needless to say, I'm hoping that regular readers will come back when blogging resumes.

Meanwhile, here are two things to keep you occupied while I'm gone.

The first, and this should be more than enough to keep the keenest anoraks going, is to catch up on the 350+ posts that have so far appeared on the blog - just in case you've missed any. You can access these from the Complete Bloglist Index on the left (under 'recommended websites), or you can type names or topics into the search box at the top and see if there's anything here about whatever it is you might be looking for.

You are also warmly invited to turn your mind to winning the:

2009 CHRISTMAS CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION

Closing date: Midnight (UK time) on 21 December 2009.

Prizes:

1st: A signed copy of Lend Me Your Ears.

2nd: A signed copy of Speechmaking and Presentation Made Easy.

3rd: A signed copy (by Basil) of Basil's School Antics.

Further incentives:

Authors of the winning entries will be able to enjoy the glory and prestige of seeing their work posted here on Christmas Day.

The judge and jury (i.e. me) undertake to donate £5 to Wateraid for every entry received.

The Challenge:

The competition is based on something posted on this blog just before Christmas last year, which began as follows:

I’ve just received an email with Christmas greetings from the White House Writers Group in Washington D.C., which contains a nice little ditty:

Santa called the other day.
"I need a speech and right away!
It should sound new, but somehow old;
A message sweet, yet still quite bold.
My words must be both short and clear
And memorable throughout the year!"
Our writers worked all through the night
To get each phrase exactly right.
Then one scribe cried, "Ah ha! I know!
Tell Santa to say just, 'Ho, ho, ho!'

Rhetorically speaking, their use of repetition, contrasts, alliteration rhyme and a three-part list can hardly be faulted.

But, having just heard Santa using these very words 3,000 miles away from Washington, I realise that this memorable line raises another intriguing question, namely, what had he been talking about just before saying “ho, ho, ho”?

The reason for asking the question comes from many years ago when I heard the late Gail Jefferson talking about her fascinating and innovative work on transcribing particles of laughter, of which “ho, ho, ho” is one of several possible vowel sounds – such as “ha, ha , ha”, “he, he, he”, “huh, huh, huh”, etc.

The gist of Jefferson’s point was that which one of these gets selected often seems to be triggered by vowel sounds that had come immediately before it. Someone might say “he was stung by a bee – he-he-he!”, “he was locked in the bar – ha-ha-ha” or “she dropped a bottle of gin on her toe – ho-ho-ho”.

I didn’t catch what Santa had been saying just before he used the line that had been supplied to him by the White House Writers Group, so there’s scope here for a pre-Christmas creative competition.

This year, your challenge is to write what Santa was saying that triggered his selection of the "ho-ho-ho" form of laughter.

There is no limit on the number of words and no restriction on the context in which he said whatever it was that he said. However, some of the vowel sounds in some of the words leading into the final three beats of laughter must be consistent with Gail Jefferson's observation as summarised above.

A few more hints about how sounds can trigger subsequent word selection can be found in another post from last December about Gordon Brown's 'saving the world' gaffe.

Entries must reach me by email before midnight (UK time) on 21 December (via email contact in 'view my complete profile' on the left).

Authors versus publishers in the digital age

As many of you will know, there's quite a debate going on about Google's plan to make every book ever published available online.

Although publishers are making a lot of noise about it, they've stayed remarkably quiet about another wheeze they've been exploiting since the digital age got under way - and about which they haven't bothered to tell their authors.

Does a book ever go out of print?

As you'll see from the second box from the right at the top of this page, Our Masters Voices can still be obtained from Amazon. And I've long been amazed that it seems to have stayed in print for as long as the 25 years since it was first published by Methuen in 1984.

But the operative words here are seems to have stayed in print, because I've just discovered that, in the traditional meaning of the term, it hasn't really stayed in print at all

It's current publisher only prints a copy if someone actually orders one. In other words, it now falls into a category that didn't exist before the digital age, namely POD or print on demand.

Nor had such a category even been dreamt of a quarter of a century ago when I signed the original contract with Methuen (later taken over by Routledge, later taken over by Tayor & Francis).

When I raised the issue with the 'publisher' recently, I asked the obvious question:

"Does this mean that books never go out of print these days?"

"Well, er - in a sense, yes" came the reply.

"But didn't the original contract say that the rights would revert to the author if and when the publisher stops printing it."

"Er- yes."

"But you're saying that you stop printing it for however many weeks pass before you get another order?"

"Er- yes" (again).

"So does that mean that the rights never revert to authors any more?"

"Well, er (again) - if you wrote to us asking for them back, we'd probably have to agree to revert them to you."

So what?

If the digital age has incited publishers to do things that hadn't been thought of when they originally signed up their authors, it's also created new opportunities for authors to do things they couldn't have done in the past either.

I've just received the princely sum of £53.60 for last year's royalties on the book, which they're now selling at an RRP of £18.99 (or £16.54 from Amazon UK and $34.15 from Amazon USA).

Last year, world sales of this ('still in print') book came to a grand total of 51.

So, if the rights reverted to me and I made it available in digital form from my websites, and reduced the price to £10.00 per copy, I'd only have to sell 6 copies a year to earn more than the miserable royalty payment just received from the 'publishers'.

If I sold the same number in my first year as they sold last year (51), I'd receive £510 rather than £53.60.

An added bonus?

There's another reason why I'd quite like to have the rights back, which is that it would enable me to add new material that the various publishers who've had their hands on it were too mean to let me do in the past.

For example, after the 1987 election, I asked if I could add another chapter (based on a paper on it that I'd given at a conference).

"No", said the publishers of the day (Routledge). "Far too expensive to add any more to it and, in any case, it's selling quite well as it is."

So they went ahead and reprinted it, without the extra chapter, in 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1994.

Then, some time during the 1990s, an article in The Guardian generously referred to the book as 'the best ever guide to the way politicians speak', but pointed out (rightly) that it could do with updating. This must have woken the publishers up, because they suddenly phoned me, for the first time in years, to suggest that I should update it with more recent examples of political speakers and speeches.

But by then it was too late and would have involved far too much work for too little reward - and other commitments meant that I simply didn't have the time.

Now, however, having written two more books on public speaking, not to mention more than 3oo blog posts on the subject, I think I'm ready to do quite a reasonable 'update'.

But I don't want to do it for them, even if the previous offer still stands.

Nor do I want to revise the original, as I'd rather it stayed available as it was in the first place - but with additional chapters on how political communication has changed since 1984.

Advice please!

So, to quote Lenin, what is to be done? And here I really would welcome advice from readers on the two main options:

1. Should I leave things as they are, keep up the boastful pretence that one of my books has stayed in print continuously for 25 years and receive an annual pittance in royalties?
2. Or should I get the rights back and make the book available in electronic form, at a lower price and with the addition of new material on what's changed since 1984?

Any suggestions, gratefully received on a postcard, in the comments section below or by email (via 'View my profile' section, above left).

Hypnotic eyes

After thanking Tony Benn earlier today for his lifetime contribution to my career, I was not intending to post anything more about him for quite a while.

But, having invited comments about the yesterday’s video clip on Twitter, replies came in from a number of people who had noticed something about his eyes and/or eye movements (for which, thanks to Olivia Mitchell, Marion Chapsal and Martin Shovel).

I was fascinated by this, because I’d originally thought of adding a note about his eyes to my comments on yesterday's video clip - pointing out that, in the parts of it where we can actually see his eyes, he doesn’t blink at all.

I didn’t mention it because I thought the post was already quite long enough. But the reason it had crossed my mind was because of of something else I’d written about Mr Benn 25 years ago.

Mad staring eyes?

‘… his more vindictive critics sometimes claim he has ‘mad staring eyes’, a point he has occasionally even joked about in some of his own speeches. In fact his eyes are rather large, and this may actually be a much more important communicative asset than he or his critics realize. It presumably means that more people will be able to track more of his eye movements over a greater distance than is possible in the case of speakers with less prominent eyes. The rate at which Mr Benn blinks his eyes while making a speech is much lower than is the case with most other orators, and this may further contribute to visibility of his eyes … which has probably contributed to his gaze being described as ‘staring’ ('Our Masters’ Voices', pp. 91-92).

Spellbound?

Some years after that, I met someone whose wife worked as a nurse in a mental hospital, where there was a locked ward for severely disturbed patients. Bolted into the ceiling was a TV set that was kept switched on more or less continuously, even though it seldom attracted much attention from residents who spent much of their time wandering around the room in different directions.

According to the nurse, there had only ever been one occasion when she’d seen all of them gather together as a group and gaze up at the the TV on the ceiling at the same time. It was during a live broadcast from a Labour Party conference, where there was one, and only one, speaker who seemed to hold them ‘spellbound’ for quite long periods and in a way that nothing else on television ever did.

By now, of course, you'll obviously know exactly who it was. But at the time, I remember being totally amazed, flabbergasted and almost a little stunned to hear that even this audience was held in thrall by the power of Tony Benn's oratory.