Aside from generally loving the man and all he’s done and stands for, Fry was also an early mac-head and early on the internets doing the online thing. Then he vanished for a few years, and now he’s back and it’s lovely (a delight) to see.
which links to
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/96631-story-collection-soars-after-fry-tweet.html
which to summarise:
A book of short stories has leaped up Amazon's book charts [rose by
nearly 250,000% in the Movers & Shakers list] to become second only
to Dan Brown after Stephen Fry endorsed it on his Twitter feed.
And here is the thing - he’s got this huge following, invests his own time (and money) in his online presence, but doesn’t really benefit from it financially all that much, at least not directly.
On the other hand, he presumably doesn’t really need the money, seems to enjoy it, and it surely helps the Fry brand.
Yet the interesting thing is surely that one human, acting alone, via a free twitter account and without any organisation behind him has such influence.
It reminded me of one of my favourite Ted talks by Clay Shirky on institutions versus collaboration and following on in a similar theme Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody
ps. Thank you Mr Fry for your continued good will and wit :-)
pps. I wonder if Mr Fry would make more money in Amazon Associate referall fees from linking to his works or from the royalties?
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