Tom Dullemond Interview - 7/7/2006

Tom Dullemond is the creator of Write Again and the owner of Asmoday Enterprises.

Carl Hose: Hi, Tom. I appreciate your taking the time to answer a few questions for me regarding Write Again. Tell us a little about your writing background and how it eventually led to the creation of Write Again.

Tom Dullemond: Hi, Carl. I’ve been writing since I was a little tyke, and have always had a great interest in speculative fiction. I did the obligatory writing of fantasy novels when I was a teenager, but didn’t really find a niche genre that I was interested in devoting my writing efforts into until I was in my early twenties. Now I’m a bit of a fantasy/speculative fic snob and eschew writers such as David Eddings for more interesting fare by the likes of Mary Gentle, China Miéville and Richard Morgan.

Around the end of the previous century I really started pursuing my writing more professionally, mainly in the area of short fiction, and I basically reached a point where I needed to keep track of my submissions, markets, etc. There really wasn’t anything out on the internet that caught my fancy/budget, and because my ‘real’ job is in software development, I decided to write my own software product. It was purely for my own use back then, but I realized as the feature set expanded that this would be a pretty good product for writers in general. The internet really allowed me to provide a distribution platform with no per-product overhead costs (in terms of packaging and distribution), and by handing out a trial package, I didn’t have to worry so much about people being unhappy with the product and wanting their money back.

A few years ago I changed the pricing model so that the basic Write Again package is completely free, although any prolific writer would probably want to use the standard/professional editions. Again, the fact that this isn’t my primary source of income, plus the low per-product cost to me of distributing the software, means that handing out a freebie like that is no big deal. I feel that providing decent customer service and free basic software ends up returning so much more in terms of positive word-of-mouth marketing for the product.

Carl Hose: There are a couple of unique features in Write Again. I’m talking primarily about the graphs that show percentage statistics on submissions by status or genre and the Suggest-a-Market feature. Are those ideas you had from the start, or did you develop them by brainstorming for features?

Tom Dullemond: The graphs were more of a gimmick. The development tools I was using had a graphing section, and I thought, ‘Hey, why not?’ With any database, the pretty interface that sits on top is only as good as the range of data you store, and so I focused on collecting as much information about a writer’s business as possible, in order to extract as much information as possible.

This is what inspired me to add ‘Suggest a Market’. Because I was actively using the software for my own writing, I noticed that I was going through a lot of redundant steps whenever I finished a project. In order to find a possible market for a story, I’d start a manual search for markets, based on the word count, genre, publishing history, etc. I realized pretty quickly that I was basically duplicating the project’s information by hand every time I performed a market search, and so it was a small step to skip that process and pre-fill all the fields I could from a given project, then kick off the search automatically.

This is where all the available underlying data comes to the fore: there is a lot of scope to expand this kind of automated search – for example, it’s entirely feasible to add some sort of priority to the results returned, based on your career-plan as a writer. If you wanted to build a relationship with a given publication, the search might order the matching market results based on how many projects a given publisher has accepted. Alternatively, if you wanted to expose yourself to the industry as much as possible, it would reverse that sort, so that the top match would always be the market in which you’ve appeared the least. Hm, that’s given me an idea, actually...

What if you could actually store basic directions in the systems settings dialog on how you wanted to approach the industry – say, for example, that you want to focus on being a novelist. If the system notices that you’ve been writing a lot of short fiction or poetry, it might start to prod you out of your procrastination by reminding you on start up with: ‘You’ve written 35,000 words in 15 short stories since you told me you wanted to be a novelist. This is 50% of your target novel length, however you have only completed 4% of your current novel project. You are a lazy SOB – please focus on your career, or change your desired career path.’ Of course, you would definitely want to be able to customize the kind of insults it threw at you.

OK, so I kid. But the basic concept holds true.

Once you start recording as much information as possible you can really start to extract useful business information about your career. Average words/day; projects completed per month – you could graph your project completion dates through the year and see when you’re at your most productive, so that you can implement some regimes to get yourself into the writing chair during your ‘down months’. As a writer myself, I recognize that self-discipline is the most important non-literary skill you can have, and so any prodding that a product like Write Again can provide is useful. Also, when I’m working on Write Again I have a legitimate excuse to procrastinate with my writing...

CH: In addition to your writing background, you obviously have background in computer-related and software design. What is that background?

TD: Well, it’s basically the job I have that gets bread on the table. I’ve been playing with computers since before I could write, starting my life on an old Commodore VIC20 (that’s with a whopping 4KB of RAM, kiddies...) that my dad bought when we were in Indonesia in the very early 80’s. He still has a program that I wrote on a piece of A4 in green felt-pen; I think it plays some sort of scales, I don’t know.

As I grew up, my interests ranged all over the place, but when I finally had to make a decision at the end of high-school about what I wanted to study at university, I opted for a double degree in Arts/Science that the local institution offered. Four years later I came out of the education system with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Medieval/Renaissance Studies, and a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering. I kind of tried a bit of everything in those degrees. Other than the history, literature and IT subjects I needed for my majors, I dabbled in Latin, Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and more. I just love language, basically, and programming utilizes custom languages just as much as the writing business does.

After my university days I worked for the state department of Housing for several years, turned to contracting for several more, and finally ended up in my current day job, as the manager for the IT development team for ABC Childcare, which is now the largest childcare provider on the planet. I started Write Again on the side while I was still working for the government back in 1999, as a way to get some creative programming energy out, as well as building myself a useful tool. It’s nice to have something creative for yourself, which is why I maintain my own little business for my writing and software. Also, it pays for all the cool gadgets I can’t afford to buy out of the domestic budget!

CH: The most defining aspect of Write Again is the clean layout, with so much of the information cross-referenced. It’s a big thrill for me to be able to glance at my computer monitor and see so much information displayed about my submissions. Also, I love the tree structure available for each submission under the Overview tab in the Projects Manager. Did you spend a great deal of time working the look and feel of Write Again out on paper before you started building it?

TD: Nah. I just started dropping lists and boxes on the screen, and when we hit version 1.2, I think, I changed over to the blue-ish interface with the fancy buttons, etc. I spent some time mucking around in Photoshop to get the button icons right, but the layout was more of an evolution than anything else.

Personally I think it’s starting to get a little cluttered, but in the process of redesigning the system I’m trying to maintain the ability to get as much information about a record as possible without having to scroll around or click on tabs. An example of this is the current ability to select relevant modules in the settings screen – if people aren’t interested in tracking projects, they can just switch that module off, and instead of cluttering up the screens with grayed out boxes and the like, it just removes that tab/button/section from the pages it would normally appear. It lets you tailor the interface a little bit to your needs as a writer.

CH: When I talk to software developers, I like to touch on the subject of software privacy. It’s become such a problem these days that many products have extensive, irritating registration procedures in place to protect against piracy. It’s a pain for legitimate customers, though I believe most of us understand the purpose of those steps. What is your take on those who believe they can steal software? How much time and effort goes into creating a program like Write Again?

TD: Well, you’ve prodded at a hornet’s nest, there. I think the term ‘steal’ as it relates to digital media is a bit of nefarious doublespeak, propagated by the ethically dubious mass media companies in the US. You can’t steal digital media in the traditional sense – you can only copy it. Everytime something is copied, the various business interest groups cry foul and count it as a lost sale – well, frankly, that’s a load of BS. Obviously a subsection of people who copy a digital file or application won’t go on to buy it, but I can say from personal experience that I’ve borrowed a friend’s physical CD to listen to, and not bought it as a consequence. That’s perfectly legal, but I don’t see anyone counting that as a lost sale, even though it definitely was. Maybe someone should fingerprint people when they buy stuff, so you can’t loan it out. Ha, you think I jest, but that technology was recently patented – by someone, I might add, who clearly has no idea what customers want.

With Write Again, I hand out the trial version for free, and give people a unique registration code when they sign up. If they choose to hand that code over to someone else, that’s fine – I can’t do anything about it – but of course the code is generated from their registration name, and linked to their email address. What it comes down to is that I will provide better service to people who have registered the software with me, and reserve the right to ignore anyone who has ‘stolen’ a legit copy of the product. I mean, the basic product is free, so please, go right ahead and ‘steal’ it. In the digital era, you are mad if you throw good money after bad trying to ‘protect’ your products from the distributed processing horde of bored hackers and script kiddies out there. You can’t do it. The only way to get around the perceived problem is by providing additional services to the people who have paid you money. For example, registered users will get a free upgrade to the new version of Write Again when it comes out, and assistance converting their data over. Other people will just have to get by. Fundamentally, piracy disappears as a business-impacting problem if you provide a product and service package for a fair price.

As for development, a lot of time and effort does go into a product like Write Again, especially when you start receiving suggestions for enhancements from your user base. In terms of that time being impacted by piracy? As a hobby, and not a life-and-death source of income, I can take a bit more of a relaxed stance against perceptions of piracy. Like all independent artists, the exposure is far more important to me than a measly $50 here or there. Maybe if the whole world took a chill pill and got back to being creative in art, instead of law, the global culture of innovation would be revived. Stuff like software patents and the Mickey Mouse extensions on copyright, not to mention the DMCA nonsense that the US is forcing down trade partners’ throats as a condition of signing free-trade agreements... Carl, you’re getting me all worked up – I think you’ve probably gotten the gist of my feelings on the matter!

CH: I really enjoyed the opportunity to review Write Again. Do you plan to keep the software on the market, and if so, are you planning any new editions?

TD: Definitely. The product, though it still works well, is getting a bit long in the tooth. The fundamental code base is now 6 years old, even though the interface has been updated and some new technology has been added. I want to rewrite the entire thing using the .NET platform, and with an SQL Server backend. Unfortunately family life has slowed down that rewrite somewhat in the last year, but I’m still excited by it. Having folks like yourself continue to show interest in the product is probably one of the biggest driving forces in getting it finished, because I believe that even now, Write Again is at the top of its game, in both features and price. I want to make sure it stays there, and I’m confident it can.

CH: Thanks again. I look forward to seeing Write Again grow.