I've recently become a Hugh Howey fan. I don't remember who recommended his Wool shorts (books, not clothes!) on Amazon Kindle, but I owe that person a beverage; in turn I've taken Hugh's peer-reviews of books to heart and purchased some of his recommendations. (But I'm not a mindless slave! Stop making me buy things!) Earlier this evening, I gulped down a recent interview of his with a joyous ferocity. One section struck an unexpectedly familiar chord.

That section talked about one thing makes e-book authors different from normal dead-tree authors: their personal interest in readers/customers. Since he has only Amazon as an intermediary between himself, and it's a thin layer, Howey has taken to forming relationships with some, conversing with tons.

In this, he reminds me of JMS, who during his Babylon 5 days, was a fixture on Usenet to talk with fans about the show.

But in another way, it reminded me of my own line of work: free/open-source software. When we build something, we put ourselves out there along with our code. Our names and much of our day-to-day workmanship are exposed directly to interested users. There is no opacity that comes from shrink-wrapping, lumping it together with other proprietary bits, hiding the innards, and selling it in a box (or on an app store). We show it all to our users; in return, they talk directly to us.

This has upsides and downsides, the former of which way outweigh the latter. When able, we can try one-on-one help, live on the ether. We can collect exact personal experiences, problem reports, wishes, without lossy intermediaries. When one of our favorite users has a problem, we feel personally motivated to jump in and fix it. When a user suggests a change, she becomes an informal colleague, and is endeared even more. When another succeeds in solving a problem with our widgets, we rejoice; when it fails, we feel guilt. Having exposed ourselves and our work, we cannot help but care.

This capacity for personal connection and the corollary pride in our work set our sector of the industry apart from the rest.