The newspaper industry is one of the favorite a whipping boy of a lot people and of course everyone one has the answer, even I've sounded off on it. The answers are not easy for the newspapers and magazines, but not many people are talking about book publishing. From my point of view some of the practices are archaic if not downright counter-intuitive. The one thing that book publishing still own are the lines of distribution, but the music industry thought the same thing and probably spend way more time fighting the future instead on embracing it, and learning new ways to make money.
Stephen R. Covey, author of one of my favorite, inspirational business books, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” maintains he owns the digital rights to his book and has released them on ebooks much to the chagrin of his publisher. One paragraph in the New York Times article really stuck out for me, Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman quote, in it he is referring Carolyn Reidy, the CEO of the publisher:
“Simon & Schuster is backward-leaning,” Mr. Herdener said. “Carolyn wants to corral readers, force them to buy what they wouldn’t buy if they had a choice. It won’t work. The better approach is to embrace the evolution of the book and give customers what they want. Forward-leaning publishers are going to clean up.”
I agree and I hope that people with this mindset find themselves in positions of influence at publishing houses or book publishers may find themselves in the same position as the music industry, in a losing battle with progress.
Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 in
Pushing through.
Oft times in my profession it's hard getting started. This does not change no matter how extensive you project brief, how well your creative brief is done and no matter how many times you sit down with the client. There are times when jumping into a project is next to impossible. This can especially be true in a large project which can seem even more daunting.
I had an experience with this recently. Here's what I like to try to do in effort to push through:
1. Define the scope. This is usually handled by a project brief. Sometime it’s hard to start because you don’t know where to start. With a scope of work at least you have an idea of what you shouldn’t be thinking about.
2. Think small. Most projects can be broken down to small task. If a task seems to big, spend some time in breaking the job down. The only thing to be careful about here is becoming a task robot, keeping busy does not mean you are working.
3. Make some good habits. If you have problems getting started on a job, dedicated time to it in your calendar every day or every other day. Like in the previous step it’s really easy staying busy, but if you schedule time to work on a particular project, you’ll start to make a habit of it. During your dedicated time stay focused. Here’s a tip: don’t allotted an unreasonable time to a project if you don’t have to. Make your dedicated time something you know you will complete. If it’s twenty minutes then it’s twenty minutes.
4. Don’t worry about being right just get started. After all it is part of the creative process. Also if you start at the very least you and your client or co-workers are both starting from the same starting point.
Love this graphic. I think it's clever and relevant but really there is one problem, not everyone knows 99 Problems by Jay-Z.
As a professional communicator it’s my job to make sure info-graphics can connect to it’s audience. Does this do it? It’s arguable, but it is still a very smart graphic. Graphic created by this guy
Finally saw Wall-e this week. The best part in my opinion is the closing credits. It basically showed the (re) evolution of man through art. Great piece.
The bad ideas that I am refering to here are the small ones. The ones not worth fighting against. Those bad ideas that are easier to get them done and over with.
In times like this I go back to what professor said once upon a time. He said that as creative people out job is to make even the smallest job and make it beautiful.
This is a little had to do with a bad idea.
However, I’ve found that even with bad ideas, at the very least I can make the execution beautiful. Shallow, I know, but when execluded from the conception process with these small bad ideas, sometimes you have to just get in there and do the work and make it beauticful.
I've set myself the task of cleaning out my delicious bookmarks. Since I've had the account for a bout 4 years, there are a lot of dead links, sites I really don't need bookmark and some rediscovering some wonderful sources of inspiration. Here are a few:
Embrace your bottom - This article is about spending time designing the footer of your webpage
Greatest internet moments - This site is a lot of fun. It’s amazing what held our attention when the web is young
The Art of Kadir Nelson - I love some of this guy genre paintings. It reminds me when I was a painter once upon a time
Not one primarily for contact information anyway. I think it's a waste of paper and a waste of time. The business card concept might be a dead one, but like email, what else is there? It's the currency of business contact information when meeting someone face to face. Electronic exchanges is the future, once there is a way to make the exchange easily or everyone gets hip enough for an iPhone so they can do that bump thing.
There seems to me that this transaction is superficial at best. My name is unique enough that a quick google search would yield not only contact information but so much more so much faster. Much more than having to dig out a business card. The business cards I receive go right into my contact database, along with any information that I remember about them that actually makes person on the business card not just a name, a number and a title. To me that is much more robust than a business card in a roledex.
I'm trying something new. It's called the 2 and 2. I believe that no project should last for more than 2 weeks, and a task that takes more than 2 hours is probably a project that can be broken down into smaller steps.
The 2 weeks thing I lifted from 37signals. They state that projects start to wane after two weeks and enthusiasm starts to fall. Anything longer than two weeks need to be re-thought. It’s made me think of very large projects into smaller discreet projects with an eye on the whole.
Conversely, any task that takes more than two hours is too long for one task and can probably be parceled out into smaller task, and that larger ‘task’ is actually a project. Especially if it’s not getting done.
This has cause me to have a lot more projects on my plate, but I actually find that I am getting a lot more completed.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Posted on Thursday, August 20, 2009 in Productivity
Meeting notes: Opportunities
This is a business card meeting. We were going over some mockups of some of our more ambitious ideas. While none of them were chosen, it always good in a company to get away with as much as possible. They may not choose the design this time, but with enough priming they may be ready for it next time.
This is a written exchange between myself: ever pragmatic, and my co-worker: ever optimistic
Day to day, I keep thinking something good is about to happen
Posted on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 in
Mailbox value: When it’s not about the content
We are ramping up are newsletters again at The Budget Fashionista. We will have two flavors, a person can receive a daily newsletter or a weekly newsletter. The daily newsletter are for the hardcore folks who would visit the site pretty regularly anyway, I think it will be the weekly newsletter that we are going to find the most return on investment.
Email newsletters have laughably low conversion rates as its industry standard. TBF tends to run about twice that, and the people we work with are usually delighted by the return. This could be that we keep a tight reign on our newsletter list, we double opt in and we make it painfully easy to leave. People who are on the list want to be on the list.
First I use twitter to keep up with people I’ve met and my peers in the creative and tech fields. There is plenty I like to share, and learn from and with those people. it keeps me relevant and informed about my craft
Second, I use twitter because I like people. I especially like people who do something that is totally out of my sphere of influence. Connecting with those people is obvious but it’s the not so obvious people that I would not cross paths with day to day that interest me. “What is a blogger doing?”, “What is a sustainability expert doing?”. “What is a writer doing?”
In addition to being interested in other people, the third reason I use twitter is to stay informed, There has been plenty of general news, and news that only a few people might find interesting gets around on twitter hours before television and days before newspapers.
In a nutshell, I use twitter because it tells me what I don’t know.
These are my notes from a toastmasters speech given on 7/22. The speech was on data storage, the tools that are used and the importance of in addition to storing your data properly the information that gives the data context should be stored as well.
Okay here is my three-step plan for the newspaper industry. The short answer is give it away, charge more and don't worry about being first.
Let’s face it, no one looks to the paper anymore for breaking news. Newspapers should get out of the headlines business, because it literally is yesterday’s headlines. Here is what I’d like to see from newspapers:
1. Change you paper to a daily tabloid and give it away. Sell as many ads as you have to to monetize the thing. I’d take a general news-in-brief from the New York Times over the Metro any day. What you are really looking here is for the numbers. Also why you are at it. Make it as local as possible. Even a story or two of what is happening in my neighborhood would be nice. You can get a blogger or two, they don’t know their power yet, so you can get them for cheap or free.
2. Give me a single-serving paper when necessary. Much like single serving sites, Print a paper that is about one thing and one thing only and make people pay. I’d pay $5, $7 10 $10 bucks for a dossier of articles that tell me why Iran is going through what it is going through, and context of why it is important.
This week would have been ideal for a non-sensational look at Michael Jackson, why he is important and while you’re at it, throw in the others who died last week, and why they were important. But whatever the case tell me something I don’t know.
3. If you must break the news don’t reinvent the wheel, or use the same one you been using. Just use the tools available like twitter and text alerts. Be discriminating and substantive about what you break, and don’t worry about being the first. Just pass along the information. In an environment where information is free, the best asset you have is trust. If I can trust you to just give me the information and give it to me now, I won’t look anywhere else.
There you are newspaper industry go to it. Check out my friends over at metaprinter, they think about this type of stuff all day.
