The Corner: How Amazon’s KDP Select Saved My Book

The Corner: How Amazon’s KDP Select Saved My Book:

I learned that the Internet is a very, very noisy place, and that just about everyone is selling something. I learned that people aren’t sitting around thinking about your book as much as you think and hope they are. I learned that all this time we worry about social media is probably best spent worrying about something else — like writing books.

Much like I will never quite understand why my So You Want to Go to Law School video went viral the way it did 16 months ago, I don’t know exactly why my book finally took off the way it did.

[Finding a large enough audience is clearly the number #1 problem. I doubt this will ever change. Which leads back to this. Be true to yourself first. ]

Source: Daring Fireball

Value | The Cynical Musician

Value | The Cynical Musician:

Google’s greatest fear, however, is that the content that draws the biggest audiences might be placed beyond its reach. It has seen this happen with Facebook. That’s why Google lobbies against copyright enforcement and for and “open internet” – with the special Googley meaning that “open” has here. It doesn’t mean open, as in “open market”(where anyone can set up shop, for fun or profit), it means open as in “you cannot shut Google out”.

[snip -Ed]

Apple, on the other hand, as Andrew points out: “hasn’t spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property”.

Apple doesn’t need other people’s property to make money. For Apple, consumers aren’t the means to an end. They are the end. Apple creates valuable consumer products and charges a pretty penny for them. Guess what? People are buying. Not just the “atoms” (devices) either; the iTunes Music and App stores are doing pretty well, too. Apple sees value in intellectual property and is prepared to pay for it in order to sell it to its customers, increasing the value of its devices in the process. Apple’s thoughts are for the consumer and how it can provide the greatest value, that it will then charge for. Unlike Google, it has no interest in decreasing the perception of value, because that would mean that it would need to charge less. To Google, the value of what it provides is simply in how many eyeballs it gets. It doesn’t need to be great, just good enough.

[I don’t agree with everything here but there are lots of good points and even more in the comments. You can argue the various monitory theories, and for example Apple does make a fortune by owning its markets (iTunes, App Stores, iBooks, etc.) which do you require other people’s property. The bottom line, is that it is not easy to convince a large group of people that your art is valuable. It’s gonna take hard work and not a small amount of luck.]

The enemy of my enemy

The enemy of my enemy:

People who really just want easily-reproducible shit for free will always find a way to get it, and any publisher is far better off working on ways to make sure that customers can legally get what they want as easily as possible with the fewest restrictions. That should be the lesson that media moguls take away from iTunes

[Which was the lesson of iTunes from my perspective.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

A VeloDramatic Report Card

A VeloDramatic Report Card:

I took it to my friendly neighborhood Apple store and remarkably they confirmed they had a known video issue with the original mainboard. They wrote up the $500 repair then credited me for the whole amount promising a five-day turnaround. The next day, less than 24 hours later, the store called to say the repair was done and the MBP ready for pickup. Superb!
Now you could chalk this video resurrection up to luck, but twice during the year I had power bricks fail. The Apple mag connector is very cool, but like all cables eventually wires pull loose. Both times, with no prompting from me, Apple representatives replaced the adapters free of charge. In an age where service and customer loyalty are largely forgotten, Apple does all the little things to earn my trust. I don’t think I’m alone and that’s why Apple is doing so well.
Because of that experience my next laptop will be a Mac.

[Nice. Interesting changes for Michael this past year. Nice to see his business flourishing.]

Cut, Paste, Innovate – The Business of (Stolen) Art

Cut, Paste, Innovate – The Business of (Stolen) Art | The Cynical Musician:

The reality is that even the best tools are seldom enough and that although the Internet has solved some problems, the biggest ones still remain – the chief of those being the ability to make your existence known to a wider audience. Plus, the same tools that enable you to enter the market at lower cost also make it easier for bad actors to do so – lifting your work in the process. If Love Lieberman was able to make any money from Art4Love, he did so by exploiting the standard pirate advantages – costless access to a large and varied body of work and the risk-minimsation that comes with it. He could even tailor the site’s offer to reflect the results achieved – phasing out disappointing works, introducing new ones and promoting those that found the most buyers. No individual artist could do the same, since they’d be restricted to the work that they had produced themselves.

Whenever an online business decides to profit from piracy – and gets called out on it – we hear the usual suspects crying out that “rent-seeking Big Media” is trying to crush “innovation”. I put it to you that most of the time what we’re actually seeing is just the “cut (or copy), paste” bit.

[Powerful piece. Rings true to me.]

Fresh Goods: Soul Poles Bamboo Ski Poles

Fresh Goods: Soul Poles Bamboo Ski Poles:

Everything old is new again: Soul Poles has gone back to one of the original materials used to make ski poles, bamboo, and there are compelling arguments in its favor, aside from the fact that the poles look bitchin’. The fledgling brand, launched by World Cup skiers Erik Schlopy and Bryon Friedman, makes the sticks by hand in Utah from sustainable bamboo and mostly recycled materials, including a recycled polypro strap, recycled plastic in the basket, and 80 percent recycled aluminum in the tip. SP is also a member of One Percent for the Planet and Protect Our Winters and good on ‘em for it.

$99-$295 LINK

[Bamboo is everywhere these days. Nice.]
Source: adventure journal

The Paradise That Should Have Been | The Cynical Musician

The Paradise That Should Have Been | The Cynical Musician:

What about a band? Let’s just quickly go over the same calculations for a standard four-piece rock group (vocals, guitar, bass, drums):

Amazon and iTunes, single-track downloads: 7,250 a month; 87,000 a year.
CD Baby full-album downloads: 619 a month; 7,433 a year.
eMusic single-track downloads: 13,567 a month; 162,807 a year.
Rhapsody streams: 509,890 a month; 6,118,681 a year.
Last.fm plays: 30,933,333 a month; 371,200,000 a year.
Aside: Even if you got the entire Chinese web-connected population to listen to your song on Last.fm just once, you still probably wouldn’t meet your annual quota.

[And that’s for minimum wage and assumes no cost in the production of the music. It is to weep. Keep asking me why I no longer try and make a living in music… simple really. I found that I had to do other things to make a living, which was defeating the point. I also never thought the “Internet” was going to improve this situation in terms of sales or royalties directly. I saw it as an opportunity to market to larger audience more easily. And that it is. But that does not convert directly into sales where aggregation and a direct relationship with your audience is important. iTunes sitting between you and your audience doesn’t allow for this… or any other service of that sort. That’s why I think making credit card transactions simple is so key right now.]

Limited Edition Fall Peloton Scarf

Made of wonderfully soft organic cotton knit, the Limited Edition Fall Peloton scarf is a colorful way for me to celebrate fall cycling even when I’m not on my bike. There’s a special message printed on the fold, and is the first in a series of special editions from VividExcellence.

If you want one (and you know you do) you can send mail to “daniel.berlinger+scarf.sample” at gmail dot com. If there’s enough interest a run will be produced, so tell your friends.

If a run is to be produced, I will contact you with pricing information, and you will have the opportunity to place an order.

If nothing else, I’m lovin’ it.

The Rapha Cycle Club Opening

I love the quote they chose for the wall.

Rapha opened their pop-up, the Rapha Cycling Club last night.

I walked down there after work which was interesting in and of itself. Since we’re talking style, let me say this. Woman of New York: Should you decide to wear a clingy knit dress, or a tight shirt, etc. and clearly some of you do, consider the effect of the clothes you wear beneath the outer garment. The seemingly intended effect is ruined by bunched, loose, ill fitting, poorly coordinated under garments. To be fair I saw some equally egregious lack of coordinated efforts from men, but who cares? Just another slob.

rapha_club_entrance

Anyway. I got down there quite a bit early, and killed some time checking out the neighborhood. As it got closer to the right time I just barged in. I was quickly welcomed by Slate Olson and later Derrick Lewis. We chit chatted, and I learned that Rapha doesn’t know what they’re doing with their currently engineless broom wagon when the 3 months are up. Might you have a suggestion?

There was a lovely spread and some great cycling artifacts on display. Some of the Paul Smith items they collborations were on display including the lovely courier bag.

the spread

Not long after fondling that very bag I heard a small crash behind me, and someone had had the misfortune of placing the bag back on the shelf and having the shelf collapse to the floor. In the whirlwind that followed I met Michael from A Continuous Lean. I had met him once before at some other event that has faded into the dusty cobwebs of my mind, but it was nice to chat with him. A regular read from the design and manufacturing side of life.

The place really filled up as things got started officially, Stella’s were being served, coffee was brewed, and the food consumed. (I had a walnut the size of my fist…) It would be nice to catch a ride with some of these folks, especially if they plan to come up to Rockland (a classic New York ride).

Congrats to all the folks who worked hard to get the place going for the summer. There’ll be daily airings of the Tour etc. 352 Bowery, New York, NY 10012, (Down by Cooper Union) Phone: 212.228.1529, *Opening 3rd July, 2010.* The bar is run by ThirdRailCoffee who are planning some cuppings and coffee related things. There’s interior bike parking as well.

The Broom Wagon