Jan 23 2012
Apple

Thoughts on iBooks Author

Apple held a big product announcement the other day, which was of particular interest to me since I’ve been working on a book with a partner, and we’ve been stumbling through the process ourselves. Rumor had it that Apple was introducing an application that would make ebook publishing easier, and last Thursday, that’s exactly what they did. Well, kinda.

The application is iBooks Author, and it’s free from the Mac App Store, so that’s pretty cool in itself. Even though it’s designed to be used only for textbook creation, there’s a lot of “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” stuff going on with the app, in that we know we can make it do what we need it to do. But there’s this big hoopla going on about the licensing agreement included with the app, particularly this part right here:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:
(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;

(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

There’s been lots of pontificating on whether or not this was an overzealous lawyer or just Apple digging its heels in just like Amazon does with the Kindle, but I’ve got a different question.

I’ve been writing a book (well, several, actually) using Scrivener, because I love the way it functions. Let’s say I output the text to a Kindle file, and get the book published in the Amazon store, and then the book is happily found on Kindles wherever they happen to roam. Then let’s say that I output the text and import it into iBooks Author, add a bunch of videos and what-not, then push it to the iBookstore as a special “iPad-only” version of the book, does that count against me?

The way I see it (and I’m not a lawyer), I’d be in the clear. The EULA talks about the distribution of your work, and since iBooks Author was not the tool I used to create the Kindle version, I’m good — plus, I have files dating back prior to Thursday that prove the book was actually created in Scrivener, not in iBooks Author.

But am I looking into this too much? I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.

Jan 02 2012
Business

2012

At last count, I have three different websites, two public Twitter accounts, one anonymous Twitter account, two Facebook pages and about five other social networks to discuss my thoughts. But here, on my personal site, the one I’ve had the longest, I want to talk about 2012.

Although I can pretend that 2011 wasn’t one of the most screwed up years in my life, it absolutely was one that I never want to go back to ever again. I’ve had a few of those in my lifetime: 1999 — I made a bad call and lost every friend I had, minus a guy in Pennsylvania and his dog, a pair I still have yet to meet in person. 2007 — The death of my sister, Kara, at just 27 years old. 2008 — When my wife was laid off for the first of three times, her grandmother passed from pancreatic cancer and our dog had to be put down. And then there’s 2011, the year in which my wife and I went into financial turmoil and finally came out of it better in the end.

In baseball terms, it’s called a transitional year; a period of time when a team isn’t expected to do very well, but the time is necessary for the team to contend the following season. After the hell that was 2010 (with the only bright point being the birth of our son), 2011 should be this last step before a kick ass 2012. That’s the hope, anyways.

So to prepare for this new year, I’ve been getting together a few projects that I’m pretty excited about. I talk about them over at Whipps Industries, but here’s the general concept: passive income.

I realized last year that although I could keep things status quo for myself and my family, there’s only so much time in the day and I tend to get burned out if I don’t give myself at least a little time off. And yet, I need to improve my income because at some point in the near future, we’re hoping to have another child, and if all things go well, my wife will stay home for part of that time as well. To do that, we need to make up her income, and although it’s not that substantial right now, it may be by the time the baby comes.

To make up that income, I need to create money when I’m not actively working. I attempted to do this in the past by selling prints of my work, but it turns out that I’m more focused on building my writing business than my photography, because I feel it’s a more lucrative option. That sounds weird to me even as I type it, but when you see the amount of outstanding invoices I have for my photography work, well you’d understand it too.

So what is this mystery project? I’m not going to let it all out yet, but I can say that I’ve been writing a book with my friend Marie Look, and we hope to have it done by sometime in the first quarter of 2012. We’re 22,000 words in so far, and I think that we’ve got an excellent start on this really fun project. Once that’s done, I have two other ideas in the works. One which involves a lot of capital, the other which is more of a time investment than anything.

These things will all start rolling together in 2012, and my hope is that by the time my company turns three in October, that the book will be out, project two will be in full swing and project three will at least be started.

If all things go according to plan, 2012 will be an awesome year.

Happy New Year.

Tagged , ,
Dec 16 2011
Commentary

Smoke and Mirrors

I’ve worked at quite a few different places over the years, and at times there seems to be a sense that I’m spending time at a magic show. There’s always some kind of trickery being pulled one way or another, and it’s all an illusion — just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The biggest example of this was my time at 944, a place made up of some very bright people, but it was all smoke and mirrors. I tell this story all the time, but it bears repeating.

When you walked into the front office of 944′s HQ in Scottsdale, it was hard not to be impressed. Smack dab in front was a water feature with a 944 topiary, which just screamed “we have money.” There was always a pretty (if not beautiful) receptionist up front, positioned behind a zebrawood desk and modern furniture that was so modern that it was uncomfortable to sit in. Oh, and the 944 cover with Paris Hilton was there as well, just in case you had any doubts of who they were and how important the magazine was. For sure, people were impressed when they walked in the door — I know I was.

But 944 was really just like that fancy water feature. At first glance, it really looked cool — lots of detail, fancy rocks and modern zebrawood surrounding the base — but if you took a closer look, it was all just a façade. The zebrawood was really a laminate, and if you peered around the left side of the base all of it was peeling off. The water feature rarely worked, often leaving hard water stains on the glass that were almost impossible to remove. And it leaked too (right onto a power outlet, I might add), making it dangerous to work in the area, or even just walk by. Oh, and the topiary wasn’t made of real bushes, although I suppose that wouldn’t make much sense since there was no light to keep them alive. Regardless, the water feature was a joke amongst us in the office, and later, among those who were cast off like so much discarded trash when the house of cards all fell apart.

Although I’m fortunate enough not to be in a situation that’s full of smoke and mirrors today, I will say that I come across these people all the time. They always want to baffle me with their bullshit, and sometimes I just want to believe them. But every time I do, I think back to that water feature and just take an extra moment to take in my surroundings and see if they’re really full of shit. Usually when I do that, I can see the curtain, and behind it is a little man working levers furiously.

Dec 09 2011
Business

The 1099 Economy/Working for Free

I own my own business and I’ve been self employed for over two years now, but technically, I’m a 1099 employee at a multitude of different places. I do print work, web work, copy work, copywriting, etc, and most of those places give me a 1099 tax form at the end of the year so that I can pay my taxes on my own. I knew this would be the case when I started my business, because that’s how it was for the previous 10 years.

But not everyone is aware of the difference between being a 1099 employee and a W-2′d one. As a 1099, I have no rights. I am, essentially, a hired gun chosen to do a job. I’m not entitled to health care, unemployment or any of the other benefits one would get with a W-2, and if I’m told that the office is closed on a particular day, I only get paid if it’s a part of my contract — assuming there is one.

My wife worked a 1099 job for a bit, and I have several friends who are working 1099 gigs right now. They’re asked to work overtime, push the limits and get things done, but there’s no upside for them. The only perk is getting a paycheck, and sometimes that doesn’t even come.

More and more businesses are choosing to go the 1099 route instead of hiring people full time because it saves them money. Healthcare costs are ridiculous in this country, and just by cutting that requirement, they’re saving a ton of cash. And in a cash-strapped economy, every bit helps.

On a similar note, there are many people nowadays who are asking (or expecting) me to work for free. Sometimes it’s implied, sometimes there’s a wink and a nod, and others it’s just right there in the paperwork. I’m promised exposure, pride, a place of honor among their company, or a golden statue of a basset hound, but they can’t pay me money. “You’ll get a lot of experience working here,” they say, and I translate that to, “We’re broke but we need this done.”

Now don’t get me wrong, there are things I will do for free. I’ll do a consultation with a client so I can understand what I need to do to meet their needs. I’ll do some extra work on a document just to make my life and theirs easier. There are a lot of things I’ll do for free, but there’s a reason: It’s not really free.

Let’s say I come in and do a consultation with a client, and I do it for free. If I get the job, I’m not going to bill the person for that consultation, because that’s not the way I operate. But I could gain a client out of it, so spending a few hours working for free to gain a potentially long term customer is well worth it. I could either bill them for my time at the beginning and risk pissing them off, or I can not bill them and make thousands over the course of our working relationship. I think that’s the right call.

Or, let’s say I put in some extra work to make my client happy, knowing that I won’t get paid. Well, by making the client happy, I’m ensuring that my work with them is secure, something which no freelancer can have enough of. If an extra 15 minutes of my time keeps them happy, then it’s worth it.

But what I won’t do for free is just work. No, I won’t write an article for free just because you’re a startup. And no, I won’t take pictures of your car so you can put it online, because that’s not what I do. And frankly, when someone asks me, I find it incredibly insulting. I think, “Would YOU work for free?” Of course not. So why should I?

Sometimes I’m corralled into working with someone who is working for free, and that’s the worst case scenario, because it’s never really free.

A long time ago, I worked at a magazine where money was a problem (as it tends to be with any print publication nowadays), and so they often solicited contributors to write for free. It was a popular enough book that people would do that, because they did want the exposure to further their career. When I would get the document, I would spend, on average, twice the amount of time to edit that piece to the correct specifications, because the person was working for free and was usually not very good. But my job was to make it good, so I had to put in the effort to tweak everything they did and make it publishable.

Another time at another publication, I assigned a writer an article. When they turned it in, not only was it not what I asked for, but I was told that it would take “at least three weeks” for them to fix it and make it what I had asked for in the first place. Instead of that, I put in four hours of my own time to make it work, and got it published.

In both scenarios, the person doing the work was free, but the cost to the company as a whole was not. I put in more time working on the “free” person’s articles just to make them work — time that I could’ve spent working on other things for the company. As a result, I’d often have to work late to make up time, thus costing them more money. Had they just paid the person to begin with, it would’ve cost less overall.

I love my job, and there are many days that I would work for free just because it makes me so happy. But I don’t, just like you don’t, because I have bills to pay, a family to feed and a roof to keep over our heads. So please, don’t ask me to work for you unless you intend on paying me, because it’s just downright insulting.

Dec 02 2011
Commentary

The Bryce Conundrum

A few years back, my buddy Chad and I were doing some side work on another friend of ours’ trucks, installing an airbag kit and laying the truck out on 20-inch wheels. The thing was coming out pretty cool, but we hit a snag towards the end of the project, something that we hadn’t anticipated.

Bryce, the owner of the truck, wanted three things out of the project: He wanted to keep the stock bed floor, he wanted to lay the frame on the ground and keep his mammoth rear tires. Problem was, he could only have two out of those three things. If he wanted to keep the tires and stock bed floor, he wouldn’t lay on the frame. If he wanted to lay on the frame, he could keep the tires but not keep the stock bed floor. If he laid on the frame, he could keep the stock bed floor but he’d have to lose the tires. There just wasn’t a great compromise that stood out.

It doesn’t really matter if you understand any of the preceding paragraphs or not, because I get that it’s all technical jargon. However, the Bryce Conundrum is a fairly universal concept: You want three things, but only two of them can happen, and it doesn’t matter which two they are. I run into this problem all the time, and it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, or whether you’re a car guy or not. We can’t always have what we want, and sometimes we have to make a compromise.

The other day I ran into that situation with one of my clients, and I thought back to that day in the garage with Bryce and Chad, talking about the various options we had in front of us. In Bryce’s case, we ended up cutting the bed floor but keeping it as stock looking as possible, which became the best alternative for his situation. With the client though, we were stuck: there just was no easy compromise.

Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as taking out a Sawzall and getting dirty. If only that was the case.

Tagged ,
Nov 28 2011
Commentary

Business Model

Recently, I reviewed an amp named Stamped, which is a social network based around the concept of liking specific items and giving them a stamp accordingly. This app has made a wave across the Internet, mostly because it’s well designed and a new startup, like everything seems to be nowadays (not that I’m complaining). But with Stamped, one of the key complaints is that the company doesn’t have a business model. From Shawn Blanc under the “Cons” column:

NO BUSINESS MODEL, YET: Build a big and happy user base now, figure out how to sustain the business later. That seems to be the business model of choice for many new startups. It was Twitter’s business model, it is Instagram’s, and it is Stamped’s as well.

A few years back, right around the time that Square was starting up, I interviewed Jack Dorsey, the founder of both Square and Twitter, for a magazine I was freelancing for at the time. I remember researching the project, thinking a lot about how and why someone would start a service like Twitter, when there is no way to monetize it. It just didn’t make sense. So I asked him just that: How do you start a company with no idea how you’re going to make money? His response struck me as very profound, and I wish I could find it right now to quote him verbatim, but here’s a paraphrased version:

“You do what you love and then you find a way to make it work.”

Simple, right? That answer really made me think, particularly at that moment as I was just a few months into my new business, my son was not yet born and I was very scared about the future. Would I make it? Was it possible to make that kind of money? Could I support my family on this work?

What Dorsey said made sense to me, and I’ve held that in high regard for the past few years, just keeping it in the back of my mind on those days when the money doesn’t seem to be moving right and the writing seems to be up and down. I think about that and remind myself that I love what I do, and that’s the important part. I’ll find a way to make it work.

I don’t know anything about the guys at Stamped. Hell, I don’t even know if they’re guys, and all I do know is that they’re another startup with an iPhone app. Maybe they’re a bunch of hippies with a dream, or corporate robots with ideas of striking it rich in the App market, I don’t know. But is it my place — or anyone else’s — to question their business plan? To judge them based on an idea that they came up with?

Maybe what they’re just doing what they love. I’m sure they’ll figure out what to do next.

Tagged , ,
Nov 23 2011
Commentary

An Open Letter to Samsung

Dear Samsung:

First off, big fan. I currently own three Samsung TVs and a Samsung Fridge, and I just helped my parents buy a new Samsung LED TV too, and it’s super cool. Frankly, there aren’t too many companies out there that I trust for big purchases like that anymore, and you’re one of them. And up until recently, I was planning on buying a new Samsung TV for my office, a purely trivial purchase that I wanted to make just in time for baseball season. But now … well now I’m not so sure.

See, I trust Samsung products to work and work well, and that’s why I buy them. But I also trust Apple products, and I enjoy using them. In fact, I’m typing this post on an Apple MacBook Air connected to an Apple display, and I’ve got another Apple computer behind me. Frankly, the two big brands in this house are Apple and Samsung, which have worked in harmony pretty well so far.

But your latest commercial — the one for the Samsung Galaxy SII (video here) — well, it makes you guys look like a bunch of dicks.

I’m one of those guys who waits in line for new Apple products, and I do so for a few different reasons:

  1. They have a well-established infrastructure which I’m heavily invested in.
  2. The products are well designed.
  3. Each item speaks volumes about the quality and workmanship involved in putting them together.
  4. They’re easy to use.

With the exception of No. 1, I could use those terms to describe Samsung products as well. My LED TV isn’t the top of the line model, but it still puts out a gorgeous picture, was simple to mount, is designed well, easy to use and appears to be put together well. I feel like I’m holding a quality piece every time I touch the TV, and that’s why I paid more for it than the competition.

If I’m an Apple guy for most stuff, and a Samsung guy for the rest, how do you think it makes me feel to be called a sheep? To be told I’m a loser because I wait in line for the latest iPhone when the competition has something else out there?

It makes me feel like never buying another Samsung product again, that’s how it makes me feel.

Samsung and Apple consumers are the same people. We buy both because we want that kind of quality in our merchandise; the kind of stuff we’ll keep for years, or until a newer and better thing comes along. Why would you try to separate us like that? Why can’t we coexist in harmony?

When comparing statistics, I can see why you would think that your new smartphone is better than the iPhone, but it just isn’t. I’m not going to reinvest my cash into anything Android, because I can never trust where it’s going to end up. What App Store do I use? Amazon? Google? Some other one? I’m not that guy. And a bigger screen? Look, it’s more important to me that my phone fit in my pocket than being able to watch movies on a big screen the one or two times a month that I do so. Just going by stats isn’t going to help you here; you need to start from the ground up and make it awesome.

And if you did that, I would have considered switching sides to your product because it was better than what Apple has. But after I saw that commercial, I realized that you really don’t care about those of us who choose Samsung over the competition for our goods, we’re just Apple sheep. Sure, you’d kill to have your own following, but by calling the Apple people fanboys, you may have just cut off your nose to spite your face.

Guess the marketing department really hit that one out of the park, huh?

Sincerely,

-Kevin Whipps

P.S. Have you heard the rumors about how one of Steve Jobs’ last big “aha!” moments was the TV and how to make it work better? And how the rumor is that this new TV is coming out next year? If the rumors are true, I guarantee there will be a surge of Samsung TVs on sale at the same time — on Craigslist.

Tagged , , ,
Nov 11 2011
Hacks

Text Expander

I fought against using all kinds of apps in the past, and one of them was Text Expander. I didn’t see the need until a year or so ago, and then once I figured out all of the hacks it could do, I realized it was a huge time saver.

For example, in one of my jobs I have to date each image in a specific format. Example: 2011_11_11-PicName.jpg. That sequence is just off from my way of thinking, and I always have a brain fart whenever I have to title an image, costing me time in the process. Today I typed in a hack that really saved me some time. It is:

%Y_%m_%d-

That gives me the current year, current month and current day in the correct format with underscores between each and a hyphen at the end. It’s saved me SO much time.

And as if I needed more proof, here’s my current stats.

Text Expander

Text Expander

Being more productive and saving time is just awesome.

Nov 10 2011
Commentary

Speaking of Bullshit …

Here’s a hell of a Craigslist ad. Could I please work for less than 3 cents a word? PLEASE?

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/wri/2695148995.html

Tagged , ,
Nov 10 2011
Commentary

Bullshitters

I few years back, I really got myself in some hot water, and it ended up leading me down a path that I’m not too proud of today. Long story short, I was a bullshitter. I talked my way out of many awkward, embarrassing or dangerous situations just by manipulating the conversation effectively. When I was busted on it, I feigned ignorance but eventually, the house of cards all came crumbling down, and I’m still recovering from that today.

Today, I feel it’s very important to tell the truth, and that I have to keep my moral standards higher than I used to just to keep up. I make lots of decisions based on that new code of mine, and sometimes it’s not always beneficial to my bottom line.

I know a few bullshitters right now, and it always amazes me to see how they work. I watch how their mind is twisting things around to try to save themselves, and I almost feel sorry for them and who they are. I know their pain, and I just hope they don’t end up in the same situation that I did, lost and confused without a friend in the world.

I bring this up because I’ve been asked quite a few times recently to break my moral code, and it’s been quite difficult to take a stand. In some cases, it affects my bottom line. In others, it affects my personal relationships. In both, it puts me in a bad position.

But if I were to go back to the person I was, then what kind of example would I be setting for my son?

It means that I might just have to bite the bullet sometime soon and walk away from the situation. It sucks really bad, but I never want to see the old Kevin again, and right now I can feel him peeking around the corner, waiting for me me to fail.

← Older posts