Post Election Thoughts

Last Tuesday was an amazing day.

Whatever your personal feelings or wishes, I can't imagine that anyone could remain unmoved by the events of Election night. It was a historic evening.

Now the question becomes, "what will the next four years bring?" I've been encouraged by the emails I've seen from Christian leaders urging believers to pray for and support our new president elect. I would add that, while praying earnestly is a wonderful beginning, it's not enough. I am praying that God would surround Obama with godly men and women, intelligent and sensitive to His voice. My fear is that the christian community, through some sense of outrage or protest, will boycott Obama's administration.

In that light, I've begun to seriously consider applying for a job somewhere on the 2009 White House staff. I wasn't even considering it this time a week ago, but the thought has been growing in the back of my mind since monday. I think it's interesting that even back in June I was very clear that I wasn't supposed to make any clear commitments or plans until late January of 2009...

So I've begun doing some research and thinking about what kind of position I'd be interested in applying for. I'll keep blogging about this process as it unfolds, but consider this a formal appeal for prayer, thoughts, and support as I begin to walk this out.

Equus Information Services, Part 2

**Picking up from yesterday**

4. DRM

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and what it means is that the media we publish is not only completely secure and copy-protected, but that it makes it very valuable to actually encourage your customers to send the file to as many people as they like.

Because we're developing these products in a proprietary format (i.e. it's not just PDFs, mp3s, etc), I can choose to allow or disable copy and paste functions, printing, and drag-and-drop on as much or as little of the product as I want. Furthermore (this is the cool part), I can embed a payment gateway right into the digital product itself. That means that if I was publishing your collection of poetry, for example, we could leave the first 2 of 20 peoms openly readable, and then create a payment wizard that pops up when someone tries to turn the page to the third one. If they don't want to pay for it, no big deal, but that's all they'll be able to see. If they want to buy the rest, they enter their credit card info (or paypal, or bank account) right there, and it unlocks the rest of the book for them on the spot.

So if they like it, they can send the file to 50 friends, and each of their friends (because they view the file on a new computer) would have the same option to pay to unlock the whole thing. An entire marketing campaign can be designed around giving your audience incentives to send the product to their friends and family, which leads me to my last point...

5. Viral Marketing

The marketing strategy I'm developing begins with getting just 100 people to buy a product, with strong incentives to send it to 10 people they think might be interested (or to send 10 people a link to the website). 100x10x10x10.....you can see where this is going. Viral, community based marketing is explosive and exponential, plain and simple, as long as you can keep your product both appealing and inobtrusive (i.e. not annoying or invasive in any way). You actually develop goodwill and a stronger sense of community/participation as you get your product in front of more people.

So, why don't more people publish digitally, if it's so great?

Well the answer is the reason I'm creating Equus in the first place. Namely, most of the digital material on the web right now is crap. Most of it is poorly designed by people with no skills or interest in graphics, layout, etc. A lot of it is actually factually inaccurate, or at least pretty pointless. It's often a total crap-shoot, which is why people are still a little leary of the idea of digital material (calling something an "e-book" does not carry very possitive connotations these days).

Equus intends to help address that by developing a strong brand recognition for quality, accessibility, and accuracy. Basically, if it's published by Equus, you'll be able to expect a certain standard of excellence. The file will work, the content will be quality, and the design will be professional.

Beyond just the quality standard, however, I really want Equus to become associated with a certain way of thinking. Do you love to learn? Are you interested in a lot of random topics? Do you like to be stretched creatively, artistically, and intellectually? Are you always looking for opportunities to discover new ideas?

Yeah? Then you'll love Equus. Start by finding some things that interest you - a new album of Sitaar/rock fusion, a short documentary on relief efforts in Somalia, or a volume of creative photography (these are all actual things I've been thinking of publishing. If you happen to recognize something you're working on in that list...we need to talk ;-) ). From there, you'll be introduced to other interesting projects and material that you never would have known to look for, based on your interest. That's the long term vision, anyway...



So that's the (longer than I expected) breakdown of what I've been spending the majority of my time developing over the past 8 months. I know there's a lot of text to wade through (compared to my normal posts at least), but if you guys have any thoughts, ideas, questions, or suggestions, I would LOVE to hear them. Seriously, I would find it very very helpful.

And since I know there are a greater than average number of creative/artistic types out there, be thinking about Equus as a way to publish material. The format is ideal for smaller, bit-sized content, so you don't need to have written an 800 page opus, or completed your epic rockopra symphony yet. If you have something you've always wanted to create, though, maybe this would be a good time to take a look at it again. Just something to think about ;-)

Equus Information Services

I realized the other day that I mention "Equus" a lot on this blog, but have never officially said anything about it. So, I wanted to go ahead and give a run through of the company and its concepts, both because it's becoming a hugely important part of my life, and also because it's good practice for me to give talk through the current "elevator speech" every so often :).

Equus Information Services is the umbrella name for the sole proprietorship I established in January of this year. It covers anything technical or organization that I get paid for (working with dad on GDI systems, for example). But my primary focus is on a division within EIS, Equus Digital Publishing. (Keep in mind, this is all symantics at this point, but I'm trying to keep the company structure clear now, so that I don't create problems for myself down the road).

What is digital publishing, you ask? What a great question!

Digital publishing is similar to traditional print/media publishing (book houses, movie studios, record labels, etc). We help an author, artist, or euntrepenuer to has material they want to release think through the best format for that material. We help them edit it, and create the final version of the product. Once it is ready for release, we help them form a marketing and distribution plan, and then handle sales of their product, paying them a royalty for every purchase.

The difference is, as the name implies we only publish fully digital content, which is where things get fun because as far as I know, we're the first company to do that. It might not sound that significance, but the difference in format has massive implications. Let me go over a few:

1. Sucess Threshold
This is a term I've coined recently (although I may have picked it up somewhere and forgotten) to describe the "break even" point that justifies publishing a product. Basically, a publisher needs to be relatively confident that a book or movie or what-have-you can sell X number of copies in order recoup the expenses of publishing it and turn a profit. The biggest factor in determining a product's success threshold is the costs involved in getting it published, printed, and out to market so it can be sold. Pretty self explanitory.

Traditional print/media can have very high costs associated with this front end development, and the costs continue to rise. It's the main reason the various media markets have been contracting. It's becoming harder and harder for a publisher like Penguin Books, for example, to justify printing books they know will sell well, but have limited appeal, and it's becoming harder for them to arrange for the few remaining major book retailers to carry it on their shelves. Everyone is looking for the next Harry Potter or Twilight. A decade ago, 5,000 sales meant a book was well worth printing. Today, that almost guarantees that it won't see daylight, even if those 5,000 sales were a total "sure thing" (a small but entheusiastic fan base, e.g.).

A lot of smarter and more experienced people have written about "the death of the midlist" before. Niche genres like poetry volumes, short films, short stories, fringe music genres, etc are languishing. Given that they don't cost significantly less than blockbuster or mainstream products to publish, fewer publishers can justify taking them on, even if they are of exceptional quality.

Enter Digital Publishing! Frankly, it's stunning how inexpensive it is to create, market, and distribute digital material if you avoid having to produce a physical accompanyment. We're talking hundreds - or even just tens! - of dollars in costs, compared to tens of thousands. What this means is that Equus can justify publishing products that we're reasonably confident would sell in the hundreds, not just the tens of thousands. In fact, that's the business plan for the first few years.

2. Digital Marketing and Distribution

You have no idea how many headaches are instantly solved by the fact that our products are all downloaded rather than shipped. Everything from manufacturing agreements, shipping, product placement deals with vendors, and on and on. Aside from being rather complicated, the costs of all of those things add up quickly. In comparisson, a website capable of hosting files and payment gateways costs maybe $40/year....

But the digital environment also simplifies marketing and advertizing. Three words: Google click-through ads (ok the hyphen might make it 3.5). Rather than paying for ad space on TV and in magazines, and hoping you did your research well enough that a significant number of your target market sees your ad (but paying for it regardless), click-through ads allow you to place a short blurb through Google that is displayed in a column on the right of the screen whenever someone searches for keywords that match your ad. Which means that the only people who see it are ones who are already generally interested in the topic or genre of your product. On top of that, you only pay a small premium when people actually follow the link to your site!

There are lots of other options for digital marketing and distribution, but that gives you a pretty good idea of how significant this is.

3. Royalties

The current royalty-based system sucks. Badly. The artist that creates the piece works their ass off and gets 5%, maybe 10%-15% if they're lucky or already famous.

Yes, the publishing process is complicated, expensive, and important. But it's not 90% of the process of taking something from a great idea to a finished product ready to be sold, so why should publishers take 90% of the profits? Basically, they do it because they can. There just aren't any other viable options.

Equus' royalty system is based on effort. The entire 100% profit from a sale is divided between the artist and the publisher on a "who did what" basis. 30% is set aside for Equus, which covers all of the expenses of marketing, distribution, and ongoing support of the product. The remaining 70% is divided based on who handled the various aspects that needed to get done to get that product to market. Content development, formating and design, process development, and other roles all have a percentage of sales assigned to them. Once Equus agrees to publish something, a deal is signed on who is going to take care of the things that need to be done to make sure that the product meets Equus' quality standards (because Equus is also a development house that can help with as much or as little of the actual design and development as needed), and the royalty is determined based on that agreement.

Bottom line, if the artist does most of the work, they make most of the profit. The more work Equus developers have to take on to get the material finished, the more they take from each sale. Makes sense, right?

**EDIT**

This entry got much longer than I had planned, so I'm going to move the second half into a new post tomorrow.

Contentment

I'm under the covers because its gotten quiet cold. When I woke up with morning there was a full blown windstorm raging outside (pun intended, hehe). I haven't heard the wind run that loudly in a long time.

This is kind of how my life feels right now. My world is small and contained, not exactly the way I want it but full of good and wonderful things at the same time, and I'm content with that. Every so often I hear the world outside making noise, but I feel more like a curious little kid standing on his toes to see what's making all that racket.

A lot of my friends are really dealing with life right now. The last week was pretty rough on a lot of people I care about. It makes me wish this journey was easier somehow. I know that there's no other way to learn to trust than to live through seasons where trust is required...but it still just feels hard sometimes. I'm struggling to stay calm, if that makes any sense. I have to keep remembering to come back to center, keep remembering that God has me here, nothing is wrong, I don't have to understand it to appreciate it.

Dad said yesterday that some time soon I'm going to look back on this season as a rich and wonderful time that passed very quickly. I'm sure he's right, but at this very moment, I'm wondering exactly how long I'm going to be bundled up in my room by myself...

What a Beautiful Mess

I just finished recording a song!

My wonderful friend Blanche has been here visiting this week, and tonight we finally sat down to record some music together, which we've wanted to do for years.

It's really incredible the kind of quality you can get out of a mac running Garage Band, I was stunned. I mean, it's not perfect, but it sounds good enough that its easy to forget that we were just sitting in front of a laptop.

So, the only finished song we have right now is a cover of A Beautiful Mess by Jason Mraz, which also happened to be my favorite song from the night. The best part is that we recorded the whole song in our very first full take. As in, sit down, hit record, done. Blanche just learned this song a few days ago, and she just improvised this amazing harmony, because she's awesome like that.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting and just post the song for you. I'd love to know what you all think!

Oh....Danny Boy

This just made me really happy =)

"Those" Guests

I get so tired of people sometimes...

Today was not fun. I had to deal with "those" guests. Every year we always get some of "those" guests here at the Inn. People who come already determined to not have a good time, find fault, and who basically are dead set on getting as much of a discount as possible.

Things range from the ridiculously nit-picky to the utterly imaginary. This morning's list included:

1. Our path was not well lit enough, and very dangerous
2. The water in the sink didn't run strong enough
3. There were little bits of leaves on the floor (which they insist they did not track in themselves, even though the ground is, you know...covered in leaves)
4. The room was chilly when they arrived
5. The room was too hot when they went to bed
6. The sheets were obviously dirty (because, of course, our housekeeper would clean the whole room but just leave dirty sheets on the bed. That makes sense right?)
7. The foyer was a mess when they came downstairs, there were beer bottles everywhere (I found out later that the bottles were left by their relatives who were staying with them, who stood there and didn't say a word about it. Actually, they kept asking if I had left them....)

And on and on. It's just so frustrating because, as obviously ridiculous as it all is, there really isn't much you can do about that. You have to smile and apologize, and give them some kind of discount before they'll shut up and leave.

I think it comes with being a Bed and Breakfast. People expect amazing service and ammenaties, but want to pay hotel prices or less because we're in a remote area.

To be fair, the vast majority of our guests are nice, interesting people who say over and over how wonderful everything is, how it's much more than they were expecting, that they hope they can come back soon, etc. We hear that all the time, which is why it's even more absurd when someone comes in absolutely determined to be miserable. I can't imagine what it must be like to go through life that way...it must be exhausting.

I'm an elitist?

I'm beginning to suspect I might be a bit of an elitist.

I've been avoiding writing about the current political campaigns, although I've been following the process closely since the early days of the primaries. But lately things have reached such a low point that I'm starting to tune out. The increasingly negative tone of both campaigns is really getting old, and it only seems sillier in light of current affairs. They're both guilty of a little pointless mudslinging lately, although I have to say that the level of dishonesty and downright nastiness coming from the McCain camp lately has been particularly shocking and offensive (isn't this the guy who swore to run a clean and honorable campaign after getting shit-stormed himself by Bush in 2000? Seems like he of all people ought to know better).

But, as frustrating as it is, I'm enough of a realist to know that all of this is, to a certain extent, just politics. What has been deeply troubling me over the past week or two has been the responses of "normal" people around the country, many of whom seem only too willing to gleefully accept whatever their candidate throws out there, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, just because they like how it feels. Take, as an example, McCain's constant insistence that Obama plans to raise taxes on American families. It happened again in the last debate. McCain mentioned in passing Obama's plan to raise taxes, and during his 2 minutes Obama once again laid out very clear his proposed tax plan (tax cuts for 90% of families and small business tax credits/loans, with raised taxes on families making over $250,000 a year, as well as on coorporate income). Not too long after, McCain was talking about how Barrack plans to raise taxes on middle class families....what??

Now, if McCain has a legitimate issue with Obama's stated tax agenda, that's just fine. He should explain what it is and what he proposes as an alternative. But I am getting SO TIRED of his apparent belief that he gets to make up whatever facts he likes, as long as he just never acknowledges contrary evidence and keeps acting like they're true.

Another small rant along a similar vein, I was stunned when McCain criticized Obama for "voting against the funding of our troops in Iraq", (Barrack voted against a funding bill that had no stated time table for troop withdrawls) when he did the exact same thing himself on a similar funding bill that did stipulate time limits. Now again, if he wants to criticize Obama for insisting on a time table, that's just fine, go right ahead and make that case. But this overblown charge of "lack of patriotism", as if someone Barrack actually wants to cut off funding for our soldiers in Iraq, is just ridiculous. And what's worse, McCain knows it.

So....what does my little tirade have to do with being an elitist? Haha, that's a good question, I got a little sidetracked. The reason I started with that observation is that I've been getting increasingly frustrated that so many people seem content to just accept all this garbage without doing the slightest bit of research or fact checking for themselves (which is so easy to do these days). It honestly pisses me off that this kind of stuff really sticks for a large number of people, people who actually have little to no real information about the candiate they are supporting. The "elitist" part is that I'm getting really frustrated that my life is so intricately tied to the choices of a lot of stupid or lazy people.

I know that sounds really strong, but the funny thing is that I'm actually a strong supporter of the democratic process. It's just that in my mind, the ideal of the "democratic process" is based on informed citizens making difficult choices. And just to be clear, I'm not at all saying that somehow I want everyone to vote like I do, not in the least. I'm totally comfortable with people voting based on opinions and ideologies that I totally disagree with. I just want them to do it based on real information and some considered reflection, not this stupid knee-jerk, name calling political farce.

I've been thinking lately that it would be a really good idea to mandate a short, 5 or 6 question quiz about the actual policies of the candidate they want to vote for. I'm thinking of very general, multiple choice kinds of questions about the candidate's major foreign and domestic policy proposals. Frankly, if someone can't do that then I don't really think they have the right to cast a vote. As an added benefit, the canditates would be highly motivated to very clearly lay out their positions and use their resources to educate their supporters, or risk losing votes.

There was a good reason that classical democracies (including ours when it was founded) restricted the right to vote to those who owned property. They wanted votes to be based on sound consideration by citizens who had a real stake in the outcome, not on political manipulation of a large mass of un-informed people. And yes, I know that that kind of classism carries its own set of ugly problems (more than its worth I think), so I'm not proposing a return to feudalism or anything. I just think that we would all benfit from treating the right to vote as something precious and important, both a gift and a serious obligation.

See...I told you I'm an elitist ;-)

This is definitely one of those posts where I would love to hear people's thoughts.

A Jumble of Things

Here's a collective, "in no particular order" snapshot of my life these days:

• Fall is fully underway, in fact I think the leaves will mostly be on the ground in a week or two. But it has certainly been a beautiful few days. When I wake up early the view from my third floor window is really breathtaking, all cloud soaked valleys and early morning sunlight tracing the tops of trees. Grandpa gathered a huge trailer load of apples from a neighbors untended trees, and found someone in the area who owns a cider press. That's right, for the past three days I've been drowing in tart, delicious, fresh pressed apple cider! He made close to 60 gallons of the stuff =). I'm planning to make apple cider pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.
• October traffic in the Inn is picking up. We have a (mostly) full house tomorrow and for the next three weekends. I'm actually enjoying cruising around the kitchen fixing breakfast, chatting with guests as they come through. Its amazing how much more fun it is when I'm moved in up here. It doesn't feel like I'm just killing time on the job anymore, which is great.
• I've started really playing music again. I've found myself sitting with my guitar for several hours most of the past week. I love the tangible feeling of getting better, of being better able to play what I'm hearing in my head, of picking a song that I've always loved off of my iTunes and learning it. I'm even starting to write a few myself, slowly. It feels wonderful.
• I woke up today thinking about my story again. It's been weeks since I've had any desire to actually write. I've noticed this pattern pretty clearly in myself: I get a strong creative urge and a write up a few chapters, and in the process I stumble on new ideas, or discover holes or "blank spots" in the plot or characters that I didn't know were there. Then I go into a kind of "hibernation" stretch where I really have no desire to write, even as my mind comes back to the setting or plot points every so often. I muse and daydream. I usually get a flash of an idea or two that I really like, but it takes a while for them to sink in and become a real part of the fabric of the story. Then, one day I wake up and I'm just ready to go at it again. I'm excited and inspired, the pieces I've been feeling my way around have all clicked together into a whole shape. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to really make consistent progress forward...but every time I go through this cycle, the story gets richer and more refined, and my writing improves in general. Thankfully, I finally don't feel an artificial pressure to try and press through for some reason.

So, that's life for me, more or less. I've been very quiet lately, tasting and lingering on all the little pieces of this season of life. I've been sitting in front of a lot of fires, which always makes my world seem warmer. There are hard parts. Sometimes the silence feels more lonely than comforting. Sometimes I catch hints of the future, like a new scent on the wind, and for a moment I feel this intense urge to move on from here and follow it.

But mostly, I am content, and honestly that surprises me a little bit. It wasn't too long ago that I definitely wouldn't have said that, and I don't really know when that changed, but I'm glad that it did. Everything feels very subdued, but powerful. The melancholy moments all seem to be balanced by quiet hours where I feel more peaceful than anything else. Life feels like a gift, even the parts of it that I don't understand, and for the first time in a long time, I don't think there is anything I would change if I could.

My Place

For the first time in almost two years, I have my own place (two years...my how the time passes), and I'm a little shocked at how absolutely, amazingly, overwhelmingly happy it has made me.

The past two days have been equal parts moving things in and putting things away, rummaging through old boxes and drawers, and lounging in my new digs. It's probably been the best weekend I've hand in months. Every time I find a old favorite book, or a useful dish or piece of furniture, it's like digging up buried treasure. I'm actually looking forward to getting some posters and art pieces for walls again.

The only thing I haven't gotten to do quiet yet is fill my kitchen with food and cook a meal for myself, since I'm on this fast. But man, when the end of the month rolls around, I am going to cook a big, multi-course meal of some sort and host everyone up here for dinner. I can't wait.