Fire By Sea

The ceiling. I’m close to the idea of what I’m doing, almost there. Once I get there the real work begins. Not just a bunch of thinking and reading but actual publishing. Here’s what’s left to do:

• Pick a theme or niche. Right now I’m not yet at a point of narrowing down, but it’s inevitable. There’s no way I can assume leadership over a company that thinks it can publish anything and everything. I do know that I’m drawn to “the common blogger” — people who would otherwise not be writing if it weren’t for the ease of self-publishing. Of course they’d need to be doing something really interesting.
• Streamline:
  • Revenue model: how will I make money? Sale of ebooks, monetization of companion blog with certain titles. Community built around “the niche” with premium content, see here: http://www.hayhouse.com/wisdom/
  • Marketing strategy: I see a threefold strategy:
    • Social media to build the tribe, word of mouth and human connectivity.
    • SEO to dig into the search market — I want my titles to come up in the engines under appropriate terms. PLUS I think there might be some value in keyword research when brainstorming titles.
    • Affiliate marketing to help with sales and word of mouth. I’m still a little iffy on how this works, but from what I know I could leverage affiliate publishers (on well-established, relevant niche networks) to help push titles. I don’t see publishing companies doing this; it’s mostly cash grab web marketers with no editorial savvy.
  • Formats: ebook primarily, which includes PDF, Kindle, whatever else there is. Then using some service to print physical books…Lulu, Booksurge? Hmmm…. Then there’s blog, which will either complement ebook or replace it. Blog can be monetized, too.
  • Retailer relationships
• Build social platform. All about digging into the right people and being present. Wouldn’t hurt to show my face sometimes, too.
• Connect with people and the top and draw people in from the bottom. Goes with the previous point but also considers the people I’m catering to: readers AND writers. Two segments: sell readers titles and poach good writers.
• Keep that blog going. Right now it’s my lifeline and it’s likely to remain that way.
• Start a small, localized publishing project. Aloha Web Marketing — Web Marketing for the People of the Kona Kohala Chamber of Commerce. Create the perfect ebook for them, draw them into site with a download, etc.
• Do I need a partner, and if so, what for?

Making friends when you’re in the thick of parenting and the early tickles of middle age is just plain difficult.

So many criteria for it to work: husband and wife have to like each others’ husband and wife. If you’ve got kids, they have to have kids, too. Then there has to be some compatibility with your kids.

That right there is a lot, and in most cases a deal killer. But, if you can make it past that, the real hard part begins. There has to be instant chemistry between either the two wives or two husband, or better yet — both (ultra rare).

But chemistry isn’t everything — there is a value system we put potential friends through. Do they meet our character values? In our experience, this is where 99.9% percent of friendship effort come to a halt. People you courted as hopefuls suddenly seem hollow.

It’s a funny dance we do as couples, something akin to speed dating. We go out and mingle and sample different couples to see if there’s a fit. We lay out our wares on the table, check theirs out, and if we like what see one of us suggests the next move.

It’s a hard to imaging having to make friends this way, but in the end I’d step forward to defend this practice. When you’re a kid, making friends is no problem at all – you start talking and doing shit right away. No petty chat.

For obvious reasons, friendship in adulthood is tougher.  You may meet some cool appealing people — people who seem great to be friends with — but at some point you have to assess if you want to pursue it, all without being rude.

Sometimes you just have to say to yourself, “That seems like a good person, but I’m going to pass. I don’t see a way out, let alone a way in.”

I don’t care much about class, as in social status and wealth. I’ve spent a fair share of time around people with money — call them millionaires — and the money is just another layer (in many cases a challenge) added to the flaws in their character.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the money elevates what rich people think of themselves — a sanitized privilege in which the deeper levels of humanity quietly slip out the door. What I mean by this is there’s the cordiality, the intellect and the ability to listen, but when it comes down to it…let them eat cake.

These are the ones I know personally, but I know of other wealthy people who use their wealth to push a cause; say, Bill Gates. He’s accepted his lot in life and turned it into a grand purpose that transcends his very existence. True wealth.

But don’t get me wrong, I’d be into striking it rich. But not for opulence nor indulgence of a hobby. I’d try good things and share good things, but be ultimately committed to the inner path. Simply, to be true to the same person I am now that I would be then, but even better.

And then, there’s that calling to greatness. Bill Gates has heeded it. Barack Obama has heeded it. When do I get my chance to heed it?

Why, I can’t even escape the horrors of shopping at Costco — the price of food depresses me. The cost of all good and services depresses me. I honestly have no clue as to how I’m going to pay my mortgage and bills this year — I simply don’t have enough cash flow to sustain this.

Yet I keep going. There’s something there, I just know it. It’s still formless but it’s there. The millionaires I know don’t emit this feeling. I don’t envy them.

I just can’t get enough of publishing.

One thing I’m afraid of myself is I’m too macro focused — too big picture, too abstract. This often ends up with lots and lots of ideas but very few completion let alone results.

In the context of my publishing vision, specificity and specialization will be key. I can’t expect to “make it” with a bunch of continuing lofty ideas. I’ve got to get down and dirty. Gary Vee talk s about specificity, about the need to narrow down and focus on completely dominating one small thing instead of the big thing.

Today I was thinking: how about publishing for bloggers? How about appealing to the bloggers who are sick of  thinking they put half if not more of their energy into “making money”?

And what of the way blogging started anyway? Seems like it was marketed (which is strange) as a make money scheme. That would be like writers advertising “how to make money as a writer.” It just makes no sense.

Publishing people are just as interesting. They have a certain feel about them, too, that I can’t even begin to describe. From them it’s good to learn the basics of the process of book publishing (agents, royalties, distributors, editors, etc.)

On the other end, if I may ponder, are bloggers completely into the craft of their writing. But that’s not healthy, either, necessarily. (BTW I should refrain from that kind of labeling). A blogger needs a market, at least the kind I’m talking about.

The blogger I have in mind is someone who cares about their writing and their subject matter way before anything else. They would rather die publishing good stuff poor than publish trash rich.

Essentially I want to break away from the pack and lead a tribe of concerned self-publishers, not money chasing opportunists.

The only trick will be providing an incentive for them.

* I can’t tell you how good it felt today NOT signing up for Copyblogger’s 3rd Tribe forum. Yawn, another training forum where the people on top collect the money of people who keep believing they’ll make it one day. People who think they need all that advice when all they need is the guts to do it on their own. Note to self: never follow the how-to salesman business model. Stick to publishing. Make money from that.

Well I’m definitely an outsider, an outlier. I hope that will work in my favor. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to fit into this gargantuan system, and I need to organize my thoughts right here, right now:

• No matter how advanced techy things get–like ebook readers and ipads and shit, people will still rely on human editors to procure their reading material (content). There is no replacement for the work of humans in the publishing world.
• In the current publishing industry, the top down looks like the same old people, practice and politics. They scout for good authors and work out deals to publish books and then sell them to distributors.
• I’m trying to figure out where they’re not looking for talent, and something tells me many of them are bloggers.
• At the same time I see a lot of bloggers, or at least the blogging mentality, focus so much on the money making part and not enough on the publishing part, so you get half-ass blogs trying to make money. Copyblogger as a leading blog pretty much sets this tone. I don’t like it and I think there are many jaded but otherwise interesting and talented bloggers being left out.
• I’m confused about the quantification of content in a blog or web format, and how people pay for that. Right now Amazon charges only $.99 per month to read a particular blog on Kindle, and I don’t know how much the blogger gets from that. 10 months = price of an ebook at $9.99.
• I like what Harper Collins did with Savvy Auntie: found a blog and made it into a book.
• Perhaps Wordful can represent the small but promising/talented blogger. Not sure how I’d setup payment.
• Someone like Shoemoney could use some publishing savvy. He has what could be a good product but it in my opinion it comes out looking like shit.
• Another idea I had — an older one — was to find niches and then build content around the niche. This would involve finding writers, managing them, paying them and overseeing and promoting the site via SEO and social media.
• Also not sure if I want to get into book publishing.
• I do know that my idea needs to be radical and unhindered. I need to see what people want, then build something around that.
• The problem I’m solving: profitable publishing in a digital world.
• As far as the choice between blogs, books, magazines, newspapers and other I prefer to work with blogs and books.
• Perhaps making the blog the next book?

The theme is progress, the variation is the ways you approach the theme:

• Physical: controlled eating, running, yoga, surfing, stretching, swimming, walking.
• Artistic: writing, looking at the stars and moon, listening to music, listening to singing, dancing
• Intellectual: reading, writing, learning, questioning, analyzing, thinking, conversing, purchasing.
• Emotional: loving, listening, talking, holding, consummating, enduring.
• All of the above: fathering, making money, being happily married.

Adhering to all those things and even more by no means guarantees progress, because progress and any other goal requires intent.

What are the variations on intent?

To improve my writing as an art form is one of the more obvious and expected answers. I have a lot of catching up to do with whatever talent I think I have and the actuality of superbly-crafted writing. This can only be accomplished by, simply, writing more. Right now, words and me don’t get along like we should, and I want them back at their rightful allied post.

Moving up from that (and I do mean up, not just next) is to develop the discipline to convey clarity in one sitting, within the boundaries of a single post. Thus these 300 or so word posts. I am trying to write each of them as a vignette, complete and colorful and compact. Some days I know I’m being sloppy. But since this is not going to press, I keep The Editor locked out for the most part (he’s only allowed in for some dusting).

Next up from that is to develop my voice.  Writing is my voice.Without that voice, nobody will listen. I’m frankly getting sick of consuming other people’s voice, getting steamrolled by their words. So I’m damn ready to get in tune and crank up my own (voice). I have very high expectations for you, voice. Very high. I’m going for part-Hemingway, part- Langston Hughes, all Charles Bohannan.

Now beyond craft and voice and discipline and clarity is something much greater, and that is the impetus to write. Unlike the other three reasons, I don’t want to write just for the sake of writing, or to merely be heard, or to be indulgent and literary. Anyone can do those things.

I actually have something to say. I have a reason to write, and that’s better than writing for the sake of writing or writing because I have to. Writing is the only way I can get whatever message inside of me across to people.

I’m the type who writes to live, not lives to write.

I’m at a point where I must make a selection between things I need to do to accomplish my goals. At work, I’ve narrowed down the field from about 10 things now to four, one obligatory, with the future option to drop one, leaving me with three. Of course one option is the one I truly want to pursue full-time, and that is what I’m ultimately after.

With that set, the focus strategy comes into play. How can I climb out of mere task completion into a realm of actionable vision? How can I fuse disparate elements of my life into one powerful flow? I accomplished this before in my early 20s but the problem was that I wasn’t doing anything important with my life.

One curious strategy is what I’ll call “riding the wave of greatness.” I seem to experience incredible, awe-inspiring moments or encounters with greatness and people that have a mass effect on me, but it only happens, say once a year or even less.

Why can’t I start manifesting this greatness as much as possible, starting with once a month, then once a week, then per day, and hell why not just embody pure greatness itself so I can pass it onto other people?

With selectivity, less is more. The less things I have to focus on, the better I’ll become at them. That’s pretty elementary. The less (harmful or useless) people I can eliminate from my life, the less problems I’ll have.

Selectivity is about temperance and discipline and truly seeing what it takes to succeed. It’s useless to become all things to all people, but we constantly seek recognition from as many as possible.

I’m okay without small bits of recognition. I’m okay knowing people aren’t yet paying attention. What I’m not okay with is losing my freedom to  select my destiny. There is no substitute or consolation for lost freedom.

It’s one thing to teach goodness—morality, kindness and responsibility—but something completely different to teach greatness. You can’t do it and it can’t be forced. Especially on children, and extra especially on your own children.

Lead by example is the first thing that comes to mind. Another is through stories of other great people. But how do you actually sit your child down and tell them how to believe in the greatness within themselves, to think and act above and beyond what is expected?

Something tells me this takes years to do, through adulthood; and, greatness comes in many forms. It’s my job to spot it and nurture it through example and dialog and the occasional lecture (funny those three different classifications).

When I look back to my childhood I don’t ever remember being drawn to anything but fun and games and girls. Bad parenting aside, I don’t remember feeling like I wanted to go and change the world. These feelings must come later…?

Teaching greatness is like trying to teach creativity (they could be one and the same): you can’t do it. Instead it comes down to helping the student eliminate the constraints that prevent them from unleashing their creativity.

Such as: keeping a future focus, letting them enjoy something with sense of privilege, practice an art of any kind allow them to pursue their passions.

[By the way I keep dozing off as I write this…]

The underlying truth is kids don’t process or appreciate what you’re saying. I mean, who the hell wants to listen to another parent lecture when they could be out and about with friends, exploring their world and everything in it.

[It’s amazing jumping back and forth between dream and waking state. Not fun, but definitely interesting. Not recommended.]

Such are the beauty of children.