He nails it:

“2. There are six billion people in the world. Even if your market is hand-made spoke shaves for left-handed woodworkers, there are more people in your market than you can ever hope to track down.”

I have a Google news feed set up for e-books so I can keep up with the evolving e-book story. Recently there have been a number of interviews with CEOs of major publishing houses in which they dismiss e-books and claim that print will be around for a long time. This makes me wonder what planet they live on and where there strategic focus lies. It seems focused on maintaining the status quo while reality is moving in the other direction.

Ten years ago I co-wrote a book on kitchen design for a mid-size press (Taunton). They just released it as an ‘e-book’. Unfortunately they did not actually do an e-book, they created an enormous PDF file, belying their understanding, from a strategic POV, of what e-books mean. Then they used an ‘other rights’ clause in my pre-Internet contract to set royalties at a rate far below e-book standards. If the book wasn’t outdated I’d be more outraged- instead I can only shake my head at their stupidity and lack of vision. They have an incredible backlist that is perfectly suited to developing interactive books for tablet devices like iPad- home improvement and how-to books that are not outdated.

The point here is that I think that emerging new publishers have an amazing opportunity to out-distance the dinosaurs, if we stay out in front of the technology. Correct xhtml formatting, innovative direct to consumer marketing, flexible pricing, use of digital distribution systems that are highly trusted like Apple/Amazon/B&N, creative application of embedded links, media and interactivity- these things, when combined with vision give even a tiny start-up like ours enough lead time to establish a foothold.

While the dinosaurs fight for turf the tiny mammals take to the trees and start making spears.

I read this thought-provoking post by Paul Graham of Y-Combinator fame this morning (thanks to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for the link) and shared it with several friends. It’s a simple premise: We tend to have a ‘top idea’ that takes up a lot of our primary thinking energy. Paul identifies your current top idea as what you think about when you’re taking a shower.

The kicker here is how we let lesser ideas inhabit this space when we should in fact be focusing on the most important thing we need to work on. His example is the entrepreneur who is trying to raise money and how that act of raising money supercedes the act of making their business work to the point where the business becomes secondary. They have lost focus. Money is often one of these distracting ideas as are emotional situations, stress, etc.

When you are able to make your passion your top idea you are telling your subconscious to let loose and run with all kinds of related ideas. I think that if you are doing a start-up or starting anything new, one test of your passion is whether that idea can stick as your top idea. If it can’t or you are constantly fighting off reasons why it won’t work then maybe it is not your passion.

I like going through mental what-ifs and problem-solving with 24PageBooks. It is literally a pleasure to have time to think through aspects of the project (it’s a ‘project’ until we launch in September- only then do we find out if it is a ‘business’).

Yesterday Amazon announced that for every 100 hardcover books sold they sold 143 Kindle versions of the same titles. This is the tipping point for the publishing industry and they are not going to like it. Just as iPod/iTunes killed the CD business (and record stores), eBooks are the end of dead tree print books except as  nostalgic novelties or collectibles.

I have a daily Google News search set up for eBooks and it is a chronicle of extremely rapid and historic change. Libraries around the world are starting to lend eBooks. The format wars continue with incremental differences designed to lock buyers into a relationship with B&N, Amazon and Apple- there are others but I think they will be marginalized by the big three. In any case it hardly matters when you can get compatible reader apps for virtually any device.

In other news Apple released a small upgrade to their iBooks reader that now supports video and audio embedding and zoom touch on photos within eBooks. As publishers we have pretty interesting ideas about ways to expand the capabilities of 24PageBook titles with these additions. Though the books may be brief, the tools and resources you can access via each title mean they are not shallow. I’ll be sharing more about the use of interactivity in our eBooks as we near our launch September launch date.

I’ve spent some time in the Bay Area (and will be there this weekend) so I understand the weather issue. I also understand the cost of rental space. The two together mean people really do start-ups in garages- it’s pretty mild and you can just open the door up on most days. Sometime I wonder how much weather is a factor in the number of start-ups produced here in Upstate NY as compared to a climate like the Bay Area.

Garages are out- we’re either experiencing winter cold (less so lately) or summer heat (hottest year on record this year) and in between it can be 40 one day and 75 the next. A lot of start-ups seem to be done by older white males working in office parks. I work in a company (day job) that is located in an ‘incubator’ space even though we’re far past the start-up stage. This is probably the least inspiring place for a start-up I can imagine: Cubes, bad coffee, a two mile drive to any amenity, sterile environment and a lot of white middle-aged guys with phones on their belts. To be fair, most of the companies in here are hard technology companies: materials, optics, energy, etc. A lot of them seem to be one guy in an office.

Comparing this to the Valley is patently unfair but I really think that our area needs to think differentlty about creating a true start-up environment, one that inspires young entrepreneurs with co-locations that are affordable and filled with other similar companies. My first company was in an old loft building downtown in 2001 and we saw and made friends in the hallways and at the nearby coffee shops and bars. We sent each other business and there was a community feel. Around that same time this ‘official’ incubator opened way out in the suburbs (I can see a tractor plowing from my window) and the start-up scene turned into something depressingly unappealing.

Since I have a virtual start-up (no employees, no office, no equipment, etc.) with 24PageBooks and I work in an established software company, I have been contemplating these two polar opposites. Frankly, I’d rather be in the garage with a fan and a space heater.

Part Two of this is going to deal with raising money Upstate- it’s practically impossible for the same reasons we have incubators in suburban office parks.

Peter Shankman of HARO (Help A Reporter Out) has a great piece on valuing your time and not letting others devalue it.

This is the core driving value of 24PageBooks: Our time is too valuable to waste with filler.

BTW, if you’re not familiar with HARO, check it out. He is reinventing the PR business. And watch for an upcoming 24 book called Fire Your PR Agency: Required Reading For PR Professionals.

I was wading through my daily quick look at the tech sites like Teccrunch, VentureBeat, etc., getting frustrated that they all have the same stories, often with the same wording obviously lifted from press releases and I had a thought that I have on a weekly basis:

Why don’t they tell us, in a clearly understandable manner, what all these goofily named companies actually do? And why can’t the companies themselves do the same?

I know why.

Most can’t do a good, compelling, simple description because they do something no one wants or cares about except a very few nerds in their niche interest area. And they’re so close to their subject that they can’t pull back and question what they’re doing, why anyone would care or how they can make money from it.

On top of this they pick a name that is impossible to remember or associate with what they do even if a reader thinks it has value. Here’s some random names from today’s stories: Okta, CloudCrowd, Nixty, Zendesk, Involver (I can sort of see this one), Reddit, We7 and on and on. Some of these are successful, some may become successful, most will or have raised a lot of money and most will not exist in a few years or even months.

Can you tell an average person on the street what your start-up does in a way that captures their interest?

I recently registered www.24PageCookbooks.com after realizing that a 24 page cookbook could work and that there may very well be a demand for them, if they are packaged right. We know these things are going to get more and more integrated with web services and this interactivity got me thinking. For example, what if each recipe included a link to an online shopping list? The way it would work is the link would would take you to an ingredient list online. You would have a field where you could enter the number of people you are cooking for and it would calculate how much of each ingredient you would need, then offer you a printable version or you could view it on your device of choice.

This would be built on a Google Spreadsheet so it would reside in the cloud along with pictures of the food, video content, etc. Meaning the 24PageCookbook has a bigger and more useful footprint than a typical fat paper cookbook.

I think the first title will be Pasta Italian Style (I’ll come up with a better title). A section on the basics, ten or so classic dishes and variations on each and you’ve covered 90% of the territory.

No employees.

No offices.

No tangible product or inventory.

No infrastructure.

No payment system.

No overhead.

Infinitely scalable.

Highly profitable.

Sounds like a fantasy doesn’t it? Well, it is our fantasy. You’ll note that it doesn’t say No Work. There is work but it is work for the founders and it can be done anywhere. The goods are virtual but the money is real. All of the infrastructure is handled by others for a share of the revenue.

No investment (besides the work of the founders).

This kind of business was unimaginable only a few years ago. Now there are many small and growing businesses that do this. Like App developers. Writers. Game developers for mobile. Drop ship marketers. And publishers…

In the olden days of yore (pre 2007), a small publisher with an unexpected hit title had a problem: too many orders and not enough resources to fill them. This problem has disappeared with digital goods.

One more (almost) No:

No carbon footprint. The (almost) is the energy needed to build and operate the tools we use to create our business and our products. This is going down as technology develops. One more:

No dead trees.

Have a great Fourth!

I work full time as Director of Marketing for a 35 person software company and spend the rest of my time working on 24PageBooks. One is a job (a good one), the other is a passion (all passions are good, IMHO, as long they are not destructive). I recently read yet another blog post about how start-up founders eventually need to hire a CEO, i.e. a ‘grown-up’, to run the company.

I don’t think so. Once you hire someone to hold the reins and keep everyone on mission you have just turned your passion into a job. Why would any self-respecting entrepreneur want to do that?

I’ve been musing about this since I took my current job,musing about the differences between ‘real’ jobs and unconventional jobs like freelancing or consulting. I am fortunate to be a creative, that is I write and make things. There is almost no reason to treat creatives, salespeople or other self-directed employees like traditional workers, parking us in a cube and keeping us there for 40 hours a week. It is not the best way to utilize this kind of worker. Instead of hours worked the operative metric should be jobs done well. Companies like Best Buy, at its corporate headquarters, have started down this route with there being almost no required hours, policies, etc. You simply do your job well and keep others aware of what you’re doing while keeping up with what they are doing. This helps turn a conventional job into a ‘passion job’. Their experience has been that there was no loss in productivity even though many employees only come into the office for the occasional meeting. And meetings are far more efficient.

Obviously this doesn’t work for jobs that are tied to a location like retail workers, construction, etc.. But many of those jobs are entry level or skilled labor and working remotely will increasingly be a perk of moving up the ladder.

This is all driven by the ability to communicate with anyone from any place and the ability to access information from anywhere.

I think the move from jobs, to passion jobs to passions is a major spark for innovation. The smartest, most competent and creative people are the ones who thrive in an unstructured situation and those are the kind of people who turn ideas into passions. That’s a pretty good description of innovation.