Thank you, E.B. White

The first book that ever changed my life would have to be Charlotte's Webb. I think I was in third or fourth grade when I read it, and it was during silent reading time in the afternoon, after recess (my teacher always thought reading was a good way for us to calm down after the chaos of recess).

So, there I was, reading away, never anticipating how this story would end. Maybe I was so focused on the threat on Wilbur's life that I didn't see it coming. But really, I wasn't one to try to anticipate the endings. I liked to be surprised. Well, this one just pulled the rug out from under me... I couldn't believe one of the main characters DIED! It was the first book I had ever read that was sad. I was really embarrassed that I was the only kid in the class who was crying while reading, and my teacher pulled me aside to make sure I was okay. I had not yet known anyone who died, I was so affected by the permanence of death, and more particularly by Charlotte's sacrifice for her friend. It was so moving to me.

Reading that book affected my writing. I loved to write, and had always been in the habit of creating books with drawings and giving them to my parents, teachers, and friends to look at. I enjoyed getting some kind of reaction, hopefully entertaining the reader, or making them laugh. This time, I tried writing a sad story. My characters were a horse and a cat who were friends, and the cat died during some fight trying to defend his friend. What was the reaction? My teacher was concerned about the violence, and my parents were openly disapproving. They asked me why there needed to be a fight, and why the character died. So, I went back and rewrote the end! It was hand written, of course, so just above the drawing on the last page, I squeezed in a line that said something like, "But wait, what's that around the corner? It's Charlie! He was alive!"

But even at the age of seven or eight, I knew that was lame. This was my story! My readers don't get to tell me how it ends! So as a future editor, I have complete respect that a story belongs to the author first, and that my job as an editor is to help with how it's told, to help the author shape it, and to help them come up with the best version of the story they want to tell.

As a side note, I later discovered that my parents have an issue with sad endings in general. They get uncomfortable during movies that end sadly, and if they know a movie will be sad, they will choose not to watch it. So last year, I took a sick satisfaction in making them watch "Million Dollar Baby", which they knew nothing about. They were pissed!

Scholastic's "book" clubs

I read this article that Brian posted in his comments on Whitney's last blog:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/books/10scho.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=Scholastic&st=cse

It was about how 1/3 of the items sold in Scholastic's brochures were either nonbook items or books packaged with other items. That's a rather high proportion, and it was called into question whether Scholastic was misusing its book clubs to market other types of retail items in schools.

In my opinion, the strongest statement that was made in that article came from the director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. She said that these items send the wrong message to kids-- that a book alone is not enough, and that children may start choosing books by what they receive with it rather than for the book itself. I believe she's right, and it's a bit offensive to see books marketed this way. It seems, to me, the ugly side of marketing. A "we'll do anything that works" attitude. I'm also turned off by the greediness of the publisher who raked in the money from publishing Harry Potter. I mean, how much money is enough of a profit? Doesn't this publishing house make enough revenue not to have to resort to such obvious marketing tactics?

On the other hand, it does work. Kids will get excited about the stuff they'll get with the books, and it will get books into the hand of kids. But effective sales is no measure of ethics. How do we know the kids won't toss the book aside with the packaging, just to get to the "fun stuff"? It scares me to think of books being devalued this way.

It reminds me of how much things have changed since I was a child reader. I used to LOVE getting the Scholastic brochures, bringing them home to peruse through and circling all the things I wanted. I was allowed to get only one book each time, so I would use pencil and start circling all the ones I wanted. Then I'd go back through and erase the ones I had decided against until I finally left only one book circled, and then I gave it to my mother to place the order. I wonder how much stickers and posters and such would have influenced my choices? It's a hard question to answer retrospectively.

Okay, Amazon. You win THIS time...

Just as I was about to smugly declare that I couldn't remember the last time I even bought anything online (even without online promotions)...that's when Amazon reared its ugly head.

There it was, a message in my e-mail box as if they knew what the blog topic was going to be. The subject line declared innocently, "Amazon recommends 'Caroline in the City, Second Season' and more..." This was a TV show from 13 years ago that I loved, and it was impossibly hard to find. Six months ago, I did find the first season by searching on Amazon, and I put the second season on my wish list. So, I made it easy for them.

I clicked on the link and filled in my info, and on the way through this process, I had two more offers: The first one was if I signed up for a free trial membership of Amazon Prime, I would get free shipping. I didn't even stick around long enough to find out that the little program was all about, because I do not like signing up for things and having to remember to cancel them later, once they are no longer free. Plus, for me, free shipping is not enough incentive because I'm not in a hurry and will pay a couple bucks for the slowest shipping they have.

The second offer was for an Amazon credit card, and if I applied, I would get a $30 credit on my order which would bring the total down to almost nothing. (I suppose the combination of both these offers would have made my purchase "free"). But I categorically decline all credit card offers because I like to shop for my own credit card terms (I worked for a credit card company for 5 years, so I'm very specific about what I want).

So, the total for this order was something like $32.00, which was both Cheap (Commerce) and Convenient. But I didn't get to feel like part of a Community like I would if I bought something at Powell's (of whom I'm a fan on Facebook). But I rationalized that Powell's doesn't sell DVD's, so I have to buy from the evil corporation who knows what I want.

Fun with Print-on-Demand, recreationally speaking

A week ago, I spent the entire weekend writing and illustrating a short children's book for my library media class. It was one of those times where a great idea occurs to you almost too late, and you have to rush to make it happen. In short, my instructor was going to Guatemala (leaving on Friday the 13th) for a literacy conference, and had mentioned to our class that the schools in Guatemala have very few books. Therefore, she was taking with her as many books in Spanish as she could carry in her suitcase. Since we are required to complete a creative project for that class, I decided to make a book to be translated to Spanish by my friend who is a native speaker.

Because the schools in Guatemala have no climate control, my teacher advised that if we were to find any books to donate, they needed to be hard backed. That's when I knew I'd have to find a printing service to print my book, and so I looked into the options through an online company called Blurb (http://www.blurb.com/). They have a free software program called Booksmart that you can download on your computer, and then you can upload your scanned images into the file to create your own book.

The software was easy to download and incredibly easy to use. I am confident that a child could use it. And the finished products are pleasing--I spent some time perusing some of the other children's books that other people created. Blurb even has a feature to set your own price, so that you can mark up your book and make a profit. I did not choose to utilize this feature, as I made this book for a specific purpose and felt that it had limited marketability. But for those who choose to market their creations, the site provides a number of avenues, including starting a blog through blurb's website, linking to social networking sites, and using Google tools.

This was a unique experience for me. When I discussed it with my teacher, and worried about if finished product would be good enough, she said to me, "Just do your best. In a school that doesn't have enough books, the difference between something and nothing is a lot." That changed my perspective. So then, for me, the appeal of this assignment was that I did not have to feel the pressure of creating a saleable product. My focus was entirely upon creating a simple book with an easy storyline and interesting pictures. For the purpose of that assignment, once the finished product was done, so was my work, as the marketing aspect was completely removed.

On a side note, the other missing piece was editing. Of course, I had my friend's translation edited by a Spanish professor for grammatical accuracy, but no one edited the content. Since I was using the story of the three pigs, it was not really necessary, but I still felt the void. I feel that editing by a third party is an important and crucial step for every piece of writing, and regardless of a story's simplicity, it will never be as good as it could be without the input of a good editor. Looking at the other people's work, I could also recognize the creativity that had not been fine-tuned, and the resulting rawness that these books exhibited. That is why I feel a strong attraction to becoming an editor.

As another experiment, I am considering creating another simple project, perhaps one more heavily laden with photos/imagery rather than writing, and putting it on the Blurb's website just to play with the marketing aspects.

Anybody have any ideas for a generic and simple, image-focused book I could create for this purpose?

E-mail, I <3 You!

Currently, I think I have five e-mail accounts. There could be more. But the main ones I use are my Yahoo account and Comcast. I use Yahoo most often, because it's the one most of my friends use to contact me. I set up Comcast as a way to filter spam, since I got absolutely no noise there. My intention was to use it solely for school or job-related things, but I am more neglectful in checking on it.

I can't remember how or why I have a gmail account, but I rarely check it. My friend Corina started a hotmail account for me, which she also used to start a MySpace page for me, both of which I almost never use. And then there's the school's pdx.edu account. I don't even know how to log into that, so there are probably at least twenty thousand messages in that box. So, the more unread messages I feel are sitting in that box, the less likely I feel like checking it.

My e-mail habit began at a young age, when I was married to a Marine. During his first deployment to the Western Pacific, we did not have e-mail accounts, and we were stuck with hand-written letters. Sometimes, weeks at a time went by between letters, then I'd get like five at once. We even had to number them to avoid confusion in the conversation. During the second deployment, we bought a laptop for him to take on the ship, and that made things both better and worse for us. Better, because we had more frequent and immediate communication, and worse because we could argue on it. We made good use of WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO SIMULATE SHOUTING. Since the e-mail was the old odin, DOS- based kind, we couldn't pepper our messages with sweet little emoticons, so we had to settle for the standard colon-dash-end parenthesis. Man, those were the old days, back in the late 90's...

Life is a whole lot better now with the ability to send attachments and live hyperlinks, and to paste photos in the body of your text when you feel like it. I'm sure that makes it more complicated for deployed military personnel, though-- maybe e-mail communication isn't even allowed on aircraft carriers anymore, for reasons of security. How easy is it to intercept an e-mail that may contain classified information? How secure is e-mail in general?

So, after our lesson about Google analytics, I was eager to try it our in real time.

I work for a small company that sells and rents heavy equipment for construction, and this is the slow season. There are still people out there looking, but it's a matter of successfully connecting with those few buyers. We are at a point where we must reduce our inventory, so some of the equipment may have to go to auction. The salesman (my boss) and I are adverse to this idea, knowing that we will experience a financial loss if we go this route, so we've been stepping up the pace to bring in more prospects.

So, I told my boss about Google's analytics, asking if I could use the company credit card for the pay-per-click feature, but he said he didn't think it would be worth it. I didn't like that answer, so on my own time and with a small budget, I tried it out. Of course, in my imagination, calls would suddenly come pouring in, and my boss would wonder what kind of ethereal force was at work to bring about such a mysterious change, and he would tell me about all the prospects who had called him over the weekend. Then, when I describe my Google ad campaign, he would be forced to admit that he was wrong, and I would be showered with praise and bonuses. (My adult mind knows better, but a girl's got to dream).

Here's what I found:
I put in 78 keywords, including industry jargon and common misspellings from e-mails I have received over the years, and makes and model numbers. After it had been active for 2 hours, I looked at the report and found that the ad had been shown 994 times, and had 4 clicks. Although this represented a .04% success rate, I was happy about the four clicks. As of this evening, the ad has been shown 6719 times and has had 12 clicks. The words Hitachi, John Deere/JD and Cat/Caterpillar got the most hits. (I found out that if you Google "cat"-- even if you're looking for the feline kind-- the first site to appear organically is Caterpillar's home website. I guess that means that there are more people searching for Caterpillar products than domestic cat-related topics/products).

For the sake of curiousity, I intend to leave this campaign going for another week, and maybe I'll change the ad to appear only regionally, and see how that changes the results. If anyone has any other ideas for how I can manipulate this ad in other ways, I would love to hear suggestions.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun experiment, and I'll be sure to report back if it appears that business seems to improve slightly. Or maybe it will be obvious when I start arriving at school in a limo.

Internet Privacy: an oxymoron?

After my post last week about the internet and social interaction, opinions were shared about social networking. I tend to view Facebook the way Brian Ridder does, that it helps me stay connected to people with whom I otherwise would have lost contact with. But for people who are unfamiliar with its usage, these sites (MySpace and Facebook in particular) can feel like "spying". I'm not much of a MySpace user, but regarding Facebook, I know that only people whom I have approved can look at my profile have access to my information, and also they only know as much as I put out there. To that end, I am still mindful of what comments and photos I am willing to share, and I also behave knowing that anything I write to anyone else is considered public conversation.

But after that, I went on to think about how much information is available online about individuals. I started wondering what is out there for people to see without my knowledge. I'm not really concerned about it, but the curiosity burned so that I wanted to search my own name and see how much someone could find out about me if they were really determined.

So I started with the easy stuff, like just googling my name and my previous name, and using the same names in yellowpages and people-finding sites. I didn't find any current information, such as my redidential address or phone number, but a limited amount of outdated stuff. So I decided to take it a step further and buy a cheap people search feature through "People Finders". I was kind of surprised at how much came up-- yet still, none of it was current. I have had the name "Dey" for 4 years, and my current address and cell phone number were not on the report I viewed. But under my old name, the report gave the names and ages of my parents and brother, and all of my ex-in-laws names and ages, including the grandparents who died 15 years ago. I found all my previous addresses and phone numbers and my date of birth. When I did an address search on a home I preniously owned, I found all that information about my former roommate as well!

Beyond this information, the site keeps prompting you to pay more money for more reports, including a criminal background check and other such reports, so a person of serious or stalker-type intent could potentially find out more. I thought this was an interesting experiment into what is out there, floating around on the internet. I was glad not to find any photos or information that I was unaware of, and to not to discover anything embarrasing or terribly inaccurate about myself.