Coming Soon! - NOT

I've had enough of unfinished websites. If you have taken the time to build or pay for a website for your business do it right and complete it. If you have a link that has a valid title, but the page just says "coming soon" take it down right now, today, this instant!

Let me tell you what "coming soon" means: I'm not coming back. I've clicked that link on your site several times since you "updated" your web, waiting for you to get your business together and I have come to the conclusion that you don't know what you are doing and that you are deliberately misleading me and I don't like it.

It's like going to a restaurant and getting comfortable in the booth, reviewing the nicely presented Menu and seeing your favorite item - just what you were hoping for - A Chocolate Shake! When the waitress comes you can hardly wait "Oooohhhh" you sigh. "I'd like one of your chocolate shakes, please" you tell her. "We don't have any shakes" she says as she takes the menu you are handing her. "Wait! It says right here" you exclaim as you snatch back the menu, flinging it open and pointing to the item. CHOCOLATE SHAKE

"Oh, sorry, we have the shake machine, we just haven't hooked it up yet" she tells you, quite clearly. "Wha wha why is it on the Menu?" you sob, heartbroken. "Oh, we printed those the day we got the shake machine a couple of months ago, we just haven't gotten around to hooking it up, that's all. Sorry."

If you say you have something, restaurant menu, web menu, I don't care which, you had better be prepared to serve it up when I ask for it or click on it. If you trick me with that "Coming Soon" crap I won't be coming back. I bet I'm not the only one.

Getting Published

Wanna be writers don't always know the 3 different types of publishing. Here they are:

• by a national (or international) publishing house
• by a Print On Demand (POD) company
  
• self publish

I am not going to get into the fine details of each nor the pro's and cons of each. If you really want to be published, do your own research and decide which process suits you best. If you are considering POD here's a blog that I thought was worthwhile reading: PODDY Mouth

Lemonade

I am reading Seth Godin's book called "The Dip". It's about quitting when you're accomplishing nothing (you find that you're traveling a road that ends in a cul-de-sac) and pushing through the dip (you have to read the book to get it) to attain your highest goals, and knowing when to either quit or push.

I read Seth daily and bought 2 of his books. His thoughts on the changing marketplace are fascinating to me, especially his view of the impact free technology is having on traditional business structure. He vilifies the record industry, but when I read his posts on the subject (try here and here) I substitute the words record/music with publisher/book. It's a dying dinosaur who's days of control are over.

Just like the artists who now sell their own MP3 downloads from their own websites, produced in their own homes with their own equipment (tolling the death knell for big corporate controlled music studios), quilt writers & designers go straight to their fans with downloadable patterns, YouTube video instructions, DVD's they made themselves and bypass the overcontrolling corporate publishing world. Cool.

My co-author wants to pursue organic fabrics and printing on recycled paper. I want to pursue downloadable patterns and instructional DVD's. Together I think we'll bypass the traditional structure and go straight to the quilters who want to see and hear what we have to offer. I'm looking forward to making some lemonade.

Angry Author

Publishers, here's how to piss your authors off forever:

• don't tell the author that they don't have an editor anymore when she leaves the company
  
• don't tell the author that the marketing gal is gone (the only employee who keeps in touch with the author!) just let the emails bounce into internet limbo she's still there (yahooo!), they just gave her a bad email address!
• don't tell the author that their book has sold out and is going into a second printing
• don't ask the author if they have any corrections before going into a second printing
• don't respond to the author's proposal for a another book

Stay tuned, I'll update you with additional big business bureaucratic stupidity. My guess is I'll be adding to this list monthly.

Time, the Internet and Music

I've already posted about how much I love blog surfing, and just a few months ago I couldn't even understand what purpose in life a blog could possibly have. I just didn't get it and I can say, quite honestly right now, that I still don't. But. I don't have to understand something to like it! Lucky me!

I like You Tube. I *love* music, but I hate the idea of stealing songs and music from an artist. I like to buy my music. But YouTube gives you a little tantalizing taste of what you're going to get when you buy (kind of like radio, with pictures) and I have to admit that it just makes me buy more, or find artists that I never knew about, and now I want to buy their music. Like "Straight No Chaser" (an a cappella group) and their rendition of "This is How We Do It" a song I love. They have 7 and a half MILLION hits to this video on YouTube, and they loaded it up to YouTube so that I could find it, hear it, love it and buy it. Smart.

I found them because I didn't know the artist's name that sings the famous version of "This is How We Do It" and I figured I could find it on YouTube.....well I still don't know it because I found Straight No Chaser. Hehehehe. Now you know how I waste my time.

No, Thank you.

After 49 years of sometimes hard and sometimes easy living, I am choosing to not accept criticism or sabotage from people who try to convince me that they are my friend. I struggle with how to end the relationship because I don't like confrontation. I love helping people and I will go thousands of miles to help someone in need. But I expect something back and that something is to not be sabotaged when I am working or creating.

My *friends* help me. If you are putting barriers up between me and success, well, give it your best shot. I know how to crawl under, walk around and jump over barriers. And I've taken a few out when I've had to. I'm still going. Just not with you anymore.

MY Quilts

Here's the deal. I might *encourage* you to finish your quilts, or your projects, or push you to actually DO the stuff you say you're going to do, but guess what? It's because I want you to enjoy the pleasure of finishing up on something and giving your quilting a purpose. I have a clearly stated purpose for my quilts and I've been open and honest about it since I started quilting. I donate my quilts to charity (or very rarely to people I love). Me. My quilts. Mine. To do with as I please.

I don't need anyone's criticism on what they think I should do with my quilts. Every breath we take is a precious gift. Don't waste your precious gift telling me what to do with my quilts. Go quilt your own.