This is a difficult post to write.

The last 5 months have been some of the most interesting and exciting of my life.  When I started blogging I couldn't have imagined what a dramatic impact it would have on me.  I've been thinking more during this time than at any other time in my life and, having found a voice, sharing more.  It's been very liberating.  It also seems to me that the path I am on now may define my course for years to come.

Starting a business was something I really wanted to do.  But I wasn't ready for the challenge, economy or no economy.  I've learned so many things, like the supreme importance of your network and, by extension, your brand relative to things like products and services.  But it's hard to run a business when every little thing is a lesson.  Despite good advice I've made mistake and after mistake and they keep coming.  On one hand I'm constantly learning and that's fun, but on the other hand it doesn't necessarily make for good business.

I want to continue, I hope to continue.  I believe (dangerous as that is) that k-logging has an important future, my inability to come up with the right message or pilot site not withstanding, and is going to be a good business to be in.  I also want to continue because I'm talking to and sharing ideas with some great people and that's always cool.  But the hard reality is that I haven't made it work yet and I'm almost at the end of my rope.

I've started looking for a job, posting my resume to various recruitment sites.  So heres where we come to the difficult bit:

Please, if you or someone you know could use my skills (CV will be up when Word agrees with me about what HTML is):

• Java application development
• Technical consultancy
• Web development (Servlets/JSP, Perl, Cold Fusion)
• Knowledge Management (+quite a lot of experience with Livelink) implementation or consultancy
• Systems Management (Quite a bit of Solaris & WinNT/2K + a smattering of linux)
• Tech support / Client support

please do get in touch, I could really use some help at the moment.

Australia ready to strike abroad. Prime Minister John Howard causes outrage by saying he would launch pre-emptive action against terrorists in neigbouring countries. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

Depressing, depressing.

Looks like the terrorists have figured out that "divide and conquer" still works.  They provoke Australia into throwing their weight around in the area and fuel the fire even further.

Instead of fighting to improve the power of the UN to deal with these issues the push is to weaken the UN and make unilateral action the de facto response to an indication of threat.

Oh well, of course Australia will obviously live up to the high standards of evidence set by the UK and the USA so no worries.

RDF Matchmaking.

Speaking of bootstraps, Ian Davis has a FOAF (friend of a friend) vocabulary for bartering. [Scripting News]

A related meme was Connecting individual people is the killer app.

[Seb's Open Research]

What an interesting concept, turning people into Web Services.

See also the XpertWeb link & comments in Seb's piece.

Why Computer Books Suck.

Thanks to Simon I ran across Why Computer Books Suck [ Go ].  I'd have to agree with her points 100%.  Having been a co-author this year on a computer book for today's leading publisher, I'd just comment that not only is the whole book process messed up but I'd also rather have all my fingernails pulled, eat glass and drink acid before writing another computer book.  I absolutely loved this section:

There's no money in it

Let's say you pour three months' worth of blood, sweat, and tears into your 500-page computer book. After taking three more months to reformat it, the publisher sends you galley proofs so you can review them and create an index. Of course, you get only a week or two for that. You mark a few minor, last-minute corrections on the proofs. You must then use the hard copy (that's right, hard copy) to create an index manually (that's right, manually). Of course, you can have the publisher do it for an outrageous fee, but most authors choose to index their own books. And most authors do a lousy job of it. By that time the author is too burnt out to do it justice, even though everyone knows the index is the single most important section of any computer book.

Finally, you're finished. The publisher dawdles for another month or so, occasionally sending you messages asking for files you've already sent them twice, and that sort of thing. Finally the book goes to print. If you're lucky, you see a couple of copies on the shelf at Border's.

Now suppose the book's list price is $40. Typically, the writer's cut is a percentage of the "net" which is a fancy way of saying half the list price. Supposedly this is to cover the cost of publishing the book. (Why does it cost that much? I'm not sure, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that three months' labor is required to reformat a book.) What this means is that if your royalty is 15%, you get 15% of $20, or $3. But that's only for domestic retail sales. Chances are, your contract contains lots of loopholes for things like international sales, book clubs, and anything else you can dream up, so on average you might get $2. That's 5% of the revenue from the sale of the book. The publisher gets the remaining 95%. Think about these two facts for a momont:

You researched, wrote, reviewed, revised, and indexed this 500-page book. You developed and tested the examples.

The publisher's cut is 95%.

Are you now suffering from severe cognitive dissonance?

Yup.  Right on the money.  When I emailed my editor asking about sales of the book -- AFTER he emailed me about it first he never even responded.  As near as I can tell, royalties for a computer book might cover sales tax on a decent dinner out but not necessarily the dinner itself.  And, finally, when I asked a professional literary agent about writing computer books, his response was "The game is rigged by publishers against the authors.  If you can write ANY OTHER type of book than a computer book that's what I recommend". 

Writing Computer Books?  Not Recommended.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Well that's as disappointing as it is instructive.  Thank Scott.

I've always harboured a desire to author a good computer book, now I think I've got better things to do with my time.  Unless...

I wonder if a way could be found to get Amazon, Barnes & Noble et al. to sell PDF books on their website from independent publishers.  That is, you and I get together and write our book.  We hire an editor on a percentage basis (would that work? Is that a better deal than most editors get now?) and supply the finished PDF for distribution directly to the on-line stores.

After all do computer books get marketed in the way that, say, a Grisham novel does?  What does the publisher do other than supply a, seemingly incompetent, management and paper distribution function?

I know some people have tried selling e-books themselves via their own websites.  But has anyone made a serious attempt to get the likes of Amazon to distribute independent efforts?

If that doesn't work is there a way to make money via a super-efficient publishing system.  Same as above, the publisher is soley responsible for taking the finished PDF, printing and distribution on a percentage basis.  Would anybody do it?

I'm probably showing my naivety again...