Why anybody thinks they will produce a gazelle by mating two dinosaurs is beyond me. –Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence For the title of this post, I opted to replace “dinosaur” in Peters’s quote because I don’t believe that either house is extinct or even approaching extinction. Like elephants, they’re just big […]
Publisher Strategies and Devastating Opportunity Costs
I was never much of an economics student. In truth, I was pretty bad. I did, however, grasp the idea of opportunity cost. The first sentence of Wikipedia’s definition sums it up wonderfully for me: Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone […]
Why Authors Are More Snowflakes Than Salmon
Two news items about authors caught my eye this week. First, that Penelope Trunk, a syndicated columnist, blogger, entrepreneur and career guru, had angrily walked away from her traditional publisher to go the self-publishing route with Hyperink. Secondly, that Neil Gaiman had signed a multi-book deal with traditional publisher HarperCollins. In heated moments like this […]