I am about spitting bullets here. There are these people who can’t even figure out how to use an email client on their own home computers. Instead, they use one of those flaky Net services (Maximum storage capacity 2 MB) to handle their email where everything is “clicky-clicky follow the bounding ball and you can send an email too clappy clappy.” And suddenly they are bound and determined they are going to send out a mass email to a big list of hand-harvested email addresses they hand-collected and hand-typed into their email address books. Not only do they want to SEND this email, but they want it to look oh-so-official and pretty. So they get ahold of their volunteer webmaster, in this case me, and when their volunteer webmaster advises against it, they go find some flaky service on the Net that says: Well, SURE. Here ya go, Honey! Now all you have to do is send this out with your message typed in here and make sure you send it out HTML email.” And they go all clappy clappy squeal giggle and then, in that hiccupping moment between giggles, email their webmaster flaunting their coup, waving their “sure-we-can” shit, and demanding to know “what’s your problem that you wouldn’t do it?”
“And…but,” they say by the wayside, “but but but I can’t send out HTML emails using my email because it won’t let me.”
(And they can’t recieve them either, and in fact have reported OTHERS for sending them innocent HTML emails, blacklisting innocent folks…but never mind that, right?)
That’s right, folks. Exactly. And so what will happen if they do this anyway? (And they will, because they really can’t read, can’t comprehend, don’t WANT TO comprehend, and are petulantly stubborn and willful.) They’ll wind up with their group’s email, domain, and organization on a spamcop blacklist that they won’t be able to get off of because the email addresses that reported them weren’t confirmed as OPT-IN email addresses in the first place…because they collected them with pen and paper at their real world meetings, then typed them into their address books themselves, hunt and peck method.
DOH. NOPE. IT AIN’T DUN THAT WAY NOPE NOPE.
ARGH!!!!
One of the best printing, matting, framing, and drop shippers of art on the Internet, a start-up called ImageKind is leading its artists down the merry road by the nose. They keep promising fixes, and the fixes aren’t happening…not even six months after they are promised. I’m so tired of the “we’re working on it,” and other empty air. It’s totally disillusioning. I’ve typed my last over on their forum. They get it fixed, or I’ll pulll all my ads in their favor.
I received an email this morning from a TD author. What did the email ask? The email wanted to know about what has already been covered on both the writer’s critique board over at http://z7.zentao7.com/forum/ and on The Deepening’s front page itself. And announcements were sent out repeatedly, too, which should have gotten those TD authors over to the forum to check out what was happening.
Did anyone pay any attention? Even when a notice was sent out about getting them their money? NO.
And this is the crux of the biscuit. Each individual will send an email asking for hand-written answers, hand-holding through processes, and individualized “handling.” NOPE. That’s why we made all those typed up announcements and posts.
People have incentive to do something when they get a cookie — when it serves them because there’s some reward they CRAVE. If it isn’t something they really, really crave, then they don’t want to be bothered, and want somebody to personally do it for them. Guess what? You pay me $60 an hour, and I’ll be glad to walk you through it personally. Otherwise, pay attention and READ the instructions!
After struggling for months with all manner of problems and issues with my online fiction magazine, The Deepening, I finally shut it down when the final solution, based on editor and author content management failed.
Since I can’t do the heavy coding any longer, I tried to implement what I thought would be a relatively easy solution for editors, authors and subscribers. But it just didn’t and wasn’t working.
So, the online fiction magazine is no more.
There are a LOT of reasons why, but one thing stands out most — people who read are a shrinking market. So, in fiction publishing, unless there’s a “buzz,” or the publisher can create a “buzz” by using “spin,” …which takes lots of money, luck, and knowing the right people, then the story just doesn’t interest most readers…who have little time to read in the first place because of busy lives…and many of whom would just rather watch the video.
Online publishing cannot compete with YouTube. It can’t compete with NetFlix. It certainly can’t protect itself from writers who only subscribe to get in, research the market, then quickly cancel their payment after they have gotten admission.
What do I think? I think that the only real readers out there are mostly writers researching markets, hoping to make it big themselves…and the old-timers who know the joy of immersing themselves into a book.
I actually think it was a known from the start that any online fiction venture would be doomed. I think any fiction venture which isn’t supported by a university or by government funding for the literary arts is ultimately doomed. The written word is too much work for the computer generation. They much prefer games, sex, video, and vegging out in front of the boob tube…or getting drunk, partying, and trying to become millionaires.
So, now I have that brain drain, money drain, and time drain evicted from my life…along with all the corresponding hassles. Now all I have to do if finish paying off the bills…which should take me a couple of years.
Oh well.
Never fails. I just about think I’m tidying up the day when somebody drops in with some “needed, necessary, must have ASAP” emergency. Okay. Fifteen minutes and some magic with the Wacom, and, there you go, FIXED. *sigh* I tell you. Nobody plans. Everybody is rushing around doing last minute gasps to meet deadlines they knew about twelve months prior. If I lived my life like that, I’d never, ever make it. People…er…Americans, LISTEN UP.
The way to have life under some measure of control is to NOT PROCRASTINATE. Do NOT put off until the second before your project deadline what you should have iced months ago. I’m not always nice. I’m not always HERE. Then what? You’re going to wind up with your shorts down around your ankles and your hands too full to cover what needs covering, that’s what! Of course, that’s always fun for us bystanders, so…carry on. 
Yup, that’s right. zentao.com, poor child of a too busy webmaster and graphic artist, a website that winds up limping along on old code and outdated everything, finally got a SMALL update. Front page changed…which might just blow my SE ranking, but, hey, that’s okay, too. And I put up a 2007 fine art gallery showing mostly stuff I’ve just done this year and end of last. I haven’t put up the professional graphics gallery yet, though. I’m too intimidated after opening the drives all that work is stored on. I have to say, I never realize just how much “stuff” I create on the fly for various projects at hand. Sifting and sorting what should go on, what can’t go on because it’s being used on this or that client’s website right now, and what I don’t want people to see because they might think I like doing “cutesy”…well, you do see the problem. Still, wow. Too many gigs.
Oh, NEW to zentao.com: There’s also a new art blog there. Again, I’ll be moving the posts to hard HTML when they get to the second page, but the blog is mostly devoted to me commenting back on some of the misapplied logic that artists wanting websites and promotion feed me via email, telephone, and, very occasionally, face-to-face. The blog isn’t skinned very nicely yet. Haven’t figured out or found something that really hits the switch, but I’m working on it.
I have loaded and configured, skinned, and customized, to date, more than 500 blogs for various projects and clients. One of my biggest irritants is when, after all that, the “blogger” goes and opens up yet another one over on blogspot or some similar forest of blogitis, leaving their custom one idling.
Biggest blog gripe for me are my editors over at The Deepening. Nice blog for them to post on, and, even with five of them, they just don’t post to it. Well, I’m about ready to shut down all posting on it and take the link off the site to “Editorials.” I won’t, but it just makes no sense to me why five people can’t post to one little blog. Of course, I don’t post there either, but, sheesh, what do I, the artist and owner, have to say about authors and writing? That I’ve gotten death threats and hate mail. (I have.) That some newbie authors have an attitude that suggests that all of us are dirt and we are out to rape them? Thank the cosmos that all of them aren’t like that, and double thank the cosmic forces that the hardened pros don’t ever come off that way. I’ve discovered through this project that writers are not nice people to magazine owners, even when I try my best to treat everyone fairly.
Anyway, back to blogging. Blasted TD editors!!!
zentao.com
