Recently, someone requested a bid on a corporate website design. I responded characteristically with a quote and my usual terms. They immediately replied, asking me to repeat what I’d already said in my response — what would it cost for just a mock-up of my design ideas? I quoted myself and hit send. I have yet to hear back from them, though I did receive a read receipt.
It always startles folks that they have to pay for me to mock-up a website design idea, but not commercial artwork. They think that I should do the mock-up for free, like I do book covers, CD covers, and brochures. Nope. Here’s why: You’ll take my design, go over to some Indian coding group and have them reproduce it for pennies on the U.S. dollar. You’ll be using my design and not paying me for my time and ideas. In other words, I’d be letting you steal from me.
Three-hundred dollars for a look at my ideas isn’t outrageous at all, especially when you can grab a screenshot of my ideas and still head out to some second or third world country to have some starving coder do it for you for a few hundred bucks.
A mock-up isn’t XHTML and CSS, either. Nope. Nor is it search engine optimized by my team which is very good at getting your website up in ranking. It’s a .jpg snapshot of a website that could be, no code included. I’m not in business to give away my ideas and my secrets. If you want them, regardless of where you have it coded up, you do have to pay for it, and, like I said, $300 ain’t much for a world-class idea.
Recently, an online group decided that they would like to try their hand at commercial work. We’re talking a mix of professional people and skilled amateurs who are pretty dedicated to their avocation. All members are very talented people.
Of the pros, most are actively working, but, with the economy the way it is, it never hurts to have something cooking on the back burner. Among the skilled amateurs are some people who are looking for work along with those who have jobs or who are retired.
So what happens? When it comes to a test “job” with a generous deadline, what we get are the professionals hopping right in and doing right away while the amateurs most in need of work wind up no-shows or making excuses.
Needless to say, the project is already failed before it’s even started. Odd thing is that, from the onset, a couple of us knew it was going to wind up just the way it did. It showed in the manner in which work was done in the group all along–a couple of initiators, the rest kinda sorta going along when it suited their tastes and their private schedules.
The lesson? There are doers, and then there’s everybody else.
The group? It’s still a functioning group, and I’m sure it will remain so, but it certainly demonstrated quite realistically and inarguably that, when it comes to succeeding in a commercial project, everybody has to hold a professional discipline or it just will never get off the ground.
I said I was going to slow down. Am I? No. Just about the time I think I’ve cleaned my plate, somebody comes along who impresses me enough that, when I listen to their aspirations, their needs, hearing a keen integrity and honorable purpose, I’ll say “yes” to. Then there’s the client who, despite the fact that their business is on the ropes because of the economy, I’ll keep working with. Sigh.
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
