Gordon Woolf's Blog

The need to make a profit

The radio caller was critical of banks, which is not unusual, but she put it in a somewhat odd way: 'I have to pay them interest, but what do they actually DO (for me?)'.

This may be partly the reason for the current Occupy movements around the world. To some youngsters it may just seem that if their parents run out of money, they just have to go to "the hole in the wall', but to those parents does it also seem that if they can buy computers, washing machines, furniture and so much more on "48 months interest free", why should the banks charge interest. After all they are only giving you money for a while, not goods permanently.

I know that doesn't make sense, but it kinda sounds logical.

The reason for the demonstrations that I have sympathy with is that it is no longer true that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer -- it is, some people have pointed out with figures and graphs, that the super-rich are getting richer, and that the rich and the poor are getting poorer.

I could claim that some of my best friends are millionaires, which is not quite true but I have known a couple well enough to visit their homes and have them visit mine. I don't envy them. Sure they make more money than I ever had but they do have to work unusual and long hours and the stress level is more than I would want, even though as a newspaper editor I once flourished on stressful work.

But we now have company directors who get pay increases by the millions and yet manage to do similar work for several companies at the same time. If their individual jobs were at the stress level of "my" millionaires, they'd have been dead long ago.

That's what I mean by things getting less fair. And therefore in general terms the Occupy movement has my moral support.

I'm not particularly blaming the chain store owner with his 48-months interest free and similar offers. The one I have in mind has said that people are stupid to accept some of the offers made in his stores as they don't suit everyone.

It is necessary for businesses to make a profit in order to reinvest but there is a big difference between making a fair profit and making the most that you can. Is the first aim of company directors to make the most profit for their shareholders or a profit which will ensure that the company continues to be viable into the future? Customers are important too, with the rest of the community needing at least a little consideration occasionally.

I don't think the unfairness claim can be made against more than a small number of the people who run companies -- it just seems like that sometimes.

Create your own book on a Kindle

This article was first published in the July 2011 edition of PC Update, the magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group. The article refers to a Kindle-formatted file of this article, which can be Download here: Create your own book on a Kindle

Let us assume you have bought a Kindle, the best selling ebook reader from Amazon. In addition to some free classic novels and a couple of best sellers you may have bought. you would rather like to add the first draft of your own Great Australian Novel, or, more likely, the report you have been preparing for your local service club.

I looked at several methods and my first attempt used a page layout program I am used to, InDesign, which recently included abilities to output to ePub files that can be converted for the Kindle and other ebook readers.

That worked well, but it was complex and I am not about to tell MelbPC members that they should go out and buy programs in the four-figure price range.

Can it be done for nothing? The answer is Yes.

Firstly, what is a Kindle book file? As supplied by Amazon they usually have an .azw extension and appears to be a proprietary format though similar to the published .mobi format. which is the same as the Palm format with the .prc extension. Both of these are recognised by the Kindle.

All these formats are based on XML, eXtensible Markup Language, which brings us to the best known such language which is HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, as used by the vast majority of web sites. In fact, a restricted form of HTML, with a small number of extra tags, is as good a means as any to use for creating an ebook.

There is a very limited range of HTML tags which can be used for formatting a book to read on a Kindle. If you have ever formatted a web page then this will come as no problem to you.

The main ones you have to play with are the set of heading tags: <h1> to <h6> getting progressively smaller (and their associated closing tags </h1> etc; <hr /> for a horizontal rule; <i> and </i> for italics (or you can use the <em> tags for "emphasis"; <b> and /b> for bold (or use the <strong> set); and <blockquote> and close with </blockquote> for a long quotation inset from the left margin.

As well you can use a limited number of CSS (cascading style sheet) commands either in your HTML file or in a separate file that is linked as it would be for a web page and include that in the same folder. If you are used to working with CSS do not try anything far from the most common tags.

Among a very few specific mobi tags is <mbp:pagebreak /> for a page break (suprisingly this seems to be forgotten by many book converters -- a new page for a new chapter does make the whole production look professional). Note that there is a space before the ending slash.

A PDF of the tags which can be used is available from http://kindleformatting.com/ but here is a simple template which might get you going:

<html>
<head>
<title>My first Kindle book</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>My first Kindle book</h2>
<h4>By firstname lastname</h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Based on a template published in PC Update, the magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group</p>
<mpb:pagebreak />
<h3>Chapter one</h3>
<p>Here goes all the text you need in as many paragraphs as you need.</p>
<mpb:pagebreak />
<h3>Chapter two</h3>
<p>Here goes all the text you need in as many paragraphs as you need. </p>
</body>
</html>

This is simple enough to edit in Notepad without getting lost in the tags, but you may find it simpler to use a Text Editor, most of which put the tags in a different colour to the text so that you can easily tell the difference. I currently use Gizmo but I have also used NotePads++ from http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ which is also free.

Calibre at http://calibre-ebook.com/ is a program which will manage an ebook collection for one or more ebook readers and will convert between formats as needed within the limits imposed by Digital Rights Management. But Calibre offers many options, often hidden from obvious control, so while it is a program I would recommend, it is easier for the beginner in this field (which was me a matter of a couple of months ago) to use simpler and more specific converters.

For this article I used the free Mobipocket Creator from http://www.mobipocket.com which is a French company that was bought by Amazon in 2005. It is simple to use in that you create a new blank publication and then drag in the HTML file and any required graphics files (plus the CSS file if you are using one), and then click on the Build icon. We will ignore the optional steps to add a cover page and a table of contents. Try these when you have achieved your first success. There is a clear Help file.

Once you have you file, you can then connect your Kindle and drag the completed file, which will have a .prc extension to the documents folder of the Kindle, ready to read.

This article is available as a PRC (Mobi) file at the link shown at the head of this blog post and is available as a Zip file with the complete article as an ebook ready to view on your Kindle and as an HTML file so that you may examine the original code.

The nastier side of Torrent

I finally got round to trying the Torrent system, and could not resist doing a torrent search on myself. With quotes around my name I got several entries, most on a site called Docstor, and for articles written years ago, such as one titled "Is there really a PageMaker 7?"

I was able to add a comment to the pages where some of the articles were listed, pointing out that the articles were old, out of date and that I had no objection to their use provided a link to my website was included -- and that more up-to-date articles, also free for use in non-profit situations, could be found on that website. It had the desired result. Some time later, downloads were listed as zero.

My views on torrent availability are mixed and not helped by finding that a surprising number of sites seem to offer free downloads of copyright material, but then offer faster downloads if one pays a fee. The person who created the material will not be receiving any of that fee so, at the very least, I feel that such pay-for-speed services should be boycotted.

Certainly many musicians, singers etc have been dudded by record companies, to the extent that the most rewarding way for many to make music is to record their own material and sell copies at concerts, plus a few to independent retailers who will hold stock so that the artist can advertise on flyers, websites etc and at concerts and other performances about where their records can be bought. There are good record companies around but they tend to be the smaller ones.

To a substantial extent the same goes for software. There are a small number of businesses that represent small software businesses, providing a means of registration and downloads and for the collection of money.

And after saying all that, I have to admit that I downloaded the Torrent version of a CD that was recorded by a singer I know, or knew, because I last heard her live 40 years ago, but who was recently in Melbourne as one of the overseas guests of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

I needed the recording to persuade my partner to also come to the concert as while she likes some jazz she is more at home with country music. Listening to a singer who uses her voice more as a musical instrument than for words was not done by choice, but she did enjoy it, and I hope by the time you read this, she will have enjoyed the concert. (update: she did).

I hope too to have been able to buy a copy of the record (update: I did) as I'd much prefer to listen to a legal recording of someone I know and whose coffee I drank at her home many times after gigs when I was in her backing band.

Getting started with ebooks

The question: I prepare books for print and I'm wondering what are good resources for taking authors through the process of Kindle publishing; this seems a useful ability to pick up.

Getting in at what is still a relatively early stage would seem to be a good move -- and what Kindle books I've downloaded so far (admittedly mostly free) are, to put it mildly, not very well done. My first experiment a week or so ago of just a 2-page file was, at least in my view, well up to average standards. But the couple of print-prepared documents I've experimented with since have been disasters.

I found Joshua Tallent's site at kindleformatting.com very useful, but the free trials so far of various software to convert from pdf to epub and the mobi format (the latter being what the Kindle uses) have been disappointing. The best so far has been the conversion aspects of the Calibre ebook library and uploading/conversion program: calibre-ebook.com

A trial version of Adobe InDesign in the new CS5.5 edition holds out promise with its new Article palette to take a print file and reorganise the items into the order needed in an ebook and to leave out other items like running heads and page numbers. That will convert to Adobe's favoured epub format that Calibre and other programs can convert to .mobi. However getting InDesign for just e-publishing at its present level would seem an expensive outlay.

I would be interested in learning from others who have dabbled or more with Kindle or other e-publishing and what software they used.

My guess is that we have yet to see the software which will let us seemlessly change a print-publishing file into one for e-reading.

Better outlook for print media

A year ago, magazines were dropping like flies. However, over 2010, the ndustry stabilized enough for more magazines to launch than to fold – with a total number of 169 launches and 167 folds.

- State of the Media Report 2011, Vocus Media Research Group

That's a big turnaround, and the Vocus report, subtitled "Adapting, Surviving and Reviving" is encouraging reading for anyone in the media.

After the above quote Rebecca Bredholt, managing editor of magazine content at Vocus writes “I think publishers have figured out how people want to consume which types of content.”

In particular it will be interesting to see the continuing progress of AOL's offshoot, the Patch.org Foundation. This started almost 700 "hyperlocal news websites" and at least some of the staff are paid

There were 13 new weeklies and 5 new monthlies in the print side of the newspaper category. On the other side of the ledger, there were closures of 6 dailies, 109 weeklies, 12 monthlies, 9 online and 15 "other".

Of course all the above figures are for the USA. However, it does seem that the outlook generally is good for specialist publications at the expense of generalist. There is a good argument for putting some sections of print publications online, especially tabular material (one wonders why many daily newspapers still print detailed sports results and share prices).

You can download the Vocus report from:
http://www.vocus.com/resources/state-of-media/index.asp
(You do have to fill in a form first which asks details of name, job, email, etc but it does not seem to do any serious checking of what you enter),

Details on the Patch Foundation are at:
http://www.patch.com/foundation

What will supermarket of future be like?

Will the retail shop of the future look much like the typical retail shop of today?

I suspect that we may see as big a change as is the comparison between the present-day supermarket and the grocery shop where I worked on Saturday mornings in my pre-teens: long counter, "pre-packaging" limited to the paper bags of broken biscuits I had the job of making up from the biscuit tins bought cheaply because they might have fallen over in the van (The good biscuits were kept aside for sale at full price.)

Deliveries have changed dramatically. No longer is there a steady stream of trucks from multiple manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. The trucks which deliver are mainly those contracted to the retail chain; the few individuals are local and usually perishable goods.

The manufacturers now make in fewer places and will, for example, deliver to a very few, very large distribution centres. Basically distribution is now handled by the supermarket chains and a product delivered to one of those may end up anywhere in the region.

The plan, by at least one major retail chain, and others seem to be following the same line, is that for all fast turnover products, the "shelves" will be stacked at the distribution centres and just moved in with hand-lift electric trolleys into place in the aisles.

I asked some time ago about the remaining product when a shelf unit section is near empty and needs replacing. It seems either there will be two identical shelf sections so the last remaining products are moved to fill spaces in that, or when the old shelf section is moved out, the remaining products are the first used to fill the new one, so a few local filling staff will still be needed.

Some smaller retail chains may use a rudimentary form of this for soft drinks, dog food, etc. but they tend to be closer to following the old half-case style of cutting open cartons, many of which are then removed when empty by customers to replace non-available plastic bags.

Not all developments are exclusive to the big chains. Our local independent supermarket is one of those using automated shelf pricing: the updated prices are sent via slight voltage variations in the fluorescent lights to the electronic price label units clipped to the shelves. I've spoken to one of the repair technicians and to the manager, and understand that while the system works fairly well, there can be some problems from the electricity supply being less consistent than it used to be. And printed price labels, especially for discounts, are still far more effective.

The automated units display the unit pricing as well as the actual price. This information is somewhat small black on green screen the size of those on an old-style mobile phone: Item description small; price large; unit pricing small. Both description and unit pricing will scroll if necessary.

I think this may have been an Australian invention but there are also advances in this field and the latest kinds (which I have not yet seen in Australia) replace the dot matrix LCD screen with an eInk format similar (but a lot smaller) to the Kindle ebook reader sold by Amazon.

Only this week the first colour eink ebook reader (no disturbing backlighting needed) was shown at the current Consumer Electronics Show in the US. So colour electronic price labels in supermarkets could come very soon.

This will also allow product icons to be shown instead of just a description. There have also been versions with a loop aerial on the ceiling above the aisle instead of using the fluorescent light circuitry.

Back in the 1930s there were attempts to completely automate the early supermarkets and I suspect that the present day attempts to encourage use of self-service checkouts will not succeed beyond their use by those having a very small number of items which they have bought previously.

Maybe a few more consumers need to learn that one of the most effective ways of making a point that you do not like certain methods is to leave the goods at the checkout if service is not what you expect and buy them again at the competitor nearby. I've heard more than the usual sense of urgency to the appeal to one of the few remaining shelf fillers to return items from a particular checkout. My guess is that they would have included some frozen items. Any retailer who has this happen as often as once in a blue moon needs to take a look at their service methods.

If we are fortunate we may see slightly less emphasis on price and discount vouchers and more on service. Could there yet be a supermarket in Australia which employs staff to help a shopper take a substantial trolley load to the car?

Here's a house that will not last!

Houses are usually built to last...maybe not the multiple hundreds of years of centuries past but at least the rest of a lifetime. So, is the real estate agent who produced this advertisement being truthful or do they just not understand what they have written.

The "will not last" phrase turns up all too often in retail advertising but it is usually in reference to goods considerably cheaper than $390,000.

Would you cut your editing or layout rates?

Whether you are editing books or articles, do you have a flat fee per page or hour, or are you prepared to cut your rates?

I am not suggesting that you should work for less overall, but there is a case for having discussions about the scope of your editing.

An example of the circumstances which can arise is the work which is being done to a budget. There has been an allocation within the budget for the work of editing and for layout. Both of these categories can sufffer from being near the end of the process and finding that costs have overrun at previous stages so there are only these last stages where cuts can be made. This may not be fair but it happens.

Sometimes layout work can be reduced by a degree of automation -- making the publication fit templates that already exist and reducing the complexity of the layout so there are fewer places where text has to run around illustrations. It may also be possible to run a long work over fewer pages by reducing text size so that production costs are reduced.

There are fewer ways in which editing costs can be cut.

Ways in which such costs can be reduced include reducing the time which will be spent on rewriting or on fact checking provided others in the process are prepared to take responsibility for such things being done at an earlier stage. Some of this comes down to a decision by the overall editor or publisher on whether the author is trusted (Nearly all author contracts require the author to take this responsibility and to indemnify the publisher).

It can mean deciding that the copyeditor is to increase the number of pages or number of words processed in each hour. Is quality to suffer? It may but there are times when a decision has to be made that the end result is "good enough".

This is a generally accepted process on newspapers and on many magazines. The deadline is fixed. As it approaches, so the final editorial processes which might have included rewrites come to focus on avoiding errors which would make the publication look bad. As the hands on the clock rotate ever faster you might hear a call to check proofs for "heads and intros" maybe with an added check to see that column ends read on to the top of the next column.

Fortunate is the editorial desk where a second edition will allow for more corrections later.

Similarly with freelance editing, the worker may have to work to a specific deadline. Sometimes the copyeditor may feel that quality has been compromised to the extent that he or she would rather not have their name associated with the work. However the skilled editor will still be able to justly claim that the limited job done is still better than it would be if a less skilled person had been involved.

So, do you insist on working to the standards you set for yourself or are you prepared to work to a budget and still feel that you did a good job in the circumstances?

Worst-case scenario: plan for it

In your business or even in life in general, have you worked out a worst-case scenario? It should be essential but I suspect too many people are unwilling to face the prospect of things going wrong.

Insurance salespeople will encourage you to consider what might happen if you had a fire, but few take it further than that, and the effects are often not those you can insure against.

Several recent reactions to changes in government policies, changes in the dollar exchange rate and surveys showing changes in consumer buying habits lead me to wonder yet again whether many business people ever work out what they'll do if things start to go wrong.

Those good at selling often overestimate their ability to sell -- but worst case is not always a lack of sales. As in the example I gave in the book Success in Store, it is also possible for a worst case to be caused by sales being too good. (Do you have access to funds to buy what you have sold, or, in a manufacturing business, the cash and/or credit to buy the raw materials?)

A lot of this is done with a spreadsheet. Just take the figures a bit further to the extremes. Yes sales in the convenience store we bought were poor, and even our own mishandling of customers might have been unable to make them worse, but what if road works started in the street outside and took way longer than were planned? I've seen that happen to others, and after putting off the staff and allowing for the lack of a need to buy stock, the overheads were still at a level which drew on all resources. (In the case I'm thinking of, the local authority was prepared to make a substantial contribution to promoting the strip shopping area when the work was done, but the businesses still had to get through to that point.)

The advertisement rate calculator included with my book How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter makes it easy to work out what would happen to income if a periodical publisher found all orders coming in for full pages instead of a mix of small and medium ads. But that is the kind of calculation which should be done with any business. I'm sure you've heard the joke about the business owner who admits that they are losing a dollar on every sale "but we make up for it in volume".

Retailers in Australia are currently trumpeting the benefits of a high dollar in lowering prices on imported goods, especially electronics. But have they worked out what they'd do if, over say a three or six month period, the dollar conversion rate dropped to half its present level -- which was where it was only a few years ago.

Computer retailers used to stock computers. Now few do outside of the demo stock on the floor. Not only did they learn to cope with price fluctuations but also with continuing upgrades in specifications. But a lot of stores went broke or closed because it was just too hard to cope.

In another field I went through some basic costings with a couple planning a restaurant. If successful it would have been a goldmine, but the most likely scenario was that they would be working their butts off for less than a living wage. Then I discovered that none of their forecasts included the cost of borrowing the admittedly fairly small sum they would have needed to get started. So, unless they started with queues outside their door on the first days they would have been going backwards slowly but certainly.

So think now of what could go wrong, and what effect it will have. If you cannot cope with that, you will be unlikely to cope with success.

How to work internationally

I've been approached by a client in another country. What can I do now to prevent unnecessary complications later?

The Internet is truly international and gives the opportunity for many individuals and small businesses to work for clients around the world. So my answer to the above question was that you should do very few things differently to what you should be doing anyway.

One difference is that you should make sure that you agree what currency the payment will be in, when it will be paid and how it will be paid. And also make sure the work involved for that payment is stated very clearly.

Neither side will be happy if you find that making the payment costs as much as the payment itself. If the client is in one of the many countries where payments can be made by PayPal that would be good, and if you must accept payments by bank transfer make sure your bank knows all about the details you will need from them and what they will charge for processing while suggesting your client makes the same enquiries at their end. I've heard of transfers costing from $5 to a hundred dollars and more for quite small amounts of money (a few hundred dollars).

If you have a good feeling after a few initial email exchanges then it is likely all will go well. I have only had one client refuse to pay and that was a US company well known for its charitable work. On the other hand many many years ago when a firm in a country which ends in ...stan owed me a small sum they eventually got a US client of theirs to hand me a small brown envelope of dollars when I was on a business trip to the USA after the original client's government had made overseas payments almost impossible.

Most clients want the association to go well but it is still a good idea to do some internet searches on business and individual names and locations.

Then, as I have already said, do what you would do for any other new client. Ask for an advance and make sure that if a job will take a substantial amount of time that you get progress payments. And do not accept excuses for delayed payments. If the money stops, you stop your work.