My Case to Apple: Give Me A Bigger iPhone

I write this because it's been nagging me for a while.

My case to Apple (the company, not the fruit) is that they should make the iPhone bigger.
Why?

1) My fat fingers - I'm not a fat guy. I run and lift regularly, and eat healthy. But I have big fingers. Even when the iPhone is turned on its side my fat fingers mash every button BUT the one I want. I have to type slowly to get my message across. Texting, E-mailing, Facebooking, and Twittering are made difficult.

2) Better picture - along with bigger buttons, a bigger screen would also mean I could see more of a webpage or text while typing. As it is, the screen gets chopped in half, or worse.

3) More powerful - with a bigger phone comes a bigger processor. In my mind bigger = more powerful. I would like that for an iPhone that regularly slows down (I have an iPhone 4, and there could be improvements I haven't seen yet in the iPhone 4S). Regardless, more power is gooder.

My recommendation: make it Samsung Galaxy Nexus size.

STOP! Before you get angry and throw your MacBook Pro at the sight of your arch nemesis Samsung, let me explain.

I don't want a Galaxy Nexus.
Yes, it has the size, screen, and touch-screen-buttons I want. But the touch screen itself is HORRIBLE. Try to zoom in on a webpage and it selects links and buttons I don't want. Trying to blog with it is a study in frustration. That and I couldn't find the dedicated browser, and had to keep using Google Search to get to sites. Ice Cream Sandwich is not for me (plus ice cream sanwichces will give me those love handles I've been working so hard to get rid of).

My idea: Make it roughly the size of a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but keep the nice iPhone 4 rounded-off-rectangle design. A 5" long x 3" wide screen would be AMAZING. I could write whole books on an iPhone like that. Hell, a 6"x4" would be pretty cool.
And keep the width of the iPhone 4, at just under a centimeter, or roughly 3/8". Maybe a tad thinner.
Keep both cameras, and with a larger iPhone they could be made bigger and better. Mega-MegaPixels!...TerraPixels?

The pros: It would be larger than the current iPhone and great for fat-fingers like mine, plus it has more power, better resolution, and a larger screen for videos, webpages, texting, etc. It's smaller than a tablet, and will appeal to those that don't want to spend the money on an iPad, but would like more out of their smartphone. A middle-market, so to speak.

The cons (because there are always cons): it's going to be bigger and heavier, and some people may balk at the size and weight. It will cost more to produce, and cost the customer more to purchase. People may balk at the price.

But if marketed as an inbetween smartphone/tablet, and with Apple's hush-hush-product-debut-followed-by-religious-devotion-of-consumers, I think it would work.

Just rambling. Now: back to work...and writing. I have a short story to finish!

Until next time...

Stop Hitting Yourself

This past week has been an epic failure for my writing. I've written. . .get ready for it. . .6,000words. Tragic I know, especially when I should be pounding out roughly 1,500-3,000 per day. Damn you work and the need to make money! Damn you Project Management masters degree!

Seriously, though, writing isn't a career for me (yet) and so finding time to write in life is difficult. I'm not complaining, just stating fact. I find ways to write (. . .not at work, of course. . .if my boss is reading this). I mute the TV and bang out a few dozen words at a commercial break. I become a hermit and lock myself in my room for an hour. But word count does suffer due to other activities.
I wil work on this.

So this week's blog? More lessons learned from my adventure self publishing. It's ADVENTURE TIME! (Algebraic!)

Don't Be a (Book)Baby!
BookBaby.com was my leap into self-publishing. I thought, "What a great service! For just $99 I can get my book published as an eBook to Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and Apple! Gee golly!" And so I skipped along, my cheeks rosey, and handed BookBaby $99. . .to do what I can now do for FREE!

I'm really kicking myself in the ass on this one. It's not that they're a bad service, per se. They're not. The BookBaby team has been amazingly helpful along the way. My questions are answered in 24hours or less. They have an amazing site. They pay me the moment I hit my payment cut-off. But it's still $99 (or more) for things I CAN DO FOR FREE!

That's a huge lesson here. If you don't have to spend gobs of money on it, don't. If you can spend a fraction of the price using a service like e-junkie to distribute your books in PDF format, DO IT! That, and Amazon has the Kindle Direct Program, Barnes and Noble has the PubIt program, Apple has the iBook Author App. It's all FREE. Okay, yes, they do take a royalty from the purchase. But there is no upfront cost that hurts your wallet. That's the important bit.

Now, BookBaby has sweetend the deal by allowing people to publish to Kobo and Copia, and they have their new print service (I honestly don't know enough their print service to opine on it, so I won't). But CreateSpace has a pretty good deal for authors (have you seen Der Sternvolker on the Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million websites?). And watch, both Kobo and Copia may start offering services much like Amazon and B&N.

Now, if you so choose to use BookBaby, more power to you. They'll treat you right.
...but it's still $99+.

Pimp Yourself
Wait, no, don't pimp yourself. You're not a word whore! Or maybe you are.
Whatever.
What I mean to say is market yourself. And it can be done on the cheap! Facebook ads and Google AdWords are great advertising tools for very cheap. Bids for your advertisement to pop up can be as low as 5cents ($0.05). Budgets vary, but you can execute a very effective marketing strategy with these tools on the cheap.

But what's FREE?
A Facebook page for you as an author/your site. That's free. And getting your friends and family to 'Like' it is free. Because then other people see their 'Like', look at your page, and they 'Like' it. That is also free.
Creating a Sell Page for your print novel(s) to hand out to local book/comic stores with Microsoft Publisher/Scribus and Adobe Acrobat? This is free (Scribus is very free to download and use).
A Twitter account is free. Everyone has the Twitters! Follow other authors, publishers, agents, and stuff you like. I follow Woodchuck Cider on Twitter (I could use like ten Woodchuck Ciders right now).
A Blog account is free.
A YouTube account is free (although a digital camcorder isn't free, unless built into your computer). Microsoft Movie Maker is free. And there's a ton of stock music and images that are free online. You can make your own free advertisements!
Another great FREE thing: going up and talking to people about your stuff. Though comic/sci-fi/fantasy conventions aren't free, they aren't terribly expensive. Just stay local (ComicCon is definitely not free in any way shape or form...but if you can go, do so and network your little heart out). Book clubs are free. Business cards aren't free, but VistaPrint is $10 for 500 very nice, professional looking business cards. It's not free, but it ain't bad, either.

There are plenty of ways to market yourself for free, or for very little money.

Do Maths
I didn't do maths. That was bad. Want to see my cost v. profits so far?

Item                                         $
BookBaby service                   -$99.00
E-Book Profits                          $62.50
CreateSpace service                -$52.00
Book Profits                              $22.29
E-Junkie Subscription (to date) -$20.00
Total                                       -$86.91

That's bad. The red lettering and negative signs prove it.
If I were a multi-million dollar business I would not be too big to fail and my corporate empire would topple like a house of cards (Noooo!).
So do your maths. Make sure you can make a profit before you spend oodles of money. Then you won't be playing the catch up game (like me. . .shut up).

My action plan?
1) Stop spending money where I don't need to. Der Sternvolker will remain with BookBaby. I've already shelled out that money. But in the future I'm goin the free way. CreateSpace should be my only charges since there is no way to get a print service to print books for free. But I'll make sure there are profits to back that up.
2) Market like a boss without spending all the cash.
3) Write, write, write summore. . .to make more money (but mostly because I like writing. . .and money).

Self-Editing, or: How to Stop Worrying and Love Hitting Yourself
Self-editing is crucial to a good final draft/book. A lot of people are adverse to this. It forces them to analyze their work and admit it's bad. They're forced out of their comfort zones. They have to criticize themselves and improve. We, as human beings, are adverse to such stressors.

We must overcome that adversity and self-edit. Finished something? Drop it for 1-4weeks, then go back and look at it like it's not yours. Then DESTROY IT! Look at the grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Balk at the horrible dialogue and terrible word choice! Force yourself to change everything to "said" and "asked" ("Oh no!" he ejaculated).
Wash, rinse, repeat self-editing process.

I would recommend doing this at least 5 times. Five. Fuenf. Sanqe. Cinco.

And then give it to someone else to ravage. A new set of eyes can make all the difference. Maybe they see something that you didn't because your eyes are bloodshot from staring at a screen for endless hours trying to turn your
crap into a diamond. Just make sure it's someone compitent. Run has been given to the wife of a friend of mine who has a degree in english and such. More to follow on that.

That's all for now folks. I'll be out of town and returning Sunday night, so have a good weekend.

"So remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
- Red Green

The Tablet Business Revolution

I have been writing furiously, and will post a snippet into what I have been creatimg...Saturday. I know I promised Tuesday...in the future I will work more wiggle room into my self-set deadlines.

For now, though, I would like to turn your attention to a new revolution in business: the iPad. A beautiful little device, it's light, mobile, powerful, and easy to use. With hundreds of thousands of apps, and more created almost daily, there is very little it cannot do to aid your business, whether it be large corporation or small business.
I found these two articles via Google:
The first article is "5 Ways to Use an iPad for Small Business": http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3880341/5-Ways-to-Use-an-iPad-for-Small-Business.htm. Herein, the author gives several examples of professions in which the iPad could be used to enhance overall task performance and organization. At the end of each example the author also describes drawbacks to the miracle device in that profession.
The second article is "5 Reasons Your Small Business Should Consider Apple's iPad": http://www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/five-reasons-your-small-business-should-consider-apples-ipad/. The author, obviously a huge iPad supporter, lists five considerations that small businesses should take in deciding the usefulness of an iPad .The author clearly thinks it is applicapble for almost any small business; this is up for debate. But he makes very good arguments for the iPad.

Search Google, and you can find a plethora of articles arguing for (and against) the use of iPads in small business.

In my honest opinion, I think the iPad is the best thing since sliced bread. Though I hate the fact that flash will not work on it, limiting the sites that could be visited, I'm sure that the second incarnation of the iPad (the iPad 2? Or perhaps the iPad Leopard, following Apple's propensity for naming systems after big cats?) will include flash (I hope). I am debating getting one once I return to the States, or if I am going to just wait until the iPad's successor is developed.

Of course, there are new competitors in the Pad market. Research In Motion (RIM) has developed their BlackBerry PlayBook: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/playbook-tablet/?IID=rim_playbook_homepage. Though smaller than the iPad (7" as opposed to the larger iPad's 10"), it does have flash, and it has a USB port for connecting to other devices. Though not out yet, the BlackBerry PlayBook is an obvious other choice if an iPad turns out not to be for me.

The future will tell. Once I make my glorious return, I will be better positioned to decide.

Affordable Space Travel, Forbes, and Steve Jobs

First and foremost I had to comment on this article on CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/10/15/space.tourism/index.html. While I don't have the money to support it, I am a huge supporter of corporate owned, commercial space travel (partially from my belief that government screws it up pretty darn well). Flights for $200,000 are already on sale for a trip in Virgin Galactic's ship. Other commercial space flight companies are rigorously building their space ports across the US and taking reservations. In the article, the company Space Adventures will charge $102,000 per trip. As more money flows into commercial space travel and exploration, prices will drop (as with any technology or service), and technology will advance to do more lighter, and with less. I only wish there was a way to donate to such companies in order to help the cause (don't I sound all politicky and revolutionary).

Second on today's post is Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/). I thoroughly enjoy this site, and read it daily to see what new nuggets I can pull from it in the areas of investing, marketing, and starting a small business. I highly recommend everyone goes to the site and reads as much as they can. Just ingest the knowledge held there. When I get back from overseas, I'm going to subscribe to the magazine (or eMagazine, if it's available).
But two articles caught my attention this evening. The first is an article on how small businesses can defeat inaction (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1025/entrepreneurs-economy-planning-new-products-what-now.html?boxes=Homepagechannels), especially in the stressful economic environment we live and operate in today (no, sorry, the recession is not over for the majority of Americans still attempting to find jobs). This article spoke to me as I am slowly but surely planning to start my own small business.
More importantly, though, was the article on "How to Innovate Like Steve Jobs" (http://blogs.forbes.com/kymmcnicholas/2010/10/15/how-to-innovate-like-steve-jobs/?boxes=Homepagechannels). It's partially an article advertisement of the book by the same name - a book I plan to buy (eBook, here I come!). In the article, and the book, the author focuses on the principles that Steve Jobs follows in innovating in Apple. One of the major points was "sell dreams, not products". Your business should be about helping people and advancing their lives, not about you or your business. Jobs focuses on creating products that meet consumer wants and needs and the best way to build them to meet those needs. Another principle Jobs follows is "association"; looking outside your industry for ideas. Instead of just going through the computer aisle at a store, Jobs strolled through a home appliances aisle to get ideas. Also, Apple Stores don't have dedicated cashiers. Instead they have concierges, an idea he got from hotels. The role of the concierge is not to make a sale, but to help people better themselves.

A lot of interesting ideas for anyone going into any business - even publishing.