“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – Gen. George S. Patton
Five Quick Bits You Might Enjoy
- What’s Your EQ? I scored a 9 out of 10 on this self-test. I wasn’t being honest as much as figuring out what the right answer was. Click here.
- The McDonald’s Vegan Burger Taste Test. Click here.
- All your favorite alcohols ranked by sugar content. Click here.
- Does my outfit offend you? This is a bit that PragerU does now and then. What I like best is how trained these college kids are in political correctness. Click here.
- They say that twins have a connection that is unique. Click here and here for two little clips – one of twin chimpanzees and one of twin girls. Tell me if this isn’t inspiring!
Cousin Camp, 2023
I’m writing this at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico, where our extended family of 46 (including spouses) has gathered for our latest once-every-two-years “Cousin Camp.”
Here’s a photo of some of us climbing a nearby ruin:
We’ve been holding these family reunions for 30 years. Our first Cousin Camp was in Martha’s Vineyard. We (K’s and my siblings) were in our late 30s/ early 40s and our children were quite young. Today, it is our children that are in their late 30s/ early 40s and our grandchildren that are the young ones.
The original idea of having periodic family reunions was suggested to me by my brother-in-law. I liked it immediately because I had always rued the fact that I never knew my cousins. They all lived in Colorado, and traveling to Colorado was very much out of my parents’ budget (with 10 mouths to feed on an income of $14,000). So, my hope was that our kids and their cousins could grow up knowing one another, even if they lived in different locations.
The usual time slot for Cousin Camp is the second week of August. Since the first one on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s been held at a Club Med in Colorado, on a cruise ship to Alaska, in one of the Disney villages in Orlando, on a boat in Croatia, and at Rancho Santana in Nicaragua (twice). We’ve also been on two adventure trips – one in Canada and another in the Rocky Mountains.
The trips themselves have been interesting and enjoyable. But the best thing about these reunions is the fulfillment of the original idea. Our children have close and comfortable relationships with 15 or so cousins. They have the kind of relaxed and intimate friendships that come only when people are able to grow up together.
I have done all sorts of things in my life. And I’ve accomplished all sorts of personal goals. But there is nothing I’ve done that gives me more satisfaction than watching the casual affection these young people have for one another.
Remote Work Is Dead… at Zoom?
Most of the businesses I work with are making efforts to get employees back to work. Zoom meetings are useful and efficient, the CEOs say, but there is something missing when employees work remotely all the time.
I thought it was interesting that senior executives at Zoom are feeling the same way. Recently, the company announced that employees who live within 50 miles of one of their offices are expected to be there at least in person 2.5 days a week.
Bull in a China Shop
In May, Binance reportedly facilitated $90 billion of crypto trading in China, where the act was, uh, made illegal in 2021. Meanwhile, US regulators are weighing fraud charges against the exchange, but worry about the effect on consumers. Click here.
Beef
With a combined subscriber list of 289 million and total views of more than 45 billion, James Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, is YouTube’s biggest creator.
He’s in the news because he’s suing ghost kitchen company Virtual Dining Concepts, alleging it served gross food at his MrBeast Burgers restaurants. VDC claims MrBeast is bullying them because he wanted more money out of the partnership.
That’s the “news.” But, having never heard of MrBeast or Jim Donaldson, I am fixated on learning how, at age 25, he created the biggest by far social media following.
This is about the lawsuit.
And this is about the man.
Keeping It Fresh
In a bid to eat up more of the $1.5 trillion US grocery market, Amazon is revamping its grocery plans, opening up fresh food delivery to non-Primers and refreshing its arsenal of brick-and-mortar Fresh grocery stores. Click here.
Bring Up the Bodies
By Hilary Mantel
432 pages
Published May 8, 2012
For the month of August, the Elder Mules selected Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.
Mantel’s name was familiar to me, but I knew nothing about her books. I worried that this one might be one of those novels that is better suited for the book clubs that our spouses belong to. So, I googled it. Turns out it’s a historical novel – and a good one. It’s the second book in a trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. The other two books in the trilogy are Wolf Hall (2009) and The Mirror and the Light(2020). Both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies won the Man Booker Prize.
I’ve always been interested in the story of Henry VIII and his eight wives, one of whom, Anne Boleyn, was famously beheaded. What brought about her downfall? And what did Thomas Cromwell have to do with it? Bring Up the Bodies does a detailed and entertaining job of explaining all that.
Critical Reception
* “Bring Up the Bodies (the title refers to the four men executed for supposedly sleeping with Anne) isn’t nostalgic, exactly, but it’s astringent and purifying, stripping away the cobwebs and varnish of history, the antique formulations and brocaded sentimentality of costume-drama novels, so that the English past comes to seem like something vivid, strange, and brand new.” (Charles McGrath)
* “Historical fiction has many pitfalls, multiple characters and plausible underwear being only two of them. How should people talk?… How much detail – clothes, furnishings, appliances – to supply without clogging up the page and slowing down the story?… Mantel sometimes overshares, but literary invention does not fail her: She’s as deft and verbally adroit as ever.” (Margaret Atwood)
* “[The book’s] ironic ending will be no cliffhanger for anyone even remotely familiar with Henry VIII’s trail of carnage. But in Bring Up the Bodies it works as one. The wonder of Ms. Mantel’s retelling is that she makes these events fresh and terrifying all over again.” (Janet Maslin)
* Time’s list of the 100 best movies in the last century. Click here.
* From Vox: A good, succinct history of why cruise ships have gotten so big. Click here.
* Talk about luxury! Take a look at this posh public restroom in China.
* Who is the only living president whose ancestors were NOT slave holders? (Hint: It isn’t Obama.) Click here.
* How to restore a $3 pair of Air Jordans. Click here.
Who’s Smarter? Liberals or Conservatives?
From AS, re my August 4 piece on political ideology and intelligence:
“Interesting fact: I and other friends of yours, who shall remain nameless, have conversed over the years about your declining intelligence. Reading your article about liberals being more intelligent, I realized there is a direct correlation between your becoming a conservative and you heading quickly toward stupid.
“With that data confirmed, I plan to write it up and send it to JAMA. I think that’s enough research for it to be published, don’t you?”
My Response: JAMA will require a fair amount of support to be willing to publish such an observation. In addition to getting testimonials from our friends, you should get quotes from K and the kids, as they have been noting my senescence for decades!
So, You Want to Get Published?
From PN, re my recommendations in the August 8 issue:
“Another option is a company like Inkshares.”
My Response: Thanks! I’ll check it out.
How to Come Up with Ideas – Day After Day
From JW:
“I find that the hardest part of writing is coming up with what to write about. Do you have any suggestions for me? I’m curious if you’d be willing to offer a little glimpse ‘behind the scenes.’ How do you crank out so much great content so often? I would really appreciate any input you have on your idea generation and writing process.”
My Response: I don’t know how often you are publishing. But one of the surprising things I discovered about writing essays for a blog is that it’s much easier to come up with ideas when you are publishing on a daily basis. Easier than publishing weekly or biweekly. I think that’s because when you are publishing only once or twice a week, you demand more of each essay. And your readers also expect less because they understand that a daily publication is a bit like having a breakfast conversation with a smart friend. You expect an interesting conversation, but you don’t expect him/her to support all his/her thoughts with solid evidence and emotionally compelling stories.
That said, the best way to generate ideas worth your readers’ time is to do a good deal of reading yourself. Not stuff you find on Google, but essays and even books written by people that have expertise in the subject matter that interests you.
As a rule of thumb, for every 250 words you write, you should expect to prepare for it with an hour’s worth of intentional reading.
Step #1 in Building a Billion-Dollar Business
From SS:
“Hello Mark Ford. I want to learn marketing and copywriting from you and really want to have you as my mentor. How can I learn from you? I want to build a billion-dollar company. Please. I really need your help.”
My Response: At this point in my life, I’m no longer doing one-on-one mentoring. The best way to learn from me right now is by reading my books. Since your goal is to build a billion-dollar company, I think you should start with Ready, Fire, Aim – and you can order a copy directly from us.
List price is $27.95. But for readers of this blog, the price is $15 (which includes free shipping). To order your copy:
* Send a check for $15.
* Make the check payable to Cap & Bells Press, LLC. (No cash, please.)
* Include your name and mailing address and mail it to:
Cap & Bells Press
Attn: GKoo
290 SE 2nd Avenue
Delray Beach, FL 33444
All are welcome?
This is pretty funny. It’s a set-up, but it’s a good example of the hypocrisy of politically woke people. Click here.
Thinking of Getting Your Book Published? Don’t Ask Me!
At long last, you’ve finished that book you’ve been meaning to write for the last 15 years. Congratulations! You have accomplished something that only one in a hundred do. You have a right to be proud of yourself. And you are excited about the next step: finding a publisher for it.
It feels like once every month I get a request from a friend, acquaintance, or reader who, knowing I’m in the publishing business, presumes I can help him or her get a manuscript published.
As a courtesy and with a sprig of curiosity, I agree to review the manuscript. But even as I make this offer, I’m 99.9% certain I won’t be able to help. That’s because few people understand how traditional book publishing works. And because of that, they have completely unrealistic expectations. Also – and this is something I will say only if I think it will help – the manuscript is probably not good enough for publication.
After reviewing a manuscript last week, I replied with a more definitive than usual “no” – a longer-than-normal explanation of why, and a suggested remedy. I’m reprinting it here for anyone reading this who has a book and is looking for a publisher.
“You have put a fair amount of work into writing this. And I can see from your CV that you are very interested in and engaged with self-improvement strategies. So I don’t want to waste your time by encouraging you to try to get this published by a traditional publisher.
“To understand why, you need to understand how that industry works. Here are some useful facts…
“Publishers aren’t hungry to publish new writers. That’s because they know that 95% of books published by new writers in America will sell, at best, just a few hundred copies.
“Even with the new, less-expensive technology for typesetting and printing books, the investment in producing a new book is usually more than $5,000. If 95 out of 100 new books fail so miserably, that means that each of the five books that do make money must net at least $100,000.
“The first book that I wrote that was published traditionally (by John Wiley & Sons) sold somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 copies. That put it on the NYT bestseller list for a week or two. But it hardly made me a superstar with John Wiley.
“Authors that can sell at those levels are certainly appreciated by conventional publishers. But they are hardly cherished. The combined dollars they bring in every year may be enough to pay for the printing of the 95 books that fail. But they are not enough to pay for the salaries of their employees, among other costs, let alone provide profits for their shareholders.
“All that money is covered by the real bestselling authors. Writers like J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, and John Grisham, who have sold 500 million, 450 million, and 300 million books, respectively.
“Think about that. Five hundred million books sold at an average of $15 a book is $7.5 billion!
“What does this mean for an aspiring author like you?
“It means that, even if they like your book, there is a 95% chance that it will be a big, fat money loser. But it will cost the publishing company – even taking advantage of the new printing technology – between $5,000 and $10,000. Because they know this to be true, all the large publishers have dozens of recent college graduates working for them whose sole job is to give such manuscripts a quick scan and then send out a ‘sorry’ note.
“There are some exceptions. If, for example, the author is a celebrity. If the author is a well-known politician. If the author or the subject of the book is temporarily famous for committing mass murder. Or if the author is a social media ‘influencer’ with at least a million subscribers.
“When John Wiley agreed to publish my book, Automatic Wealth, I was writing and publishing a blog (Early to Rise) that had 900,000 subscribers. Today, with considerably fewer (but much higher quality) readers, any manuscript I sent them would be quickly ‘handled’ by one of their recent college grads.
“Which is to say, my advice is to forget about finding a conventional publisher for the moment. You should do what I did to get Automatic Wealth on the bestseller list: Build an audience.
“You can do that by starting a blog or a YouTube channel. Then work very hard on that. Work on improving the content – crafting ideas that are unique and uniquely marketable. Work on perfecting the delivery and the format to get your open-and-read rates to bestselling standards. And work on building your subscriber base until it reaches 10,000 and then 50,000, and eventually… who knows?
“If you hit a million subscribers, you will have a good chance of finding a conventional publisher to publish and promote your book. But don’t expect a huge signing bonus. As an unproven author (notwithstanding your big fan base), you’ll be lucky to get $20,000 plus a conventional royalty of 4% to 7% of sales.
“Or, at that point, you can publish the book yourself and sell it directly to your fans. If you do it that way, you will keep between 60% and 80% of the revenues (depending on whether the book is printed or digital).”
Speaking of selling the books you write, readers of this blog can order a copy of my book, Automatic Wealth, directly from us. List price is $24.95. But for you, the price is $15 (which includes free shipping).
To order your copy:
* Send a check for $15.
* Make the check payable to Cap & Bells Press, LLC. (No cash, please.)
* Include your name and mailing address and mail it to:
Cap & Bells Press
Attn: GKoo
290 SE 2nd Avenue
Delray Beach, FL 33444