OK, OK! I'll do it!

Ever since I began writing articles about my hobby of choice--amateur or "ham" radio--for my ham radio web site and several others, people have been asking me when I was going to do an amateur radio book.  The truth is, I have just been too darn busy to even think of such a thing.  And I also knew, in my heart of hearts, that it be would difficult indeed to get any kind of decent book contract for such a niche book.  I presented my idea to the American Radio Relay League, the ham radio national membership organization, and they passed, so that confirmed my feelings.  If they had no interest, I doubted anyone else would either.

Fast-forward to July 2012.  Things have changed, both in my personal life and in the wild and woolly world of big-time book publishing.

First, I retired from my 60-hour-a-week day job back in May.  And as I shuffled through the articles I had in the can, several more I was working on, and a few still in my head, I realized I was closer to a book than I had thought.

Secondly, as I investigated Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon.com for the re-issue of a couple of my previous now-out-of-print books (see my post just prior to this one), I realized that I should absolutely pull the ham radio book together for that outlet at least. I believe Amazon has become a real threat to traditional publishing companies--especially when it comes to e-books--as the old-line publishing houses struggle to figure this thing out.  At the very least, it gives me the opportunity to make my book available at a very reasonable price to those interested in amateur radio.  No, I don't make much money, even if I actually sell some downloads of the book, but that is not really the object anyway.  As I have said many times, and not totally facetiously, if I wanted to make a fortune writing books, I would write pornography (See FIFTY SHADES OF GREY).

Then, as I considered other options, I realized that Amazon offers a truly unique opportunity for works like this one that allows me to offer the book in a traditional paperback format.  It is a print-on-demand deal, but I ordered some copies as soon as I got the book and cover uploaded and accepted and the next day got the message that they were being shipped that day.  Wow!

This was with very little upfront cost and minimal hassle.  Now, the paperback will be available not only through Amazon.com, but through major distributors, for order by libraries, and even in many European markets.  We will see how good the print job is, but believe me on this: the major houses don't necessarily produce the highest quality book any more.

Talk about rapid technological change and its effect on society and the media!  Radio, TV, the Internet and telephone communications are not the only things evolving at a dizzying pace.  Include the anachronistic business of book publishing in that mix, too!

Realistically, will tons of booksellers and all the Barnes & Noble stores order a box full of the books?  Or will thousands of libraries order up a couple dozen of copies?  Of course not.  The big publishers do have sales staff to encourage that sort of thing.  But a) no big publishing house was going to do a contract for RIDING THE SHORTWAVES: EXPLORING THE MAGIC OF AMATEUR RADIO and b) even if they did, it would be somewhere near the bottom of the sales staff's sample case, so c) Amazon's various self-publishing options are perfect for this kind of book.

By the way, if you have any interest in the dynamic and rapidly growing hobby of ham radio--believe me, it ain't your weird uncle's past-time any more!--then you may want to stop by Amazon.com and take a look "Inside the Book," read the description, and maybe buy a copy or two...for yourself or someone you know.

See, right there in that last sentence, I did more publicity for RIDING THE SHORTWAVES than the big publishers do for most of the books they print up and ship out!

Don Keith N4KC
www.donkeith.com
www.n4kc.com

It Never Gets Old. No, It Doesn't!

There was a box on my doorstep the other day.  When I opened it, it was filled with my author copies of my latest book, FIRING POINT.  Just as with the previous 23 books, I had to sit there for a while, looking at the cover, flipping through the pages, reading excerpts.  It was still a thrill to see a real, live book with my name on the cover, filled with words that I wrote (well, helped write in this case since my co-author, George Wallace, is a gifted storyteller in his own right).  I admit I even smelled the fresh ink and paper and, even after 17 years, seeing a book that I wrote right there in my hands was as much a hoot as it was back in 1995 when I got that box of copies of THE FOREVER SEASON from Robert Wyatt, my editor at St. Martin's Press.

Now I've been to Amazon.com and read the write-up and downloaded the Kindle version of FIRING POINT, dropped by Barnes & Noble and grabbed the eBook version there for my wife's Nook, and even went to Audible.com to listen to an excerpt of the audio book (Stefan Rudnicki has done a fantastic job with the narration).

That was when it occurred to me that back in 1995, that box of books was it.  There were no eBooks, for sure, and audio books were big, bulky things on cassette tape.  Now those formats come as CDs or downloadable files for tablets, smart phones and other media.  Technological change.  Boy, is our primary topic giving publishers fits!  Traditional publishers, that is.  They are slowly but surely figuring out what is happening and how they should react.  At least some of them are.

I spent most of the last week or so playing the part of an editor/publisher, see.  I got the rights back from St. Martin's Press years ago on my second novel, WIZARD OF THE WIND.  Despite wonderful reviews, it never really sold very well and was never released as a paperback or audio book and nothing else existed then.  Since then, I really had no way to do anything else with it.  Publishers are not typically interested in re-doing books that did not sell well...even if there were beau coups great reviews.  "Damaged books" they call them.  But now, thanks to Amazon.com and Kindle, I have an outlet for the book that may just find some new readers.  Readers who grew up on radio, rock and roll, and the legendary disk jockeys who brought that groundbreaking music to us over the airwaves.

I have gone back and edited the manuscript myself.  There was some lazy writing in there, and I wanted to tighten up the prose a bit and update the story and how it equates to what has been happening in the radio broadcasting biz since it was published in 1997.  I added an author's note that spelled out exactly what I was trying to say by telling the story of fictional deejay and media mogul Jimmy Gill.  Then,with all that hard work done, it was a matter of minutes before I managed to get it converted to Kindle format, uploaded, looked at for formatting, and sent on its way for final approval and into the catalog at Amazon.  I have another couple of unsold manuscripts I'm looking at to self-publish that way, too, and have a ham-radio-oriented concept I'm working on, too.  I love the possibilities!  I'm also investigating Amazon's print-on-demand option for a couple of projects, too.

I can't wait until I see WIZARD OF THE WIND (and the cover I designed for it) pop up on Amazon, ready for sale and download.  It will still be just as big a thrill as seeing that box full of FIRING POINT copies show up on my doorstep.

It never gets old.  No, it doesn't.

Don Keith N4KC
www.n4kc.com
www.donkeith.com

(PS: I'll be harping on the eBook of WIZARD OF THE WIND as soon as it is approved for publishing and in the catalog.  Brace yourselves!)

(PPS: I am still producing this blog under protest using Google's Chrome browser.  It's an okay browser but I resent Google forcing me to use it if I want to continue to use their Blogspot service.  Pretty heavy-handed, I say!)

DVR for AM-FM? Gee!

Radio is the most ephemeral of all media.  Don't look up the word.  It just means it's here right now and then it's gone forever.  If someone says something especially pithy, makes you laugh, elucidates...oops!  Unless you had a tape recorder rolling, it's gone.  Oh, some stations and shows offer podcasts, but that's their opinion of what you found worth hearing again or sharing with friends.

Well, now along comes DAR.FM, a service that allows you to record your favorites and listen to them anytime, anywhere.  "Anywhere" assumes you have a computer, smartphone, or other device that will allow you to access the Internet, of course.  And the part about you being able to easily share whatever it is with your buddies is still in development.  But still, this DVR-like service for radio has some real possibilities.

HERE is an interesting interview with DAR.FM's founder, Michael Robertson.  If you don't have time to view the entire thing, skip to about the last six-and-a-half minutes.  There Michael has some interesting thoughts about how people expect to consume media content and how your old jalopy fits into that equation.

Rapid technological change.  You ain't see nothin' yet!

But the one thing that will drive it--beyond smartphones, apps, the Internet, WIFI, and all that other geek stuff is...wait for it...CONTENT.  You still have to have something on the air that is compelling enough that someone will want to record it, play it back, share it, and cherish it.  I agree with Robertson that some of that exists now.  But when people can truly access content from a wide range of geographies, regardless the time of day it aired or was made available, then those who produce something worthwhile will be royally rewarded.  As now with the wide range of TV content required to fill all those channels 24/7, there will be a tremendous hunger for audio magic.

And those who think compelling content is streaming the same tired old songs one after the other will fade away like that daytime AM radio station when the sun goes down.

Don Keith N4KC
www.donkeith.com
www.n4kc.com

Interrupting for attention

Followers of this blog have seen before my mentions of consultant Seth Grodin and his pithy observations on the nature of marketing, media, and the like.  In a recent interview, Grodin made some especially salient points on the subject of "moving from advertising to marketing."  Common misperception: advertising IS marketing.  No.  Advertising is one aspect of a much bigger thing called "marketing."  Marketing can start when a product or service is first conceived...who needs this widget?  What makes it better than other widgets already out there?  Can we make it and sell it at a price that can be competitive and still make enough money to make it worth our time and effort...and risk?  At some point, you finally start thinking about advertising, where, to whom, how much, and how.


As with everything else, marketing and its more visible component, advertising, are affected by rapidly changing technology that has scrambled the landscape.  Changed it since I started typing this post.  And Seth Grodin has some interesting points to make in that regard:



We all grew up learning about the industrial revolution. Every revolution then brings an age behind it. The industrial revolution created the industrial age. What was hard about the industrial age was making stuff. Henry Ford didn’t get rich because he ran good commercials. He got rich because he made a car better for the money than anyone ever had before. So, for half a century making stuff was key.


Then, once you got factories up and running making stuff, there’s a demand for mass media. We invented television to make advertisers happy, not the other way around. And so in this second era, the mass media era, we’ve got lots and lots of attention because television manufactured attention and we needed to grab that attention and turned it into money. 


But attention is now scarce. It’s not abundant anymore. There’s a million or a billion channels to choose from, not three. There is a store one click away that sells every item ever made as opposed to the local store where shelf space was scarce. All of those things undermine the importance of making average stuff because it’s easier than ever before.
You can design something on your computer, send an email to China and a month later it comes back and you didn’t have to do anything. The hard part isn’t getting shelf space because everyone gets the same amount of shelf space on Amazon as everybody else. The hard part is earning attention and trust, and nothing that Henry Ford did was about attention or trust.


Interruption (as in traditional media advertising) does work unless your interruptions are being interrupted.
If you stand up in church and start screaming and yelling, everyone will notice you. They may not trust you but they’ll notice you. What has happened is the amount of interruption, the amount of noise, has gone from getting two emails a day to 450. So you can interrupt my email box all you want. It’s not going to work.


And so we replaced this idea that you could steal my attention with the idea that you could earn it and I have to pay it to you. I can’t get it back because once attention is gone, it’s gone forever. But the person who owns attention has built a worthwhile asset.
Name one company that has gone on the internet and built a brand, a jingle, a slogan or a logo. The answer is none. The Internet doesn’t build those things the way TV does. What the Internet builds is connection, and every successful Internet company and every successful Internet marketer is successful for that and only that reason: They have earned attention, built trust and turned it into profit.


Grodin goes on to talk about telling stories, establishing "tribes" that are loyal to whatever you are selling.  These should be familiar concepts to those who follow this blog.


Each day, I mark several emails as "spam" and block the sender from ever landing in my inbox again.  But I don't do that to every piece of incoming advertising email.  Some I am polite enough to unsubscribe.  Others I allow to waft right on in every single time for my consideration.  Why?  Because some of it has earned my trust.  I want to see what they have to offer.  I have become part of their "tribe."  Same thing with ads that interrupt "Hatfields and McCoys" or whatever else I may have DVRed.  If I want to see the "story" they are offering, I'll allow that ad to spin out in normal time.


Example: the DirecTV commercials that tell me--through outrageous example--what will happen if I continue to stick with cable.  Some hate 'em.  That's the risk they take when they tell a story.  But the stories they tell will resonate with many, many others who are frustrated with cable.  That makes the ads successful.  That and the marketing that went into not only the ads but the product offered about which they speak.


Don Keith N4KC
www.n4kc.com
www.donkeith.com

Hate to say I told you so

Three totally unrelated things today. 

First: all the media news today is wrapped around the announcement by newspaper conglomerate Advance Media that their New Orleans Times-Picayune would soon cease publishing a print edition every day.  They will only throw a paper in Crescent City driveways on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.  Otherwise, subscribers will have to get their news from their online "digital" edition, which will thoretically be updated constantly.

Told you so.  The economics and competitive landscape for traditional newspapers have long since been obsoleted, not just by technology buy how people expect to get their news.  Stay tuned.  This is only the first shot.  My hometown paper, The Birmingham News, also an Advance paper, announced today they and others in the group will do likewise beginning soon.  Prediction:  none of these entities will be publishing traditional newspapers--any day of the week--within two years.

Second item: amateur radio circles have been all atwitter about the introduction this week of a new transceiver from Kenwood, their TS-990S.  Not really "introduction."  They had a non-working prototype for view at the massive Dayton Hamvention last week.  Kenwood is not talking much, for good reasons.  Some features are not yet set.  And they have patents pending on some things they would prefer remaining quiet about.  But that has not stopped rampant (and often ludicrous) speculation.  It's fun, though.  Plus it is a vote by a major manufacturer that the hobby will continue to grow and be vibrant.

I had told you earlier that new technology in the manufacture of ham radio gear would reinvigorate the market, and with it, the hobby.  Here's proof.  The fact that both QST and CQ Magazine, the hobby's two major publications, are now offering digital editions is another example of how ham radio continues to do its best to keep up with how potential hams expect their hobby to evolve.

Finally, what is this with an ugly message at the top of Blogspot's post page that tells me that my browser is no longer supported by "Blogger?"  Internet Explorer is no longer supported?  The most widely used internet browser by miles?  They are kind enough to suggest that I try Chrome if I am having problems.

I am.  Having problems, that is.  Editing this post is almost impossible, and I had to add that huge image of the Kenwood TS-990S just to get a cursor in the edit box.  I still can't go back with the mouse and put the cursor anywhere else in the post, not can I copy the text.  I just hope Google is not throwing its weight around.  I don't mind downloading and using Chrome.

But don't force me.  I don't respond well to intimidation.  Give me some reasons, Google, and I will be glad to consider it.  But don't tell me you are going to make it impossible for me to continue a blog I have been using for years just so you can force me to devote even more of my computer's hard drive to Google.

Don Keith

UPDATE:  Yes, indeed.  When I downloaded and installed Chrome, my blog posting page works beautifully.  Please, Mr. Google, explain to me why you would disenfranchise all users of the latest version of what is still--in many analytic reports--the number one web browser?  Because you can?  It worked.  I downloaded your damn browser.  And I guess I'll see if I want to use it instead of IE9.  But I won't enjoy it.  So there.

The CFPB -- update

Followers of this blog may remember a while back when I ranted and raved about the creation of the new Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau, thanks to those caring and concerned Congressmen Dodd and Frank.  (I won't even launch into my belief that at least one of those guys was instrumental in creating the housing crisis in 2008 with his incessant and ill-conceived meddling.)  I noted in that diatribe my concern that this new government watchdog agency had already added over 800 employees, just since November 2011.  And that it was created despite the fact that many, many federal and state agencies already exist to do exactly what this new one was supposedly chartered to do.

Well, they apparently aren't satisfied with duplicating the existing agencies that are supposed to be enforcing existing laws as they apply to financial institutions.  Now CFPB is grabbing some more responsibility, taking on an even broader role in regulating consumer credit.  They have taken it upon themselves to regulate the workforce diversity of the entities they now oversee.  Hey, I'm all for diversity.  I am practically a radical when it comes to diversity, fair and equal treatment, and a lack of discrimination.

But where in the rather foggy legislation that created this boondoggle does it give them the right to investigate the hiring diversity of banks and credit unions?  And even if it did, are there not plenty of other government agencies whose job it is to do this very thing?

Portions of an article from THE HILL on the subject:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is casting a gaze at the diversity of the workforce at the firms it monitors, thanks to a new hire.  Stuart Ishimaru was unveiled Monday as the CFPB's first head of its Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, which is charged with monitoring the diversity policies of not only the agency itself, but also the firms the bureau regulates.

"Americans from all walks of life use consumer financial products and services. We should strive to reflect that diversity because, in the end, it will only strengthen the work we do,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray in a statement. “Mr. Ishimaru’s extensive experience in promoting diversity makes him the perfect person for the job.”

In addition to making sure financial institutions are selling consumer products that are easily understood and cracking down on abusive products, the new office means the bureau also will be monitoring the diversity policies of those businesses.  The CFPB established the position thanks to a provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — which also created the bureau — that requires all financial services agencies to establish similar offices. The provision was authored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the second-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.


In addition to evaluating the diversity policies of banks, credit card companies and mortgage providers, among others, Ishimaru is also charged with ensuring the diversity of the CFPB's workforce and that of the businesses that participate in agency programs and contracts.

Again, I am all for fairness and diversity.  But do we need another multi-million-dollar tangle of hopeless bureaucracy and waste to get it?  Or do we just make sure existing agencies are doing what we are paying them to do already?

Answer me that.  Please!

Don Keith N4KC
http://www.donkeith.com/
http://www.n4kc.com/

That OTHER button on your radio

I have the pleasure of doing lunch most weeks with a great group of guys, most of whom are amateur radio operators, and some of whom are AM broadcast-band DXers.  That means they try to hear and log reception of distant radio stations on the AM broadcast portion of the radio spectrum.  They face many challenges these days, including a startlingly high level of electrical noise (generated by everything from power lines to high-def plasma TV sets), more and more stations broadcasting in languages other than English, weaker signals due to a lack of maintenance on the stations' transmitting plants, and the fact that many don't even bother to identify their call signs and station locations as required by law, or they illegally identify as the FM sister station they are simulcasting at the time.

The fact is that listenership to AM radio...once the only viable commercial band...is rapidly becoming non-existent.  (I remember putting an FM station on the air in the mid-1970s and giving away FM converters for AM car radios so we'd encourage people to tune in FM.)  Some of the radio-industry "trade" publications are quick to point out that several of the top-money-making stations in the country are AM stations.  True, but that is due to factors--mostly truly compelling programming and continuing to be important to a significant number of listeners--unrelated to their using a different technology to modulate their carriers. And those successful AM stations are absolutely the exception and not the rule.

The fact is, AM is dying.  I see an amazing number of AM broadcasters somehow finagling licenses for translator stations that put their AM station on a low-power FM frequency.  Others are finding their transmitter/tower sites more valuable as real estate than as radio stations and are simply turning in their licenses to the FCC and going "dark."  Or their billing is not enough to cover the power bill.  One of the major group owners has for years been systematically selling off their AMs for a song or, in most cases, giving them away to non-profit groups as tax write-offs.

Never mind that I think broadcast operators allowed this to happen by being total dunderheads.  When FM came along, they all moved their more compelling programming--and especially their music formats--to the better fidelity of that mode.  Like him or hate him, Rush Limbaugh almost single-handedly prolonged the viability of the AM stations by a decade with his unique brand of talk.  Now, though, Rush, news and sports talk, and ethnic programming is just as readily available on FM.  That same ever-present buzzing electrical noise along with the vagaries of night-time propagation and other factors that frustrate my AM-DXing buddies also discourage anyone from ever hitting that "AM" button on car radios.

But all that aside, the reason AM has deteroriated to almost no listenership in most cities is simply that there is nothing there worth listening to.  My oft-quoted consultant buddy, Mark Ramsey, just spoke to the subject HERE. 

It all begs two questions:

1) Is AM merely the first domino to tip over, with FM inevitably toppling, too?  Is traditional, over-the-air broadcasting going away at some point?  There are plenty of other audio choices available to people on a variety of platforms that are becoming more and more ubiquitous, but will broadcasters answer the challenge by investing in programming content that people will still want to pull out of the mire?  Or will they continue to avoid investing money and creativity in the product for which people are searching...and successfully finding elsewhere?

2) How long before the AM broadcast band becomes an extension of the amateur radio 160-meter band?

Don Keith N4KC
http://www.n4kc.com/
http://www.donkeith.com/