Category: Contentions
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Giving new life to a dead publication
Publications are difficult to keep up. Unlike a book—which you can write and publish once—a publication regularly is preparing to work on a new issue. Publications bear much resemblance to warm-blooded animals. They require constant attention, energy, and love. Every publication comes to an end at some point. I understand that. A few mornings ago,…
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Free coffee
The other day, I ordered a coffee at a restaurant. I sipped it slowly for 15–20 minutes, and then I asked for the bill. I waited a few minutes, and caught the manager’s eye. He said, “Sorry for the delay—don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.” The saying goes, “There is no such thing…
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Read the room
When you’re presenting online, one helpful way to think about voice, tone, and style is to consider its physical equivalent scenario. For example, let’s say you’re making a video that’s going on YouTube. What are you going to talk about, and how do you want to sound? When you change the metaphorical environment and audience,…
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A good brand honors a group
Nike honors great athletes. Apple honors people who think different. Stripe honors people with high agency who value intellectual ambition, as well as economic and technological progress. Every good brand is built on honoring a group of people. Who is your group? What do they respect and value? What are you making that will honor,…
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Suits and the backlist
Over a decade ago, early in my career, I worked at an office in the Canadian Pacific Heritage Building in Toronto. I would often come across a film set with several iconic yellow New York City cabs in a quiet street nearby. I later found out it was the set of Suits. The first season…
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A business needs its own magazine
Backstory is the name of a bookstore in London, UK. This bookstore publishes a self-titled magazine that I picked up recently. It’s good. More importantly, it makes sense. Backstory works with a community of people including distributors and authors, so this magazine is a channel for them to highlight the community and as a launchpad…
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Picasso, the boilermaker, and expertise
If you want to build a business on your expertise—specialized knowledge—one early key is to break out of the idea that your effort should be directly correlated with your income. Here’s a good, perhaps fictional, example that starts off with a woman asking Picasso to make a sketch for her: Picasso complied and then said,…
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Categorization, commoditization, and clarity
When you’re growing your business, one of your biggest challenges is market misunderstanding. When you’re working on a business (as an entrepreneur, freelancer, team, artist, author, etc.), your perspective tends to expand in breadth and depth. You develop expertise and see patterns. You come across better opportunities and bigger markets. In order to grow, you…
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Apple’s bad ad
Two words you don’t see together very often: Apple apologizes. Recently, Apple released a new commercial intended as a sequel to its iconic 1984 commercial. Instead, it completely fell flat. It’s not just that Apple made a misstep, which seems to be happening more often lately. It’s more that its usual defenders aren’t as vocal,…
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Good editing means trusting yourself
While editing certainly involves a lot of hard skills—structuring a piece, making it flow, continuing to draw the eye onward—it equally requires understanding what the author is trying to do. It means listening closely to them, helping them see their options, and advising them on making the best decisions. It doesn’t always look like that,…