By Callie Oettinger | Published: April 5, 2012
Best Buy and Five Star in China
Last week I caught the tail-end of the CNBC show “Best Buy: The Big Box Strikes Back.”
According to the show, Best Buy “closed its nine American style stores in 2011.” In China, Best Buy had become the Brick portion of the “Brick and Click” method of buying. Consumers went into the stores to see the product, to research it, but then they “go back home to buy the product online or they go next store to the local competition because it was a lot cheaper.” (more…)
By Steven Pressfield | Published: April 4, 2012
In the past few weeks we’ve been talking about risk, specifically the universe of hazard that the artist and entrepreneur willingly and consciously inhabit. We’ve talked about operating on two tracks—the commercial track and the pure-soul track—and about betting on yourself. Today I want to take the discussion deeper into the realm of nuts and bolts.
There's a reason why the company always picks up the check
When you and I sell our novel or cookbook to Simon & Schuster (or our screenplay to Warner Bros. or our album to Interscope or our videogame to Electronic Arts), we willingly and consciously take ourselves out of the sphere of risk.
The company cuts us a check and we cruise to the bank. The publisher or studio has taken on the Big Boy assignment: they have assumed the risk. It’s their role, now, to finance everything, distribute everything, market everything. If the project bombs, they eat it. You and I get off scot-free. We’ve got our check and nobody can take it away from us.
But there’s a price to be paid for evading that risk. The price is that we become the child, and the studio/label/publisher becomes the adult.
There’s a reason why editors and producers (and even agents) pick up the check when they take the writer or musician to lunch. They’re the grownups. We’re the kids.
Now it’s true that certain projects require the deep pockets of a Major Kahuna. You and I can’t finance our $50 million sword-and-sandal epic. We’re getting nosebleeds just thinking about bankrolling our $10K digital, shoot-it-in-three-days biopic of Johnny Rotten. And (full disclosure) I confess that my own next project is a big book with a big publisher. So by no means have I totally moved away from my day job.
But in other areas of publishing/music/movies, the barriers to entry have fallen so far (thanks, Seth Godin, for teaching us this and a lot more) that it has become feasible to actually roll the dice and bet on yourself all the way. I can do it. You can too. (more…)
By Callie Oettinger | Published: March 30, 2012
I hesitated when I read the words video book in Steve’s upcoming post “Betting on Yourself, Part Two“.
Maybe video? Or video series? But, not book. (more…)
