Two years ago, when I was an editor at a craft publisher, I worked a photo shoot for a book titled Pure Knits, a collection of sophisticated knitting patterns using luxurious yarns in shades of only one color: white. We rented an RV, loaded up models and completed projects, and drove to locations at Crane Beach in Ipswitch and the nearby salt marshes.
Some beautiful photos were taken, many of which would appear in the final book, but my favorite pictures from the shoot are among the outtakes: Here’s just a sample:
Well, I was beginning to think it would never happen, but that book is finally in print. I received an advance copy this week, and I’m very proud of it on a number of levels.
I can easily substitute my beloved grey for all the white. and I agree the original cover is much more pleasant. Yay for it finally happening. i’ve found cute babies sell patterns and yarn. I knit a project in yarn I didn’t want to knit and for a pattern that didn’t really excite me all because the baby model was so darned cute. It worked out perfectly because I ended up needing a gift just as I was finishing it up, but still…
I know it’s been awhile between posts, but I just had to share this single-CD mix I culled from Johnny Cash’s five American Recordings albums, featuring original compositions, traditional songs, and covers of songs originally written and recorded by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Neil Diamond, Nine Inch Nails, U2, Depeche Mode, and more. This is pure gold, and it makes me sad to know there won’t be a sixth album in the series.
Here’s the track listing for my own personal “best of” album:
Okay, first off, my memory isn’t so short that I don’t remember what I wrote in January about the intrinsic rewards of running my own race and the corresponding implication that I would likely never desire to run another marathon ever again. As it turns out, a few months later, though I still believe the first part, the second part has gradually evolved into an actual need to run another marathon.
Here’s something interesting: “Running My Own Race,” by LiveJournal user alexbutlervc* (not his own race, as it turns out):
If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s awfully similar to a post I wrote in January. Yes, that’s me in the picture, and even the links are mine (to my Twitter stream and my MapMyRun.com profile).
Here’s a little video I made to supplement the excellent book Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, using Aesop’s fable and a personal twist to help explain the key concepts of SUCCESs:
If you have a four-year-old boy, you may have seen this already, but my son tagged me and convinced me of the importance of getting answers from everyone to these important questions. So, here are my responses to just a subset of the questionnaire I take verbally pretty much every day:
What’s your favorite kind of dinosaur? Therezinosaurus (a.k.a. “The Giant Claw”)
Over on the Make blog (disclosure: Make is a division of O’Reilly Media, the company that pays me, though not for this blog), Phillip Torrone’s causing quite a stir in the maker and publishing communities by questioning the originality of Klutz/Scholastic’s forthcoming book/kit Invasion of the Bristlebots, a project that features, without attribution, an invention previously described by Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories (using the same name) and posted to YouTube (inspiring numerous video responses) in late 2007:
I’ve been giving this issue a lot of thought since reading this revelation and I’ve even supplied two of the 89 (at the time of this writing) comments generated on the Make blog post:
On the Amazon product page, Klutz even acknowledges the “dedicated tinkerers [who] show off [on YouTube] motorized toothbrush heads that are pretty darned impressive.” Because they add “Researchers at Klutz Laboratories … have sacrificed countless toothbrushes to develop high-performance Bristlebots with more zip, wilder action, and a control that lets you adjust a Bot’s behavior,” it looks like they think the Bristlebot is such a well-known invention (a dubious, transparently disingenuous assumption) that they don’t need permission to improve upon it. Perhaps they even think it was an invention (meme?) that just sprang to life, without a real inventor to attribute (Windell and Lenore just being the ones who happened to make the best YouTube video)?
[My second comment addresses another reader's response to my previous comment]
Perhaps I was unclear, but I actually wasn’t suggesting it was an honest mistake. Based on Klutz’s YouTube video response and their own marketing description, they seem to know they owe the idea to a particular external source. Given that they only had the single inventors’ video to respond to (as far as I can tell, every other “bristlebot” video I’ve seen on YouTube points back to the original EMS clip) suggests that they knew this wasn’t some meme without a known creator to credit.
Even if the idea isn’t new, it seems pretty clear where Klutz picked up on it, so attribution (at the very least) seems appropriate.
Since I posted those comments, it became clear that I gave Klutz too much credit by even suggesting that their claim was based on not needing permission for a common invention. As it turns out, an official statement reveals that they’re actually “genuinely surprised by this reaction,” claiming that “the development of ‘Invasion of the Bristlebots’ by the Klutz creative team dates back to at least early 2007 and was developed internally like other Klutz products.” If I thought their previous claim was disingenuous, this one smells even worse. How can they draw attention to the number of YouTube videos featuring bristlebots, while at the same time trying to make us believe that they were developing this project independently, in secret, before the Evil Mad Scientists uploaded their first video and throughout the time the invention was becoming a video craze?
This whole question of owning an idea and when/how it’s appropriate for another party to profit from it brings to mind my own experience with an idea for a book I started noodling in late 2007. While working on Napkin Origami (a concept which itself owes a debt of inspiration to the success of Alison Jenkins’ The Lost Art of Towel Origami), I started to think about other publishing opportunities in the niche of origami using everyday, nontraditional materials.* This path led me to a fun web site that served as a book proposal for Toilegami: The Practical Bathroom Book. Whether the authors were serious about the proposal or just having a laugh, I was intrigued and wanted to sign the project immediately.
The trouble was, the site’s Contact Us page was dead (it still is) and the creators were impossible to track down. Google returned a few possible email addresses, though most were for the wrong people and rest were too old to be useful (I sent messages to all the addresses I could find). Eventually, I needed to admit defeat and move on. I wouldn’t be able to use these authors or their work for a book, but the germ of the idea remained. Though Toilegami and the specific text and designs associated with it were off limits, there was no reason I couldn’t do a book titled Toilet Paper Origami, with different authors and different creations (in which case, I’d likely still credit my inspiration).
Unfortunately, my pursuit of this particular title ended almost exactly one year ago, along with my employment at the publisher I was working for at the time (which coincided with the de facto end of that company). Imagine my surprise and frustration when I saw Toilet Paper Origami released in September by a different publisher. Of course, I was frustrated because someone else got to the book I wanted to do, not because I’d felt I’d been robbed (how could I have been, since I’d never announced any plans for a book like this?), This is simply an example of a good idea whose time was right, and another publisher seized on it while I was unable to.
Getting back to the issue that kicked off this post, the example of Toilet Paper Origami is different from Invasion of the Bristlebots because it capitalizes on a general idea, with a different implementation and a different name. If the publisher had used the name Toilegami, however, I’d be doing a little more than just raising my eyebrows and would likely express as much concern on behalf of the creators of that term as Phil has been for the Evil Mad Scientists (who coined the name “bristlebots”).
When I worked as a trade/craft editor, I participated in many pitch meetings that revolved around questions like, “How can we do something like [successful book]“? That’s just the way publishing (like most industries, I’d imagine) works. I’m reminded of the chapter title in Blake Snyder’s excellent guide to screen writing, Save the Cat!: “Give me the same thing… only different!” But the second half of that equation, only different!, is as important to remember as the first.
Sharing a common inspiration is not the same thing as capitalizing on the particularity of an idea that another creator has taken the time and thought to cultivate. Appropriating someone else’s developed market for an idea (as Klutz appears to have done by linking to Evil Mad Scientists’ “How to Make a BristleBot” video, which has had over two million views so far and spawned many inspired hobbyists to follow) is unfair to the original makers whose great idea is worth spreading in a way that acknowledges their work.
UPDATE: Pat Murphy, editor at Klutz, weighs in with a thoughtful response, which I’m still trying to digest. Everything in that post sounds right and true, but it doesn’t really mesh with the message that preceded it. I really want to believe it, but could editorial at Klutz really be so insulated (obviously, their marketing department is not) to keep them from seeing the community surrounding the invention on which they’re publishing? I know I’m jaded, and perhaps I’ve been too close to seeing how these sorts of decisions are made in trade/craft publishing, but I’m still left with a bad taste in my mouth.
I know I’m a little late to the game, but I finally got around to watching The Wire. Like most people who start watching it, I’ve become completely absorbed and managed to watch the entirety of Season 2 over a five-day business trip last month. I just started Season 3 recently and, unfortunately, I’m just not feeling it as much. Yesterday, I revealed this heresy in a quick update via Twitter and expected it to be the ultimate in flame bait, drawing out the faithful with a flurry of arguments as strong as the adoration exhibited when my friends and contacts pounced on my mention that I’d started watching not too long ago.
But the responses were much more tame and basically ranged from “Seasons 3 and 5 are the weakest of the lot” and “at the end of the season, you will be raving about it,” all the way to “give it a chance … out of all five, I think it’s a toss-up between Season 3 and Season 1 for best season.”
I posted a note to my Facebook profile to respond (who knew there was a character limit to comment boxes?) and after it elicited a number of comments I realized it was more content than I’d posted to my blog for awhile and that it also stimulated much more discussion than anything seen here recently. So, I figured it made sense to promote it and run it here. I hope you’ll forgive both the duplication and lack of polish.
[Warning to anyone who hasn't seen the series up through Season 3, Episode 3: the rest of the post contains mild, big-picture spoilers.]
My complaints aside, I have no intention of giving up The Wire three episodes into Season 3. As one friend suggested, even a “bad” episode of The Wire is better than almost anything else on television. But from Episode 1, I felt like I’d missed something. Both Season 1 and Season 2 began by assembling the team and establishing the target. And both ended by disbanding the team and pulling down everything from the bulletin board (leaving only The Greek up there at the end of Season 2). Season 3 begins with the team appearing to be back together and working on regular detective work, business as usual. How did they get to that point?
But more than the ramp up (which can be forgiven mainly because we probably don’t really need to see those details this time, as long as we understand the point of what they’re doing together), I’m disappointed in what seems like a lack of purpose driving Season 3. While Season 1 was all about Barksdale, and Season 2 was, ultimately, about The Greek, I don’t see a similar focus yet for this season.
Granted, I’m only three episodes into it now (I’m moving slower, now that I have to Netflix them, and there are only two episodes on many discs), but I seem to remember the other two seasons having a focus figured out by this point, or were at least showing signs of a plan.
Perhaps this will be Proposition Joe’s season, or maybe someone else’s turn, but without a real target (just one guy’s face up on that bulletin board right now, and we all know he’s not going to really be the target), I don’t see the raison d’etre yet.
If the writers have a plan, they’re keeping it very close to their chest so far, and I’d like at least a peak at a few of their cards, just to make sure there’s something there. Without an eventual One Thing to drive the show, these first few episodes have felt to me like, as Stringer might say, “too many 40-degree days” (warning: the following clip features explicit language to colorfully illustrate this metaphor):
It doesn’t help that they killed off the most sympathetic of the “bad guys” in Season 2 (though they seem to be grooming at least one new character to fill this role), but if the final season is really considered one of the weakest, that isn’t a good sign to me.
Still, I can’t get enough, so I’m off now to watch Season 3, Episode 4, and hoping for the return of spring weather …
Two years ago, when I was an editor at a craft publisher, I worked a photo shoot for a book titled Pure Knits, a collection of sophisticated knitting patterns using luxurious yarns in shades of only one color: white. We rented an RV, loaded up models and completed projects, and drove to locations at Crane Beach in Ipswitch and the nearby salt marshes.
I know it’s been awhile between posts, but I just had to share this single-CD mix I culled from Johnny Cash’s five American Recordings albums, featuring original compositions, traditional songs, and covers of songs originally written and recorded by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Neil Diamond, Nine Inch Nails, U2, Depeche Mode, and more. This is pure gold, and it makes me sad to know there won’t be a sixth album in the series.
SADFASFA, and 
BUT ITS A GOOD LİST THX 
Over on the Make blog (disclosure: Make is a division of O’Reilly Media, the company that pays me, though not for this blog), Phillip Torrone’s 
Unfortunately, my pursuit of this particular title ended almost exactly one year ago, along with my employment at the publisher I was working for at the time (which coincided with the de facto end of that company). Imagine my surprise and frustration when I saw 
Lichen 9:39 pm on August 24, 2009 Permalink |
I grew up about a mile down from Crane’s Beach. What a magical place. I’ll order the book for the Library tomorrow… can’t wait to see. Congrats.
penny 4:38 pm on August 25, 2009 Permalink |
I can easily substitute my beloved grey for all the white. and I agree the original cover is much more pleasant. Yay for it finally happening. i’ve found cute babies sell patterns and yarn. I knit a project in yarn I didn’t want to knit and for a pattern that didn’t really excite me all because the baby model was so darned cute. It worked out perfectly because I ended up needing a gift just as I was finishing it up, but still…