One, the first, is perhaps the most important (and don’t worry you can support this one later and it won’t be until next year that your support will be the most critical). This is, however, limited to just folks in the US (citizens in particular). Namely the reelection campaign of Barack Obama. I am an independent (registered as such in the state of CA) but I am also a very firm supporter of President Obama. Tonight is the deadline for this financial reporting period (tonight being Friday Sept 30th) and everyone who contributes will get a chance to potentially have dinner with President Obama and three others.

But don’t support him just for that chance, support him because he is and has been the most effect president in my lifetime. In the face of an obstructionist opposition party he has achieved more than most past Democratic presidents (or Republican Presidents) both domestically and internationally. He faces a tough reelection campaign due to the horrible economic climate and tough federal financial situation both due in large part to the failures of the last administration (and to some degree the administrations before as well). If you disagree with my politics I at least urge you to be deeply involved and informed this election cycle and be open to President Obama’s arguments.

Getting away from Politics there are many other great projects which end tonight as well.

One of my favorite musicians and one of the best examples of how the Internet has enabled musicians to carve out a new form of successful career is Jonathan Coulton. He has a new album, Artificial Heart, coming out and tonight is the last day to get one of the bundles he is offering. These range from $10 for just the album in digital form to $100 for three t-shirts, signed CD’s, posters and much much more. Go buy a bundle today.

I have mixed feelings about Slow Food USA but overall do support them and their mission, though I may disagree from time to time about their focus on specific projects and the underlying attitude they present to the world. I think that great, locally sourced food is something that should be celebrated by people of all socioeconomic statuses and races, Slow Food USA all to often comes across as more than a bit elitist. But that aside, tonight is the last day to participate in a promotion they are offering – donate any amount and get membership in Slow Food USA for the full year. If you love heirloom foods, local food providers and paying attention to what you eat and how you eat then Slow Food is a movement worth some support, now is a great time to show that support.

And not ending tonight but in 12 days the Humble Bundle is back this time with the Frozen Synapse bundle. If you donate more than the average amount you will get a bunch of great games for every platform, support independent game developers as well as worthy charities and hopefully have a lot of fun with the games you have bought (for a bargain price most likely). A true win-win-win-win (the fourth win being the folks behind humblebundle who I hope do well from organizing these bundles for others).

Besides my friend Mary Anne’s great erotic SF book project Demi-Monde there are many other great ongoing Kickstarter campaigns which are worth supporting before they end. In particular I’m eyeing the boardgame projects from Clever Mojo Games. They have the possibly unique distinction of having THREE successful Kickstarter campaigns so they are clearly doing something right. I’m tempted to get the Aliens invade sunrise city pack myself. Their current projects Sunrise City (ends in 20 hours as I type this) and Alien Frontiers: Factions (ends in 44 hours) are about to end and both offer some unique and compelling (if you like their type of games) offers only available if you join the 100′s (actually nearly 2000 in the case of Alien Frontiers: Factions) backing each project.

As a business designer and advisor I think that the ability of folks with a great idea to use Kickstarter to fund that idea directly from actual interested customers is an amazing innovation. In the case of boardgames this has been taken to a new level with Springboard from GameSalute which extends the Kickstarter model to also support distribution and sales to retailers.

While some of Jason’s suggestions are good ones, a few are, I think, mistakes as well. Jason also misses the biggest and most valuable moves Apple could (and is) making with their warchest – namely ongoing investments into their supply chain efficiency and scale as well as the highly profitable investments they have been making in opening up additional Apple stores (which have the highest per sq. ft sales of nearly any retailer anywhere in the world).

To be specific I think Jason’s suggestion of offering a massive discount on the iPad for the educational market is a mistake (and based on a bunch of faulty ideas). Any discount beyond what Apple already offers if big enough will be gamed and used to fuel resellers (i.e. students and others buying at 60% and selling at 30% off on eBay). Apple is relatively unique amongst all consumer electronics businesses in rarely offering any sizable discounts and likewise they are unique in being amongst the most profitable of consumer electronics companies. I don’t think this is coincidental. Apple maintains strict price controls on their small set of goods for sale and in place of deep discounts offers new, better products on a regular schedule as well as bundles of goods for the educational market (notably this year they offered $100 iTunes credit in place of their more traditional offer of a free iPod to students). Apple has massive volume without massive discounts – and they already do have millions of tablet users (if not quite yet 100M they are selling iPads nearly as fast as they can make them) and they do have well over 100M iOS devices (a lot more).

I also don’t fully agree that Apple should pay 100% out to developers. Apple’s 30% does more than just pay Apple. It covers credit card payment fees, it pays (small) affiliate fees and it means that the App store (and iTunes) are viable, more than self-sustaining businesses. This rigor is good for Apple. It also helps curb, a bit, the general downward pressure on prices (since most businesses are bad at setting prices Apple’s floor of $0.99 for apps which aren’t free is a good thing). I think that the Mac App store as well as the iPad have started to slowly shift sales off of the $0.99 price point to higher prices which is better for developers. In-App purchases also have been very successful for many developers. Apple could, perhaps, waive fees on certain CLASSES of sales – for example perhaps paying out a higher percentage on in-app purchases of CONTENT (magazine subscriptions, music, videos) while retaining the 30% on the sale of apps and app functionality. Sure the line between content and app can be blurry but I think this could help grow the app market even further (and let Amazon as well as many music companies turn back on sales of content inside of apps). Apple could also waive or eliminate any requirement to clear content sales (with a process to ensure that if an app claims to be for all ages it doesn’t offer adult content – if it does the app could face a penalty)

Apple is about to “pull a gmail” with the pending launch of iCloud, though the actual figures for size are a bit more complicated than Jason’s proposed 50GB. Apple will be offering 5GB for free with additional space available. However since Apple has stated that music and photos don’t count (if you sync them to the cloud) it is a bit hard to compare directly to Dropbox etc. See The Next Web’s coverage in August for some more details on the pricing.

I like Jason’s suggestion for buying Boingo Wireless and for investing widely in a nationwide (and ideally global) network of free (for Apple devices at a minimum) hotspots. This make sense though Apple would likely need to invest more than Jason estimates to buy wireless hotspots Internationally. Also there is a valid argument for paid hotspots in meeting the business needs of the venues where those hotspots are located – but perhaps Apple could find creative alternatives to compensate venues and minimize freeloading (or overloading of a hotspot from neighbors). This is less of a concern in locations such as airports where most people are passing through, but it is an issue in urban venues where people may live upstairs or next door. It is also a case that wifi hotspots get used for less-than-legal purposes or just for uses that tie up significant bandwidth – such as large downloads. Apple, however, does have a business need to promote high bandwidth use cases (such as downloading large OS updates, downloading purchased apps and movies, streaming content from iCloud etc) so Apple might have a business reason to upgrade the wifi networks. If Apple does this purchase they might also face carrier pushback (though since Boingo likely purchases bandwidth from some of those carriers this may be muted).

While I see the argument for Apple investing $10B in building their own search engine to compete with Google (Jason suggests offering this without ads – I don’t see why that would be so compelling however as ads against search is now a clear and interesting business). But that isn’t, actually, hitting Google where they are strongest.

What Apple SHOULD do if they really want to all out compete with Google is invest $10B (or more) in building out their iADs platform into a valid competitor for Doubleclick. This would be hard but the profits in building up a valuable ad serving business on a massive Internet (and mobile Internet) wide scale could be immense. This would require likely some highly creative purchases as well as deep investments into core technology and into a massive salesforce and agency outreach. Apple might start by looking to buy parts of Yahoo and AOL (but likely not all of both companies) though there is an equally strong argument that the industry needs new approaches not the same old approaches.

My personal suggestion beyond the billions in supply chain investments which Apple is already making – buying up capacity and funding the building of new plants and manufacturing capacity for the components that go into Apple’s devices would be to look at the following additional investment options.

1. Consider, if Chinese law permits it, the full purchase of Foxconn. Yes this would mean adding 1M+ employees to Apple’s books and yes this would mean that Apple would “own” the working conditions. But it would further ensure that Apple fully owns their supply chain and manufacturing process in a manner that few other companies do at the moment. This might, however, have downsides. Not least of which is that it could limit their ability to use new suppliers in the future and it could have major legal hurdles (as Chinese law may not permit the foreign ownership of big Chinese firms). Baring this Apple should continue to invest in improvements in the working conditions of their manufacturing processes and look at ways to diversify their manufacturing into other countries than just China (to minimize future supply chain disruption risks). If any company in the world could figure out how to profitably manufacture in the US (or other “Western” countries once again it is likely Apple).
2. Many pundits have suggested that the next logical move for Apple is to offer an Apple TV. I don’t think this is bold enough. I think Apple should look at investments in a home gaming console - one that builds on the Apple TV (and iOS) but which is a full fledged competitor to the XBox, Playstation and Wii (including the next generations of each of those consoles when they come out). One possible approach which would be “different” would be for Apple to buy OnLive which would likely cost $2B or more especially if they also purchased the related Reardon Companies whose Shannon’s Law breaking wireless technology if it works and can be deployed could go far beyond Onlive (or Boingo) in applications and value to Apple. Onlive isn’t riskless in the least but if Apple purchased them and made a massive investment in growing them as well as in adding Apple TV capabilities to the Onlive box (and leveraging Onlive’s successes in being integrated into other devices) it could be a really really big shift in the gaming landscape. And if, as has been rumored, OnLive becomes more than just a PC (as in Windows) gaming platform this shift could be even larger. The potential in the Onlive model exists for games that run on hardware that dwarfs that of any modern (or even future) console system – while displaying on today’s laptops and TV’s.
3. Apple should invest in “getting” Social. For all that Apple is design focused the one area of modern design they haven’t cracked is Social. The deep Twitter integration into the Apple platform that is coming is a good starting point but it shouldn’t be the end game. Apple should invest in ways to leverage their massive brand value as well as deep consumer relationships and touchpoints into a real, engaged and valuable social experience. Already iTunes (and the credit cards and credits in iTunes) represents a massive network of users – albeit one that hasn’t been socially engaged – yet. Ping doesn’t count. Apple could and I think should make some bold moves to get Social. They could buy some social assets on the cheap (MySpace for example) and work on migrating those social experiences to better run and better designed Apple experiences. However a counter argument could be made that Apple’s lack of “Social” has left room for massive innovation by iOS developers leveraging Apple platforms as well as the web in building new social experiences and that any move by Apple might disturb this valuable ecosystem.
4. Apple should invest in the Enterprise. Apple’s Enterprise story is far larger than most pundits understand – the iOS and iPad platform is seeing massive corporate deployments all the time and I suspect IT departments everywhere are seeing greater demand for Apple devices as alternatives to PC platforms (and as the price competitiveness and performance of Apple devices keep growing the IT arguments against Apple computers in the Enterprise diminish rapidly). The shift of many corporate software platforms from internal networks to SAAS (software-as-a-service) also minimizes the need for a uniform enterprise platform. That said, Apple’s Enterprise story could be far larger – they could offer more from their server offerings and they could invest in SAAS offerings themselves (Salesforce however might not be a great fit though it might be worth exploring).

Default (as Plus already does) to SECURE connections – why Facebook games and apps can’t handle HTTPS is still somewhat of a mystery to me but it is a problem as more and more people use shared wifi connections.

Emphasize social games – truly social experiences This means far far more than reciprocal gift request/giving as is the model of most “social” games on Facebook today. Truly social games are ones that encourage players to interact, to cooperate or to compete – but also to talk with each other, to plot, to strategize and in short to interact – both within the context of the game and outside of the game.

Leverage circles and especially extended circles Games are a great use case for the Extended Circle concept, albeit it does make a presumption that your friend’s use circles in a somewhat similar manner as you do – so their extended circles represent people who might share interests including games. Possibly this should be further extended to a subset of the current Extended Circle – i.e. not the extended circle of ALL of my circles but ONLY the extended circles of SOME of my circles (i.e. in my case likely my FAMILY and FRIENDS circles, the ones that represent my closest friends, though possibly also my ACQUAINTANCES circle as in my case many of those people might also be online game players)

Open and creative API’s Make it easy for both small and large game companies to build for the platform including leveraging payments to make this a business not just fun (Payments being an area where Google hasn’t had as much success as Apple or Facebook). Offer LOTS of useful services for game developers – great integration into their player’s Google+ (without compromising security or privacy) but also business focused features such as rich integration of analytics from the beginning of the platform; integration into other aspects of Google such as Google’s advertising platforms – both within the game and advertising as a means to drive players to the games; rich features to aid game developers in making truly cross-platform games – specifically solving the problem the Flash heavy Facebook game community has with playing games via mobile platforms.

Rich and complex tools for game discovery This is something Facebook fails almost entirely at currently – having deprecated their App directory and offering only highly limited features to encourage app discovery and exploration. Instead they force developers to rely entirely on “viral” marketing or paid advertising, probably smart from a business perspective but not much fun for players simply looking for something fun to play or do. Discovery and search should, I would think, be among Google’s strongest additions to the social app market.

Encourage crossplatform explorations Obviously this should include cross-fertilizing the Android app markets with the likely new wave of companies likely eager to build for the Google+ market but this should also be open to iOS app developers, to existing Facebook (and other platform) social games and even game developers who build for platforms such as consoles or even Steam.

Integrate Hangouts into Games this could solve my desire for building truly social experiences. Imagine the possibilities of social interactions around playing a game with up to 10 other people while simultaneously having a video chat with them! I want to personally explore the potential to build some amazing and highly immersive RPG – in the D&D sense of that game type – which involve Hangouts but also rich applications. Hangouts which auto-invite the players of a given game to them could be amazing – especially if the UI integrates the game elements and the live video in a combined smart format – sharing a common game view with all the players while also showing each player their personal, private for their eyes only data for the game (i.e. think a card game where each player sees their cards but all the players see the table as well as each other’s faces – takes bluffing in an online poker game to an entirely new level)

What features are you looking for from Google+ Games?

In the past month I have started to get spammed on many social networks, not spammed via the messages but spammed by friend/connect requests on both Facebook and increasingly LinkedIn. On LinkedIn I am now getting about 10 but at times more than 20 connection requests a day with well over 99% of them being from complete and utter strangers, individuals with whom I share at most one connection on LinkedIn and individuals who claim that either “we are friends” or that “we have done business” occasionally they claim that “we are colleagues” at a company I have never heard of.

In all cases they are indicative that a large number of people on LinkedIn are connecting with strangers and that the claimed descriptions of connections are suspect at best.

I’ve also gotten similar, though at a lower volume, friend requests on Facebook – again from near total strangers. In the case of Facebook most of these were clearly spammers, accounts that were nearly identical but with a different photo and a single spam link to an external site. That type of spam was a problem for a few days then nearly completely died away which is a sign that Facebook probably caught on to how the spammers were creating these accounts and blocked them.

However as I have been playing a lot of “social” games on Facebook I have found myself wishing for a way to connect, myself, to near (or actual) strangers, to form new connections around a shared interest in a given game, most of which at most one person in my large Facebook network have even tried in the past let alone are actively playing.

What Social Networks need is a new form of connection – not a friend or colleague but a new, future connection

This new form of connection would be in the case of LinkedIn an appropriate way to share some information with a potential client, a new business contact, without making a stronger or permanent connection. On Facebook this new form of connection would be for making friends, it might be limited to a shared interest or application with by default only a limited exposure of your additional social information.

Sure if you are a truly advanced Facebook user you might achieve a variation of this today with careful use of lists and privacy settings, but even highly technical users of Facebook get befuddled by the privacy settings and very few people have set up complex sets of groups of friends on Facebook and set varying permissions for each group. I know I haven’t.

The idea would be to help prune the explosion of truly weak ties which appear to these networks to be the same as stronger, deeper ties. In a professional context this would be used for those folks you have just met and exchanged business cards with – increasingly this may happen via exchanging social network information (Twitter handles, LinkedIn/Facebook profiles etc) but today this results in often very weak ties cluttering up our social graphs.

For me my criteria for social network connections are fairly strict.

• Facebook – people I would invite to my house for a dinner party
• LinkedIn – people whom I would accept a referral from and would refer new business

Yet I find myself wanting to connect with many more people, people who I don’t yet know well enough to decide whether I would have them over for a dinner party or whether I would work with them or trust their business judgment. I also have many people whom I might not know well enough to have over for dinner or to work with but whom I would connect with in another context. People with whom I might want to play casual social games with or people whom I want to follow and get to know professionally.

In short social networks both personal and professional should support the making of new friends, the growing of your professional network, the landing of new clients. But at the moment they do not and the efforts to fudge them, to overload the connections is, in fact, reducing the value of these networks.

This afternoon I am at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, the conference is in a very cool space – an vacant office building, like most past TechCrunch events there are perhaps too many companies offering demos at small tables throughout the hallways and across the venue and in the main space there is a mix of conversations, interviews and short demos for a small panel of judges. All in all a great conference and format.

That said, the end of the day today has been a painfully weak panel of companies competing as part of the Disrupt Battlefield. Six companies who all had pretty weak presentations and buzzword heavy presentations which focused on the nitty gritty details of their applications but ignored what you need to pitch in a short demo, namely why anyone, anywhere would want to use the application, why it solves a real problem (which can be a fun one i.e. “make music”) and from that why they are a team that can deliver it.

Instead in the last session what we have been seeing this afternoon so far is just a bunch of technology without real problems or technologies in search of a real problem.

The first Battlefield session, in contrast, had many great and interesting companies, even the weakest of the presentations was better than the best of the last group.

All that said, there is a palpable buzz in the air here at Disrupt and a great selection of companies who are not all based in Silicon Valley. I am going to dive deeper in the companies that have presented here as well as the sessions which I missed this morning in later posts.

A few general observations and trends.

• Still lots of “me to” companies which are just a feature or a single application not always a real business
• A recognition of the problem but still too white male dominated in the sessions & judges (though not as bad as many other events)
• The iPad is the prize of choice (basically the only prize being offered for the countless and too many location based check-in games happening at the conference)
• Mobile is clearly a major focus with many almost all of the presenting companies having at least some focus on mobile aplications
• Some only in NYC businesses have presented here, for example a company which is a registered broker/dealer

More, much more over the next few days.

But this afternoon I was struck by a simple question: Why hasn’t LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Connect?

That is, why isn’t LinkedIn looking to be the Identity layer for not just a few applications running inside of LinkedIn or a very small handful of LinkedIn Partners, but instead to offer a strong, business focused identity layer for 1000′s of business applications across the Internet? Including applications on mobile platforms exactly as Facebook Connect and Twitter Oauth are used today to allow people to use Facebook or Twitter as an identity layer and a quickstart social network for a new application and to avoid needing to create new usernames and passwords as well as to rebuild social networks to use a new application.

I don’t know the answer but I think this would be a huge opportunity for LinkedIn.

This is not how to save print media nor is it the best use of $90 million

Instead the publishers should be rethinking their print publications and using that $90M towards the following.

• Hiring better writers with more diverse views. I’m a longtime New Yorker subscriber and in the past year I have seen a significant decline in the quality of the writing. Furthermore the lack of diversity of perspectives, especially in the reviews they publish has become really glaring. Even though I have been a subscriber for 20+ years I am thinking about not renewing my subscription when it expires, especially if the current decline in quality continues.
• Investing in cultivating new advertisers and in adding greater value to current advertisers. For over a decade I have been suggesting that print publications – from monthly magazines to daily newspapers – should have long ago extended their print advertising relationships to the web. Perhaps in the 1990′s and even early in this century many advertisers in print publications did not have related web presences but today it is a rare ad which does not feature a web URL and an even rarer advertiser who does not have a web presence. But even without making every ad a link to the relevant advertiser, print publications have missed out on many great opportunities by not extending ads into the web. Many print publications are bought for the ads as well as the content – in a few cases almost entirely for the ads (see many fashion magazines).
• Do not retain content sections just because they are traditional. All parts of every publication should be rethought and be up for revision in the light of the changes brought by the web. The New Yorker, for example, should consider editing down the front events pages and remaking them into a highly curated selection of just events, restaurants, art shows and movies which the editors recommend to their readers. Perhaps make the comprehensive listings available as an online extended service (and do not hide this behind a pay wall) but focus the print edition on just what will be lasting, what matters, what are truly don’t miss.
• Invest in editors. Invest in writers. Invest in photographers. Online there are a seeming infinite number of writers and other content creators, print publications should invest in and cultivate great writing. Don’t publish filler content or throwaway articles, invest instead in great editing that makes content tighter. Invest in great photography that tells a story and captures a look or a moment.
• Frame the content of the magazine in great design but do not over do it. Wired magazine has, at times, had great articles but the ever present “design” of the magazine often hides the value of the content and makes it harder to read. Furthermore by having a different design for many articles the overall costs go up for little added value to the reader – in fact by having to figure out how to read each article anew the value to most readers goes down.

Most importantly, however, advertising the “power of print” via only ads in other print publications is preaching to a currently shrinking population. Instead the publishers should be looking to ways to engage with the rest of the media landscape – increasingly that means digital – find a value-adding role for each print publication within that ecosystem.

And do not confuse the form with the mission of the publication.

Great publications have a mission which can and should extend well beyond a single physical form. The physical editions however frequent should be a reminder of that mission and serve to further it, but shouldn’t be the only part. The editors and writers and other creative parts of the publication alongside the advertising and commercial relationships should all act together towards a common goal. For a magazine such as Vogue it might be a celebration of fashion, for the New Yorker it might be a celebration of the diversity of New York City (and the inhabitants of that city – culture, politics, business, fashion and more).

Print publications today have many audiences – subscribers, newsstand buyers, readers of shared copies found in doctor’s waiting rooms. But they also are part of some community – whether fashion or a city or an industry. But very rapidly those communities around the globe are finding new means of communicating and magazines which are stuck in the past will and are being left behind.

2010 is a great year for print.

I have been thinking about print in the age of the web for a long time, earlier this year I thought about (and still may) starting a print publication of my own, tbnl magazine, but three items from the past week really struck me as to why I think 2010 could, contrary to most opinions, be a great year for print.

Item 1: McSweeney’s Panorama.

Item 2: a gift subscription to the amazing cookbook series from The Canal House

Item 3: podcasts from the best new magazine of the decade, Monocle.

Item 4 (bonus): a whole bunch of innovative print examples especially from the comics industry but also from other places  in the past few months – DC Comic’s Wednesday Comics series in broadsheet newsprint among others as is Andrew Sullivan’s recent self-published book of photos from his reader’s windows.

Item 1: McSweeney’s Panorama

Panorama is a huge experiment in what can still be done in the broadsheet, newspaper format. All told it is 320 pages of newsprint (w/two magazine inserts) as well bonus posters and other materials. Approximately 350,000 words, 218 contributors, 10 sections, 120 broadsheet pages, 22 comics, 3 posters went into the publication.

In a very fascinating insert to the publication, McSweeney’s details the overall costs for Panorama. They had a print run of 20,000 copies at a per unit printing cost of $5.57. With just one part-time ad sales person (first time McSweeney’s has taken ads) they sold $61,000 worth of advertising from a combination of local & national advertisers. Their unit costs factoring in editorial & art expenses as well as printing costs were $7.98/unit.

Their payments to contributors was about $40,000.

All told they published Panorama with a total direct capital of about $235,000, most of which they expected to recoup on the first day of selling Panorama (~1500 copies sold at $5/copy, 18,500+ at ~$16/copy)  when they expect to net about $300,000. Along with the $61,000 in ad sales that means a rough expectation of around $170,000 in profits. This is likely a bit high as the few 1000 copies sold in retailers would have some margin for those retailers.

I have not yet finished my copy of Panorama – indeed so far I have just skimmed it, read a few articles and took in the overall design and layout. There are many sections I think are exceptional and many which I think fall a bit short – the magazine background of many of the contributors shows with many pages and sections reading more like an enlarged magazine than a newspaper (specifically they rarely if ever have multiple stories on the same page – a design model common in newspapers but uncommon in magazines)

That said the overall process which McSweeney’s demonstrated with Panorama shows that there are still the mechanical and structural elements capable of publishing an amazing example of newsprint publication (as well as supplemental magazines) including much of the distribution all at costs which could be manageable for a small team to publish on a regular basis – likely with a higher print run than 20,000 copies, fewer pages, fewer special inserts and thus a far lower per unit printing costs (and also editorial costs).

In short McSweeney’s is demonstrating that there could be a future for newsprint if groups of creative people come together to explore it. A future which would probably be far more niche than today’s dailies but less niche than small local neighborhood weekly papers. The Onion is, perhaps, an example of what this future could look like – a niche paper with a mix of national and very local content and so strong of an advertising base that they give the paper away for free.

Item 2: The Canal House cookbook

My sister and brother-in-law (well technically they aren’t married but have been living together for a very long time and just days ago had my niece) gave me a subscription to The Canal House cookbook as a holiday present this year. Eventually the website may be a great resource for foodies, but for the moment the focus is the self-published cookbooks with plans for 3 cookbooks a year.

The books are $19.95 each or you can buy (or gift) a subscription for three issues for $49.95.

The physical design of the books is beautiful, one of the two woman behind The Canal House is a world renowned food photographer and co-founder of Saveur Magazine. Prior to The Canal House her photography had been a part of many other successful cookbooks.

They could have probably sold a traditional cookbook to a traditional publisher. Instead they have decided to self-publish.

So why do I think The Canal House illustrates the future of print?

To start, consider the economics. Every 1000 subscribers they sign up for the three book series represents $50,000 in revenue.

What about the costs?

They print each cookbook in China, so are likely not using a print on demand service, thus they do have to balance inventory and print runs, but here are some rough estimates:

- per book printing costs: $5-7/book ? (I suspect this may actually be on the high side though their book is full color)

- shipping costs $5-10/subscription (my subscription included the first two books shipped in one package for a cost of $3.16 + the shipping envelope)

Say that the total (rough) costs for a three-book subscription are $30 for printing, shipping & packaging. That means $20/subscription profit or $20,000 per 1000 subscribers.

Very few authors get advances which are more than $100,000, in fact very few get advances which are more than $50,000. The Canal House has two co-founders so any advance would have to have been split between them.

Doing it all by themselves if they sell 10,000 subscriptions they will, roughly, net $200,000 in profit or $100,000 per co-founder.

If they sell more than 10,000 (or if my cost estimates are high) they will make far more.

And very likely, given how great the first two cookbooks are, they will see many subscribers renewing for future subscriptions. So instead of negotiating a new book deal each year (very few publishers would have expected to get three books from a set of authors in a given year) they are building a business which will be sustainable for years to come.

I think there are likely dozens (perhaps 100′s) of other food authors as well as active food blogs/communities who could adopt a similar, print driven revenue model. Take the best articles, the best recipes from a given period of time and print them along side of tested recipes and beautiful photography and sell them. Ideally mostly via a subscription model which allows you to very closely estimate the print numbers you need in advance of actual printing (allowing you to negotiate with the printer and take advantage of volume discounts, per unit printing costs go down very quickly with volume).

My sister’s boyfriend, Peter Meehan recently published a major cookbook (Momofuku w/David Chang). They went the more traditional route with a major publisher, a large advance and a well supported and well attended press tour. Their hard work has been rewarded with a cookbook that cracked the top 100 on Amazon (as high as #32) and which will likely sell out the initial print run of at least 50,000 books (for a $40 book – yes that’s $2M at full retail pricing).

However they are by far the exception – a cookbook by a non-TV chef rarely sees numbers anything like what they are seeing.

Most cookbook authors, like the vast majority of authors of any genre, make fairly little from their writing.

Thus in 2010 I would suggest that any food writer thinking about making a cookbook consider strongly the DIY route enhanced by leveraging the web & social media to generate pre-sales (and/or adopt a subscription model such as The Canal House has) and use that to lower production costs while retaining far more revenue than traditionally received under a usual publisher’s contract.

Of course to do this well requires that you have access to great photographers, editors, writer and recipe editors/testers. Many websites, such as the fantastic Serious Eats would seem well positioned to do just that.

Item 3: The Monocle

I have been a huge fan of The Monocle since I discovered it a bit over a year ago. In a year which has seen many magazines close and print publications around the globe scale back their ambitions and international coverage, Monocle consistently creates a compelling if also hard to summarize global mix of coverage with original reporting from across the globe. The mix of a strong focus on design, combined with global coverage of the world including interviews with world leaders, extensive photojournalism and stories which cover the globe in depth and with richness and depth makes Monocle a long, but very compelling read.

It is also a great argument for the power and value of great design and the print format to tell a compelling story all while also demonstrating a very 21st century business model.

The components of the Monocle business model which, I think, are worth noting as components of the future of print in 2010 and beyond are:

1. A high value (and equally high priced) monthly print magazine. Monocle has a $12 list price in the US and subscriptions in the US are actually a bit more costly (75 pounds sterling) than buying the magazine at retail – depending on the variations of exchange rates
2. By focusing on a global audience but with a definite luxury and high design focus Monocle attracts global, luxury advertisers whose advertising budgets are less impacted by economic shifts. Additionally these advertisers seek specific audiences over mass reach.
3. Monocle has a retail component – with actual retail stores in London and LA as well as an international online store. In the store they sell design collaborations with select companies from across the globe as well as limited edition books and prints. These range from postcards to dining room tables to travel bags. Over the summer they had a pop-up store along the Mediterranean coast as well.
4. A growing range of audio and video podcasts. Supplementing and enhancing the magazine the Monocle’s online audio and video content is of an exceptionally high quality. Their video series are often sponsored by premier sponsors via tasteful (and short) embedded ads while the regular audio series serve primarily to be an audio discussion of the content of the current and future magazine issues.
5. Regular special reports and inserts into most of the issues of the print magazine. These special reports on Travel, Aviation and many other topics are both great original content and highly targeted publications which attract specific advertisers who might otherwise not advertise in the regular issues of Monocle.

Monocle may not be an easily duplicated model. It is certainly a high cost, high value publication with editors and reporters across the globe and very likely a very high travel and expenses budget along with very high production value. But at a time when many magazines claim hardship and are closing Monocle stands as a reminder that it is still very possible to build a great (and by all appearances successful) magazine even in the 21st century.

Item 4: Examples of innovative print experiments

Though I have always been a geek and was aware of trends in comics growing up it wasn’t until earlier this year that I started to semi-seriously collect comics. What drew me to comics in 2009 was a combination of new media (podcasts/video podcasts such as iFanboy and Major Spoilers) and an interest in looking at how the comics industry has been responding to the challenges of the 21st century.

What I have found in 2009 in looking at the comics industry is a range of lessons which offer, I think, much to be hopeful about the future of Print in the 21st century and especially in 2010. Yes there are fewer big hit comics (though more than you might expect – with some breakout graphic novels especially manga titles making bestseller lists this year as well as many smaller titles selling out and getting reprinted multiple times).

But beyond questions of volume of sales what I am most encouraged by in observing the comics industry is the range of innovations I see there – with companies large and small exploring different mediums, form factors and many different publishing schedules and business models. The physical products come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, at a range of periods (from “one-shots” to bi-weeklies to monthlies to bi-monthlies, quarterlies etc). In addition to the comics sold in any comics store the industry also has branches selling – very successfully – comics in large bookstores (graphic novels and especially manga) as well as at school book sales around the country (Scholastic sells millions of comics books in such book sales every year – the colored editions of Boned for example sell exceptionally well).

And while there are exceptions, for the most part the comics industry creates physical print products which explore the limits of print. This summer, in a prequel of sorts to what McSweeney’s has done with Panorama, DC published a 12 issue weekly series, Wednesday Comics. Each issue was printed on large format newsprint and told 15 different serialized stories each told one large format page per week. Overall it was a celebration of the history of comics – a return to a classic format which predates the comicbook as we know it today.

A few years ago there was a book published which reprinted the Little Nemo comics from the early part of the 20th century in their original, large broadsheet format. Earlier this year the second volume of those Little Nemo reprints was published, Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays, Volume 2 which is also gorgeous.

As 2009 ends there are many other examples of innovation in print happening. One in particular which I have enjoyed observing the process around is a photo book which blogger Andrew Sullivan published this year featuring a collection of photos from his reader’s windows. To launch the book he put out a call to his readers to pre-commit to ordering the book, in turn this allowed him to place an initial print order of 3000 books sold to those who had pre-committed at the lower price allowed by printing so many copies at once. That print run having sold out, the current books are available as print-on-demand from Blurb for a higher per book price.

A last example of where innovation is happening in print – is in the art print business – 20×200 is an innovative gallery in NYC and website which makes art prints available at prices starting at $20 (200 small format prints of each work are typically made available at a $20 price point). When 20×200 launched they would typically have 200 prints of a work at $20 and 2 prints of the work at $2000. In the past year they have expanded the range of price points and print sizes and now for a given work they may have as many as 4 or 5 print sizes, always in limited quantities. Some works could net over $75,000 or more if all of the prints sell out – as they frequently do.

What makes 20×200 work as with many of the examples I have listed is the curation behind each of these projects. As I noted in 2008 and still believe today the future of media is curation.

cc-licensed photo by Robert Soderberg

photo by Ewan Spence

I am spending the afternoon at my friend Ross Dawson’s Future of Influence Summit here in San Francisco (it is also running simultanously in Sydney Australia) I will have much more to write about this topic in future posts, but as I walked here this morning I was thinking a great deal about how brands are built today.

Telling great stories is the best way to build great brands

Here in San Franciso in the past year the local food scene has seen dozens of innovative, small scale food related businesses being created. Many of them are broadly speaking food carts, others are chefs who only cook a few nights a week, or other new forms of food and craft driven businesses. At the same time dozens of more traditional food businesses have opened in San Francisco. However I have observed that there are some common traits to the new businesses which are emerging with strong brands compared to those which have only a minimal if any brand recognition.

A great example here in San Francisco, though far from the only one,  is 4505 Meats, which is a local food business started by aclaimed chef Ryan Farr. He is building a fantastic business making a range of locally sourced meat products – Pork Chicarronnes which are available for sale in cafes and specilized markets throughout San Francisco and he is growing in acclaim for his handmade sausages, hot dogs and when he makes them hamburgers. He sells these products directly at the Thursday Ferry Bulding Farmers Market as well as select food festivals around town, but he is also increasingly a supplier of choice for many other small scale, innovative local food businesses.

In the process he is building a great, local brand, one which I suspect will only continue to grow in value in the years to come.

And his blog as well as the design choices he makes, including selling limited edition lithograph prints, all tell his story – that of food products made from very carefully sourced local providers made with care, old faashioned skill and a great sense of taste and quality control. He charges fair prices boh directly to customers at the markets and clearly to the many local businesses who are gladly doing business with him. As a result his business is growing and his brand is growing as well.

Take a look at how he is using twitter – follow him at @chicharrones – he’s using it to promote his events & specials exceptionally well.

And here in the Bay Area he is far from unique, there are some dozen or more similar, small scale, innovative food related businesses who are using Twitter as in many cases their primary form of marketing and advertising to promote their appearances, daily specials and over time to build up their brands – often in no small part by helping to promote each other’s businesses.

A few notable examples – but look at any of their Tweet streams for more are:

@adobohobo – a local food cart that makes Adobo Chicken (and occasionally other dishes), tasty, fairly priced street food.

@eatrealfest – a local, first time Street Food Festival which drew over 60,000 people to Oakland for three days of street food and farmers markets. They promoted the event throughout the Bay Area via posters and postcards but also benefited extensively from the social media usage (especially Twitter) of so many of the businesses who were selling at the festival, many of whom sold 1000′s of dishes in a single day.

@cremebrulecart – a local chef who makes a range of flavors of creme brule which he sells in parks and at events throughout the Bay Area, I’ve yet to see him fail to completely sell out at an appearance, his product is very tasty and fairly priced and not surprisingly quite popular. In addition to using his growing Twitter followers to announce where he will be, he is also using Twitter to get people to come out to help keep a favorite local park clean through volunteer efforts.

@missionstfood – a local Bay Area business which started as a food cart, then moved to their current format where they take over a local Chinese restuarant in the Mission area of San Francisco on Thursday and Saturday evenings. Each evening a different guest chef creates the menu, much of the proceeds of the evening go to a different charity (chosen by that evening’s guest chef). They use Twitter to promote the menu and over the course of the evening to inform people about what they have sold out of at the moment. They draw over 200 people most evenings, many of whom gladly wait over 1 1/2 hours for a table and they almost never have an empty chair from the moment they open until just before they close for the evening (usually having sold every dish they were ready to make). Just a few weeks ago they expanded further to now have a regular daily business, Mission Burger, selling beef & vegetarian hamburgers and occasional specials from within a local Mission market.

All of these small businesses along with dozens of others are using emerging media, such as twitter, as a core part of how they tell the story of their brand, in many ways using these tools to help them build and define a brand as it emerges in partnership with customers. While many of the businesses I have linked to have active online blogs and websites and many are increasingly attracting the attention of the media both online and offline, they are also using tools such as twitter to help them tell their own stories.

So what can the Boy Scouts teach us about Social Games?

A bit of history first – the Boy Scouts were founded in 1907-08 in England by General Robert Baden-Powell (most of my notes here are extracted from the great history of scouting published by Troop 97 on their website) after he noticed boys using his book written for military scouts, he then rewrote his book and started what has become one of the largest global organizations on the planet, with scouting groups in 185 different countries (and in many countries multiple different related groups).  Baden-Powell started Girl Guides around the same time, in the US what grew to become Girl Scouts. Scouting differs slightly from country to country (considerably in many countries), the rest of my discussion will focus mostly on the Boy Scouts of America (and since in many ways the Girl Scouts follow similar patterns lessons from them as well).

I followed my father as a boy scout for many years as a child, starting a cub scout when I was younger, then as a Webelo and finally as a Boy Scout, acheiving all but the final rank of Eagle Scout (which I’m sure was/is a disapointment to my father who was an Eagle Scout and considers it a major achievement of his youth).

As an Atheist I have serious issues with the Boy Scouts historically and currently, the current Boy Scouts of America is heaibly dominated by the Mormon Church whose troops make up some one fifth of BSA membership and their highly conservative influence runs deeply in the structures of the current Boy Scouts.

All that aside, this is a look back at the past of Boy Scouts and at the structures which were in place from nearly the very beginning and what lessons they have for social games of today.

Imagine the following – a group gathers, at first everyone is the same, low rank, following a series of detailed instructions many involving large scale group activities they start to rise in rank. With each rise in rank they recieve tangible rewards and group acclaim. But they are not isolated, from time to time they encounter other groups who have been following the same sets of instructions and in those cases their ranks are respected across groups. Individual activies and events evolve to have special rewards unique to those groups, as well special organizations form within the framework of the larger group which require invitation to join. Over time the achievements evolve adding new achievements as the times change…

That is not a description of the current Social Game, rather it is a description of the earliest days of scouting (and in most respects still is true to this day). What the global scouting movement captured, which is being replicated many times over by social games and social applications across the web, is the power of many small achievements and rewards which can be displayed to others who are participating all in the context of a larger, highly social set of activities, activities which bridge a tight, close social network with a far larger shared social context.

While it may seem that the evoluation of badges, achievements and even the applicaiton of levels is somewhat new in the past few years of online social applications and games it has its origins nearly a century ago with the early days of Scouting. In turn Scouting was adapting lessons about the power of medals and badges to motivate which had been learned within military organizations for many decades dating back at least to Napoleon.

It is important to look at what is working today within social applcations, to learn what makes Mafia Wars and other similar games so successful and engaging but it is useful and important to look beyond just the short term, immediate examples from other online activities and to look further back at pre-Internet examples of similar social activities and movements.

What Scouting shows is that there is a great deal of power and engagement from a large scale standard for achievement coupled with a mostly local and tight knit social group. The Global framework provides standards and contexts as well as rewards in the form of shared respect, respect which can in the case of achieving Eagle Scout status extend long into the future. The large gatherings and the badges and patches which arose from them while not the same as Merit Badges offered another form of incentives and engagement. They also formed the opportunities for cross troop groups to form.

Online games such as FourSquare are starting to learn some of these lessons, they emphasize your circle of friends over the larger game context of a given city, while having achievements (literally badges in this case) which are tied to in most cases a given city). Over time I would guess they will evolve further shared social achievements and rewards.

In future posts I will look at other very early examples of social activities which offer lessons for the social media of today. I will also trace some of the early history of the Internet and the evolution of those early online activities and applications in to the modern, post-Web 2.0 world of today.

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