www.andrewmackay.net:

I’m increasingly a little stymied by response to the Sopa / Pipa thing. I’ve written my senators and congressman (and, like a hipster, I totally did it before it was cool), and I’ve asked them to not do anything dumb.

The challenge is that the argument from the tech community is “Hey, let us help form a solution.” But, I have yet to see any such solution proposed.

I think we need to go back to the basic assumptions of the argument. Part of the issue is general disregard for creative content as property. No one argues about who owns and should benefit from a carpenter’s work. The transactions are clear cut.

But, there are many people who would say that creative content is not the same thing. Until we figure that out, we probably won’t be able to work out the mechanisms for protection. Or, rather, any mechanism we work out would be circumvented regardless.

So, I just did what every geek has done in the last couple of months: I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

I have been reading about Steve Jobs since I was young. If I recall correctly, I first saw the internet operating on a Mac (a LGIII, for the other mac nerds out there). I was 13. That was 15 years ago. Shortly thereafter, the school where my parents lived and worked got email access. Shortly after that, we were online. Those 56k connections could really rock. It was around that time that I started reading about Bill Gates (evil) and the Steves, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the creators of Apple (and clearly good).

Reading it all rehashed, with detail and clarity and honesty was profound. I really enjoyed it. Yes, Steve Jobs had a nasty side. He got incredible things done. That doesn’t excuse him being a jerk, but it does help to compensate a little bit for it.

What did I learn? I think the most important lesson from Steve Jobs life and work is focus. Whatever he did, he applied an overwhelming sense of focus to it. He cut through extraneous details and to the core. A lot of that came from great instincts, but even those instincts seemed honed by his ability to focus, to say no to almost everything and yes only to the most important things.

I have a tendency to do exactly the opposite. And the reality is that I end up chasing my tail sometimes as a result. I hope that it’s okay, that I’m still young enough to learn. It’s a lesson I want to learn. Through focus, great things can be accomplished.

Should you read Steve Jobs? It does detail the life of one of the smartest executives in recent american history. If you can’t learn something from him, it’d be a surprise.

About three years ago, movie rentals became the easiest thing in the world. Between Netflix (unlimited DVDs as long as you keep shipping them back) for about $10 a month (with free streaming as a bonus) and Redbox ($1 a night for new DVDs), whether you wanted to pay as you go or subscribe, you had good options. We watched more movies than we had before.

But, hollywood wants more money. First, new movies were slow in coming to Redbox. Then Netflix fell for the same. Blockbuster launched a Redbox look a like, with new titles at $3 a night, older titles at $1 a night.

Then it got worse: Netflix dropped a pricing bomb on its faithful customers (yours truly included). Prices went up substantially. They lost more subscribers than they gained for the first time. Several other dumb business decisions contributed to that.

Fast forward a couple of months and Redbox decides that they need to take advantage of Netflix’s miscues to raise their prices to $1.20 a night.

Blockbuster took a different tactic: they’ve instituted a three tier pricing system. New movies will be $3 for the first 28 days they’re available. Then, between 28 days and 90 days, they’ll be $2 a day. Then, after 90 days, they’ll be $1.00 a day.

Honestly? The whole thing makes me want to torrent or usenet or something. The rumblings are that studios are trying to move Netflix and Redbox out to 90 days after a movie’s street date.

The thing that they don’t realize is that there’s a persistent decrease in urgency to see their product. It used to be “When is that movie coming out on tape/dvd?” Now, many of us add it to our queue and when it comes around or we walk past in advertised on a Redbox display, we watch it. Movies that are events will continue to be seen in theaters. The rest, we’re willing to consume when they’re available by our preferred delivery mechanism.

Of course, the reality is that their manipulation of the release schedule will work on enough of the population for it to be “worthwhile” for the studios. If only we could all ban together and say “We’re going to treat the cost effective rental availability date like the availability date, we don’t care what you say.” I guess until then, I’ll simply stay frustrated.

It had been a while since I’d been in a bookstore. I saw my chance, and I took it — a great big Borders store. I went in just to browse. I don’t know if perhaps the nature of the business just requires them to cast a wide net, or what, but it felt like miles of shelves of junk with just a few gems hidden here and there. Two sections dear to my heart particularly made me cringe; the Christian section was bad (lacking depth), the YA section seemed worse. Immensely worse. I found myself thinking “who’s reading this stuff?”

I worked my way through the rest of the store, and as i got to the other end, I said to myself “This is it… there is no longer any need for bookstores. There’s nothing about this experience that I can’t beat online. It’s useless.” I aimed for the door.

My path took me through the children’s section. As I walked through, I heard a little boy, probably 5 or 6 years old, say “Where the Wild Things Are? Can I read that one, mom?” I teared up. It was just a little bit because I don’t cry.

That’s a special book. And maybe that kid was drawn to it because he saw the movie, but maybe — just maybe — he stumbled into it. And that’s not something you can do the same way online. You can’t just be immersed in great books and have the opportunity to stumble into Where the Wild Things Are.

I said a silent apology to Borders. I also decided I wanted to own a bookstore, which my wife mentions might not make sense in our market. I’d want to run it entirely on recommendations… staff recommendations and public recommendations. If it’s a great book and you’ll tell people about it, we’ll stock it. Otherwise, we just won’t bother. Less “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” and more “Here, there be great books.”

I was reminded this evening of the power of books. Even if I don’t ever own a bookstore (and I probably won’t, realistically), I’m committing to going to our local store and spending the occasional dollars. I want my kids to have the chance to pick up a good book by mistake.

I sat down over the weekend to think about this blog. I was trying to write a purpose statement that would help me to be more targeted in creating content for it. The word brand came up. I put down my notebook (not a moleskine… only because 1. I don’t have one, 2. I can’t pronounce it right (i.e. pretentiously enough) for a bookstore clerk to be able to point me to one…)  just a little 3rd grade composition book… (say with me, “finger space”) in frustration.

I hate the sound of personal branding. It sounds dirty. I wouldn’t ever want the day to come where you think, “Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, Andrew Mackay.” That sounds wrong. I don’t want to be all about pumping myself up and making you think I’m awesome.

But then, clearly something compels me to come here and write this every day. I want to say things that are worth hearing. I want to communicate that God is great, that stories and art help us see that, that the story you tell / we tell through our families is gravely important, that humor and community and camaraderie are good and valuable.

No matter what, having a desire to do that means, on some level, that in twentieth century (twenty-first, I guess) parlance I am building a brand. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. But, can we call it something else?

This is not an idea that’s original to me. Read The Long Tail or any number of modern entrepreneurs and you’ll see the same concept:

We no longer buy hits.

Of course, that’s not strictly true. Obviously, a hit is generally defined numerically (a gold record sells 500,000 copies… books are a  little more mysterious: the exact qualifications for making the New York Times Bestseller list are considered trade secrets proprietary to the NY Times… if you have these, please give me a call), which means that, since there are still hits, people are still buying them in large quantities).

But, the middle ground, the hits, have become less significant. Part of this is tied up in the fact that we consume more–so just the hits are not enough. The other part is that we’re rampantly individualistic. I’ll leave the philosophical and theological considerations for another time and focus on the business implications: There are more people interested in more niche topics than ever before in the history of the world. It’s not that people are more interested in life in general than we were in the past, it’s that technology and information have made it possible for me to have a completely different set of interests than the guy across the street.

Actually, that’s probably a great example.

If you looked at our two households, seven people (4 in his, 3 in mine), you would probably find a few interests that crossover — cooking, lawn maintenance, maybe the TV show NCIS. But from there, you’d find an incredible split. It’d be likely that if you asked each of those individuals what tv show they most liked to watch, what song they had most recently heard, and what book they were reading, you’d find no more than one or two matches through seven people.

This matters to me as an aspiring creator of content. It matters a lot. It indicates that, if a) there are enough people out there interested in similar types of stories as me and b) I can find a cost efficient way to deliver the type of story that will appeal to those people, then, it just might be possible to actually make a living at something like this.

It’s a paradigm shift. Content and product creators no longer need to be the most popular to succeed. They just need to find their following.