Us!
We're Five. And yes, we do act like it sometimes. But forgive us for blowing our own horn when we say that, since we're up 70% over last year (in an economy where flat is the new up) we're feeling all's well. For now.
Tomorrow is another story.
Meanwhile, to check out all the facts, and read about our new deal with Thomas Nelson, and updates to our platform, and MUCH, MUCH MORE...
Didn't we TELL YOU we would? We did! We just launched our Blog2Print support for Wordpress Blogs. In record time, if we can say so out loud.
So, now if you have a blog on Blogger - you go to Blog2Print.
If you have a blog on TypePad - you go to Blog2Print.
And if you have a blog on Wordpress - where ya gonna go?!?!
Easy stuff, right?
Bloggers asked for it, and now we have it!
The Blog2Print service, long a favorite among authors on the Blogger platform, is now available to those of you who use TypePad, which includes, among others, us. Fairly ironic, isn't it, that we couldn't make a Blog Book of our own blog? Well, that is behind us now.
What? Do we hear calls for WordPress? Watch this space, folks - it won't be long now...and keep an eye on Blog2Print.com for continued innovation as we take this platform forward.
I recently joined the SharedBook team, which is based on Wall Street in New York City. Even though I’m in Alabama, I’ve been in the publishing industry for almost fifteen years, so trips to New York were regular occurrences, with home base being a hotel room and death-defying cab rides the transportation of choice. But with SharedBook I’ve enjoyed the new-found benefit of a local office with a view of the Statue of Liberty and strong encouragement from upper management to take advantage of cheaper, faster, and presumably less fear-inducing public transportation.
Armed with a “flashmap,” explicit directions from Rick Hunt (our office representative for the Metro Transit Authority) and a Southern girl’s sense of adventure, I mastered the 6 train, delved into the R train, and got completely lost taking a bus. Everyone in New York seems to move with such a sense of purpose that I’m loathe to stop someone and ask directions (other than a UPS driver—always an excellent source of information). It’s not that New Yorkers are unhelpful; on the contrary, I have always found New Yorkers friendly and warm once you get them to stop moving. It’s more that as soon as I open my mouth, my Southern roots are readily apparent and I don’t want to look like an out-of-towner who needs help. So I’ve spent a few extra minutes (hours?) wandering around looking for my next meeting, but you can stumble upon superb hidden gems that way. Like one night I arrived safely early for a client dinner at Balthazar and walked a few blocks to kill time. And there, behind a gray façade, nowhere near what I knew to be a shopping district, was --wonder of wonders-- a Bloomingdale’s. Who knew! I love this town. So, in honor of my first blog post, I’d like to announce one of our newest personalized products, the University of Alabama Football 2008 Media Guide. The Crimson Tide is having a stellar regular season, capped off by a trouncing of in-state rival Auburn36-0 this weekend. Ranked number one and soon to be playing Florida for the SEC Championship and a spot in the BCS Championship Game, even Bear would say Saban is earning his $4 mil. If you know anyone who learned to say Roll Tide before their ABC’s, they need this for Christmas. Just go to www.rolltide.com and click on Bama Stores.
You can't possibly know how excited we are today to announce that our very first frontlist personalized book just happens to be the latest novel in the Star Wars series! Now, that's the way to step out, big time.
You can read about the deal, or pre-order the book. Or you can amuse yourself by writing silly Yoda-like sentences ("Sell millions, we will...") about the whole thing. As we have. Or you can thank your wonderful partners at Lucas and Random House a couple dozen more times. As we will!
Anyway, it's wonderful news for us, and, as they say on TV, it's just in time for the holidays...!
It's here!
Kids.SharedBook.com, known colloquially as The Kids Personalized Book Store, has launched. And just in the nick of time, too, because the holidays are just around the corner.
No propaganda here - if you must have it, take a look at our breathless press release. Instead, take a minute to browse the store, and see how many books you remember from your childhood! And imagine what a great gift these classic titles will make, personalized with a dedication and a photo of a child you love.
We'll be back to keep you updated on our progress throughout the season. Meanwhile, all of us at SharedBook are going to take a deep breath, pat ourselves once on the back, get a good night's sleep...and come back tomorrow to continue the adventure...
“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” -- Sven Goran Eriksson
No one likes failures. Myself included. Yet, part of growing up is learning to accept those failures, to accept those mistakes that we do, learn from them, and move forward.
When we started SharedBook, Yossie Hollander, our founder, kept on telling me he wants me to take risks. He kept on telling me that I haven’t failed enough in my life. And I didn’t understand what he meant.
A few months later, I made my biggest mistake in SharedBook, and I was devastated. Truth be told, I didn’t feel like I failed, I felt like I was a failure. Yossie was kind enough to call me and congratulate (!!!) me, telling me it is an important lesson that will serve me for life. A few days later, as the lesson was well absorbed, I understood what he meant back then when we started
“Failure is the tuition you pay for success.” -- Walter Brunell
As you’ve probably realized by now, if you’ve read my previous posts, I am also an enthusiastic triathlete. And last week, I tried a new approach in the swim lag of a triathlon, and failed, miserably. In fact, I found myself all alone in the sea, the last one to get out of the water, and it hurt. Even after I biked well and ran well and won a nice trophy, I still felt miserable.
And then it got me thinking: what went wrong? What do I need to change in my process? What to I need to change in my training? What do I need to change in my racing strategy?
Quite a few lessons I’ve learned from this incident. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but one day, when I’ll be able to make a great swim lag in a triathlon, I am sure I’ll remember to attribute the success to last week’s race.
“We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.” -- Leo F. Buscaglia
This week was extremely busy in SharedBook R&D. OK, I’ll be honest: it was hectic, sometimes it even felt nothing less than chaotic. Our team here is well experienced with this; we try, it doesn’t work, we learn from this mistake, try a different approach, and so on. Someone here once call this a “continuous post-mortem”. It is an ongoing learning process that eventually leads us to success.
And this week was no exception: we tried, we failed, we learned from this failure, and we tried again. People pulled all-nighters, worked hard, and then worked harder. And with such determination and diligence success was bound to come.
It is times like this make me really proud to be part of the SharedBook team!
“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.” -- Woody Allen
Dario, Benny and Rona – I’d like to take this chance and thank you for all your hard work, efforts and continuous learning process that eventually yielded successful results.
Thanks!
A few years back during a meeting I gave feedback on a proposed website design. I spoke as a potential user and was attempting to point out some possible pitfalls. The President of a company I was consulting for asked "Is this your personal opinion as a user, or as an advocate of the user?". Not an easy question as the lines are so fuzzy. Clearly this question is at the core of web design decision making.
One of the major rules of website design is to NOT build for yourself. There is a saying that "the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client". In my line of work, the saying should go "the designer who builds a website for himself has an expert as a client". And it is just as foolish.
When you design a website to satisfy your own needs as a user, your expertise will constantly pull you in a potentially dangerous direction.
You are engaged. The product is your job. You feel passionately about it (or are at least paid to be) and your willingness to read about the product, consider its merits, and reach conclusions are a given. Unfortunately you would be lucky if your customers are one tenth as engaged. Not because they don't care, but because they don't know.
You know the product. Exactly what it is and (maybe more importantly) what it isn't. Your customers know neither. And worse, many of them think they know what the product is and somehow have it wrong. As a designer you have precious little time to help clarify this.
You understand the process. You know what needs to happen and when. Moreover, you know what is difficult to successfully accomplish and what isn't. Your users aren't insiders like you. They don't know your operations. Your difficulties and triumphs are completely invisible to them. They will likely assume some things are easy that are in fact complex. They won't give them a second thought, meanwhile your success might depend on it.
You look at it every day. This causes a bias that work for you or against you. You know where to look and what to ignore. You may miss that your design is focusing the user on the wrong spot. You also might think your design is stale and "yesterday" - but perhaps that's because you spent all of yesterday staring at it.
Nothing can replace user feedback. The point is that the site is built for them - because without them you don't have a product.
Most designers think: "If I design it, they will come." Not so fast. A good Web site design is like a good car design: Looks impressive sitting on driveway, but without the proper mechanics and engineering under the hood, all you have is an expensive piece of scrap metal on your hands. Same goes for Web site design. Being a well-rounded designer does not consist of you solely mastering photo selection and type, you must be able to discuss your design with your coder — how they both interact is paramount. Without proper coding, your site may never be found by a single user, potential client or ranked by the likes of Google.
I am constantly referring to the experience of SharedBook's coders, Gokce Akyurek and John Paul Lorenti, on new and existing projects. Whether you are working with HTML, PHP, XML or a MySQL database, being able to talk intelligently with a front or back end developer about limitations and potential roadblocks, will not only save you time in the long run, but help you produce that much more robust and error free site. OK, no site is completely error free, but a designer can dream.
Think of your coder as your Web site mechanic, peeking under the hood of your site, making sure all the bells and whistles you created are actually going to work.They usually reside in the back room, low lighting, somewhere among the IT staff. No worries, they are here to help.
“The three Ps of success: Passion, Persistence and Patience” – Doug Bronson
If you’ve read my previous blog posts you’ve probably noticed how passionate I am about two things: SharedBook and Sports, especially cycling. As an experienced high tech manager and long distance runner and triathlete, persistence is also one quality I learned to master. Today, I want to discuss the 3rd P: Patience.
We are living in a fast moving world. Suddenly everyone wants something, and wants it fast. We enter a website and if it doesn’t respond within 2 seconds, we lose our patience and leave. And the same goes for real life as well: we want results and we want them now.
The dark side of overnight success stories
High tech industry is crazy. We’ve all heard about those amazing one night success stories: startup companies that were sold for millions within a matter of months. And suddenly everyone expects this for every startup company…
Here at SharedBook we work differently. Yossie, our founder and experienced entrepreneur, kept on telling us from day one that it is going to be a long journey, and there are no shortcuts. Step by step, constantly checking yourself, learning the market and listening to its feedback, changing course accordingly and you will reach your ultimate goal. In fact Yossie sometimes laughs and says that those overnight success stories are one of the worst things to happen to this industry; since no one has patience anymore – we all expect overnight success.
If you want to ride fast, you need to learn to ride slowly
In sports – the same rule applies as well, you must have patience. Once you’ve set your goal, you need to start planning your entire season accordingly. The first stage is building a strong, robust aerobic base, which is why this period is called the base period. Base period requires a lot of patience: you need to ride long and slow. I don’t mind going long, but going slow is a different story. Cyclists and road cyclists specifically are addicted to speed. Going slow is almost against our nature – especially when you are training with people who are in a different stage of their season (i.e. allowed to ride fast). It can be nerve-wracking, it can be lonely, and you can even feel left out watching your friends riding fast while you are left behind.
Suddenly I have to keep reminding myself the importance of being patient. The importance of working hard, moving forward slowly but surely. I have to remind myself the importance of doing things right, without skipping any stages. And it is difficult for me, it almost feels against my nature, but I am learning. J
“He that can have patience can have what he will” – Benjamin Franklin
