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Archives › May 2005

May 31, 2005

Rest in Peace

Dale Velzy, a surfboard designer who helped popularize surfing along the California coast, died last Thursday. His business life offers up some interesting lessons:

• Build a business aroud your passions Velzy started surfing when he was a child.
• Location matters He opened a shop under the Manhattan Beach Pier in Los Angeles County.
• Promote your most avid customers Velzy helped fund the 1957 film "Slippery When Wet," which was made by Bruce Brown, who later went on to make the historic surfing documentary "The Endless Summer."
• Partner with people who will promote you Velzy made boards for legendary surfers such as Duke Kahanamoku, George Downing, Mickey Dora, and Harry Robello.
• Keep your nose -- and books -- clean His business shut down for a decade following an IRS audit that uncovered faulty record keeping.

Posted by Heath Row at 6:08 PM | 9 Comments

Fast Company... on the Air!

Tomorrow morning at 4:40 a.m., Fast Company contributor Michael Prospero will appear on ABC World News This Morning to discuss why design is so important to the success of certain products and companies featured in the June issue.

Posted by Heath Row at 2:13 PM | 1 Comment

Fast Company... "Is Probably Gone for Good."

So says David Carr in a New York Times column yesterday. My first reaction to Carr's opinion piece was to think of the John Lennon line: "I read the news today, oh boy!" But then Carr is stating his opinion, not fact, and also manages to warp a good number of facts along the way.

He writes, for example, that Fast Company and Inc., both being sold by Gruner & Jahr, "now have a value of zero." That's silly and completely inaccurate. The writer jumps to this conclusion merely because Meredith Corp., which agreed to buy both business magazines if they can't be sold by G&J by the end of June, said such a sale would not be material to the overall purchase price. The reason it's not material is because Meredith intends to make as much or more selling us than it has agreed to pay G&J for Fast Company and Inc. These are two very valuable national magazine brands being sold at the worst time for G&J but the best time for any smart buyer. Smart investors, after all, buy low and sell high.

Continue reading "Fast Company... "Is Probably Gone for Good.""

Posted by Editor in Chief at 1:03 PM | 27 Comments

Remake Reality

When I saw 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' not too long ago, eight trailers preceded it. Four of those, exactly half, were for remakes. Some of those are nostalgic classics, 'Herbie' and 'The Bad News Bears.' Others have a cult following, 'House of Wax,' for instance. This morning I read about a new version of 'The Wicker Man.' The original is a perfect, creepy piece of film. Why bother remaking it?

As usual in this world, it comes down to money. Remakes pose less risk for the studios than an original product. The concept has already proven to be successful and a new iteration has a built-in audience because of fans of the first one. Most of the time businesses will go with the sure thing, the certain bit of profit, than be bold and create something new. Innovation is more of a risk, but has a potential for greatness. And we all could use less of the same and more of actual innovation.

How do you feel about remaking films? What about retreading business practices?

Posted by Kevin Ohannessian at 10:56 AM | 5 Comments

May 27, 2005

Happy Birthday, Giggles

The Pillsbury Doughboy may be the epitome of long-standing brand characters. So we'd like to wish him a happy birthday. For today, Mr. Giggles with the ticklish belly and chef's cap turns 40.

Posted by Heath Row at 12:39 PM | 3 Comments

Poetic Justice: Viagra May Cause Blindness

Like some old wives' tale being borne out by medical science, it seems that drugs for erectile dysfunction may have been found to, ahem, stiffen one's chances of going blind.

Call me a lefty (please), but in a world where an estimated 2.1 million people die each year because they lack access to basic vaccinations, while rich, aging white men pay $10 each time they want to jumpstart their johnson, I can't help but find an element of poetic justice in this news.

Posted by Ryan Underwood at 12:12 PM | 25 Comments

Developing Development

This morning, I learned about a new blog supported by the World Resources Institute, a group of "scientists, economists, policy experts, business analysts, statistical analysts, mapmakers, and communicators working to protect the Earth and improve people's lives." That project, NextBillion is a highly interactive blog that seeks to foster development through enterprise.

"Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens," state the blog's organizers. And the wealth of content offered to date indicates that they're well on their way. Combining staff posts with reader posts, the site helps foster dialogue, as well as information sharing. There's a lot of great ideas and insights here. Think FC Now by way of the Social Capitalist Awards.

Posted by Heath Row at 10:13 AM | 1 Comment

May 26, 2005

Gone Plogging

A new book is published every 30 seconds, so the hopeful author has to invent marketing wheezes at a similar rate if she is to remain visible for more than a few seconds. The hard part these days is to plug (= English for promote) one's book in blogs without offending everyone and making things worse. I've coined the word "plogging" to describe this practice. With my book I'm also trying to perfect a form of viral marketing that's like avian bird flu: I want my book to 'jump' from the design species to the human one. Mind you, I feel a rank amateur compared to the mega-churches. All credit to Business Week for running that piece, but discussion of that article on this page was, for me, a classic example of why Fast Company must survive.

Posted by John Thackara at 11:34 PM | 8 Comments

Market Research Panopticon

A full-page story in the Financial Times (March 1, page 9) waxed lyrical about 'reality tv for the boardroom' – and went on to describe the use of video footage to 'reduce the growing distance between the corporate elite and consumers'. Executives in multinational companies, understated the FT, 'often find themselves doing business in places they know little about' (but) 'corporate reality tv enables highly paid executives to cross the class divide and get a glimpse into the lives of regular people – that is, their consumers'. How fast is this practice spreading? Video ethnography is not a neutral activity, and it would be interesting to find out how much it is being used, for what purposes, and by whom. Feedback, please.

Posted by John Thackara at 3:36 PM | 4 Comments

Make Art Not More

'Those who enjoy what they do never have to work any more'. An intriguing article by Sybrand Zijlstra Morf ) reports that 80 percent of students graduating from art academies pronounced themselves to be satisfied with their education. This is a surprise: endless reports, at least in Europe, describe art and design education as being in a mess. A bigger surprise, considering that the number of jobs available for artists is tiny: only two percent of those with a degree in art or design consider themselves to be unemployed. The conclusion is obvious: compulsory art education for all – it woud solve the unemployment crisis at a stroke.

Posted by John Thackara at 3:28 PM | 9 Comments

Read Letter Day

Today's edition of Cool News of the Day comments on Joey Katzen's Retail Alphabet Game, in which you strive to match letters with the company or product logo from which they're taken.

The game reminds me of Capitalis Pirata, a typeface we touched a year-plus ago, as well as other DIY typeface tools. What font do you use most often? I'm a big fan of Arial.

Posted by Heath Row at 11:34 AM | 2 Comments

Science Fiction Project Management

I'm reading Bruce Sterling's 2004 novel The Zenith Angle, and just less than 75 pages in last night, I was hit by some surprisingly sensible project management and leadership advice -- coming from the pages of a skiffy book! Without further ado, "How to Run a Skunk Works":

Continue reading "Science Fiction Project Management"

Posted by Heath Row at 10:08 AM | 5 Comments

Tech Research Priorities

My theme this week seems to have become the search for meaning in obscure reports. Can't be worse than tea-leaves. A survey of front-line researchers in 25 European countries reveals surprising devations from tech orthodoxy. The so-called Fistera Delphi (it's a system for averaging the results of an opinon survey) asked experts to prioritise research priorities for 2010 and beyond. The study looked at the social dimension of what is optimistically described in Europe as the "Information Society". In the survey, domains such as leisure and recreation, ageing, and security, scored much less well than the report's editors seem to have anticipated. This led them to comment, rather plaintively I thought, that "this result is rather surprising given the huge markets that exist around these areas". I find it most reassuring that so many researchers seem unimpressed by the corporate push in these domains. Even more encouraging: "improving IPR protection" was voted least important among all the opportunities for innovation.

Posted by John Thackara at 3:50 AM | 2 Comments

Happiness Index

After this I'll shut about work but I love this report even though I can't figure out what it means. A British organisation called City & Guilds has published a Happiness Index. Hairdressers are the happiest workers in Britain: 40 percent say they are very content in their job (giving their careers a score of ten out of ten). Next in the happiness stakes are the clergy (24 percent ), chefs/cooks (23 percent ), beauticians (22 percent ), and plumbers, mechanics and builders (all 20 percent ). In contrast, only five percent of lawyers, IT specialists and secretaries/PAs, four percent of real-estate agents, three percent of civil servants and two percent of architects say they are extremely happy at work.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:20 AM | 7 Comments

Infinitely Deferred Gratification

I'm not sure everyone in the financial world is up to speed on the attitudinal shift we're discussing. A half-page ad in last weekend's San Francisco Chronice featured the headline, "Why do we work?" displayed over the photo of an assembly line worker's hands, shifting a box.The text below read, "to keep the future growing". A bank called Principal.com presumably paid a goodly chunk of its customers' money to share this pearl of wisdom with us all.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:17 AM | 1 Comment

Work vs. Life

Apropos yesterday's discussion about dream time: I arrived here in Helsinki to be reminded me that it is European Union policy to promote "a better work:life balance". This sounds all very advanced and mature until you realise that it defines work, and life, as two separate domains. Which explains (as if we did not already know) why so many people dislike or hate their work.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:08 AM | 8 Comments

May 25, 2005

Top-Down Disruptions?

Strategy+Business magazine offers an interesting article that expands on the current work and thinking of Clay Christensen. What I found most interesting was the distinction between top-down disruptive innovations and grassroots innovations.

Christensen suggests that not only are top-down disruptions as powerful as their smaller scale, grassroots counterparts -- but that they may be more easily created and sustained. This can give incumbents a competitive advantage.

What do you think? Is top-down or bottoms-up innovation more powerful?

Posted by Heath Row at 6:45 PM | 3 Comments

And How to Win a Customer

A corollary to Keith's ADT story: The other day I traveled to New York for a party celebrating our June issue on design, and because there were no hotels in the city (What's up with that, New York?), I booked a room at the Crowne Plaza by the airport. I didn't arrive until 11pm, at which point I learned that I didn't have a room after all. A big federal agency that had been staying at the hotel for weeks extended its stay at the last minute. I got the boot.

Before I could protest -- or start composing a letter to the CEO (Keith isn't the only one with this hobby) -- the front desk clerk told me she had already booked a complimentary room for me elsewhere. A car was waiting outside to take me. Since I would miss grabbing a late bite, she threw in a meal as well.

Now I wasn't the least bit happy about getting bumped in the interest of a bigger customer and staying 15 miles farther from the airport and losing sleep after a long day, but I found myself surprisingly mollified. The staff acted genuinely apologetic, and they recovered quickly, satisfying both the feds and the little guy. As much as I wanted to be miffed at Crowne Plaza, I couldn't help but be impressed: A travel nightmare became a positive experience -- one I've been telling people about ever since. Talk about customer service paying off for a business. Where have you experienced this sort of service recovery? Or perhaps a failed attempt at recovering?

Posted by Chuck Salter at 6:20 PM | 2 Comments

A Grande Latte With a Double Shot of Love

Talk about a lovemark. Arthur Odle and Rebecca Lightfoot, both of Montgomery, Ala., were married in a Starbucks coffee shop last week. The two had met there every morning before work, and Arthur even proposed to Rebecca over coffee.

Brands are increasingly playing a role in traditionally personal spaces that they never have before. Not only are they becoming places we tie the knot, but places that we call home--witness Ian Schrager's apartments at the Gramercy Park Hotel and W Hotels' residences in Dallas. This goes beyond the brand cult--communities of Harley fanatics, MINI motorists, or Mac addicts--to people who are branding the highly personal spaces in their lives. It's certainly a testament to the power of Starbucks as a third space--there's our homes, our workplaces, and now, our coffee-shop-cum-nuptial-site--and to the relationship it has with its customers. But what's next? Pottery Barn branded subdivisions? Churches named after Rick Warren?

Posted by Jena McGregor at 5:59 PM | 1 Comment

How to Lose a Customer (Epilogue)

I realized, after my vent earlier today about National Geographic, that I never closed the loop on an earlier screed--that one, regarding my home alarm system and ADT.

The executive summary of that post: I got ticked off at ADT's appallingly poor service--and, when time came to pick a new vendor, went elsewhere.

So, here's the update. I enjoy a slightly eccentic hobby, in situations like this, of writing old-fashioned letters of complaint to the boss. Partly because doing so makes me feel better, but also because I'm curious what effect, if any, the letter will have.

So I wrote Ed Breen, the CEO of Tyco, ADT's parent company. Pretty much spilled my guts; told him the whole, sad story.

Continue reading "How to Lose a Customer (Epilogue)"

Posted by Keith Hammonds at 1:54 PM | 10 Comments

Big Mistake?

Who the hell would buy music from McDonalds? That's like buying DVDs at a seven-eleven. Yet, people do. Then again, maybe it isn't crazy. Look at Starbucks.

A business expands into new markets, new product-lines. When is such a move over-reaching? Should every retailer sell every kind of thing? Should every company offer every possible service? I happen to believe that it is better to do a single thing very well. Personally, I would never go to a fast food restaurant or coffee house to buy music. We have Best Buy for that.

Do you think it is a better strategy for a company to offer more products or services, or to offer one thing done right? And as a consumer, which do you prefer?

Posted by Kevin Ohannessian at 11:26 AM | 11 Comments

BP Might Just Kill Your PR

It's interesting that at a time when advertisers are scrambling to find any way to reach consumers, they're willing to nix the one marketing strategy that still works: PR. AdAge reported this week that Morgan Stanley and BP similarly "informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing 'objectionable editorial coverage.'" First and foremost, there are of course the ethical implications of this type of move by putting pressure on editorial objectivity. But from a marketing standpoint, don't companies like Morgan Stanley and BP realize that by pulling the plug on advertising in magazines they are in turn doing a disservice to their fellow marketers?

The US magazine model is dependent on advertisers - and it's no secret magazines are floundering (um, did you see our "For Sale" sign?). It's also widely known that the power of a journalist's pen endorsing a company is roughly three times the power of an ad paid for by a company. Right now marketers are up against TiVo, the death of the 30-second spot, and the frenetic, uncaptive consumer. If magazines disappear, so will the all-powerful third-party endorsement written by legitimate journalists writing legitimately about good companies, products and leaders; the same journalism that drives consumers into your stores and investors investing in you company after reading about you in their favorite magazines.

It's not our job to do you this favor - good companies will breed good coverage. Unless you want your marketing comrades - who are fearful of the type of coverage their own practices might breed - to cannibalize the one marketing outlet that still works, I suggest you ask them to question the consqeunces of their actions. Sure, as a journalist and magazine-junkie I may have my vested interest, but I believe, as marketers, you have yours.

Posted by Danielle Sacks at 11:06 AM | 2 Comments

This Is Convenience?

My wife received a postcard the other day. Return address was Magazine Direct Inc., Salt Lake City. Spartan white with anonymous black type. Presorted postage rate. Looked like junk mail.

I happened to read it first. "Thank you for being a valued customer. We hope you have been enjoying your service, as your complete satisfaction is our goal." Still sounded like junk mail.

And then...

Continue reading "This Is Convenience?"

Posted by Keith Hammonds at 9:33 AM | 17 Comments

Lab Rats

Per John's entry below, we at Fast Company find ourselves up for sale and, as often before, subjects in our own little management test lab. Yippee. Now, how the heck do we negotiate this?

Say your organization is put on the block--or entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, or otherwise placed in a situation that causes broad uncertainty. Until things are resolved, how do you...

--keep yourself in the game, intellectually and emotionally?
--keep colleagues motivated?
--convince customers (in our case, advertisers) to do business with you?
--help move the eventual outcome in your favor?

And, from a career perspective (FC staffers, don't read this next part...) how do you decide whether to hang in there for the ride, or bail? Or better, perhaps, how do you set yourself up to win, whatever the outcome?

Posted by Keith Hammonds at 9:08 AM | 2 Comments

Dream Time

I ran across some amazing numbers in a survey by the Center for a New American Dream of attitudes to consumption in the United States. More than eight out of ten Americans believe that "society's priorities are out of whack"; 93 percent agree that Americans are "too focused on working and making money and not enough on family and community". More than 8 in 10 say they would be "more satisfied with life if they just had less stress". 40 percent have made conscious decisions to buy less since 9/11. 83 percent agree that the way we live consumes too many resources. 81 percent agree that protecting the environment will require most of us to make major changes in the way we live. And so on. If people at the epicentre of the world economy are in this state of mind, it confirms the core proposition of My book that profound change is not a future necessity - it's already happening.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:37 AM | 5 Comments

No Reason to Panic

At Doors (this was in March) people seemed to find Margrit Kennedy's talk about the end of the known financial world interesting, but not alarming. Their reaction reminded me of the newspaper clipping I keep pinned to my office wall. It's a Guardian (UK) science story from two years back about the ecological crisis, and had the headline: "Human life on the planet under threat". This snippet was run on page 13 of the paper under "International News".

Posted by John Thackara at 12:18 AM | Add Comment

Hedged Bets

To my cynical eye, the people I see on US on television reassuring us about hedge funds are acting just too relaxed - and when I saw one analyst describe fund managers as "much more sophisticated these days" I knew the rest of us had reason to panic. At our conference in Delhi recently, a former urban planner from Germany, Margrit Kennedy made a persuasive case "based on the laws of arithmetic" that the world money system is heading for collapse, and soon. What makes the situation so dangerous, she explained, is that all the currency and gold reserves of all the central banks in the world amount to only the volume of transactions handled in seven to eight hours of trading. Ten years ago, Kennedy was regarded as a crank; today, she gets invited over for a chat by the President of Germany's central bank. At the weekend, Germany's chancellor threw in the towel; yesterday, Fast Company's parent company decided to sell a perfectly good magazine. Those in the know are not happy campers at this time.

Posted by John Thackara at 12:06 AM | Add Comment

May 24, 2005

Learning Communities

It's indeed rotten news that Fast Company's parent company, Gruner & Jahr, has put it up for sale. A magazine is one of those places - like a school, or town square (or an event like Doors of Perception) - that create far more value than is often apparent. That's because they enable encounter and interaction that would not otherwise occur. This is expecially true of Fast Company. Just this afternoon I met a bunch of interesting new new people in Milan only because Heath Row, who runs Company of Friends, connected us to each other. The challenge we all face is the lack of business models to make these interstitial places sustainable. We're all supposed to be entrepreneurs and social innovators, so let's get inventing.

Posted by John Thackara at 6:13 PM | 1 Comment

For Sale: Fast Company

Our corporate parent publicly hung a "For Sale" sign on the magazine today. Gruner & Jahr USA sold four of its women's service magazines to Meredith and announced that it would seek a buyer for both Fast Company and Inc.

Understandably, it's a difficult and sad day at the office. The faces at my staff meeting today showed much worry and concern as well as frustration. I understand those feelings because I share them. And more than that, I am deeply disappointed in G&J's decision to leave the U.S. magazine market where it has had a significant presence for the past 15 years.

At Fast Company, putting out this magazine every month, is not merely a job for us. The editors, writers, artists, and production folks not only bring their intellect to the job of creating a world-class product for our readers. They bring their hearts and souls to Fast Company each and every day. For us, this magazine is a teaching community: It's about personal growth, learning, and making a meaningful difference in the lives of our readers. We're extremely proud of our work and feel honored to serve our readers as best we can.

Over the next few weeks, as my team struggles with the uncertainty and worry that inevitably comes during a transition like this, I want every reader to know that we intend to work as hard and as smart as humanly possible. Our goal: to continue to publish what we believe is the best business magazine on the planet. And I want to publicly thank each and every member of my editorial, advertising, and marketing staffs for believing in us.

Thanks for all your support and understanding. The best is yet to come.

John A. Byrne
Editor-in-Chief
Fast Company

Posted by Editor in Chief at 5:35 PM | 35 Comments

Leading Ideas: Take Advantage of Others

"Every man I meet is in some way my superior." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American author, minister, & activist

Something to consider:

Everyone knows something that you don't. Take advantage of that and allow them to teach you. By seeking the knowledge and wisdom of others 2 powerful things happen. (1) - you acknowledge them (a basic human desire). And (2) - you learn a lot in the process. Everybody wins.

Continue reading "Leading Ideas: Take Advantage of Others"

Posted by Doug Sundheim at 7:10 AM | 4 Comments

May 23, 2005

Best Business Blogs

What are your favorite branding blogs? The best blogs that concentrate on marketing and how to keep brands cool and emotionally connected?

Tell us.

Posted by Heath Row at 5:40 PM | 26 Comments

Tax your Perception

All that is certain in this world is death and taxes, or so the saying goes. But what if taxes became a complete and certain disaster? The senate is meeting to address the alternative minimum tax created in 1969 to insure those who made more than $200,000 in a year couldn't be completely exempted by loopholes. But the AMT has never been adjusted for inflation. And $200k is not what it was 35 years ago. Millions of Americans will have to pay more taxes than they probably should.

Why does our government move so slowly? They could have fixed this a decade ago. The flaw is that our government is not flexible. Organizations need to be observant of problems on the horizon and quickly address them before they become colossal catastrophes. History is littered with the wreckage of those who failed to do this. Speak to co-workers and employees. Stretch your perception. Become aware of the blip on the radar. And then do something about it. Don't wait, don't hesitate, simply act.

Posted by Kevin Ohannessian at 12:58 PM | 5 Comments

Untangling the Email Maze

This Sunday's New York Times snuck a wonderful article into the Week in Review section -- "Enron Offers an Unlikely Boost to Email Surveillance" addresses a Johns Hopkins University study of about a half million email messages sent within the organization. While the security and surveillance is the least interesting aspect as far as I'm concerned, two other angles do intrigue.

One, the image of how the email transmissions clustered. What leaders sent the most? The least? Separating executives into roughly three tiers, researchers could easily identify who the communication nodes were, and where notable changes in email behavior occurred. The knowledge mapping aspect is fascinating. I'd love to see Fast Company's staff represented thusly. Who works with whom? Who answers the most questions? Who askes the most?

That leads to the second angle of interest... the research team has yet to do a content study of the messages -- what keywords are used the most, and how -- but the implications of being able to analyze such data raises some fascinating questions. What challenges arise most often? How do people frame debate? How do the words we use reflect how we feel about our work?

Posted by Heath Row at 12:10 PM | 2 Comments

Currency of Choice

The London Company of Friends group is currently discussing an interesting question on their mailing list: When working with international clients, whose currency do you invoice using? Invoicing in your local currency may mean that your partner bears the exchange rate risk. Yet invoicing in their currency means that you bear the load. Any experiences or advice to share?

Posted by Heath Row at 10:24 AM | 1 Comment

Guest Host: In the Bubble

Ladies and gentlemen, John Thackara, guest host of FC Now this week! Author of In the Bubble, this month's Readers' Choice Award selection, Thackara is the mind behind the Doors of Perception conference and a globally conscious design thinker.

Tune in all week to learn more about the ideas behind John's new book, the ideas he develops as he travels -- he just left Seattle for Milan -- and to weigh in on the conversation about how to better design our lives, lives that work.

Posted by Heath Row at 8:26 AM | 12 Comments

Neighbour Power

The anarchist bookshop next to the pier in Seattle never fails to yield gem-like titles - although nowadays, even the most grassrootsy titles are often to be found on Amazon, too. I'm enjoying a book by Jim Diers called Neighbor Power: Building Community The Seattle Way. In the 1990s, Jim Diers helped Seattle neighborhoods face challenges ranging from gang violence to urban growth. Many of the stories he tells here concern small, local Tipping Point-like actions. Diers describes as 'asset-based' often-modest actions that enable communities to exploit resources - such as time, skills, or relationships - that would be too small or scattered to interest a global company.

Posted by John Thackara at 3:14 AM | Add Comment

Beware the Precautionary Principle

My book was only just published when Fast Company raised a sneaky question about its basic argument. In the section of the review "Things We Didn''t Like" someone said: "Many a garage inventor would argue that poorly designed, superfluous products are necessary by-products of the innovation process, not fundamental flaws in our design philosophy. Thackara deems it foolhardy, but maybe it's Darwinian".

This is a fair point and points to a dilemma. It won't be easy to combine trial-and-error innovation, on the one hand, with consideration of the consequences of design actions before we take them, on the other. The precautionary principle requires scientists and designers to take "what if.." questions seriously - but trial-and-error is often the best way to approach innovation. I don't know how to resolve the conundrum - but I don't believe we can go on treating the planet, our only home, as a glorified crash-test rig.

Posted by John Thackara at 2:56 AM | Add Comment

Book Work

A well-meaning friend gave me a copy of Gabrielo Zaid's "So Many Books" to read while on the promotion tour of my own book.

"The reading of books is growing arithmetically; the writing of books is growing exponentially" Zaid's book begins; "a new book is published every 30 seconds".

After twenty days on the road, I don't much need reminding of this. Several of my stops have been at large bookstores where the vanity of expecting one's book to be noticed, let alone read, amid acres of new titles, would be sad if it were not also laughable. But Zaid counsels writers to think about the purpose of their of their work not as commanding the attention of millions, but as starting conversations that will end...who knows where. At one point he argues that commerce, too, is best thought of as conversation - thereby persuading me that this curious but exhilarating book tour is indeed a form of work.