Giving It Away for Profit

Cory Doctorow photo by Paula Mariel Salischiker

Science fiction author and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow was interviewed recently on
NPR's All Tech Considered. Doctorow discusses his use of Creative Commons licensing and lays out his plans for self publishing profits based on a business model that includes the word, "free". While Doctorow is an author, several visual artists have used similar methods to promote and sell their works by having the right mix of free downloads, print on demand from outlets like blurb or lulu, and limited edition (read expensive) customized books.

"In other words, Doctorow is giving away free e-books in hopes of getting people buy the paper books; he's offering print-on-demand paper books with four different covers through Lulu.com; he's soliciting donations; and he's printing 250 hand-sewn limited-edition hardcovers that will run $275 each."

Doctorow also touches on some of the concepts laid out in 1000 True Fans, and
The Full Monty Marketing Mix.

Listen to the full interview here, or read a brief excerpt on NPR.org...

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Raechel Running Scores Honorable Mention

Photographer Raechel Running scored an Honorable Mention at this year's Santa Fe Photographic Workshop with her photo titled, "Mennonite Sisters, Chihuahua, Mexico".

The winners of FAMILY have been chosen and are proudly presented below. Judges Tony Bannon, Julie Blackmon, Brenna Britton, and Reid Callanan have honored 50 photographers for their poignant, heartfelt, humorous, and intimate views of family. From Australia to Venezuela, images came from 25 countries, and our contest inspired 702 photographers to enter 2544 images. Enjoy these 50 award-winning interpretations of FAMILY.

See all the winners...

Tracking Stolen Laptops and Phones

Prey is program that you install on your phone or laptop, and should the device ever get lost or stolen, you can remote trigger a number of actions to protect your data, and hopefully, recover your property. From the Prey Project:

Basically you install a tiny agent in your PC or phone, which silently waits for a remote signal to wake up and work its magic.
This signal is sent either from the Internet or through an SMS message, and allows you to gather information regarding the device's location, hardware and network status, and optionally trigger specific actions on it

Some of those actions include taking pictures of the thief, sending location information, taking screenshots and password protecting the computer. A lot like Apple's Find my Phone feature except it works on Android based devices, and laptops running Windows, Mac OS, and Ubuntu.
Free and open source.

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Promoting Yourself To Dream Clients

Our friend Speider Schneider is back with another great article on Smashing Magazine, this one titled, "Breaking Down Doors: Promoting Yourself To Dream Clients":

There’s a saying that the School of Visual Arts in New York City once used in its ads: “To be good is not enough when you dream of being great.” We all have dream clients that we would like to add to our portfolio, but either we don’t know how to reach them or have no idea how to even start. Promotion is not a big subject at art school, and I know way too many creatives who stare at the phone and wonder why it’s not ringing.

Continue Reading... There's even a bit in there about how Store 44 Reps uses Google Adwords for our regional advertising. All in all, a good read for freelancers.

The Smashing Book is available on Amazon.com