When the Second Edition of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist came out, I was baffled that the books were listed as two separate Amazon items. The biggest impact was that all the reviews for the first edition did not sync with the second edition, so anyone coming across the second edition wouldn’t see all the first edition reviews. There was also a bunch of other content missing from the Second Edition page. In frustration, I wrote a post titled The Mess of a Second Edition Book.
For several weeks I dug into this with Wiley (my publisher) to no avail. I kept hearing back that the Second Edition is considered an entirely new book. I accepted that (it has a separate ISDN number), but I still wanted the two pages to be linked. The First Edition pointed to the Second Edition, but the Second Edition didn’t point to the first edition. And – none of the content on the pages was synchronized. I kept thinking some version of “c’mon guys – this is just meta-data – how hard could this really be?”
Dane McDonald, who works for me, eventually just took it on himself to figure this out. He went to the Amazon Author Central site, found, and followed the instructions.
Voila. Several days later what Wiley had said was impossible now worked. The two editions were linked and all was good in the world. Until the other day, when the books magically unlinked. Boo.
Yesterday, I followed the instructions again to relink the editions. This time I got a disappointing email from Amazon.
I understand you would like us to link ISBNs 978-1118443613 and 978-0470929827.
The books requested for linking, Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist ISBN 978-1118443613 and 978-0470929827 don’t meet the qualifications to be linked. Please accept my sincere apologies for this disappointment.
In order to be linked, books must have the same content. Linking books such as the hardcover and paperback edition is meant to allow customers to choose between different formats, but customers should be able to expect to read the same content. Newer editions of nonfiction books generally have additional primary content, and therefore aren’t considered materially the same.
Books that are different parts of a set, or derivations of one another can’t be linked, even though they may be similar.
Thank you for contacting Author Central. We hope to see you again soon.
Double boo. I guess I should be frustrated, but pretty much everything about the old school publishing process baffles and perplexes me. Almost none of it is from a reader or author’s perspective. The publishers and distributors have their own magic language, special rules, and byzantine processes. Everything is harder than it needs to be, doesn’t work quite as expected, and has a bunch of extra words around each step.
I’ve let go of my frustration. Now I’m just amused. And I’m glad stuff like Bookshout exists – hopefully it’ll stimulate another wave of reader-centric disruption.
Enterprise development is once again white hot. More evidence is this year’s Gluecon. Not only does Gluecon have the usual raft of amazing startup/early stage sponsors, but this year, the “big guys” are showing up (SAP, Intel, HP, Google, IBM, General Motors, Rackspace). And, I also know (because Eric’s told me) that we’re seeing a leap in the number of enterprise developers that are registering for the show.
Is it cloud computing adoption that’s driving this? Or mobile? or Big Data, or APIs? I’m not sure if it’s one topically-driven thing, but it sure does seem like the little developer conference that we helped to start just over five years ago is turning into *the* place to be if you’re looking for technical content.
The most recent agenda is here. Click on the link and you’ll see loads of juicy, technical content. I don’t know of anywhere you can go to get this depth of content.
So, I hope to see you at Gluecon (in just under 3 weeks). I’ll be there – absorbing everything that I can along with the rest of you. Use “gluespring” to take 10% off of the registration price.
TechStars Patriot Boot Camp is an intense three-day program that will educate and mentor Veterans and Service Members to innovate, build technology companies, and create jobs. TechStars hopes that participation in the Patriot Boot Camp will be the catalyst for Veterans and Service Members to kickstart their company, find co-founders and advance as entrepreneurs. Veterans, spouses of Veterans, Service Members, or companies comprised of 50% or more Veterans are encouraged to apply to our second annual July 17-19 event in Washington D.C.
As an interesting note, participant Tak Lo from Patriot Boot Camp 2012 is now an Associate at TechStars in New York City and a participating company from Patriot Boot Camp 2012 – Nexercise – was recently accepted into the inaugural program of TechStars Chicago.
This event is made possible by awesome sponsors SoftLayer, Kauffman FastTrac, Slice of Lime, PivotDesk, Silicon Valley Bank, SendGrid, Galvanize, and George Washington University. The biggest thanks are due to these veteran entrepreneurs for their service to our country. Do you know a Veteran or Service Member that could benefit from a miniature TechStars experience? Please encourage them to apply.
I’m a big fan of doing stuff while I work. When I created my first treadputer in 2006 it was definitely ahead of it’s time. Today, I enjoy the Walkstation from Steelcase.
Recently I’ve been exploring new options and with my friends at Betabrand came up with the idea for CanDo – The Lavatory Workstation. More about it in the video below.
It fits nicely with my general theme of bathrooms.
I was at the annual meeting for one of our LPs yesterday. Promptly at 10am the took away the breakfast buffet. I was getting a new cup of tea at the time and watched them haul off trenchers of food that would easily feed 50 people. I had the same experience the previous two days at the SERGE event as several of the meals were buffet style and at the end of the meal there was still food for a group that was equal to or larger than us left.
Tuesday night dinner at SERGE was a sit down meal in a ballroom. The food was “ok” but not awesome and when I looked around there was a lot left uneaten, especially the dessert which was about as many calories as the main course. It was a pretty simple four course meal – soup, salad, main, and giant dessert. I found out after that the cost for each person was $300. Now – I’ve had my share of $300 meals – the one we had that night was a $50 meal at best.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed this if I hadn’t had three things connect – the giant waste of food on Monday and Tuesday (which I mentally noted on Tuesday at lunch), the trenchers full of food being hauled away Wednesday morning, and the $300 / person ticket for the mediocre meal at a top end hotel on Tuesday night.
It feels a lot like getting charged $15 / day for Internet service when you stay at a $400 / night hotel. The hotel is just jacking you on price because they can. But it feels worse when it’s a perishable good, like food, that is going to just get tossed in the trash.
I have no clue what to do about it but figured it was worth a rant. Maybe some of you have constructive suggestions.
For the past two days I’ve been at an even called SERGE (Seasoned Entrepreneurs Gathering Exchange). I co-founded it with two long time friends, Martin Babinec (founder of Trinet) and Keith Alper (founder of Creative Producers Group). Martin, Keith and I have known each other since the mid-1990s when we were much younger entrepreneurs playing leadership roles at the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (now simply “EO”).
We each invited about ten entrepreneurs and their partners to the event. 50 people showed up – 25 entrepreneurs and their partners – and we spent two days on Miami Beach hanging out and covering a lot of different topics. All of us were between the ages of 40 and 50 (+/- a few years), have each had at least one successful business, and were from all over the US and in plenty of different industries.
We had a solid 12 hours spread over two days in a conference room where the following eight topics were discussed.
One of led on each topic (for example, I kicked things off with “How Will You Measure Your Life?” – talked for about 15 – 30 minutes, and then facilitated a discussion for the balance of an hour.
It was amazing. If you’ve ever been in an organization like YEO, YPO, EO, Birthing of Giants, or Gathering of Titans, it was like a “super forum”. Two days with peers, talking confidentially and intimately about a wide range of issues, and getting to know each other at a different level. In this case, there were three intersecting groups (mine, Martin’s, and Keith’s) so you got the added bonus of meeting a set of new people that were highly vetted to be your peers that you could immediately trust and engage with.
Partners were included. Some – like Amy – participated for most of it. Others didn’t. This was the only big miss – we should have worked harder to include all the partners in the entire discussion, and have several of them lead topics. Next time.
Once again I was reminded of the power for entrepreneurs of spending time with your peers outside of the craziness of the daily schedule. 50 people invested two days of their life in this event – the feedback I’ve heard so far was awesome. And – for me personally – it was very rewarding.
If you are an entrepreneur, do yourself a favor and find a peer group. If you don’t know where to start, try Entrepreneurs Organization. You’ll thank me in 10 years.