a-MUSE-ing Links

  • You don’t get extreme talent, fame, or success without extreme actions.

    Be less leisurely.

    Throw yourself into this entirely.

    Find what you love and let it kill you.

    SOURCE: Extreme results = extreme actions



  • Here's the essential truth:

    This is the first mass marketing medium ever that isn't supported by ads.

    If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn't please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.

    That's the reason the medium (and its rules) exist. To please the advertisers.

    But the Net is different.

    It wasn't invented by business people, and it doesn't exist to help your company make money.

    It's entirely possible it could be used that way, but it doesn't owe you anything. The question to ask isn't, "but how does this help me?" as if you have some sort of say in the matter. You don't get a vote on whether Google succeeds or whether your customers erect spam filters.

    The question to ask is, "how are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?"

    SOURCE: Seth's Blog: The web doesn't care



  • Jonathan Karp has become a bit of a celebrity in and out of the industry, first for the books he got famous editing over his 16 years at Random House (some titles you might know include SEABISCUIT, THE ORCHID THIEF, SHADOW DIVERS, and THE DANTE CLUB), but more recently for the creation of Twelve, which functions on a simple principle: less is more.

    Twelve publishes only twelve books a year. That means a given catalog has only four books in it, tops. This means more focus on quality, where only one book is getting an editor's complete attention at a time. It also means the slashing of arbitrary initiatives (many publishing companies incentivize their departments and employees by the number of acquisitions and books published, which makes sense in a quantitative way but in a qualitative way inadvertently encourages editors to acquire books they don't care about in order to scrape their margins together).

    SOURCE: Editorial Ass: Less Is More



  • It all starts with that one great piece that announces to the world why they should care that you exist. Your first job is to create your calling card. Your second job is to in some way fulfill its promise. I think any smart discussion of how to have a career in the arts has to start there.