The SoapBoxers

Did you collect baseball (or football, basketball, hockey, etc) cards when you were younger – or perhaps you still collect today?  Then you might be a candidate for an exciting new book that will published in 2011!

Hyrax Publications, LLC, the parent organization of The Soap Boxers, is actively seeking contributions for Cardboard Canvases: An Anecdotal History Of Sports Card Collecting in The Modern Era.  The book will be published in electronic format in 2011.  Depending on demand, there may be a subsequent printed edition.

The book will contain essays from 100 sports card collectors.  The writers will share their experiences in the card collecting hobby.  Cardboard Canvases should be an enjoyable read for anyone who has ever busted open a pack to see what stars lay inside.

What Can I Do To Help?

We already have firm commitments from around thirty writers, including some popular internet-based writers.  However, we still have plenty of spots open.  We’d love to include your story.

We anticipate that most essays will fall in the range of 500 to 2500 words.  However, this is not a hard-and-fast requirement.  If your story happens to fall outside this range, that’s fine.  Quality is much more important than quantity.

Some suggestions for topics in the essay include:

• How you got started collecting
• Why you quit collecting
• Your favorite cards

This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list.  You have freedom to pursue topics of your choice, as long as they are relevant to your experiences collecting sports cards.

It is anticipated that many of the writers will be male, 30-40 years old, and residing in the US.  If you don’t fit this demographic, we are particularly interested in your story – as it will add variety to the book.

You don’t have to write like Hemingway, nor do you have to boast a collection that contains a T-206 Wagner or a 52 Mantle.  Simply tell us your story.  Submissions will be edited for spelling, punctuation, and grammar.  However, we will make every effort to ensure that the essays still maintain the unique writing style of the writer.

I Have a Friend …

Maybe you’re not a collector, but have a friend who is?  Please make them aware of Cardboard Canvases – just click this link to share via email.

What’s In it For Me?

Every writer will be given a free copy of the PDF version, of course.  Honestly, this is a great deal.  You spend a small amount of time reliving your youth, and get the complete book as compensation for your time!

Additionally, there will be revenue sharing.  You will make money on every sale!  I’m not going to go into great detail in this post, but I’ll be glad to send you a copy of the submission agreement if you email me at kosmo@ObservingCasually.com

Can I Pre-order?

If you don’t plan to submit an essay, but are interested in purchasing a copy of the book when it becomes available, send me a note at kosmo@ObservingCasually.com and I’ll put you on the mailing list.  We will not take your money until the book is ready to ship.  Our goal is to get it out the door during the first half of the baseball season.

A few weeks ago, my writing was rejected.  I had submitted a manuscript to the Iowa Short Fiction Awards and was notified that I was not among the finalists (there were more than 400 entries).  Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms had been rejected.  The 63 stories, encompassing more than 70,000 words, had taken countless hours to write edit.  One of the stories (The Cell Window) by itself had taken nearly six weeks to write.  Sales of my eBooks at the Hyrax Publications store have been lackluster, but there was still the chance for critical acclaim, right?  Now, too, that hope was dashed.

This was actually a bit of a new experience for me.  In my years as a writer, I have generally had good luck when submitting stories and articles to publications and sites.  Almost without fail, I have managed to find a home for every piece of writing.  Now, someone was telling me that my writing wasn’t good enough.

How do I – and other writers – handle this rejection?

First, realize that much of the joy is in the journey itself, rather than the destination.  For many writers, the process is cathartic.  If there is value in the writing process itself, then you don’t necessarily need commercial or critical success in order to “win”.  It would be great if people like your work, but it’s just frosting on the cake.

Next, take a closer look at your goals.  Do you need to have your work praised by experts?  Do you strive to place your books at the top of the best seller lists?  Or perhaps you want to make a small difference, one life at a time.  Several months ago, I wrote a little story called Safe at Home.  Like many of my stories, it’s a sports story – but with a big sentimental tug at the end.  I shared it with a friend of mine.  This short little story that took only a few minutes to read jerked heavily at his heartstrings.  Mission accomplished.

Look also at your audience.  Perhaps you’re submitting things to publishers that simply “don’t get you”.  Very few people strike a chord with everyone.  Regardless of how good your writing is, you’re going to strike out occasionally.  Try a different publisher – or even sit on the work for a year or so.  A writing style that is unpopular today may be all the rage in the future.

Finally, think of your writing as your legacy.  Writing is something that can be passed down from generation to generation.  A hundred years from now, if my descendents wonder what sort of person I was, they’ll be able to read my stories to gain some insight.  Of course, they may come away from the experience thinking that I am a serial killer, what is most untrue.  (I devour Lucky Charms, but am generally pretty nice to cereal).

On that note, The Crunchy Conservative uncovered some journals that her grandfather wrote at the beginning of the 2oth century.  His words will jump onto the information superhighway this year.  Crunchy will be posting each day’s 1902 entry on the corresponding date in 2011.  Already this year there is information about a funeral and the unpleasant task of dehorning cattle.  Check it out at LeanderBolton.com

I’ve been feeling really under the weather lately, so there may not be a fiction story tomorrow.  If that’s the case, then this will be the last post of 2011.  (If you go into Soap Boxer withdrawal over the weekend, you can also delve into the archives.  Plenty to read there.)

We’re on the cusp on a new year.  Honestly, I’m not much of a New Year’s fan, as I see it as a pretty arbitrary start point for the new year – why not start it on the vernal equinox?  In any case, I have some goals for the year ahead.

Turn a profit.  Hyrax Publications (the parent organization for The Soap Boxers) has been somewhat unprofitable in 2009 and 2010.  With increasing traffic and new ventures such as SPARKS by Kosmo, I think 2011 will be a profitable year.  By 2012, I expect to see millions of dollars in revenue each year.  (Huh?  What do you mean by “rose colored glasses”?)

Double the traffic.  This sounds like an aggressive goal, but the number of page views in December 2010 is more than four times the traffic we saw in December 2009, and we’ve seen very strong growth the past few months.

See SPARKS ignite.  SPARKS by Kosmo booked a small bit of revenue in 2010, but there is plenty of room for growth.  We’ll be unveiling new pricing plans and features in January.

Continue to give back.  I received – and continue to receive – a lot of assistance from my good friend Lazy Man.  In an effort to pay it forward, I’ve helped other people get started with their own blogs, and will continue this is 2011.  If you have ever wondered if you should start your own blog, the answer is “yes”.

More articles from guest writers.  We’ve had a variety of guest articles in the past, on topics like a day in the life of an air traffic controller, the in-person experience of the 2010 Olympics, and a muslim’s view of Islam.  I’ll continue to seek out people who have interesting tales to tell.

Finish the new eBook.  Next week, I’ll announce a new project that will involved 100 authors.  I have already lined up quite a few writers, but need a lot more to turn the idea into reality.  I expect to spending much time searching for these writers in the first few months of the year, and hope to have the book ready for production by late spring or early summer.

Get traction on my novel.  I’ve had a lot of irons in the fire in 2010, and my novel ended up on the back burner.  I really want to set aside some time in 2011 to make strong progress on the novel.  I doubt I’ll be able to finish in 2011, but I’d like to have most of the heavy lifting done before year end.

What are your goals or resolutions for 2011?

When I was in elementary school, I was a good student in most subjects.  One particular subject always tripped me up – penmanship.  We were on the S/U (satisfactory / unsatisfactory) scale, and I received a grade of U- each term.  In hindsight, I wonder if my teacher comprehended the actual meaning of the word unsatisfactory …

My mom urged me to work on my penmanship, which was truly atrocious.  I commented that I’d just do everything on computers in the future, and that handwriting would be unimportant.

It turns out that I was actually correct.  My handwriting was never an impediment in my college years, and most of the people I have worked with over the past 13 years have no idea how lousy my handwriting is – because all of our communication has been verbal or via email.  My typed documents are just as neat as the next person’s – I’m not Pig Pen.  In the time before laptops, someone glanced at my meeting notes and asked if I could read my own writing when it was “cold”. 

When I am forced to take pen in hand, I almost always print – in order to achieve some level of legibility.  The only time I use cursive is to sign my name or write checks.  Until recently, I always took caution to sign credit cards as neatly as possible.  The I realized that this might cause a problem if a merchant decided that my normal signature didn’t match the one on my card.  Now I simply use my regular scribble when I sign a card.

Over the years, my signature has slowly lost its luster.  The six characters in my last name were once somewhat distinguishable.  This is no longer the case – you see the first letter and then a ragged line for the rest – and even the ragged line is losing definition and will eventually become a straight line.  My first name is a bit better, but not by much.  Perhaps the most defined letter in my entire signature is my middle initial.

It’s not all bad, of course.  If I ever wanted to pass myself off as a doctor, I’d have a fighting chance.  I always joke that I have the writing down, I just need the medical school.  Like many bad writers, I also have the ability to decipher the code of other bad writers.  When we come under attack from Canada, the ability to transmit messages via poor handwriting will be critical to the defense of the nation (assuming that we are able to first identify and eliminate Canadians with poor writing skills).

There’s actually a serious question hiding behind the facade of my jokes.  Have we reached a point where we can safely ignore penmanship – and cease further instruction on the subject?  The need for the skill is on the decline – will the need eventually die out completely?

[Editor’s note: today’s article was written by Poch.  Check out more of Poch’s writing at Plato Press.]

My small Manila hometown is very near the Philippines busiest international airport (I will not mention the name to avoid libel charges). Its main attraction and big income producer is a world-famous church which also triggers corruption among the town leaders -our town thrives on underground economy.

Illegal gambling is everywhere -it’s already part of the town’s culture. The town leaders allow vendors (and anarchy) to occupy sidewalks for a fee which collectively isn’t small -there are hundreds of illegal vendors creating street anarchy. Even some police officials get their take too.

From time to time when the corrupt leaders are taking heat from higher officials, they make a show of chasing the vendors away from the streets which turns violent sometimes causing death among vendors or law enforcers. These battles have been going on for decades until now.

I have a cousin who is an ‘official’ of one illegal gambling (locally called ‘Sakla’) that’s permitted most of the time during funerals. It’s organized if the family of the deceased wants or needs money for the funeral. The family gets a percentage of what the gambling earns from bets. After the local elections this year, this particular gambling was stopped by the city mayor. The reason? The mayor’s brother lost in our town elections and because his brother’s opponent was earning or ‘on the take’ from Sakla, he stopped it to punish his brother’s opponent. So now my cousin gets poorer and poorer everyday because Sakla is his main source of income and he’s feeding 4 children of his own. Now imagine the other many gamblers who earns less than him and also have families to feed. I really wonder how the gamblers go on for decades living this way. But mostly, I wonder why I’m being forced by fate to come back and live here again and again.

Things have been busy lately in the world of Kosmo.  Barring a complete collapse in the second half of the month (which is possible, with Christmas pulling people away from their computers) we should set a new record in page views for the fourth consecutive month.  We’re not seeing a million visitors per month, but we’re seeing solid growth, particularly from search engine traffic.  The Soap Boxers has always been the flagship offering of Hyrax Publications, and this will continue in the future.

I have also launched a consulting business, Sparks By Kosmo.  The thought was that up-and-coming bloggers would take advantage of the service to get some new ideas for their site.  However, at this point, the main interest seems to be coming from established bloggers looking to iron out the last few wrinkles.  We’ll be unveiling new packages geared toward these different sets of customers in January.  And perhaps we’ll also unveil a new member of the Sparks team at that point?  While The Soap Boxers is the flagship of Hyrax Publications, Sparks has the potential to actually pay some bills.

We’ll also be launching an eBook project in January.  This isn’t me just announcing a new eBook or audio book for sale in the Hyrax Publications store.  This will actually be a collaborative effort involving up to 100 individual authors.  I’ll be looking to include some of you in this project.  Keep your eyes open for more details in January, with publication slated for late spring or early summer.  Some of you are already aware of this effort and have signed on to become contributors.

Hyrax Publications will also be getting into the business of selling printed books in 2011.  The first two books are written by a self-published author on an interesting niche topic.  Putting her books for sale in the Hyrax Publications store will allow her to reach a potentially worldwide audience without having to build out any infrastructure.  If this experiment proves successful, we may opt to work with other authors later in the year.

My novel, unfortunately, has been pushed to the back burner a bit.  My New Year’s resolution for 2011 will be to get some traction on it.  Given the free time, I think I could hammer out the first hundred pages fairly quickly.

Several days ago, I received notification that I was NOT the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award contest.  This wasn’t a big shock, since the contest attracted 400+ writers.

And in the category of “things you didn’t notice and really don’t care about,” my business name has changed from Hyrax Publications to Hyrax Publications, LLC.

I’ve been collecting favorite quotes for a number of years.  Here are some that I enjoy – it’s definitely a motley collection.

“Goof Grief.” – Master Charles Brown

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Niezsche

“Last night I dreamed I was a butterfly.  Now I do not know if I am a man who dreams he is a butterfly or a butterfly who dreams he is a man” (paraphrased) – Zhuangzi

“That is what Tiggers do best!” – Tigger

“Luck is the residue of design.” Often attributed to Branch Rickey, but Rickey borrowed it from John Milton

“With proper design, there is no residue.” – George (friend of Kosmo)

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” – Baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Attributed to Yogi Berra

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” – Jesus Christ

“Ah.  Hay-SOOS.  I like him very much, but he no help with curve ball.” – Pedro Cerrano

“Oh.  Dog and a beer.” – Terrence Mann, after first mistaking Ray Kinsella’s question of “What do you want” as something existential rather than food-oriented.

“These are not the droids you’re looking for.” Obi-Wan Kenobi

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Holmes

“This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.” – Skip (Major League)

“My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to DIE.” – Inigo Montoya

and finally:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Yeah, I’m an Apple fan, but even if I wasn’t, I would love this quote.

You’ve seen the ads.  Sparks by Kosmo – Web consulting with a twist.  What the heck does that mean?

Although our little site at The Soap Boxers is still a relatively undiscovered diamond in the rough that is the blogosphere, I can, with confidence, claim to have one unique specialty.

My mind is not bound by the constraints that tend to hamper most people.  Most people operate with a filter that weeds out the bizarre ideas before they actually have a chance to live at all.  Not the case with me.  I say to those ideas “be fruitful and multiply!”  Honestly, if I didn’t have a day job in a conservative industry, I’d probably commonly be referred to as “a bit eccentric”.

Introduce people to a variety of unusual ideas, and you will expand their horizons to encompass a broad range of possibilities.  While the original ideas themselves may not be a final answer, they may open up a line of thought that leads to other ideas which are eventually implemented.

To that end, I am announcing a service that will allow you to bottle a little bit of Kosmo.  Few can doubt that my creativity factory churns out some unique stuff (don’t believe me?  Check out short stories like Second Chances and The Critic) – why not work with web site owners to come up with new ideas to help improve their sites?

This will certainly not be your grandfather’s brand of web consulting.  There will be no chatter about click-through rates, search engine optimizations, and load times.  The focus will simply be on making the site more interesting and useful for your visitors, pushing the envelope beyond what you do today.

I’m going to start out with two different levels of service.

The first, affectionately nicknamed “I hate your website because …” will be a quick look-see at your site, with an email from me pointing out the aspects of the site that I disliked the most.  Most often, these are going to be tactical things, although I’ll throw in an outside-the-box idea when possible.

The second level will be a more in-depth look at the site.  For a small retainer, I’ll give you two quick tips on how to improve your site, plus a quote on how much I would change for a full review.  At the end of a full review, you will receive a formal report (between 500 and 3000+ words) detailing suggested changes.  Bear in mind that I have no prior knowledge of your site or your audience, so I don’t know what “won’t work”.  Odds are good that several of my ideas will be things that “won’t work”.  Given a chance, I bet that some of those ideas actually WILL work.  And if they don’t work, you just blame it on the crazy consultant!

I can’t guarantee that you’ll be a BETTER person after working with me –  but you’ll certainly be a DIFFERENT person.

I lined up a lucky sucker customer to give Sparks a try.  You may know her as Silicon Valley Blogger from The Digerati Life.  Honestly, she’s probably not in my target audience.  Not only has she spent much time refining her site over the years and has a strong sense of the direction she is heading, but I am also a frequent reader.  This means that it will be difficult to truly look upon her site as a blank slate.  The report I gave to SVB ended up being on the more basic side of the spectrum.  What could Kosmo come up with the improve one of the most popular personal finance sites on the web?

Here are a couple of sample suggestions

Navigation bar links to outdated information – The most current deal in the Special Deals section is from July, and the most recent online coupon is from May. You need to decide if these are important enough to take up prime real estate on the navigation bar, or if they are so unimportant that they can go a half-year between updates. These are mutually exclusive categories.

Recent articles – If a new visitor stumbles across your site, they aren’t able to determine what you have been writing about recently. Consider using a “recent articles” plug-in in a sidebar to draw their attention to your recent activity.

Another client was Mommy’s Recess.  This is a newer site that has only been up for a few months – so I was able to put together a more detailed report.  This is the type of client who can probably gain the most from Sparks.

Here are some nuggets from the detailed report:

Who’s your daddy? – Obviously, your site is centered on the perspective of a mother. Every once in a while (perhaps once a month), why not have a guest article that comes from a different perspective? Have a father write something about the joys of fatherhood – or a grandmother, teacher, or even the owner of a store that specializes in children’s clothing or merchandise?

Go ask mother – Get your readers more involved with an advice column. You may need to prime the pump at first – getting some questions from friends and family in the “real world”, but before long, you’ll be getting questions from your site visitors.

Recalls – Consider covering the important topic of manufacturer recalls once a month. Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission provides this information on their web site, not every checks the site. Also, you may choose to go explain the importance of some of the recalls.

Sarah and Emma had this to say about Sparks:

We received a great review from Kosmo. As stay at home moms working on a blog, we know diapers and kids but not internet.

Not only did he give us tips on colors and links, but he gave us content ideas that will give the blog a fresh look and ideas!

Hop over the Sparks today for some introductory pricing.

After nearly five years of trusty service, my 1999 Ford Taurus began to experience a problem in the spring of 2004.  The speedometer would be accurate up to about 25 mph, but they would bounce wildly between 25 mph and 85 mph, regardless of the actual speed being driven.

At first, this was an infrequent problem, and then became gradually more common.  Of course, the problem never occurred when I took the car into the shop.  One of the mechanics apologized for his inability to troubleshoot the problem.  My response was that I worked in information technology and could fully understand the problem of a machine not reproducing a problem when you wanted it to (computers are notorious for this).

Some online research strongly suggested that the problem was with the vehicle speed sensor – an opinion that was backed up by some car experts in my office.  I had an extended warranty on the car, so the necessary repairs would be paid for, minus a small deductible.

The only problem was that the warranty company wouldn’t pay for a repair without the shop getting a reading from the onboard computer.  This made sense to me – they didn’t want to keep replacing parts until the shop fixed the problem by trial and error.  I continued to experience the problem – except for the times when I took it into the shop.  One time, the problem occurred for an entire weekend, only to cease on Monday when I took it in.

It was during this time that I learned that you really don’t need a speedometer.  You can gauge your rough speed by looking at the tachometer (engine RPMs).  This does vary a bit on hills, but you can make a rough estimate of your speed.  So I was able to drive the car without getting any speeding tickets, which was a small victory.  However, I was unable to use cruise control, which really sucked.

Finally, one weekend, the problem took a turn for the worse.  Not only was the speedometer not properly registering speeds above 25 mph, but the car was actually not moving any faster than 25.  There were some long drives that weekend.

At around 6:00 AM on Monday, I took a long drive down to the Ford dealer.  It was still early enough that the well-traveled road to the deal didn’t have many cars on it yet.  That’s exactly why I choose this time of day, of course – to minimize the risk of an accident.  The dealership opened at 8, so I pulled out a book and read for 90 minutes.

The dealership was able to get the Taurus looked at right away – and the computer was still throwing an error code.  Imagine my “surprise” when it indicated that the vehicle speed sensor was faulty.  A few minutes later, I was back on the road with a fully functioning speedometer.

Today marks the 500th article I have written for this blog, over a span of two years (kudos as well to the other writers, who have contributed more than 200 articles).  Have I learned anything over the years?  Yep.  My thoughts, after 500 articles.

If you’re thinking about starting, do it NOW.  I neglected my writing for about a decade simply because lack of feedback in the traditional writing model bothered me.  I could never tell how good or bad writing was unless I actively sought out friends to read my writing (and I didn’t feel like stalking people in order to get their opinion).  With the internet, you can throw something out there are see if people like it (and since they don’t know you personally, the feedback can be more honest).  Not sure if YOU want to start a blog?  If you’re thinking about it, do it now.  You can either use a free service, or have a blog at your own domain name.  If you use this link, you can have hosting through Dreamhost for a discounted cost of $36 for the entire first year (full price is currently $119.40 for a year).  Give it a year and see if you like it.  If you aren’t enjoying it, just quit.  There’s no shame in that – there are a lot of abandoned blogs on the internet.  Don’t be surprised if you get addicted. 

Most bloggers are great people.  One thing that I didn’t really expect when I started were the friendships I would build with other bloggers.  Lazy Man and I have been friends for a while, of course, but I’ve also become friends with people like Evan, SVB, and Johnny Sacks (this is not an all-inclusive list – if you’re reading this and feel excluded, rest assured that I probably could have filled the entire article with names).  These three would be an odd trio if they ever bumped into each other – there’s really no single tie that would bind them together.  Each of them resonates with a different aspect of my personality.  Also, when I have asked questions of other bloggers (generally of a technical nature regarding how they achieved a certain look on their site), I have always received nice responses.  Certainly no blogger wants you to rip off their entire theme, but they are willing to show you how certain pieces work.

It’s a team effort.  I started this site as one guy throwing  out random observations (hence the original title “The Casual Observer”).  There came a point where it took a sharp turn and became the dynamic multi-author site you see today.  It really hasn’t been that difficult to get people to write (especially since the only financial benefit they are working toward is the promise of sharing of profits, when those profits occur).  While there has been turnover, it has been manageable. 

Plagiarism sucks.  Luckily, this issue has only come up once, but when I found that a former writer had stolen content from other and attributed it to themself, it was a dark day for me as an editor.  By nature, I am a very trusting person … but since that day, I am less trusting. 

The money isn’t great.  I was hoping that ad revenue would quickly defray costs and make me a millionaire.  Well, help me break even, at least.  Unfortunately, the site is still leaking a bit of red ink.  I’ve made some conscious decisions that prevent me from maximizing ad revenue.  I minimize the ads that are shown to regular visitors and don’t show any ads at all in the RSS feeds.  I’ve also made an effort to weed out ads that I think are scammy, irrelevant (I’m still working on the soap ads, but think I’ve gotten rid of the ads for boxer dogs), or just downright ugly.  I can’t possibly catch all of them, but I’ll catch as many as I can in order to enhance the visitor experience a bit.  Of course, the ads that I feel are a  bit scammy are probably the ones that pay the best.  I’m trying to figure out exactly how much time I have spent on the site over the years – writing 500 articles, recruiting writers, coordinating the schedule, making code changes … it’s a substantial amount of energy.

Political articles are popular.  This is hardly a surprise, as politics is the national pastime of the United States.  For the longest time, I avoided having official political columns (aside from occasional rants from me).  Eventually, I figured out a format that would work – have two writers from each camp, and have them write on alternate weeks.  I wasn’t really sure how well it would work out, but I think it’s fair to say that The Political Observers has been a hit.  I also worried a bit that the tone of comments would get out of hand.  There have been spirited discussions, but it seems that people are generally able to avoid personal attacks.

People like it.  You never know how well received something will be.  We’re far from the most popular blog in the world, but we do have our fans, and the positive comments out-number the negative by a wide margin.  I can count the number of outright negative comments on one hand.  The personal notes I receive via email are a great motivator to continue my writing.

OK, that’s all for now.  500 articles down, 9500 to go!