I've spent much of this past Golden Week vacation, more time than I could afford, really, beta reading for friends from the LDS Beta Readers writers' group.
One manuscript was a billionaire romance in early beta condition. It was very entertaining, and the story itself was rather well laid out. My primary suggestion was that I wished the pace had been slower. But slowing it down would require altering the premise significantly, potentially making it less interesting. Anyway, this author is experienced, and I am confident she will get this one on the market in good shape and good order.
Another was a tale of leprechauns, witches, dragons, and some other more exotic creatures, from a less established author. The tale was engaging and even somewhat instructive. It was significantly better than most of the fantasy that gets turned into published anime. I am procrastinating the feedback because I like the story and the execution, but I know I have to tell the author it's not very marketable as it is. I want the author to be able to bring this book to publication.
A third was a Regency period romance, a tale of innocent deception in the face of sibling rivalries that go too far. It is in a close-to-period vernacular, but the reader's modern vernacular shows through at distracting points. I like the story and the layout, but the execution gets in the way a little. And I am procrastinating this one, as well, although I think I know what to focus on, to encourage the author to finish.
I hope, eventually, to be able to post reviews of the published versions of these (and many others that I have beta-read since joining this group). They have great potential.
These are beta level, so execution issues (grammar, word choice, phrasing, some minor structure issues, etc.) are to be expected. This is always something of a quandary, because we have the instinct to offer editing services and opinions that the author has not requested, and that we cannot afford to give. And if we start offering unsolicited editing, it's easy to start trying to re-write.
But rewriting somebody else's work without permission is rather a breach of ettiquette and even a discourtesy. (Publishing such rewrites could even constitute a crime against copyright law, is how discourteous.)
Beta reading is a privilege with accompanying responsibility.
Now, if you understand the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi, you might understand my following comments on the privilege:
These are all unpolished gems. Very rarely do I get to do a beta read of a manuscript that does not need editing. Often, the various errors of execution make it difficult to get started into a story.
But once you get into the flow of the author's story, the rhythm of the author's voice, the story itself comes into focus, and finishing the manuscript is usually a pleasure.
Preparing a manuscript for market almost always requires "cleaning out" the rougher aspects of the author's modes of expression. Sometimes it requires cleaning out substantial parts of the author's vision for the story, and worse.
Editing a manuscript to make it marketable requires denaturing the story.
Think how it would be if all restaurant food were subjected to the same marketing processes as the McDonalds' menu.
Do I need to map this allegory? No? You do see it, right?
Sometimes, it almost breaks my heart to beta-read. Not because the writing is bad. I haven't yet seen a manuscript that is that bad, though I have seen some that need a lot of work.
Now editing can be done with light hand. Not all edited works are comparable to McDonalds' food. But market forces tend to motivate the heavier hand more often than not.
That means that, even if you do get a chance to read the novels I have beta read this week, you will not see the rough beauty I see. It will probably be polished and palatable -- easy to read. And it may have lost significant portions of the meaning that I enjoyed reading in them.
Sometimes, the difference I expect almost breaks my heart.
Do I recommend joining a beta readers group? It depends. They do require time -- and learning to read through rough writing.
Showing posts with label value. Show all posts
Showing posts with label value. Show all posts
Friday, May 4, 2018
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Optimizing all the value out of your bottom line
Money.
I have a bunch of projects I could push forward if I had money. Last time I looked at Kickstarter, I would need a US credit card to try to get them funded there. I've looked at some of the other crowdfunding sites, and I don't really care for the models they use.
It's not just money I need. Publicity on Kickstarter or somewhere similar could help me reach people who might be interesting in working with me on those projects.
It's the connections I develop while getting the money the dull way that is the real value. The portfolio I develop is also useful, but it's the human relationships and the value that people have for each other, the value we generate when we work together that is the real value. Not money.
Money is cheap.
Money.
If money is what you want, I hear it's not hard to get. (And I think I have reason to believe it.) But when you go that way, you get money without meaning.
Money saves no one. I could suppose I could win a big lottery, but then I would have to spend a lot of time every day for several months just getting the money put away where the combination of US and Japanese taxes wouldn't have me owing more than I won.
Sure, that would eventually settle down, and I would be able to focus on my projects. And, for all that I could get to work, I still wouldn't have that network of like-minded people to help. Maybe I could get such a network if I had money. But there is the other possibility of just getting people who want the money clogging up my networks.
People who just want money also clog up companies, make them (appear to be) inefficient.
Companies big and small have focused on optimizing their processes, to build their bottom line. But what do they measure that bottom line in?
Money.
How often it is that a company gets a big hit on a product and then refocuses itself around the money the hit product brings in.
Focuses on the product, in theory, but more on the money. Gotta build that bottom line.
Then they optimize the company around the bottom line -- around the product, first, but around the money most of all.
And then the product begins to lose popularity. And the company finds it has money and no meaning. And no way to survive.
And then the company goes running to the government and cries,
Well, let's back up and look at the optimization process. How does that optimization work? How does it rob the company of meaning?
Well, there are two broad facets to the optimization. Two kinds of deadwood that companies like to optimize out of their organizations. Two kinds of employees that don't appear to contribute to the bottom line.
You know the one kind, no one remembers how he got hired. He never does anything. Every time you see him, he's surfing the web. Or talking at the water cooler. Or sleeping on company time.
He comes in late, leaves early. Ask him to do something, and it's a crap-shoot whether what he does, if anything, will be useful. In fact, sometimes when you involve him in your project, he does something that so much gets in the way that you'd have preferred that he had done nothing.
Clearly deadwood. Should be fired.
Well, you have to realize that, when you put that guy on the street, unless he finds something to motivate him, he goes on welfare. Then what the company is no longer paying out in wages, it is now paying in taxes.
(One problem with using inflation -- public debt -- as a way to hide future taxes, we don't see an immediate tax burden in putting such employees on the street.)
Then there's the other type. Faded stars. Still useful. Maybe they were involved in the hit product that is the company's (current) bread-and-butter. But they seem to have lost their way. Anyway, they are going a different direction from the rest of the company. They come in when they want, do what they want, what they contribute to projects is usually hard enough to work with that you wish they had done nothing.
Clearly deadwood. Should be given the opportunity to work elsewhere.
The problem is, intellectual property is a mirage. What the mirage hides is intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is in the brains of the faded stars. Maybe it's kinder to let them go elsewhere, but when you do so, a big chunk of the company's intellectual capital goes with them. And it's that intellectual capital that the company is going to need when the hit product begins to fail.
Let me tell you a secret: These two guys are one-and-the-same. You just didn't know enough about him when I described him to you the first time.
The problem is in your vision. In fact, you should go look in the mirror when you criticize the deadwood at your company, because one of these days, the deadwood is going to be you.
It's necessary to fire people or let them move on sometimes, but we should be careful about our reasons. It's even necessary to let go of entire companies.
But if our bottom line is money, the filter is going to be set to discard all meaning and all value. And it's no surprise when the company fails with its hit product. And no surprise when the surrounding society seems to have trouble maintaining enough value to survive as companies burn brightly and then burn out.
I have a bunch of projects I could push forward if I had money. Last time I looked at Kickstarter, I would need a US credit card to try to get them funded there. I've looked at some of the other crowdfunding sites, and I don't really care for the models they use.
It's not just money I need. Publicity on Kickstarter or somewhere similar could help me reach people who might be interesting in working with me on those projects.
It's the connections I develop while getting the money the dull way that is the real value. The portfolio I develop is also useful, but it's the human relationships and the value that people have for each other, the value we generate when we work together that is the real value. Not money.
Money is cheap.
Money.
If money is what you want, I hear it's not hard to get. (And I think I have reason to believe it.) But when you go that way, you get money without meaning.
Money saves no one. I could suppose I could win a big lottery, but then I would have to spend a lot of time every day for several months just getting the money put away where the combination of US and Japanese taxes wouldn't have me owing more than I won.
Sure, that would eventually settle down, and I would be able to focus on my projects. And, for all that I could get to work, I still wouldn't have that network of like-minded people to help. Maybe I could get such a network if I had money. But there is the other possibility of just getting people who want the money clogging up my networks.
People who just want money also clog up companies, make them (appear to be) inefficient.
Companies big and small have focused on optimizing their processes, to build their bottom line. But what do they measure that bottom line in?
Money.
How often it is that a company gets a big hit on a product and then refocuses itself around the money the hit product brings in.
Focuses on the product, in theory, but more on the money. Gotta build that bottom line.
Then they optimize the company around the bottom line -- around the product, first, but around the money most of all.
And then the product begins to lose popularity. And the company finds it has money and no meaning. And no way to survive.
And then the company goes running to the government and cries,
SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!!!
Make a law that requires people to use our product!!!!
'Cause we were stupid and now we don't know anything but the product that people don't buy any more!!!
Copyright! Patent! Something has to work!!!!
We don't know how to make meaning any more!!!If only companies could really see that this is what they are saying when the run crying to the government. Then they might not optimize all the meaning out of their operations so that they have to be saved from themselves.
Well, let's back up and look at the optimization process. How does that optimization work? How does it rob the company of meaning?
Well, there are two broad facets to the optimization. Two kinds of deadwood that companies like to optimize out of their organizations. Two kinds of employees that don't appear to contribute to the bottom line.
You know the one kind, no one remembers how he got hired. He never does anything. Every time you see him, he's surfing the web. Or talking at the water cooler. Or sleeping on company time.
He comes in late, leaves early. Ask him to do something, and it's a crap-shoot whether what he does, if anything, will be useful. In fact, sometimes when you involve him in your project, he does something that so much gets in the way that you'd have preferred that he had done nothing.
Clearly deadwood. Should be fired.
Well, you have to realize that, when you put that guy on the street, unless he finds something to motivate him, he goes on welfare. Then what the company is no longer paying out in wages, it is now paying in taxes.
(One problem with using inflation -- public debt -- as a way to hide future taxes, we don't see an immediate tax burden in putting such employees on the street.)
Then there's the other type. Faded stars. Still useful. Maybe they were involved in the hit product that is the company's (current) bread-and-butter. But they seem to have lost their way. Anyway, they are going a different direction from the rest of the company. They come in when they want, do what they want, what they contribute to projects is usually hard enough to work with that you wish they had done nothing.
Clearly deadwood. Should be given the opportunity to work elsewhere.
The problem is, intellectual property is a mirage. What the mirage hides is intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is in the brains of the faded stars. Maybe it's kinder to let them go elsewhere, but when you do so, a big chunk of the company's intellectual capital goes with them. And it's that intellectual capital that the company is going to need when the hit product begins to fail.
Let me tell you a secret: These two guys are one-and-the-same. You just didn't know enough about him when I described him to you the first time.
The problem is in your vision. In fact, you should go look in the mirror when you criticize the deadwood at your company, because one of these days, the deadwood is going to be you.
It's necessary to fire people or let them move on sometimes, but we should be careful about our reasons. It's even necessary to let go of entire companies.
But if our bottom line is money, the filter is going to be set to discard all meaning and all value. And it's no surprise when the company fails with its hit product. And no surprise when the surrounding society seems to have trouble maintaining enough value to survive as companies burn brightly and then burn out.
Monday, April 9, 2012
lottery -- くじ引き
(Started this sometime back in March or April, didn't have time to finish or translate it.
これは先の三月か、四月の頃に書き始めたものですが、ちゃんと終わらせることも訳すことも、時間が足りなかった。)
My wife and children were listening to Doujou Youzo between NHK language programs this morning. He and his new assistant, Megumi, or Kyu-chan, were talking about the US lottery and comparing it to the Japanese lottery.
今朝、家の嫁、子供は道上洋三の番組をNHK 言語番組の隙に聞いていて、道上と新補佐の愛（めぐみ＝「きゅうちゃん」）が米国のたからくじを話題にして、日本の宝くじに比べていた。
The biggest Japanese public lottery is for a JPY ￥600,000,000 jackpot. (About USD $7,000,000 at the current exchange rate.) Apparently, a recent jackpot in the US was for $656,000,000 (Mega Millions, how late did they stay up thinking up that name?), split between three people. That would be, what? about $220 million each.
日本の第一大きい籤と言えば、６億円です。（現在の為替で７百万円。）アメリカの最近の大当たりはその百倍に近い６億5千６百万ドルを三人に分けられたたそうです。（「メガミリオンズ」というヤツ。何時まで起きていてそんな名前を考えたかな？）一人当たりおよそ、えぇっと、２億２千万ドルですね。
Hmm. Do they get to decide individually whether to take it lump sum or in monthly payouts?
さて、一括か、月々の方法でいただくのを一人個人で決めれるのでしょう？三人一同で決めなあかんかな？
Lump sum will chew into the total, as will taxes. (Apparently, Japan does not tax their lotteries. At least, the wikipedia articles I read did not mention any taxation.) But, even if they take the lump sum and can't find any shelters to postpone the tax hit, $70 million is not chump change. (English wikipedia article indicates lump sum can cut the total to a third of the published value. Of course, the wikipedia article could be wrong.)
一括なら、最後の金額は減らされるそうです。税金によっても。（ウィキペディアの記事で探したが、もしかして日本のクジは税金かからないかも知らない。はっきりと税金のこと言わないのです。）しかし、一括でもらって減らされて、税金を後回しにするための投資対策が分からなくても、７千万ドルは馬鹿銭ではない。（ウィキペディアの英語の記事によると、一括でもらった場合は記された値の三分の一までに減らされることもある。ウィキペディアは場合によって外れることもあるし。）
How much would monthly payouts be, assuming a 40 year payout? $460,000 a month? Income tax is going to take a bite of that, too, but that's still gonna be more money in a month than I've earned in the last five years.
月々の場合は、４０年にかけて払ってもらうならどれほどになる？一ヶ月４６万ドル？それに税金かかるでしょうが、この俺が先ほどの５年間にかけて稼いできた給料を一ヶ月に、一期に上回ることになるでしょう。
Yeah. I succumb to daydreams about that kind of money sometimes. Even now, I could dream about buying my ISP and starting the next big internet thing.
まあ、空想にふけることもある。今すら自分の ISP を買収して、インターネットの次の大ヒットになる運動を開始する夢が見れる。
But when I think seriously about it, there are a number of problems.
だが、真剣に考えることになったら、問題点は多い。
One, money is not value. It is supposed to represent value. Value is something you generate by working an honest job. (Not just realize value, generate it.)
第一、お金は価値に等しくない。価値を代表するはずです。意味ある仕事を正直で働くことによって価値を作り出す。（見出すだけではない。作り出す。）
Lotteries suck the value out of our society just like pyramid investment schemes. Do you buy lottery tickets? Even though lotteries are legal, they are not significantly different in effect from Nigeria 419 schemes.
法に叶ったものにしても、クジはピラミッド型投資計画と同じように社会の価値をその社会から吸い出し、結局、法にしたがったものとされても、結果の実状では、ナイジェリア419条詐欺とそれほど変わりません。
You could, for instance, cut your lottery ticket purchasess by half and take the other half to places like kickstarter.
たとえば、ロットクジけんをその枚数を半分にして、余ったお金をキックスターターのようなところに持っていくことも可能なはずです。
これは先の三月か、四月の頃に書き始めたものですが、ちゃんと終わらせることも訳すことも、時間が足りなかった。)
My wife and children were listening to Doujou Youzo between NHK language programs this morning. He and his new assistant, Megumi, or Kyu-chan, were talking about the US lottery and comparing it to the Japanese lottery.
今朝、家の嫁、子供は道上洋三の番組をNHK 言語番組の隙に聞いていて、道上と新補佐の愛（めぐみ＝「きゅうちゃん」）が米国のたからくじを話題にして、日本の宝くじに比べていた。
The biggest Japanese public lottery is for a JPY ￥600,000,000 jackpot. (About USD $7,000,000 at the current exchange rate.) Apparently, a recent jackpot in the US was for $656,000,000 (Mega Millions, how late did they stay up thinking up that name?), split between three people. That would be, what? about $220 million each.
日本の第一大きい籤と言えば、６億円です。（現在の為替で７百万円。）アメリカの最近の大当たりはその百倍に近い６億5千６百万ドルを三人に分けられたたそうです。（「メガミリオンズ」というヤツ。何時まで起きていてそんな名前を考えたかな？）一人当たりおよそ、えぇっと、２億２千万ドルですね。
Hmm. Do they get to decide individually whether to take it lump sum or in monthly payouts?
さて、一括か、月々の方法でいただくのを一人個人で決めれるのでしょう？三人一同で決めなあかんかな？
Lump sum will chew into the total, as will taxes. (Apparently, Japan does not tax their lotteries. At least, the wikipedia articles I read did not mention any taxation.) But, even if they take the lump sum and can't find any shelters to postpone the tax hit, $70 million is not chump change. (English wikipedia article indicates lump sum can cut the total to a third of the published value. Of course, the wikipedia article could be wrong.)
一括なら、最後の金額は減らされるそうです。税金によっても。（ウィキペディアの記事で探したが、もしかして日本のクジは税金かからないかも知らない。はっきりと税金のこと言わないのです。）しかし、一括でもらって減らされて、税金を後回しにするための投資対策が分からなくても、７千万ドルは馬鹿銭ではない。（ウィキペディアの英語の記事によると、一括でもらった場合は記された値の三分の一までに減らされることもある。ウィキペディアは場合によって外れることもあるし。）
How much would monthly payouts be, assuming a 40 year payout? $460,000 a month? Income tax is going to take a bite of that, too, but that's still gonna be more money in a month than I've earned in the last five years.
月々の場合は、４０年にかけて払ってもらうならどれほどになる？一ヶ月４６万ドル？それに税金かかるでしょうが、この俺が先ほどの５年間にかけて稼いできた給料を一ヶ月に、一期に上回ることになるでしょう。
Yeah. I succumb to daydreams about that kind of money sometimes. Even now, I could dream about buying my ISP and starting the next big internet thing.
まあ、空想にふけることもある。今すら自分の ISP を買収して、インターネットの次の大ヒットになる運動を開始する夢が見れる。
But when I think seriously about it, there are a number of problems.
だが、真剣に考えることになったら、問題点は多い。
One, money is not value. It is supposed to represent value. Value is something you generate by working an honest job. (Not just realize value, generate it.)
第一、お金は価値に等しくない。価値を代表するはずです。意味ある仕事を正直で働くことによって価値を作り出す。（見出すだけではない。作り出す。）
Lotteries suck the value out of our society just like pyramid investment schemes. Do you buy lottery tickets? Even though lotteries are legal, they are not significantly different in effect from Nigeria 419 schemes.
法に叶ったものにしても、クジはピラミッド型投資計画と同じように社会の価値をその社会から吸い出し、結局、法にしたがったものとされても、結果の実状では、ナイジェリア419条詐欺とそれほど変わりません。
You could, for instance, cut your lottery ticket purchasess by half and take the other half to places like kickstarter.
たとえば、ロットクジけんをその枚数を半分にして、余ったお金をキックスターターのようなところに持っていくことも可能なはずです。
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