Friday Five
List five charities where you’d like to see some holiday cash go. It’s that simple. Make a gift out of giving.
5. Austin SPCA
4. UT’s McDonald Observatory
3. Coastal Conservation
2. Shakespeare’s Globe
1. Austin Shakespeare Festival
There’s always the choice to send an anonymous donation to astrofish.net and help keep this place afloat.
But astrofish.net is not a charity. Ain’t tax deductible, although, it sure feels like this place is run like a charity.
Thursday Three
One cheap shot. Two cups of coffee. Three Mercury Retorgrade.
“Santa asked me to check up on you this year, see if you’ve been good.”
So how much to keep my mouth shut?
Scorpio Barista. No fish. Libra barista.
Unrelated:
Had that boat of sashimi at the swank place downtown. Virgo server who was much put out when I asked her birthday. My Aquarius buddy reminded the Virgo, it was all for fun.
Just trying to be historically accurate.
Unrelated:
Back to the book idea….
Fishing Guide to the Stars: 2003. Okay, so I’m guessing, “why would anyone in their right mind buy this when the columns are all available on the website?” The 2003 index will be in the free section at the end of the month – about the same time the book gets delivered. Plus I’ll make the text itself available as a PDF file – free for download.
It was a “Mercury is retrograde” action on my part. More curiosity than anything else. I’ve suggested that the work that goes into a massive weekly column is the same as a big, fat paperback. Seems I was right. Plus I had to list the ISBN 0-9744983-2-7 with “Books in Print” so that the column is official and all that.
I took a Gemini call late in the afternoon, and I was thinking about this among the litany of Mercurial-inspired-complaints, and that one Gemini asked if 2004 would be available soon, in book form.
I’m not sure, but I wasn’t planning on it. Besides, the column is a serial venture, at least, right now. There’s a ten-year plan at work, and the domain itself is good until 2010. Y2X? So I’ve got several more years, at this pace, instead of trying to crank out other texts.
I’m just a little unsure of the “do what you love and the money will follow” ideal. I’m still pretty tired of folks complaining that horoscopes should be free.
So, if I were to do a book version of 2004, available soon, what would be a fair price? In serial form, it costs $30/year. Actually, it costs more, but that’s about what I see per subscription. That prices the book itself around $50. Damned expensive paperback. Worth it? I doubt it, as far as I can tell, I’d sell one copy – to that Gemini.
I flipped over to some other astrology sites, and I did note that advertising and revenue-producing material far outweighs the amount of text (and screen real estate) devoted to horoscopes. My front page? Still less than 10% of the page is advertising. And in the subscription area? “Oh yeah, whose yo’ daddy!” Less than 5% of the screen real estate is advertising.
Maybe I should just sell out – but I’m having too much fun. Even when Mercury is backwards.
