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Author: Bartleby

IDF – Question 9

IDF – Question 9

Today the Interaction Design Foundation asked:

“Using the information in this lesson item, what can you do to increase each of the following? If you don’t want to increase something, note that as well.
Trust
Familiarity
Loyalty
Presence”

AMW & BW took a quick stab at that slippery eel of a question:​

Trust: Make sure the site is as professional, safe, enjoyable and usable as possible

Specifics: No spelling or grammar errors or bugs in delivery;

easy navigation to high quality work [ex: right now the page with an overview of the writings is a mess that needs to be organized so that the reader can easily find the type of writings they are looking for, with the better writings at the top of the list and the others at the bottom];

money-back offers prominent and honored

use third party money-takers like paypal and stripe that people already trust;

all ebooks should be readable and beautiful [when a writer asks a reader to spend their time and energy on their book, the writer is asking for trust, and so we want to err on the side of removing more content rather than the side of getting in every clever little point (ouch! how do you do that?!?)];

if we are ever going to actually have a readership, we’ll need a system for monitoring emails and the Buy the Books page should be shorter
Familiarity: We can release the books on other forums (like Amazon and B&N) and submit works for reviews. [Right now the site is basically a secret, which is just as well, since isn’t ready for visitors.] We’ll have to get the mailing list up and running so we can send out updates about products and maybe weekly (short!) writing selections.

Loyalty:

We need to make sure these elements are high quality: 1) tangibles, 2) the combination of responsiveness, reliability, and assurance, and 3) empathy (Gefen, 2002a).​

Most of these have been discussed in the Trust and Familiarity sections. What does Grefen, 2002a mean with “empathy” here? The site anticipates users needs? “Empathy” for the user or for all sentient beings? Let’s have a lesson on this use of “empathy” please.

Presence:

Again the lesson noted that there’s a trade-off with Presence: rich media creates the illusion that the user and the product/company/site really are pals hanging out (named here: “presence”) and that increases user’s motivation to engage with the site’s message; but the rich media (and probably most fundamentally their veg-out in this pretend hang-out, a pleasant escape that’s painfully undone by awareness and critical thinking) decreases their ability to process the message.

That’s no trade-off for decent advertisers! We want to raise, not lower awareness. We don’t want to lull people into pretend romances with us while sticking our grubby products down their drowsy mouths. We want to share aware joy–the only kind that’s worth pursuing.

This by way of saying, let’s not put too much rich media into the main pages of this website. If we want to post a skit on it’s own page like we posts poems on their own page: that’s fine. That’s a skit and understood as one. And, like a poem, it is a way to build presence by being your whole self in front of your audience. Right? It isn’t always immoral to create rich media experiences, just when you’re using them to try and fool people into pretending you’re their friend and you’re hanging out being real cool together so cool and so’s this cat tote that we’re selling, so cool, so very cool.

Well, there’s degrees of degradation in all human endeavors. We’ll try to push towards less bullshit with the scheme sketched above. We can also create rich media contents that unmask themselves, which will help users increase their general savvyness.

AMW/BW

Battle-Pieces & Aspects of the War 1

Battle-Pieces & Aspects of the War 1

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

[Playing with poems published by Herman Melville in his 1866 “Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War”]

The Portent / Herman Melville / 1859

Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo, John Brown),
And the stabs shall heal no more.
Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.

….

See bottom of page for a portrait and a snippet from Wikipedia’s entry on the famous anti-pacifistic abolitionist John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859), hanged for leading a raid on a federal armory.

Poem’s structure by verse:
5 syllables (strong, weak, .. strong)
7 syllables (same–all are like that [stressed, unstressed — aka: “trochaic”])
7
4 (this one ends on a weak stress, since the syllablication’s even)
7
5
7
7
4 (again ends on a weak stress)
7
3
7
The rhyming is abab, then aa, then abcdceec (last rhyme is slant)

A Response Poem by AMW or BW, as the case may be

Brooklyn in the light.
Stroll across the bunching crowds.
Sidewalks white, kimonos bright,
Blossoms spread out
Differently shaped and dressed,
colored, coiffed, confessed.
Many phones and T-shirts, though.
Shared too, vaguely, tales and songs.
Children crash about.
I am Saturday alone
(off my phone)
In a sacred loud respite.

……

John Brown with hands in pockets, facing the camera.
John Brown in 1859
muddy waters of two great rivers
The Shenandoah (left) flows into the Potomac (right) at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia

From Wikipedia’s “John Brown” entry:

In 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (still Virginia at the time) to start a liberation movement among the slaves there. He seized the armory, but seven people were killed and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown’s men had fled or been killed or captured by local farmers, militiamen, and US Marines led by Robert E. Lee. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection, was found guilty on all counts, and was hanged.

Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid escalated tensions which led to the South’s secession a year later and the American Civil War.

…

The Poem response is an AMW copyright;
“John Brown” article snippet belongs to Wikipedia’s entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist);
Melville’s poem & the John Brown photo are both public domain;
THe Harper’s Ferry photo is by Morgan Nuzzo (I found it living in this Wikipedia cubby: href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpers_Ferry,_West_Virginia#/media/File:HarpersFerry_panorama.jpg”>)

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

IDF – Web Communication – Question 8

IDF – Web Communication – Question 8

This time the Interaction Design F​oundation listed a bunch of tips for making copy snappier and then asked us to rewrite something. We rewrote their example of snappy text: The Gettysburg Address. Then we wrote a little essay about Lincoln’s question: how to make a nation helpful to God. No real answer is found, a few wheels are spun, we skip out again into the sunlight, looking for a breeze.

Before Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us —

that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion —

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;

that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom;

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

After Gettysburg Address

Twenty-seven years ago our fathers established a new nation, conceived in liberty and proposing universal equality.

Now a great civil war tests whether ours or any nation so conceived and dedicated can long endure.

Voici a great battlefield, a portion we now dedicate as the final resting place for lives here sacrificed that our nation might live.

Surely fitting and proper. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, consecrate, hallow this ground.

Brave soldiers, living and dead, consecrated it far above our poor powers.

The world may not long remember our words, but it can never forget their deeds.
Let us living men, rather, dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work they’ve thus far so nobly advanced.
Let us, rather, accept the great task remaining before us –​
taking from these honored dead increased devotion to what they sacrificed their last full measure;
Demanding purpose for their deaths;

that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom;

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Note
The Gettysburg Address breaks a lot of the rules here promulgated. It would probably not do as internet copy. Neither would my worsened version. The topic requires consideration. The speech’s poetic beauty opens up a window into one conscious moment’s confrontation with the great problem of his day and his life. By sharing his whole conscious space in a way ours can relate to, Lincoln shares with us his soul’s struggle with the motions of his world.
Lincoln’s question remains our own: how can spiritual values guide a nation? how can a nation be God’s instrument on earth? We know that individuals should empty themselves of all selfishness and let the Heavenly Light flow through and overtake their every word and deed. But when we think that’s what we’re doing, we’re often lying to ourselves, and thus–since the foundation of all spiritual progress is awareness–heading in the wrong direction. With a government the dangers of self-deception are even greater, hence the separation of church and state. But there is a difference between a government indifferent to spiritual values (ie: absolute values like “No, you actually should not lie–for real, that’s how things really are no matter what we little slips of passing fancies may feel or suppose.”) and a government separating church and state. You cannot make things better without following spiritual values (no other values can even ask the question “what is truly better”, since they are not absolute values, but merely unfounded assumptions), but so much trouble is created when people act like they are following spiritual values! Because they so often aren’t actually doing that at all, but are just using the notion of spiritual correctness to turn down the awareness of themselves and their fellows.

Abraham Lincoln did what he could. We all do what we can, given who we are and where we are. Reconstruction was undone. America is a work in progress. Our only hope is always the same: raise our individual and collective awarenesses to the point that we actually believe in and follow Goodness–not the word, nor even the concept, and especially not the swelling and sweetly sickening feelings we sometimes associate with Goodness, but real Goodness, that to which the word imperfectly but not therefore necessarily meaninglessly points.

But how do you do that? Clarity, honesty, openness, kindness, anti-corruption within the individual and every group, every governmental body, every business, church, artistic collective. But how do we do that?

Strange times, troubling times, burbling, gurgling, waterspilling times.

AMW/BW

IDF – Effective Web Communication – #7

IDF – Effective Web Communication – #7

This time the Interactive Design Foundation wanted to know if we thought our site’s main page was properly ordered, by which they meant: most important stuff always first; important stuff also at the finale.

The boys didn’t seem interested in arguing about this one. In fact, they mostly acted like they took the question seriously. I don’t think they did. I think they just didn’t care to think much about it, because they did not notice any moral red flags, and they were sleepy in body, mind and heart.​

I think we’re OK for primacy and regency in the overall structure of the landing page of from-bartleby.com.

First is the book. Right now it’s the main thing BW & AW have to offer.

Second comes the newsletter sign up. I think that’s important since we can send them info about new products as they arise, supposing they do arise, which they might.

Then a synopsis of everything covered on the page.

Then more info on the book and another link to it (again, the main thing so far); followed by a quick contemplation of the animating premise of novelty gift items with image-links to the WAP novelty store (since we’re trying to make WAP into a place where we make money both with literary endeavors and with little embodied charm); followed by an advertisement for Pure Love / critique of advertising / tip jar (we are very interested in raising human consciousness to heights so great that advertisers lose their hold on us all, although this site’s main idea is to be an advertisement for our own products); followed by a link to the page organizing all the poems, essays, freewrites and etc that the site’s author’s posted over the last several years of lonely larking (this is just for people who really want to hang out with the WAP crew all day long!–that eager super-minority will happily wait for their bugle until the page’s end). After your impassioned speech on the importance of recency, we again listed the links we’d introduced throughout the page.

The paragraphs are often only a sentence long, so we often don’t need to worry about whether or not the first sentence in the paragraph is the most important. But let’s look at two longer ones:
A description of the ebook: OK. First we list the primary content, then the secondary content, then we mention the relevant but not super important fact that the stories were written years ago now.
A discussion of the novelty gift items. The paragraph itself does not put the most important info (we’re selling novelty items; these are what they are; get them here) first, so we added (!Novelty Gift Items!) to the heading of the section so people would not get confused by our decision to launch first into flim flammery and then into a mini-essay about the raison d’etre of novelty gift items–at least as we mean to wield them.

This site is to some degree a literary endeavor, so we don’t need to split our heads over questions like whether or not each sentence starts with the main idea. Such concerns make sense when your audience has no interest in literary flourishes, but of course if you’re in no mood for literary flourishes, you’re in no mood for Wandering Albatross Press.

AMW/BW

IDF – Effective Web Communication – Number 6

IDF – Effective Web Communication – Number 6

The Interactive Design Foundation asked us to review how well the front page of our website adhered to basic copywriting guidelines. Those guidelines are in bold, our answers follow.

Level of formality for your audience

Our audience is lost. Their hearts are broken. And yet a sweet shattered kind chuckle’s been building and building at the back of their mind/heart/bodies for ages now, comforting them, lifting them up, making joy possible–inevitable even. Picture them as seawrecked skeletons scattered across a dusty seafloor when bright white rays poke at them through the crinkling dome of the light-filled tropical waters. You must picture Sisyphus happy. How could they complain about the style of this webpage? It is not actually glib. It’s just kind of silly, and all through it rings the melancholy and persevering

Vocabulary appropriateness for your audience

Our audience longs to grow spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. They will appreciate the poetic uses of language. There are a few tougher vocabulary words, but not so many as seriously hamper one’s understanding of the overall piece. Also, it is very easy to look up a word when you’re already on the internet!​

Sentence complexity appropriateness for your audience

Covered above​

Appropriate chunking to break up cognitive demands

OK. Take, for example, the section on the Corporeal Product Line. A mix of short and long sentences that introduce the products, explain the logic behind paying more for novelty-product versions of totes and baby onesies​, and punch up the mini-essay with fun, silly, but still basically on-topic exclamations.

Sentence type variation to retain interest

OK. See above: chunking and sentence type variation go hand in hand.​

Use of be verbs (and passive constructions, which use be verbs)

We tired. For example, in the “Diary of An Adament Seducer”​ section, we changed, “A project that was once begun and then” to ” A project begu​n and then”. In fact, in several instances we used that trick: Make the sentence into a list-item style to eliminate the grammar necessary to have it be a complete sentence in the traditional sense.

On the other hand, we left (beginning of text) “… during the six years he was supposed to be staying on task.​” because it the round about grammatical excess helps to paint the picture of a person not staying on task.

Use of filler words

Again we tried. For example, “And also a few stories of the mythic origins of Wandering Albatross Press​” became​ “And also a few stories describing WAP’s mythic origins.​” Honestly, we’re not sure we should keep that change. We’d originally wanted “living” instead of “describing”, but then that seemed too confusing, and now you’ve got us worried about being confusing. But now we’re stuck with a boring verb like “describing” and are concerned that it doesn’t jive with the flow of the page

Important information first

Yes. The book is for sale and here’s a link. Then a quick overview of all the items we will introduce on the page. And also those items are arranged in descending order of importance.​

Conciseness

We sacrificed some conciseness to frolic. It’s a balance. You don’t want to bog people down; but you do want to frolic with them.​

Length of webpage

OK, I think. Again, it could be shorter, but then we’d have less frolic.

To tell you the truth

We are trying to be ourselves without being off-putting. It’s not a terrible idea for a project like this. It is not likely to succeed in any big way, but insofar as it does succeed, it will be because people correctly recognize that we’re creating art that interests them. If I am a business that sells computers or some other serious product, then I want people to correctly recognize that my computers are affordable, capable, and reliable. I avoid the silliness and round-abouts. If I am selling soda, then I am a con artist, since there is no value in soda except the illusionary storylines that come with it and the thrill of swilling sugar–a thrill that is only natural in children aged four to ten. If, then, I am a fraudster, it behooves me to match my lingo to the lingo of my audience; however, it behooves the rest of us to teach ourselves and others how to spot such manipulative profiteering.

AMW/BW

IDF – Interactive Web Communication – Question 6

IDF – Interactive Web Communication – Question 6

Today the Interactive Design Foundation asked: What publications circulate among your target demographic? Do a search, and make a list of relevant publications. They also wanted us to analyze such texts for word-length, vocab and etc. Earlier in the lesson, they’d suggested googling “values of” xyz cultural subgroup.

BW & AW could not get on board with that way of thinking about design:

Our target audience is not a demographic, but an aspect of each human being: the best part: the Light within!​ So hah! We’re not going to go find texts of xyz subculture so we can parrot it back to them to create the illusion that we are in their club. We don’t approve of all this clubbiness!!!!! We will not google “the values of xyz race, income level, and age” We will google “value of people who live for kindness”, understand that that is the true aspiration of all human beings, and fasten on this (https://www.psychologies.co.uk/self/kindness-why-we-need-it.html​) article’s quote from P Fierrucci, who tried to break kindness down into parts: empathy, modest, patience, generosity, respect, loyalty, gratitude. And for books, we will google “loving kindness literature” Here’s something: http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/loving-kindness

We don’t need to deconstruct the language of anyone’s writings. We humans don’t want to be the little sing-song huddle-up-under-the-myths nonsense our groups say we are. Don’t steal my styles and prejudices to win me with flattery and regurgitated group-think! Write clear and calm and let me in to the space where we admit that we’re all in this together. The question is not how to make designs that trick people into thinking they’re among “friends” (ie: people who share their prejudices about how people should think, act, speak, dress, and otherwise carry on), but how to make a user experience that invites both designer and user into the kind of space created by a loving-kindness meditation. Now how do we do that? How long the sentence? How quick the cadence? Light sparkles off shifting waters quick and lively; but it also echoes slow and calm through openings in the forest canopy. So the answer’s not in the cadence. Vocabulary? Shakespeare caught the light, but so do the little kindnesses of some no-account’s day to day. No, vocabulary is not the answer. Everyone longs for the same thing: true joy. Our copy must sparkle with God’s laughter: that is the copy that gives people not the trite boring stories they think they need to hear in order to feel safe/important/bloated, but the path that deep inside we all recognize, believe in, and are grateful for–the path that nourishes us in empathy, modesty, patience, generosity, respect, loyalty, gratitude, kindness, shared joy. But how do we write this copy? The one that gives people not what their shallows suppose they are and which sycophants manipulate in order to keep them in the shallows, but what their depths know is what they really are. How to write the copy of life overflowing?

What is the list of things to make sure we do for our website’s copy?
It should be pleasant, encouraging, open-hearted/-minded
It should be honest: gentle with ourselves and others, but also relentlessly accurate
It should listen patiently and empathetically to the user and to the world. Empathy is not about pretending you are in the same club as someone one. It is about living in the knowledge that everyone is in the same club. But what is the copy that lives in that knowledge? How does one write kindly? You just take it easy. Take it easy on everybody. Have fun together. Let everyone in. Exclude no one. Hurt nothing. Kindness is a spiritual good, and as such it is beyond definition. On the other hand, we can use concepts to point towards it–meaningfully, though not definitively/literally. And so sketches like the one we found: empathy, modesty, patience, generosity, etc can be good rules of thumbs. But how do you write in a way that is empathetic, modest, patient, generous, respectful, loyal-to-the-Light-within-and-through-each-human, grateful? Keep trying?

Line of questioning from IDF
Disapproval at the assumptions behind the questions and hand-wringing over the question of how one could actually escape those assumptions and write a truly blessed copy: BW & AW

This Hurt

This Hurt

It drags you down
It folds your shoulders in
It pinches your face in half.
It disassembles you and laughs you off.
It hurts it hurts it hurts.

Will someone listen to you?
Will someone hold you now?
Before it is too late?
It hurts all the time
Like a gong ringing
through your every spot
Make it stop
But you can’t

Will someone please help?
They can’t get down there,
They can’t get to the split
open oozing vibrating scream
They can’t get there and you can’t either
All alone here where the wind blows
and the shutters rattle
and the bogie man rustles with the shadows.

It gets old
It gets dull
It becomes always strange
like a drug trip
separated from the world
aloof because the hurt
is louder than their talk
anyway

Let me go make it stop
all the time like tentacles
wrapped around and tugging down
You hate it but who cares?
So quiet here by the orange trickling water
coming down the shattered shale shelving
so quiet when there’s nothing to say.

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 5

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 5

AMW and BW take a stab at a couple questions from the Interactive Design Foundation, in their dogged attempt to become people who notice design.​

Is creating a sense of presence in our best interest?

Yes, but not through piles of media, which, while increasing a user’s motivation to engage with you, decrease a user’s ability to process what you are saying. Instead, our landing page will be prose that admits who we are and that we don’t understand the loneliness, though it dogs us so. And from there, the various experiences will be linked to easily. There will be some rich media content: for example, an ad that shows how the rich media increases motivation while simultaneously decreasing your ability to process information, thus pricking your vague longing’s never-ending gimmegimmegimme while simultaneously diminishing your ability to notice that the vague longing will never be satisfied by some specific “good” and that if the ad suggests to you that by going down their rabbit hole, you will indeed find that salvation that the back of your thought screams for, then that ad is scamming you. The anti-ad will work like this: rich nonsensical content of the sort you see everywhere, that, upon a click-over breaks into a succinct prose description of the evil within such media maneuvers.

What type of media would best server our audience?

Again, clear prose upfront, and some of what we link to should be rich content (anti-ads, skits, etc). Some of what we link to should also be clearly organized accessible literary larks, and we also need a confessional page where we outline what we are attempting to do as a business and where we are falling short. This combination should increase trust by being upfront and clear (all links must of course be tidy, and the book comes with a money-back offer, which upon refund comes with a sincere apology that we wasted your time, but you see, we thought we had to start somewhere, and it took us so long to come up with this book that it seemed a shame to throw it out, and it seemed to us like at least some people would enjoy it enough to bother with it), while also giving users the opportunity to become more familiar with us by checking out all the charming singsongs we’ve heaved up into the inforealm.

AMW/BW

Water Skaters

Water Skaters

Zini chases the edges, like the elders had instructed.
Everything moved as one as she slipped across the waters.
The river so wide as a lake out here, far from town.
Zini’s town of bamboo rafts and shacks floats silent
off in the rounded distance, at the edges of her eyes.
She follows slow-spreading green round a rocky bend.

A water skater, a river chaser, she-who-belongs.
How easy it is when you can!
Wide flapped froggy feet fold up down the center,
thin black legs stab into the wet, push against,
jam her spindly body the otherwise, setting up
a falling slice from that side’s folded flipper.

Nothing compares to water skating,
the concentration of never-hating.

On and on she flies, forgetting everything but
her motion, calm, the swoosh of her water strikes.
Deep inside, pushing out from within, searching
for the edges, to stay within yet go beyond,
to chase the edges, catch the light, know all joy.

The village out of sight when she unfolds her flipper feet
and skids to a spraying stop, standing breathless on wide
strange crinkling river flowing to a sea she’s never seen.
On the banks the wood people gather timber in their way,
many on the lines and one flailing at the base with
two hatchets, steel glinting in a blur of passion.
A youth rests upon a rock, his short legs crossed.
She waves her thin webbed hand, he, long arm already
as thick as her torso, waves a broad flat hand.

A strange people, strong, swift in the trees,
but slow and clumsy on ground and water.
Not unpleasant, but a bit dull, divided
as they are from the magic of the river.
And, though it’s undignified to dwell
upon such matters, rather unsightly:
covered in coarse orange-brown hairs
everywhere except on their big round faces.

But, of course, it isn’t their fault
that they’re neither beautiful nor fit
to run the rivers.
One should rather focus on gratitude
for the wonderful blessing of belonging
to those who rule the rivers,
who travel to the sea.

At dinner Mama wonders what Zini’s seen and heard.
A squick-squick bird diving beneath the water
coming up empty-beaked.
The wood people hunting timber.
Waterhoops rolling wild–she had to jump over them.
Mama tsks.
Father shakes his head.
When will the council address this matter?
The waterhoops are outgrabe!

AMW/BW

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 4

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 4

Today the Interactive Design Foundation said:

“Consider your current website.
What can you do to increase consumer trust?
What can you do to increase consumer familiarity?
What can you to to construct a sense of presence?”

To which BW & AW replied:

I. Increasing Consumer Trust:

We should definitely offer the book with a money-back offer, and also a soliloquy promising to not hold it against you if you return the book, a soliloquy that should make clear that we ourselves have misgivings about the book, and that if you don’t like this one, we hope you’ll still like the next one, since it has to be better than this one–if it isn’t, we just don’t know how we’ll get by!

II. Increasing Consumer Familiarity:

No one’s heard of us. If there’s lots to do on the site that is free and worthwhile, people will goof around with us awhile and then start to know our ways and so we’ll become familiar to them. Unfortunately, the site has only madcap to offer. Maybe if we made a Pure Love Certificate you could download for free. Why? It would demonstrate that, all kidding aside, insofar as it is within our power, we are happy to give away all the Pure Love we have. And it could be short and sweet, unlike so much of our literary attempts. In the same vein, we need to pay a lot of attention to introducing the writings: it should be very easy to find writings that most people will find engaging and avoid the ones most people will consider overly long-winded.

III. Increasing Presence

Let’s make some skits! We wrote some ads for products. Let’s film them and embed them or link to them. This will also enhance familiarity. However, by seeing our movements, the way we hold our bodies, and the attitudes of our facial contortions, customers will perceive that we are bits of string slowly unfurling and fraying, which will decrease their trust in us. Perhaps if we hired actors.

IV. But shouldn’t we be helping consumers see what a scam advertising/presentation is?

Definitely. We need some way to point out that neither Amazon nor Wandering Albatross Press is really their friend. We at Wandering Albatross Press would like to run our business in a way that is good for everyone, but we are still selling something. Everyone thinks that they are OK and blah blah blah; but who among us even truly wants to do what’s best for everyone, let alone knows how to and does it? I know! We’ll issue a certificate of our official heartfelt apology for only kind of meaning to be truly kind–as another free download.

BW/AMW/WHATEVER