Live From the Chemo Room 28

Technically, not from the Chemo Room this time, just from Dr. Z's office. Routine follow-up. No news, just scheduling the next scan and getting a shot of my bone booster.

BTW, it finally happened. My former business partner and childhood friend is the mayor of this newish city where Dr. Z's office is located. We'd had a falling out years ago, one of those business and friendships don't usually mix well stories. It's been many years since I'd seen Mike, but he was coming out of the bakery this morning as I was headed in to pick up a couple of the World's Best Store-Made Challahs. We chatted. He'd not heard I was going through treatment again. I'd heard he was divorced, so I knew not to ask about his wife.

It was all very civil, and also a little strange.

Logo, circa 1998

Twenty years ago I left a promising career in a big public accounting firm to join Mike's little startup. Our lives were completely intertwined. We were in each other's weddings, knew each other's families, came into the office together on weekends to catch up on billings, etc. We grew the company, and learned what we were each good at. Mike was a relationship guy, I was more technical. We brought in a third partner, Neil, who was our sales guy. We opened an office in another city, then merged with another similar firm with two offices out west, adding two more partners. We had over 60 employees in the late 90's. Then the post-Y2K dip hit, and the differences between the partners became obvious. After a lot of 4 to 1 votes, we all realized it was time for the "1" to move on.

Mike was hurt by our decision, and predictably, that lead to our personal relationship declining. Then came same legal issues, and that was pretty much the end. He went on to start another firm doing similar work a couple years later, and a few of our former employees joined him after my remaining partners and I sold off the business. That was in 2005, 6 months after my first brush with cancer.

So now we come full circle.

It's been a while since I'd thought about Mike, and all the other folks from Lighthouse Group. Neil and I remain friends, but we've not been as close as I'd like. I saw my partner Tom a couple years ago when he came through town, but I haven't talked to Jerry in forever, although his wife Maria is the most reliable sender of birthday cards I've ever known. I hear something about one or two former employees from time to time, but not often enough. Looking back, we had a great team, we had a lot of fun, made tons of mistakes, and, I'd like to think, learned a great deal about how to be a better business person.

Maybe even a better person.

Freemium

Writing in the modern world is vastly different than it was only a few years ago. Becoming a writer used to mean sending manuscript after manuscript to agents and publishers and running to the mailbox each day to count the rejection letters. Nowadays, any idiot with a laptop can self publish anything from a collection of lame love poems sent to their high school sweethearts to a how-to guide for taking care of people with cancer (ahem). Once you finish your masterpiece, you upload it to a website, click here and there, and now millions of users with Kindles and Nooks and iPads can completely ignore it. You don't even get the rejection letters anymore!

So, yes, I'm a published author, or more accurately, a self-published author. And I'm thrilled every month when I get a couple of direct deposits that usually total $10 to $20, representing my cut from the sales of electronic and paper editions of my book. I've probably sold around 100 copies in the year or so since I published Welcome to the Club! Surviving Cancer, One Laugh at a Time. I've given away a few dozen more copies to fellow Members of the Club, family, my doctors and nurses, etc. That always feels good. But the CPA in me can't help but notice, this is no way to make a living.

In the technology sector, when you have a good idea that you just want people to be aware of, you often turn to a freemium model. Give away a basic version of your software, your iPhone app, etc. that has decent functionality, then, like any good crack dealer, get a few of those users hooked so they're willing to start paying for the full version. Want to read PDF's on any device?  Download the free Adobe Reader. Want to create PDF's? Insert your credit card here please.

As an author, I've thought about how the freemium model would apply to me. Amazon lets me allow people to download a chapter of the book for free on the hopes that people would then want to pay for the rest of the book. I've had exactly 2 people download the sample chapter, and I think one of those two was me testing out the feature. Then I noticed they also give me the option to make the whole book free for up to 5 days each calendar quarter. So I tried it out last Friday.

The results blew me away. Based on two Tweets and a couple of Facebook posts during the day, with a couple of Re-Tweets and shares by some of you, people downloaded 213 copies of my book for free. In one day, I gave away twice as many copies as I'd sold in a year. Since then, I've sold two copies, so it's not as though those 200+ readers became my evangelists.

The question to me is what to do with this data. How, if at all, does the freemium model apply to self-published books? It's easy to do this with eBooks, but what about the printed book, which had accounted for about 3/4 of my total book sales? I'd love to get your thoughts, dear readers.

And if you missed out on the free day, don't worry. We'll do it again soon