Business

Beth Casey, owner of Lorna's Laces yarn company, raises some important questions about what makes a business "indie" and another business "corporate" over on her blog. Though it's tempting, given how much grey area there is, to wonder why making such distinctions is worthwhile, I do think it's an important conversation to have in our evolving...
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Last week Canadian television journalist Kai Nagata quit his job and blogged about why. It's a long read, and worth it. I enjoyed his post a lot, both as someone prone to quitting jobs, and as someone keen to see principled people speak up about how their chosen industry could do better. This morning, CBC radio...
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A few weeks ago I started an email newsletter. Did I forget to mention that here? Shame on me. I call it a curated cornucopia of creativity crafts and cleverness. See, I got into a fun little habit after the baby arrived and I started doing most of my perusing of the internet on my iPhone – I...
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So you heard about that whole kerfuffle last week, when Urban Outfitters was accused of ripping off an indie crafter's jewelry design? If this is news to you, read the crafter's post, the tweeter's post about it all going viral, Regretsy's follow-up, and Urban Outfitter's eventual response. In sum, what happened was that a maker...
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(From the homepage, click through to the post to see the video.)   In my imagination, this videoblog would involve animated illustrations of how Flattr works. Or at least line drawings that move. Or at least line drawings. Alas, the universe was having none of it on my recording day, so you get me and words....
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Yesterday I finally took the bus with the kid. I avoided confronting my stroller-on-the-bus anxiety by just wearing him in the carrier — which, really, is easier anyway. When we got on the bus the driver smiled at Owen and I mentioned it was his first bus ride. This seemed to please her greatly. She...
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(From the homepage, click through to the post to see the video.) However tempted I may be to toss this video in the bin and redo it – on account of my flighty rambling, my too-many ums, and my terrible editing – I'm keeping the promise I made to myself when I started videoblogging months...
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Publishing-industry thinker Sean Cranbury linked to this article in the Globe and Mail: The rise of the e-book lending library (and the death of e-book pirating). The voice of the article, along with some of the people quoted within it, struck me as... naïve. To say the least. But enough about that. As an author, here's...
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This was an odd year for me. I started out with a job, left that job in February to go back to freelancing, and am ending the year doing the majority of my work in crochet-related projects, which was never my goal but which makes me happy all the same, despite my desire to...
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After my missive on not being a media outlet and how most emails from publicists end up in my overflowing trash, gentle reader Brigette Mayer asked some questions worth exploring further. Brigette's general take was that my assumption that this topic has been discussed to death is an inaccurate one. And she's right. I was...
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