Puedo Leer -- Granada

Submitted by Islander on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 06:11.

An interesting article about Nica kids, books, a library, smuggling (books), and the FACT (not a sweeping generalization based on caca del toro) that, given the resources, Nicas WILL read.

Who'd thunk it?

Couple of other things

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 10:08.

The founder is Nicaraguan. They did more than just dump a bunch of books on a community; they worked to build the library over six years, worked on things like getting teachers to read to children (teacher or parents -- I think that early being-read-to experience is critical for creating life long readers).

So, doing various things, not just dumping books on a population that may not know how to read and flying off.

Having someone from Granada who was a successful writer and illustrator is a wonderful role model for the kids.

Rebecca Brown

Implementation is everything

Submitted by sball on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 11:48.

Lots of people have good ideas but implementation is everything, and if something fails, you have to learn from the mistakes and not repeat them. This reminds me of the early days of PCs in offices, when they were often dumped on people that were given no training.

A lot of people have ideas

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 13:10.

Implementation is how you find out if the idea was any good or not, whether for a book or a business. You are allowed to edit the implementation.

People tend to overvalue their own ideas. It's the mark of the wannabe in writing. Anyone who starts talking about what a fantastic idea they have for a book, it's going to be their least impressive book if they're professionals (see _Difference Engine_) or they're just wannabe clowns.

I suspect as the kind of cerebral modeling animals that we are, we learn better from watching other people's mistakes. I like analyzing why someone else's plan seems unlikely to work, do research on various examples of the thing they're sure would be a great idea. It's been informative to me, and I've learned things I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

Rebecca Brown

Not true

Submitted by sball on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 17:03.

You can have a great idea with a very bad implementation. That happens all the time, and instead of trying again, people throw their hands up in despair and say they already tried "it" and "it" didn't work or "it" didn't sell. Then they watch a competitor cleanup with an improved one. Venture Capitalists will tell you there's never a shortage of ideas but a real shortage of people that can implement them. Try something more familiar. Look at reasons for restaurants failing - Was it the idea or more likely the food, price, market, location, bad lighting, no parking, or a surly owner?

Sometimes things just need tweaking. A famous hair color commercial ran for years with reasonable success, but they finally changed one single word and sales soared. That was a commercial with Heather Locklear - try to guess the word. My point, of course, is you just need to analyze why things aren't working, and better yet, really do your research up front.

Difference between editing/redoing to make the idea good

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Thu, 2012/08/16 - 15:09.

...and giving up, too. Ideas in themselves are never better than their implementations. The implementations are where the creativity is.

My experience with other people's great ideas is that they thought someone else would make it work for them cheap. This is like the clowns who think that an editor would fix their great idea and make it a salable book.

I think venture capitalists are saying exactly the same thing I'm saying -- ideas are cheap, no shortage of them. Implementation is what determines the greatness of the idea because the implementation is part of the real idea, not the delusional narcissistic ones. Nobody has a great idea for a book that some other person can write for them.

Most restaurants fail because good amateur cooks don't necessarily have a clue about running a kitchen. See _Kitchen Confidential_ for an interesting discussion of this (Bourdain had lots of experience with failing restaurants due to having had a raving heroin addiction for a while that sort of undercut his talent).

The venture capitalists are saying implementation can be great or not, ideas not so much. I suspect they learned this lesson the hard way during the computer go-go years.

Rebecca Brown

There were VCs

Submitted by sball on Thu, 2012/08/16 - 15:21.

There were VCs long before the dot com era. There were many amateur VCs during it, throwing a million bucks at anyone with an idea and no business plan.

Yep, its real easy to criticise other peoples attempts

Submitted by Juanno on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 14:16.

What I don't understand is those that do it yet have nothing much to show for their own endeavors.

Yes, the real measure of success is a Wikipedia page

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Thu, 2012/08/16 - 15:20.

...that you didn't put up for yourself.

Rebecca Brown

But that was only so

Submitted by Juanno on Thu, 2012/08/16 - 15:41.

You didn't get mixed up with Rebecca Julia Brown (born Ruth Irene Bailey).

I have no idea why whoever put it up put it up

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Thu, 2012/08/16 - 16:14.

I used the name Ore after I found out how many publishing Rebecca Browns here were (a poet, a mystery writer, and the loon, who I didn't know about at the time).

Rebecca Brown

Books are duty-free

Submitted by oncidiumfan on Wed, 2012/08/15 - 10:01.

Jinotega has a library, just not a lending library, and the kids I know want to get in on this ebook thing, which will probably mean a certain amount of piracy, but I fail to find that all so horrible.

Guatemala has developed its own tablet computer: http://thecostaricanews.com/guatemala-has-its-very-own-tablet-computer/7...

When the price for reading devices is down to around $50 US (cheapest current one is a little over US $100 for a tablet and around $80 for a Kindle, then this becomes a very useful tool for Nicaraguan readers, who can already use reader software if they have computers or smart phones. Also, having ebooks on a device or computer saves the problem of storing more than a couple of books (I have one bookcase and one Kindle here).

I think this is probably going to be like going from nothing to the 3G and 4G USB modem systems. There are a number of free ebooks out there in Spanish (see Amazon) and distributing ebooks rather than paper books saves in distribution costs.

My publisher said that last year was the first year that ebooks outsold traditional books.

Rebecca Brown