I was at Indigo flipping through a book that looked interesting and I decided to buy it, from the Amazon Kindle store on my iPhone that is. The physical book was $20.50 (plus tax). I only spent $5.56 for it through Kindle. That’s almost $15 in savings.

For those who are wondering, I would have bought it through Indigo’s Kobo eBookstore (support Canadian companies and all that), but not only did it cost $11.99 through them, their website was abysmally slow on my iPhone (and failed to load my search results twice), whereas the Kindle store was ridiculously speedy and much cheaper. Indigo/Chapters might want to look into that.

In addition to all that, I’m also finding that I just prefer reading eBooks more than physical books these days. The convenience of being able to carry my entire library with me in my pocket is reason enough for me to switch almost entirely to eBooks, but I’m also one of those people who actually prefers reading on a screen over paper as well.

What do you think? Do bookstores still have a future?

So why is it that product placement in TV shows and movies rarely bothers me, and can actually make a show better?

When I’m watching a science fiction show, as I’m prone to do (one doesn’t need a television to enjoy quality TV shows anymore), it’s already unrealistic enough to begin with. If a series is set far enough in the future, I can imagine that the brand name or logo on the screen hasn’t been invented yet. However, when a series is set in the present, seeing a real product being used actually makes what I’m seeing feel real. An obviously fake brand name throws me out of the illusion that what I’m seeing is actually happening, but a well placed brand name or logo makes a fictional world come to life.

Watch almost any TV show and you’ll think that, aside from the one or two products that advertisers have paid the production to use, everybody in that world, even the rich, buys only generic brands, not to mention products without names. Now take a look around the room you’re in. I can count over two dozen company logos in the room I’m writing this in without even having to look hard.

That said, having product placement in an episode has to be done delicately. You can’t have the camera linger obviously on a product, or have characters talking positively about some product they would never use in a real world (on the other hand, some series can humorously use blatant product placement the way the series Chuck does with Subway). But just having real products sitting in the background or being used by the characters the way generic products have been used until now goes a long way to making a fictional world feel more real. Honestly, the best product placement is generally the sort you don’t even notice. It should blend seamlessly into the background just like it does in your home (the labels don’t all need to directly face the camera, for instance).

So I’m not calling for less product placement, I’m calling for more (lots more, and not just brands paid for by advertisers), just better placed than it has been in some movies and shows up until now.

The problem is, the old media is restricted by a number of serious constraints. If you’re relying on the newspaper for your news updates, you’re only going to hear about yesterday’s events (though some papers do sell updated editions later in the day). While there are now plenty of 24 hour news channels on television, meaning you no longer have to wait for the evening news broadcast, you do still have to be at home to find out what’s going on. Radio news is a little better (if you can deal with the painful commercials) as it can be listened to from almost anywhere, but it too suffers from a serious limitation shared with television news: you can only hear the news that happens to be broadcasting at that particular moment. If you miss an important story then you have to wait for the next news broadcast cycle (which admittedly may only be an hour, but it’s still not particularly convenient). You also have no way of finding out what news you might have missed when you weren’t listening to your radio or watching your TV. There’s also the factor that the traditional news outlets, often being owned by big corporations, decide what should be considered newsworthy and, even worse, what the public shouldn’t hear about.

Rather than being held back by ancient technology, those of us who have embraced the Post-PC era that we’re now living in can know what’s happening almost as soon as it happens. It was thanks to Twitter on my iPhone that I was alerted to the earthquake which had just occurred minutes before. I wanted more details so I logged into one of my many news apps to find out more (pretty much every newspaper and news station has an app now, not to mention the handy Google News website). I can even have Google News scan for specific keywords and email alerts straight to my iPhone as events are reported if I want to follow a particular story or be informed when something I might be interested in has happened.

And speaking of email alerts, I’m also immediately informed whenever a major delay is happening on the subway (or on the bus and streetcar routes that I’ve chosen to monitor) here in Toronto, making it easier to adjust any trips across the city I might be participating in.

Another advantage to receiving your news online is you can quickly scan a list of headlines rather than having to listen to a news anchor go on about stories that are neither interesting nor relevant to you while waiting for the latest update on a story you might want to follow. And, thanks to Twitter, not to mention news sources that aren’t owned by big business, we’re able to find more accurate news than if we just rely on the conventional news anchors and reporters.

The fact that we’ve now entered the Post-PC era doesn’t mean we’ll no longer use personal computers. It just means that we’ll soon do the majority of our computing on Post-PC devices such as smartphones and tablets, if we don’t already (I know I do). Likewise, it doesn’t mean there will no longer be newspapers or television and radio news channels in the near future. There will be, at least for a while, but the media providers who really want to thrive will provide well designed methods of consuming the information we want on our iPhones, iPads, Kindle eReaders, and such. Those who don’t, however, eventually will go the way of the dinosaur.

The No B.S. Truth About Popups

“Silence means death.” – Max Cavalera

If we’re being honest then honestly I don’t want to publish this article. It’s likely either going to spread and become a catalyst for positive change or blow up in my face and make people I like hate me. By a quick mental count there are exactly 13 things I’d rather do more than publish this article.

But I’m seeing far too many of my friends/acquaintances, good people who mean well, fall into the black hole of internet marketing. What I mean by that is, once you start putting money over your customers it turns into a slippery slope aimed directly into the darkest pits of marketing and business. I know because I’ve been there.

You won’t even see it happen. You’ll deny. You’ll lie to yourself. You’ll scream from the rooftops that you are an honest, ethical, business person. Like a junkie having “just one bump” you’ll hit rock bottom and wonder how you got there.

Back in the days I used to use popups, popunders, popovers, and every single other method available to get more leads into my funnel and squeeze every percentage point of cash out of those leads.

See what happened there? Leads. Funnel. Percentage. Cash. I’ve dehumanized the whole process of creating a business that actually helps people. Now you’re just a lead in my funnel pouring bills into my pocket. A blip on my macbook. Faceless. Soul-less. With a credit card and a paypal account, hopefully both at the ready. You are John Doe. You are Jane Doe. You are nobody. You’re more nobody if you don’t buy from me.

Before I go on, let me state in simple terms: I’m no saint. I’m a recovering “money-grubbing sleazy marketer.” (Which is the category of business owner popup use puts you in.) I wrote about the depression that resulted from those times in the Luxury of Less.

Money Is OK

There is nothing wrong with building a business.

There is nothing wrong with making a lot of money.

There is even nothing inherently wrong with caring more about money than your customers.

And contrary to what I’ve stated in the past I don’t think everybody who uses popups cares more about money than their customers.

What I think has happened is that most people who use popovers (the “sexy new popup”) don’t realize what they’re conveying to their audiences because they’ve simply followed the herd (their popup-using mentors). Ignorance is bliss, right?

Which is why I needed to publish this article. Once you’ve read it you can no longer claim ignorance. If I can save one person from the black hole of internet marketing my work here is done. Everything else is gravy. (Vegan gravy, of course.)

I’ve heard all the excuses about why popups are supposedly OK and they’re all very telling about the business owner.

“If you don’t like them don’t read my site.”

Very true and very condescending. You’ve consciously put yourself in the realm of sleazy, money-grubbing, marketer. (That may very well be what you want, of course.) There are absolutely no two-ways about it. A sleazy, money-grubbing, marketer doesn’t care what their customers think, because the bottom line trumps all: “Does it make money? Yes? Do it.” It’s unfortunate, but true.

This is also a very short-sighted approach. Sure, you will probably generate more leads and more sales in the short term, but at what cost? A loss of trust. Over the long term that loss of trust will result in a business that isn’t sustainable. Business today is dependent on trust more than ever. That trend will only continue.

“Trust is the scarcest resource we’ve got left.” – Seth Godin in All Marketers Are Liars

“If people didn’t like them they wouldn’t work.”

Delusional. It’s OK, I was delusional once as well. I told myself the very same thing.

“I’m getting more subscribers. And people e-mail me thanking me for my content! I’m doing good work.” The truth is I was not. I didn’t care. It was cool that I was helping people and all, but I didn’t care. I wanted more money, more subscribers, more leads …get in my funnel!

I used to spam Google search results with pages upon pages of fake (aka “spun”) content. (Do some searches on “content spinner” or “article spinner” and you’ll see the “quality” content these things create.) Did anybody (particularly Google or the end-user) like my websites? Not one bit. I didn’t even like them.

“They work like gangbusters, so everybody must like them,” I lied to myself.

Popups are on the same sleazy realm as spam.

“Look, if you have something fundamentally shitty, you can’t do much with it, can you?” – A man named Geoffrey, from the book The Geography of Bliss.

“It’s free. I’m being altruistic.”

A dude offered me a hit of cocaine once. Even drug dealers have free lead generators. He wanted me in his funnel and was willing to give me something that had actual cash value for free. Does that mean he cared about me?

First, as we know, free isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Second, this is another delusion. You may very well be giving something good away for free. And you may very well care about your customers. But the mere fact you’re giving something away for free doesn’t mean you care about your customers. There’s far more to it than that.

Unwillingly forcing your customers into an action they weren’t expecting insinuates something entirely different than a sense of altruism.

“They only show up once.”

No, they don’t, and you very well know that. Quit lying to yourself.

Did you know that the most common use of people’s time, outside of their working and sleeping hours, is watching television (and it cuts into the sleeping hours for too many people as well)? This is so much the case that the average person spends about 5 hours a day watching TV. That’s 35 hours a week, which is more than two months a year spent watching television. By the way, that includes over an hour and a half of commercials in each of those days. That’s more than 10 and a half hours of advertisements a week, ads which do influence you to spend money on things you don’t need (if commercials didn’t work, companies wouldn’t spend so much on getting them produced and broadcast).

By now you’re worried that you know what I’m going to suggest, and you’re exactly right. The best thing you could do right now is get rid of your television altogether. However, for those who can’t bring themselves to go that far just yet, it’s imperative that you cancel the cable or get rid of the satellite dish. Get rid of any digital over-the-air receivers or antennas as well so you can’t receive any broadcast stations.

Getting rid of cable, by the way, will free up more than just time. It will also free up money. Let’s say you’re only paying the basic $40 a month for cable. Multiply that by 12 and you’ve probably saved over $500 a year (after taxes). Lots of people are paying more than that a month on cable, however, so adjust accordingly. If you sell your TV as well, you’ve not only brought in a few extra dollars, you’re less likely to spend money on DVD or Blu-Ray rentals (swap your computer out for a MacBook Air or Mac Mini with no optical drive if you want to remove that last temptation, though that will cost some money too, so only do this if your current computer has reached the end of its life).

If you’re somebody who just leaves the TV on for background noise, you’ll find the quality of your actions around your home going up once you’ve gotten rid of your cable or television set. Humans really can’t multitask, it’s just not in our nature to be able to do a quality job if we’re distracted by other things happening around us. And we can’t be truly present in the moment, focusing on the task at hand, with a TV blasting in the background.

One last thing you’ll notice without a TV constantly running is more peace of mind, particularly if you watch a lot of news. Having the TV going all the time means your mind CANNOT relax. No matter how accustomed you might think you are to the noise, and how much you might think you’re able to tune it out, your mind is never truly present if there’s constant chatter happening (and if you could tune it out then why do you need it in the first place?). A person needs times of peace and quiet in order to function properly, and not just during sleep.

There’s Nothing Wrong With TV Shows

Now I’m going to say something that might seem to contradict what you just read: There’s nothing wrong with watching television shows. I got rid of my TV about a year ago, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, but there are still a few high quality series I enjoy watching (if you’re not watching Supernatural, for instance, you’re missing one of the best TV series since The X-Files). The difference is, because I don’t have a television set, I can’t just mindlessly watch whatever happens to be on. I have to focus on finding the specific show I enjoy before streaming or downloading it on my computer, and while it’s downloading I actually can do something else as there’s no noise distracting me. This method avoids most, if not all, of those commercials as well. Thanks to services like Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and even just the broadcasters’ websites, nearly all the best series can be watched for a low cost, if not free. Don’t go overboard or you’ll end up right back where you started, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the odd series. And I suspect that watching quality science fiction on occasion, by the way, is probably good for your intelligence (not to mention your morality, something I might write about in the future. Edit: It is written. Read it here).

Don’t Worry

If this idea scares you, I’m going to make you a promise: You’ll never regret getting rid of your cable, satellite, or television receiver. In fact, you’ll find the quality of your life going up so much that you’ll wish you’d done so sooner. With all the free time you’ll be able to accomplish so much more. Without the noise and bad news you’ll find yourself much more relaxed. And without the constant distraction you’ll find your mind working so much better. If not, the worst that can happen is you have to re-subscribe to your cable service and catch up on a few episodes online, but I’ll bet that doesn’t happen once you’ve discovered how much better life is without it.