You Can’t Sell Happiness
Happy New Years Racers!
To start of 2013, I decided to start with a post that is partly about design, but with a larger point about sales.
We all know the old saying… You can’t buy happiness. But actually I think the correct saying should be: You can’t sell happiness. It’s not really fiscally responsible. I mean think about it. Apple comes out with a new phone every year (like clockwork). 4/4s/5. People have barely had a chance to enjoy their new phone when a new NEW one comes out. That is the challenge of capitalism, particularly in todays world of now, now, now.
It’s also, for better or worse, fallen into the publishing industry, making it nearly impossible for writers to put out anything less than one book each year, and two books if entirely possible. We are a country that wants as much as you can give us, as fast as you can give it to us. (I’m speaking as an American of course, but I’m sure those of you across the globe can feel the pull of this as well).
It’s not… necessarily a bad thing, at the same time, in very real ways, we’ve sacrificed quality for quantity.
Not long ago, (though last year) I read an article in which an author came to the conclusion that quantity was more important for writers to focus on, because as she explained it, with quantity comes quality. (The more you write, the better you get). This is… not necessarily true, at least to my mind. I mean sure, you do get better the more you work, however, writing 500 crappy works does not equal out to one good one. Sure The Casual Vacancy took J.K.Rowling 5 years after she published Deathly Hallows, but it was worth the wait. Consider other authors who publish two books a year (so in the same 5 years… 10 books) and not one of them was worth reading, whereas J.K.Rowling’s was. Obviously using J.K.Rowling isn’t really a fair example, authors like her come around once in a generation, perhaps even a lifetime, but the point is… quality should trump quantity.
I’m a huge Apple fan, but let’s be honest, they rushed themselves on their maps and now all of us are suffering for it. I may not be on the pro-google side of any debate (unless it’s versus Bing), but getting rid of Google maps didn’t make a whole lot of sense, it was a really good program that didn’t need tampering with, and I wish Apple had just let this one go.
