There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a room when an author finally stops typing and realizes the story is done. It is a heavy, slightly terrifying silence because it marks the moment the dream ends and the business begins. For those of us in the self-publishing world, that transition is usually … Read more
I spent most of last Tuesday staring at a flickering screen in a coffee shop just outside of Austin, Texas, watching liquidity pools breathe. It is a strange thing to witness. You see these massive pulses of capital moving between layers, jumping from one ecosystem to another, and if you look closely enough, you see … Read more
The air in Lisbon smells like salt and roasting coffee, which is a much better backdrop for a crisis than the fluorescent hum of a traditional office. I sat there last Tuesday, watching a software developer from Chicago stare at his laptop screen with the kind of pale, wide-eyed terror usually reserved for witnessing a … Read more
I was sitting in a small, slightly overpriced coffee shop in downtown Austin, Texas, last Tuesday when I saw a guy at the next table scrolling through a KDP dashboard that looked like a graveyard. He had fifty titles live, all of them clearly generated by a prompt and a prayer, and not a single … Read more
I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Austin about three years ago, watching a friend try to explain why he was buying a digital fraction of a logistics warehouse in Germany. At the time, it felt like a fever dream or a very expensive hobby for people who enjoyed staring at spreadsheets. Fast forward … Read more
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Austin last Tuesday, watching a founder stare at a spreadsheet with the kind of hollowed-out expression usually reserved for tax audits. He wasn’t looking at his revenue. He was looking at his “stack.” Specifically, he was looking at the twenty-four separate line items that hit his business … Read more
There was a time, maybe three or four years ago, when we all thought a book trailer had to look like a high-budget Hollywood teaser. You remember those. The dramatic orchestral swells, the stock footage of a woman running through a misty forest, and that deep, gravelly voiceover that sounded like it belonged in a … Read more
I remember standing on a cracked riverbed in the Central Valley of California a few years ago, watching a farmer stare at a horizon that offered absolutely nothing in the way of rain. He wasn’t looking for clouds though. He was looking at his phone, checking a digital ledger. That was the first time I … Read more
I sat in a coffee shop in Seattle last Tuesday watching a woman scribble furiously into a yellow legal pad while her laptop sat closed and dark beside her. It felt like a protest. In a year where every writing interface is cluttered with “magic” buttons and predictive text that begs to finish your sentences … Read more
It feels like every time I open a browser lately, I’m being chased by a billboard for some massive, all-in-one enterprise suite that promises to “revolutionize” my workflow for the low, low price of a monthly payment that rivals a small car loan. There is a certain exhaustion that settles in when you realize you’re … Read more