dot-com adventures

I spent most of yesterday working on my novel, the first solid day I've been able to work on my fiction writing since before the audit. It felt VERY VERY GOOD to get back to that. I'm going to focus heavily on my novel for the next two months so I can send it off in September.

Also went for a run along the lake in the late afternoon. I had less energy than usual, and got tired having to dodge around so many people (the Martin Goodman Trail), so I ended up taking more walking breaks than usual. I also ran out of water for the first time during a run.

I finally feel as if my life is getting back under control and in a direction I'm completely happy with for the first time in several years. Jeff and I were talking about this last night over dinner at a restaurant in BCE place last night. Since early 1999, I've been feeling as if I've been a rollercoaster ride. Exciting and fun at times, but I always felt as if the car I was in could fly off the rail at anytime (which it did, in a way).

The rollercoaster ride began on January 11th, 1999, when I received a phone call from Tony Astarita, then the Director of Corporate Finance at Barnes & Noble Inc. I was working on Inkspot at home at that point, didn't have an office yet. Things were looking pretty good for Inkspot; I didn't have trouble finding advertisers, even made enough to be able to hire some telecommuting help, was gradually expanding.

Astarita said that B&N was interested "in securing a majority interest share in Inkspot". He and someone else from B&N wanted to talk to me, and could they come fly to Toronto to meet in person? I was already in shock by that point, of course. I also remembering looking around my tiny and very cluttered home office, trying to picture two bigwigs in suits from B&N trying to cram themselves in the small space. Nope, definitely wouldn't do.

Jeff and I were supposed to fly to New York the following week to visit with some friends, so I suggested that we could meet in New York. Astarita agreed.

As soon as I got off the phone with B&N, of course, I called Jeff right away. As you can imagine, I wasn't very coherent. :-)

Two days later, I got a phone call from Jack Heffron, head of the Writer's Digest Book team at F&W Publications. They wanted me to write a book for them about online markets for writers. I was floored. Stunned. In shock. I also clearly remember that for a few split seconds, I was utterly panicked at the idea of trying to cope with doing a book during what was probably going to be an incredibly hectic and stressful time in life because of the B&N stuff in addition to Inkspot stuff, but I also knew that there was absolutely no way I could turn down a book offer. After hanging up the phone with Writer's Digest, I confess that I jumped up and down like a little kid. I don't remember if I yelled. I probably did.

I mean geez, I was GOING TO HAVE A BOOK PUBLISHED! This was what I had been dreaming about all my life. I never dreamed I'd get a nonfiction book published before a fiction title. So what if things were going to be a little hectic? I'd make time somehow.

After I finished jumping up and down, I called Jeff right away. I think I was even less coherent than my B&N news phone call.

On January 20th, Jeff and I flew to New York. We stayed with a friend of ours who is a lawyer at Goldman-Sachs; she gave me some advice for my meeting with B&N, helped calm my jitters somewhat. I was still terrified, of course.

We were taken on a tour of the BarnesandNoble.com offices. This was separate from the regular B&N head office, and was devoted to their online efforts. The office had a warehouse feel, with high ceilings and lots of space. Lots of cubicles.

We met with Astarita, the finance guy I had talked with on the phone, as well as Ken Brooks, then VP of B&N's E-Publishing division. They were both easygoing, super-friendly. Ken showed Jeff and me some of the cool tech toys he was checking out, including the new Rocketbook; I'd only seen photos of the e-book reader before, had never held one.

Hey, this is kind of fun, I thought. These guys don't seem like stuffy corporate types at all.

After our brief tour of the B&N.com, Jeff and I were taken to the Hercules room, where they had hooked up a projector so that we could browse the Web and see the results on a big screen. We sat at a long table with lots of chairs that was obviously built to accommodate very big and important B&N.com meetings with lots of people. We were told that the chairs were new and cost a lot of money. I remember almost fainting in shock when I heard the price of one chair; the amount would support Inkspot for several months.

They asked me to walk them through Inkspot, so I did. I was super-nervous at first, but then was fine. Inkspot was my baby, after all. Kind of funny, really...I'm a relatively shy person and normally despise public speaking of any kind, but when it came to Inkspot, the excitement I felt about the site and its community made me forget about everything else. I loved working on Inkspot, talking about Inkspot. So I took the B&N guys on a short tour of my site; they mostly listened, didn't ask many questions.

After, they asked me what my "vision" was for Inkspot. It was the first time the term had come up; I'd be hearing it many, many more times over the next few years. I told them some of my plans for Inkspot, but by this time I had grown somewhat cautious about specifics; I knew that B&N could afford to implement any of my ideas in their own site much more easily than I could if they wanted to.

At the end of the meeting, they said they wanted me to prepare a business plan that would "grow" Inkspot as quickly as possible. They gave very little specific information about their own vision for Inkspot or how it would help or fit into B&N.com, though they did mention the possibility of a new entity and that I could be a shareholder in this new entity. They said that would need to see the business plan before making a decision about an Inkspot/B&N deal.

Sure, I said, not knowing what else to say. I could do that.

We had brunch with Steve Riggio (then the Vice Chairman of B&N, now the CEO) at a nearby fancy hotel. Astarita, Brooks, Jeff and I waited for about half an hour before Riggio showed up; apparently he was coming from another meeting. When he arrived, the atmosphere at our table immediately changed. It felt almost as if Astarita and Brooks stepped back, even though they never moved in their chairs. I can see part of the reason Riggio attracts so much media attention. He's vibrant, full of energy, intense, wiry; he's one of those people whose very presence makes everyone beside him seem to pale in comparison. His passion and enthusiasm make him a natural leader-type.

After very minimal smalltalk, he launched right into Inkspot discussion. He wanted to know my vision for Inkspot. He wanted to know how Inkspot got started and more about my background. When I told him about the Writer's Digest book, he said that they could feature my book in the front display case of every Barnes and Noble store. Like Brooks and Astarita, he told me that I should put together some numbers for the future Inkspot.

Riggio left brunch early because he had another meeting to attend. He never touched his food. As soon as Riggio started talking with me, I felt as if a giant spotlight was fixed on me, that everyone in the room, not just our table, was listening. I don't think I ate much during that brunch, either, but more from sheer terror than because of time constraints. I'm sure I sounded like a blathering idiot during that conversation, though Jeff reassured me I did fine. :-)

When I got home, I began working on the business plan right away. Unfortunately I had never written a business plan before. I bought some books on business plans (including "Business Plans For Dummies" :-) ) and pored over them. I also had zero experience in planning large-scale business ventures. B&N didn't want to tell me how much money they were willing to invest in Inkspot, so I didn't even know what my financial parameters were. They also didn't tell me what they hoped to get out of Inkspot. Obviously they wanted to make money, but how?

I spent the next several months researching web development companies, office space, database software and programmers, and other services. One web development company gave me a quote of nearly $500,000. I began to realize that I was way out of my depth; I wasn't used to working with these kind of numbers. B&N would e-mail or call every week or so to see how the business plan was coming. I told them it was tough; could they please give me more info about what they wanted from Inkspot? Direct profit from advertisers or services? How much? More users? How many more? "Whatever you think is necessary," Brooks told me.

Meanwhile, I was also working on my book for Writer's Digest. They basically wanted a big version of an Inklings issue. I would organize and write the framework but also commission and edit articles about online markets for writers, as well as researching online markets. As you can imagine, I was pretty stressed out during those first few months of 1999.

I had no idea how much more stressful and hectic things were going to get.

More in a future Blathering.

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Today's Blatherpic:

Sunrise at the cottage.