We’ve been talking with our friends and doing a lot of research into traditional vs. self-publishing. I feel a lot more informed and confident now. And the winner is… SELF-PUBLISHING! By a landslide!

Here are all the reasons we decided to go with self-publishing.

• You make more money per copy.
• You have more control over the content and layout.
• If your first run does poorly, it’s not a death sentence for your book.
• You retain the rights to do whatever you want with the content.
• …

And here are the reasons we don’t care about the advantages of traditional publishing.

• Marketing. We’re planning on becoming famous and doing our own marketing anyway.
• Distribution. We don’t care so much about getting into old-fashioned brick-and-mortar bookstores, …

Eh, fuck this post. It’s all bullshit logical reasons. The real reason I feel passionately about self-publishing is because I want to damn the man. I think the existing publishing paradigm is old, outdated, and doomed to fall. I want to help topple it. I don’t want any gatekeepers on what can and can’t be said, what is and isn’t worthy. Let the people decide. If it’s good, people will buy it. If it’s not, they won’t. That’s a hell of a better criterion for a book’s success than anything the publishing community uses.

Self-publishing is a very connection paradigm thing to do. Share your information freely, without gatekeepers, without (implicit or explicit) censorship, without supporting the old paradigm. We’re going to self-publish and it is going to ROCK.

Seth Godin posted today about what watching less TV means for the world. This post is about what it means for you.

People sometimes say to me, “Wow, your life is so interesting!” Sometimes they say it in kind of a fearful sort of way, but sometimes they say it in kind of an envious way, as if they find their life boring and would love to have a more interesting life. So here it is, folks, How To Live An Interesting Life, in one not-as-hard-as-you-might-think step.

That’s not so bad, right? You don’t even have to do anything, you just have to stop doing a few things. Like watching TV. Maybe playing video games. Maybe spending so much time at parties or social events. Whatever you feel is “sucking up your time” and making your life uninteresting — it may be totally different for you than for someone else. Just stop doing it.

You will get bored. You will feel antsy. You will get jittery and want to go back to doing the things you just stopped doing. (Notice how this is like withdrawal from an addiction?) But if you stay the course, you will come out the other side. You will get so bored that you will find something interesting to do. This is our default state, but we have so many distractions that it’s hard for us to get back to our natural baseline. Eliminating all the distractions will help you regain your default state of having an interesting life.

I’ve found that it helps to make a small number of large decisions rather than a large number of small decisions. It’s like choosing not to buy junk food once a week during grocery shopping time instead of choosing not to eat junk food every hour during potential snacky time. I’m talking about medium-to-large decisions like not owning a TV, or not signing up for cable. Not buying a game I know I’d get addicted to. Setting up a calendar with certain times reserved for certain things, and sticking to the schedule. Consolidate your willpower.

Notice I said to stop doing “uninteresting” things, not “boring” things. TV isn’t boring; it’s specifically designed to not be. But on a higher level, on a life level, it is incredibly uninteresting. Take stock of all those things in your life that you feel are uninteresting, and just stop doing them. That’s all it takes. The rest will take care of itself — or rather, you will take care of it, because it will help you find and express the true inner amazingness that is inside you.

Good luck to all who wish it! (:

Kyeli, Megan, and I have been talking a lot about the name “The Usual Error”. It all started when Kyeli came up with a tagline: “Talking About Talking.” I said that I liked the tagline but that it was ambiguous; if we wrote “The Usual Error: Talking About Talking”, that could imply one of two things. One, it is an error to talk about talking, or two, we are in the business of talking about talking. This conversation made me so happy, because it was meta in two orthogonal ways. “Talking about talking” is nice and pleasingly meta, and also we made the usual error during the conversation. It seemed completely understandable and unambiguous to Kyeli, and at first she couldn’t understand why it seemed ambiguous to me. *big grin*

It boils down to the fact that the phrase “the usual error” is ambiguous; it either means the error of assuming that others are just like you, or it means the work that Kyeli and I do of teaching others about the usual error and other communication issues. We try to capitalize consistently, using lowercase for the error and caps for the business, but that’s not distinguishing enough. So we came up with a brilliant idea: the Usual Error Project. From now on, our project of helping people improve their communication skills is called the Usual Error Project. Making the assumption that others are just like you is called the usual error.

And then there was another big name conversation. We talked about all the big plans we have for workshops we want to give and information we want to share, and a lot of it is not related to communication. Some of it is related to fixing the world, some of it is about relationships (but not communication per se), and some of it is about business. It’s not all about the usual error; it’s not even all about communication, so the name “Usual Error Project” didn’t feel like a big enough umbrella to put it all under. But you know what it is all about? It’s all about envisioning a world full of connection with self and others. Connection Paradigm!

Now we finally know what to do with connectionparadigm.net. We’ll make it our new online home. Each of our big projects can have its own smaller place, like usualerror.com, and Connection Paradigm can be the umbrella that ties them all together. connectionparadigm.net will be big enough for all the things we want to do! Megan is busy redesigning both sites as we speak, because now that we’re planning on inviting tons of people over to our homes, we want the place to look nice. (:

Oh! And there was a whole other rename discussion that I forgot to post about! We talked about the title “The Usual Error” being negative, focusing on the error rather than the desired goal. We tried rephrasing it more positively, and thinking about things like “What is communication like when you don’t make the usual error?” We came up with lots of ideas, like “Authentic Communication” and “Awesome Communication”, but they’re not as catchy and already taken in one way or another. So we decided to stick with “The Usual Error” as the title of the book and the workshops. It’s intriguing and eye-catching, moreso than anything else we could come up with. (:

BOOM! Studios is choosing a connection paradigm business style by releasing several items from their backlist for free. Instead of trying to keep control over their intellectual property, they’re sharing it for free with their fans and potential fans.

The titles they’re offering include Ninja Tales, Zombie Tales, Hero Squared, 2 Guns, Shmobots and Cthulhu Tales.

“This is a great way to get the word out about BOOM! titles,” said Chip Mosher in a press release. “When people come to the site for free comics, they’ll be able to take a look at the other quality books we’re putting out. The interface ties all the parts of our website - the store, current titles, free stuff - into one beautiful package. New fans who might be stopping by for cool zombie or Cthulhu content can get turned on to what BOOM!’s doing across the board and check out the print editions in local comic book shops or at Amazon.com and mass market bookstores via our distribution deal with Perseus Books. We expect that people who aren’t BOOM! fans will discover our series and titles and be excited to own print copies.”

I have learned an AWESOME two-part system for easily accomplishing long-term goals.

Part one: I ask myself: “Is this more important than accomplishing my goal?”, or a more clear and personal example: “Is eating this ice cream more important to me than losing weight?”

I find the answer to almost always be, “No.”

When the answer is no, I don’t do it! I’ve given myself the power to remember my long-term goals when my short-term wants are flashing in the moment.

Part two: making my long-term goals concrete. It’s nearly impossible to strive for a goal that’s vague and distant, especially in the face of a real and present short-term want, but making my long-term goals specific makes them not only more attainable, but more real in the moment. It’s in the moment that I have trouble choosing long-term over short-term, and this has made it not only possible, but easy!

So what do I do if I ever answer “yes”? It happens - I’ve found that occasionally the answer to “is eating this ice cream right now more important than losing weight” is yes; ice cream is my #1 comfort food, and like everyone, I need comfort sometimes.

I solved this by finding very low-fat frozen yogurt: I can eat an entire pint and take in less calories than a candy bar, and actually I can no longer physically consume an entire pint. I usually eat about 1/4th of one at a time, which I find to be totally acceptable, and it fills that comfort need that invokes the feelings in the first place.

Another example is that sometimes I really want a break from exercising. Again, I’ll consider if a break is more important than my goals, and if the answer is yes (this is extremely rare, but it does happen), I’ll go for a walk or a swim or something that day instead of the more hardcore exercising I usually do.

So, my method of dealing with these rare yeses is to find things that don’t do as much harm but still feed whatever need is presenting itself.

These combinations are incredibly powerful. This has helped me make real and measurable progress on goals I never believed I could accomplish. I’m really excited and happy!!

I baked a cake! (The Boy helped!)

It was super-yummy!

This is the first thing I’ve ever made from scratch that didn’t turn out icky in some way. I’m extraordinarily proud of myself!!

I’ve been overcoming externally inflicted limitations a lot recently, and this was a BIG one. I’m really proud and pleased and excited to be constantly proving to myself that the only thing that limits me is me.

*dances* I can cook, I can bake, I can spell, I can do math, I can sing, I can chill, I can be happy, I can do whatever I want. I rock!

1. Help people
2. Enjoy the journey
2½. ???
3. Profit!

To follow up on the advice to incorporate as a C-corp, I did some research on my own. My opinion is that this advice is probably bad in general, and definitely bad for us. My recommendation is to run The Usual Error as a partnership, at least for now.

We don’t need the liability protection of an LLC or corporation, for two reasons. One, we’re already married and hence liable for each other’s debts anyway. (There are loopholes here, but I’m not interested in exploiting them.) Two, the liability protection of LLCs doesn’t count for actions performed directly by their owners. Since we’re not currently planning on having any employees other than myself and Kyeli, that adds up to zero liability protection anyway.

After that, the main distinguishing factors are taxation, overhead, and fees.

• A sole proprietorship or partnership is taxed like you’re self-employed. You pay the self-employment tax, but it adds up to the same tax you’d pay if you were a business and your own employee. An LLP doesn’t add anything that would be useful to us.
• An LLC doesn’t affect taxation, since it’s pass-through. In fact, it it would be slightly disadvantageous wrt taxation because of the Texas franchise tax.
• An S-corp is taxed differently, and you get to avoid paying the SE tax, but the advantages only kick in after the business is making enough profits to pay its owner/employees a “reasonable salary” and then some.^[1] This might be good for us in the future, but would just be unnecessary overhead for now.
• A C-corp… well, a C-corp just sucks. If you’re really clever, you might be able to figure out some way to use C-corp tax law to your advantage, but good luck making it be worth the double taxation.

Hence, a partnership looks like the way to go for us. Another advantage of this is that we avoid participating in a corporation which is accorded legal personhood, which is a law we find troublesome and very problematic.

Here are the sources I found useful in my research:

• http://www.themoneyalert.com/Corp-Entity-Table.html
• http://www.companiesinc.com/llc/texas.asp
• http://www.simplesubjects.com/tax/businesses/llcs-corpc-corp.html
• http://jumpup.intuit.com/step/business_structure/whyhow
• http://www.mynewcompany.com/entity.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doing_business_as
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_taxation_%28USA%29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-employment_tax#Self-employment_law_in_the_United_States
• http://www.simplesubjects.com/tax/self-employment-tax-explained.html
• http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/franchise/rates.html

Disclaimer: This is just my understanding after doing two hours of internet research (and some past dabbling in accounting), so please, by no means take it as tax or legal advice. (:

I met a woman named Valerie Wynn at a party last night, and we were
talking about business. (She’s started and sold 3 businesses in
the past dozen years, and is now on her 4th.) I asked her what advice
she would give to a new business owner, and she said:

1. Set reasonable goals
2. Pay yourself first
3. Incorporate as a C-Corp

As for #1, we plan to set unreasonable goals, so that’s out. But
if she means achievable goals, then that’s cool.

As for #2, I read about that in Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think
it’s a very important concept. Most people pay themselves last.
They have bills and expenses and discretionary income, and whatever’s
left over goes to them. If you’re a small business owner, especially
a hobby-turned-business owner, often your business is funded by
whatever’s left over after every other piece of the pie has been
sliced out. This is insane. If your business is really
important to you, pay yourself first. Set aside the amount of money
you need for your business, and only then pay the things that are
lower priority.

As for #3, I haven’t had a chance to research all the options yet,
but we’ll be setting up The Usual Error as an official business soon,
so I’ll post about it again once I’ve done my homework. (: [link]

We have decided to make The Usual Error our career!

We will finish the book, write more books, give presentations, do workshops, go on road trips, blog, make DVDs, host a con, and much much more!

The turning point for me was during my last Psych-K session with Crow, where I let go of whatever was blocking me from believing that I can make money doing what I love. A year and a half ago, we gave up on that dream. We got discouraged when we found that hardly anyone was showing up when we charged, but that plenty of people came for free. That somehow gave us the idea that the only way to make it work was to hurry up and get rich, retire, and then do The Usual Error for free.

But that’s not the only option! I don’t even know how the heck we got to that conclusion back then! There are so many people who would come to the workshops, regardless of price! And we know so much more about business, about marketing, about relationships, and about communication, even more than we knew a year ago, that we’ll be even better!

Now we’re really ready. We’re ready to improve ourselves in all sorts of ways to make The Usual Error even more awesome. And Dru is going to help too! He’s going to be our cameraman for the DVDs, and there are all sorts of other ways he wants to help.

What the heck were we thinking?! Keep our noses to the grindstone, work hard, hoard up, and eventually start living our dreams, years or decades in the future? Fuck. That. Shit. We’re going to follow our hearts, live our dreams — starting today — and succeed beyond our wildest imagination.

Thanks for your support, everyone. We wouldn’t have had the guts to do this if it weren’t for your support and encouragement. We appreciate you.