Sharon Ritchey

Welcome to 2012, a new year of words and ideas. With more thoughts flying through the ether than ever before, it’s almost impossible to keep up with all the new resources, opinions, and online shopping. Well, there’s always time for shopping but not always for resources.

Our Friend the OED

In case you missed it, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as it’s best known by its closest friends, released its quarterly update of new words this past December. The online version of this amazing reference features articles and stories about the English language. Word lovers, Scrabble enthusiasts, and word nerds can unite with the etymology of both obscure and common words. It’s here that you’ll find a new entry for Abbott’s Booby – it’s a bird- as well as hundreds of other new entries and updates. The site is worth a quarterly visit just to see who is minding the dictionary.

A New Voice from the LOC

The Library of Congress has just released a new blog from the Catbird Seat written by Robert Casper, head of the library’s Poetry and Literature Center. “Posts to this blog will offer an inside view of the Center and our programs, as well as feature guest bloggers (including our Poets Laureate, as well as reference librarians and division specialists within the Library) talking about literature and the wealth of literary treasures here at the Library of the Congress.”

The inaugural blog was a bit flat, but as it is coming from the Library of Congress (LOC) I’ll be sure to check back for future posts. The LOC is by definition a wealth of information and worth spending some time visiting either in person or online. Treasure abounds for the most patient of researchers.

Happy reading anyone and do share your new word finds for 2012

by Sharon Ritchey

don’t know if it’s possible to categorize awesomeness but somehow we try. In our land of plenty of everything we try to discern the good from the bad and great from the just o.k.

Enter the top whatever list. It could be top 10, top 100, pick a number.

I love these lists that come out at the end of every year. They tell me what I missed, reinforce my judgment on popular culture from movies, restaurants, and music, and are just plain fun. So in the spirit of fun, here are some top ten lists to end your year and get you thinking about what you may have missed – or maybe thankfully avoided.

Popular Culture

Movies 2011,  I must be really living in a cave as I haven’t heard of most of these.

Music 2011, Yup, still lame, don’t know most of these artists

Best Restaurants Washington, DC 2011, O.k,  I may not agree, but at least I’ve eaten at many of these places

Books 2011, So, I’m a little behind on my reading

Word Nerds

Words and Phrases 2011, Guess what words I’ll be avoiding?

Top Libraries USA 2011, Yes, this is a real list!

Technology

Best Apps 2011, If you believe Time magazine

Best Video Games 2011, Think of all the time I spent working when I could have been playing

Gadgets 2011, Cool stuff

Celebrities

Weddings 2011, Why wasn’t I invited?

People 2011, Who knew?

Before You Go Spend that Money

Cars 2011, Bought one

Colleges 2011, Got a few degrees, I’m done

And this list could just go on and on. Anyone got one that’s really interesting? I’d love to see it. Happy New Year. It’s time to make your 2012 resolution list.

Are you paying for marketing?

When’s the last time you gave money to charity?

Yes, that’s a personal question especially in our tightened economic times. However, millions of Americans reach into our pockets throughout the year whether it’s for a scout project, co-workers walk for breast cancer, or religious group canned food drive. Estimates put our yearly charitable giving around $300 billion dollars.

If you do give do you know what motivates you?

I became curious about this recently when one of my favorite charities Feeding America, formerly America’s Second Harvest, went from the top of my list to completely off the list.

This non profit, like many others, has done its marketing homework on how to bring the cause to me at a personal level. As a marketer, I respect that. Their appeals talk about how I can truly make a difference.

Now, that’s a value meal, or so we are lead to believe

Feeding America’s marketing – it’s on the homepage of their website – tells me and every visitor that every dollar donated equals 8 meals! If I donate a mere $21 I can provide 168 meals, not 165 or 170 but a specific 168. That’s powerful marketing. I can see how my donation works.

So, if $1 can feed eight hungry children why did Feeding American feel they needed to send me a slick 8 ½ x 11 flat marketing proposal that cost over $1 to mail that said on the outside it was prepared just for Sharon Ritchey? But more than the cost of the actual postage is the cost to create the marketing piece. I know what it costs to create the type of collateral they sent. We create similar pieces all the time.

The piece contained a 4- color process, 120lb (ish) cover stock, matte-finished folder with full bleed using custom photography and design. If you don’t speak printing it’s about as heavy as a manila file folder. They used a great agency; it’s attractive.

On the outside was the proclamation – a proposal prepared for Sharon Ritchey – yes they spent money to source and print my name.

Inside the folder was 2 pieces of paper – each single sided, paper clipped together with the same rehashed marketing message as always and an appeal card.

The piece was expensive both in natural and human resources including: photography, writing, design, and printing. Let’s not forget the personal touch of the paperclip that had to be attached by a worker.  The piece needed to be hand collated, stuffed, addressed, sent to a mail house and postage paid.

This piece, multiplied by their huge mailing list, most likely averaged out to be $2-$3 a piece before postage. Add the postage and they spent maybe $5.00 to reach me. That’s 40 meals by their estimates!

There are many guidelines about how much an organization should spend on fundraising. In reality it depends on each organization’s size and needs. A $3.00 per donor investment that yields $20, $25 or more is considered a good return.

Yes, Organizations Do Need to Raise Funds

I do realize that fundraising is a necessary evil. If you don’t tell people about your needs they won’t contribute.

However, if Feeding America was attempting to capture my attention during the frenzied end of the year appeals, they certainly did. For all the wrong reasons. I was a regular contributor. There was no need according to fundraising metrics to send such an elaborate appeal to me. Their records should show my year over year contributions.

What they sent me was 40 meals worth of marketing. Multiply that by the thousands on their list and you get the idea of how many people they could have provided meals to.

I’m no longer feeding this organization’s marketing budget. I’ve got a carload of food that I’m delivering in person to my local food bank. At least I know it’ll make a direct difference.

Non profits need to look at their fund raising efforts and consider how those at the receiving end view them. Mailed appeals, according to research, are the most effective. Think of all the return address labels, postcards, and free calendars your receive. There’s also a trust factor with a mailing. You send the money instead of a direct phone solicitation or potential spam-like email.  Sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator help donors make informed decisions based on pie charts and limited data that is provided to the government. Feeding America rates fairly high but a closer look inside leads me to believe otherwise.

Please be generous this year there are too many hungry people in America and around the globe. But be a wise and cautious consumer too.

It says it all

Posted By Sharon Ritchey

Oh! What are you?

Why am I so confused?

How do I find the right punctuation to use?

When I interject my feelings, I use an exclamation point.

When I’m confused, I use a question mark.

But what do I use when I’m confused and I need to shout? !

Then it hit me. Yes I understand.

Interrobang, Interrobang as my brain sang

(by Renee Ritchey)

Properly punctuated prose is polite. When you allow your reader to pause mid sentence with a comma or semicolon; realize you are asking a question with a question mark; or speaking dialogue with the use of double and sometimes single quotation marks, you are alerting the reader to the full intent of your words. Punctuation is powerful! But it is not foolproof. Take the notion of the rhetorical question. A question being asked where the answer is already known.

“John, I have some exciting news. We’re having a baby!” Mary said.

“What, you’re pregnant?!” John said.

Well, duh, yes, she’s pregnant. John’s statement was a rhetorical question. In this instance, I chose to punctuate it with both a question mark and an exclamation point. In formal writing you would only use the question mark. But just using the question mark fails to alert the reader to the full impact of the statement.

Enter the interrobang a mark of punctuation created by advertising executive Martin Speckler in 1962 that combined the question mark and exclamation point into one symbol. It was quite the in mark to use through the 1960s and made it’s way onto a few qwerty keyboards as well as into the dictionary.

In this age of texts, tweets, and 24 hours of over the top news stories, perhaps it’s time to bring this most modern mark back to the keyboard as a way to fully express our emotions. R U ready?! I think we R!

]]> http://www.homerowed.com/talkin-qwerty/interrobang-the-coolest-mark-of-punctuation-we-never-use/feed/ 0 http://www.homerowed.com/talkin-qwerty/writers-need-to-write-a-guest-posting/ http://www.homerowed.com/talkin-qwerty/writers-need-to-write-a-guest-posting/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:19:13 +0000 Sharon Ritchey http://www.homerowed.com/?p=1059

By Kathryn Brill

July 6 2011

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, but I’ve always been a little fuzzy on the details of making that happen. I always sort of assumed that there was a set path to becoming a writer, in the same way that there’s a set path to becoming a doctor or a professor, and that as I got older I’d know what that path was. Eventually, I figured out it wasn’t exactly that conventional.

Part of what makes becoming a writer such a strange process is that becoming a writer involves writing…which makes me an aspiring writer who is also currently a writer in the process of becoming a writer.  “Writer” is at once a description of my present identity, a journey I’m embarking upon, and a goal I hope to attain. It’s hard to know what to do with such a confusing label.

Another thing that makes becoming a writer confusing is that there are so many different types of writing out there. Both in print and on the web, there are a dizzying array of places and mediums where a writer could make her mark. Finding your voice in a world reeling with possibilities can seem like a daunting task.  Where to start? And once you’ve started, how can you share what you’re doing with other people, and keep what you’re working on from languishing in your saved documents?

For me, the solution to these problems has been to start blogging; there’s something about it that makes it uniquely suited to helping with these sorts of dilemmas. Blogs are versatile: they can cover a multitude of topics, adapt themselves to many styles of writing, and even allow for an easy change of styles or topics if need be. A blog is an easy platform to present my writing to an audience, opening up the possibility of hearing others’ reactions to my writing, and the even more exciting possibility of gaining readers I’ve never met. Most importantly, blogging gives me a reason to write even when I’m not feeling particularly motivated about writing. And as long as I’m writing, I’m growing in my experience, getting to know my writing style, and figuring out my process. What could be more useful than that?

I’ve had two blogs: one documenting my exploration of various coffee shops and parks in the New York City area and their suitability for reading in; the other a repository for my short fiction. In the process, I’ve learned that although I find almost all types of writing enjoyable, there are some that feel more “me” than others. I’ve learned that it’s difficult, but ultimately rewarding, to write on a schedule. I’ve learned that while my writing can twist, adapt and evolve based on the medium I’m writing for, I have a consistent style and voice that can always be heard. And last but not least, I’ve learned what it means to make writing a part of my identity, to say to people “I am a writer” and have something to back it up with. Blogging may not be the end of the road in this process of becoming a writer, but it’s been one of the most helpful first steps I’ve taken.

Dunbar's 150 theorizes that we can only make 150 meaningful connections

Robin Dunbar an evolutionary anthropologist, and the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, has put forth a theory that humans can only maintain meaningful relationships with a finite number of people. That number is cited to be 150. In a March 2010 interview published at www.guardian.co.uk, the scientist talks about this idea and how it relates to social networking.

“Most species of birds and animals aren’t as intensely social [as human]. Sociality for most species hovers around pair-bonds, that’s as complicated as it gets. The species with big brains are the ones who mate monogamously… The lesson is that there is something computationally very demanding about maintaining close relationships over a very long period of time – as we all know!”

He goes on to talk about how our society has changed. There are more people than any time in human history and we now live closer together. And though there are more ways for us to connect through social media, we are unable to truly connect beyond about 150 people.

“Can we manage to have meaningful relationships with more than just the old numbers? Yes, I can find out what you had for breakfast from your tweet, but can I really get to know you better? These digital developments help us keep in touch, when in the past a relationship might just have died; but in the end, we actually have to get together to make a relationship work.

In the end, we rely heavily on touch and we still haven’t figured out how to do virtual touch. Maybe once we can do that we will have cracked a big nut.

Words are slippery, a touch is worth a 1,000 words any day.”

How many people do you connect with on your Facebook page? Do you have a company Facebook page as well? How about Linkedin where the system tells you how many connections you have through your connections. How many user groups do you participate in. And how many of those people would you recognize if you sat next to them in a busy airline terminal?

The idea of connections hit me personally the other day. I received a Facebook friend request from one of the magazine editors I work with.  I like and respect this editor quite a bit and he and I have had a great working relationship for over 15 years. When his request came in I felt moment of “oh crap what am I supposed to do?” I have made a personal decision that my Facebook page will be reserved for people who care about my daughters’ dance recitals and are interested in my new car search. I bet you’re bored just reading that. See, that’s my point. Unless you truly care and have a personal – not personal professional relationship with me, I’m not comfortable “friending” you. To confuse my social networking choices even more I’ve also been getting a lot of LinkedIn request lately from people I don’t know. As a matter of course, I don’t accept connections from people I have never conversed with in person or through some correspondence.

I feel that people who link and accept friend requests without thinking are losing the point about networking – building relationships. This brings me to Dunbar’s number. Yes, I can stand to expand my personal and personal professional network. I seek to do it all the time. I have noticed throughout the years that when I do truly to connect to new people, it is a lasting connection that is either good for my growing business or for my need to find new people to laugh and have a good time with. I’m nowhere near 150 true personal connections. It’s a good number to strive for.

Lest you think I’m anti social that’s not true. Come find me and connect with me on LinkedIn, read my blog, or here’s a new one, call me directly.

Self Published Books Are No Longer Industry Pariahs

April 28, 2011 Posted By Sharon Ritchey

Fedex delivered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne and a book to my office last Tuesday. And while I love champagne, it was the book I was most eager to open. A Smile Never Hurts, One Woman’s Story, by my client Pat Powers Rothacker  has been close to a two-year editorial journey. Pat’s latest memoir chronicles her life from the moment she learned she needed a liver transplant and follows her to recovery today.

I reluctantly took Pat on as a client. I say reluctantly because I’m not a book editor and that’s what she needed. However, there I sat at her dining room table as she told me her story and handed me a jumble of short vignettes that were a compelling mess of emotions.

Pat’s plans were to self publish the book. Her first book, White Gloves to Washington, was published by a niche publisher but that was no longer an option for this manuscript.

Book publishing has changed over the past decade. And self publishing once considered a lowly route for authors and deemed “vanity press” has changed as well. Self publishing is now a viable and profitable option for authors who want to see their words in print, whether they are business resources, non fiction memoirs, or the great American novel.

Industry Wakes Up

Publishers Weekly, the industry resource for the book publisher world reports, “764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers.” The magazine now also puts out PW Select a publication that covers the self-publishing industry with reviews and information. As a writer, that signals to me that there is money out there and it’s time for the publishing world to look outside its cubicles. PW Select does say that the most successful self published books are heavily promoted by the authors. Enter Home Row Editorial. Editorial project management, promotional material content development, press, and brand building – bring it on! But how? we had never done a self published book before.

I made several calls when I left Pat’s home that first week. I plugged into my industry contacts and got a recommendation for a fabulous self publishing group, 3Bean Press. This company is run by three women who truly know the industry. I was impressed by their organization and services. They offer authors editing, layout, promotional materials, printing, and the essential behind the book services of securing ISBN numbers and listing the book on Amazon, etc. They also put out their own catalog and have connections to the industry, which depending on the book and the audience, can be put to use. Pat’s book was a slow birth due to a series of unexpected illnesses. 3Bean took it all in stride and recognized the extraordinary circumstances of working with my client and with me. They walked us both through the publication process and I truly felt as if I were working with a large publishing house like Random or Penguin. And though we were paying for their expert editing, project management, and design, it was well worth the money.

This inspirational book now sits on my desk and the next phase of promotion is about to begin. For that I welcome my publicist partner Trina Kaye. But that’s another blog as I continue this self publishing chronicle.

Is self publishing a book right for your work?

Maybe. You must have a level of commitment to both the art of writing and the art of selling. Remember, you have to pay for the book and the cost of your promotions. And while you also sell your book, most first time authors will tell you that they don’t make a lot of money. However, it can be enough to finance your second book and allow you to continue on the path of being a writer. Self published books that sell well can also be picked up by a commercial publisher. Where I once blanched at the idea of self publishing, I have changed my mind – completely. The quality of A Smile Never Hurts is high. The experience I personally have had with this particular self publisher has been amazing. But as always be cautious, results may vary. Do your research and find a publishing company that fits both your pricing needs and your service level needs. But most importantly, keep writing!

April 16, 2011 by Sharon J. Ritchey

I won’t add my thoughts to the decline of newspaper readership. There are plenty of pundits who follow this issue more closely than I care. But I have to say that over the past six months I have started to pay more attention to my local newspapers, the Fairfax Times, and the Washington Post.

Perhaps I’m in that sweet readership demographic – female, approaching mid-forties. But I think it may have to do with the content. While the writers who cover the local Northern Virginia community are far from Pulitzer Prize writers, they are  hard working journalists who are providing their readers with local, relevant content. I’ve been to events and have spoken with many of these local writers and they are professional and enthusiastic about their work. But let’s go back to idea of content relevance.

Content that Readers Care About

Hubspot recently put together an informative slideshow with timely demographics on online readership across a variety of social media platforms: twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Once again, the mantra of relevance was repeated. If you provide content that people want to read, they will continue to visit your outlets and engage with you. For me, reading about local events, businesses, politics, and the like is important. Now that I have school-age children, I’m interested in school board meetings. While I don’t care to attend these meetings, I do want to know what is being said. The same thing applies to road construction projects. Traffic is big news in my part of the world. Information about the roads right outside my door is useful. You could argue that I can get this same information from my local all-news radio station, WTOP. But I can’t. WTOP provides local news but they cover an enormous market and I only listen in the car. The same holds true for the local television stations. There may be something of interest on the news but it’s not specific to me and my community. I know that every article in the paper from crime statistics, events at the libraries, and even sports is relevant to my life. Whether I chose to be interested in what is covered is a different blog.

The Fairfax Times has a published circulation of 130,000 and a corresponding website. The paper is delivered free to my door. The content comes directly to me. I can choose to toss it directly into the recycling bin and if it’s a soggy mess, I will. But more often I don’t. Just like a website, I’m curious to see what content I will turn up as I turn the pages.

Check out your own local paper. You may be surprised to see how interested you are.

How do you determine the value of anything?

Posted by Sharon Ritchey

April 6, 2011

It’s not often that I first take a book out of the library and then buy it. But this is the case with Priceless, The Myth of Fair Value and How to Take Advantage of It by William Poundstone. This is a book where I feel compelled to make notes in the margins and mark up so that I can go back and reread.

Priceless came to my attention while I was researching restaurant menu psychology for a presentation I gave to Women Chefs and Restaurateurs (WCR).  Poundstone includes a chapter on how restaurant menus can be effectively designed to help restaurants sell more profitable items. I borrowed the book from the library intending in my haste to only read the relevant chapter. But I was soon hooked on this book and Poundstone’s writing style.

The premise is that people make decisions about what items and services cost, not always on value but on our internal feelings of fairness to us and what we value. Even the simple act of suggesting a number can cause you to make a decision based on whether that number is high or low.  Companies can and do use price anchoring to guide people to make purchases. And while this sounds like trickery, in reality it’s how the human mind works.

How Price Anchoring Works

An example of price anchoring is when you go into a high end store like Coach and on display is a $10,000 signature, limited edition evening bag. It may only hold a credit card and lipstick but it’s $10K. Coach doesn’t intend for you to fork over the $10k. Instead they want you to see the rest of the merchandise as a great value. Gosh, $10,000 for an evening bag is crazy, but $350 for a shoulder bag, now that’s a deal. And while $350 may still be high, especially in this tight economy, the concept works at all levels.

Another example from the book is the use of “charm prices.” This refers to items priced below whole numbers. The .99 special meal deal for example at your favorite fast food restaurant. Additionally, stores can motivate shoppers during sales to snatch up merchandise this way. The next time you buy something on sale, take a look and see if you can see the original price of the item showing with a sticker over it with the new price, most likely ending in a 9. This is actually the cover image of the book. This pricing structure lets us evaluate the value to each of us. If the price is for example $29 versus $30 for an item that was originally $79, it seems like a better deal. Better grab it while they have it, right?

Poundstone presents the scientific evidence for pricing, perceptions based on numbers, and how humans react. He details studies and the researchers who have done the research. These are the chapters that slow down the book a bit. The studies are interesting but the biographical information on the specific researchers at times feels tedious and out of place. I found myself skimming through these chapters to get to the results. Poundstone does a solid job of taking often dry results and  making them understandable and relevant to the lay reader.

One of the points I found most interesting was the professional distrust between economists and psychologist. It’s an age old debate between soft science and hard facts. Over the years, as psychologists  have collected hard evidence on how humans react to pricing, economists (at least some of them) have taken a fresh look at how markets may react based on human nature. Companies have taken notice of how consumers behave and perhaps its time that our “expert” government economists take a look as well.

With chapter titles such as ” The Devil’s Greatest Trick,” The Free 72-Ounce Steak,” and “Who’s Afraid of the Phone Bill?” Poundstone breaks down the mysteries of pricing for specific industries revealing why phone bills and airline tickets are impossible to understand. It’s all on purpose.

The Value of this Book In Business or for a Trip to the Store

This book is a fascinating read for anyone in business who needs to price their products or services or needs to negotiate pricing for needed items. By understanding why and how we react to pricing we maybe able to to make better financial decisions. I say maybe because how each of us values an object’s worth is tied to our emotions. When your 3-year old asks for a $4.00 balloon on a trip to the zoo, the fact that you’ve just paid $60.00 for tickets, and close to $40.00 for lunch may make the $4.00 balloon completely reasonable. The balloon in reality is only  worth a few pennies but what is the value of the smile and the memory. Gotcha!

I’d love to hear about pricing anchoring in the wild. If you come across some blatant examples, let me know. And if you avoid a costly mistake based on some of what you can learn from this book, let me know too.

Everyone is Irish on St. Patty's Day

March 17, 2011

by Sharon Ritchey

Everyone is Irish on St. Patty’s Day.

That got me thinking about leprechauns and their true origin.

These red-bearded gents are associated with gold, stylish green outfits, shoe making, four-leaf clovers, and rainbows. But as with all modern day mythical characters, there is a darker underbelly of creation.

The following is from one of my favorite books The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlain Matthews. My thanks goes to them for the research and well told legend.

The name Leprechaun comes from the Middle Irish word luchorpan meaning little body. This word is borrowed from the Latin corpus and points to the Catholic church’s influence on the Emerald Isle. It is an old Irish word but first recorded in English in 1604. (source: The American Heritage Dictionary.)

But, back to the story. It all starts in the 8th century with a story “The Death of Fergus mac Leiti.” It seems that the original leprechauns were water sprites. One day while Fergus snoozes on the seashore, he is captured by the luchorpans and wakes to find himself floating over the water. He manages to trap three of them and promises to let them go if they teach him to swim. They agree and give him the power to swim underwater but bar him from Lake Rudraige. Fergus can’t resist temptation and ends up in the lake where he has an unfortunate encounter with the monster Muirdris. The monster tears at this face. Because he is disfigured, he is no longer allowed to be a ruler.

Today’s more jovial being seems to have arrived in the 13th century. The story changes, as these type of legends do, and there is a comedic exchange with the luchorpans King Iuban, Queen Bebo, their poet, Eisirt, and Fergus.  It also seems that the idea of the leprechaun has been confused with another Irish fairy the Cluricaune. This fairy is cunning and a bit naughty as he haunts cellars, drinks, smokes, and likes to play tricks. The Matthews point to a book, Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends published in 1825 as the story’s source. Since then these creatures have continued to evolve. Today leprechauns are men who live alone and often are cobblers – this may be a link to the famous fairy tale the Elves and Shoemaker. If you can catch a leprechaun you can make him take you to his secret pot of gold. But, you’ll have to find the end of the rainbow first. Maybe after a few pints of Guiness you’ll have better luck.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!