旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � HomeCraft's Small Business Journal 넴 � SPECIAL ISSUE 넴 � The 1992 Summer Shareware Seminar 넴 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸� 賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽� 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � 넴 � DISTRIBUTOR'S TRACK SESSIONS 넴 � 넴 � Interacting With Authors 넴 � 넴 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸� 賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽� DAVE BURTON: Okay, we're missing one panelist, but I guess we'll go ahead and start, since we're a little behind. My name's Dave Burton; I work for PBS, and I also work for ZiffNet. This session is about interacting with authors. On the panel we have, at the end: Dan Veaner from Emmasoft. Next to him, we have Charles Schell, from Unicorn Software. Next is Eric Robichaud, from Rhode Island Soft Systems, and next to him is Adrian Mardlin from Nildram Software. I'm going to turn it over to them for a brief discussion of the topics that are listed in the program, and then we'll open it up for questions. Dan, do you want to start? DAN VEANER: I've been in business as a shareware author for about two and a half years, and the more I'm into it, the more contact with vendors I have because more vendors contact me. As time has gone on, I've become a minimalist about what I require from vendors or hope for from vendors. First of all, I really like it when you communicate with me, but I don't really expect you to write me a 15-page letter - I know that takes a lot of time and the stamps are expensive. I do like to know if you decide to carry my programs so I can keep you updated - just a form-letter type postcard is really great; I love those. If I get a form postcard from you, that gets you on my list and I'll keep sending you disks and letters. As far as my vendor requirements are concerned: I have tried to keep them as minimal as possible. It just makes it simple for you and it makes it simple for me. To me, it comes down to three things: don't charge more than my registration fee for your distribution disk -- that would kind of squash registrations and not make me too happy -- keep all my files together, and don't change them. That doesn't mean you can't unzip them and LHARC them instead or whatever. But don't change the actual files. And the third one is: have a good explanation of shareware. Don't hide the fact that that's what it is. And tell people about registering. On my side of the business; I'm starting to get what I refer to as "the pile the cat sleeps next to". That's a pile that comes from the letters I get from vendors almost every day. The letters explain a little about their business and ask me to send them my disks. As the pile gets higher, it's getting really expensive to send out all those disks. You're going to find - particularly with authors just starting out - that you may not hear from them. You may not even hear from authors who have been in business a while, and who feel that they have a wide enough distribution. So I wanted to mention a couple of things about getting the attention with authors who have a pile and a cat. First of all, if you just send me a letter, it's definitely going on the pile, and at some point I'll get to the pile. I'd like to answer all of them, if I can afford to, but I don't know whether I'll be able to. So, one way to get around this pile problem, is to get into a distribution channel. For example, if you join the ASP, you'll get the ASP mailing - that's kind of automatic - and a lot of authors who are members take advantage of it because it's inexpensive for them to get their disks to you that way. And there are other channels too: FBS, network and such. I have to admit that vendors who call me on the phone get disks because they're bypassing the pile. I figure that, if you pay the 50 cents for the phone call, you deserve to have me spend the 50 cents to send a disk. Also, a lot of authors are beginning to ask vendors to send copies of their catalog so we can see your explanation of shareware. So if you do send a letter - if you include a catalog with the shareware explanation circled - that really helps. I'd send a disk to you, if you did that. And, finally, if you advertise, tell me that, because that's going to make you more attractive to me. If I think you're going to put the name of one of my programs in a magazine, or in a card deck or something, I will send you my disk. CHARLES SCHELL: I'm Charles Shell with Unicorn Software. I've been in the shareware business since 1986, so I've had a lot of interaction with vendors. But a lot of my first interaction was with BBS sysops who, in a lot of ways, are a lot easier to deal with than vendors. Sysops are usually happy to have a file - any file. There's not a lot of hassle to go through, getting a program on a BBS. You don't have to go through massive reviews, or hope you know somebody on the inside - which is the way it's becoming with a lot of the bigger shareware vendors. To echo some of the sentiments expressed by Dan: I like to hear back from you, too. I do my own mailing. I do not participate in the ASP mailing. I have too many programs and it's just not economical. If I send you disks - if for some reason I saw one of your ads and was impressed, or I had seen your catalog, or a user called and said, "I got this disk from Floppyware out in New Jersey" - I will send you updated copies, just on the spur of the moment - especially if the user had an older version, just to make sure that you have the latest version. If you send me a postcard back, I then know you got the disks, and I know to keep you on the mailing list and to keep you updated. I don't have a big problem keeping vendors on my mailing list, letting them know when I've got an update and making sure they've got an updated copy. It's my business as well as yours. Particularly if I had a bug in a program, I needed to figure out who has it in a hurry. I can go through my mailing list and zap it out, send everybody the update in one day, if I have to. But if you don't acknowledge the fact [of] the receipt of disks, or let me know you have my program, I've got no way of updating you. A lot of vendors say, "I'm too busy," or "It costs too much money." Well, I have a hard time with that. I understand that to a vendor just starting out, it is a lot of money to notify an author. But a 19 cent postcard isn't that expensive. In fact, I even have a program that'll print them for you. It's called Postcard Master - plug, plug - and the registration cost is fairly reasonable. A lot of times, I've got a stack just like Dan talked about. Mine's not next to the cat; mine sits in my file box. It gets one of two kinds of responses. If you send me a catalog ... if you send me a nice letter telling me this is who we are, this is what we're going to charge, this is my explanation of shareware... It can be a quick page -- just let me know what you're about! Give me some background information on you and your company... I'll go ahead and send you out a packet of disks. If you respond back and acknowledge receiving those disks, then you get added to my mailing list. That's my simple rule of thumb. ASP vendors are automatically added, the minute I see the logo on the letter or on the letterhead. If I can confirm they are indeed ASP vendors, I'll automatically send them disks, regardless of what the letter says, because I know what kinds of standards you're meeting already. Then I've got another pile, that are what I call "quick mail". Somebody's gone to a service and said, "Okay, I want a list of shareware authors, because I'm going to start a business." The envelope's got a nice little sticky label and they all look the same coming out of this one particular company because they've got a misspelling in my name. I know exactly where you bought that list. Then I open it up and there's a nice dot-matrix printed letter that says something along the lines of, "Please send us all of your programs GRATIS." Gratis is capitalized and underlined twice. That generally gets a letter back stating, "If you want to get on my mailing list, then you send me $10 and I'll mail you out everything I've got. [Then] I'll keep you on my list for at least a year." That type of response is simply business protection for me, because it could be somebody just trying to build up their personal collection. I've got no idea who they are, what they do, what kind of quality of work they're doing. Based on that letter, they're not doing very high quality work. I understand what it is to start as a vendor. I was a vendor for a few years, so I know what it's like to start. I know what it's like to try and get in touch with authors. At one point, I used to have a letter that said something along the lines of, "When you get these disks and copy them to your own media, send me the disks back." I used that as a hook, more or less, to get some sort of response out of the vendor. In one case, I had a vendor send me 50 disks, [who] said, "We won't send yours back any more until these run out." Worked out nice; because he covered the cost of media, he is definitely on my mailing list still, and as soon as I come out with an upgrade or a new program, he's one the first people to get it, because he impressed me. He was trying to help me cover part of the cost of mailing. As far as BBSs go: I do mail out to BBSs -- the ASP approved BBSs, and some of the larger BBSs and on-line services that I'm aware of. But the problem with BBSs is that a lot of them are home computer users; they're doing it for free; they're doing it voluntarily; they're doing it as a hobby; they're masochistic. I'm not sure what it is that causes a man to be a sysop, but I answer any letters from them, including handwritten ones, because I know what it's like to be a sysop just starting out and trying to get your file libraries built. The one thing that Dan didn't address, that I want to rather quickly cover, is handling quick updates. At one point I had a vendor on my mailing list to whom I mailed copies of a program. A couple of weeks later I found a bug. It was a combination of keystrokes that caused the wrong thing to happen. So I mailed out the update to everybody. A short while later, I got a letter from a user who said, "I got your program from Scuzzyware. This is the version number I got, and this happens when I hit this combination of keys." Well, I went back to Scuzzyware and said, "Hey, look, I mailed you the update! What happened?" "Oh, we got it, but the disk was bent so we just threw it away." "Why didn't you contact me?" "That costs too much money." I said, "Well, I'll save you some money. Pull every disk of mine out of your catalog or you'll get a cease and desist assist from my lawyer." That's an extreme case; most vendors are very good about getting updates in their catalogs. Generally, if it's a bigger operation - like The Software Labs or PBS - I will call, as well as send the disk, to make sure that they have exchanged the older version with the new one. But an author sends updates for a number of reasons. It's done not only to add a mouse enhancement, or to change the screen a bit, or maybe change an address or something in the docs; we also upgrade to take care of bugs and problems we have found in the program. If a vendor fails to update, they're hurting their own customer. They're hurting their own business. I understand you've made a hundred copies of this program; now you're going to have to make a hundred more. But you're gonna save money in the long run because the customer who gets that old disk from you - if it was a bug fix - is going to be awful upset when they hit the bug. They're not only going to blame the author. In a lot of cases, they'll write the author and never use that vendor again. In cases where I've found the vendor has an older version which they have not updated, I will include a letter -- when I send the user the latest version -- and give them the names, addresses and phone num- bers of several libraries they can go to, to get quality, up-to-date software. That's my only way of retaliating or pointing a user in a good direction. I don't want them to have an unfavorable impression of shareware. It doesn't do me any good as an author; it doesn't do you any good as a vendor. Your turn. ERIC ROBICHAUD: I'd like to just hit a few quick points on BBSs before I get into vendors themselves. A couple of pet-peeve sort of things I have that I think can tremendously help a BBS. I have my own customer support BBS. I accept uploads and I accept disks from authors. I'm thrilled to put them on-line, to help authors out, on my BBS. I allow people to dial in and upload their wares on the first call. I think that is of absolute importance for a BBS. You're hurting yourself if you don't allow an author to upload on the first call. Because as an author, when I'm going to call hundreds of BBSs that are all long distance, I'm paying for the calls; and if I get in and I can't upload and you say, "Call back in a week", that BBS is usually scratched off the list. Maybe I will call back, but those BBSs get put aside. The ones on which I get the first shot: they'll get my program. The second thing, as far as bulletin board services, is for authors. You should, whenever possible, try to limit the logon scripts. When an author is sitting down trying to log in to 500 BBSs to upload his stuff, they don't want to sit there and enter long logon scripts of 500 pages, of "What's your cat's name?" and "What's this?" or that, and on and on and on. Finally, the same thing with verification. I've called, I would say, literally thousands of BBSs in my lifetime. I've never gotten a single call back for this verifier stuff. I'm not sure why they don't let you upload on the first call. The verifying type of situation just makes me wait a week. So those are the kind of things I would look for in a BBS. If you change some of your policies, make it a little easier for authors to give you this stuff for free. You'll end up getting a lot more response. Now going over to the vendors. What I think is very interesting -- and what I wanted to hit on here -- is the concept of the relationship between the author and the vendor. So far, the two gentlemen who have spoken already have basically been hitting the point I find to be crucial -- and that is that the best way vendors can help themselves is by working out a good relationship with authors. Just as vendors say, "Geez, I've got thousands of authors out there sending me disks -- so many authors that I may not be able to handle them all individually.", the authors are sitting on the other side of the fence saying the same thing: "You know, I have 500 vendors out there I have to send my disks to." So we're both in the same boat, on different sides of the fence. From an author's viewpoint, we tend to cop an attitude when we say, "Vendors need us. If it weren't for shareware authors putting out the programs, where would vendors be?" Whether or not that's accurate or true, that tends to be the case. Because of that feeling, we want to get some special recognition. As an author, I am going to be much more inclined to send my programs to a vendor who is looking after my needs. A vendor who is not trying to sell my software as a "Pay 50 cents and get 10,000 programs" sort of thing. A vendor who includes the proper shareware disclosure -- who tries to educate the customers about what shareware is and about paying the author. If the vendor isn't doing me any favors, I'm not going to do them any favors. I'm not going to be spending my money to send disks to a vendor who takes my software, never acknowledges the fact they got it, and then throws it into a library with six billion other programs, unnamed, unreferenced, and which the vendor is promoting as "$10 for 50 disks worth of programs - you get it for free" kind of thing. But if it's a conscientious vendor that's educating the public as to the nature of shareware, and putting the name of my program in front of the public - that sort of thing... Maybe including a short description, even if it's only a sentence or two... I'm going to be much more likely to send updates and new versions to that vendor. Finally, to echo what has already been said, I think it's extremely, extremely important to work on the relationship with the author on a one-on-one basis. Meaning feedback and sending letters. I'm sure there are a lot of vendors out there who carry my software that I don't even know about. It makes it much more difficult for me to get updates to the vendors if I don't know if they have my disk or if it's in their catalog -- especially in the genre of vendors who handle 16 programs all on one disk with no descriptions. It's just listed as a utilities disk. They don't even say what's on the disk. How do I know they have my program? As an author, I set up form letters in a mail merge type of system. I've come up with six or seven different form letters for the kind of things I want to say. It's very easy to sit down and bang out a bunch of names, print out form letters, drop them in the mail. For 29 cents in postage, a couple cents for the envelope and the letter and very little time, I can give my users information. As a BBS I send out form letters; I send out little postcards, like Charles was saying, telling them I got the program, thank you very much. I think the authors will come back and continue to send my bulletin board service their programs. I think the key is working out the relationship with the author and not just sitting back and waiting for the disks. If you take a proactive stance, I think that will help you a lot. ADRIAN MARDLIN: Hi, I'm from the U.K. I want to touch on one or two international issues. One thing that really annoys me at times is that although my software is represented in the States by a distributor, I tend to get 42 or 43 letters a week from you guys asking whether you can have permission to distribute my software in your catalogs, or asking for the latest version. You're not looking at the VENDOR.DOC file where it says, "Hey, I've got a distributor in the States and you should be contacting him." I think it's going to be an increasingly common thing as we get more and more authors outside the States who have local distributors. You should be contacting the local guy. It saves you money. It saves us money and hassle. So be aware that there are a lot of people with local distributors nowadays. One thing as well, when I first started as an author I was very easily pleased. I think we all are very easily pleased. But they say you only get one chance to make a first impression and on day one, when an author first sends his software out to vendors, those responses he gets back are the first real response he's got from his software. When a vendor writes back and says, "Hey, this is a great program. Here's a copy of my catalog," that guy is now a friend for life. He's never coming off the mailing list. Nowadays, I'm a bit like Dan in that I've got more of a minimalist approach. I don't require people to send me all kinds of letters and catalogs. If I get a catalog when I first contact a vendor, then that's great. But from then on I don't need you to go to the expense all the time of sending me a catalog every time I send you a disk. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Do you want a catalog sent to you in Europe, or to your U.S. distributor? ADRIAN MARDLIN: U.S. distributor. It's his job. What I want to do is to concentrate on my market in the U.K. and Europe and, if I have a local distributor, then it's his job to look after the States. I tend to send him a couple of Compuserve messages a month saying, "Hey, I've got all these new guys; can you make sure they're on your mailing list?" I wouldn't need to do that if you basically contacted him. So I would say it's good - when an author first contacts you and sends you software - to spend some time to maybe send him a copy of your catalog and maybe a nice letter. It could be a standard form letter, but that is really going to make an impression on that author, because he's desperate for feedback and he hasn't got any registrations. He wants to know what's going on -- if he can cut it. After making that first impression, you don't need to keep on doing that every time. If you do that on day one, when you first get contact with an author, that makes a big impression. One that I really remember was when my product first came over to the States. It was sent out to about 200 vendors and I got a phone call from a guy somewhere in America. He phoned me up and said, "Hey, this is the first time I've ever received anything from you. I just wanted to touch base and say hi." I did not expect that. That surprised me. He spent half an hour on the phone with me. Thanks! He must be making some bucks out of my program. One more issue: I think a lot of times, over the years, people have discussed whether it's in the vendors interest to encourage registrations. I feel there's a lot of vendors - in the U.K., anyway, you tend to get the fly-by-night operations - who pop up and write, "Hey, look, 50 pennies a disk," sell loads of disks, and two months later they've gone down because they're cutting the costs to the bone and they're not going to survive. I think it is in the vendor's interest to encourage registrations as much as possible. I know I, and many other authors, keep a record who the registrations have come through. I've got a data base that's got all my vendors. I know, since I've started, how much money I've received as a result of that vendor's activities. From time to time I go through my list and think, "Boy, this guy's been on my list for two years and I haven't received a single registration. You know, I'm wasting my money sending him disks. And this other guy, you know, has resulted in a thousand pounds in the past year." When a new release comes, he's getting it. There's no doubt about it. So be aware that authors do monitor where registrations come from, and we do base what we send out on the registrations we receive. BOB SCHENOT: Hi, I'm Bob Schenot. My products are PC Canary, Time Track, and The Shareware Book. You have a copy of The Shareware Book on the goodies disk you got with registration here. I've got kind of a long list that I'm gonna try to run through pretty quickly. The first thing I guess I'd say is: do your job. That's what I really want most out of you guys. I'm sure most of you are doing a fine job of it. Think about what value you add and do it. I think that for a vendor, much of the value they add is as a filter. You're presenting the best programs -- good programs -- whatever it is that you think are marketable and useable by your customers. That's fantastic because, quite honestly, the barriers to competition are so low that there is a lot of junk out there. Your primary job, from my point of view, is to not offer junk. Offer good stuff. Have shareware look like good software that people want to buy. It's in our interest -- yours and mine -- to have shareware succeed. You'll succeed and I'll succeed, if more people buy shareware. My best guess right now is that less than 4% of the computer-owning population knows that shareware exists. I'm hoping we're gonna change that and we'll both get rich. Right? The other thing I do ask you to do is to explain shareware. You've heard it before; you'll hear it again. I have a very, very open VENDOR.DOC. All I ask is that people explain shareware and a couple of other things. No writing letters back and forth, no signatures, or anything else. I can tell you that when I get a complaint from an end-user who says, "What do you mean I need to send you money?", the first thing I do is I have my wife call and ask for a catalog. If I don't see an explanation of shareware, I'll call you up and tell you that we've got a problem, and hopefully, we'll be able to work it out. I also have to assume that the guys I have a problem with are not in this room because you took the time and spent the money to come here, so I know that. If I could take just a minute to talk about the author's marketing problem and what you might do to help us with our marketing problem, you could make a hell of a difference for us -- you really could. From an author's perspective, we send out disks. Our first job is to get distributed. The second job is to get the customer to order our disk. The next job is to get the customer to look at it long enough to think that they might want to try it. From there, we need to turn them into a steady user, and finally we need to get the customer to send us money, and we don't have a thing until that customer has actually sent us money, okay? The problem lies in the fact that we can't even get information about the first step. Very, very few vendors acknowledge disks! We have no idea - when we don't get registrations - whether the problem is that there's a zillion people out there not paying for the program, or whether there's ten people out there and they all pay for the program. The only way I can hope to have that information is if you as vendors give us a little bit of feedback. I'm not quite sure how to make that happen, but that's something shareware authors are universally desperate for. If you can't distribute our disks, it would be the nicest thing in the world to tell us why the program isn't marketable. Or, if it is marketable, tell us that you're marketing it and, if it isn't selling well, tell us that. If it is selling well, tell us that, too. Any kind of feedback you can provide. Any kind of customer comments you can get. When we send out disks, it's like throwing them into a black hole. It really is. You guys are marketing guys. You know what that's like. We have no way of knowing where we're doing well and where we're doing poorly. That is the most useful thing you could possibly do for me, is tell me what's going on because I can't find it out by myself. Could I have a quick show of hands, I just want to get some sense, what percentage of you guys do belong to the ASP and what percentage don't? Okay. I'd like to encourage you to join the ASP but mostly, even if you don't want to join the ASP for whatever reasons, get into some kind of distribution network. It's absolutely essential. I will tell you that I am sending out fewer and fewer individual disks and I think that's true of the shareware authors that have been at it for a while. Basically, I have a branding scheme that shows me where registrations are coming from. When people register, they register my programs from inside the program where there's a registration key that tells me exactly to who and when I send out an individual disk. It takes me a lot of extra time because I have to brand that disk individually, but I've discovered - because I know where my registrations are coming from - that sending out individual disks is not profitable for me. I can send to the SDN project; I send through the ASP mailing; I send through a number of other services; I upload to GEnie and CIS; I do a number of other things. For me, when I have a new release, really and truly, I send out something in the neighborhood of 30 disks and that's it. There's a question? QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: <> BOB SCHENOT: I can't key it to a particular vendor, but I know SDN either did or didn't work for me. Okay? That's what I know and that's why I'm cutting back on individual disks. It's my experience that when I send out individual disks that are keyed, the number of registrations are real low, real low. So I'm saying, hey, the heck with it. I'll send out 30 disks to the 30 top guys in terms of performance. Your job is to get on that train. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: <> BOB SCHENOT: That's true, that's true, and basically I've given up on trying to track individual vendors. I have personally; other authors haven't. ANOTHER PANELIST: You track what you can. It's impossible; the nature of shareware is like termites: it just goes everywhere. There's no accurate way to track it, but the fact that you know that registrations are coming from your mailing to the SDN network is significant because it means it's a good place to mail to. That's the best you can do really. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: <> BOB SCHENOT: All I'm saying is that my problem was, I was sending out 500 disks. That took a lot of time and a lot of money. I said what happens if I only send out 35 disks to the channels that give me the most bang for my buck. I found out that there was no effect. So, heck, given a choice between sending out 35 disks and sending out 500, it was a no-brainer. I only send out 35 disks now. With rare exceptions, a new release for me gets 35 disks: one to ASP, one to SDN, a couple of uploads to CIS, a couple of uploads to GEnie, and there are a couple of other select disks that I do send out that get me into things like America On-Line. That's it for me. Now just so you are aware of a little bit of the dynamics of what's going on with the channel. There's a concept that's been running around that I'm partially responsible for, called Sharebox. This is not the time to talk about it, but basically it's a way for vendors to encourage registrations. Authors would buy Sharebox at a reduced price. It would carry advertising and the idea is the advertising would be for vendors who would say, "If you turn this in as evidence of having actually registered a program, we'll give you a free disk with the rest of your order." They would still have to pay shipping and handling. I'm kind of excited about that idea because it encourages registrations and we'll talk about it in other meetings, hopefully. If you possibly can, I encourage you to get on CIS and/or GEnie, just for communications purposes. It will get you connected into what's going on in the rest of the shareware community, and it makes it a whole lot easier for me to talk to you and for you to talk to me. The only other thing that I will mention is that I personally am tightening up dramatically on my stale messages. Do you all know what a stale message is? A stale message is something in the program where some time after it's released, when you bring up the program, it pops up a message that says, in essence, "I will continue to work properly, but you really should have a much more recent release of me because there's been at least two releases since I was out." The reason that Shareware authors are doing that is because vendors have four year old copies of the program that have a bad address, and probably a bug, and God knows what else. The only way a shareware author can protect himself from those terribly old copies of software is by popping up a message like that. I would suggest that you find out which programs have stale messages, and that you don't carry shareware that's over two years old. Or at least be aware of that, because that's the only way we have of defending ourselves against those things that are going on forever. I think a lot of authors are using stale messages now. I started out at three years and I'm now slowly back to a two year stale message. So with any of my software, at least you can take a look at the date on the EXE file and two years from then it will put up a nice message. It will not stop working. All it says is to talk to your distributor and get a more recent copy, because I'm old. And there was a question. Your mike is not on. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I have a couple of questions. First of all, you want responses from vendors. I get a lot of different types of mail that's from authors. Sometimes an author will send me a disk with a postcard with the postage paid which says, "Check this off if you're going to distribute, check this off if you're not." Then I get others where I get almost a nasty reply that says, "Write me or you're gonna hear from my lawyer." PANELIST: I want to answer that. There are bozos in every industry. This is just my opinion. I probably wouldn't be here doing what I do if you weren't there doing what you do. If you get a nasty letter from someone like me I'd throw it in the trash and not carry that program. I mean, all I want from you is a form postcard. That's all I really need. I don't need any effort and I don't want you to spend a whole lot of money. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: That's what I was going to say, I don't expect to pay my postage and everything. But as you know just about every shareware product has a file you can print to register it. Couldn't you put another file in there for the vendors just to check off a few things and mail it off to say, "Hey, I'm distributing your software, this is how I distributed it, this is some key information." PANELIST: Actually, I've had a vendor use the registration form for that once. They took it, they printed out the registration form and then - I include a remarks section where the user can give me some feedback - he said, "This really isn't a registration; I'm a new vendor. I'm carrying your program, could you please add me to your mailing list?" That's fine with me. They can do a screen print on the opening screen with the address and everything on it and just put down, "I'm carrying this", and I'm satisfied. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: If you made just a 1-K file with a bunch of check-offs on it and we could print that out... ANOTHER PANELIST: The thing is, trying to get two authors to do something the same way... I think it's a good idea, but I also think that a lot of the programs have too many files going with them and it just gets confusing. What do I look at, what do I check off, and so on. That's why I try to promote the idea of the form postcard. It's just something where you don't even have to look for a file in my program, you just send back the postcard. I do want to say one other thing about that postcard though, because now I've seen hundreds of responses from vendors. Some of them have been quite short and really great. Some of them have been long or short and not so great. Try to look as professional as you can. If you look professional to me, then I figure you look professional to your customers. Don't misspell words, don't use bad grammar. You know, don't cross things out and... ANOTHER PANELIST: Know how to spell potato. PREVIOUS PANELIST: What? Know how to spell potato, right. Can you spell French Fry? ANOTHER PANELIST: True, true. It's much easier that way. PREVIOUS PANELIST: And while I'm talking, the other thing is: forms to fill out. This will be really short. The only forms I'll fill out are for PC-SIG and SDN. That's it. Because I want to kind of send out my form disks, as it were. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: My second question. If I get a new program in, I don't immediately access my library. We compile a list of new files, and at a certain time we ship them out. I get the ASP mailing, put it in the library, and about a week after we shipped out the new library, the next version of Integrity Master comes out. Well, it's going to be another month and a half before I'm going to do a new update for my library. That means the old version of Integrity Master is going to sit on my shelves for a month and a half. Is that a problem? PANELIST: I'm complaining about the guys that take three years, okay? I don't want to rag you for six weeks. On occasion - thank goodness I have not had this problem, others have - on occasion you send out something with a bug. Hopefully, you send out things with big red stickers or red envelopes to all the vendors you're aware of that says, "There's a bug in this program, please, please, please replace it." I hope you would make an exception, if that day ever comes for me or any other author. But we're talking about three year kind of stuff. The chronic stuff is the author who moves and needs to change the address for registration. Vendors are out there still sending out the old stuff and, you know, the phone number's no longer good. So a typical thing -- by the way that you may not be aware of this -- is that many, many people who are about to register shareware pick up the phone. They call it with an installation question or they call it for something else, but what they're really doing is checking to see if the author's really still there. If the phone doesn't get answered, or it's a wrong number or something, they never send in the registration. So it's critical for us -- when and if we move -- to have a new version of the software out there. But six weeks is not going to make a difference. Three years is really kind of outrageous, you know? PERSON ON THE FLOOR: We do wholesale and we've got people out in California. It takes a while for what we send to get to them. Making updates will take at least two weeks. PANELIST: Not a problem for me. ANOTHER PANELIST: Well, see, that's not really a problem. A lot of times, like you said, the author will come in with a big, red piece of paper that says, "Oh, my God, I screwed up!" and explain what happened. In fact, when I do an update that's strictly a bug fix, I will tell the vendor exactly what the bug is, in case a user calls, and exactly how to avoid it. In my stuff, if I have a bug, it's usually something like a combination of keystrokes that my beta-testers did not find and I did not find, and then finally one user somewhere has found it. But I don't have a problem with that not being shipped for a short period of time just because you've got the stock. But I've got a major problem if you mailed out 300 copies since I mailed you the update, and you haven't reacted. ANOTHER PANELIST: There's another point and that is -- especially for smaller vendors -- if you put out a catalog, say, every three months or every six months or whatever, and it says "Catalog-On-A-Disk Version 1" on it, and you get Version 2 of our software -- which I'm holding in my hand, by the way -- nobody's going to fault you for shipping Version 2 even before your next catalog comes out. They'll like it. ANOTHER PANELIST: Kind of the reverse of that, from a vendor point of view, is the author who doesn't send you updates. We had an author call the other day, [who] said, "[You have] an old version in the catalog," and we asked him, "Well, did you send us the update?" He said, "Well, no." SECOND PANELIST: Authors are dumb. PREVIOUS PANELIST: Well, you all seem pretty conscientious about it, but not every author is. ANOTHER PANELIST: One more final comment on that. You mentioned something about receiving ASP mailing. I assume, therefore, you're a member of the ASP? If you're talking about two week, three weeks -- if you want hard numbers -- the ASP regulations are that updates must be in the vendor's library within 90 days. So you're talking three months. So, just like anything else, there are those of us who turn around and send out -- not myself -- but authors who send out updates every two weeks. Well, that's not realistic either. We're talking 90 days. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: When you send us an update, tell us the exact version number. A lot of times, we'll get a program will say version 4.4 and we'll put 4.4 in our catalog. But the actual version on the disk might be 4.42. We update on a weekly basis, but the only problem we have is when the author switches from one disk to two disks, or vice versa; the update has to wait until we have a new catalog. PANELIST: For what it's worth, on that note... Right now -- as we're speaking -- in the other room, the vendors are sitting up here telling the authors all the things we're doing wrong. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: One of the main things that many authors do is take a non-meaningful name for their program, and there's nothing you can do to make that thing move. It just creates a lot of junk and a lot of hassle for everyone. And the other thing I would like to see is another file, with your program, in the same format as the data base for the ASP catalog. PANELIST: On the first one, I would say, don't carry that author's program, and if you choose to carry it ,tell the author. That will make significant changes in the way authors are dealing with you. I want to make your job easy because, if your job is easy for my program, you're going to carry it and distribute it. So, if you're not carrying it, I'm interested in finding out why. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Well, one of the classic examples -- I don't know if he's here today, he was here last year -- is a program called George. PANELIST: Did you tell him? Did you tell him that last year? SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Yes... SAME PANELIST: Well, what I'm saying is, don't make it your problem. It's his problem. You see what I'm saying? SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Well, the obvious thing would be to try to get him to change his name, since no other author apparently has a comparable program -- and he refused to let people change the name. He's turning off... Our customers come looking for something and we don't have that because it's not going to sell. PANELIST: I understand exactly what you're saying. All you can do is tell him once. If he chooses to ignore reality, what can I tell you? COMMENT FROM THE AUDIENCE: <> SAME PANELIST: I'm sure there are. That's an unfortunate truth about the industry that we're both in together. Just as there are bozo vendors and bozo BBSs, there are bozo authors. You can work with them or not work with them, as you choose. All I personally ask is that you tell us when we're bozos -- if we are, you know? Just once. ANOTHER PANELIST: A comment in that vein -- perhaps this product, George, may be the obvious exception... On the other hand choosing a product name that is not directly related sometimes is an advantage. For myself, I have a screen saver, I call it Blanket.p Looking back, I don't think that was too smart of a choice. We have name recognition now; we're sticking with it. But the problem is that you get an awful lot of authors who don't know what's out there and just choose an obvious name. We ran into the problem with that ourselves and we ended up changing our product name -- which hurts us because what happens is, in the long run, we don't get any product name recognition. We just lost out, if we have to change our name. That's why -- in terms of oil companies -- Exxon spent millions of dollars doing a search for a word that means nothing in any language in the world. So there's also merit in that. ANOTHER PANELIST: Now it means oil slick. <> NEW PANELIST: Another thing, that none of the authors have brought up: when an author goes about naming a program, that's not a process -- at least not for me -- I do on the spur of the moment. I do a little research to see if someone else out there has the same name. Now that this is becoming a crowded field, it's possible that you and five other authors have the same name for a program that does a similar function. I've gotten into two arguments with authors. One was with an author who used the title Video Master - which was mine. The vendor received it and replaced mine with his without knowing it. I'm in version 8, this was version 2. I saw version 2 in the catalog and had a cow. Immediately got on the phone with the vendor and found out it was another author who had named the program the same thing. So as things get more confused, you're going to see wilder and wilder names for things that may not be exactly descriptive. But you've got to also remember that we're playing in a field that's getting bigger by the minute, and it's harder to come up with a unique name that's also going to supply a hook -- for the author to get that name recognition. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: You had mentioned about your - I guess Bob - about your vendors helping out with the registrations, and you said you'd speak about it in another session -- but which session? PANELIST: In the ASP meeting, it's sort of half way on the agenda. I would be very, very interested in speaking with any vendors who would like to talk to me privately or in a corner somewhere or whatever, about the concept. I'm kind of excited about it because it's a mechanism for encouraging registration that - hopefully - will bring you some recognition and publicity -- at not a whole lot of cost -- and also maybe get a higher proportion of the user community to register shareware. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: As a vendor, I would love to know how many people are registering it. Some of the people looking at the product... I heard some of the people talking: "Well, let's go in and register this together so we can get it." Which I told them that the idea is to put the... PANELIST: My best guess is that registration rates vary anywhere from one thousandth of one percent upward to perhaps as high as 80 percent. I personally think that Time Track -- my product, which is oriented towards corporate work groups -- has an extraordinarily high registration rate because corporations just don't fool around with that kind of thing. On the other hand, there are many, many games - where their registration incentives are not very strong - where the registration rate probably is extremely low. I was speaking to a ASP games author last night who has made some of the real hit lists, and he's getting like two and three registrations a month -- and that's reality. Some authors make money and a lot of them don't. I personally put the vast majority of the burden on me as an author to explain the shareware concept and to provide registration incentives. I don't expect you to do that. I expect you to just not stand in my way. In all honesty, other authors have different opinions and I recognize that. But I think that, if we work together in some kind of organized way, maybe we can encourage people. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Do you feel that, if the vendor offers to cover your disk mailing cost, that that's a quick way of getting an author's attention? PANELIST: Yes. That happens about once a year. ANOTHER PANELIST: It gets my attention. A THIRD PANELIST: Another thing... I had a vendor send me a letter, and what he said: "If a user registers your program, you'll see a slip from us. When that slip is returned to us, the user will get a free disk -- if he registers your program." Now I'm seeing all these slips come in with registration checks. I'm happy to sign them, and I'm looking at his company name every time I sign one of those slips to acknowledge the fact that the person did indeed register. Like I told you about the one vendor who mailed me two boxes of disks and said keep me there for a while: yeah, it caught my attention. No problem at all. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Earlier, it was discussed about updating your documentation version number and program version number. I just wanted to let you know that there are many times when - at Public Brand - when I'm doing an update, and I wind up taking two or three author disks, putting them in three or four different subdirectories and doing direct DOS compares to make sure each file matches byte for byte. You don't know how confusing that may be sometimes. Please, by all means, if you send us an update, at least put some kind of alpha or generic change or new version number on it so we'll know which one supersedes what. It used to be we would have a tray full of superseded updates and somebody would have to go back through and start doing comparing to make sure it actually was superseded. PANELIST: Hopefully, the guys in the other room are being told that right now. I will confess that early in my career, I was a guilty one. At this seminar, last year, I cleaned up my act, and hopefully, I have been good since. I agree with you. You're preaching to the converted at this table, I'm sure, and hopefully the guys at the other side are getting the message. ANOTHER PANELIST: I fight too much with PBS not to include the version numbers. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Also, regarding updates, it was mentioned that -- a person on the right here... I can't read his name tag from here... You were talking about, you send out 35 disks, updating your particular program. I'd like all authors, if you're updating your program, to make the Public Brand Forum on ZiffNet one of your targets, because we were talking a couple of days ago about making your updates live before we actually finish the review process. We'll make that known to the users. We'll indicate this is an update and it doesn't have Public Brand approval yet, but you can download it and we appreciate your comments. PANELIST: I have a return question, if I could, because I'm very interested in that. I'm not terribly interested in sending $2.50 a month to ZiffNet in order to upload once every couple months. If I include the disk in the ASP mailing, will it get into ZiffNet? PERSON ON THE FLOOR: It will. It will take longer, though. PANELIST: That's okay. Because otherwise, we're talking about ten bucks per release for the privilege of updating to ZiffNet and quite honestly, I don't upload to any place that charges me money. I think most authors feel the same way. But if you'll catch me through the ASP mailing, that's fine, we're in good shape. For whatever it's worth, you guys may want to think about that. I think very few authors are interested in paying $2.50 a month plus connect time to get to the point where you're uploading in order to have the great privilege of uploading. It just doesn't work that way. ANOTHER PANELIST: Maybe there should be a free area for author uploads or something. It struck me that way, too; it seemed like a tax on uploading. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Well, this is something that's been recently discussed. I'm not here to say whether or not that is the case -- whether it's a free upload or charge. I can't answer those types of questions. PANELIST: I didn't lose my warm and fuzzy feelings for Ziff and PBS because of that. I just decided that there were other ways to get the programs to you guys. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: A lot of the ASP authors, they include on the disk a DESCRIBE file or a VENDOR.DOC file, and it's usually that system that advises us. It's got a short description, a medium length description, a long description and usually the short description... <> We don't really have a large catalog - maybe four pages, both sides with 350 to 400 files. We won't put a whole lot of description on it. I would appreciate it if, in the future, authors would try to do like a Dan Quayle or a George Bush and give us a nice little sound bite. <> PANELIST: That's right. I think the short description should be 40 characters long, like it is on a BBS. A one line description. The medium description should be two lines maximum, and then the long one should be Tolstoy. But again, all you can do is tell authors what you prefer and if they do it, that's great, carry our programs. If we don't do it, then let us know. You might also want to look for a file called "FILE_ID.DIZ" which a lot of ASP authors are now including and that is a up to eight lines, 45 characters wide. It's a text file but you may not have been aware of it, and that's mostly used by sysops. <>