I shall be kind. I shall not mention his name. He and I go back at least 35 years. He was for a few years one of the most successful self-published authors in America.
He has made two serious blunders.
BLUNDER #1: ZIPPED FILES
I have been writing about this blunder for over a decade. The best I can say is this: the vast majority of people who sell online information no longer make this mistake. The fact that this man made the mistake indicates that he is at least a dozen years behind the online industry.
Zip files were sometimes used very early in online sales. In order to save bandwidth and file size, the technician hired by the writer zipped the files. In other words, he compressed them digitally. He used a special program to do this. This cut the size of the file by maybe a third, or maybe more.
This was never necessary. Bandwidth was never that expensive. I have been online since 1996, and I never zipped any files.
What's the problem with zipping a file? This: the reader needs a special program to unzip the file in order to read it. These days, file-unzipping programs are rare. People used to sell them for $25. There were some free ones, but they weren't much good. All unzip programs I ever downloaded were hard to use. They were not automatic. The person had to know how to use the file unzip program, and it was unintuitive. So, he often could not unzip them. That was my situation for years. I learned well over a decade ago never to order any product online that was zipped.
Enter the munchkins.
Munchkin techies would zip the files, and the man who wrote the now-zipped document never beta-tested the sales system. He never noticed that his techie had zipped the files. He may not even have been aware of the problems associated with zip files. He just went along merrily.
There was an institutional problem here. The author, who was trying to sell the files in order make a profit, became dependent on the makers of third-party software to unzip the files. He made his income dependent on people he had no relationship with. He didn't know who these people were. He knew who ran his website. He knew who hosted his website, or at least he should have. But there was no way for him to know which unzip program a user would use. If he did not tell his technician to use a program that automatically unzipped the files, he was vulnerable to the errors built into the programs that users chose to unzip his files.
Ever since about 2004, high-speed Internet services and storage space have been so cheap that there is essentially no charge to store and deliver the unzipped document, so there is no excuse for zipping a file. Nevertheless, aging writers occasionally hire technicians who are stuck in 2003, and who still zip files. This is a bad combination.
Here is what I wrote in 2007.
Zipping Your Way to Lost Sales: The Absurdity of Zipped Data FilesWeb hosting space is cheap. A lost sale isn't.
Back in the Internet's youth, site owners were charged huge amounts for downloads. I recall being asked to pay $1,200 a month extra because my site's discussion forum was widely used. I switched sites. My download charges fell to zero.
I am sure that hosting service is out of business or under different management.
Back in that era, sites with high download rates could be expensive to maintain. So, site owners started using zip software to speed up downloads (at 56k) and to lower their use charges.
Today, anyone with money has cable or DSL. These people want fast service. They want uncomplicated service. Yet sites are still zipping files.
They become dependent on third-party suppliers of unzip software. Except for Adobe Reader, it's foolish to become dependent on any third-party supplier.
Some people don't have unzip software. Others don't know how to use it.
Recently, I came across a site with an information product I wanted -- several, in fact. The site had a great sales ad. I ordered the $97 product.
I could not use it. It was zipped. I canceled the order. If they bill me, I will contact Visa and complain. I told them within 2 minutes to cancel the order.
How many orders do they get, anyway? Here is an obscure site that gets few hits and even fewer orders. What are they thinking of? Zipping files to save money? What money?
They made life more difficult for me. Why? To save . . . what?
The seller had better make life easy for the buyer. The buyer is in control, not the seller.
Never zip a file. Never.
Later in the year, I wrote this.
The Implicit Message of ZIPPED Files: "We Don't Want Your Money. Go Away."To ZIP a program for downloading is to walk away from money unless the program automatically unzips.
With bandwidth cheap, there is no excuse to ZIP a file.
When you do it, you say: "We are poor. We cannot afford the bandwidth. We are barely surviving. We may be out of business next week."
When you ZIP a file that does not unzip automatically, you are asking the trial user to do extra work that he may not understand. You may even be forcing him to download a third-party UNZIP program, possibly that he must pay for. He may not know how to use it.
To become dependent on a third party to make your program operational is simply suicidal. It is user-unfriendly.
The user does not need you. After years of bad experiences, he does not trust you. He knows programmers are contemptuous of users. He can go elsewhere.
If your ZIPped files do not automatically unzip, find a better way to distribute your program.
What is the underlying problem? This: the author is dependent on a techie who cares zip -- sorry, I could not resist -- about buyers. He cares about his narrowly focused techie standards. He thinks compressed, shorter files are better files. They aren't. They are horrible files. They depend on third-party products to unzip them. Here is a rule for all online sellers of information: Do not become needlessly dependent on a third-party seller. He may go out of business. His service may self-destruct.
I wrote this in January 2008.
How to Alienate Buyers, Hurt Your Reputation, and Lose Money in Order to Avoid Upgrading Archaic Technology. (Don't Do This.)In the world of digits, the "default setting" is convenient for programmers. A case in point. . . .
Tonight, I ordered a package of direct-mail training materials. It looked like a good package. I paid $127.
As soon as the site had my credit card, it began to display poor programming. I was told I could not download the material until I inserted a special code. The code, the screen said, would be sent in an email.
It wasn't. No email. The autoresponder was dead.
I send an email to the site's manager. But the email address was goofy: two strung together.
I waited. Nothing.
Then I sent an email to a friend, who had been interviewed as part of the package. I told him to warn his buddy: dead autoresponder, angry customer.
I got a letter back from the seller in an hour. Personal. It had the code in it.
I pasted in the code and clicked. I was taken to a web page, where I was informed that all the files were zipped. I had to download Winzip. Winzip used to be shareware. These days, you have to pay for it.
In 8 years -- or is it 10? -- I have never learned how to use Winzip.
So, I have to spend more money to read his materials. So, he cheated me. His sales copy never mentioned Winzip. If it had, I would not have bought the package.
I have had this happen before: a surprise "gotcha!" involving Winzip. This was a stupid policy back in 1997, because it made the seller dependent on unreliable, confusing, third-party software. But in our day of cable modems and DSL, and bandwidth so cheap that sites people post movies, the policy is beyond mere stupidity. It is archaic.
If a site zips a file, it had better have automatic unzipping software that opens the file for the buyer. The buyer should never be told after a sale that he is responsible for the unzipping procedure. It's his money. It's therefore the seller's responsibility to provide the automatic extraction and installation software.
It would be like a new car salesman delivering the car without tires installed. He points to a stack of four tires. "You put them on. That's your job," he tells the buyer. "And you have to pay for the special tool to put them on the car."
You know what this tells me? A guy selling a package on how to sell doesn't know the basics of marketing. He has not learned the basic principle: Keep the buyer happy by making things easy for him. This guy thinks his #1 job is to make life easy for his Website's designer.
This seller lost a sale. He also lost any promotion I planned to do if the package was high quality.
Why are sellers so blind? Because they listen to programmers. The programmers tell them, "This is efficient." It's efficient from the programmer's point of view, but not from the buyer's point of view. But programmers are not interested in buyers' views. They don't work on commission. Why should they care?
I have asked the guy for a refund. I will not read his material. I don't trust his judgment as a seller. I surely will not trust his judgment as a teacher of marketing.
Lesson: satisfy the buyer, not your programmer. Keep buyers happy. Whether a programmer is unhappy is irrelevant. Programmers can be replaced. Unhappy customers are lost forever.
P.S. I sent him this article. He replied, "I'm sorry you feel this way." No, he isn't. If he were, he would have said, "You're right. I blew it. I will have my programmer fix the site ASAP."
He did say I can get a refund. Yet what I really wanted was the material.
My unnamed author recently advertised a $98 information package. I wanted that package. I'm always looking for one good idea from an information package, and he always supplies more than one idea.
I paid my money, and I was automatically sent digital links to the reports. They were zipped. I don't have a program to unzip files. I could not open the files.
Two days later, I was sent the zipped files. I was sent a link to a web page that would teach me how to unzip them.
I never would have bought them on this basis. The ad should have warned me in advance: "These are zipped files."
This foul-up took place because of the original foul-up, namely, zipping the files. I'm sure the author did not tell his techie to zip the files. I doubt that the author knows what a zipped file is. The techie did it on his own, and never told the author. The author never personally downloaded the offer in order to check the files. He doesn't think it's necessary. He trusts his munchkin techie.
That is a huge mistake. "All files are corrupted, zipped, or the wrong files." This is as true as the fact that "all guns are loaded." Therefore, always check the files and check the guns.
The author has wasted my time. He has wasted his assistant's time. He has wasted the customer service lady's time. That was because the technician wasted everybody's time. What is good for the technician may not be good for anybody else. The technician is going to look out for number one. He sees himself as number one, and everybody else can be ignored.
BLUNDER #2: BLOCKED FLOW OF BAD NEWS
When the munchkins know that their blunders will not be discovered by the boss, they can get away with murder.
A boss who enables the munchkins to block the flow of bad news is asking for blunders. He is subsidizing blunders. He is paying salaries that are not based on actual performance. In such a world, blunders are not subject to negative feedback. There are no negative sanctions. In a world governed by entropy, blunders are normal. Blunders mess up systems. Systems breakdown. This is normal. You have to build in a system of negative sanctions for blunders, or else your system will be overwhelmed by blunders.
The problem, obviously, is when an institution is really big, the CEO does not want to be overwhelmed by ticky-tacky problems. But then he has an obligation to hire specialists at good salaries to investigate problems. Their salaries are dependent on their ability to detect these problems, and possibly even to suggest solutions. But the system has to have negative sanctions built into it.
Munchkins defend each other. Noncommissioned officers want to protect their platoons from interference by captains and majors. There is loyalty downward more than there is loyalty upward. This is why every system has to have problem detectors who understand that their loyalty is upward, not downward. They will be resented by the munchkins, but they are necessary to the CEO.
If there isn't anyone serving this role, then anybody wanting to get bad news to the CEO has to go outside of channels.
Lesson: anytime you don't want public discussion of your foul-ups, make certain that there is an institutional procedure for straightening out the foul-ups before they go public.
CONCLUSION
If you run a business, never let the techies be in charge. If they really are in charge because of the nature of the business, seek to have good relationships with them. Explain politely why you want something done in a particular way, and give them bonuses if they do it your way. If you can't fire them, you had better be prepared to give them substantial bonuses for doing what you want them to do. They are in charge. They can impose negative sanctions on you.
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