Subject: Viridian Note 00064: Viridian Finances

Key concepts: fundraising, imaginary products, fake ad 
campaigns, Viridian  Curia, Viridian Library, online 
bookselling, book recommendations, critical assessment

Attention Conservation Notice:  It's about money.  But you 
don't get any money.  If you're not careful, you might end 
up spending some money.

Links: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/

Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest:
http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fo
ssil.gif
http://www.subterrane.com
http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana
(note dino animation at bottom of page)
http://www.phuq.com/viridian
http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif
http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/index.html
http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/banner.html
http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/sunservr.html
http://www.dux.ru/digbody/viridian/vir.htm
http://members.aol.com/stjude/viridian
This contest expires May 31, 01999

  I now have over thirty volunteers for the Viridian 
Curia, which is plenty of people. Maybe too many. 
Membership in the Curia will be closed until further 
notice.

   As their first creative effort, these Curia people are 
going to create some souvenir Viridian swag which can be 
given away or sold.  In order to do this, they require 
some capital, and this note is about generating some money 
for their operations.

   Thanks to the good offices of Jon Lebkowsky 
(jonl@well.com^^^^^^^^^), I have been running a mail-order 
bookstore out of my website for a couple of months now.  
We are linked to amazon.com, and the myrmidons of Bezos do 
all our shipping and ordering work while giving us a 5 
percent referral fee.  

     Lebkowsky and I just got out first amazon royalty 
check.  It's fifty bucks, which is about enough to order a 
couple of jumbo pizzas and a bottle of decent Chianti.  I 
don't know what Lebkowsky's doing with his share of the 
money == he's the one doing all the website work, so 
heaven knows he deserves it == but I am putting all of my 
bookstore loot straight into the Viridian Treasury.

    I'm not under the illusion that this teensy virtual 
bookstore is going to generate enough money to get us 
anywhere important.  There are three things about it that 
strongly appeal to me, however.

(1) The first is that it doesn't require much attention. 
Except from Lebkowsky, that is.

(2)  The second is that, as a byproduct, it allows 
Viridian people a fine opportunity to create and 
accumulate a useful Viridian library on relevant subjects 
such as climate change, postindustrial design, and 
propaganda graphics. (I don't think these subjects have 
ever been grouped in one place before, but it's high 
time.) 

(3) The third cool thing is that the whole thing is 
basically being underwritten by the frantic day-trading 
lunatics who have driven the "value" of Amazon.com out of 
the stratosphere.  These people are *definitely* the 
target demographic group of marks and suckers who should 
be painlessly tapped for some cash so that we Viridians 
can enjoy ourselves.

    On http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/ I have a 
little Viridian library going already, but I want to 
expand it radically.  Therefore, I want you, the 
experienced and canny Viridian list reader, to tell me 
about the high-quality, relevant books that you are 
convinced other Viridians should be reading.  

     I don't want you to disgorge some dry bibliography of 
all possible reference works -- don't bug me with this.  I 
am an author, I know very well that the world is chock-
full of boring books.  You *have to blurb them for us,* so 
that we can have some assurance that we are not wasting 
our valuable attention on your pet obsession with left-
handed Croatian land snails.   I want to know about books 
that are of vital Viridian interest, so that Viridians can 
come by the site, buy some book, receive it, enjoy it, get 
some real benefit out of it, and then come back and 
cheerfully buy another one.  

    Note that I am not begging you to give us any money.  
What I'm begging for here is some intelligent attention 
and some critical assessment.  Thanks to Bezos et al, we 
now have a method by which we can turn this critical 
practice into money.  This money will be spent on 
Viridiana, so at length, and theoretically, it ought to 
benefit you.

     I make one exception to this policy of high quality. 
If you are on Viridian list and you yourself write books, 
I will put your books up on the site even if they are 
dull, irrelevant and stupid.  After all, my own books are 
up there, too.  Many of them are not in the least 
Viridian.  If you're on this list, I'm kind of interested 
in knowing what you write. So, tell me about your own 
books.  You'll get the usual royalties if we sell any, 
while the group will get the referral fee.

     I also inherited some books quite recently.  They 
have nothing to do with Viridian matters, but the stacks 
of dusty books here are literally driving me out of the 
Viridian Vatican.  I believe I will sell the surplus off, 
perhaps in the new amazon.com bidding system, and add 
these book salvage funds to the Viridian Treasury.  

    And after all that, I dunno.  Maybe a for-profit blood 
drive.

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MY EMAIL BURNS OIL AND DAMAGES YOUR CLIMATE 
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