Today's "Buck Up" Talk. Firefly vs. Snoopy

We're in the middle of proposing a new "spin off" launch this week and of course, the big concern on the marketing, circulation and numbers side is: "What will happen to Borders in the near future?"

For a project of this size, putting magazines into Borders is pretty key. So if the chain's not there when it's time to pull the final print order together, that's a problem. If we drop the mags into Borders and two weeks into the sales period, they shut their doors....

If you think about it, it's kind of like dropping an e-blast and having more addresses bounce back than you anticipated. Or realizing five minutes after you open the box that your android powered tablet doesn't work as advertised. Or in the middle of a meeting realizing that the connectivity problems you're having means you really wish your iPad could hook into your flash drive. Or...

For some inexplicable reason, scenes from the series Firefly kept bopping into my head as I worked on the numbers. In "Firefly", the crew of the ship named Firefly keeps moving further out in the void to find a better life because conditions for the former rebels continues to worsen. But somehow, those images  got all mixed up with Snoopy fighting his endless battles over the French landscape as he keeps getting shot down and keeps getting back into a plane to take to the sky.

So the email that summed it up best for me was this:

There's a proposal on the table. It's a print proposal but right there on page 8 are marketing ideas that tie in nicely to the ... digital vision and work well to merge print and digital. On pages 4 and 7 are merchandising ideas that would bring additional ... revenue.

If we get shot down, we get shot down. We pull the ripcord on the parachute, try not to break our legs when we land, head back to base and take another plane up.  Keep flying.

Keep flying. You'll find out.