Jon Samsel

An NDA is an agreement between two parties to protect the privacy of their ideas when disclosing those ideas to each other, or to signatory third parties.

Here is what a sample Non-Disclosure Agreement looks like:

In connection with your review of certain confidential information created by UltraHip Publishers of America (”UltraHip”), we ask that you read and accept the following conditions on UltraHip’s disclosure of such information:

“Proprietary Information” shall mean all information obtained by you from or disclosed to you by UltraHip which:

(i) relates to UltraHip’s past, present or future research, development or business activities or the results from such activities or ;

(ii) which UltraHip has received from others and which UltraHip is obligated to treat as confidential or proprietary. Proprietary information shall not include information previously known to you or publicly disclosed without breach of an obligation of confidentiality, either prior or subsequent to your receipt of such information. You agree that you shall hold all proprietary information in confidence and shall not use any proprietary information except as may be authorized by UltraHip in writing. You shall not disclose by publication or otherwise to any person any such Proprietary Information. You further agree that at any time upon request of UltraHip you shall return to UltraHip any and all written or descriptive matter including, but not limited to, financial information, descriptions or other papers or documents which contain any such proprietary information, together with all copies thereof.

If the foregoing reflects your understanding, please sign this agreement in the space provided below.

AGREED TO AND ACCEPTED BY:
____________________    ________
(Your name & company)     (Date)

____________________    ________
(UltraHip representative)     (Date)

Lester Wunderman, the so-called father of direct marketing, once said that “advertising becomes a dialogue that becomes an invitation to a relationship.” In his book Being Direct, he also says that direct marketing is both an art and science that communicates directly with an individual to change behavior and not just an attitude to gain a measurable response.

Direct marketing is any direct communication directed at targeted individuals or demographic where a response is asked for and expected. A response can take many forms– a phone call, a direct order, a sales lead, or traffic to a website—but in DR, a response usulally refers to the results of your campaign.

Direct Response Television (commonly referred to as DRTV) is a sub-channel of direct response marketing utilizing short form TV commercials (spots less than two minutes in length) and longer form infomercials that compel consumers into action through use of an 800 number to get direct responses to the advertiser.

Launching compelling and effective DRTV campaigns may seem easy, but as Wunderman said, it’s a little bit art and science. The key to effective DRTV is presenting a clear, concise and compelling sales presentation. The more time your have to present and sell, the more likely you are to generate responses.

The ‘art’ portion of DRTV is made up of the fun, creative aspects of shooting and presenting the spots themselves. The spokesperson you hire, the script you write, the focus group you test with, the offer presented, the live audience you coral, and the creativity of your on-screen graphics or the set you build to film in—are all critical pieces of the creative puzzle.

But the science part of DRTV success is just as important.

15 Primary Levers for Optimizing DRTV Campaigns:

1. Media planning & buying process
2. Communication & planning
3. Testing methodology / testing process
4. Audience profiling / geo-targeting
5. Integrated multi-channel campaigns
6. Day-to-day media buying and how media buyers are compensated
7. Amount of media spend / duration of campaign
8. Spot style & format
9. Final commercial or informercial / creative variations of each spot
10. The demonstration
11. Message / offer
12. Talent (spokesperson, voice over, audience, etc)
13. Supporting microsite to continue the offline conversation online / boost responses
14. Reporting, day-parting, analytics / optimizing cost to response to sales ratio
15. Performance and compensation of sales staff responding to DRTV responses

It’s been said that the key to sales success is learning how to budget your time. But the term “time-management” seems to create a false impression of what a person is able to do. Time-management is actually self-management. Time can’t be managed. Time is uncontrollable; we can only manage ourselves, and our use of time.

It’s interesting that the skills we need to manage others are the same skills that we need to manage ourselves: the ability to plan, delegate, organize, direct and control. Part of this includes being able to recognize what wastes your time.

Here is a list of common time-wasters:

1. Shifting priorities and crisis management
2. Lack of priorities/objectives
3. Procrastination
4. Too much clutter
5. Attempting too much

Ideas for Effective Self Management

1. Define your objectives as clearly as possible. Do you find you are not doing what you want because your goals have not been set? One attribute of successful people is their ability to work out what they want to achieve using written goals, which they review constantly. Your long term goals should impact your daily activities and be included on your “to do” list. Without a goal or objective people tend to just drift personally and professionally
2. Analyze your use of time. Are you spending enough time on the important things? If you are constantly asking yourself “What is the most important use of my time, right now?” it will help you to focus on ‘important tasks’ and stop reacting to tasks which seem urgent (or pleasant to do) but carry no importance towards your goals.
3. Have a plan. How can you achieve your goals without a plan? Most people know what they want but have no plan to achieve it except through hard work. Your monthly plan should be reviewed daily and reset as your achievements are met. Successful people make lists constantly. It enables them to stay on top of priorities and enable them to remain flexible to changing priorities. This should be done for both personal and business goals. The value of a good plan is to identify trouble spots early and seek out solutions. “I don’t let a single day go by without knowing why I didn’t capture a sale. Be sure to measure the progress you make toward your goals because what you can measure you can control.

Self-management is not a hard subject to understand, but unless you are committed to integrating time-management techniques into your daily routine you’ll only achieve partial results. The lesson to learn is that the more time we spend planning our time and activities the more time we will have for those activities.

Whether or not you are aware of it, our world is structured into a series of shapes and patterns and sounds that trigger pleasure in us. This systematic organization is part of our intuitive nature—it allows us to structure sensory information into consciousness, thought, and language. It’s the way we humans are designed.

In the interactive world, design structure is more than just notes scribbled on a napkin or a complex flowchart depicting sequential scenes of an application in rich detail. Interactive design structure fulfills two important duties: it defines the navigational boundaries of the user experience and it is the framework that holds all the creative elements of an interactive work together.

You are now ready to make some pretty important decisions that will have a serious impact on the ability of the user to navigate your interactive application. As an interactive writer, it is your job to identify the user’s perceived range of action—keeping in mind that “what the user can do” directly corresponds with the “rules and pathways you create.”

For example, an interactive environment such as Myst [the groundbreaking first-person point of view adventure game created by Robyn and Rand Miller], which has a wide range and depth of choice, may be perceived as more interactive than a conditional branching system with limited choices. This is true, in part, because of the navigation methodology built into the system—a methodology that emphasizes the program’s “critical objective” over a “critical path” mentality. A critical objective is a centralized aim, goal, or action whereby the end user’s overall path of discovery stresses a “means to an end,” rather than fulfilling an immediate task. Key elements within such an application are revealed over time as the user navigates through the application. A critical path is a single correct path a user must follow to successfully complete an application. This is a procedural approach to completing a task.

The distinction between a critical objective and a critical path is significant. Many players confess that what they like best about playing Myst is “exploring the environment.” Finishing the game is much less important.

In her essay “The Garden of Merging Paths,” Rebecca Solnit writes, “Much recent attention to interactive media proposes that it makes the passive viewer become actively engaged. What is interesting about these products is that they map out a number of choices, but the choices are all pre-selected…that is, the user cannot do anything or go anywhere that the creator has not planned; as usual with computer programs, one must stay on the path and off the grass (by which analogy hackers do get off the path, a subversive success that keeps them in the park). We could chart the game as a series of forks in the road, in which each choice sets up another array of choices, but the sum total of choices has already been made. Thus the audience becomes the user, a figure who resembles a rat in a conceptual version of a laboratory maze. The audience-user is not literally passive; he is engaged in making choices, but the choices do not necessarily represent freedom, nor does his activity represent thinking.”

Douglas Gayeton, who has worked on high-profile projects such as Plug In (AOL), Waking Hours (Boxtop/IXL), Johnny Mnemonic (Sony ImageSoft), and Vanishing Point (MSN/Sunshine Digital), claims, “The geography of an interactive space is an illusion…it’s a directed experience. You only need to art direct (or write) what the viewer will see. If a location is too richly composed and features too many objects, the viewer will expect to be able to interact with everything. When she finds that she can’t, she will realize she’s hit a ‘wall’ in the interactive world.”

In his book The Complete Wargames Handbook, author James F. Dunnigan cautions, “Keep in mind that a computer does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do. Unlike people (some people, anyway), you can’t just tell a computer what you want done and expect your request to be carried out. Computers require explicit instructions. These are called computer programs, or computer software. The terms ‘program’ and ‘software’ are often used interchangeably.”

The opening pages of a novel are vitally important. They must grab the reader’s attention quickly and hold it. Many browsers in bookstores turn to the first page or introduction of the book. If they like what they read they may decide to buy it then and there. If they’re bored by what they read, or the material has little interest or promise of being a good read, they will replace the book on the shelf and reach for another one.

Here are some useful questions to ask yourself when planning the introduction for your novel:

• What is the first thing I can open with in my book that will hook the reader’s attention?
• Is there some dramatic or surprise beginning I could use?
• Would a key question get attention?
• How can I make my introduction for this book different and especially appealing?

Study and read carefully the introductions used by other writers for their books. Here are a few classics worth noting:

• It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)
• Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
• You better not never tell nobody but God. - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
• Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
• All this happened, more or less. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
• In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
• They shoot the white girl first. - Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)
• The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. - Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)
• He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
• Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)
• When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. - James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

If you have a daily job, it’s clear that the only time you will have for your writing is either early in the morning or in the evening. You may be too exhausted in the evening, so that leaves the morning as probably your best time.

You need some time for recreation and plain relaxation. Many authors find their best time for work by experimenting with different schedules. You can do the same.

You could, for example, get in two hours of writing in the early morning hours before going to your job. Many authors have turned out fine books using such a schedule. A plus about morning work is that your mind is fresh.

Another option is working from eight or nine at night to midnight. A worthy and realistic goal is about three hours a day at least for your writing. If there is no way you can devote three hours a day to it, then you will have to settle for an hour or so in the morning and evening. You should try both. You could of course do an hour in the morning and one or two at night.

It is vitally important that you work in the same place and at the same time each day. At least most authors believe this is important. Your mind will learn that you mean to work at that time and in that place. Training your mind in good work techniques is very helpful.

The mind becomes used to a routine and cooperates better than it would if you wrote at a different time and place each day. Some lucky authors can write no matter where they are or what time of day or night it is. John O’Hara, who was very successful, wrote all night.

Some authors work hard Monday through Friday and then totally relax during the weekend. Others work the same hours at their writing desk seven days a week.

Some authors don’t go on clock time; they set a certain number of pages to do per day as a goal. Some days they may get their pages early, but on others it may take them more than three hours. Three or four pages a day is a realistic goal for many authors. Others go for more. George Sand’s thirty pages a night was incredible, but one wonders how many pages of that output had to be thrown out.

A long break from your writing routine may cause difficulty in getting started again. There are natural rhythms in writing. This is one reason why many authors like to work every day when doing a book. A week or two away from writing, or even a weekend, may interrupt your normal rhythm or cycle.

The right place to write will also come by experimenting. Some authors rent hotel rooms without windows so there are no distractions. They even remove the telephones. You can try your kitchen table, a desk in a study, a formal office, the seashore, a cabin in the mountains, or wherever. Go with wherever the words seem to flow best. Again, remember that Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather on his kitchen table. Other authors have written on coffee tables while sitting on the carpet, on airplanes, boats, trains, and other places. Try some of them and go with the place you like best.

It may sound obvious, but try to keep one fact about writing books in mind at all times: Chapters make your book. This basic truth can help you finish any number of projects.

Chapters are the framework of your book. You can sustain your enthusiasm by realizing that you draw ever nearer to its completion with every new chapter you finish.

Don’t underestimate this truth. Many people who consider writing a book never do it. An important reason why they never do is that the thought of all the work involved scares them. It can be frightening to think of the work required for a book, regardless of the length.
So don’t let your book project leer at you with its length, scope, or amount of work needed to become a reality. Seeing all that work—in one massive dose—can depress even the most prolific of authors.

Your salvation lies in chapters. By breaking the total project down, you’re not overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it. You may not see how your book will end, or even see its middle part. Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on doing one chapter at a time.

Give your attention to the chapter at hand. When you’re satisfied with it, move on to the next. Chapters have a marvelous way of adding up, just as pages do.

Focus on the bits and pieces of your project—the words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters. These will all work together to produce the beginning, middle, and end of your book.

Look at it this way. If you wrote just one page a day for the next year, you would have a book of 365 pages. Or you could do the same by writing two pages a day for six months. The work schedule you set and stick to is up to you.

Some authors develop various ways to keep making progress on their books. One, for example, plans his next chapter whenever he finds himself bogged down with a current one. This way, he doesn’t lose valuable time.

A lot of writers work hard on the advance planning of chapters. Such work pays off when they are ready to begin the actual writing of the book. After you complete chapter one, you already have a script for chapter two and know where you’re heading with the material. That’s the result of advance planning. It keeps your progress moving forward smoothly and continually.

Advance planning of chapters can be another source of enthusiasm. You’re eager to get into the next chapter because the plan for it is ready and waiting. The total effort results in increased confidence as your book comes to life.

While some novels don’t have any chapter headings, most nonfiction books make use of them.

Chapter headings can increase the sales of your book. Watch how many browsers and customers in bookstores skim through books, glancing at the chapter headings. Many will decide to buy a particular book if the chapter headings offer promise of good reading.

What is more important is the fact that well-written chapter headings stimulate your writing all through your book. Some will interest you more than others, but all of them act as signals. They tell what each chapter is about and what the reader is likely to find there.

Next time you are at a bookstore, thumb through some books to see for yourself which chapter headings stand out. You can then go home and think about a few possible chapter headings you might use for your new book. Don’t be afraid of stimulating your creative neurons– you may be pleasantly surprised by the results!