Archive for the ‘Selling’ Category

Amazon KindleDroid? When Not If.

March 21st, 2011 Clint

Amazon isn’t releasing hard numbers but have said that the Kindle is now the highest selling item at Amazon. Industry estimates are that they sold about five to six million units last year and that so far this year it is actually outpacing projections so might well top ten million units in 2011. Those rather nebulous numbers mean that we will probably see Amazon sell almost half as many “tablets” as the much hyped Apple this year.

That is with a device that is pretty much relegated to e-reading only; what would happen if Amazon’s next generation Kindle is a full on Android tablet? How about one that is sized between the Kindle 3 and the DX while dropping the physical keyboard and thinning the bezel to allow it a 10“ screen?

First off, why would they want to do that?

Well, Apple is being a real dick with their new “if you want to sell anything through your own app, you need to give us a cut” policy. In the future, when Amazon sells an eBook through their own Kindle app, without ever sending an electron through Apple’s App Store, Apple wants a kickback because… uhhh… ummm… they want more money? It is probably a combination of an overt money grab and a covert herding of iOS users away from Amazon and to iBooks.

Extorting money from our customers? There’s an app for that.

So Amazon doesn’t want to gouge their customers for Apple or lose money if they stick to a level pricing for all devices. They won’t abandon the iOS field but they should want to give a viable option to the iPad.

Another reason is that, while the Kindle is selling well enough right now, it will start to lose sales as full featured tablets gain on it in price, readability and battery life while maintaining a large edge in utility. As more and more people get used to carrying tablets around with them all the time it becomes annoying to carry around a second device just for reading – although a few hundred thousand people do just that, they would probably prefer not to.

Then there is the rich media consumption, you can’t watch video on the Kindle and Amazon really wants to stream you video.

What do they need to add for a KindleDroid?

The primary bit of gear that is holding them back is the display. The Kindle uses a reflective, gray scale E Ink display that is really easy on the eyes and sips power at a tiny fraction of what an LCD does. The same company that makes the current display has recently introduced the “E Ink Triton Imaging Film” display… that is not adequate for motion of touch control. Amazon would have to switch to another source and that would be Qualcomm with their Mirasol technology. It does motion closer to LCDs and they are touting even lower power consumption than the greyscale e-ink displays.

mirasol

The processor also needs to be bumped up. The current CPU is inadequate for some of the more demanding apps and that needs to be addressed. They can stay inside the same processor family and simply move up from the Freescale i.MX353 to something from the i.MX 6 series… they don’t even have to go to the top, the i.MX6Solo should be able to do everything they need.

The Kindle uses a custom Linux OS so it shouldn’t take much to transition to the likewise custom Linux called Android.

Having only 4GB of memory is not a problem when it can hold thousands of books. It is a problem when you want to load up a few dozen apps and store a few full length videos on it. It needs at least 16GB built in and an SDHC card reader to let you bump that up to whatever level you need and/or can afford.

The “nice to have” items like gyroscopic sensors, GPS, front and back facing cameras… if they can get them in there while keeping the price down then I say go for it. If it pushes the price well above the iPad then drop them until the next generation.

What can’t it lose?

There are a lot of people who own both an iPad or Android Tablet and a Kindle. They use the tablets for all the browsing, games, videos and the creativity-lite that they can handle while using the Kindle for reading. They prefer that the batteries last for days and that it is easier on the eyes for extended reading- especially outside.

People praise the iPad for lasting ten hours on a charge… the Kindle DX will run for well over a hundred hours and that means you don’t have to constantly be looking for an outlet to charge your ereader. I’m not saying that the KindleDroid needs to last 150 hours on a charge… but it can’t only last 10 hours. The closer it gets to 50 hours the better. The Mirasol display and the i.MX6Solo have a real shot at deliver an adequate user experience while getting it into that ballpark. Video playback and games will erode most of that battery life down from the Kindle DX’s 170 hours but there is hope that it can still last several times longer than the iPad.

The Kindle 3 sells for only $139 while the Kindle DX costs $379… they don’t want to lose the pricing edge over the iPad but it can’t stay as wide when you are adding a lot of new hardware. The iPad starts at $499 and it would be great if the KindleDroid could come out at $399… but I would buy it if it was the same $499 (or even a bit above) but came with a near 50 hour battery life.

What signs are there for KindleDroid development?

As of March 21, 2011, a search at Lab126 (Amazon’s eReader development team)  with the keyword “android” returns job openings for seven software engineers and three managers. I think that ten job openings are seven or eight too many for just an Android app.

Last year, they bought a small company called Touchco that was developing multi-touch screens… and folded it into Lab126. I really like that this technology has multiple levels of pressure sensitivity and can use styli for accurate touch as well as our clumsy big fingers for general interface control. A Manga Studio app would be great but is not possible without a pressure sensitive stylus.

Amazon Studios and Instant Video for Premium Members means there will be a pile of content that needs a place to go. What with Netflix getting into the content creation racket with House of Cards, how long will it take for Amazon to do the same?* Once they have a series in production, not being able to play the show on their own tablet would be problematic.

Also, how can you own the Internet Movie Database without taking advantage of deep linking content streaming right from the site? You have people looking up movies, television shows, actors, directors and… don’t you need a one click button to watch it on your Amazon Premium account enable tablet as well as you desktop/laptop/TV?

Within the next few days, Amazon will be opening the Amazon Appstore to deliver apps to the Android platform. Now would you do that if you didn’t have any device that actually ran the Android OS? That would be like selling ebooks without an ereader.

So they have tons of content to sell through a more capable tablet and they are hiring engineers who know the Android platform… I may be getting a KindleDroid for next Christmas.

android1

  *Jeff- we need to sit down with Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman to talk about a dramatic series set in the current civilian space race as Amazon’s first original series. I’ve got a first draft of the pilot done and we can get it into development for this fall if we get right on it… just puttin’ it out there.  
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Rough Covers

September 11th, 2010 Clint

There was a last minute need of graphics for the covers of four pitch documents to be taken to Toronto for TIFF. There wasn’t the weeks needed to get an actual graphic designer and go through the proper steps of establishing motif of the film, generate concepts to choose from and then iterate down to the best images to perfectly represent the story being pitched.

Instead, I had only a little better than a day to put these four together and there were severe constraints on what I could use. Even if I could have gathered the images of actors and acquired the rights to the photos, none are officially attached and so I couldn’t put them on the covers. I had to use my own photographs and manipulate them to be more abstract so they wouldn’t be easily recognized – or go with inanimate elements that could plausibly be representative of the feature’s themes.

One of the features, the one that I have the rough draft done for, is ‘Dead Man Switch’. It is an action/thriller with a hard sci-fi element and I wanted a cyborg, a female Secret Service Agent and a soldier to depict the primary elements of the script.

The cyborg on the left with the targeting eye is a picture of myself suitably abstracted, not because I wouldn’t give clearance but ‘cause I ain’t leading man pretty. The agent in the centre is a picture of a girl I met on a tour I was on in Europe back in 2002 with a pistol composited into her hand. She was abstracted so as not to be very recognizable, this time because I didn’t have a model release even though she was quite pretty. The soldier is actually a guard at a casino in Monaco from the same tour. The idea was to be archetypical but not specifically recognizable.

 

Dead-Man-Switch_3

 

‘Monster Makers’ is a feature that I am outlining right now and is next for my keyboard once I have the rough draft of ‘Saving the Dead’ finished. For this one I had a picture of a machined plate of aluminum  with another piece riveted to the upper corner (actually the inside of a door on the tug boat I worked on). I took a rough font and put it on a layer above the plate then distorted it to give the impression of a welder scoring the words into the plate. I then embossed a tagline along the bottom, trying to make it look like it had been milled out of the aluminum.

 

Monster-Makers

 

The faked welding turned out better than the fake machined tagline but  it was three in the morning and I only had about an hour to put it together so I went with “good enough”.

Monster-Makers-Detail

 

Then  there is the psychological drama ‘I Am Vengeance’. It is one that I may be hired to write based on the producer/director’s idea and so I am familiar with it but can’t talk about it. For this one, I needed the image of an angry girl and digging through my archives I found a picture I had taken at Christmas a few years back. It is of my cousin and she had smiled for the picture and then glared so I clicked the shutter again. Though she is a little younger here than the character, I think that it captures the feel of the script better than I had any right to expect for the few hours I had to put it together.

 

Cover for I Am Vengeance pitch document

 

The fourth cover is for a horror film and it is another one that I am in line to write if development money is raised so I can’t talk about this story either. For this one, I used a picture I took of a Greek statue overlaid on another from almost the exact same angle that I took of an unwrapped Egyptian mummy. The layer effects build up an air of decay on the cold perfection of the marble.

Kisses-So-Sweet

 

I used a font that is more associated with a romance novel and then gave it the look of fresh spilled blood.

Kisses-So-Sweet-Detail

 

If you were to take the font effect off and delete the underlying picture of the mummy you are left with something that wouldn’t look terribly out of place on the shelf in the romance section. And it is sort of a romance… just not for everyone.

All told, they look like straight to video movies from the eighties but I can live with that since I am not trained as a graphic designer and I only had hours to create all four of them and I think they do look better than a blank sheet of paper with the title in the Papyrus font.

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Novels Are Not Dying

February 26th, 2010 Clint

young_steve_jobs4

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” – “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” – Steve Jobs

More and more, I’ve read about the death of the novel in the short attention span era of Twitter, Youtube and ChatRoulette.

They all seem to come to the conclusion that nobody under forty years old can pay attention for more than 144 characters at a time.

I have a different take on things and here are:

book_harry7

Exhibit ‘A’

twilight--novel----wikipedia--the-free-encyclopedi-lrg

Exhibit ‘B’

I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t the over forty crowd who broke sales records with the Harry Potter books… then set more records again with the Twilight novels? Okay, I do conceded that forty-one year old women who are a little too in touch with their inner 14 year old girl do add to those Twilight Saga sales but they aren’t the typical buyer.

We aren’t losing readers of novels, they have always been in the minority and short attention span Tweeters won’t start reading novels if they woke up tomorrow and the internet was gone. They would watch TV, films and read the sports page just like their grandparents did.

What is of more concern to me is that we will lose many of the young people who are avid readers unless they can be introduced to more mature characters in new novels that engage them every every bit as much as Harry or Bella.

Because it has also been the norm for the reading habits of people to change for the worse with age. I’d say that the typical consumption of novels rises until the late teens and then plateaus through to the early twenties when the demands of an adult life push long form reading out of most people’s lives. School and then work, spouses and children leave less and less time for long form reading- unless reading becomes important enough to them that they make the time.

Despite competition from alternative entertainment mediums, I’d hold that with a growing population and a growing worldwide literacy rate, there are more people reading novels right now than at any time in human history.

We just have to make sure that the rise of the e-reader doesn’t go hand in hand with a sense of entitlement to free goods from people who think nothing of ripping MP3s.

Musicians can still make a living performing live even if they never sell another song… I don’t think there are many authors who could do a dramatic reading of their book and sell out the local coffee shop let along BC Place Stadium.

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… And We’ll Throw in an iPad!

February 23rd, 2010 Clint

My family makes made an income from the forest industry for a long time, generations actually. The last thing I want to do is talk down the price of wood in an already decimated market- but printing news on mashed up trees is really expensive.

ipad2

Let’s just go through it with The New York Times because its costs, circulation and subscription numbers are easy to find… and because Apple has the spiffy graphic of the iPad with the NYT already in it.

The New York Times almost assuredly spends well over $400 per year on the paper and printing of a years subscription worth of newspapers… I’m going to leave the delivery of the dead tree version out of the equation because I’ll just use it to wash the online delivery costs off the table.

They in turn charge less than $300 for for this and make up the difference, then the profit, with ad sales.

It would actually be in the Grey Lady’s best financial interest to offer a two year subscription to an iPad Edition for $600 and throw in the iPad for “free”. This is actually less than their NYT Kindle Edition that costs $336 for one year.

Kindle-NYTimes

I couldn’t find a picture of the Kindle DX with the NYT on it and didn’t feel like ‘shopping up something that bland, so I went with the smaller Kindle… but even the DX doesn’t bring the sexy like the iPad. This makes me unhappy since Jeff Bezos builds space ships, which makes him approximately 42,583% cooler than Steve Jobs will ever be… at least outside the influence of his Reality Distortion Field.

Steve-VS-Jeff

Where was I? Oh yeah. The NYT could surely get a discount off the Apples MSR of $400 if they purchased a half million of them. They have over 800,000 subscribers for the two year option so I don’t think ordering 500,000 iPads would be too optimistic with half coming up for renewal in any given year – and the new subscribers that would be drawn in by the “Subscribe and we’ll throw in an iPad!” deal.

The biggest problem might be Apple getting production high enough to meet demand.

Apple may be a closed ecosystem that won’t let their products play outside of their own sandbox- but I’m also pretty sure that the publisher could cut some kind of deal with Apple for distribution through iTunes to cost less than the current hundreds of trucks handing out stacks of paper to a kid on a bicycle to roll up and throw in a puddle at your front door?

Now, the consolidation of print, radio, movies and television into media giants actually work to make this even more viable. While The New York Times only owns about two dozen other newspapers, they could sell bundles of the NYT+Local or they could allow you to add on subscriptions for a nominal fee.

They could also do replacement advertisements for the regions that they have newspaper department in place. A local ad in the New York Times has little value for the advertiser when the person reads it in Boston. The NYT could offer the advertisers in their Boston Globe a deal to “localize” the New York Times iPad edition by inserting their local Boston ad in place of a local New York ad.

You’d have to leave the Fords and Cokes out of this since national advertisers would have a legitimate beef if their ad got pulled in a market where they actually service customers; but the Copacabana wouldn’t be too concerned about running its “Grand Opening at 760 8th Avenue” advertisement in Boston.

 

How does this play out for Canada?

shaw-communications Shaw Communication just got the okay from the bureaucrats to purchase the controlling interest in Canwest Global Communications so lets take that through the MBA mindgrinder.

You don’t want to get me on a rant about letting the state, who couldn’t make money with a whorehouse in a goldrush, make business decisions for anything more complex than a neighbourhood lemonade stand… nix that, your average ten year old would have a better handle on that.

So let’s stick to Shaw and how they can best use the iPad. It is a moving target, with deals being struck in all directions- but right now, with this purchase, they look to be acquiring 13 daily newspapers across the country and another 26 community papers.

Those 39 newspapers right there would make it almost an autopilot move for them to offer that free iPad with a two year subscription to one daily newspaper+your community paper. It would be quite short sighted of them not to.

It gets even better for them when we start looking into their other holdings and how they can be leveraged on a computer supplied and set up by Shaw.

Canwest Global has at least 11 portal websites, 12 localized Global websites and another 12 portals for their bigger specialty channels. It doesn’t take much business acumen to see the benefit these 35 (wholly or in part) advertisement driven websites would get from a Shaw iPad that had them integrated into the Homescreen.

Then there are the television holdings themselves. The flagship broadcaster is Global which reaches pretty much 100% of the televisions in Canada. Now add to that the 21 specialty channels that run on cable that is in a good part owned by Shaw.

Will Shaw see the potential of using the iPad as a portable media player and DVR for a nominal fee on their monthly cable bill? Could it replace, in part, the DVRs that they are offering right now at a discount with long term contracts? How many more pay-per-views could they sell to the mobile crowd killing time on the Sky Train?

Vertical and horizontal integration would make the iPad a massive force multiplier to a media conglomeration like Shaw – or are they going to let this opportunity slide on by for another five to ten years?

If they aren’t going to do it, over on 777 Jarvis sits Rogers Communications.

rogers-communications

Everything I pointed out for SHAW works for Rogers and their 70 consumer magazines, 51 radio stations, couple dozen TV stations, handful of internet portals, massive mobile network and their own cable distribution system.

Just thinkin’ out loud, maybe Rogers could sell off the Blue Jays for the estimated $286 million and use the money to bring in a fleet of transport trucks full of iPads? It strikes me as a better use of resources for a media and distribution company.

061215_toronto_blue_jays_logo

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The Medium is the Messenger.

February 20th, 2010 Clint

Bear with me, I am a minarchist and things are about to get a little snarky in here. First, I want to emphasis that I feel it is morally wrong for the state to sanction and finance one group of people’s voice over others – others who are forced to pay for it.

But the point I want to make right now is that it is pragmatically wrong as well because the people writing the regulations and mandates have historically made decisions that have been detrimental to the industry both financially and artistically.

And they are at it again.

The “Canadian Media Fund”, after about a year of being hammered out as I write this, looks like it will mandate that supplicants applicants put forward a plan that encompasses as much of the television, game consoles, smartphones and web world as it can. Your funding will depend, not just how many propaganda cultural points you can hit, but how many mediums you can floodcast on.

I think the fund chasing producers and the government bureaucrats that hold the bags of taxpayer cash have all taken McLuhan too literally.

"The medium is the message" never meant that the medium replaced the message but that the medium influences the way the message is delivered and perceived.

It seems that many self styled pundits on the future of content delivery have decided that the medium is what it’s all about and that the message is merely filler.

Don’t get me wrong, as we grow to understand the newer mediums and how they influence the packaging and perception of the message, we will learn to create great and epic works that that fully exploit the nature of those mediums.

Personally I’m developing Red Hellas with plans for novels, a one hour dramatic TV series, comic books, a half hour webisodic series and  a MMOG… but it is organic to the world I am creating. That isn’t so for most of the other projects I’m working on and it would be counter-creative of me to try and force it.

The Iliad has been brought to life in epic poems, paintings, novels, movies and eventually it will be a Massive Multiplayer Online Game that can stand with the best of those old mediums.

Were Homer to start filling in the reams of funding forms today, the state would demand to hear the awesome ringtone and to know how his business plan monetized that MMOG within the next year?

And this would surely make it ever so much more likely to succeed critically and creatively, as well as ensuring that it will be just what the audience wants.</sarcasm>

While they have no idea where they are going, these men and women are running as fast as they can and making good time.

Please, may I offer up a replacement phrase that can be taken completely and utterly literally?

"The medium is not the message, it is just the messenger."

Now don’t give him to much crap to carry.

Posted in Distribution, Film, Graphic Novel, Internet, Learning, Selling, Socio-Economics, Television, Webisodic, Writing No Comments »

So, What Do You Need?

February 18th, 2010 Clint

One of the things people do wrong is go into a pitch desperate to get the other person to do something for them. The are stuck on what they themselves need.

In actuality, what I want to do is convince the agent, manager, development executive or producer that I can do something for them. Not just one something but a lot of somethings and for a lot of years.

Since I ain’t cute enough to wiggle my eyebrows suggestively toward the good old casting couch, I have to give them confidence that I can consistently produce that which the the entire industry runs on. They need scripts and they need ideas turned into scripts competently.

I can do that for you.

You are an agent that wants a marketable project for a star client? I have a completed script that could work for them… but if none of those is the tailored fit that you’re looking for, well then I can bespoke one of the ideas I have waiting to be developed. If you don’t think any of them are going to excite the client- well is there a genre or subject matter that they want to tackle? I can take it from scratch.

You’re a producer looking for a marketable high concept film that can sell itself with a poster and a trailer and doesn’t need a $5 million dollar actor? I have just what you need right here… and with limited locations if that is what you want.

Or you’re a producer who needs a big tent pole film that will attract an actor who commands $20 million? You want that in a superhero, fantasy or… hey, Warner Brothers doesn’t have the rights to The Odyssey, that sucker has been public domain for almost three thousand years. I’ll write it, but may I suggest that you approach Mel Gibson to direct and star? The man would nail Odysseus and his movie making style would fit the tale perfectly. (Some of you readers may see him more as Ulysses than as Odysseus but that man knows story structure and I can’t really see anyone else doing a better job of either incarnation)

You are a TV producer who needs a show for either a cable channel or a broadcast network? I have great ideas but also understand that one of those is a show that needs to win critical acclaim as it builds a solid fan base while the other needs to hit as wide an audience as possible while hopefully getting some Emmy attention.

I also understand that sometimes it works the other way ‘round. Right now, NBC needs, with the desperation of a drowning man, a series that the critics rave about. They also need shows that can draw in 15 million or more viewers but they won’t find them until people start talking about great shows and NBC in the same breath.

Killing off five prime time scripted shows to fit in Jay Leno slammed on the brakes and people stayed away in droves. Enough audience did stay to make it financially viable… if they didn’t mind slowly dwindling away to irrelevance in the entertainment world while they chased a slim profit margin. The audience needs to be lured back and that will require a season of critically acclaimed shows that rival cable’s best – as lead ins to competently done shows that capture mass audience. Not just time slot lead ins but to lead the audience back in to the network.

Don’t get me wrong, I never miss an episode of Chuck, but NBC needs a show to rebuild the brand… a show like… say ‘Space Inc.’.

So, what do you need?

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Pitchmarket 2010 Research Mode

February 18th, 2010 Clint

The first thing to do when going into a pitching event like this is to learn everything you can about the people that have been brought in to sit across the table from the pitching masses.

Just pitching anything to anyone is a recipe for irritating people. If what you have to offer doesn’t fit with the person then it is a waste of both their time and yours.

Using IMDB-Pro, the supplied links and bios on their blog along with good old Google; I try to find out what they and the company have done before- then look at the development slate out ahead of them.

Then I have to make an honest assessment of the fit. Do they have a record of producing material in the same genre as the script I want to pitch to them? Do they have a track record of completing projects to a standard that I would be comfortable with? Are they already working on something that is eerily similar to what I want to pitch?

The trouble with my TV series Space Inc. is that it is a perfect fit for Tom Hanks’ Playtone as well as being a very good fit with Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment and a not bad fit for Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment… after that there is too strong a chance of it getting royally screwed up.

If I had creative control I could make it with any one of the dozens of good production companies. No production company would take that chance on a writer without years of experience in the writing room and that is only reasonable and expected.

My research is much more exhaustive than these postings will portray, there are pages for each person and links galore, but these posts will give bullet points, tips and conclusions.

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Pitchmarket 2010

February 18th, 2010 Clint

I noted that FTXEvents is putting on Pitchmarket 2010 over the March 6-7 weekend. I looked over the roster of “decision makers” and figured that maybe it was time for me to throw out some more pitches.

While there isn’t a great track record (or any record?) for writers getting hauled up from the huddled masses at any of these events- it is a chance to meet people that are hard to get to outside of these things.

Keep in mind that most of the people coming to these events are a little lower on the totem pole than they are made out to be. That isn’t to say they are not moving up, just that it is often considered a way to give baby agents and assistants who are about to become development executives a chance to be barraged by pitches- a sort of baptism by fire if you will. While they usually (not always mind you) do not have the power to give even a tentative “yes” to anything, they can take scripts to those who can. Also, their career trajectory is in the direction of that power and it certainly won’t hurt to get onto their radar.

Also, from what I hear; the further the pitches are from Hollywood, the better the calibre of people you will be pitching to. You see, when it is in their own city, there isn’t much of a draw for those higher up the hierarchy so they send the assistants… when they are offered plane tickets to a another city and are put up in a hotel, it suddenly becomes more attractive. This one is in my backyard… 2000 kilometres from Los Angeles.

Although the TSA seems bound and determined to make travelling by air as horrible an experience as possible- so the attraction of a plane ticket is subject to change.

All said, I certainly could use practice pitching my work and who knows, someone may love an idea so much that they have no choice but to champion it.

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SWE4: PitchXchange Final Tally

November 15th, 2005 Clint

Eight pitches.
I missed one and two executives missed theirs. One of the executives didn’t bother trying to make it up while the other is letting us email a pitch to him.
Of the people I pitched to, one gave a pass with good feedback and encouragement, two asked for treatments, one asked for a synopsis and another asked for the completed script when it is ready.
I’m thinking either that is a pretty fair showing… or that the people at these pitches are free with their interest. It might just be easier to say no in a letter rather than face to face.
Either way, I have some writing to do.

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SWE4: PitchXchange – For Lack of a Treatment – C. from a Management Co.

November 15th, 2005 Clint

Since I came here planning to use the pitch process to focus my writing, I didn’t have a lot of material ready to hand out. I have two television series and two features that I can’t decide between for my next project and I thought this would be a great way to focus myself.
Pitch all four at the wall and see what sticks.
The point is that C. was impressed with the idea for my boxing/organized crime series and wanted to see a treatment… but I don’t have a treatment with me.
He was not so impressed with that.
So the moral of the story is to always have at least a treatment to give them. I’m beginning to see that a solid treatment is the lowest level of preparedness that you should come to these with. And for a series, you might want to have one paragraph breakdowns for the first five episodes after the pilot.
He took my email address and said that he might be it touch with me. Heavy on the might.
I ain’t saying that for the lack of a treatment, a sale was lost… but it was a mark against me here.

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