Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Some ramblings..




These days I have been re-reading the book "What I wish I knew when I was 20" by Tina Seelig.
It is a very interesting book, and I am writing a short summary of that book.
A few weeks ago I decided to write summaries for every book I read. I used to do that at college, but  stopped when I came to Japan, don't know why.
In the last weeks I read books on high school mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Why write summaries?
Because 99% of a book is garbage. Seriously. You write down on a summary the actually useful remaining 1%.

Books are usually written under contract, in which the publisher asks the author to write a book about a certain subject. Or the author pitches the publisher about a book he want to writes.
If there is agreeement, the author needs to finish the book by a certain deadline, writing a certain minimum of pages.
But the author wil not be inspired 100% of the time, and he will be in a position he needs to fill pages even though he has nothing interesting to write. That is when he will write garbage. Pages and pages of obvious, commonplace garbage.

How to use post-its?
Instead of writing summaries should I use post-its? I have never used them. I don't know how to use them. I had a friend who used to use post-its everywhere. Her books were filled with post-its.
A post-it seems to be a bookmark. If you find a passage that seems particularly interesting, you can bookmark the page with post-it, so you can find the passage easily.

What else?
I have met 2 Japanese people interested in learning Portuguese language and I am giving classes over Skype.
Can I turn this into a business? How should I charge ? How much should I charge?
I have been thinking of asking for donations at this point. Donation actually is not a good business model, do you know any successful company based on donations??
But at this point, if I were to charge for fees, how much should I charge?
An hour of work should go for a minimum of 1,000 yens. English classes will not go for less than 2,000.  The cheapest English school will charge no less than 10 thousand yens a month.
If I were to turn this into a business I need to find more students. How can I find more students, when I have no money for advertising?

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