Stephen Colbert...Harlequin cover model?

As you may have heard, Harlequin is on the hunt for some new cover models. Men gracing the covers of our series romance lines have gradually become...well, less manly. So last week we held an open casting call for those lacking a model's fancy portfolio. Two hundred men strutted their stuff, wearing little more than cowboy hats, jeans, and a scowl.

Last night, Stephen Colbert dedicated more than 4 minutes of his show to Harlequin and our quest for real men. Check out the clip here and the resulting sample covers below. Perhaps we should have been more clear: real man are nice and all, but we seek real, hot men.

This is the kind of publicity that you just can't buy. Credit is owed to my colleagues, Deb Peterson and Marleah Stout, for reminding us how far one can get by putting the feel back in feel-good story. Stay tuned as there is talk of putting Colbert on a real book cover.

Let's bring Seth Godin to Toronto

In support of his new book, Seth Godin has proposed an experiment, a variation on the traditional book tour:

In each city I'm able to get to, if you buy 5 books (in advance), you get to come hear me give a speech for free. OR, if you prefer to think of it differently, if you pay $50 to hear me speak, you get five books for free.

If 500 people in Toronto agree that 5 copies of The Dip and the chance to listen to Seth are worth $50, then we have something. I've heard the man speak and can attest to his greatness. $50 is a bargain.

If you think we could make this work, leave a comment below or email me. I'd be happy to organize things if we can get a critical mass of people.

Hanging with 16-year olds

Many thanks to those of you who contributed to my presentation to a delightful group of high school students. The talk went well and the kids seemed genuinely appreciative of the session.

I've posted my slides on slideshare, so feel free to check out the finished product. You won't get the benefit of the voiceover, but that might actually be a good thing. It took me more than 30 minutes to drone on with these slides in the background.



Apologies for not blogging consistently this week. It's been a really busy couple of days, but the storm appears to have passed.

Spring and new runners

One of my colleagues temporarily "lost" her young daughter last week. When Zoe exited her front door, she got a glint in her eye and took off down the street. The reason? It was spring and she had new running shoes on.

I caught the same bug last week. My runners aren't exactly new, but I hit the roads 4 times in the past 5 days. It's tough to see dappled sunlight outside my window and not want to explore Saturday morning on foot. Although my fellow shufflers along Toronto's Beltline path usually nod or grunt acknowledgment, this weekend was a time for clearly audible greeetings. Sometimes we even bordered on smug - it's possible for "Morning!" to actually mean "Aren't we proud of ourselves for taking advantage of this fabulous day, all while offseting the effects of recent indulgences?"

I hope your activities of choice bring about a similarly born-again feeling. If not, what are you going to do about it? Might be time for some new running shoes to help break the funk.

What do you wish you knew at 16?

I've been asked to speak to a group of high school students next week. For some reason, one of the parents thinks I'll have something interesting to say. Given teenagers' tendencies toward continuous partial attention, I'm humbled by the challenge of connecting with bright, young, hormone-driven, multi-tasking minds.

I have some ideas on how to structure the time and what I might say, but I would imagine that the braintrust reached by this blog can do better. My specific assignment reads as follows:

This new initiative has been developed with the intent of providing students with information on different aspects of the business world. The idea is to educate students through the stories of business professionals. Some of the many questions we want to address include: how people chose their careers, how they get there, what obstacles did they face and how did they overcome them? Students want to hear stories about what your jobs have entailed, as they have limited knowledge about careers.

I think the task can be neatly summed up as "what do you wish you knew at 16?". I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments below. A few minutes of your time could make a big difference to these kids. You'll also help me avoid reliving those painful memories of 16 year-olds laughing at my expense.

Bum Rush the Charts

From www.bumrushthecharts.com:

On March 22nd, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street. The track we've chosen is "Mine Again" by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.

What's more, we're going to take it a step beyond that. We've signed up as an affiliate of the iTunes Music Store, and every commission made on the sale of "Mine Again" will be donated to college scholarships, partly because it's a worthy cause, but also partly because college students are among the most misunderstood and underestimated groups of people by big media. Black Lab has taken it up another notch - 50% of their earnings are going to be donated to the scholarship fund as well.

If you believe in the power of new media, on March 22nd, 2007, take 99 cents and 2 minutes of your time to join the revolution and make iTunes "Mine Again". If you're a content producer (blogger, podcaster, etc.), we're asking you to join up with us and help spread the word to your audience. Nothing would prove the power of new media more than showing corporate media that not only can we exceed their reach and match their purchasing power, but that we can also do it AND make a positive difference in the world. If we can succeed with this small example, then there's no telling what can do next.

And the geeks shall inherit the Earth

Last night I attended my first "geek dinner". In advance of the AIMS seminar on marketing in Second Life, twenty or so seminar participants gathered to break bread and talk new media. Truth be told, I hadn't even registered for the seminar...I just geeked out on the chance to meet people who work in the digital space.

I wish I could tell you that I met C.C. Chapman, but he was at the other end of the table. As I left the party, I could have grabbed his shirt sleeve and gushed about how much his podcast has brought to my life. But even this geek has her standards. Fortunately, I got to know a bunch of other super cool people...

Kate Trgovac is best known as mynameiskate on 2L and as a goddess within digital marketing. Right away I thought she was cool, but I darn near flipped when she mentioned attending the TED conference.

Sulemann Ahmed manages SearsTravel.ca's online marketing. He also leads a bunch of digital marketing work within the Canadian Marketing Association and appears to know everyone. When he arrived late for dinner, it was like Norm was walking into Cheers.

By day, Eden Spodek runs online communications for a pension fund. When not dealing with suits at work, she may be found buying suits and blogging about her finds as the Bargainista. I'll rely on her blog to point me to great deals in Toronto and then tap her expertise on the next After a Fashion outing in Second Life.


If you just can't get enough of geeks, Fast Company profiles IBM's chief geek here. As I dove into the article, I felt all smug about my math degree...but then I couldn't remember much of the optimization referenced therein. Do any of my fellow mathies remember moment generating functions? Or the Open Pit Mining Problem? If you do, my ego would be better off if kept it to yourself.

Do I miss consulting?

The Freaknomics dudes recently explored why people comment on blogs. Or more precisely, why a whole bunch of people don't. The piece suggested that a blogger's willingness to respond back to comments can fuel participation. So I went back to my comments to ensure that I was replying back pronto.

Looking back on my comments, I think I've responded in a timely fashion. One question I missed was posed by Wannabe - "do you ever miss consulting?". It seems that my response is overdue.

In a word, no, I really don't miss consulting. It was a good experience, but not one that I would extend, if I could do it all again. I think my reasons have been well chronicled in this blog.

I will say that my short experience at McKinsey was a privilege. Setting aside the frustrations, the work took me to fascinating places that I never would have found on my own. Driving through the Arizona desert on my way to a phantom grocery store...getting lost in Brussels while out running and hailing a cab to drive me the 3 blocks back to the hotel...running the first 5 miles of the Flying Pig Marathon course before work, just to relive my race memories.

More than anything, I do miss my colleagues a great deal. I had the privilege of working with insanely bright, quirky, fun and motivated people. I miss Starbucks outings with R, airport departure lounge chats with S and C while they played their PSPs, and whiteboard problem solving sessions with G. And it would be great to see the sun rise while running with Director T again.

Fortunately, I actually see more of these folks now that I am civilian. I spend a few hours with JFJ each weekend, something we rarely did when we both worked at McK. The brunch crowd last weekend was comprised of 4 ex-McK folks, spouses, and 2 friends still hanging in there a little while longer. Our breakfast banter used to focus on work topics, but now we spend hours without mentioning clients, team struggles, or demanding partners. Today's focus is on Tuesday night tennis lessons, books we are reading, and movies we'll catch together soon.

If you are considering a short career in consulting, I encourage you to dive in and squeeze everything you can from the opportunity. Cherish the people and relish the adventure - it's rare for a twenty-something kid to see so much of the world, its challenges, and its people. Working at McKinsey is an exceptional experience, but one that for me was best cut short.

More on YouTube and political campaigns

As a follow up to today's earlier post that referenced YouTube in political campaigns, I'll point out a post on The Hour blog (yes, another CBC shout out). It would seem that Canadian politicians aren't nearly as Web 2.0-savvy as Twittering John Edwards or YouTube-happy Obama. Although we'll be late to the party, our arrival may be imminent, as illustrated by the Liberal video channel on YouTube.

Huffington Post...the best of

I aspire to get through The Huffington Post each day. It never happens. I wish I could be one of those people who reads even a fraction of the NY Times each Sunday. If you are like me, you might appreciate a condensed view of the best of today's Huffington Post entries.

1. Barbara Ehrenreich's views on why we should blog before writing that book

2. Further illustration of how YouTube has changed politics, if not the world

3. A true/false quiz that makes light work of chastising neoconservatives

If you like Arianna Huffington, consider checking out the KCRW Left, Right & Center podcast. Without it, my views of current affairs would reflect that articulated on The Mercer Report and The Hour (fine examples of great CBC programming, but not the most exhaustive new sources...although certainly better than what one would find on CNN or Fox News).

Two new things

Tried two new things this weekend: Twitter and Second Life. You can see my Twitter entries on the right of this screen. To find me in Second Life, look for Tamara Pera (I thought that name had a nice ring to it.)

I'm still not 100% sure on Twitter. I'm not sure of the value of a stream of consciousness, from a friend or stranger. If used in place of a quick blog entry, however, something interesting might emerge. I'll experiment with it a bit this week and see if it's helpful.

In Second Life, I took the required tutorials and flew around a bit. Visited Bantam Dell's bookstore dedicated to Dean Koontz and failed to locate any other publishers. I was under the impression that Penguin has some space, but I didn't have any luck. Could be that they have folded up shop. Just as likely that I didn't know how to teleport myself over to the right location. It would seem that the physical coordination I lack in reality is exaggerated in my Second Life.

What about you? Can I find you in Second Life? And what do you think of Twitter?

Post rating widget

Earlier this week, Random House announced the availability of audiobook widgets for certain titles. I tried to add one to my blog, but got a bunch of error messages. Irritating.

Since then, Guy Kawasaki pointed me to MajikWidget and their post rating application. I thought I would give it a try here. My blog analytic tools tell me how many readers visit this blog, but I don't know if readers are pleased or nonplused by what they find.

I would appreciate your rating my posts over the next couple of weeks (including today's earlier post found below). Your feedback will guide the topics addressed and questions asked. Thanks.

What you say vs. what you do

Seth Godin recently blogged about the wisdom of Neil Young. At the end of his post, Godin concludes

"On songs that aren't working so well, you will hear Neil try harder, play louder, raise his voice and strain to make an impact. It doesn't work. At all. It's what you say, most of the time, not how you say it."

This strikes me as inconsistent with Godin's previous thoughts on marketing. As a student of Godin, I've come to think that it's not what or you how say it, but rather what you do. From how you serve customers to the environment you create with employees, the power of actions trumps words.

Let's continue looking at Neil Young as an example (he may not offer the best illustration, but he's Canadian and my husband will be impressed with this continuing analysis). Young doesn't stop at singing about war and his desire to impeach the president. He sets up the Living With War site, a spoof on USAToday that aggregates evidence of protest against the disaster in Iraq. Got an anti-war song? Neil will include it in his Living With War playlist. Interested in a good protest video? You can take your pick.

Neil doesn't stop at words. He's leveraging every medium available to move people to action. To follow his example. And by offering free downloads to all videos from his Living With War album, even Neil Young gets the economics of free digital content.

Does it suck or does it actually rock?

Just want to point out www.sucks-rocks.com, a delightful time waster with a Web 2.0 spin. Type in any Yahoo search-friendly phrase, and you'll get a reading on whether that phrase has a positive or negative vibe online. You can also see what others are searching on, giving it a bit of a Twitter-like addictive feel. According to the site, this is how it works:

"When you enter a search term, sucks/rocks searches the web for several positive and negative phrases using that term. The score is the fraction of positive results to the sum of positive and negative results, normalized to 10.
The negative phrases are: X sucks, X is lame, X is crap, I hate X.
The positive phrases are: X rocks, X is sweet, X is awesome, I love X."

I am happy to report that "Harlequin" rocks modestly, with a score of 6.9 out of 10. Other rockers include "Wharton" and "Toronto". I'll leave you to check out what "McKinsey" revealed (Note to McK PR department: pitter patter, let's get at 'er).

On an unrelated, but equally rocking, matter, I was pleased as punch to be included in the list of press covering TED2007. If you haven't checked out the TEDBlog, you won't regret adding it to your to-do list. The TEDTalks podcasts are also online - they'll be getting me through long runs leading up to my spring half-marathons.

My guest blog entry on I (Heart) Presents

The ladies over at I (Heart) Presents asked me to post a guest blog entry. I shared some thoughts on what makes a great series romance book, referring to Julia James' Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded for illustration.

Readers of this blog may not be romance fans, but I encourage you to check out Harlequin's many series romance series. Aside from Presents, I'm most excited about Harlequin Everlasting Love. If you got teary over The Notebook, you'll love having two new Everlasting stories each month.

Note that I chose to blog about romance today because a few people have said recently that my blog is too intense. How this for you? (said in a completely nonchalant manner, of course)

Torture via Powerpoint

Check out this animation. Could the New Yorker be suggesting a link between consultants and Satan?

"Deep" thoughts on strategy

In a recent post, I shared some preliminary thoughts on employee engagement. Is there a downside to increasing and improving employee engagement? By providing a forum for people to explore an organization's situation and brainstorm potential action, does one increase buy-in or breed negativity?

Last week my thoughts turned more specificially to strategy and the roles played by various levels of an organization. Some suggest that strategy should be a top-down exercise, coming from the CEO and top leaders. Under this school of thought, the broader organization's role in strategy is limited to implementation. I don't expect to find a hard and fast rule here, but I'm wondering how deep into an organization strategy discussions should go.

I believe that people are more likely to get behind something that they helped to create. In the context of strategy, does this belief hold true? Would a company's direction be internalized and improved if people felt like they had been heard during strategy formulation? Even if we set aside the rather ambiguous notion of strategy, should organizations create a forum for something as simple as a SWOT discussion? If a facilitator could keep discussions constructive and action-oriented, could such an exercise improve buy-in?

What's your take? Does opening a dialogue help corporate strategy or is it more trouble than it is really worth?

Barenaked Ladies and DRM-free music

Like any good Canadian lass born in the 70s, I love the Barenaked Ladies. Their music alone can stand on its own two feet, but my allegiance roots itself in circumstance and nostalgia. In the present, the band's willingness to experiment with DRM-free, dynamically priced content only cements my respect for the Scarborough-born lads.

I heard my first BNL tune in September 1992, sitting in the Sir Winston Churchill student council office with Susannah Humble (now a professor of European history). That day, I bought one of those little yellow demo tapes from Sam the Record Man - I think classmate Dave Tripp sold it to me - and harmonized with "Brian Wilson" and "McDonald's Girl". Thanks to the music's ties to my final year of high school, I'll always associate the Ladies with good times.

Soon the BNL will distribute their tunes via Amie Street, a DRM-free music download service with an innovative business model. At first, a track can be downloaded at no charge. As a song's popularity climbs, however, pricing increments to a ceiling of 98 cents. Sounds like a great way to get new artists discovered and take Web 2.0 to the next level. In an era of You, Person of the Year, why not let the community set prices?

I'm also really happy to see a recommender system - my new new thing to love - entering the mix. Under the "REC" system, users earn credits by pointing out songs to friends who download and bid up a recommended track's unit price. This activity is based around "Friend" groups, social networks organized around particular genres or musical interests.

The DRM-free aspect of things is particularly interesting. Unlike songs downloaded via iTunes, Amie Street product can be played on any mp3 device. Now, I love my iPod as much as the next gal and fumed when a Wal-Mart.com-sourced Carrie Underwood track wouldn't play on my mini. (When I worked in Arizona grocery land, "Jesus Take the Wheel" was a mainstay with the meat cutters.) As a law-abiding consumer who gave up Napster after two frustratingly slow P2P downloads, DRM makes no sense to me. It's nothing more than a source of frustration, caused by content providers who don't understand how the economics of free can drive profits.

Naturally, Amie Street has a blog through which you can learn about their continued innovation. I know I'll be reading and cheering them on. What do you think of the service? Will the business model take off?

Faux tuna, what's the point?

Last night I had dinner with ALo at Live Organic Food Bar in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood. We had chosen it because our friend L is veggie and L was originally to join us. When L bailed, we chose not to change our plans to suit our meat-loving palettes.

I think the world of ALo. In addition to enjoying her fabulous company, our dinner was quite good...quite good, that is, for vegan, dairy-free, rabbit food with nary a whisper of gluten. We shared a platter of what you might call fake food: faux tuna salad on spelt bread, a cannelloni-inspired wrap of zucchini and a nicely herbed tofu concoction, and the interior of a raw thai spring roll. The spring roll was actually quite tasty and would have been divine if we had encased it in a wonton and tossed it in a deep fryer.

On the side, we shared some curried chick peas in brown rice. This being a raw food sort of place, the rice hadn't been cooked per se...just soaked in water for a long time. The result was almost soft. I wonder for how long one has to passively soak rice to make it al dente?

For dessert, I indulged in a slice of dairy and flour-free chocolate pie. Shredded coconut had been compressed with the force of tectonic plates to form a crust. On it sat a wonderfully rich melange of chocolate and tofu. ALo didn't fare as well, wishing that her faux blueberry cheesecake had met with some sugar. The blueberry topping was powerful in a French Laundry sort of way, but the coconut-derived dairy substitute found underneath disappointed. Good thing ALo could wash in down with some ginger-spiked carrot and beet juice.

One of my colleagues says that people don't like to post comments here because my questions are too hard. So let's try this: what do you look for in a good dinner? Are you into the raw food movement? And what's with the fake approach to food? Should we all just get over ourselves and forget the tofurky?

TED (Technology Entertainment Design)

I love conferences. Smart ideas, temporarily suspended deadlines, new cities in which to run. Conferences fuel my batteries and brain with energy, insight, and fun.

The new web allows me to virtually attend conferences to which I would otherwise be excluded. In January, I followed the World Economic Forum at Davos. Last November, I even peaked into Richard Branson's uber-exclusive Necker Island fest. Tomorrow, the TED conference will kick off, with a diverse group of icons, geniuses, and mavericks (this year's theme).

The interior design freak in me is psyched about Philippe Stark. His acrylic Louis VIX chair may be passe now, but I'm still a fan in the right setting. Robin Chase will talk about Zipcar, her well passed the start start-up that is revolutionizing how people think about car ownership in big cities. Lawrence Lessig will talk about Creative Commons, the content sharing framework so popular on the web. My husband will be happy to hear from Paul Simon and there will be the usual talk from Bill Clinton, assuming he can break away from Hillary's campaign.

If you want to hear last year's great content, subscribe to the TEDTalks feed on iTunes. One of my all-time favourite conference podcasts, particularly for those in book publishing, is the BookExpoAmerica podcast. I hope to attend BEA convention in June and will share my own reaction to the events for your enjoyment. Not exactly the TED conference, but time well spent nonetheless.

Employee engagement

The Engaging Brand is one of my favourite podcasts, hosted by Anna Farmery, a delightful woman who has no shortage of smart ideas and positive attitude. She focuses most of her cast's time on motivation, management, leadership, and communication. Not exactly the kind of thing to get me through the last mile of a tough run, but truly valuable stuff.

As a general rule, most managers would say that engagement on their teams is something they want more of versus less. Assuming that engagement is a good thing, then investing in that engagement shouldn't be a contentious issue. Over the past week, however, I've heard resistance to the idea. And resistance from smart people I like and respect makes me think....hmmmmmm...is there a downside to seeking employee engagement?

As part of my strategy role, I've heard some feedback about how to improve our strat plan process. Participants want to hash out our situation and not just go execute on the strategy laid out by our leadership team. They want more time to cover the basics...our strengths, what competitors are doing, where we need to invest, what we need to change.

The prospect of discussing what we need to change can make people a bit nervous. What if people raise legitimate issues that we can't fix? What if we don't act on the challenges raised? Will people feel ignored? Like the discussion was a waste of time?

These are valid questions, but not ones that hinder us from opening the dialogue. I believe that open engagement on tough issues is valuable, even if the discussion doesn't change our near-term path. Even if the discussion turns into a gripe-fest, being heard and acknowledged is a valuable first step.

Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of Warner Music Group, holds what he calls "employee roundtables" every other month. He hosts a confidential, closed-door session for 15-20 employees from across the business and uses the time to brainstorm ideas. He says,

"It's a little like going to an AA meeting. You make a pledge and ask them to honor their commitment. As it turns out, because you give people that freedom, it doesn't turn into a gripe session. Instead they give us ideas about how to make the company better. There are waiting lists now for these roundtables."

A very smart friend of mine has a smart husband who isn't as convinced as Bronfman. Over the weekend, he questioned the value of asking people for their point of view if all you could do was confirm that they had been heard. He suggested that a manager needs to be able to maintain a constructive tone and take action. Otherwise, the exercise gets messy and even destructive.

So what is your point of view on this? Should we seek colleagues' opinions without fear? Or should we manage discussions carefully, so as to contain negative perspectives? Is there a way to find a middle ground, where constructive ideas emerge without rocking the boat?

Great books

Two of my favourite books of 2007 are now on sale and I'm so excited for these first-time authors.


Regularly readers may remember how much I loved reading Girl Most Likely To. You can learn more about the book by visiting the author website, Amazon, or eHarlequin.com. This should be mandatory reading for all Wharton alums and students of either gender. If you are too busy working for Blackstone or McKinsey to read, buy the book anyway!








For history buffs, fans of women's fiction, and even literary snobs, The Kommandant's Girl is the one book I insist you read this year. Learn more at the author website, Amazon, or eHarlequin.com. You can also email me and I'll rave for you one-on-one.








Workout update: Ran 3 miles on the treadmill. Felt fabulous and finished a minute faster than on Tuesday. Anna is back in the office, but I might keep posting here too. You keep me honest when I want to sleep in.