Ellen Notbohm | Ellen's Column of the Month

This Month’s Column

As published in The Sunday Oregonian, June 15, 2008

Unbundle Me: Writer’s craft most ripe for a la carte capitalism
by Ellen Notbohm

“Bundling” is one of those annoying buzz words pervading business these days. If it wasn’t so annoying, it would be comical how some companies – cable television and telephone companies, notoriously – are rushing to bundle services in hopes of persuading (forcing) you to buy services you may or may not want. Meanwhile, other companies are rushing just as urgently in the opposite direction, “unbundling” services, the marketing equivalent of upending their customers by the ankles in order to shake the last possible penny out of their pockets. They spin this money-extraction tactic as “choice” or “ala carte offerings.”

The 800-pound gorilla on this squeeze-play bandwagon is the airline industry. They actually began unbundling long ago, cutting costs by eliminating meal service, an unlamented change since “airplane food” is my favorite oxymoron. Now the “unbundling” is accelerating at warp speed. Some will “unbundle” their product by charging for “extras” such as a phone number through which you can actually reach a reservation agent when your flight is delayed or cancelled. American Airlines will now charge you extra for checking a suitcase. It’s not hard to guess what’s coming next – a surcharge if you want to debark using a jetway instead of leaping to the tarmac. Why not go all the way – bring back steerage class and charge extra for the actual seat on the cattle car?

This all got me to thinking about the products and services I offer. I’m an author, and my fuel costs (some folks still quaintly call it “food”) have gone up too. I have teenage boys in the house; need I say more? I’m just not marketing-savvy enough. I need to unbundle my services in order to cut costs and pocket more money. I will start by offering just the words on the pages. If you want the punctuation that makes it easier to read the book, that will be alacarte, for an extra charge. My granddad actually employed this idea many years ago. When he wrote letters to my mother, he would claim that he couldn’t be bothered with punctuation, and he would string a line of commas, periods and question marks along the bottom of the page, with instructions that she put them in wherever she liked. Wow, this tactic would save me a lot of time writing and editing and save my publisher money on printing. It is not only economical, but green! Think of the paper – the trees! – saved by streamlining all those pesky spaces between the words. Win-win! So the pages of my books would look like this:

unbundlingisgoodforeveryonebusinesseswillmakemoremoney
andconsumerswillonlyhavetopayforgoodsandservicestheyactually
wantandusetherebystimulatingglobaleconomieswecouldevenout
sourceourpunctuationtosomethirdworldcountryandtheycouldma
kemoremoneytoo

.....,,,,,?????!!!!!:::::;;;;; """"" """""’

I will further unbundle my service by charging extra for all those superfluous vowels. They are not really needed anyway. Most people can figure out a sentence without the vowels; really they can! (Ask any teen who texts.)

Vwls r nt ncssry t rdng njymnt. n fct thy r wst f tm, dnt y gr?

Did you notice I included the y’s as a special bonus? Don’t get too excited. They are perks thrown in only for frequent buyers of my books.

I will yet further unbundle my service by offering the consumer the ultimate economy: book binding and a cover will cost you extra. That’s right. The basic cost of the book gets you the words on the pages – loose pages. Why should consumers pay for binding and fancy cover art if they don’t want it?

When sales of my books drop, I will blame Amazon for their faulty accounting system or sneer at the ignorance of the public for not embracing my sensible cost-cutting measures. But hey, look at how much less space my books take up in my carry-on suitcase as I fly the frugal skies.

I’d love to chat more about this but I gotta run – must buy a new car before dealers figure out they can unbundle stuff like windows and tires. It was good enough for The Flintstones, right?

Betcha it’ll still cost a bundle.

*****

Author and columnist Ellen is a two-time ForeWord Book of the Year finalist and a regular contributor to magazines, websites and newsletters around the world. To contact Ellen or explore her work, please visit www.ellennotbohm.com .