ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ CHANGES SINCE THE LAST ISSUE PLUS WHAT'S INTERESTING THAT DOESN'T FIT ANYWHERE ELSE! ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ Do you have a press release, an idea, a disk, a shareware catalog or a need for a program which relates to the shareware software industry? Shareware authors would like your information! Many subscribe to this publication! Send it so SMS can evaluate it for possible inclusion in this file. Submit text in ASCII on disk so we can import it directly into this package! 5/25/91 Quite a bit of news has piled up on my desk since the last issue of SMS. Let's get started . . . Out on the shareware horizon, there is a storm brewing. Unfortunately it concerns the "T" word: Taxes. Glancing at a recent article in PC Sources (June 91, page 141) I got to thinking we may be in for BIG trouble in the near future. In essence the issue is the Use Tax. This is a tax levied by a state which requires a buyer to pay tax on purchases made outside of a state (like someone buying software or computer hardware by mail). Shareware is very much an interstate business for BOTH vendors and authors. We ship disks all over U.S. and charge shipping fees, but what about the Use Tax? In principle a majority of states charge Use Taxes on purchases made outside the state. A sales tax is required to be collected by the seller or vendor while a Use Tax is usually BUT NOT ALWAYS reported and paid by the buyer. All states that have a sales tax generally have a Use Tax. There are cases where an out of state merchant MUST collect the Use Tax such as when a business has a PRESENCE in a state such as a showroom, sales office or branch operation. This presence is called NEXUS. In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that a mail order firm did NOT have to collect Use Taxes in the state of Illinois since that firm did NOT have nexus or physical presence. So far so good; you're thinking that as an author or disk vendor you don't have a presence in any state but your own. The problem: with the increased need for state revenues, recession and decreasing federal tax dollars available to most states, the revenue folks in most state offices are scrambling to figure out how to effectively collect the Use Tax. In 1985 legislation was introduced to Congress by the states to this effect. The states are now following a new DANGEROUS line of logic: business presence, claim the states, can also be seen by toll free numbers available for use in that state, use of charge cards (backed by a local bank in that state), a moneyback guarantee and other policies. All of a sudden this sounds a little like many shareware authors and vendors, doesn't it? Can you imagine the fun of filling out FIFTY monthly Use Tax reports (one for each state of the union?) This is serious stuff and shareware is definitely an interstate business. The states are DEAD SERIOUS about this. Some states are even sending threatening notices to mail order companies to push the issue. Take a look at the original PC Sources article and give this issue some thought. Use Tax could be a problem in the future. Check out my idea for the Shareware Information File (SIF) which may make the README file obsolete and at the same time provide an unusual boost to the shareware industry. See LETTERS.TXT. Top ten shareware programs in order of priority (compiled and consolidated by volume and rank by several leading disk vendors according to PC Sources (June 91) whose source is a Member of the ASP:) Print Partner, AM-TAX 90, PKZIP, Sky Globe, ZipKey, Mercury, Tax 90, Image Print, Aporia, Windows Icon Collection (PC-SIG disk). Compiled February 1991. Eagle eye readers of SMS will note the presence of the file SEBFU35.EXE on disk two of this package. As most SMS users know, I periodically pack superior new shareware packages with SMS which may be of service to authors or users in the shareware community. For this Summer edition of SMS I want everyone to see, use and register SEBFU (Scanlon Enterprises Batch File Utilities.) This is by far the ULTIMATE batch file utility set and the enclosed version 3.5 is a major upgrade. Paul Scanlon, the program's author, has kindly allowed a $5.00 discount off the listed registration price. Just mention that you obtained your evaluation copy of SEBFU from SMS. Registered users receive SEBFI (batch file interpreter) utility in addition to an AREA CODE program if you mention SMS! Further questions: Paul Scanlon Scanlon Enterprises 38354 17th ST E #C Palmdale, CA 93550 (805) 272-4827 Next an item sent in by Jim Goode of the Technical Group. Shareware authors should take note! This is an edited and abridged version, the COMPLETE text of this letter is in the file: LETTERS.TEXT elsewhere on this disk. PSL (Public Software Library) of Houston, Texas is doing something I wish more shareware disk vendors did: when a user registers a shareware disk which came from PSL, a little form is submitted by the user to the author. The author signs the little form which is returned to the user and then (ultimately) sent back to PSL so that they user can order ANOTHER free shareware disk from PSL. Talk about motivating users to register shareware! I love PSL! How long before other vendors pick up on this SIMPLE idea? Why didn't somebody think of this sooner? JIM GOODE, THE TECHNICAL GROUP, INC. SUITE B, 4545 INDUSTRIAL DRIVE, SPRINGFIELD, IL 62703 VOICE (217) 585-3456 FAX (217) 585-0164 COMPUSERVE 70274,3274 The Technical Group is a new listing in the SMS database. We actively seek shareware and we hope to become a major force in our particular niche. We will be producing the MICRO MOONLIGHTER NEWSLETTER AND THE MOONLIGHTING WITH YOUR COMPUTER SEMINAR. The newsletter will be distributed via SHAREWARE CHANNELS and other methods. The Newsletter editorial goal: present realistic and creative methods for earning income at home with a computer as the focus of a business and keeping the computer entrepreneur aware of services, products, and specific areas of opportunity. We are seeking good articles and/or continuing series for publication. The articles can address most any aspect of working from home with a computer as the focus of the business. We need writers! Send samples of your work. We are also producing the MOONLIGHTING WITH YOUR COMPUTER seminar. While we have produced the seminar as a public vehicle, we are now involved with the production of the seminar as a service to several large clients. As of this writing (May 21, 1991), we are negotiating with Illinois Bell to produce the seminar under their auspices as a part of their experimental Work-At-Home Center in Chicago. We are in CONTINUING NEED of products that can be offered to the seminar registrants. Such products may consist of books, newsletters, magazines, software, databases. For those of you with SHAREWARE --- PLEASE SEND A COPY ALONG ASAP! For the seminars, we would like to provide the registrants with a nice little package of SHAREWARE as a part of the freebies that we normally provide. We also have a high interest in developing HYPERTEXT books which address a wide range of subjects - but, again, concentrated in the area of entrepreneurship. (End of item from Mr. Goode. See LETTERS.TXT for the complete version of this letter and further details.) PC-File version 6.0 is out and has undergone radical changes: pulldown mouse-supported menus, scroll bars, windows, dialog boxes, table view is now no longer read only, simpler report design. Things keep evolving. And, since I just mentioned PC-File, it's only fair in the spirit of equal access that I print a short press release sent to me by Expressware, providers of another world class shareware database. Note the size and sales volume of this shareware operation in the first paragraph. DUVALL, WA. -- MAY, 1991 -- Expressware Corporation Expressware was founded by David Berdan in 1984 in Duvall, WA, 25 miles Northeast of Seattle. Expressware provides software products to over 26,000 users. Currently, the privately-held company has a staff of 14. 1990 sales were over $1.4 million. Expressware Corporation announces shipment of File Express 5.0, a major upgrade to its flat-file database management system (DBMS). With an economical visual interface that breaks database management down to nine steps, File Express 5.0 is an exceptional DBMS for the non-programming business user. Expressware has dramatically enhanced product flexibility by rewriting File Express 5.0 in C and Assembler. Basic relational capability has been added to make it easier and more intuitive for the user to retrieve and place information in other databases. Over 100 new features have been added to File Express 5.0. The functionality of nearly every aspect of data management -- screen definition, import/export, database size, reports, form letters, sorts -- has been expanded. Users can now edit records while in browse mode. Recognizing that one of the primary uses of a database is for mailing lists, File Express 5.0 now has word processing capabilities. Users can write a letter from within the program and merge data from a database. File Express 5.0 has enhanced Import/Export features that let users transfer data from eight different formats, including dBase, Lotus and WordPerfect files. New features include multiple data indexing, file locking for network use, mouse support, custom input screen design, 500 context sensitive help screens and support for 280 printers. File Express 5.0 has 36 definable macro keys. Screen definition features include color configuration, automatic addition of field names, calculated fields, word wrap and easy drawing of lines and boxes. File Express 5.0 has increased its capacity, now handling 2 billion records per database, 4000 characters per record and 100 databases per directory. File Express requires DOS 2.0 or later, 512K of available RAM and two 720K (or larger) floppy drives. A hard drive is recommended. File Express 5.0 is available for $99 from dealers or direct from Expressware at 1-800-753-FILE (3453). Registration includes a 60 day money-back guarantee, one year free telephone support, newsletter and notification of upgrades. Upgrade for current users is $39.95. Contact: Charles "Luke" Lukey (206) 788-0174 MCI Mail: Expressware (end of Expressware item) Two of the best resources for starting and operating a small business will be mentioned in the next two items. Money Guide on How to Start and Run Your Business. $4.95. Contact: Your Business, POB 30626, Tampa, Fl 33630-0626. Produced by the editors of Money Magazine. Updated periodically. Also available on newsstands. The MacMillan Small Business Handbook, Mark Stevens, Macmillan Pub. 1988. Comprehensive, detailed and thorough. Newkey Ver 5.4 is out. This shareware macro generator continues to amaze me. This version adds unique features such as subroutine branching and a UNIQUE screen read feature. Here's one way I use my (registered!) copy of Newkey: when compiling the main SMS database I must LHARC (compress) it. Newkey runs the macro for this sequence and then pauses the macro UNTIL it sees the word "frozen" on the screen. This is the word LHARC provides on the screen when it is done. Then Newkey continues on or branches to a different macro depending on what it needs to do. You can also continue or branch a macro based on ABSENCE of a word or string on the screen. Intelligent macro processing based on what Newkey finds (or does NOT find) on the screen! This item should answer a HUGE volume of calls and letters I get from shareware authors and disk vendors regarding business information, employment opportunities and company profiles in the Washington State software and hardware industry as well as general information about starting a business in Washington State. Three primary resources are available. Maybe useful for a resume effort or marketing push of your product. NORTHWEST HIGH TECH 1990. Editors: John Spilker and Karen Strudnick. Published by Resolution Business Press. 206/455-4611. 713 - 110th Ave NE, Ste 208, Bellevue, WA 98004. Over 1,200 detailed hardware and software company listings for Washington, Western Canada and Oregon. Company name, key product line, phone numbers, key contacts, address, size. 1990 WASHINGTON STATE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY DIRECTORY. Published by Washington Software Association. 206/483-3323. 18912 - North Creek Parkway, Bothell, WA 98011. Detailed company profiles on major and minor software companies in Washington State. Addresses, key executive names, phone numbers, product descriptions, market category cross refs. COMPUTER USER ANNUAL DIRECTORY ON DISK. Puget Sound Computer User, 3530 Bagley Ave N., Seattle, WA 98103 206/547-4950. Locate products, services, consultants, typesetters, programmers, and employers relating to the Puget Sound (Seattle metropolitan) computer industry. $69.95 Finally a mention of the Washington State Dept. of Trade and economic development and their excellent public BBS system. You can also contact them by mail. Useful to ANYONE operating a business OF ANY TYPE in Washington State. Note the availability of trade leads. Very valuable. Information follows: WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRADE & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Domestic & International Trade Division Address: Telephone: 2001 6th Ave, Suite 2600 206/464-7143 Seattle, WA 98121 Telex: 910-444-4091 BBS: Services: 206/441-5472 * General trade counseling. * Trade exhibition/mission recruitment and participation. * Location of potential buyers and representatives for state firms. * Visitation program to state companies. * Export/Import statistics development. * Recruitment of buyers and representatives to visit state. PARTIAL BBS MENU: Marketplace program ÿ -- Private sector bid opportunities ÿ -- Public sector bid opportunities International trade ÿ -- Trade leads ÿ -- Trade assistance organizations British Columbia information

Publication lists Industry Sectors (Biotechnology, Forestry) Join discussion group Leads - view and download trade leads <1> Department of Trade and Economic Development <2> Export Assistance Center of Washington <3> U.S. Dept. of Commerce, U.S. & Foreign Comm. Service <4> WA State International Trade Fair <5> Washington Council on International Trade <6> Washington State Department of Agriculture 5/15/91 New shareware disk from Eagle Software of Texas. Their shareware offering is sure to interest Turbo Pascal shareware authors: SYS60A and STRG57 and STRG61. High speed replacements for PASCAL SYSTEM UNIT which offer BLISTERING SPEEDS for operations such as string processing, conversions, classifications, parse, position, match ignore case and much more. Versions for Turbo 5.5 and 6.0. over 111 routines. See the SMS file GOODIES.TXT for ordering info. Note change of address pending: Kevin King, Disk-Count Data, POB 36, Lake Hamilton, AR 71951 will be moving to Sacramento, CA in next two months. Will list new address as soon as available to SMS. Disk-Count Data is a BUSY shareware disk vending operation, we wish Kevin and his wife every success as they make the move. By the way my own parents are retired in Sacramento and one of my brothers lives in San Francisco while the other lives in East Palo Alto. Small world. I'll have to look up Kevin and have lunch with him sometime when I visit the folks . . . Normally I put letters to the editor in a different section of SMS, however, the following info from Dave Byter is a snippet of market information that is truly interesting. Any other authors willing to share on this issue? If you are bashful about actual volume, provide a list with percentage or fractional numbers. Dave Byter « Fast Software 1/2 Fast Road Ritner, KY 42639 606/376-3137 Dear Jim, Who produces registrations? SURVEY LAND YOURSELF is not your normal software, so take this with a block of salt. The Software Labs 20 Anonymous 16 Gemini 4 PC-SIG 4 Sizzleware 3 DEL 1 Fairshare 1 MicroMart 1 PC Arcade 1 PD Select 1 Pendragon 1 Prima Data 1 Spindleware 1 Notice that TSL produced more than everywhere else combined. Go forth & expontntiate^ Dave Byter Comment from SMS: Assuming that customers can order shareware from a variety of vendors, why is it that TSL seems to produce more registrations from this author's standpoint? Can one infer that TSL thus sells MORE disks than PC-SIG? Or maybe that TSL customers are more disposed to register a surveying program? This is most interesting. As an aside, I too notice a good volume of registrations which track to TSL, but I also track high registrations to Shareware Express, Compuserve and Public Brand. Would like to hear more input from other authors as to which vendor(s) seem to have a special magic which produces registrations. By the way, you can order Cave Survey disk from SMS (see GOODIES.TXT.) Fred Parker of Use-Full Software Anthologies (West Palm Beach, Florida) notes that while Shareware author Dave Byter of Kentucky strongly feels The Software Labs (TSL) is tops for securing author registrations, and I like Shareware Express of Los Angeles, Fred strongly feels that SMC/International Software Library (2180 Las Palmas, Carlsbad, CA 92009 619/931- 8111) is a strong contender for top registrations received by authors. Any other suggestions or nominations? Shareware authors call frequently asking about new ideas for shareware. Digging into my disorderly desk and idea file, these yet-to-be-done projects might strike your fancy. SENIOR NEWSLETTER ON DISK A compendium of trends about aging, using medicare, health insurance scams, great buys, super places to retire, tax breaks, new legislation, care for elderly, food and diet concerns, exercise, new discoveries. TAX TIPS Not another tax preparation package, but a tips disk. In other words you answer questions (age, earning status, credit card use, own or rent a home, etc) and it gives you tax strategy tips based on input. Also a section on how an audit works. Betcha this will be a HUGE HIT if done carefully and comprehensively. MY PET Care and feeding for cats, dogs, etc. Multiple disk set: one for each animal. Pet market is HUGE. HOW TO GET COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID AND UNCLAIMED SCHOLARSHIPS Big project, but this one could be out of the gate before anyone else does it. Lots of potential for annual updates and could be a hit with high school counselers. PERSONALS ADS Lots of ASCII files for example personals ads. Don't laugh. George Van Valkenburg of Soft A'Ware has asked me to do this twice. Easy package to do and probably a real winner in a crazy sense! Upon registration, the author will write two ads for the person based on data which the package obtains by asking some questions. Kinda cute. Lots of lonesome people out there. 5/6/91 New disk vendor: Zucchini Inc, POB 161, Goldenrod, FL 32733. 407/671-9766. Contact: Paul M. Leps, Jr. Paul was kind enough to send out a letter requesting permission to list my programs. Nice touch, and I can comment I wish that more new shareware startups did this. Send Paul a disk! Check out the May-June issue of Shareware Magazine: large article on corporate shareware users. Types of programs used, what they look for in support, how they find shareware, several names of key corporate contact individuals in corporations such as General Dynamics, Allen-Bradley, Data I/O. While reading the article, several key names of corporate contact individuals were given as shareware users. The thought: why not send them a letter suggesting they contact me for evaluation copies of my shareware. The problem: no address or telephone information other than company name was given. Solution if you are faced with a similar situation: grab a copy of the THOMAS REGISTER at your library and look up the mailing address, telephone and background of the target company. Only takes a second and is an invaluable marketing reference for a shareware author seeking to make contact with a known but partially documented corporate shareware user. This is big dollar potential if you latch onto the right company who wants a site license for quality shareware. I've done this many times seeking site licenses for my humble PC-LEARN tutorial. Works for me . . . This brings up an interesting idea. If every shareware author contributed two names of KEY CONTACT INDIVIDUAL within a corporation who had registered a shareware package, we could put together a delicious directory of shareware corporate contacts! Send your candidates to SMS and we'll start a new database! This could be the ultimate "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" if we get some response to SMS on this idea! Let's start the CSB (corporate shareware buyers) database soon. I'll kick in with a registered issue of SMS for 5 names and addresses of key corporate shareware buyers. One year SMS subscription for 18. I'm looking for corporate buyers who have registered your package such as a key office manager, MIS contact, or person who got a lot of your shareware in the front door at a company. Along the same line of shareware in corporate America, note that a group of ASP authors have published a corporate catalog of shareware which will be mailed to several thousand corporate buyers. Authors should take a peek at this shareware disk: Fastzip Mail Ver 2.2 is useful for authors and disk vendors who want to print special postal bar code and/or return address on mailers, postcards, envelopes. Even has adjustment for dot matrix printers for use with old ribbon to make sure that bar code is readable by post office machines. Slick package can be ordered from SMS; see file GOODIES.TXT. Another winner is a tiny little shareware jewel called the TXT2COM utility which converts any ASCII text file into a com file. But there's more! You can convert your txt file to a com file which even has imbedded screen color control commands, browsing, print file or screen, show line number, etc. Only $5.00 to license this tiny jewel of a program for your shareware distribution disk. So darn clever. This one does MORE than what the docs say. Even has a TSR popup version. Must have. See GOODIES.TXT for ordering information. Use this thing to help your end users root around in your documentation and keep outsiders from editing your text files since they are compiled and inviolate to tampering. Next, let's take a look at shareware best sellers according to a couple of notable vendors: Best sellers at PC-SIG as of June, 1991: Print Partner, AM-Tax, PKZip, Sky Globe, Zipkey, Mercury, Tax 90, Image Print, Aporia, Windows Icon Collection. Meanwhile, best sellers and recommended bets at Software Excitement disk vendors of Central Point, Oregon are: Checkmate, Names and Dates, Master Keys, Viruscan, Super Pinball, PC Key Draw, World, Computer Tutor, Trip Planner, Total Recall, Electric Almanac, Form Master, Treeview, List 7.3, Video Poker, Algebrax, Typing tutor, PC-Write, School Mom. Take a glance at the April 1991 issue of PC SOURCES. Writer Christopher O'Malley strongly suggests that more computer sellers and VARs put shareware on the hard drive of ALL computers sold. Real win win situation for the industry. Grand new idea, says Christopher. Wanna hear a secret? My little PC- LEARN tutorial for beginners has been shipping on the hard drive of all computers sold at Seattle's Profast and Seattle's US Micro Express for over a year now. The Computery Store in Indiana does the same. I currently have about 30 stores with such licensing arrangements for PC-LEARN and I get loads of registrations from this SWEET SOURCE daily. Now you know, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story. Suggest you steal this OLD idea and go out and bang on some computer store doors soon! New computer owners are PRIME candidates to buy, use and REGISTER shareware. Vendors can get into the act, too, by working a deal to keep their catalogs near the cash register at the local computer store. I work a deal with disk vendors using PC-LEARN so that just this kind of "catalog placement" can happen. Drop me a note if you are a vendor and what to act on this. Want to contact Richard Petersen, President of PC-SIG? Personal contact info - FAX: 707/829-3265. Mailing address: POB 62, Graton, CA 95444. May 1991 Issue of Compuserve Magazine lists facts and stats on the key on line databases within their service. Smart shareware authors might be wise to root around in such databases as Commerce Business Daily (GO COMBUS), Newspaper Library (GO NEWSLIB) or Patent Research Center (GO TRADERC) for ideas and demographics for shareware. See pages 20 and 21 of that issue of the magazine. And don't forget to check in at the Working from Home Forum (GO WORK). Sysops Paul and Sarah Edwards of that forum can also guide you to their new book "Working from Home" (publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc, 1990). And speaking of books, you can electronically search and price your favorite book, cassette, CD or video purchases at the Barnes and Noble store (GO BN). 5/2/91 Clever idea! Brian Nash, SoftShop, POB 3701, Omaha, NE 68103 sent along a copy of his new program: SoftShop ver 2.1 which neatly allows the user to design a professional looking menu- driven shareware catalog which a disk vendor might use or design. Could also be used by anyone designing any kind of disk catalog with something for sale (stamps, donations, coins, etc.) The disk is itself shareware and has been listed as available in the SMS file GOODIES.TXT. This could be the start of a great idea that allows MANY MORE folks to get into the disk vending business which is something shareware needs to further raise visibility, credibility, and registrations from an author's standpoint! Know anyone that wants to be a vendor? Softshop solves one part of the puzzle: quick and easy disk catalog design. 4/28/91 Received a disk with letter to the editor from David Batterson who is the author of the popular PC REVIEW shareware package. In many respects David's package is similar to the direction of many sharp shareware packages of the future: information on a disk rather than an application to manage information. Check out David's thoughts at the end of the file LETTERS.TXT elsewhere within this package. Good reading! 4/24/91 Still more commercial software is moving into varying forms of shareware-like marketing methods. Quicken software published by Intuit is up to something: the April 1991 issue of INC. Magazine features a comment by John Case who notes that Intuit offers customers the chance to obtain a copy of Quicken for an $8.00 shipping and handling charge. If the product does not suit the customer's needs, then the customer is invited not to pay for the product. No need to return the product for a refund. Keep it or toss it. It it looks and quacks like a duck (shareware) then is it a duck? Nope. Technically Quicken cannot be distributed by traditional shareware disk vendors so one might classify this as "almost shareware." Times they are a changing. Buttonware, founders of the shareware concept, is big business. Begun in 1982 by Jim Button, Buttonware grew to revenues of $400,000 by 1984. Last year revenues were over 3.5 million dollars. Buttonware remains committed to the shareware concept even while others focus on moving out of shareware towards a strong commercial software focus (e.g., DataStorm/Procomm and the FormGen Company with its retail versions.) Buttonware actually bridges both worlds and secures high volume sales for products such as PC-File and PC-Calc through retail outlets such as Egghead Software. With the installation of a 900 telephone support number one who suppose customers would be concerned with a pay-as-you-go support policy, but apparently all is well and indeed 900 telephone support service seems to be a growing norm in the software industry. Currently Buttonware has 30 full-time and seven part-time employees. Tech Support volume is about 300 calls per day which. Jim Button's son, John, is currently Buttonware's International Business Manager which is a current and future thrust of this dynamic company. Current translations of Buttonware products are targeted at French and German markets with others to follow. In that respect John Button is sure to be a busy man! COOP mailing news. Longridge Software 203/723-8380 in Naugatuck, Conn. promotes a COOP mailing method for shareware authors. Each three months they will mail a package of disks from several authors to a large variety of distributors. Share the cost and get involved with the power of COOP. Check out the Baker PC Industry Catalog. 9,000 companies and 20,000 products for the PC Market. Data available on disk in ASCII. Can contact them at 609/582-9203. Good resource for shareware authors. Loads of addresses and key contact info. $25 per issue. 4/22/91 A future edition of Shareware Magazine from PC-SIG will feature interviews with industry movers and shakers. The three key questions asked of these industry sources are: 1) What trends do you see in the shareware industry? 2) What erroneous shareware myth should be corrected? 3) How should a person better use your shareware package? Should make interesting reading with the combination of shareware industry gurus now writing their responses! Latest info on shareware disk bestsellers from Shareware Express disk vendors, 27601 Forbes Rd, Ste 37, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677: Skyglobe, World29, Bootsys, LQ & Bigprint, ImagePrint, Loan Accelerator, Legal Guide, Amortizeit!, Form Master, VDE, Zipkey, Master Meal Manager, Powerbatch, Patience. Smart shareware authors keep an eye on hotsellers to determine their own marketing direction. Expect to see a book release later this year from Future Communications Systems, Mr. Marty Fox, 170 Broadway, Ste 201, New York, NY 10038. Focus is on producing income by working with a computer at home. Should be interesting and possibly include information from SMS! Marty's local telephone number in New York is 212/903-5626. There are obviously MANY ways to make money with a computer - writing shareware is but one avenue. One of my favorite marketing ploys is to try to determine the demographics of the users who register my package. My PC-LEARN package is a beginner's tutorial and one thing I have noticed is a growing predominance of older and senior users of the package. Look closely at registration checks you receive and read between the lines: things such as USN Ret. (US Navy retired) and other clues give age demographic information. If a user writes a chatty note on the registration form I sometimes call and probe more deeply: how are they using PC-LEARN? What is missing? Changes needed? Looking closely at registration documents gives a lot of information such as ratios of men to women who use the package, age and location. Even the check number reveals a lot: a high number like 4652 is usually an old account. Business or oversize check reveals a potential site license possibility. And on and on! Do you just cash registration checks or do you use them for demographic research? Shareware is a PROCESS not a PRODUCT! 4/7/91 Dave Snyder at MVP Software passes along this tidbit: cheap disk supplier is Ann Deaver Enterprises, 2897 Gavilan, San Jose, CA 95148. Dave claimed something like 14 cents a disk. Maybe worth a little investigation. New disk vendor: Shareware Unlimited, Perry Langla, POB 6303, Virginia Beach, VA 23456. ASP vendor. Another vendor north of the border: Ralph Kendall, 5111 - New Street, Burlington, Ontario, Canada L7L 1B2. You should consider writing a religious or biblical shareware package! Most authors kind of roll their eyes and mumble something about "writing serious applications rather than low profit potential religious shareware." Wrong, wrong, WRONG! Kevin King of Disk-Count Data and Ray Hamilton of Biblesoft say church and religious shareware is a BOOMING BUSINESS! Kevin's primary income flow is from sales of one primary religious shareware line. Church Bytes Magazine is devoted to just this market. I suspect that users of religious shareware are also a little more sensitive to registering a package since honesty and religion tend to go hand in hand. Are you ignoring a booming market? Contact Ray or Kevin (address info in the main database) for further details. Received a nice letter from Marilyn Young, editor for PC-SIG's Shareware Magazine. Marilyn emphasizes she wants shareware authors to submit press releases, story ideas and news about the shareware scene to her. Shareware Magazine is widely followed in the shareware community. I do urge you to pass along those interesting story ideas and news about shareware directly to her. Shareware Magazine can be reached as follows: Shareware Magazine, Marilyn Young, Editor, 1030 D East Duane Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Voice: 408/730-9291. FAX:408/730-2107. Expressware, the File Express people, just finished using SMS to mail out part of their announcements and releases for their upgrade to File Express. Likewise Bob Ostrander and crew at Public Brand registered their copy of SMS and used it to mail out the new update for Professional Masterkeys. I am still looking at the check from Public Brand for the subscription to SMS. Don't know whether I should cash it or frame it . . . By the way, Public Brand sent in a little stack of bad and undeliverable addresses returned from their mailing of PMK. That's how I keep the SMS mailing list clean: appreciate feedback on ANY new or old addresses. Now you know what user supported really means! All of you out there, PLEASE keep me posted on address info for vendors, clubs and computer magazines! It benefits all of us in the shareware community! This is weird. I am getting quite a few subscriptions requests for SMS from engineers who obviously (from the letterhead) work at large silicon chip manufacturing houses. Is there a latent pack of shareware authors hidden in those silicon foundries of California? Could we soon be treated to some new shareware packages from a crop of author/engineers? If you think shareware is a busy industry now, just watch the next four or five years! Cheaper chips could bode well for shareware! Here's the drift. Several industry journals I follow are targeted at computer and chip designers. This is pretty esoteric stuff: ASIC chip design, wafer production technology, economic trends in the chip industry for military contracts, etc. It seems that if you think that chips and computers are cheap now, wait a year or so now that even newer technologies are blossoming. Example: multi- trace wire technology that allows seven and eight stacks of printed circuit board wiring on one board with each trace separated by high density polymer coatings. No more expensive multi-layer boards! Just one board with multiple traces and polymer insulators. Computers are going to get so small and cheap that everyone curious about learning will get one. The variety of software needs and niches will explode as really cheap computers come to the masses! This is the time to really rev up your shareware creativity and prepare for loads of niche markets and shareware opportunities. Now that oil prices are stabilizing, military budgets are going down due to global tension relaxation, and economic markets are solidifying I think we could see software really become the currency of trade. These are exciting times for shareware! Time for some news from Canada: New shareware vendor in Canada. Tim and Donna Heaton, DDH Ware, POB 1230, Forest, Ontario, Canada NON 1J0. 519/786-4389. I repeat my often spoken refrain: send 'em a disk! I urge all shareware vendors startups to contact me for a listing in SMS. I like Canadian software! Telix is one of the finest shareware packages for modem communication ever invented. Exis of Canada is the provider. By the way, the new maintenance upgrade for Telix Ver 3.15 is shipping! New packages in the mail today: PC Stat comprehensive statistics package from PC Information Systems of Reno, Nevada. Also, the Painless Accounting folks in Plano, TX have released the Painless Event Processor which cleverly feeds keyboard macros to your PC to start ANY application or combination thereof at a time determined by your system clock. Good stuff here . . . PC Stat reachable at 702/342-0376. Painless at 214/596-9164. I like Texas software. More cotton pickin machine coders there than anywhere else. I kid you not! Fred Parker of Use-Full Software Anthologies offers a few opportunities. He has a three disk set of his software with a little extra space on the disks and requests any author with a good home-use program to contact him for purposes of coop mailing (your stuff and his) to his registered users. Possibility of exchanging mailing lists of registered users, his and yours, so long as confidentiality is preserved. Fred is at POB 4684, West Palm Beach, FL 33402. 407/687-7738. I might add a postscript that this is how shareware authors should get their marketing done! Sharing, swapping and synergizing! 4/3/91 TechStaff Consultants Inc. is a disk vendor who passes along the following information. New address: POB 823, Watertown, MA 02272. 617/924-0306. Their disk catalog is unique: contains actual screen snapshots of many of the shareware programs. Neat idea! They also author The TechStaff Tools collection which has been reviewed by Computer Shopper Magazine (Feb, 91) and Shareware Magazine (Sept/Oct, 90). Good organization! Send President Jim Patriarca a disk with your program and note their change of address. Interesting tidbit from shareware regions in Houston: HAL-PC librarian Harvey Hild supervises the shareware library for the 10,000 member Houston Area League. They copy over 4,000 shareware disks per month for their members. That's a lot of shareware! Contact HAL at 1200 Post Oak Blvd, Ste 106, Houston, TX 77056. Odds and ends: people call and ask me what database do I use to manage SMS: Borland's Reflex. Most "respectable programmers" react with horror: why not a power user's product like Rbase or dBase? Reason by way of example: yesterday I had four Reflex windows open as I rummaged around the SMS mailing list in Reflex. Windows all reading simultaneously: 1) Form view showing precise readout of a single record 2) list view showing a "spreadsheet like" view with 8 or so records above and below the record in question 3) crosstab open to show actual total count of the database plus count of types and ratings (how many in each category) 4) Pie chart to show visual ratio of count (quantity of ratings). Sounds silly? Not until you use something like Reflex. I'm an information junkie - you spot trends and see relationships by sifting and sniffing . . . Reflex doesn't have a programming language or macros since Borland would rather sell me Paradox, so I use the shareware macro-generating program Newkey to automate Reflex. As an example, one Reflex macro is over 400 separate keystrokes and performs the sort, export, lharc and update of the final distribution copy of the SMS mailing list which is shipped to users. Reflex also has quite a few @ functions similar to Lotus 123. Flat file databases do have advantages, at times . . . Trends on the horizon: 1) Expect disk vendors buying exceptional shareware programs from an author - example, Public Brand who owns Professional Masterkey. 2) Disk vendors and shareware authors will soon be taking an equity position in other shareware products (i.e., marketing products for authors who would rather program. Example, MVP Software. For that matter, more disk vendors will be writing their own shareware since they can see the "holes in the market" better than anyone else - example, Automated System with the Perfect Wedding Planner. 3) Commercial software trying "shareware-look-alike" schemes - example, Lotus and Microsoft with their semi-sorta-crippled programs you can buy at Egghead or find on the hard drive of your new computer. 4) More vertical market shareware. 5) This is important: authors marketing to vertical markets not just disk vendors and computer clubs - example, if your package is a diet and nutrition system, you should research Contacts Influential, a Thomas Register and other sources so that you mail your disk to folks like hospital dieticians, health food stores, weight loss clubs, etc. Vertical packages demand vertical marketing. 6) Shareware companies growing into commercial size operations and commercial software houses getting more deeply involved with shareware-like operations - example, Sub Rosa (SR-Info) and the famous Xtree package which now have shareware versions. 7) Expect to see more authors banding together to make winning projects fly - example, SMS is itself based on code and information from many authors and sources. The menu system comes from Texas and some valuable address leads and research come from California, Kentucky, and Florida. Aircraft are now made from composites, soon good shareware will be, too. 8) Expect to see major corporations start to buy entire shareware disk vendor operations - reason: information is the currency of the future and software is the driving force. In addition, the profits from a good vending or author/programming operation are tempting to corporations who up until now have ignored shareware as a revenue stream. The markup is too high and too attractive to corporations like Pepsi who calculate market share and profit structures with fractional point accuracy when shareware vendors and authors collect many dollars profit on the simple 21 cent piece of plastic we call a diskette. Expect the big guys to become interested soon. 9) Expect to see government offices start using shareware in large quantities - example the VDE editor and the Automenu system are already popular in the corporate and government world. This could be very profitable to the right author at the right time. 10) Expect to see the Internal Revenue Service someday release a shareware income tax package. Reason: taxes are too complicated now, soon everyone will have a computer, why not issue your IRS forms on paper or disk as desired by the taxpayer? Forms on disk is just another way of saying a copy of a program to do your taxes. This will change the way we work and live. Very fundamental stuff, here. 11) Anticipate "sudden ramp-up" shareware projects. Meaning: shareware that is researched, programmed, marketed and brought to completion in two or three weeks and mass marketed to LARGE numbers of vendors and BBS systems in the space of a few days. Reason: SMS mailing list and rapid BBS upload services such as Megapost. Sudden ramp-up shareware projects hold the potential for great profit since today things flow in a "winner take most" marketing strategy: he who is out of the gate in massive quantity and quality before competitors smell the coffee is bound to have 97% market share no matter what clone of the package comes out later. Lotus isn't the best spreadsheet anymore, but the winner takes most system has them locked into profit streams for a long time. 12) Expect vendors to soon start retiring MANY old shareware programs. Reason: there is too much shareware for even the largest vendors to track, review and catalog. Even with CD-ROM capacities, a lot of shareware is going to fade into oblivion in the next two or three years. 13) We need MORE disk vendors! Everybody seems upset about the proliferation of 99 cent "Mom and Pop" disk vendors. Comment: what we need is four times as many disk vendors all selling at 69 cents! Shareware needs the visibility, volume and stability of mainstreaming. Competition among disk vendors works on the same level as competition among shareware programs: the good survive, the poor die. No other industry has as low an entry fee to "set up shop" as shareware. This applies to both vendors and authors. The low ramp-up cost to get an operation started means the best and brightest will bubble to the top in surprisingly rapid fashion. This is simply the way our economic system works. On the horizon! June 21 through 23: the Summer Shareware Seminar for shareware authors and distributors sponsored by Public Brand Software, the ASP and the Indianapolis Computer Society. Three day total immersion seminar from the best and the brightest in the shareware industry. Read the LARGE detailed writeup on this stunning event a few paragraphs further along, but first some immediate news regarding new disk vendors and changes of address: MVP Software is seeking authors who want shareware programs actively MARKETED, not just distributed. If you have a great program or idea, contact David Snyder, 1035 Dallas SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49507 616/245-8376. David has been a shareware author since 1985 and knows marketing! He handles details authors dislike: distribution, promotion, documentation, orders, tech support. He will commit up to $15,000 of his company's money to market your software if it is terrific. MVP and David will be rolling out the next HOT shareware game: Robomaze II: The Tower. Robomaze II took two years to produce - graphics are intricate: screen updates occur constantly; animation is smooth. Over 100 graphics screens. Robomaze II is the second episode in the complete Robomaze trilogy. Robomaze II is available as shareware; the remaining two volumes may be purchased only by registered users. Coming June 1991. Watch for a special promotional contest sponsored by MVP Software and Public Brand Software. Robomaze II: The Tower features: Colorful animated graphics. Joystick and keyboard support. Original soundtrack written by musician commissioned just for the program. On-line help and quick reference. Runs on CGA system, yet includes redesigned graphics for EGA/VGA systems. Unique timing routine permits same game speed on any computer regardless of clock speed. Support for all Intel CPU chips. Ultra-responsive to player input - no movement or firing delays. Intiutive player interface. Full support for Tandy 1000 line, including the Tandy extended keyboard. New disk vendor: Ms. Darlene Wagner, Wagner Enterprises, 5271 Newton Falls Rd, Ravenna, OH 44266. 216/297-9330. A thanks to shareware author Fred Parker of Use-Full Software Anthologies for spotting this vendor and passing address info along to SMS. Fred says Wagner Enterprises is a quality operation. That's good enough for me! Suggest you send them a disk! A nice disk-based catalog comes from Cross-Roads Shareware, POB 2109, Alvin, TX 77512-2109. 713/331-1201. Suggest you send owner Bill Bufkin your shareware disk. Another change of address: Sunshine Software Services, POB 411115, Los Angeles, CA 90041. Steven Charbonneau, President. Their old address was in Las Vegas. Their library contains about 1,500 titles. Ship 'em a disk. From the ASP note the following: Executive Director is Jan Abbott, 545 Grover Rd, Muskegon, MI 49442. Voice tel: 616/788- 5131. FAX: 616/788-2765. CIS: 72050,1433. According to materials I have seen from the ASP, they now list over 300 author members and almost 200 vendor members. Dues for vendor membership (disk vendors, not authors) is $150 the first year and $250 each year thereafter. Software is an international business, too. Best little resource I have seen for international marketing research is Inc. Magazine's Guide to International Business. Contains goodies on international hot spots for trade, a mailing list of state resources where you can write or call for information on import/export assistance, the whole bit! I just got my hands on an old Fall 1988 version of the little guide. Neat! Inc. Magazine Publishing, 38 Commercial Wharf, Boston, MA 02110. Speaking of magazines, you should see the HOT issue of Databased Advisor (March 1991.) GORGEOUS article on the ins and outs of computer consulting. We're all shareware authors or disk vendors, but lotsa folks do consulting in addition. This issue of Databased Advisor has consulting tips and guidelines from over 25 thriving computer consultants. Databased Advisor, 4010, Morena Blvd, Ste 200, San Diego, CA 92117. More magazines/catalogs of interest to shareare authors: Compuserve Magazine, November 1990 issue: working at home. Details on Compuserve conferences and resources on setting up, managing and marketing your wares from home. Reliabable Home Office catalog POB 804117, Chicago, Il 60680- 9968 - free catalog of really neat stuff for the work-at-homer. Isn't that what most shareware authors are? Entrepreneur Magazine's Guide to Homebased Businesses (Winter 91). Lots of ideas on making money using a computer - not just shareware! Another useful magazine for shareware author marketing research. New trends in shareware: Trius, the Aseasyas Spreadsheet folks have just come out with the new ALITE which is a scaled down version of their famous ASEASYAS spreadsheet. Moral: if you have a successful package, clone it to a lighter, less byte-filling version for more revenue. Same thing with PC-Write which also has a light version. Could be a trend here. Kevin King, Disk Count Data, disk vendors POB 36, Lake Hamilton, AR 71951 has done it again with two brilliant ideas: 1) he has added a HOT echo to his BBS system for resellers and wholesalers featuring best national buys of the month. 2) he will set you up as an equipment reseller which is yet another way a shareware author or disk vendor can make money. See info below: DISK-COUNT DATA PRODUCTS P. O. BOX 36 LAKE HAMILTON, AR. 71951 501-525-0419 Voice 501-525-6094 BBS Over the years as we at Disk-Count Data have bought and sold computers systems we have continually found ourselves helping other people start their own businesses. We can help you become a PROFITABLE dealer to resell computers. It won't be long before you'll be selling computer products to your friends and relatives and maybe even your boss at work. Here's the secret: I have located several companies that we can help you buy from at true wholesale rates. They all have toll free 800 lines for both ordering and tech support. They provide on-site service from over 1200 service centers all over America. And they will even drop ship direct to your customer. You can prepare a simple display ad. You don't need to have a $4,000.00 full page ad in PC-MAGAZINE, all you need is a catchy typeset quality ad that you can display in super markets, computer users groups, at the community college or even in magazines like the "Thrifty Nickel". When you get an interested customer, mail out product brochures (that we supply you with) of what you are selling. When the customer prepays you with his Bank Draft Check (or you may want to be set up to take Visa/Master Card,) you then just call one of our recommended manufacturers and they will ship the system to your door by UPS. Or they will drop ship to your customer if they live out of town or out of state. Plus the company can provide your customer an on-site warranty package so that if something does go wrong with a computer they can call a 800 phone number to get hardware support from the "Nationwide Service Network." You will need to be registered with your State Department of Finance and Administration. A reseller's permit is all you need to start buying from a manufacturer. All states very in how much a permit will cost. You will need to set up at your local bank a BUSINESS checking account and good bookkeeping system. After a while when you get established you may want to start accepting Visa/Master card orders over the phone. We have seen a 50% increase in our business since we started with VISA. To apply for Visa/Master, just go to the bank where you got setup with your business checking. The Visa/Master card company will take 4.75% from each sale you make. We are charging you a ONE TIME FEE of just $50.00. For that money we will provide you with everything you will need to buy from each company we have recommended. Each company will have a dealer kit which will have color product brochures, dealer cost prices lists, on-site service information, company policies and an 800 toll free number with the name of your account representative to order from. We provide you with dealer catalogs of companies that sell Memory products, Printers, Monitors, Floppy & Hard drives, Controllers and other add on type boards. You will also get full access to the RESELLERS SECTION on our BBS which lists changing wholesale prices and is kept current from our national price listing database and ads we receive from VARs and wholesalers. Each company will have a dealer kit which will have product brochures, dealer cost prices lists, On-site service information, company polices and an 800 toll free number with the name of your account representative to order from. END OF ITEM FROM KEVIN KING, DISK-COUNT DATA 3/15/91 This is HOT: On the horizon! June 21 through 23: the Summer Shareware Seminar for shareware authors and distributors sponsored by Public Brand Software, the ASP and the Indianapolis Computer Society. Three day total immersion seminar from the best and the brightest in the shareware industry: How to woo Fortune 1000 companies and the Government with your shareware, getting publicity, going for growth, retailing, author and vendor needs, user group insights, writing for the educational community, programming techniques and MUCH MORE! This is the place to be! Seminar still seeking guest speakers and presentation materials. Info: contact Public Brand Software POB 51315, Indianapolis, IN 46251. 317/856-7571 or 800/426-3475 or Bob Ostrander on Compuserve at 76635,1670. I have written to Bob suggesting that video or audio tapes be prepared. Registration is only $20 and Hotel reservations at the local Holiday Inn in Indianapolis are available. You want success in shareware as an author or vendor? Indianapolis is the place to be in June 1991! Write or call Public Brand for a seminar announcent sheet which contains reservation materials and calander of activities! Steve Hudgik of Homecraft (address and tel later in this article) will be tape recording and interviewing various panel members at the conference who represent LARGE shareware operations. Will try to keep you posted when Steve's materials are available or you can contact him directly. Are you using NARC? Everybody in this business uses PKZIP to compress files. But PKUNZIP pales in comparison to NARC. Machine code fast. Point and shoot menus. Unarchives zip and arcs. Not a shell that uses PKUNZIP - this program has the code on board! Very elegant beast. Also look at Qfiler for a hot little shell if you like to see two directories at once. I like Directory Freedom, but Qfiler is also hot. See file: GOODIES.TXT elesewhere for ordering info. Neat little disk I bumped into is the shareware "Home Businesses" by James Melton of Grand Prarie, Texas. Lots of tips and suggestions for starting and motivating a little business at home. Import-Export, information services, ideas for little businesses which require little startup capital. See GOODIES.TXT for further info on ordering from SMS. I hope the author keeps working on this one - he's headed the right direction. Sometimes a shareware author should look at specialized commercial software for a marketing edge: Selective Software Catalog (free) 800/423-3556. Packages to consider: Ronstadt's Financials which allows you to enter business assumptions and then draw up income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, revenue forecast, etc. Why use it? Put your financial paperwork together if applying for a bank loan or approaching Venture Capitalists (Vulture Capitalists) when ramping up for big time shareware authorship. $119 for the package. Also look at Biz Plan Builder, $99, in the same catalog. Clever package is World Trade director, $129, which gives background on international marketing, market conditions in specific countries, customs, policies, fees. The point: Microsoft derives more revenues from foreign than domestic sales of software. This thing just might be useful to a shareware author seeking overseas sales. Oh, one more thing: it contains a database of 1,900 world trade organizations and contacts, plus 86 topical areas of trade research. Another goodie for the shareware author, same catalog, is PP Memo which helps you prepare a stock offering prospectus with complete disclosure statements, $149.95. Finally, there is Career Design, $99, to assess contacts, career path, resume workup, goal setting, etc. Bunch of other good software. Go get the catalog. Send a disk to: Power User, POB 89, Erie, PA 16512. 814/454-0234 814/459-7881. Quality disk vendor. Nice folks, Great catalog. Solid BBS system. Go out of their way to explain that users should register for shareware they use. I like these folks! I am trying an experiment. One of my community charity projects is to teach reading to adults in need of literacy help. I am trying to use a little shareware to help my student. I'll let you know how things progress as the year unfolds. However, two points: 1) are you doing something good for your community for free? 2) Can shareware help those in need either financially or directly in terms of training, management, etc? I'll keep you posted on my little adventure . . . How many shareware authors will catch the next wave: shareware for laptops. This will be (already is) a huge market. What is out there? Microsoft Works, some little battery gas gauge things, some laplinker goodies; and in shareware: compass and slicworks which are integrated programs like smaller versions of Microsoft Works. I would like to see some new shareware for laptoppers: betcha you'll see some registrations as the market takes off. An early entrant: Fastfile. A tiny little machine code-quick database. How about a laptop utility toolkit, a laptop magazine on disk for airline readers, a laptop desk reference set, a laptop care and maintenance guide, a laptop database list of repair and equipment sources. There is so much work to be done - kinda sad to see all the "me too" shareware products out there cloning each other . . . Warning: working in anything slow and bulky (Quickbasic, etc) won't make it. Assembler or C++ is closer to what a laptop needs. Big market out there. Send me something for review . . . I think the market could support a TON of magazines on disk. How many are out there now? I can count the good ones on one hand. Sharedebate International comes to mind. Reading is fun on a computer: you can zoom around, hypertext, search, sort, assemble for export and play. Big hole in the market for shareware packages out there. 3/8/91 BBS upload detail item: Megapost upload service can upload your files to Compuserve, GEnie, Channel 1, Nashville exchange and DOZENS of other HOT boards. You pay a fee to them and can also specify that a report later be sent to you showing download counts of how many times your software was downloaded on a particular board. ASP discount and subsequent upload discount. If you want to get your shareware onto boards, you pay them a fee and the job is done! Current prices: Per BBS group (roughly ten boards in a group) is $45 up to 100K zip file, with small additional fee (.45 to .65) per each 1K beyond the first 100K. Megapost, Andrew Saucci, Jr. 641 Koelbel Ct, Baldwin, NY 11510-3915. Or contact Andrew: CIS 72117,241. Delphi ASAUCCI. GEnie A.SAUCCI3. Exec PC Andrew Saucci. Get a subscription to the following publication AND send them a disk of your shareware: The Alternative Software Bulletin, Steve Enzer Editor, Binary Press, POB 757, Brooklyn, MI 49230. Editor's electronic addresses: CIS 72477,517. GEnie S.ENZER. Solid, well designed publication which reviews shareware, public domain, etc. Back pages list NEW file listings on CIS and GEnie. Plus detailed reviews of major and minor shareware packages. $18.00 for an annual subscription of ten issues. My check went in the mail today! Get this one! Send them a disk for review! Here's one of my standard tricks: always carry a sample disk or two of your programs with you in the briefcase. As many of you know, my primary business is commercial photography. As I wander about Seattle on my hectic day I frequently spot clients who have computers. If the timing and circumstance is right, I can offer a copy of my PC-LEARN beginners tutorial to a new computer user. Easy way to get registrations when you deal with a user eyeball to eyeball instead of post office box to post office box! Top ten shareware sellers reported by The Simple Series disk vendors of Plaistow, New Hampshire: (in order of sales volume) Commander Keen, Last Half of Darkness, Resume Shop, Animated Alphabet, Takin' Care of Business, Turbo Paint, Formgen, Unicom, Business Forms Collection, Electronic Monopoly. Wise authors check trends to spot openings (or competitors) in the market. Next item of interest to programmers looking for an easy to use interface item. Shareware disk (can order from SMS file GOODIES.TXT or direct from author.) Note following . . . Programmer's Integrated Environment (PIE) provides a simple interface for most popular programming languages. PIE allows the programmer to edit, compile, link, debug, and test programs from a simple menu. It will work with most popular programming languages including Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo Assembler, and QuickBASIC. Also, it allows the user to switch rapidly from one language to another by simply entering a new source file name! PIE is an interface between the editor, command line compiler, linker, and debugger, if all of these are available (an editor is supplied with the registered version of PIE). It has been used successfully with Turbo Pascal 6.0, Turbo C 2.0, Turbo Assembler 2.0, and QuickBASIC 4.5. Can order shareware evaluation copy from SMS (see GOODIES.TXT) or author: twentysomething Software 16744 James St. Holland MI 49424 Why don't more disk vendors use BRIGHT IDEAS? Let's spend a few paragraphs on this point. Simple Series (Plaistow, NH) aggressively places stacks of their catalogs in major computer stores - up to 70 locations as of this article, Public Brand (Indianapolis, IN) publishes a nice list of books for sale which are of definite interest to computer users and they also rate shareware disks with trophies and stars so the end user can get a little value ranking of the product, PSL (Houston, TX) publishes their PSL News on ultra lightweight rice paper in a handy little pocket size and also has a mega disk collection of the best shareware and clever chit/chat newsletter at the start of the publication, Data Outlet Shareware (Macon, GA) includes an alphabetical index of programs so you can find a program's page number location in their catalog if you look in the index by name - THIS IS ESSENTIAL IN ANY CATALOG AND MOST DISK VENDORS ARE MISSING THIS FEATURE! Some disk vendors wisely specialize and thus don't have to compete with anyone. Example: Biblesoft of Greenleaf, ID is probably the biggest and best vendor of religious shareware. They don't have to worry about competition. There is none at their advanced level. Kevin King, Disk Count Data of Lake Hamilton, AR, uses a clever wrinkle to promote his disk vending operation: in addition to maintaining a catalog and BBS he also writes a well-respected column about religious software for Churches Bytes Magazine. He thus promotes shareware and his own vendor operation to a LARGE BUT SPECIALIZED NICHE MARKET. Dumb stuff: why do some vendors have a simple, clear order blank with good instructions and empty lines for program name and disk number while other vendors have two pages of itty bitty listings of every disk number they carry and customer is expected to find and circle the itty bitty numbers of the disks he/she is ordering? Imagine the fun if the Sears Catalog did this . . . Why not use a rational order form like PD Select of Gastonia, NC and place it properly at the end of the catalog where it can be located by a customer and include a couple of spare copies? PD Select also wisely puts the "how to use a shareware disk info near the order forms at the back of the catalog. Use the paper saved on itty bitty disk numbers to LIST MORE SHAREWARE. Shareware Express (Laguna Niguel, CA), The Software Labs (Los Angeles, CA) and tiny Tsunami Software (Los Angeles, CA) have reasonable order forms. Not great, but reasonable. Why do vendors put the order form in the middle of the catalog? I am not interested in the poor reason that when you pull order form out, the binding doesn't lose pages since you are removing the middle section and the staples hold the remaining guts together. New England Software Library puts their order form in the middle of the catalog but colors it bright yellow so you can kinda find it (sorta like spray painting a stolen car: attempting to make a dumb deed a little bit easier to locate). Venerable Public Brand also puts the customer order form in middle of catalog, but their catalog is so detailed and deliciously thorough that you can't really quibble over small stuff. Back to some praise and positive comments: Soft A'Ware (San Diego, CA) has probably the best author notification policy in the business: when they receive your disk submission OWNER GEORGE VAN VALKENBURG picks up the phone and calls you and also sends out a copy of Pinnacle Help and SMS to give you some insights into how authorship has its privileges! Shareware Outlet of Bellevue CLEARLY marks the new additions to the catalog with a visually BOLD "new" logo so you can scan any issue and find the new disks FAST. PD Select will be coming out with the DEFINITIVE reprint of how beginners should use shareware in their next catalog: most shareware vendors have tiny ATROCIOUS sections of their catalogs devoted to vague crappola hints about what file extensions are and how you can throw confetti in the air and unzip or unarchive programs. Vague descriptions on how to use shareware cause vague reorders from most beginners and poor registrations. No single vendor has this one right yet! See my program SUT (shareware users tutorial) for my attempt at plugging this leaky dike. MSCA of Waukesha, WI is aggressively going after college bookstores as a location for shareware racks and catalogs: an untapped market. Tsunami Software of Los Angeles, CA has probably the smallest catalog in the business but they put really attractive little picture icons next to each disk listing. Very small catalog, but cute and readable. Back to the subject of bugs in programs and a couple of vendors that shine: Public Brand has Marcia Meier, their chief disk reviewer, call you pronto and suggest a fix if they like your program and want to encourage a little tinkering to your program's benefit. ACL of Sacramento, CA does the same as witnessed by a recent call to me to suggest a little fix to PC-LEARN which made a lot of sense and only took one weekend of programming to solve. Finally, some of the really smart disk vendors are starting to write a little shareware of their own which is GREAT! I like versatile folks. Writing and selling keeps you down in the trenches! Examples: MSCA and Automated Systems put out some good packages they have authored. But these two vendors are a minority and sadly most vendors sit around wondering why nobody writes that neat package customers are demanding when they could DO IT THEMSELVES! Final awards before I summarize. Standout movers and shakers who are industry resources: Kevin King (Disk Count Data) category: drive, originality and raw hustle. Howard Schwartz (MSCA) category: talent and direct marketing savvy. PD Select, category: plain common sense, killer catalog, always thinking about authors. George Van Valkenburg (Soft A'Ware) category: forever on the phone to authors in probe and research mode, always thinking how to improve the industry. Public Brand, category: damn fine catalog. Shareware Outlet (Bellevue, WA), category: top notch BBS Tsunami Software, category: smaller is better and brighter. The Simple Series, category: catalogs at more retail locations than MacDonalds has outlets. PC-SIG, category: Shareware Magazine is the major force which will eventually professionalize and inform the industry. ASP, category: ASP catalog on disk with list of authors, ASP outlets and program descriptions; all nicely done. I won't keep droning on. The points: 1) the best and brightest disk vendor ideas are all over the place in this industry, but no single disk vendor is using A LARGE NUMBER of really great ideas; just a few good things here and there. 2) there are still another thousand disk vendor marketing ideas yet to be discovered. 3) if you think this industry is saturated with disk vendors all trying to compete at 99 cents a disk, I'll bet it could support four times the number of suppliers if shareware vendors would start using bright, simple marketing concepts just like the handful I've presented in the last few excessively long-winded paragraphs. Too many vendors are competing on the 99 cent principle: when your price per disk reaches 99 cents, your chance of staying in business reaches .001 percent. Authors and vendors MUST compete with ideas and marketing strategy, price is but ONE ELEMENT of marketing for results. Another shareware disk I chanced upon is HOT. The MSDOS Reference. A compilation of dozens of tech refs listing all kinds of programming goodies: scan codes, interrupts, history of DOS, memory map, vectors, goodies and more goodies. Very nice. See file: GOODIES.TXT in this package. Shareware trends: why aren't the following packages and or concepts for shareware out there? My daughter has one of those little hand held pocket spelling checkers with thesaurus. Handy. Why don't we have a popup version similar to a popup screen calculator. If I saw something with the speed of ZIPKEY and the elegance of the XACT calculators, I think that would be a winner. Next trend on the horizon most shareware authors seem to be missing: data for specialized markets. Why program yet another database or utility package (yawn) when you could put together a database of mailing lists, genealogy information, lists of gardening seed catalogs, lists of employment agencies, shareware guide to dog and cat breed health care, etc . . . Don't always program an application which uses data. Program an application WHICH CONTAINS DATA! This also insures renewal and cash flow potential since databases and lists of information go out of date predictably and thus require users to come to you with open wallet for an update. The age of "me too" products is coming to a close. Send me a copy of your new concepts. I'll tell you if you've got a bingo or a yawner. Especially interested in shareware that fits MY NICHE for the SMS file GOODIES.TXT which specializes in shareware targeted at users who are themselves shareware authors. I get stacks of shareware disks in the mail every day and frequently spot clever ideas worth sharing. Get a copy of the SILICON FROG UTILITIES! Evaluation copy available from SMS (see file GOODIES.TXT) or most shareware disk vendors. Why get Silicon Frog? 1) You've got to see how the author uses an internal PKZIP error checking routine to prevent modification or virus tampering - most clever I have seen! 2) You've got to see how the author has user automatically read a licensing statement for use of the disk and answer "yes" that user will abide by the conditions of the evaluation disk agreement before proceeding 3) the utilities are EXCELLENT! Loads of COM files to do many marvelous chores. This disk is a treasure trove of BRIGHT IDEAS! Highly recommended. Some ideas are so obvious you wonder: I am always bugged by people registering old copies of my shareware from weird sources I cannot track down and send an update disk. Try writing the person a note and ask where they got the old copy: USUALLY NO RESULTS. Instead send a pre-stamped postcard with your return address and note asking to be informed of the source of the old copy of your shareware: WORKS ALMOST EVERY TIME! Shareware authors send SMS piles of disks: I love it and try to sift out those applicable to my general shareware library or the SMS library which may interest other shareware programmers. However some programmers ask me to do a detailed written review, spend several hours with the program, beta test it, prepare a marketing analysis (what is chance for success in shareware market, what should you do next, who are competitors if any, etc.) Unfortunately I can't do this for everybody, although many folks request it. Bottom line: I try to look at everything and make sure it goes in the proper library or catalog. But if you want me to do a detailed analysis (spend all day with your program, do thorough writeup, spot problem areas, suggest marketing strategy and provide ONE additional beta test of the revised product, contact me for current charges for this service. Most shareware programmers extract their marketing information directly by reading SMS. Many however, want a personal review and analysis of their product which I can't do as a freebie. Hopefully you won't deem this a high falutin' manueveur: nothing in life is free and if you want me to personally beta your program, we have to be fair with each other. Generally free advice is worth what you paid for it. I might suggest that if you are not even prepared to spend around $400 to $500 in postage costs to distribute your program, let alone marketing and programming costs, you are kinda wasting your time. Let's get back to business . . . The next item is VERY INTERESTING. A commercial strength software programmers management system. Can order shareware version for inspection (two disks from SMS via the file GOODIES.TXT elsewhere in SMS or directly from the developer: ------------------------------------------------------------- Sell More Software System (shareware version available): Marketing and MIS for Software Developers. From Droege Computing Services, Inc. 3200 Croasdaile Drive, Suite 304 Durham, North Carolina 27705. 919/383-9749. Shareware version available on two standard 360K floppies. The Sell More Software program is a personal computer system designed to facilitate the marketing, sales, and administrative activities involved in selling computer software. Created specifically for software developers and value-added re-sellers, the program helps to plan projects, track contact with prospects and clients, track support, and print custom letters and forms. Sales and Marketing Features. Clients, Prospects and Products, MailMerge Forms, Invoicing, 7 Indices to search Prospects by, Handles multiple sales representatives, Next sales call by Sales Rep or Product, Copy Prospect to another Record, Search for other names at same company, Personal Messages and Notes, Tracks Typical questions, Contact History, Global search and replace, Label and Laser Envelope Printing, Client and Prospect Reports, Create Mail Merge Secondary File, Contact Summary Sheets, UPS Labels, Accounts Payable Labels, Analysis of Telemarketing Work, Weekly Marketing Analysis, Survey Analysis, Daily Call List, Letters to Related Clients, Contact Analysis by Type, Contact Analysis by Product, Price Lists, and Pricing Detail. Time and Billing for Consultants. Proof Reading Listing, Generate Invoices, List Items to be Billed, Key Vacation Time, Weekly Report of Time Worked, and Productivity Analysis. Accounting. Chart of Accounts, Transaction File (General Ledger), Cost Accounting, Cost Centers, Month End and Year End Closeout, Postage Expense Tracking, Supplies Inventory, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Transaction Register, General Ledger, and Budget Analysis. Software Support. Problems, Error Log and Tracking, Software Support Followup Letter, Error Listings, Support Listings, Geographical Listing of Users, Sales Analysis, Support Expiration Notices, Support Expiration Labels, Mailing Labels, New Users, Demos, and Diskette Labels. Other Management Functions. Proportional Fonts, Product Labels, Project Planning, Enter Payments / Outstanding Invoices, Invoice Distribution Report, Royalty Distribution Report, Lease Tracking, Invoice Management, Weekly Project Management, Project Status Reports, Timesheet, Product Cost Analysis with Average Monthly Cost, Objectives with % Analysis, and Product Budget, Actual and Variance. Complete Contact Histories. The Clients and Prospects file maintains a record of each contact, thus preventing you from forgetting a client or his needs. Next Marketing Step. The program keeps track of the next contact date for each client, thus assuring that you always know when to make the next call or send the next letter. Software Support Tracking. The Support record tracks support for each client. The separate Error Tracking record lets you keep up with problems and solutions. Project Planning. The Project Planning module helps you track hours spent and status of each project. It also helps to monitor expenses with the Cost Analysis report. Mail Merge. The Mail Merge feature automatically merges name and address records with your own letters. The ability to rate your prospects simplifies mass mailings. Laser fonts are supported, thus permitting high quality output. Reports. The program's reports help you to manage your sales, marketing, and administrative functions. Reports are listed in the functional checklist. You may register and receive bound documentation ($100), software support ($375/year), or source code ($750) for this software. System Requirements: IBM or compatible computer (AT, 80286, or later CPU recommended), Hard disk, 640K or more memory, DOS 3.1 or later, LAN compatible. Shareware version available from SMS or Droege Computing. ------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting book on direct mail marketing brought to my attention by Ed Marion of Webster, Texas: Direct Mail Workshop, 1001 tips, by Rene Gnam. 813/938-1555. Speaking of direct mail marketing, check out the two shareware disks which discuss this subject in the file GOODIES.TXT elsewhere in this package. When the ASP was using their Bellevue, Washington address they sent out a very interesting AUTHOR APPLICATION disk for authors interested in joining the ASP. That version of the disk contained the highly useful file GUIDE.EXE with letters and marketing ideas from established shareware authors. You can still obtain that version from SMS (see file: GOODIES.TXT). Now that the ASP has changed their mailing address to Muskegon, MI the author application disk has changed and mysteriously no longer includes GUIDE.EXE but equally mysteriously has a VERY INTERESTING file of chit chat captured from their ASP Compuserve forum about what and how they view "trivial software" which is not eligible for ASP membership status. Take a look. Get the old version or new version from SMS (file: GOODIES.TXT) or of course contact the ASP directly. This is interesting: telephone support services for shareware users! I talked at length with Kenneth Mocabee 314/256-3130 Advanced Support Group, 268 Lamp and Lantern Village, Town and Country, Missouri 63017. They offer support for users of your shareware package (and other software developers in general) via either 900 or 800 telephone numbers. Revenue from the 900 numbers IS SHARED WITH THE SOFTWARE AUTHOR! Neat idea: rather than user support being a pain for the small shareware author, it can be a REVENUE SOURCE! Customers calling the hotline (1-900-456-HELP) pay $2.00 per minute. ASG returns the call on their own line if the tech support specialist needs to research the answer. Visa and Mastercard. Subscription basis 800 toll free service also available. Info available on disk and hard copy. Ken seems to be a dedicated guy about customer support and wants to provide EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS and possibly provide you a little revenue stream from user support calls. Extending this idea, what do you do if users call and want to chat about more mundane DOS questions and ask about word processing or other generic stuff? ASG offers more general support along those lines too. Other vendors are also into this game: Kirin International 900/446-2468 - claims support for over 600 software and hardware products, both MSDOS and Mac. Both prepaid and pay as you go plans. 24 hours a day. Further info about Kirin: 800/753-2468. CompuAdd: 900/990-0111 - also offers similar services. More info: 512/250-2000. The Help Network: 900/88-4HELP - offers many folks on call who specialize in various software packages and has special expertise in accounting software such as DAC, Peachtree and Bradford. PC-Helpline: 800/366-8125 - good customer support on a variety of packages More info: 800/366-8125. Micro Support Resources: 404/452-7676 - Yearly support contracts for those needing more continuous industrial strength support. Flat $200 per year. Focus is small business. If you follow the drift of the previous few paragraphs you understand how you can look good to your customers by simply sending them to one or several specialized support services so you can get back to programming and opening those envelopes with registration checks! 2/26/91 I get stacks of registration forms and then never have the time to input the registered user info into my customer database. Clever trick department: Praireware, 406/454-0829, POB 265, Great Falls, MT 59403 is seeking lists of your registered users so they can mail their catalogs and drum up a little business. I ship them my big stacks of registration forms, I get back the original forms plus a neat little disk of my customer info ready to import into my database. Prarieware gets a mailing list of customers to whom they send out their catalog! Win/win situaton for all! Shareware is a three way triangle: Users help us, vendors help us, vendors help users, we help users, WE HELP VENDORS! Just mailing out a disk to a vendor is NOT enough these days! Share that data! Wonder if more vendors will pick up on this simple trick? Disk vendors are important to this industry! They get shareware out into the marketplace. Sometimes, though, you wonder if they don't overlook the obvious: seems they all concentrate on direct mail marketing and ads in magazines. It seems to me there are a LOT of small to middle sized computer stores out there who would probably allow a small stack of disk vendor catalogs near the cash register IF THE RIGHT QUESTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES came up. Computer beginners and new computer owners logically buy more software then intermediate and advanced users, seems to me. Example: Shareware Outlet here in Seattle has a stack of their catalogs near the door at Bellevue-based Lucky Computer Stores. Seems obvious. Why don't more disk vendors do this? I even have some ADDITIONAL MARKETING TRICKS AND TIPS I will send to disk vendors on how they can accomplish this EVEN IF THE COMPUTER STORE IS 100 MILES from your office! Write me if you are a disk vendor. I am forever on the phone listening to disk vendors about what goes on and trying to figure out how I can make THEM money so they will make ME money. Ever seen a disk vendor have a sales rep solely dedicated to developing corporate accounts who want to use shareware? The rep could research what businesses would like to see in affordable shareware and pass this along to the authors (via SMS of course!) Now there's an idea! 2/19/91 Note NEW addition of the file DATABAS2.EXE to part B of this package. This is a self-extracting file of BAD AND UNDELIVERABLE ADDRESSES which is useful to those needing to know what addresses are bad. Do not accidentally mix or merge the two databases! DATABAS2.EXE produces the file DATABAS2.DBF and can be loaded into your database package. Adding a little value to SMS as requested by several authors! We aim to please . . . New disk vendor. Send this outfit a disk: Howard Schwartz, President, MSCA (Marketing Services Corporation of America) #1, Marketing Centre, 3157 Madison St, Waukesha, WI 53188-4409. 414/521-8057. Howard has taught a course on direct mail marketing and offers a MUST HAVE course on four cassettes with workbook. This is something I listened to in the car on my casette player. You gotta hear this thing for GOOD info about direct mail marketing! After all, isn't this the business we are in? Contact Howard for info about the cassettes. With his experience in direct mail and interest in becoming a disk vendor, Howard is going to put together a killer operation which should wipe out a lot of the 99 cent Mom and Pop disk vendors on the scene! Steve Hudgik of Homecraft, mentioned elsewhere in this section, has done it again with an exceptional interview on the strategies it takes to become a successful shareware author in the lastest editon of Shareware Magazine, available from PC-SIG. Too many details to list, but some highpoints of Steve's thoughts from the article: make your software intuitive, use on screen info plus help screens, beta test with someone not familiar with your system, use defaults if user needs to make selection but allow user choices too, and of course for people who use laser printers - put a formfeed at the end of the file so that the last sheet ejects from the printer rather than sitting in the printer and possibly being overwritten by the next document. New files in the GOODIES.TXT section of this package: Bates Directory of Newspapers and Bates Directory of Libraries. The point is, you might want to try mailing your shareware to libraries and newspapers for review or inclusion in collections: many libraries are now starting shareware sections and many newspapers have a computer columnist. Mail to the largest and see what happens. Good mailing lists! Also see the new electronic almanac and PC-Review which reviews and discusses LOADS of hardware and software all on a neat little shareware disk! Change of address: ASP, 545 Grover Rd, Muskegon, MI 49442. Quicksoft, venerable distributors of the famous PC-WRITE shareware word processor has been sold to Leo Nikora. Bob Wallace, founder, will remain on as adviser and developer. Shareware best sellers noted in latest issue of Shareware Magazine. In order of volume sold: Sky Globe, Home Legal Guide, ImagePrint, PowerBatch, World29, Graphic Workshop, PKZip, Miramar, Resume Shop, Wampum. Shareware Magazine is published by PC-SIG. Note inclusion of Pinnacle Help System and Pinnacle GO system on disk two (part B) of this package. Very interesting addition you authors should consider incorporating into your packages. Be sure to register with Pinnacle if you find the package useful. Pinnacle seems to be developing a line of products which we might call shareware author tools. Give a look. Another item from Pinnacle follows. Speaks loudly about the dismal acknowledgement record of disk vendors. Do disk vendors HAVE to acknowledge to be any good? I think so! So does Pinnacle. Hope that Pinnacle will keep this list updated for SMS! Vendors: see how you do on the Pinnacle Rating Scale! ---------------------------------------------------------------- PINNACLE DISK VENDOR RATING SYSTEM ---------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement Record of Several Shareware Houses compiled February 19th 1991 by Pinnacle Software of Canada: ALL of the packages submitted to the vendor by Pinnacle included four diskettes, extensive documentation, a SELF-ADDRESSED envelope, and an acknowledgement form which takes approximately one minute to fill out. So why do so few houses acknowledge? (Laziness, too many disks flooding through the door, don't know how or care to be successful, low capitalization Mom and Pop disk vendor are probable reasons . . . ed.) SHAREWARE HOUSE SENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO PINNACLE OF SUBMISSION ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ A.C.L. DEC 18 JAN 02 91 "Too late for inclusion in 1991 catalog" GEMINI MARKETING DEC 18 Good acknowledgement record OLYMPUS SOFTWARE DEC 18 JAN 09 91 COMPU-TECH DEC 18 NONE DISK JOCKEY DEC 18 NONE GENERIC-WARE DEC 18 NONE INT'L SFTWR LIB'Y DEC 18 NONE MIDWEST SFTWR LIB DEC 18 NONE PARADISE SOFTWARE DEC 18 NONE PC SHAREWARE DEC 18 NONE PRINCETON SOFTWARE DEC 18 NONE SOFTSHOPPE DEC 18 NONE SOFTSOURCE DEC 18 NONE CALIFORNIA FREEWR DEC 18 NONE COMPUTER BIN DEC 18 NONE FLORIDA PC LIB'Y DEC 18 NONE SOFT A'WARE DEC 19 DEC 31 90 (Acknowledgement via phone) PUBLIC (SFTWR) LIB DEC 19 Good acknowledgement record SIZZLEWARE DEC 19 JAN 08 91 (Acknowledgement via phone) FREEBOOTER SFTWR DEC 19 JAN 09 91 THE SOFTWARE LABS DEC 19 JAN 09 91 PD SELECT DEC 19 JAN 17 90 Winner of SMS thumbs up AUSTIN PROSOFT DEC 19 JAN 24 90 MICRO STAR/WEST DEC 19 JAN 28 91 PRAIRIEWARE DEC 19 JAN 30 90 Many typos in catalog; inaccurate reviews MICROCOMPUTER MGRS DEC 19 NONE PRINTERS SHAREWARE DEC 19 NONE SFTWR EXCITEMENT! DEC 19 NONE DYNACOMP INC DEC 19 NONE HOME BASED BSNSS DEC 19 NONE PEOPLE'S CHOICE DEC 19 NONE PUBLIC INFO XCHNG DEC 19 NONE PC ARCADE DEC 19 Sent catalog ORIGINAL SFTWR CO. DEC 20 BOX CLOSED -- No forwarding address RAINBOW SOFTWARE DEC 20 JAN 09 91 IND. SHRWR DIST. DEC 20 NONE QUALITYWARE DEC 20 NONE SHAREWARE OUTLET DEC 20 NONE SHAREWARE TO GO DEC 20 NONE SOFTEC PCL DEC 20 NONE SOFTWARE CLUB DEC 20 NONE SUNSHINE MARKETING DEC 20 NONE SUNSHINE SOFTWARE DEC 20 NONE AAA SOFTWARE DEC 20 NONE AMERICAN RESOURCE JAN 03 NONE DATA OUTLET SFTWR JAN 10 JAN 23 91 (Acknowledgement via phone) BABBAGE'S INC. JAN 10 NONE ELITE SHRWR LABS JAN 10 NONE BUDGETBYTES JAN 10 UNDELIVERABLE; NO FORWARDING ADDRESS AMERICAN SOFTWARE JAN 14 FEB 05 91 DISK COUNT JAN 14 JAN 03 APPLIED BSNSS SYS JAN 14 JAN 31 90 FIRST BANK SHRWR JAN 14 NONE FIRST CHOICE SFTWR JAN 14 NONE PD SOFTWAREHOUSE JAN 14 NONE SHRWR SOLUTIONS JAN 14 NONE ALTER. PERS. SFTWR JAN 14 NONE AMER. SFTWR XCHG JAN 14 NONE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS JAN 14 NONE ELECT USA JAN 14 NONE SHAREWARE EXPRESS JAN 23 NONE -- Has never acknowledged despite SIX mailings STANCOM JAN 28 FEB 07 91 Corporate users of shareware aren't stupid. One my my registered users for PC-LEARN (my beginners tutorial package) told me how he deals with shareware authors: he has his secretary send in a registration check with a registration form using his home address. Depending on how fast and professionally the author deals with this "secret corporate shopper" they draw up papers for LAN licensing and site licenses if the package is any good. Sometimes he has the "secret shopper" call and ask questions to see what support and author profile is like. Like I said, corporate shareware users are PRETTY CLEVER! I have sent back registered packages to several of my PC-LEARN users to find out that I have stumbled into government offices with large LAN networks and Fortune 500 companies just because I tried to be quick with a response and answered the phone with intelligent answers and a little common sense. The smartest corporate users prefer some shareware packages because the site licenses are relatively cheap and the corporate guru can call the shareware author and have a custom version programmed for a price attractive to the company and VERY attractive for the author. Viva shareware! I just finished a weekend project that should really boost the industry: SUT (Shareware Users Tutorial) is a slick small ASCII file I want all the vendors to put in their catalogs or ship out for free! I'm tired of reading half baked explanations in vendor catalogs on how a beginner is supposed to figure out shareware. We authors have a thousand nutty conventions as to disk contents and filenames. SUT is clear and simple so that any beginner can figure out how the system works along with some REAL reasons why folks should register rather than the lukewarm "register because it's nice of you" notes that most vendors put in their catalogs. I'll try to include SUT on a few issues of SMS (look for it on disk two as SUT52.ZIP and let me know what you think. Also urge vendors to use SUT so that they sell more and authors get paid more! If beginners can't figure out shareware, then we as authors lose and so do the disk vendors. I have also imbedded SUT inside my PC-LEARN tutorial system. I want some critique on SUT until it works right. Something weird: I got a call from Saudi Arabia that a U.S. Army officer wanted a dozen PC-LEARN packages shipped or modemed pronto! Seems that IBM clones are used in a variety of military ways during the action in the gulf and a lot of soldiers need a fast tutorial on how a DOS computer works. The point: shareware fills MANY market needs if you market and code your program well! PC-LEARN is my little beginners tutorial for DOS computer users . . . Wonder what other shareware packages were in the Gulf doing duty for our country? Come to think of it, does any shareware author write stuff for the military? Could be a lucrative market . . . Trot down to the post office and ask the postmaster for the little publication "Consumer's Directory of Postal Services and Products." Pub #201. Packed with goodies about using direct mail and other services I'll bet you never knew existed! Your disks are shipped in the mail and your registration checks arrive in the mail - there's lot's more than that to using the mail! Recommend disk submissions to: Uncle Hank's shareware newsletter and Zip Magazine (shareware reviews) both addresses in the main database. Killer vehicles which circulate in the shareware community. A good review from these two sources goes a long way. Finally received my first ever REPORT OF SALES VOLUME from PC- SIG. For many moons they have promised to send me a report of how many disks of my programs they have sold. Really eye-opening. Wish more vendors did this. I was stunned to see volume of sales of SMS compared to my older, more general product, PC-LEARN. SMS is only 5 or 6 months old and is killing PC-LEARN. Four stars to PC-SIG for sales volume report. Will I get another in the future? I'll let you know. Politics matters. Shareware is a marketing concept and has just a LITTLE to do with software! The assumption is that your disk is of stunning quality and beyond anything in the commercial sector BEFORE you start the serious shareware game of authorship: marketing. Shareware to me means devising a method of moving pieces of plastic through the mail for maximum profit. Back to politics: pick up the phone and call key PEOPLE and ask marketing questions: did they get your disk? How can you make it better? What packages do they NEED that you should write? Send postcard to that person by name thanking them for conversation. Call it politics, call it something else, but having a key contact person inside a vendor operation or magazine puts you into serious position to move disks. Always think: how can I solve problems for vendors and magazine editors! Don't just shove a disk out the door with an address label. Here at SMS I have access to the largest mailing list of all. But I only use about 30% of it in what I call the "key shareware movers and shakers." Who are key shakers? Example: Marcia Meier, disk reviewer for Public Brand. I have absolute respect for Marcia, she can make or break your product, strives to give you valuable feedback on improvements, and really cares about shareware. If you ignore her suggestions or review because you know your program best of all and let your ego get in the way: your disk is dead . . . Let's start a little list in SMS: who do YOU think are the key contacts on the shareware scene? Not companies. Individuals who can make or break a product! Send me your list plus a blank disk, stamps and a mailer and I'll send you back the latest SMS. I have my secret list of movers and shakers. This could be interesting if enough of you send me a note . . . Weird beg screen ideas. How close can you come to crippling without crippling? Make a beg screen which forces user to press a random key to proceed (F1, F7, etc) Then print the keypress information (what key they have to hit) at let us say one of eight random spots on the screen! Should drive cheaters wild, doesn't cripple the main body of the program, doesn't allow user to feed a known key such as "press enter to proceed" to the keyboard via a macro called from a batch file. Wicked idea! How close can you come to crippling without crippling? Silly Little Mail Reader uses the random keypress idea, but they don't put it on a random section of the screen. Generally I think that severe crippling is real dumb. But a little beg screen funny business to trip the cheaters for just a moment or so is the sweetest form of revenge and DOES NOT cripple the body of the program. Weird idea number two: lets get together a shareware disk of the greatest sneaky beg screens ever made and ship it around. I could add it to my collection in the file GOODIES.TXT elsewhere on this disk. Extra points if source code included. In the catalog of most vendors this would be known as: "That darn disk: greatest sneaky beg screens from the 80's and 90's." Another weird idea is to have a known delay (perhaps a random number of seconds from 1 to 10 just for fun) halt the screen before proceeding. But here's the fun: have the number count downhill (10, 9, 8 ...) and grow gradually bigger to fill the screen and alternately flash the please register message in a variety of colors with each tick of the clock. I want to see this one. Can somebody send me the code or do one or both of these ideas the ASP is SURE TO FROWN UPON? Remember, crippling the body of the program is stupid marketing. Beg screen creativity will be rewarded with a free issue of SMS if you include blank disk, stamps and mailer. Points are awarded for finesse (how close can you get to crass and still be elegant), use of color, proper use of english grammar, smallness of code, simplicity (minimum wordiness), humor, use of random elements to surprise and delight, security (code can't be tripped by a macro installed by user), conformance to standards (ASP might let it go through), and of course auto-sensing of hercules and color. Trick of the month club: I rip out every coupon, card, and extra thickness sheet of advertising from a computer magazine BEFORE I sit down to read it. Try it, you won't believe the difference it makes in comfortable reading. The real advertising is buried in between the lines and not on the cards and heavy paper stock. Zip++ address verification on CD-ROM with official USPS national zip files. Every viable address range in the U.S.! Heavy duty info if you are a shareware author into big time mailings. $699 per quarter. Arc Tangent, 121 Gray Ave, POB 2009, Santa Barbara, CA 93120. 805/965-7277. Also has industrial strength merge purge, city state insert and stuff that really big time operators in direct mail use. This system makes SMS look like peanuts! These folks do serious abuse to the words: junk mail possibilties! 2/15/91 SMS installation procedure contained in file INSTALL.BAT modified to allow for installation of SMS main program to Hard drives C, D, E, F, G and HIGH density floppies on drives B and D per kind suggestion of shareware reviewer MARCIA MEIER of Public Brand Software of Indianapolis, IN. Thanks! 2/11/91 Homecraft, Steve Hudgik, 503/692-3732, POB 974, Tualtin, OR, 97062. Absolutely fabulous cassette audio tape on how to market and program shareware. Listened to my evaluation copy on the cassette in my car THREE TIMES!. $14.95. Buy this now! Includes interviews by telephone with shareware greats from HOT shareware companies all over the nation plus magazine editors and other "key contact shareware movers and shakers," compuserve poll research Steve did, tips, marketing ideas. If you don't buy this tape, you will probably remain a shareware hobbyist rather than a successful shareware author. This tape IS the heart of business! Also see ad for Steve's book later in this section. Steve's compuserve ID is 71450,254. Steve also notes an interesting small detail regarding submissions of shareware disks to writers and editors of computer magazines: late Summer through September is a key time when magazines renew (or terminate) contracts with writers and editors. Thus a software submission to a magazine editor or writer should take into account possible staff changes. Steve's book, which is a practical guide to authoring and programming shareware, is doing well! Steve's address info and a short advertisement for his book appears later within this file. Recommended reading and worth the price! Remove Parity Corporation of Bothell, Washington from mailing list. No shareware being carried. Check deletions list for other removed addresses. Idea: construct a shareware package with help of a computer entrepreneur in the USSR you make contact with. Have your Russian friend supply lists of Russian entrepreneurs wanting to start businesses of all types. Sort your list by category of business interest. Model the shareware program after SMS package. Russian person supplies you mailing lists by satellite modem link. You update package and distribute in America. Russian person has bank account opened in US with American cash (hard currency a premium in USSR). The two of you split proceeds. Refine idea to have folks subscribe to monthly update. Cripple idea: delete addresses and force users to pay you small commission fee to get address of each Russian entrepreneur they need info on. Name of package? Russian Entrepreneurs mailing list: from Russian with love! Somebody will do this sooner or later, betcha! 2/4/91 I want you to remain calm. I'm going to use the "M" word: Macintosh. Some of the brightest ideas for marketing software have come from items written by Guy Kawasaki, former Apple Corporation employee and president of Acius Inc. Guy's book, The Macintosh Way (1990, Scott Foresman Professional Book Pub), is filled with wit and wisdom about software marketing and sales strategies. Essential reading over here in IBM land. I have read my copy three times and still going back for more! A followup to the book is Guy's magazine article in the March 1991 issue of MacUser. The drift is that key people exist within any computer community who can move your software. In the Mac world, three publications are key movers in directing the market to a software product: MacUser, Macworld and MacWeek. Three editors are key players: Russ Ito, Carol Person and Henry Norr of those three respective magazines. The point: use a rifle not a shotgun in distributing software. Second item: a product gets the level of distribution it deserves. If you have something which is new and well thought out, distributors and others will always take a look. Third: concentrate of end user pull. Thus try to figure out how to increase customer demand for a product (end user pull) rather than shoving it at disk distributors (push). Fourth: user groups count. They disseminate information and build "consicousness" for really great products. User groups aren't adequately stroked and served by software developers, maintains chariman Guy. Final offer at the end of the article is that Kawasaki will send anyone requesting it a database of mailing addresses and key contacts in the Mac community who help software products achieve distribution. Food for thought over here in the IBM clone community. Everyone calls me to ask the 64 million dollar question. Do I like or hate the ASP. Short answer: I dunno, let's wait and find out. . . Long answer: Some folks tell me the emperor has no clothes. Others say shareware needs some standards and a Guild. My attitude: shareware has too much potential to start serious fights and bad feelings. But suggestions, good ideas, information flow, AFFORDABLE MEMBERSHIP, REALISTIC STANDARDS, A SENSE OF HUMOR AND LACK OF POMPOSITY are good for growth. Sacred cows DO NOT always need roasting: sometimes a little sunbath is all that's necessary . . . Straw poll: should I get Joe Bob Briggs to write for SMS? Should Joe Bob write ASP membership guidelines? My two favorite states of the Union: Washington (great place to live) and Texas (they talk to you nice, clear and friendly like REAL FOLKS and they write software that's tight n' pickin good) Let's get back to business . . . 1/30/91 Several authors have requested a list of DELETIONS from the mailing list database (i.e., what was deleted and when.) This is useful for those maintaining a private list who wish to delete entries based on what I have deleted. Deletion list is now available. You can always find out which entries are new by sorting the main database by the DATE REVISED field to locate new additions made since you last used the SMS mailing list. An observation about the N word: Non-registered authors who use the SMS database without first paying the appropriate registration fee. Yep, there are quite a few, sad to say. I find out since several distributors advise me as they spot the obvious SMS mailing labels. Both ASP authors and independents are using SMS data without registering. Kind of sad when you figure authors should understand and abide by the shareware principle. I maintain a LONG list of names of the cheaters since it is easy to determine this with the help of the distributors who feed back info to me. One ASP author used the SMS data in a mailing without registering and then was called by myself by phone. The author proceeded to make negative comments about accuracy of SMS data and need for improvements in the mailing list! Come on! If you don't like SMS, don't use it. I do find out the cheaters easily and quickly with the feedback from my several distributor friends (8 as of this date.) I may simply block cheaters from EVER being able to subscribe to SMS if cheater one day decides he/she NEEDS SMS updates. Another option: publish the list of cheaters in SMS. Not a pleasant thought for an indpendent author; bad situation for an ASP author. Bottom line: play fair, be fair, respect shareware principle. 1/20/91 Membership in SMS Net for rapidly distributing shareware to BBS systems nationally is growing. See the file RAPID.TXT for list of authors and BBS systems which particpate in distributing shareware nationally. Join SMS Net by submitting an application contained at the end of RAPID.TXT. Since BBS addresses are hard to get and SYSOPS are relucatant to release these addresses, SMS Net is an attempt to provide a shareware marketing avenue which is faster and cheaper than mailing your shareware to BBS systems! Sizzleware, a shareware distributor listed in the main database, is sending around a questionnaire to disk vendors and tabulating results to be made available for purchase on disk. Questions asked of shareware disk distributors include: how many employees, are you still in business, total dollar sales last 12 months, net profit on sales in percent. Ray Hamilton, of Biblesoft shareware distributors (address and tel in main database) has done it again. His newly revised Christian Computer Survival kit (available from Ray or SMS if you see file GOODIES.TXT) now has the first ever ELECTRONIC BINGO CARD. Just like the magazine version which you pull out and then circle the little numbers for more product info, this thing is electronic. This is the cleverest use of electronic marketing I have ever seen. Get a copy. By the way, Eagle software of Texas (mentioned later in this file) did the programming. This is something Borland and Microsoft will examine if they want to see clever marketing ideas better than their own . . . BBS version numbering system for SMS changed slightly. Old system: SMS90WI8.ZIP (1990, Winter, Revision 8). New system: SMS9008.ZIP (1990, Revision 08). Future extensions will allow for mulitiple file parts of SMS on BBS systems: SMS9002A.ZIP, SMS9002B.ZIP and so forth. The top of the README file of SMS will always give you a suggested BBS name to facilitate correct naming of all versions nationally. Databased Advisor Magazine Directory ON DISK contains listing of 1,400+ sources for vertical applicaton code, consulting firms, database design tools, function libraries, management systems and more for programmers and developers. $17.95 for the disk. 800/336-6060. Or write 1991 DBA Directory on Disk, 4010 Morena Blvd, Ste 200, San Diego, CA 92117. HUGE library of PD/shareware utilities for dBase and compilers plus other utilities for shareware developers and programmers. EMS Prof. Shareware Libraries. 4505 Buckhurst Ct., Olney, MD 20832. 301/924-3594. 1/8/91 Is shareware big business? There are big distributors and small ones, obviously. However, last year Gemini Marketing of Duvall, Washington noted sales of $2.5 million. Source: owner Dale Hubbard quoted in the Journal American News. Gemini has 14 retail stores scattered around the country with plans to expand overseas, says Dale in the news article which also includes notes on Duvall, Washington which is home to THREE shareware operations: Gemini, Expressware and Fairshare. Duvall is a few miles down the road from Seattle, home to QuickSoft, and Bellevue, home to Buttonware. With Microsoft, Aldus and many other commercial developers nearby, the Seattle vicinity is reaching critical density for both commercial and shareware types of software. And the $HAREWARE MARKETING $YSTEM is published on Mercer Island which is dead center on a Seattle vicinity map - not a bad place to be! Kevin King, owner of Disk Count Data Products has installed a BBS system at 501/525-6094 so you authors can ship him your disk. Address in the main database. Kevin runs a large operation. Always send Kevin a disk. He will get it out there and has a great catalog on disk with good LONG detailed instructions. Kevin also maintains a detailed list of shareware authors on disk. $9.95. Good research item if you are trying to locate an author. Also be aware that the ASP catalog on disk contains author and distributor address and telephone information (see my file GOODIES.TXT). Added more entries to database and corrections. The main mailing list is now at over 3,000 entries and STILL growing rapidly as authors FLOOD me with lists and address corrections on disk and by modem to merge and purge with the main database! Ethan Skylar of Rolling Bay, Washington (206/842-1984) suggests I update the database to note which distributors have catalogs (disk or printed) so he can spot the BEST and most ELITE distributors. This is a useful idea! Think I'll act on it, but allow me a little time and patience. Looking for a label printing program with a difference? Labels Unlimited version 3.0 from PowerUp. 800/851-2917. Includes DBF import, graphics import, 300 dpi scalable fonts, new graphics and borders, serial numbering, print preview, date stamping, more. The shareware label makers I have seen are fine. But this commercial package is only $59.95 and is better, faster and has ten times more features for a modest price approaching what you would pay for shareware. The import/export features surpass most label makers I have seen and works with the SMS database without problems. Speaking the obvious department: Shareware authors need to subscribe to Shareware Magazine 408/730-9291. Automatic with membership in PC-SIG. Too many names, marketing ideas and useful information to pass up! Necessary publication for shareware authors who understand you can NEVER stop marketing and researching new ideas! Shareware Magazine solicits articles, contact Marilyn Young, 1030-D East Duane Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. We always submit a disk to PC-SIG, but there is a lot they have to offer to authors from a marketing standpoint if you read their magazine. Vertical market tip: if you have a specific vertical market package, for example an accounting shareware disk targeted at physicians, trot down to your local library with a pocket full of dimes. Ask the librarian to find the CONTACTS INFLUENTIAL DIRECTORY. This jewel contains mailing addresses for businesses arranged by type of business. Easy to pull out just the plumbers or software stores or video rental outlets. But here is the real magic: each listing contains full mailing address including zip code, names of key company officers, size of company and phone numbers. Better than using the yellow pages. Trot over to the xerox machine and copy the pages of interest to you and later key in the data for mailing labels at home or even cut out the addresses and glue stick them on your disk mailers. Maybe copy the pages on an enlarging xerox machine if you want to use listings as mailing labels directly. Think vertical markets for your shareware package, not just computer clubs and shareware distributors. Maybe even line up a consulting job with a company if they like your software and want you to customize it just for their use. Money to be made on this idea . . . Added new "poverty registration option for starving shareware authors." See the registration form. Think you will like it! I talked with Steve Hudgik on Homecraft In Oregon. He just finished an excellent book on shareware marketing. Includes mailing list of distributors, equipment suppliers, service providers, how to design your shareware and more! A copy of his book and a copy of THE $HAREWARE MARKETING $YSTEM disk would make a nice combination on your reference shelf! Information follows: ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º M A K E M O N E Y W R I T I N G S O F T W A R E º º º º Writing & Marketing Shareware - a new book by Steve Hudgik º º shows you how to become a successful shareware author. º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º Learn how to combine your programming skills with solid º º business practices and marketing techniques to run a º º successful software publishing business. Includes details º º on everything from software design to legal questions. º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º This book provides all the information you need to know to º º become a successful shareware publisher and includes a º º mailing list of over 200 distributors who will get your º º software into the hands of users at no charge to you. º º º º It also provides a mailing list of over 120 magazine editors º º who publish news about software and describes in detail how º º to write a press release so you can get free publicity. º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ Send for a free brochure or to order send $39.95 to: HomeCraft, P.O. Box 974, Tualatin OR 97062 - add $9.00 for foreign orders. (Jim Hood recommends this one! Get it!) 1/4/91 67 changes or deletions made to database. Deleted old or bad addresses, added things like FAX numbers and more BBS numbers for distributors. About 550 new entries added. My mailbox is PACKED daily with items to go into or be removed from the mailing list database. Added custom service price list for those folks needing my main DBF format mailing list converted to ASCII or other formats. See the END of the file REGISTER.TXT. Other conversion services available. Many people are calling who are not programmers and need file conversions for their mailing label software or just want labels printed and shipped to them ready to use. Odd idea dept: go to any post office and write down the mailbox numbers for the largest and oldest (low numbered mailboxes.) Those boxes belong to businesses or people who get lots of mail or are older folks. Those box owners either have computers (business) or the time for computers (retired). Send them a shareware disk if your disk is general in nature! Don't send a technical package, but try some general public shareware. You might make some connections and money. Drive all over town and do this for all the mailboxes. Even the private mailboxes at places like "Mailboxes R Us." Probably do this nationally by finding people in other cities to copy down numbers for OLD or LARGE mailboxes. Distributors, send those mailboxes your catalog. Get the idea? Weird marketing concept I'll bet nobody has tried even though it is SO OBVIOUS. Someone send me a letter and tell me how this nutty idea works out . . . Shareware is catching on in commercial circles: Lotus has begun a pilot program with Computerland Canada called Lotus Choice. The shareware-like program puts copies of 1-2-3, Freelance and Magellan on hard drives of new computers sold. Users can try each program up to seven times and get toll free tech support. If users decide to buy, they get a password by phone to unlock their version with an official shrinkwrapped product later mailed. Shareware is now SO BIG that even the commercial folks are giving it a try. Idea: several shareware authors have contacted me wanting my services to beta test their products and then prepare a marketing campaign. Basically they want me to wring out the bugs, find problems and then tell them how, when and where to market their product in a serious manner. A couple of shareware distributors are asking for freelance librarians to review and beta/bug test new products which arrive in stacks every day. I might be interested for either bartered programming/cash. Also consider submitting to me your name if you want to do some serious beta testing or library cataloguing of shareware products. Why don't we have more programmers doing beta testing, marketing of each others products and library catloguing for the distributors? I could start a database listing in this publication of folks for hire and positions offered. We are all connected by modem and fax anyway. Hmmmm ... What didn't someone do this before department: Tim Campbell of Pinnacle software (address and telephone info contained in his article, see file: LETTERS.TXT) has finally done something which shareware has needed: a standardized shareware utility called HELPME also known as Pinnacle Help. This clever software utility installs on your shareware disk and produces a SIMPLE, UNDERSTANDABLE, STANDARDIZED software interface which prints user manuals, proceses registration, explains product, lists files, configures your package and other grunt work. End users should love this with its standard simple front end. Shareware programmers should investigate. Can get PINNACLE HELP SYSTEM/HELPME from me (see file GOODIES.TXT) or contact Tim. Worth a look so that ALL SHAREWARE DISKS in the future will look, smell and start the same way. This utility, or at least the idea, is right up there with simple things like paperclips and post it notes! Tim has also updated his "software diatribe" with news about a new Canadian shareware distributor and more. See the very end of LETTERS.TXT file. George Van Valkenburg of Soft A'ware shareware distributors in San Diego, CA will be automatically shipping out this package and Tim's Pinnacle help disk to authors who ship him a disk. Wish more distributors would follow suit and we may yet see the GOLDEN AGE OF SHAREWARE during which all authors will start to standardize package startup, market shareware effectively and see some REAL FINANCIAL REWARDS FOR THEIR EFFORTS. George's address/tel info in main database. Useful item if you do a lot of mailings and need to check the zipcodes in a fast painless manner: get zipkey disk (see my file GOODIES.TXT). This thing is clever. Type in the first few digits of the zip and it gives the city and state instantly. Type in the first few digits of the city/state and it gives the zip. Still more? It can fill in the address block of your form letters instantly in cut/paste mode if you type in the zip or keyword. Tight item. Shareware authors should use shareware products. Right? Submit your disk for review. Alfred Glossbrenner's Master Guide to Free Software and Shareware, c/o FireCrystal Communications, 699 River Rd, Yardley, PA 19067. Alfred writes one of the largest and most respected guides to shareware in the industry and is a contributing editor to several industry computer magazines. MAXIMUM INTEREST ITEM: Jim Gallagher, Eagle Software, POB 292786, Lewisville, TX 75029-2786, tel 214/539-7855. Can provide STUNNING popdown "point and shoot" menu systems as a front end for your program. These menus are PURE COMMERCIAL QUALITY that puts Borland and Microsoft popdown/moving light bar menus to shame. I ran a a demo program using their "Eagle" menu system as a front end and I thought my clunky XT clone was a 386 screamer machine with VGA it looked that good! These guys program in assembler and C to the point where the CPU must be in near meltdown! Ultra high speed string searches, help screens, label printing, file encoding. All menu driven and so tight n' pickin INTUITIVE I thought this character based menu system just might give Microsoft Windows a run for the money. Forget GUI's if you can have the Eagle system - it's faster and more intuitive! The Christian Computer Survival Kit (see GOODIES.TXT on this disk) uses Eagle. Take a look at that disk or call Eagle. Looking for software tools to improve your programming efforts? Computer Solutions, POB 354, Mason, MI 48854, tel 203/746-6372. LOADS of shareware for programmers: language libraries, ASM and C routines, BIOS routines 8087 macros, pascal source, utilities, dBase source, prolog, disassemblers and more in shareware. Get a catalog and send them your disk. Back to basics dept: many shareware authors overlook bulk and reduced price volume mailings. Don't just buy a roll of stamps and start licking and stuffing disk mailers. Check out bulk mail rates with post office. DUMP disk mailers! Too heavy and bulky. My method: disk with a label plus lightweight paper xerox containing the header of the README file. No disk sleeve! Use single weight 6 x 9 envelope. No cardboard stiffener. Single stamp does it! Volkswagen class mailings. Disk gets bent? The few that do will usually cause recipient to ask for another. KISS principle . . . Try GEdit. Programmers editor: create and maintain code, repair data files, recover files from damaged diskettes, explore memory locations, word processing, batch file prep. From Rolson Hendricks, Cat Creek Enterprises, POB 606, Bristol, TN 37621- 0606. I also have it (see file GOODIES.TXT). Check this out: Joe Rahall, Small Business Subscription Service, Ste D, 344 Timberbrook Dr., Waldorf, MD 20601. tel 301/843-7165 or tel 301/645-0320. Joe has a shareware disk he publishes (plus extra pamphlets and documents) on how you can get over 191 trade magazines free! Incredible computer magazines and other business oriented magazines free. Joe also has the inside line on obtaining at REDUCED PRICES computers, books, newsletters, office supplies. His shareware disk: FREE_MAG_191 (can order from me see file: GOODIES.TXT). George Van Valkenburg at Soft a'Ware in San Diego 800/444-8390 (address in the main database) wants these shareware programs written: disk with huge number of sample resumes in ASCII text to edit in a word processor, disk with ASCII sample personals ads which people can use to write their own, disk discussing menopause and medical implications and assistance for women. How about a disk with animated back pain excercises, popup excercise reminder alarm, excercise performance graphing and more for computer programmers and others wanting to relieve back pain. Show me a programmer without low back pain and I will show you someone who hasn't written a really long piece of code . . . Odd item for those interested in coop mailing: I got a package from the ASP today with return address: FormGen Company, 13 Holland Drive, Bolton, ON, Canada, L7E 5A4. Contains MANY disks packed in a plastic bag mailer which are shipped to shareware distributors and computer clubs. Shareware like Formgen, Diskdupe, SR-Info, Xdir, Powerbatch, more. These guys are in saturation mode with bulk mailings. Let's get our own shared mailing coop system started SOON! One of the Texas computer clubs asked me to be a guest speaker at their programmers forum recently. I recoiled at having to pay airfare, but they surprised me. Telephone link guest speakers! Apparently they rent an amplified speakerphone and then call the guest speaker long distance at a pre-arranged time. Everybody relaxes in the club conference room while a member demonstrates that speaker's program on an overhead and LCD projection panel as the program author chats away long distance to club members. Apparently the speaker is sitting in front of his screen operating the program in tandem. Other speakers ship a disk of computer generated slides (not film type, computer images on disk of the program) and then ask the projection operator to advance to the next screen via his telephone link as he chats. Extend the above idea to FORM A SHAREWARE AUTHOR'S SPEAKERS BUREAU. Scenario: a smart shareware distributor or club lines up many shareware authors into a speakers bureau to discuss shareware. Promote the concept to national computer clubs: the shareware author speaker's bureau can do presentations for monthly computer club meetings by speakerphone. At the end of the talk you announce X percent discount on your package if club members order your disk in next 24 hours by phone. Either you ship disks or team up with a smart shareware distributor who does the work and takes the toll free orders. Clubs need speakers, authors need money, distributors need exposure. Clubs pay for long distance charges. Let's consider a shareware author's speakers bureau. Interesting thought: "the more nearly a product is pure knowledge, the higher the returns will be." Fortune Magazine, January 14, 1991, page 31. Cover item of that issue: the most fascinating ideas for 1991. This issue will change how you think. 12/20/90 Interesting resource I chanced upon in my research travels: DP DIRECTORY contact: Al Harberg, 525 Goodhill Rd, Glastonbury, CT 06033. Telephone 203/659-1065. Produces and maintains INDUSTRIAL STENGTH mailing address lists and pre-printed labels of computer clubs, manufacturers, distributors, computer industry magazine writers, computer stores, medical listings, medical magazines, more. Commercial quality VOLUME operation which might be interesting for acquiring addresses if you want to do a LARGE mailing. Talked with Mr. Harberg via phone. Nice guy. Deleted about 30 bad addresses from database. Maintaining a separate file of bad addresses (not on this disk) so they don't sneak back in as I merge/purge data from authors and shareware distributors submitting updates for the database. Registration price raised to $25 per issue or $90 for a quarterly subscription. Original $10/$25 registration/subscription price simply too low to sustain the EXTENSIVE workload it takes to manage a package of this complexity. No advertisers have come forward to help defray expenses so a more rational registration/subscription fee is in order. If you want a fast, full-featured database product which will import the main database mailing list from this package (see DATABASE.EXE and DATABASE.TXT) and generate mailing labels quickly you should look at the soon to be released FILE EXPRESS Version 5.0. Lots of folks use dBase, PC-File or small mailing label packages to generate mailing labels but File Express is balanced: a fast, EASY to use and very powerful shareware database system. Evaluation copies available from most shareware distributors. If you need a SMALL AND SIMPLE tool to access the main mailing list database of this program or any DBF file try Popdbf (shareware), a TSR which pops up over any application or DOS to let you view, append, browse, edit and print records from any dbf file. Can get from me (see file GOODIES.TXT) or most shareware distributors. Really simple fast way to use a DBF file without hassles of a big database package. Also consider dPerfect merge which allows you extract dBase files into wordperfect format for those wishing to use my database list with wordperfect mail merging and sorting (see GOODIES.TXT). HOT SOURCE for authors using BBS systems for distribution: Telecomputing Magazine, 2625 Pennsylvania NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110. 505/881-6988. Looks to me like their primary audience is BBS SYSOPS, modem/shareware hackers and industry GURUS deep into public BBS systems. STRONG SHAREWARE FOCUS - they review shareware programs submitted. They publish a BBS yellow pages listing each January with Boards and advertisements. While on the subject, most large BBS systems throughout the U.S. are listed in the "Darwin" file available on most boards. Or get a copy of the Darwin list from me (see file GOODIES.TXT). Don't foget that many major BBS systems are listed in the main database of this package. Several shareware authors have suggsted ideas to improve on ASP concepts or start an independent shareware programmers group. Key concepts I am hearing from the independent programmers: 1) skip compuserve for message networking - use Prodigy or Genie for cheaper rates 2) do a monthly newsletter 3) keep membership dues low 4) provide MORE mailing lists for targeted markets 5) allow crippling of programs if author wishes 6) retain the ombudsman concept 7) REALLY standardize documentation 8) interface with computer clubs on a more proactive basis 8) produce videos showing best visual ideas on shareware programs that work: screens, colors, animations, documentation, etc 9) work with ASP in a mutual synergistic manner 10) contribute source code segments and program libraries to a common repository which everyone can draw on when programming 11) be open to new ideas which are market sensitive and money making. Another BBS shareware author marketing tip: CONNECT USA (800/477-1788) allows modem connection to MANY major BBS systems from anywhere in US for $3.00 per hour from the local CONNECT USA telephone number in your city! Connect to MAJOR national boards to distribute your shareware. Boards such as Channel 1, PC-Library, Exec-PC and more. Good way to get your shareware to hot boards FAST and CHEAP. Tell them I sent you! Added file: VENDOR. Check out this file to review another one of my ZANY IDEAS to distribute this shareware package to MORE AUTHORS. If you are a shareware distributor, please review this file! Authors, read it too. Many authors call and ask my priorities for distributing my own shareware: (from highest to lowest) shareware distributors, BBS systems, magazine writers with a shareware interest, computer clubs in MAJOR American cities, computer stores (the last one I use for my PC-LEARN tutorial package which computer stores copy onto the hard disk of each computer sold.) NICE shareware product for authors: the DUP disk duplicator from R. MacLean. Fast, allows serial numbers to be put on disks, CRC checks, many options and configuration settings, menu driven. Nice. Get a copy from any shareware distributor or can order an evaluation copy from me for $1.99 (see file on this disk GOODIES.TXT). Author registration is $25. Also a commercial version available with fabulous additional capabilities. Received note of something called DON'S DIRECTORY, POB 30166, Philadelphia, PA, 10913. Source of yet more addresses and contacts which shareware authors might find interesting. I have not seen a copy of this publication at this time. Just a tidbit I have yet to check out! Soapbox message to UNRELIABLE SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTORS who still resist sending out written acknowledgement to shareware authors when they have received a disk: Buy an inexpensive stack of 15 cent PRESTAMPED postcards from the post office. Send out a postcard to acknowlege receipt of disk. If you have the time/energy/patience, send out a second followup card to notify author if the program has finally been accepted into your catalog. Pretty soon authors are going to discover unreliability factors when they 1) don't get feedback from you 2) see your LOW RATING in $HAREWARE MARKETING $YSTEM. A 15 cent postcard is minimum human courtesy! Finally, send in announcement to $HAREWARE MARKETING $YSTEM if you go out of business or decline certain types of shareware! I suggest computer clubs who still want to receive shareware for their libraries consider sending out postcard acknowledgement as well. Authors, send me info on distributors and clubs who need a DOWNGRADE rating in my main database or who have changed address. The especially bad distributors get a COMPLIMENTARY THUMBS DOWN in the vendor award section of this program (VENDOR.TXT.) While on the subject of postcards, the next suggestion is directed at shareware authors who dislike the lack of feedback from distributors and clubs when they ship out their routine mailing of free evaluation disks. Buy a large stack of 15 cent postcards and use a SMALL TYPEFACE to print one of the two following messages on the postcard and ship the card INSTEAD of the disk. Your local speedy/quick print shop can print up the message. Good idea to include reference in the first sentence to the $hareware Marketing $ystem so distributors can get back to me to update info on my main mailing list since this provides a trail for the clubs and distributors to the main database which will be updated and eventually sent back out to the you authors. In fact it would be a good idea to refer to $hareware Marketing $ystem even if you still prefer to ship out disks so the distributors and clubs will become aware of this product and keep me updated which keeps YOU updated and provides more entries on the mailing list and more accuracy in data listed. POSTCARD VERSION ONE, authors send this to shareware distributors: Your address was made available by the $hareware Marketing $ystem mailing list and newsletter (PO Box 1506, MI, WA 98040). I will ship you a disk containing the shareware program named _____ Version ____ FREE of charge if you sign and date below and UPDATE your mailing address on the reverse of this card. This shareware program provides ___________________ capabilities and has won the following award and is distributed by the following shareware distributors_______. If you can't wait, you may obtain it by modem from Compuserve (GO____, library_____) or the ______ BBS system. File name is ______.ZIP. PRINT your name and date here____________ to receive your FREE disk(s). Don't forget to update your address on face of this card if necessary! Return this card to my address and telephone which follows: _________. Postcard version two: same message, but $1.00 handling and shipping fee charged. You decide how much or little to charge all the way up to full registration price! Another way of securing feedback is to use a different method which TRIUS Company (ASEASYAS spreadsheet) uses: ship the disk AND an agreement letter with empty signature block explaining that the ONLY way to get future updates is to return the signed agreement letter. GRIPE TO AUTHORS: why don't we routinely put the suggested ZIP file name and preferred ZIP version numbering system at the top of the README file? See example at the top of the README with this program. Good idea to have your ZIP file name and version numbering system established nationally. I am sure the SYSOPS would love this idea too, what with the diversity of oddball names floating around out there for the same program. Gripe number two: I hate it when the README file contains initial 28 page detail about what shareware is and benefits of registration. This belongs in the middle or bottom of the README. Here is my suggested order of business in the README from top to bottom: program name, version, suggested zipfile name, author address and telephone, one line how to quickstart the program, CONCISE description, files on disk, registration. After this the nicities like topical index, introduction, what is shareware and why register, main data about using program features. Think of it this way, if I were a shareware reviewer or distributor evaluating a program, why bother if I can't find out the name, version, startup info, and concise description in the FIRST TWO screens at the top of the readme? Another gripe: README should be spelled README not READ.ME not README.DOC not README.TXT. When spelled README you can run Norton's dirsort (en option) to get the directory in order and put the README at or near top of the file listing. Frequently a reviewer will lift your program description verbatim for reprint in the catalog. Resource of interest: Bureau of Electronic Publishing Inc, 141 New Road, Parsippany, NJ, 07054 201/808-2700 FAX 201/808-2676 Toll Free 800/828-4766. Beautiful catalog of CD-ROM products (both hardware and CD-ROM disks). Probably NOT a source you would send your shareware disk to, but worth requesting the catalog if you are interested in CD-ROM publishing, researching, locating comprehensive source for ALL KINDS of CD-ROM titles. Lots of CD-ROMs with shareware contained within. 12/16/90 Added LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (LETTERS.TXT) and FILES YOU CAN ORDER (GOODIES.TXT) in response to shareware authors who wish to express/share views about shareware marketing and also order files and programs which are mentioned in this package. Very fine article submitted by Pinnacle Software is contained in LETTERS.TXT. Free one year subscription goes to Tim Campbell of Pinnacle for submitting a file 50K in size to this publication per my standing offer contained in the README file elsewhere in this program. Tim has a super program, FREE SPEECH, which BBS sysops MUST see. Adds unique features to your existing BBS unlike anything I have yet seen! Tim's address info contained within LETTERS.TXT. Read it if you want to discover a bit of the downside of shareware from an experienced author. A pattern emerges: many shareware authors ship me a shareware disk of their program(s) when they submit a registration check for this package. What do I do with disks which are submitted? 1) I will try to upload shareware programs to Seattle vicinity BBS's as I find time 2) would encourage you to consider doing the same for me and other authors involved in such swaps in the BBS RAPID RELEASE NETWORK (see file RAPID.TXT elsewhere within this program) 3) will pass your disk along to other shareware distributors locally here in Seattle as time permits. 4) encourage you to take your copy of the $HAREWARE MARKETING $YSTEM and upload it to five HOT BBS systems in your vicinity as a favor to me and the many shareware authors who need the mailing list. 12/3/90 The database will be growing to over 3,000 entries by the Spring 1990 edition of this package! I am still working on the new revisions since I received over 620 new mailing addresses of clubs and distributors from Ray Hamilton of Biblesoft (POB 308, Greenleaf, ID, 83626 Tel 208/454-2914). Biblesoft specializes in distributing religious shareware and is probably one of the biggest in that category. Ray is a superior "new marketing ideas" person and is also attempting to form a network of christian shareware programmers and those who specialize in authoring christian type shareware (bible, church management, etc.) Biblesoft has also authored a shareware package, the CHRISTIAN COMPUTER SURVIVAL KIT, with resources for ministers, christian shareware programmers, and shareware programmers in general. I can send you a copy (see file GOODIES.TXT) or contact Biblesoft. Ray has also developed the CHRISTIAN SOFTWARE LIBRARY, a CD-Rom product which features religious shareware and software. Advertising is also available in that publication which will be updated regularly and released to a variety of religious vendors, churches and over 230 religious BBS systems with which Biblesoft maintains contact. I have changed the field names DISTRIB MNEUMONIC to TYPE in the main mailing list database. Also changed DATE LISTED\REVISED to DATE REVISED. Simple changes which were requested by several shareware authors. Added this section, WHATSNEW.TXT. Added coop mailing section per request of several authors and a few shareware distributors. Added refund for undeliverable addresses section to end of registration form. I'll pay you for bad or undeliverable addresses. See registration form. Added brief mention to my database tutorial concerning the PCLABEL.EXE program within PC-FILE since many subscribers seem to be getting confused on where the label generator feature is located when using this popular shareware database. The December 1990 issue of Databased Advisor Magazine selected the $hareware Marketing $ystem as the file of the month (page 119.) This file now contained in forum 6/Consulting and business, (Compuserve service: GO DBA.) Torbert Data Systems (POB 9218, Chesapeake, VA 23321 tel 804/488-5506) submitted to me a beta copy of their new shareware program the SHAREWARE BUSINESS PARTNER which is slick! Written in Clarion, this gem manages a shareware author's business: accounting, customer lists, customer orders and invoices, print labels, prepare reports on business activity summarized from customer and accounting data. Specifically tuned up for a shareware author's business. Still a beta release but should be out soon. Contact author. I should have a final evaluation copy which I can pass along to authors as shareware when program is finally released and things have been finalized. Torbert also puts out the SMART HOME SHOPPER and HOME HELPER which are aimed at the general shareware user market. Shareware distributors should investigate the shareware package ORDER PRO from Automated Systems (POB 192, Little Falls, NJ, 07424-0192) You can order an evaluation copy of this package from me for $1.99 (see file GOODIES.TXT) This package manages and automates a mail order business! Customer controls, invoices, etc. They have also authored THE PERFECT WEDDING another classic shareware item. Automated Systems is a pretty nice disk distributor in general. Send them a disk. Tell them I sent you! Now using a special feature in the main Borland Reflex database to truncate field lengths to the exact length needed. This means field lengths will now be only as long as the LONGEST entry in the database. The feature was there in Reflex all the time, just had not noticed it! Brain Barter Database Entry submitted on disk when I mentioned brain bartering in the main tutorial of this package (TUTORIAL.TXT): McKelvy Enterprises, 3149 Bradford Place, Birmingham, AL 35242 (205) 980-0592 Services offered: Programming in Foxbase+/FoxPro (and compatible programs), BASIC, FORTRAN. Specializing in database mgmnt systems, inventory tracking/control, contract mngmnt, personal information mngmnt (patient info for doctor's office). Program documentation. Tech Report Writing. Services Needed: None presently. Possibly C programming in the future. Let's barter!!!!! Files I have you might find interesting include the ASP disk catalog which floats around on BBS systems. Lists their authors, programs and distributors complete with addresses and telephones. Their author registration disk contains the classic file GUIDE.EXE which compliments my tutorial within this program. The Disk-Count data catalog on disk contains author addresses and program version numbers. The Praireware catalog on disk uses the unique (shareware) system called IRIS which must be seen. You can contact Disk-Count and Praireware via their address info in the main database. Or obtain any or all of these files from me directly (see file GOODIES.TXT) for a small disk copying/handling fee. Since both the database and tutorial sections of this package are growing RAPIDLY, I may be forced to provide it on a two or three disk set SOON. My hope is to AVOID an increase in registration/subscription fees by accepting paid advertising. Should keep this package healthy since the work of maintaining the database, reviewing STACKS of mail and adding new features is overwhelming! Paid advertisers will help maintain the low registration/subscription cost for shareware authors. Win/win situation. If no advertising, registration fees will increase. Received calls from several authors wanting to start the BBS Rapid Release Network (see RAPID.TXT). Will publish more. Possible names and list of BBS systems. 11/15/90 This program now in libraries and catalogs of PC-SIG, PUBLIC BRAND, NEW ENGLAND SOFTWARE, others. Added 348 new addresses and entries to database. Added splash screen as DATABASE.EXE unpacks itself. Some BBS systems will strip this comment out, don't worry if you don't see it as DATABASE.EXE unpacks. Version numbering system of package formalized: year, quarter and revision. Example: 1990, Winter, Revision 2. Zip file format suggested: SMS90WI2.ZIP Several subscribers of this package have asked why the database is in all CAPS. Reason: several post office folks whom I have talked with suggest that the all caps option is easier to sort, search and ship using automated equipment. Lists come to me in all upper, all lower and upper lower, something has to be done to normalize the list. Reflex has an @UPPER function which I run to bring the hodgepodge of data into an uppercase condition. Quattro pro and other programs have an @PROPER function for upper/lower case if you wish to reformat. Other subscribers have asked why the foreign addresses don't have their own special fields (e.g., country). The reason is that if you create extra fields you would have to print all your labels for the USA and then go back, load a fresh template or reprogram your label generator to drop out the city/state fields and add in the country field(s). Ease of use counts. 9/18/90 Discontinued lotus file format, dBase is sufficient and the file is too large to load into lotus on most machines. 281 corrections to old or existing data. 8/11/90 First release of package: 1990, Summer. BBS File format SMS90SU.ZIP also released as $M$90SU.ZIP