Peter Sackett
I've recently completed my very first Degree late in life with The Open University, a B.A. (Hons) in Arts and Humanities, and am now a life-long learner.
Location Bucks, England
Activity
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Finding the core of your being (what makes you tick) so that you can take aim on the life you need to live to achieve peace of mind and self-satisfaction. This still only amounts to your own perceived valuation of personal success, which will be different for everyone. And in achieving this success you have to be mindful not to achieve that success at the...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Hi All - I'm a second generation university graduate (very late in life) and have experienced both success and failure in business. I'm starting again with my life on all fronts to see if I can learn from my mistakes. I've got a pretty good idea of where I went wrong in the past but this course should help me to confirm that I'm going along the right track...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
@JoanLockyer Hi Joan, My apologies for being so forthright. I think a simple solution would be to alter the exercise so that those who choose Options B or C get a much bigger reward, with C getting the biggest reward because that's the one with the biggest risk. As it stand, all options get the same reward and Option A has by far the least risk attached to...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
@JoanLockyer Thanks for your reply Joan. I do believe you've made the game too simple - so simple that the summary of choices taken give quite the wrong impression of what an entrepreneur is all about. I regard this game as harmful to the mindset of an entrepreneur. It actively encourages the student to take blind chances, and equates that with being...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
Hello Michele - I'm actually criticising the course for the comments it makes on the three choices, so I was hoping for some sort of defence from you to support the course position. I think equating Choice C with having entrepreneurial flair is quite worrying, because Choice C is a pure gamble, and that's not what this course is advocating, surely. Tying in...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
Of course, creativity is much more than lateral thinking. Creativity has so many different aspects from solving problems and seeing opportunities when none appear to exist, to creating works of art, that many skills are involved. Often, creativity rides on the back of knowledge or practical skill, e.g. a copywriter needs a good vocabulary as well as very good...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
I don't agree with Knight's interpretation of choices at all. This exercise is all about probability. The only sensible choice is A where you have a 50:50 chance of winning 100 times more than your stake. No betting company would give you odds like that; not in a million years. This is an opportunity you can't afford to turn down. If you choose B or C then you...
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@AbigailAustine I was that employee - very good and obedient until I found out everything I could about the job I did. Then I became frustrated, even after quick promotion. Then I moved on and repeated the process with other companies, until I built up sufficient experience to start out on my own. That was never my intention. I just had to work for myself...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
My experience of being an entrepreneur is wanting to work for myself and then finding that I did not want to just offer my services to others, but wanting instead to create my own opportunities. That meant setting up my own business and eventually employing others. But I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I was driven. I felt I had no choice. Which makes me...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Creativity is lateral thinking.
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Banks always want some security - a personal guarantee, your property, or your business assets, or most likely, all three. It's tempting to borrow from banks when your business is doing well and you want to expand quickly, but be warned. If things don't go well you could lose your assets to the bank - both business and personal. That's a high price to pay for...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Only borrow from family and friends if they are 100% prepared for you to fail, and thy fully understand that there is every likelihood they will lose their investment. Any monies they make from the loan, or even an interest-free repayment, will be a bonus. Make this absolutely clear, because the chances of you making a lasting success in your first business...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
This is very good advice on protecting your intellectual property rights. If you are thinking of starting up in one of the creative industries (e.g. publishing, music, performance, artistic) I recommend another free course on Future Learn: Economies of Copyright.
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Thank you Marisa for masterly overseeing an exceptional course - so much useful information, so clearly defined. If only this course had been available many years ago I wouldn't have made so many mistakes with copyright protection that has cost me dearly in the past - but not from now on!
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Great summary. Thanks!
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@MarisaGandelman I have resisted 'working for hire' and always taken the risk, and consequently gone bust more than once. But I now have a stack of once-valuable properties (losing value with age) which can constantly be used in new ways as new markets open up through technological development and shifting patterns. Some of those IPs were produced 20 years...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
I'm more like a publisher without publishing myself, without the need to promote to the public, to warehouse stock, or to provide distribution. Up to that stage I mirror what a publisher does. Some packagers evolve into proper publishers with time. Mitchell Beazley, now part of Octopus, was the first UK packager in the 1960s and now are publishers. Grisewood...
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Peter Sackett replied to Erick Mukiira
@MarisaGandelman You are right - it does seem to be a cultural thing. Actually, I eventually found out she was selling all the books she had printed in the English language for us, not just the one title. When I pointed out that that wasn't right, she took them down off the site, and we're still working happily together - because I really don't believe she was...
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Not necessary with self-publishing or e-books
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Peter Sackett replied to Erick Mukiira
Never mind about companies, individuals are self-publishing as well, with books printed digitally to order, one copy at a time if necessary (print to order). Social media, digital printing, and e-books have completed disrupted the traditional market, but not yet as much as it should have done, because the power is now in the hands of the creators if they did...
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Peter Sackett replied to Erick Mukiira
The publishers take the risk of publishing, and they have the promotional and distribution facilities - that's why the author doesn't usually get much of a royalty advance on their royalty agreement, and why even their royalty agreements aren't always based on a %age of retail price - sometimes it's on a %age of net revenue (i.e. after retail discounts) and...
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Peter Sackett replied to Anita Young
The publishing rights of the illustrations are usually handed over to the publisher in return for a fee or royalty, but the artist retains the rights to the original art and can sell that separately. But they cannot sell any other rights with that art, just the art itself. Obviously, if it's digital art in the first case, there's a problem with that.
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Peter Sackett made a comment
It's more complicated than this video outlines. Illustrated information books are often commissioned by the publisher or a book packager. In children's information books, the writer is commissioned to write the text on a particular subject, and writes to fit the design which the publisher/packager commissions, so the writer can't go off and sell his text to...
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Peter Sackett replied to Peter Sackett
A book packager creates all aspects of a book, i.e. gets the idea, commissions authors, editors, artists, designers, picture researchers etc. Gets that book to print-ready file stage and then starts selling different rights to different publishers around the world, so the same book can be sold to many different publishers, e.g. different language rights,...
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Peter Sackett replied to Erick Mukiira
@EdwardFordyce You're right about Alibaba. One of our Chinese printers ran on copies of one of our publications and sold them as her own books on Alibaba, and didn't even seem to understand that she was doing anything wrong.
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Hi, I'm a UK book packager. I create intellectual copyrights in the form of highly illustrated information books for children and young adults on all subjects. I then sell language rights to different international publishers, either as co-editions (which I print in China and India) or under licence. I've worked for major publishers in the past so have been...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Risky in the case of the example shown, so equity investors would expect disproportional returns if their injection of capital helped to turn the company around.
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Peter Sackett made a comment
Reinvesting profits is how I built growth in my present company. But now sales are not so good as they once were and I can see that I reinvested too much of my profits (in fact, all my profits!) and now I'm scratching around for cash-flow and can't afford to invest in a new range of product, which is essential to keep the business going. So my advice is, if...
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Peter Sackett made a comment
I think that the working capital figure of £94,000 tells us that the current assets outweigh the current liabilities by that sum. But that's not the cash-flow position because inventory/stock would have to be sold to realise the full amount shown as current assets. I would say that the business has to find £428,000 to pay out in hard cash (payables,...
