Reaching back, I recall my first encounter with Netflix. My fiendish college roommate was renting and returning DVDs from the service as quickly as he could, keeping them only as long as it took to copy the movies onto blank discs. Oh, the malice (/s).

Considering we didn't have access to cable TV and the nearest Wal-Mart was a 60-minute drive from our college, could you blame us for embracing an alternative, cost-effective, non-multi-camera sitcom entertainment model?

Flash to today and we're left to wonder: if Netflix was formerly the alternative to all that, what'll be the Netflix alternative? What comes next...?

How often do you think about the marketing, promotion, and sales aspects of your art? Maybe 5% of your day?

No matter your craft, you'd likely prefer to buckle down and create, rather than contemplate how to approach running your creativity like a business.

Turns out, that's the right attitude, and with this guide on the must-do marketing and sales tactics, you can know which actions to prioritize, leaving you more time to do what you love...

Vision augmented by 20/20 hindsight, and maybe an updated glasses prescription, you're sizing up a summer reading list. Not just trashy beach books with covers thick enough you could smash clams, but classics you've always meant to read.

Didn't you always mean to read an oldie-but-a-goodie?

Lucky you, Amazon is packed to the gills with free novels. Not $1 bodice-rippers. Not $4 adventure pulp (it has those, too), but honest-to-goodness masterpieces.

These are some of the finest books you can find on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace, ready for summer reading... 

After you're finished cackling over the treasure-chest that is Breath of the Wild—fistfulls of precious gold squirting wasted between fingers because, man, if Zelda isn't an endless video game fun-box—I recommend aiming your Nintendo Switch toward the eShop and buying Shovel Knight.

To clarify, don't get simply-Shovel Knight, but rather Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, which includes the new Specter of Torment expansion. Superior even to its predecessor's high-art 8-bit homage, Specter of Torment stands above the original Shovel Knight experience.

In our landscape of bargain-hunting indie games and Steam sale memes, throw all your available money toward the developers at Yacht Club games and buy Specter of Torment. The reason why is simple: this is a secret Ninja Gaiden game... 

Someday soon, this generation of hyper-intelligent, semi-employed, well-adjusted weirdos won't have the money to buy tickets to the next Avengers movie.

But let's not bury the lede:

Free books are coming.

What? Yeah, buckle up, ya'll. It's unavoidable. As popular culture becomes a self-consuming snake where the fanbase can no longer foot the bill to participate in the lowest-common denominator zeitgeist, votes will be cast with wallets, and it's just going to be diligent, thrifty tastemakers and free books...

The Nintendo Wii was a momentary magic trick. While mainly just silk scarfs and white gloves distracting an unsuspecting audience, the system was potent reminder to lapsed Roman-Nintendophiles:

• Video games are fun for the whole family, including the near-dead Grandma
• Mario Kart Wii is fun for the whole family, including Grandma, who is now dead (but we'll always have the memories)

Since Mario Kart Wii launched, the franchise has vampire-fang chomped onto the crossover fanbase it seduced, refusing to budge. Now fat as a tick, Mario Kart has mutated into the Ur-Nintendo brand. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch is debatably the series' best outing. That's where the trouble kicks in:

Mario Kart has become so competent, all that "Mario Kart" baggage is ruining its races...

A supremely-talented improvisational musician can take to the floor and tell you that thoughtless, organic creativity is the purest form. This is not incorrect.

Plenty of great writers shoot from the hip. That is a capital skill. Stephen King didn't write hundreds of books by putting up his feet; he wrote them because he didn't stop writing. Improvised writing is pure.

Then again, purity may not be your objective, in music, or in writing. Perhaps you need to immediately put an idea in your reader's head?

Keeping that in mind, you need to outline all your writing projects...

You've heard this one—it's time to expand your team and you have to be dead-sure you know what you need for the role. You want a rockstar: a warm body that captures all the attention in the room and can still wow everyone when things get loud.

How do you turn your needs into a thorough job rec though? It's no easy task. No matter the role, internal- or external-facing, sales or account services, you feel pressure to hire a peacocking rockstar. Here's the secret though: the best rockstar-hires are actually secret agent-hires.

Let's dig into how you do this...

001) I can already taste that sunlight.

002) Real air is amazing.

003) Did I take Allegra is this morning?

004) Whoa, my keyboard is a phenomenal crumb-catcher.

005) When did I eat raisins?

006) That’s not a raisin.

007) Well, my dad always said everyone will eat a few grams of dirt before they die.

008) I wonder when my forehead got this greasy?

009) I wonder how much light is reflecting off my forehead?

The best joke illuminates the silliness of a widely-recognized inaccuracy.

We need reeducation in comedy. It's fashionable these days for flailing failures to wheeze defensively about certain audiences not noticing what is or is not a joke, and it's somebody else's fault that THEY don't get THEIR joke. What they're often telling aren't jokes, they're battle-lines and barriers. 

The recent Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival on Netflix (winner of Ghost Little’s coveted Shrieking Robot award, the highest honor this office can bestow) is god-tier comedy. Why is that, you wonder? For a billion reasons, most relevant: it’s tasteful...