Editing The Pen Addict 40/transcript (section)

== Field Notes ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So where are we going today? What's on the docket?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We have, I want to do some follow-up on the field notes talk that seems to be a running theme through the podcast. We're going to talk about that. And then we're going to get into our main topic, which provoked a lot of discussion and a lot of emails and a lot of comments. And that's on fountain pen cleaning. We said last week we were going to talk about that this week. And we are. So we've got a bunch of notes pulled together, a bunch of links, a bunch of comments. So we'll talk a lot about that. But first up, I wanted to follow up with field notes where Jim Koodle, who is the man behind field notes, not necessarily – he's behind the company that puts them out. Aaron Draplin does the design work and a lot of that for the field notes. But Jim in his office in Chicago and a gentleman named Brian – I didn't catch Brian's last name – put out a set of videos that are called An Obsessive's Guide to Field Notes Colors Editions.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like the perfect thing for us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is. And they did it with a reason. And right when you – if you listen the first minute or two of the first episode, there's four videos. They broke them down into by year when they started doing the special editions, the colors editions releases. So there's a video for 2009, for 2010, for 2011, for 2012, each color covering the four editions they released. And in the beginning of the first episode or the first video for the 2009, Jim Koodle goes into why he felt he needed to make these videos. It's because apparently there's been a huge collector boom of these field notes and people are going crazy trying to be completists and trying to find all the different field notes that they can find. And I'm obviously guilty of that myself and a bunch of other people that I follow on Twitter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Should we personally take the responsibility for the fact that that has occurred? That's my question to you. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that we should.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. We should. We should. But no, there was definitely people doing it before I jumped in on the bandwagon. Guys like Sandy McDonald and Jim mentioned some emails he was getting years ago for different things, trying to round up some of the promotional sets. They actually didn't go into the promotional type things that we've been doing. But they just went in strictly through the color subscription history.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I guess for them, I mean, you know, it's good to show what the colors have been in the past. So it gives you a good, you know, if you want to buy them, you know, if you want to get a color subscription in the future, it's good because you kind of get to see this is what colors gets you. And I guess the promotional ones that, you know, they don't sell anything to do with those. So it kind of, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. That's exactly right. It's a moot point. But it was a really interesting set of videos and I learned a lot. And, you know, I was I paid very close attention to some of the things that they were saying. And I actually learned a lot about when you hear it from the guys that are involved in it from day to day, you definitely learn some things. Like the first the first colors edition. Well, let me back up when that before they even started with the field notes and making the field notes brand website. And before they even had a product, you know, the story goes that Aaron Draplin created these memo books and sent them out to his friends for Christmas. And they said field notes on them. And, you know, and Jim happened to be on Draplin's mailing list. And he had actually had a copy of that one that Aaron sent. But it looks just like the craft paper, the brown craft paper ones, you know, like the basic field notes that you always get. And on the front of it has a little and it's got a little extra line like says number number X out of Y on it, which I thought was pretty neat to see. Like see the book that really kicked off the whole.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now, that's the real. That is the real collector's edition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. Only only whoever was on Aaron's Christmas list that year. They really have something. Yeah. So that's the book that started it all. But then then they went into, you know, they talked about a little bit about the base edition, but they really wanted to discuss all the colors editions. And they talked about, you know, when they first decided to do it, they printed out. The first edition was called Butcher Orange for the Butcher Orange cover.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They printed out 503 packs of those. And at the same time, they went ahead and printed out 500 of the Butcher Blue memo book three packs. And what's interesting about that is they only released the orange for the first subscription for the first version. This was before you could subscribe to the colors edition service, right? You know, you could subscribe at that point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Or, you know, you could just buy the individual packs, which they obviously didn't have very many of. So what happened was they released the orange. That became a big hit. And for the second release, they wanted to release the Butcher Blue. And they took so many subscriptions for that that they didn't have an – they only had enough printed of the Butcher Blue, which was the second edition, to fulfill all the subscription. And only had a few left over for individuals to buy. So from a rarity perspective, the Butcher Blue was actually a much more harder-to-get memo book than the first version, which is the Butcher Orange. Even though it was a lot – the availability was a lot lower because they were already committed to people who had seen the orange and then subscribed. Interesting. Since they printed them out on the front end but didn't release them until afterwards, it was – they were kind of tight and had a miscalculation there on how many they would really need. So I thought that was a really interesting thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You see, I haven't watched the videos yet. I'm looking forward very much to watching them. I'm probably going to do it this week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you should do it. It's about – I think all told, if you add them all up, it's maybe like 25 minutes, less than 30 minutes, I think, for all the videos. And they really give some insight, some things I learned that I didn't know. Like for one, for example, later on, once they started moving into retail and allowing some vendors to sell some of the subscription editions, there's actually different versions were printed for retail shops as opposed to the subscription edition subscribers. Or the ones that you get – that you order off the mailing list that comes out. And the way you can tell the difference is there's actually print run information on the inside back cover on the bottom right that will say like first run or things of that nature. Like the states, they gave a good example, the 50 states edition. They've kept that on as a main product line.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So I've got Expedition here. 2012 Field Notes brand Expedition first printing November 2012.