A funny thing happened to me last week when I started selling my Shakespeare Geek tee shirts on Amazon.  Assuming this isn’t your first visit to my humble little corner of the web, you’ve probably heard me bust out my “Mercutio Drew First” joke, a crossover with the Star Wars “Han Shot First” meme that I actually thought of close to ten years ago at this point.

Although I’ve always had t-shirts with that slogan for sale via Zazzle, Cafepress, and other random “print your own” shops, over the last couple of weeks is when I got approved for Amazon Merchandise and saw an opportunity to scale up for real. Bigger audience, lower prices, better quality.

The shirt did well. I hang out on some forums dedicated to Amazon Merch, and when I shared sales numbers, people were saying, “Wow, how’d you do it?!”  I felt good about that.

Then I logged in one day and saw half a dozen other vendors selling a Mercutio Drew First shirt, with various vendor names ripping me off, like Shakespeare Geek Vintage Tees or Shakespeare Geek Store.

My first reaction was incredulity. I knew this was a problem with Amazon Merch; I just never thought I’d be big enough to worry.

My second reaction was to fight back, jumping onto the forums and asking what my recourse was, writing to Amazon to protect my idea, and so on. Yeah, good luck with that.

My third reaction was to think, “Ok, well, it’s over.  It was nice for a couple of weeks, I might as well pack up shop now. Everything I do will be stolen.”

Then I got over myself.

This site started because I would see the occasional Shakespeare reference in the wild – a tattoo, a TV commercial, a random sitcom plot – and wanted a place to talk about them with other people who also recognized them and thought that it was cool.  Creating merchandise here with our own original content was my way of contributing. How cool would it be to walk down the street one day and bump into somebody wearing merchandise with a slogan that you wrote in the first place?

These rip-off artists are just helping to spread the word.  Would I like all of the sales to come through my store?  Sure, of course.  But all I’m doing really is taking most of that money and folding it back into supporting the cause anyway.  So if half a dozen people selling a shirt means 6x as many people might see it?  I can live with that.  Honestly, they’re not going to sell as many as I am, the audience for this kind of thing is pretty loyal to me. But we’ll pretend that it scales evenly.  If anybody sees one of these shirts and goes googling for it, who are they going to find? They’re going to find us.  And that, I’m totally ok with.

By the time this post is up, you should see a new link at the top of the page, where I will track all of the authentic Shakespeare Geek tee shirts and merchandise.

Because of the way Amazon works, I can’t just put it all under a single brand, unfortunately. This means  “Shakespeare Geek” is me, “Shakespeare Geek Hamlet Tee Shirts” too, but “Shakespeare Geek Store” is not.  There’s no way you, loyal readers, could tell the difference.

But by always coming through the new merchandise page, you can trust that you’re buying from the original creator. You’re also supporting the mission of spreading Shakespeare in the world, not just adding a few bucks to the pockets of the many rip-off artists hovering around other people’s success because they don’t have the imagination to do something of their own.  (Hey, just because I accept it doesn’t mean I have to like it!)

Thank you so much to the geeks out there who’ve purchased shirts and shown them off to family and friends. I greatly appreciate the support!  I will keep cranking out new and interesting original ideas that you can only get one place.

Shakespeare Geek Tee Shirts Available Here (And Only Here)

This is the only place to find real Shakespeare Geek tee shirts. Thank you as always for supporting the site!

A funny thing happened to me today, and I’ve experienced it twice now so I sense a pattern developing.

Twice now I’ve read books where the narrator is … flawed, in some way.  In a way that says, “Wow, society could chew this person up and spit him out.”  On the inside?  The narrator in both cases is a sweetheart, perfectly innocent, seeing the best in everyone, and ready to help whoever might need him. In other words, the perfect victim.

Here’s the thing, though.  I read both these books with an overwhelming sense of trepidation, always waiting for the tragedy to fall.  One is a young adult story (it was very popular, you may even know which one I’m talking about by now) and whenever a bigger kid entered the scene I would turn each page thinking, “He’s going to get beat up he’s going to get beat up he’s going to get beat up…” preparing myself for the inevitable.  But it never came.  In both cases, I reached the end and the tragedy never came. Both had happy endings.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m disappointed by that.  It’s not that I was looking forward to something horrible happening. On the contrary, it practically made me nauseous waiting for it to happen.  But when both books ended with a happily ever after I did not find myself thinking, “Yay! The world is a happy place sometimes!”  Instead, I end up thinking something more along the lines of, “I’m disappointed that the author chose to ignore that sometimes reality is unpleasant.”

I have to attribute that kind of thinking to years of studying Shakespeare’s tragedies. I’ve had debates with people about whether the comedies or tragedies are more entertaining/enjoyable.  Plenty of folks would rather go home on a song and dance number, not on the death of the hero and everyone he loved.  Not me. I think that’s just too contrived.  It’s kind of like a chicken and egg problem, the audience wants the happy ending, so you give them the happy ending.  Which came first? I like it when the audience wants the happy ending and you deliver despair, and then it gets interesting because then they have to face things they wouldn’t normally choose to face. That, to me, is where the value is. That is how you continue to grow as a person by constantly examining the places you don’t want to go, instead of staying in the light.

Is that depressing?

(Having said all that I’m well aware that if you asked me my favorite play I would say The Tempest, and part of my argument for that is precisely for the happily ever after ending.  But I know why that is. That is for my kids.  For me, personally, I’m ok with facing unpleasant reality and pondering how I deal with it. For my kids? I’m ok with them getting happy endings for as long as I can help it happen.)

I just finished Start with Why by Simon Sinek, a book I’ve seen recommended many times over the years but I finally got around to reading (well, listening to).  The premise is so basic that I’m honestly surprised he got an entire book out of it.

It goes something like this – to succeed in business (and, by extension, in life) do not focus on what you are doing, and how you are doing it, but why you are doing it.

I guess some folks need that spelled out? I thought that was kind of obvious, it’s called being authentic and having personal integrity, isn’t it?  If I tell you that I’m promoting a product because it will make your life better, I should actually believe that, I shouldn’t just be saying that because my marketing tests have shown that the phrasing “make your life better” converts higher than the comparable “improves your life”.

I don’t read books like this and think about my day job. I’m out of most of the decision-making in that area.  No, I read books like this and think about Shakespeare.  What do I do? I run a Shakespeare blog, trying to generate some degree of reputation on the subject, and occasionally attempt to turn it into a side hustle.  How? By creating merchandise based on the original content we generate here, and by writing in a way that I feel presents the material in an approachable way to an audience not necessarily already being served.

What do I do? I run a Shakespeare blog, trying to generate some degree of reputation on the subject, and occasionally attempt to turn it into a side hustle.  How? By creating merchandise based on the original content we generate here, and by writing in a way that I feel presents the material in an approachable way to an audience not necessarily already being served.

How? By creating merchandise based on the original content we generate here, and by writing in a way that I feel presents the material in an approachable way to an audience not necessarily already being served.

Why?  See, I think there’s two answers here.  One answer is, “Because I want more Shakespeare in the world. I want to walk down the street and see people with Shakespeare quotes on their t-shirts, or tattoos, or reading a Shakespeare-related book at the beach.”  Why? Because I immediately feel a bond with that fellow human being, and that makes me happy.  I immediately think of those people as smarter and more philosophically in touch with the universe, and that raises my standard toward the whole human race just a little bit.  The more I get to experience that, the more optimistic I am about the people I haven’t met yet.

Or, “Because everybody wants to make more money.”  Why? It’s not necessarily the amount of dollars, though that does help.  It’s the direct connection to the process that does it for me. The feeling that I made the decisions (see above!), that whether or not the money comes in is based on things that I find important. Why? Because money means there’s something tangible at stake. You put money into these things, and hope to get more money back in return. That signifies success. Why? Because for people to spend money because of the value they find in something that I created, it means that what is important to me is also important to them. That makes me happy, because that means that I am adding value to the world.

What about you? Why do you Shakespeare?