Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Boulevard or Blvd.?

I spent much of the afternoon returning e-mails to various publishers and vendors requesting catalogs and account applications. In the process, I have been compiling the information needed to complete all the paperwork necessary to open accounts with those companies I choose to order from. Of course, the first question is; Business Name. And, therein, lies a tale.

Way back in December and January - I know it's only been three or four months but it feels like years ago - I decided to start this blog to keep my family, friends, and the SPI community informed about the process involved in opening my dream bookstore. Before I could really start the blog, I had to have a name, and that is a story of its own. But, I finally made a decision; Paragraphs on Padre Boulevard. It can be shortened to Paragraphs, which I thought had a kind of community appeal - "Hey, I'll meet you at Paragraphs" - and the, on Padre Boulevard, tells everyone where the shop is located. So, that choice was made and the blog was launched.

Not long after, I received a very nice call from Jerry Wilson, suggesting that I reserve a domain for my perfect name and future website. He told me that in this new internet world there are folks that just look for names that someone may want, then these same people register the name and when the poor dope (that's me) gets ready to launch their web site, the domain name has been taken but can be purchased, for a price.

Now this sounded like reasonable advice, and I put registering ParagraphsonPadreBoulevard.com as a domain on my list of things to do. Well, we all know what happens to our To Do lists. By the time I got around to this task, a couple of weeks had gone by in classic Padre Style, and, you guessed it, ParagraphsonPadreBoulevard.com was not available. Now, there is no logical reason why this domain name would be used by anyone but me, unless the registrant planned to make me pay for the use of my own carefully chosen name.

My Italian temperament kicked in and I decided there was no way I would give these scavengers the satisfaction of inquiring about this domain name. I finally decided that it was easy enough to change Boulevard to the abbreviated form and everything would be great.

It was one of my first lessons in doing business in this virtual world. So there you have it - Our name will officially be Paragraphs on Padre Blvd. Now I'm ready to get the legal niceties out of the way - that is on the agenda for next week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not just Paragraphs on Padre? I mean, SPI is not huge, and I would assume that once someone finds your website, prominent on the homepage will be the address and a map. Also, Blvd. takes away from the visual symmetry of the capital P's and their alliteration.

Anyways, that's my humble opinion. Of course, if you name your bookstore Paragraphs on Padre and no one can find it, I'll feel very guilty. :)

Patricia A.

Joni said...

Patricia,

Are you trying to confuse me?

I see your point - I suppose I was just trying to differentiate between the Island and the street. But like you say, they are sort of one and the same.

I do appreciate your input, and I'll see how the various iterations look when used in a logo, which will probably be the deciding factor.

Frankly, I hope the locals will just use Paragraphs, and we can leave it at that!!

Joni