Is it my imagination, but are domainers dumping their inventory?

Ms Domainer

LiteraryAgent.com – Literary Agent—NOT MINE!

DN Journal has revealed the sales for last week (September 24-30, 2007), so now I can reveal the domain I did not win: LiteraryAgent.com, which sold for $6,758--well, I already blabbed in last post.

I suspect that the buyer will not be reselling it to a literary agent. Agents, by and large, are notorious for avoiding potential customers (in other words, it's a buyer's market when it comes to representing and pitching books). If the new domain owner wishes to flip it, a likely buyer will probably use the domain to develop a comprehensive directory of honest literary agents, which was my original intention.

Unfortunately, the literary and book publishing fields are filled with crooks and scammers.

A probable scenario: the domain might be sold to a current literary agent directory owner (such as Writer's Digest or AgentQuery) who might realize that having the generic would position their company in the number 1 spot. This domain represents a very niche market, BUT it's a competitive and active one.

Now here's where it gets interesting for me: when it became obvious that I wasn't going to snag the dot-com, I took some risk and reg'd LiteraryAgent.tv, LiteraryAgent.de, and LiteraryAgent.cc. Today, I reg'd LiteraryAgents.mobi (singular gone, too bad). I realize that these might not be worth much right now, but I believe that they will be soon enough.

The singular version of .mobi MIGHT interest a literary agent who would be interested in having an easy way for his or her clients to get in touch via a mobile phone. If an agent were wildly popular, he or she might even transfer all literaryagent.mobi calls to an answering service that might field the calls and transfer the desirable calls directly to the agent who owns the domain.

My plural version could interest someone who might want to develop a filtering answering system for the industry itself. Busy agents would subscribe to this answering service, which would field calls for agent subscribers, acting pretty much as a buffer. In addition, the service itself could have on file some basic information about each subscribing agency. Writers have long complained about not being able to call agents for basic questions, and this would provide easy access, with an easily memorable .mobi code.

Here's one reason why I don't think the dot-com domain is worth the price it commanded:

The word "Literary" is probably one of the most misspelled words in the English language, even by writers who you would think would know better: LiterayAgent.com, LiterearyAgent.com, LitearyAgent.com, which at first glance, look correct, and the only way the new domain owner would get around this problem would be to own them and redirect them to the correct site.

But if the domain owner wants to do this, she or he will have to come to me and make an offer; the first typo (Liteary) was an accident, but it then occurred to me that if I, an English teacher, could make such a ridiculous mistake, then others would too.

;=)

In yet another way, losing LiteraryAgent.com has forced me think around the box, so to speak.

The average domainer might not know this, but when writers look for literary agents, they tend to seek agents who belong to The AAR (The Association of Artists' Representatives), which assures that the agent will adhere to a specific and strict Canon of Ethics. Not belonging to the AAR does not necessarily mean that the agent is a scammer (a new agent might not be eligible to join yet), but it does raise a red flag.

So I reg'd (at regular price):

AARagent.com
AARagents.com
AARliteraryagent.com
AARliteraryagents.com

There's a caveat here: if I sell these domains, I would have to be careful not to sell them to a scammer who could then misrepresent him or herself. In any case, a real agent is not likely to want any of these domains (and if one queried me about them, I would definitely do a check of credentials first). Most domain sales are brokered, but for these I would have to insist on transparency. I'm not a scammer or spammer--these must stay out of such hands--and I wouldn't want to tarnish the AAR reputation by selling these domains to a crook.

More likely, an agent directory developer working on a comprehensive listing of AAR agents would be interested. I may very well end up being that person.

I also reg'd some related domains that will help me pitch my memoir to an agent, but I'll discuss those later, once I have launched the site.

Ms Domainer

New Universal Postal TLD? (Editorial)

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has announced the following on its web site:
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UPU works to establish .post, an Internet top-level sponsored domain. The Universal Postal Union, on behalf of Posts worldwide and associated industry bodies, is looking to enhance access to universal postal service in the electronic world by establishing a top-level domain on the Internet – .post.
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Universal Postal Union TLD announcement continued...

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About two months ago, Jay at Domain Tools Blog proposed a small experiment to see if the U.S. Post Office could deliver letters with just domain names for the destination address and return address (see his second post).

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I decided to participate, and sent the above envelope to Jay with a short message enclosed. I thought it was such a good idea that I registered a domain name and built a two-page web space around the concept, which you can find at AddyDomain.com.

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I thought it sounded like a good idea, although I thought maybe each country would have its own TLD. I'm not quite sure what to think about one entity controlling the entire world-wide TLD--could be open to abuse and corruption. But I'm not willing to dismiss the idea entirely, for a postal TLD is inevitable (just like 20 years ago when the world wide web was coming, like it or not, and I didn't like it one bit. Life changes and progress moves on, with or without us, so obviously, I made my peace).

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Alas, the U.S. Post Office couldn't deliver my letter to Jay, although a quick check of his Whois would have revealed everything they needed to know, and certainly my Whois would have revealed my info; however, the letter probably sits somewhere in the dead letter file with a big question mark. I must admit, that envelope looks a bit like the work of a nutjob.

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I was a bit reluctant participate in this experiment, perhaps slightly fearful of running afoul of the law--normally I'm a very obedient citizen.

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In the future, addy domains will probably be standard, and I do hope that the U.S.P.S. will be up to the task.

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Ms Domainer