Posted on Tue, Apr. 08, 2003
"Couple Turn Word Puzzle Passion into Paid Gig"
By Mike Cassidy, San Jose Mercury News
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/5584202.htm
Jan and Carey Cook are persistent, resolute, sedulous, dogged, diligent and pertinacious -- which is to say they possess a certain stick-to-itiveness. And that can come in handy, can't it? It's been handy for the Cooks, who for years have been knocking around the idea that vocabulary could be a hot commodity. Think about it: Everybody who's anybody uses words. As humans we're sociable, affable, clubbable, jovial, convivial even. So sure, people would consume words. But would they pay for something we get so much of for nothing? Carey Cook, who makes a living selling stock market research, thought there might be a way to "monetize" (his word, not mine) vocabulary. And if there weren't? He was ready to give it away."This is a passion," Carey, 60, says. "We're making a difference and it's fun." Ah, this. The Cooks have come up with an elaborate range of word puzzles aimed at grade school through high school kids (www.vocabulary.com). The puzzles are the result of much trial and error that started back in the 1970s when Carey Cook actually authored a comic strip featuring vocabulary lessons. That didn't get very far. Yes, he kept his day job and kept thinking. And then one August night in 1994, a friend introduced Carey to the World Wide Web, as we called it then.
"I spent 2 1/2 hours, from 9 to 11:30, in absolute wonder," he says. If he could use this Web thing to distribute his puzzles, he thought, well, there'd be no stopping him.Jan and Carey, who live in Menlo Park, worked like crazy creating puzzles. They started posting them -- crosswords, fill-in-the blanks, word search. They made some interactive. Through the grapevine and education organizations they got the word out to teachers, who loved to use the puzzles in their classrooms. And, like many Web pioneers, the Cooks thought not a bit about making money, which is to say they didn't make any. But Carey hangs out with a bottom-line crowd. And the bottom-line crowd would ask: "You make money in this thing?" Nope. And it doesn't matter, Carey says he would say.
"People sort of look at you like you're half nuts."Maybe not so much nuts as crazy about words. It's a love Carey learned from his grandfather, who made his living with pictures as a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. Grandpa Carey Orr agonized over the captions beneath his drawings. He knew well the power, melody and music of words. For her part, Jan Cook has always had a thing for language, studying French and Spanish in college and teaching French at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton.
So why not word puzzles? And get this. The Cooks now have a newspaper syndication contract with Tribune Media Services. And they have a deal with Universal Press-Uclick (www.uclick.com), a Web site that offers brain teasers for serious puzzlers. The Cooks still create free puzzles for teachers, but now the syndicate and Uclick/Universal Press are paying them for others. The money is rolling (my word, not theirs) in. "Our first royalty check, Mike? Hold onto your pen," Jan says. "Two dollars." (More like $8, says Carey.) Which is nice, dandy, splendid, peachy, swell -- which is to say, it's the cat's pajamas.
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Hey! Have an only-in-Silicon Valley story? Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5536.
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