History
CultureFeast was originally created to be an online bookstore for used (or pre-owned) books. Once upon a time, I, Daniel Dessinger, worked at a cool bookstore in Edmond, Oklahoma called Archives Books. When I joined the team, the store was in the process of converting from brick-and-mortar to Internet only. My job was to evaluate used books and type each book's condition into a database. I started to hate the monotony of data entry, but the concept of a used bookstore excited me.
I decided to try the concept on my own. The idea of being my own boss was formed then and there. I'd never had the notion before. I started by selling my textbooks and required reading from college. The good ones sold quickly, giving me an unfair sense of expectation.
A year later, I went ahead and bought the domain name CultureFeast and built a blog in the hopes of converting the website into a bookstore when I could afford an actual web designer and developer. I spent months crunching numbers, using information I had gleaned from the owner of Archives Books.
But before my bookstore ever materialized, I realized that my ex-boss had some advantages I simply couldn't replicate without first having my own brick and mortar store. Unlike Archives, I couldn't sit on my duff and let people walk in the store and sell me their books. I didn't have a store, so that meant I had to find the books. That's time, energy, and money I hadn't realistically planned on.
The only competitor for buying used books in the DFW area is Half Price Books, and they offer next to nothing. But without my own shop, I couldn't get people's attention. After a year of having a garage-full of books never listed for sale, my wife and I held a garage sale and liquidated our massive collection. The garage looked great, but it was a sour experience for the whole family.
CultureFeast the website was still around, so I kept it as my personal and professional blog. To it's credit, it has been a source of freelance copywriting projects as well as a place for me to vent when I was moody.
Since then, CultureFeast has grown to include more than ten different writers on subjects ranging from politics to celebrities to writing tips and scores of other topics. CultureFeast is an organic site, in that it changes and evolves every day. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, but ALWAYS relevant, we think that CultureFeast is truly a feast of culture.
That about says it all. I'm still a little sad that I didn't use CultureFeast to sell used books online. I loved the idea. But CultureFeast the culture blog has carved a niche into society and this is where we're going to stay.
