Please buy new books. Please.

There's a nice essay by James Grippando M.J. Rose's blog. I second the emotion: If you buy books, PLEASE buy new if you can. Writers make zero dollars from used books. That's zero dollars as in: Zip. Nada. $0.00. Not-one-thin-dime. If writers don't make money, then the publishers don't make money. And if publishers don't make money, they won't publish any books. And readers won't have new books to read.

If you love to read; if you care about books, words, and the marvelous way in which books feed our imaginations, then please, buy new if you can. If you can't, that's okay! Check out books from your library. Libraries are funded in part based on numbers of patrons. The more patrons, the bigger the budget. And libraries are the bedrock (along with good manners) of civilization.

So please, if you can possibly do so, buy books new. If you can't, then please, patronize your local library. We'll all be better for it. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading!

I'm dead! Give me money!

I'm a long-time reader of obituaries. (No, I have no idea why I'm so fascinated by them. I'm sure the psychiatrists in the audience would be glad to offer some explanations). Anyway, I've read obits for years and years -- decades, in fact.

Back in the old days (which are increasingly seeming like the GOOD old days), the families of the deceased might suggest memorial contributions to a favorite non-profit. Great idea, because after all, does anyone really need all those flowers?

But in the past two years, I've noticed a truly disturbing trend in the American Way of Death: the family suggests that memorial contributions be made to -- the family.

Now, okay, if the deceased is the sole breadwinner and leaves behind a spouse and seven kids, I can certainly understand that the survivors might need some financial assistance. Or if a child is suddenly orphaned by the death of both parents But that's rarely the case in the "give us money" obits. Sometimes the deceased is a child. Sometimes it's an elderly person. Sometimes it's an unmarried, unparenting adult.

But the survivors want MONEY.

What the HELL is the deal with this? It's bad enough that soon-to-be-marrieds now routinely ask wedding guests for dough (the lastest wrinkle in that nasty fad is posting a house plan at a website and asking people to pay for a window, door, or floor covering. But survivors of the recently deceased asking for money? Ewwwwwwwwww! I truly don't understand this.

So if anyone can explain it to me, well, I'd be thrilled to bits. Just don't expect me to endorse this new "custom."

Today's lesson is.........

Yesterday I had occasion to have someone read a beer-related piece to me over the phone (I don't have a fax machine, and this person wanted me to hear the content of this piece sooner rather than later). (Okay, the piece in question was a review of AMBITIOUS BREW from one of the publishing trade magazines.) (Yes, it was a good review. And this is the rag known for its incredibly snarky reviews. Whew!)

Anyway, the person reading the piece to me knows zip about beer and apologized in advance for "butchering" some of the names.

I was reminded of that by the July 6 entry at A Planet Full of Beer Blogs Yuengling is pronounced "Ying-ling." Uihlein (the family that built Schlitz Brewing) is pronounced "E-line." And Greisedieck is pronounced "GREE-see-dick" or "GREE-sa-dick." Take your pick. No rhyme intended.

Random Musings of a Random Mind

Okay, this is what's bugging me about blogs and blogging (and let me say at the outset that I'm not an expert on blogs, bloggers, or blogging. Mostly I'm fascinated by the enthusiasm that blogging generates: What compels an ordinary schmo to set out his/her thoughts for the world at large??):

The standard rap on blogging is that blogs provide two things (well, probably more than two, but two MAIN things): First, they provide an alternative viewpoint, alternative, that is, to "mainstream" media coverage of people, places, and events. Eg, an erudite blogger with a purple mohawk (or whatever hairdo passes for hip-chic these days) and seventeen tattoos dishes up a perspective on the war in Iraq, the economy, Democratic party politics, etc., that diverges from the view presented in the New York Times or on CNN.

Second, blogs create links between and among ideas and "dialogues" that might not otherwise be connected out in the "real" world. The resulting ideas and dialogues are layered with texture, text, and heft that they would otherwise lack.

But I wonder: are either of those assumptions accurate?

Take writers' blogs. As near as I can tell, MOST (not all) writers' blogs are about -- writing! Now I don't know about you, but if I weren't a writer, I would find a writer's blog to be dull, dull, and still more dull. Or, to put it a bit more grandiosely, a writer's blog about writing is self-referential. Which is not surprising, but it's also, well, hardly novel (no pun intended) or particularly exciting.

Similarly, if you look at the links listed alongside most writers' blogs, those links lead to other writers' blogs, or to blogs produced by editors, agents, and booksellers.

In short, most writers' blogs exist to link to other writers' blogs and thereby generate more name recognition for all concerned. (In the political world, say the one that revolves around Capitol Hill and The Beltway, this is known as back-scratching.) Meaning that most writers' blogs exist within a web of insularity and self-reference that can't possibly be interesting to anyone but the initiated (other writers......)

(I should also add that M. J. Rose made this same point in a blog entry in April, a blog that was pointed out to me by an editor. Rose's blog that day was about a more important topic: namely, writers need to think twice before they waste their time blogging if the only point of the blog is to link to other writers' blogs. A point with which I whole-heartedly agree.)

Now it's POSSIBLE (and even likely) that there are some bloggers who link to bloggers beyond their own worlds. Eg, a blogger interested in the wired world links to or comments about neuroscience or quantum mechanics. And the person who originally read that particular blog in order to keep up on events/ideas in the world of cyber-politics ends up learning about the ways in which neuroscience influences and affects the creation and design of computers and the internet.

But I'm guessing that those kinds of blogs are the exception rather than the rule. (I'd be happy to be proved wrong.) If you read an article somewhere about some buzz-generating blog, it's likely only generating buzz amongst an insular group. The choir preaching to the choir, as it were.

Which brings me (finally!!) to my point: What IS the point of blogging? Especially for writers.

Frankly, I don't wanna waste my time blogging away in hopes that my blog will be linked to that of other (better-known) writers. I belong to two online writing groups and get all the writerly chat I need from them. And frankly, I don't want to spend ALL MY TIME hanging out with a bunch of people who are just like me! I need some variety, if you know what I mean.

The problem, of course, is that if someone blogs about what's on her mind, well, the human mind being what it is, the content of the blog will be all over the place. Point in case: my own blog -- which so far has discussed beer, conferences of brainy people, and proofreading. Hardly the sorts of topics that are gonna get me far on technorati's search engine (I kinda doubt there's a search term for "musings on the human condition").

And the things I'm writing about are certainly not going to bring me to the attention of people who might read my blog and then, GASP!, buy my books........ (Because let's be honest: the other reason writers take up blogging is so that they can grab the attention of the book-buying public. But of course that almost never happens because, well, see my point several paragraphs above.....)

So at this particular moment (early July 2006), I'm not convinced that blogging is the Next Great Thing in human interaction. I suspect that mostly, it's the Next Great Thing destined to push our society to the next level of bowling alone: namely, a place where we think about bowling alone, rather than actually getting out there in the lanes and knocking down pins, alone or otherwise! Indeed, here I am, blogging for an audience of one!

Insiders R Us

It's natural, I suppose, for people intimately involved with something to forget that the rest of the world is not as obsessed or knowledgeable as they are. We've all experienced it: we ask some computer geek to show us how to do something. The geek executes 15 keystrokes in 2.5 seconds and says "There! See how easy that was?" And of course, we're still clueless because we have no idea what just transpired. And then the geek gets annoyed because we're not catching on!

People in the publishing industry are like that: We're an insular community with our own jargon and own ways of doing things. Anything we do and say looms large in our lives and minds and we assume that the rest of the world is as knowledgeable and obsessed as we are.

The truth is that the rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass! They don't understand how our particular "system" works, and we shouldn't assume that they do.

The other day I experienced a humbling reminder of those facts. A woman I met recently wanted to read my first two books. So she went to the local public library and didn't find either book there (one is a scholarly book unsuited for a public library and the other is a book about Florida and why would a library in the middle of Iowa have a book about Florida?)

So she emailed me and asked me if I had any copies she could borrow to read. Now if I were a better self-promoter, I would have explained to her that, hey, do ya think I'm doin' this for free? No! Go BUY the damn books. But I'm a softie and a lousy self-promoter. So I rifled through my shelves and found a copy of the plumbing book to loan her and then I gave her a copy of the Key West book to keep (because I have about twenty copies of the paperback on hand). She's a truly lovely person person and I just didn't have the heart to tell her that I only earn money from writing when people BUY my books.

The encounter was a good reminder that the average person has no idea how publishing and writing work. And why should they? It's not their business to know!

Yeah, it's frustrating when people ask me to loan them copies of my books. Yeah, it's frustrating when I have a new book come out and people ask me for free copies. They don't realize that I only get a handful of free copies and that I must give those to give to people who assisted the venture in some way. (For example, I get twenty free copies of the beer book. But my list of people who contributed in some way contains 45 names! So I'll have to buy 25 extra copies just to give to them.)

Or people say to me, "Gee, are you ever going to finish that book? What's taking you so long?" Or, "How hard can it be to write a book about beer? Just find some facts and write them down!" They don't understand (and again, why should they?), that researching the history of beer or Key West or whatever takes years. That once I finish the research, then I start an even more challenging (and time-consuming) project: taking hundreds of thousands of "facts" and weaving them into an interesting story.

I'm not complaining. I do what I do because I love to research and I love to write. Nor am I being critical of the public at large. Most people aren't writers. There's no REASON why they should understand how the system works.

I do wonder, however, if writers have themselves to blame. Certainly I blame myself. Here I had a chance to educate someone, who might in turn educate others, and I blew it. Writers could -- and SHOULD -- do a better job of explaining themselves to the rest of the world. Of making it clear to "outsiders" that we don't work for free. That we only earn money when people buy the results of our labor. (That, by the way, is why I'm such a fanatic about "stealing" music. I won't download music for free, nor will I accept CDs of music copied from a disk owned by someone else. Musicians work hard for their money. When we steal their music, we're stealing their income.)

So what's the point? Well, there's not one. Except that I hope that the next time someone asks to borrow one of my books, I'll stiffen my spine, summon my courage, and explain how the "system" works.

What Kind of Fool Am I?

Anyone remember that song? Yesterday I finally finished proofreading the manuscript. That means I finished reading aloud 412 pages of text -- backward. My voice is shot and my brain is gone. Proofreading provokes a particularly intense form of existential angst (hmmm....is that redundant??): Sitting there slogging my way from one page to the next, listening to my droning, increasingly raspy voice; becoming alarmed and unnerved by the number of typos; wondering how many of the bastards I'm MISSING as I read .....

..... I wondered: Why the HELL am I doing this? I just spent five years of my life on this book. No one will care. No one reads anymore. People who do read don't want to plunk down actual cash for books (remember: writers earn zero dollars from borrowed and used books). Down into the slough of despair I slid.

Yes, let's hear it for proofreading. Every writer's favorite activity! No wonder so many books are full of typos, misspelled words, dropped lines, and innaccuracies. Who in his or her right mind would knowingly subject him/herself to such torture??

Oh. Right. Because there's almost nothing as satisfying as writing a book; as exhilerating as creating something from nothing. So I guess proofreading is the writer's equivalent of labor pains: women give suffer fifty kinds of torture giving birth, and then that sweet little face blows the memory of that pain right out of their minds.

Yes, you guessed it: I'm chomping at the bit to start a new project so that, three or four years hence, I can sit at my kitchen table again for seven straight days reading several hundred pages of text aloud backward. Chomping at the bit to fall in love with writing all over again. What kind of FOOOLLLLL am I? Who [always falls] in love?