Is Cheap/Free Worth It?

I ponder that question often, and in many contexts. (Perhaps because I've been writing a book in which "cheap" features so prominently? Maybe? I don't know. I just thought of that connection.) Anyway, I'm one of those dinosaurs who believes there is no free lunch, and on that note, here's a blog post worth reading. It comes from a site devoted to "scholarly publishing" (something else in which I'm interested for a number of reasons, many of them only tangentially related to the "publishing" part). Here the author is thinking about "social costs" and "social good" but doing so in a broad context. Worth reading.

Two money quotes:

Cheapness has consequences in the long run. We all end up paying for it somehow. And cheapness has a funny way of being expensive.

And:

You can save yourself poor as a business or an industry.

Ain't that the truth. (Hey! When else will I have an excuse to use a Zappa album cover?)

I May Live To Regret This . . .

UPDATE: The comments section for this post is FAR more interesting than the post itself. I'm grateful for all those who've stopped by to comment. I'm learning a lot from it, and what I'm learning makes me even more eager to see someone from The Human Wave get out there in front and tell the rest of the world what they do and how they do it. Because honest-to-god, folks, the rest of us DO. NOT. KNOW. UPDATE #2: Kate Paulk has taken my challenge and made a first stab at a "here's what we do" piece. Read it here.

. . . because I said that I rarely write about writerly stuff. But, damn! Again: from my point of view as a historian, these are exciting times. VERY exciting. So this is more the historian speaking than the author.

A bit of background: as I noted in a blog entry a few days back, publishing is in total disarray at the moment thanks primarily to the power of the digital. Thanks to that, it's now possible to publish a book without the middlemen who have long held sway.

This isn't a bad thing, and as I also said here, I wrestle every. single. day. with what to do with my own work. (That was the point of my original post about this: When your work consists of 85 to 90 percent research, and only 10 or 15 percent "writing," it ain't easy to give up the subsidy that traditional publishing offers.) (*1)

No one knows how the disarray will shake out because that's how "history" works: We don't know the end until the end gets here. (Unless you're a writer of historical fiction, in which case you can make things turn out any way you please, lucky you!

The ramifications of the "new" publishing are being felt by everyone in the business, as evidenced by this absolutely bizarro article in the New York Times a few days ago. That in turn prompted this response from a group blog I'd never heard of but somehow stumbled across in pursuit of who-knows-what, and there I found a link to this thoughtful commentary on the nature of "writing." 

But I digress from my main point, which is this: My original post about publishing generated, um, a response. (Not one I expected. I assumed no one would read it.) The response was, well, interesting, not least of which was this.

That got me thinking. Yesterday when I was walking, I contemplated the snarkitude of the response and thought "Wow. This is what a revolution feels like!"

This kind of rage is what, for example, the rich of Moscow likely felt as rebellion gained power and heft in 1916 and 1917. This is what ruling classes feel when the fury of the "oppressed" takes form and turns into outright revolution.  (Not, I hasten to add, that I'm either rich or a member of the "ruling classes." Rather, my point is that the self-publishing crowd regards people like me as elitist and they wanna see me suffer.)

Cool!

But then today, I was out walking (again; yeah, like most walkers/runners/swimmers --- I do all three --- my best ideas come when I'm in motion) and I thought "Well, okay. This is definitely what a revolution would feel like. Except --- they've already won!"

The self-publishers have won both the battle and the war. They've won. The spoils are theirs. They're making money. They call the shots. They're building audiences and did I mention they earning money from their work?

And no, I'm not being snarky. They've won. I'm the loser, as is anyone else who still clings to traditional publishing. (Which is why I a great deal of time pondering how and when I should move to The Other Side.)

So here's my question: Why are the winners so angry? I only follow one blog devoted to self-publishing, and its proprietor is a mostly mild-mannered guy; full of snark and condescension toward us losers (which, again, seems normal to me), but through his blog, I've landed at plenty of other self-publishers' blogs, and man! These people are ANGRY. (*2)

Is this normal human behavior when the oppressed finally gain power? They lash out at their former oppressors? (Again, I'm hardly an oppressor. I'm a mild-mannered, middle-aged historian. But in their eyes, I'm an elitist, whiney jerk with an overly developed sense of entitlement.) (*3)

So please: someone 'splain this to me, because I don't get it. And I swear this is my last take on writers' crap for awhile. It IS fascinating to me, but it's not something I can take a lot of time to ponder because, well, I've got to ponder equally historical shifts in the American food system and, hey, a girl's only got so many hours in the day.

______________________

*1: I've thought about this often enough that I'm daunted by the prospect. Should I opt for self-publishing, I'd have to get a job, obviously. The only thing I know how to do other than "history" is waiting tables. So I could do that and then use my off-time to research. By my calculation, and under those circumstances, the kinds of books I write would take 10 to 15 years to complete, and that includes giving up any other kind of leisure activity. (Bye-bye, husband!) (*1.1)

*1.1: The self-publishers scoff at such calculations. According to them, people like me simply don't work hard enough. I think what's really going on is that they simply don't know what historians do, and for that, as I've said on many occasions, I blame the historical profession for its unwillingness to engage with the public.

*2: I inadvertently got a load of that contempt/condescension/rage myself a few days ago. And again: I get why the self-publishers are smug about their success. I would be, too! But angry? What the hell are they ANGRY about? They've won! They should be happy, not angry.

*3: I must say: that's the other weird thing about the response from the self-pubbers who responded to my blog entry: They somehow got that idea that I believe I'm entitled to some kind of public subsidy. To which I say: Huh? I'm not asking taxpayers to fund my work (something many, many writers do, I might add). My arrangement with my publishers is entirely legal and private and takes nothing from anyone's pocket.

Thank You, President Obama

Gasp! Imagine: A politician (who happens to be the president) who's willing to treat other Americans as adults. Who acknowledges that we can think; that we're capable of pondering complex human issues; that we have empathy.

Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer:

I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

. . .

I've always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.

But over the course of several years I've talked to friends and family about this. I've thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I've gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.

What I've come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens.

Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn't dawn on them that their friends' parents should be treated differently.

So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.

Thank you, President Obama, for giving us an honest statement about your opinion on the subject of marriage, family, and love in the United States in the early twenty-first century.

______________

Text is from an email message the president sent to his supporters. For video of the television conversation about this, see this link.

I Heart New York

Really, I do. And have done so for more than fifty years. I first fell in love with the place as a kid, reading books set in New York City. (Had I been more aware, I would have wondered: "Why the heck do so many writers set their stories in this one city?" Now I know the answer.) I first went there in 1975 and stayed for a year. And have gone back regularly ever since. I married someone who grew up there, and my younger step-daughter moved there when she was eighteen. (The older s-d opted for London. That's good, too!)

And the older I get, the more I love the place. Good people watching? Sure. But it's also the best eavesdropping on the planet. New Yorkers are such a wierd paradox: On one hand, they're the most provincial people on the planet. All of 'em. On the other hand, they're so engaged with the world around them (narrow and limited though that world might be.) They exude energy, which means, in turn, that the physical city vibrates with all that energy.

The city is different for me now because these days, I enjoy it in the company of a small child (my s-d's son, who will be four in October). I adore that kid. I'm besotted by the kid! And he's a delightful touring companion so my favorite place is now doubly, triply, quadruply delightful. (I doubt that latter adjective is a real word, but you get my drift.)

On this most recent visit, I devoted one day to business (downtown to see editor, uptown to see agent), and the rest to the city: High Line Park, which I'd not yet managed to visit, followed by a stroll through the West Village en route to pizza.

A visit to the Queens Museum of Art to see a mammoth cartographic map of the city's water system; a nearly surreal panoramic 3-D map of the city; and a small but choice exhibit of black-and-white photos taken in the 1950s; followed by a visit to the New York Aquarium and a stroll along the Coney Island boardwalk.

(I'm but an average skee ball player, although had someone handed me enough quarters, I'dve spent a whole lotta time trying to improve my game.)

And so my half-century love affair with the city continues. Yet another reason I'd love to be a hundred and fifty.

Adrift in a Pond of Lassitude

Yeah. Okay. I wanted to call it a Pond of Ennui, but that word doesn't fit. Torper would do, too. But lassitude it is. I don’t recall feeling this aimless and adrift since, well, some moment so long ago that I can’t remember when it was.

I’ve worn a track in the carpet wandering from room to room, trying to decide what to do with all my “free time.”

Not, of course, that I have any “free time.” Yes, okay, the manuscript is on my editor’s desk and I’ll see her later this week to discuss it. (Let us hope her response is not the equivalent of “What the FUCK were you thinking???? We can’t publish this crap!”)

Until that happens, I’m not inclined to work on it. I’m also not in the mood to work on it. If familiarity breeds contempt, my manuscript and I loathe each other at the moment.

Much of my house-wandering has been devoted to thinking, in a general way, about my next book. I know what I want to do, but I don’t want to get too carried away until I talk to my agent, which will also happen later this week.

(Manhattan: Trek downtown to see editor, then up to midtown to see agent.) The idea is only quarter-baked at the moment. I think it’s a good one, but ...... (Yes, this is one reason to pay an agent: he/she offers advice, assistance, reality checks.)

So --- I’m not getting much done. Which is not to say I’ve been sitting around engaging in the contemporary equivalent of eating bon bons while watching soap operas. Things I’ve done since sending manuscript to editor:

• Written the introduction. Or, more accurately, written five or six drafts of the introduction
• Read a bunch of stuff (much of it excruciatingly dull) about contemporary food politics
• Pondered my next book
• Talked to reporters about Pink Slime; written about Pink Slime
• Written a first draft of lyrics for the music video I’ll be making to promote the meat book

Hmmm. And: Ugh. Doesn’t sound like much for a month of work. So. Back to wandering.

If Publishing Is Dead, What Happens to Non-Fiction?

UPDATE: See my long, and related, comment at this post. (As in: It's in the COMMENTS, not the blog entry itself.) I rarely write about the publishing side of my life; frankly, it’s not that interesting and it’s more insider baseball than anything else and how boring is that for those who aren’t on the inside? (Bohhhh-rriiiiing.)

So indulge me. Just this once. (I’m a historian and a writer and am living through a once-in-a-millennium paradigm shift. What’s not to love??)

For those of you who don’t work in “publishing,” a bit of background: The industry consists of publishing houses, both big and small; literary agents; and writers (aka the Big Mob At the Bottom of the Totem Pole).

Until recently (like, oh, coupla years ago), writers wrote, then tried to find an agent who then sold the writer’s work to a publishing house. The agent takes a percentage of the author’s royalties, and everyone involved hoped for the best (meaning: hoped readers would want to buy the book the writer had written. Most of the time, they did not.)

“Self-publishing” --- when a writer acted as her own publishing house --- was looked on as the resort of hacks, the untalented, the losers.

No more. Now anyone can write a manuscript, create a digital version of it, upload it to Amazon or wherever, and wait for readers and their wallets to come running.

For authors, the advantages are obvious: There’s no time lag between finishing a manuscript and “publishing” it. (In contrast, assuming all goes well, my meat book will come out in about ten or eleven months.) There’s no agent to take a chunk of the profits. The writer becomes a one-woman publishing industry.

For many writers, this has become the road to riches. Authors who never earned anything on books published the old-fashioned way swear that, thanks to self-publishing, they’re raking in the dough.

The self-publishing king- and queenpins are relentless in their mockery of those of us who cling to agents and publishing houses. According to them, we traditionalists are losers of the first order. We’re world-class fools for letting agents take our money, and dumbasses for letting editors and publishing companies call the shots on our behalf.

The self-pubbers canNOT wait for the day when the entire traditional publishing complex falls into a huge hole in the ground. The self-pubbers have the funeral all planned. (If the self-pubbers spent as much time writing as they do gloating over the slow death of publishing, they could easily crank out another book or two each year.)

Okay. Fine.

But I’ve noticed: The new self-publishing king/queenpins are almost entirely novelists, meaning they write fiction rather than non-fiction. (*1)

They crank out a novel or two (or three) a YEAR. I’m sure that many of them have to do research for their books, but for MOST fiction writers (not all of them), that research is minimal and is the kind of thing that can be taken care of with good googling or a trip or two to the public library.

As a result, they don’t understand that for people like me, the “traditional” publishing industry is my only lifeline, my only means of support.

Consider: I started working on the meat book in early 2007. I finished it in early 2012. You do the math.

I spent five years researching and writing the beer book, and of that, a great deal of money and time was spent on traveling to specialized libraries. The Key West book took me two years to research and write.

How did I pay for that? By entering into a partnership with a traditional publishing house that provided financial support.

It works like this: My agent sells my book IDEA to a publishing house. The house pays an “advance”: a sum of money upfront that I can live on while I research and write the book. It’s not much money --- in fact it’s an embarrassing amount of money and I also am fortunate enough to receive financial support from my spouse.

Without that assistance, I couldn’t do what I do. Period. Again, it’s not much money, and it’s the ONLY money I earn from my books. (If I were lucky enough to write a bang ‘em up bestseller, I’d earn more than the advance, but I’m not that lucky. Er, um, not that talented a writer.)

The self-publishers, in my opinion, have a distorted view of “books” and of “publishing.” In their minds, every writer is cranking out novels that don’t require much time to research and write, and the lag time between creation and payoff is short.

So I ask them: What happens when the agents, editors, and publishing houses go away? Who will write non-fiction then?

And yes, sigh, all this ruminating led to that single simple question. I TOLD you I was long-winded.

UPDATE/OTHER LINKS: For more on non-fiction in this brave new world of books, see this post by Sarah Weinman, a long-time industry insider, and this article in the Wall Street Journal. (The latter link may evaporate.) And another update: This take from a writer who's been on both sides.

___________________________ *1: I say “almost entirely” because among the self-pubbers are a small but vocal group of non-fiction writers who, having earned beaucoup bucks from their work, are now Famous and Rich and can afford to dump their publishers and agents and publish their own work.