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.

"Pink Slime" and Cognitive Bias; Or, How to Make Mountains of Molehills

Last year, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman published a book titled Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book has won awards and landed on bestseller lists and I recommend it. (It's not an easy read but it's worth the effort.) Kahneman looks at how we "think" and how our intuition and cognitive biases (and we all have them) shape how we think and how we respond to ideas and events In Chapter 13, he discusses the role of "risk" in our thinking, especially the way "biased reactions" and inaccurate  assessments of  risk can and do shape public policy. He cites the work of another scholar, Cass Sunstein, who argues that, as Kahneman puts it,

biased reactions to risks are an important source of erratic and misplaced priorities in public policy. Lawmakers and regulators may be overly responsive to the irrational concerns of citizens, both because of political sensitivity and because they are prone to the same cognitive biases as other citizens.

Kahneman describes what happens when the public's inability to calculate "risk" accurately fuels an irrational response to a relatively trivial matter. The passage is long but worth quoting in full.

[This] . . .  self-sustaining chain of events .  .  . may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability entrepreneurs," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news.

The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a "heinous cover-up." The issue become politically important because it is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment.

Kahneman cites two specific examples of cases where a minor episode blew up into a Very Big Deal and facts were ignored: the Love Canal episode of the late 1970s, and the "Alar scare" in 1989. In both cases, the facts did not support the dangers touted.

To which I would add the example of Pink Slime in 2012: Jamie Oliver describes salvaged beef scraps as dog food; a blogger demands that the USDA stop using said scraps and launches a petition; the media picks up the story; a media-savvy group of "availability entrepreneurs" fan the flames --- and a company ends up teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

________________

Quotes are from Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), p. 142.

In My Other Life --- I Talk, Not Write

Have I ever mentioned that I often talk about my work to others? I do. Anyway, thanks to Lean Finely-Textured Beef (Pink Slime to you and me), I've already done a couple of radio interviews about meat (nice because the book won't even be out until early 2013).

This one was with the always kind and thoughtful Ray Bowman.

This one early this morning for Q, a program that originates on CBC in Canada and is broadcast in the US via PRI.

Bill Maher Explains It All

AHA! Now I get it! Anyone who denounces Pink Slime is a "liberal," and anyone who doesn't is a "conservative."

So says Bill Maher. Speaking about two Republican governors who spoke out in support of BPI, Inc. and Pink Slime:

I think the Republican party is at war with common sense… I think Republicans live in a world now where whatever a liberal says, no matter how sensible, is automatically evil, wrong, and needs to be fought with the fervor of a starving racoon on crystalmeth.

So if I'm reading this him correctly, anyone who is opposed to PS is a "liberal." Those who aren't are, by default, conservatives.

So. Now I understand why some folks think that since I didn't issue an unequivocal condemnation of PS, it follows that I don't believe in global warming or the climate crisis. Because I'm a REPUBLICAN, stupid.

Okaaaay. Now I get it. Whew. So glad to have that little mystery cleared up.

Gotta go. Off to the county courthouse to correct the error on my voter registration card.

"Beer Wars," "Content Creation," and Crap Shoots

Three years? Somehow it seemed longer than that (which, heh, is probably due to the way I've spent the past three years). According to Anat Baron (and she should know), it's been three years since her film "Beer Wars" debuted. (*1)  Her comment on the film and the anniversary are worth reading in whole, but I'll quote this part of it here:

I still get asked about a follow up film or a sequel. I don’t think that folks understand what it takes to produce and distribute a feature film. Just because everyone has a digital camera these days doesn’t mean that they’re making a feature-length movie. That millions of people will see. And so, if you haven’t realized from my tone, there will not be another film. It takes too long. Costs too much. And in the end, viewers want content for free. So, for me the economics just don’t add up.

I had a story to tell. I told it in the best way I knew how. It’s a documentary so you can’t just make shit up and manipulate the facts.

Ain't that the truth? Especially the "make shit up" part and the "viewers want content for free" part. Making films, like making books, is absurdly difficult and EXPENSIVE and a total crap shoot. Will anyone want to see the film? Will anyone want to PAY MONEY to see the film? Will anyone read the book? Will anyone plunk down some coin to BUY the book?

We "content creators" never know. Which is why, ya know, it's a crap shoot. Most "content" is built on faith and a prayer and a shitload of hard work.

Anyway: As Anat points out, in the three years since BW debuted, everyone and her mother has cranked out some form of beer-related visual "content." (Sorry. Can't help myself. My favorite shoot-a-hole-in-that-mother phrase is "content creator.") And she hopes that someone else will, as she says, grab the baton and make a new cinematic statement about craft brewing.

Which is another way of saying she hopes the dreamers and doers and suckers (like me. Like her.) keep coming. Here's to us: the craps-shooting content creators!

________________________

*1: Full disclosure: I am in the film (BRIEFLY); I participated in the live panel discussion that followed the film debut in Los Angeles. Anat is a dear friend. I also weighed in --- at, cough cough, length --- on the film, its reception, its meaning, etc. in a ridiculously long blog series.