Penguin's Pushcart

While reading recently about the Book Expo of America, I came upon a news item about the Penguin Group's old-fashioned, print-only Book Truck and Pushcart, a mobile store scheduled to travel the Route 66 journey made famous in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (one of my all-time favorite novels) and partly-inspired by New York's classic hotdog carts.  I found this notion wholely delightful, and very much in line with the strange dichotomy our modern world seems to be embracing - high-tech digital wonderment on one hand, low-tech retro small-business on the other.  

I must admit this dichotomy makes me unreasonably happy.  Maybe it's because I live in Portland.  The old-fashioned traveling bookstore notion represented by Penguin's Book Truck falls right in line with the locally-sourced movement of restaurants and the movement towards repairing over replacing in the realm of other products, not to mention the food cart revolution that has allowed small business restaurateurs a fiscally low-risk entry-point.  E-books seem to have dealt a serious blow to big name publishing houses and bookstores, but the indies are thriving, and benefitting from the access to technology such as print-on-demand.  With their pushcart/book truck idea, Penguin appears to be engaging in competition on indie terms.  

We humans seem hell-bent on finding ways to keep our humble, simple humanity, community and craftsmanship intact even as we catapult ourselves through cyberspace.  I say this cycling back to basics while embracing progress is healthy.  It  gives me hope.  I'm not a luddite; I'm a humanist.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/28/4260003/book-industry-gathers-for-annual.html#storylink=cpy

Mammon and the Storyteller: I Just Want To Write, Dammit!

I'm in danger of becoming a blog-whiner, one of my least favorite species.  Truly.  When I read a blog, I don't want to read about somebody whining over their day or apologizing for neglecting the blogosphere.  Yet here I am preparing to whine, yet again, about the social media flood and its stagnation-inducing effect on my writing.  Blogs and book giveaways and raffles and memes and e-book releases and cover reveals.  I feel like such a dinosaur.  I don't have time for that stuff.  I just want to write, dammit.

And if I should ever manage to get an agent or a publisher interested in my stuff, God forbid they wander over to this whiney rant born of a sad little neglected blog.  "What do we want with her?" they may say.  "All she wants to do is write.  Writers are a dime a dozen.  We don't need more writers.  We need marketers."  That's the message I'm getting these days.

As for self-publishing in the brave new world of the digital age, how is it any better than the old version of self-publishing?  You have to fork over a bundle of money (it's a bundle by my standards) for editors and cover art and all those important extras that will make you competitive.  I don't see that as much of an improvement over the days of vanity presses.  Yes, you control it, but you're still paying for it.

We human beings are driven to tell stories, I guess.  Tell them and write them.  But selling them?  That's a different animal.  The days of the tribal storyteller as a combination entertainer and shaman are gone.  Money has changed the storyteller's role forever.  Look at Hollywood.  How can the spirit that is meant to reflect on the deeper elements of human existence survive in the competitive commercial world?  Perhaps that is why so many artists end up screwed up, addicted, depressed, lost.  We're turning shamans into slaves, trained monkeys and prostitutes.

Oh, how very dark I'm being tonight!

Maybe I should be rejoicing in the notion that the human race is embracing its literary drive.  Maybe it's a good thing, everyone pouring their thoughts into words, this massive output of creative energy.  Afterall, some terrific creative work continues to emerge from all of this.  Have we human beings in the digital age become our own version of the old fable about the monkeys typing Shakespeare?    

One Compass to Find Your Way Through the Indie Book Forest

For readers wanting to navigate the overwhelming flood that has become the self-published e-book market, there is finally a glimmer of hope - the  IndieReader.com website.  The window of opportunity in which digital publishing made self-publishing truly viable seemed to be closing, in my opinion, because there were so many people doing it that it was its own slush pile.  How could readers EVER find you in all that stuff?  Every writing group I'm part of has a constant stream of announcements about people's new e-releases, free book giveaways, etc., etc.  And the reviewing mechanisms were too easily exploited just by getting friends to review your book, or paying someone to review it.  I've been getting so discouraged by this whole notion.

ANYWAY, the IndiReader website seems to be like a breath of fresh air, a place for truly independent reviews and opinions on the indie, e-book, self-publishing market.  Check it out:

IndieReader.com