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Getting Published: “Self” vs. “Traditional”… the “Great Debate”

With all this horse shit, there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere!

(Reputed to have been Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke.)

The linked email exchange, introduced here, actually happened. It was edited only slightly, simply to help clarify.

(If you’d like to cut right to it, click this to skip my contextual intro: The Great Non-Debate!)

This all began with an email from the program organizer for a major upcoming writing conference where I’ll be presenting three workshops in August, asking if I’d like to participate in a videotaped “debate” to help with the promotion and marketing of the event. It would be a face-off from two sides: the advocacy of traditional publishing, versus a defense of self publishing as the better call, presumably seeking to recruit writers to either point of view.

I would, of course, be the spokesperson for the traditional vote… which he seemed to believe was my obvious wheelhouse. Not sure why, actually, as I write about craft rather than marketing. Maybe it’s the constant references to “getting published” in my posts that cast me in the old school mode for this (because anybody can publish anything in the self-publishing world, thus confusing the issue.

These days, that phrase applies to either camp.

My opponent in this “debate” would be Linda Needham, an experienced and highly respected author who will also be presenting at the conference. Linda, I gleaned from the context of the invitation, was a huge advocate and expert in the self-publishing realm.

The organizer meant well.  He wanted it to be funny, a “mock” debate in the “Larry you ignorant slut” tonality of an old Saturday Night Live sketch.  I got that.  It was actually a clever idea.

Let me say here, I was never tempted to say yes.

I waited 24 hours to respond, then wrote to say thanks for the offer, it’d be a fun project with the right players, but I wasn’t the right guy. I hate conflict. I avoid debate.  I don’t need to be right, and frankly there are no clear cut lines dividing these two publishing preferences.  It’s a “debate” nobody can win. Both positions have upsides and horror stories, and examples of each abound.

Let me say also that I’ve done it both ways.  I’ve published eight books (six novels and two writing books)… traditionally. And I’ve distributed five ebooks on writing… as a self-published author.

That said, I have broken the code for neither.

I copied my response to the invite, my decline, to my so-called opponent (Linda), just to make sure I remained respectful to all parties. Frankly, I was pretty certain that she’d kick my ass in such a square-off, and I wanted to make that clear… I can’t defend traditional publishing as a goal any more than I can, using the numbers and the sparsity of valid examples, justify self-publishing.  (Any metric to measure success in either realm is an issue of scale and personal goals… one self-published writer’s home run in terms of sales is another traditionally-published writer’s dismal failure.)

Holding a book in your hands that has your name on the cover, or looking at its listing online, is a wonderful feeling, no matter how one gets there.  But it’s not remotely what it used to be, and what it means depends on the writer.

All of which is pretty depressing, when you think about it.

It leaves us with, well, no promising options whatsoever if more than “holding my book in my hands” is the goal. And yet, books do get published, they do get bought and read, and from both strategies.  Some writers come out the other side  with the beginning of an actual career, though the number lean toward traditional on that count, by a long shot.

As for seeing your book on a shelf in a bookstore, however, that one remains a near impossibility for one strategy, and lately, a very iffy prospect for the other.

Linda wrote back, asking me to offer up more details.

I did that, and suddenly the debate has morphed into a sort of manifesto exploring the dark world of the writing aspiration. The objective of sharing it with you here is to bring you to the point of such a discussion, and make you aware of the species of shark with which you are swimming regardless of which pool into which you dive .

For me, it comes full circle back to what I’m doing here on Storyfix, and why I keep writing fiction in what amounts to my spare time lately, because dreams die hard. It’s why I coach writers on their stories for a living, the goal being to give their novel the best possible chance of floating in those shark-infested waters.

I teach so that I might learn.

I will never hang my shingle out as a publishing consultant.  Beware of anyone who does.

So there will be no debate.

There never will be. Certainly argument and advocacy will continue, cloaked as campaign or propaganda, often told from behind blinders. There is a lot of noise  about self-publishing, but the number of viable, money-making, truly bestselling authors out there still come from traditional publishing by a factor of about 1000 to 1 (I once told a large keynote audience that the number of bestselling authors from their state could fit into a booth at Denny’s… the reviews were mixed on that one).

In other words, for every story that goes like this – “hey, Joe Blow has sold one million ebooks on Kindle, and he’s not even that good!” – there are hundreds of bookstores full of titles from the traditional publishing world, with nary a single self-published title on the property.  And among those books on the story shelf, there are many that have sold more than one million copies.

We must choose our goals and our strategies very carefully.

And, with the realization that both are at once viable while remaining long shots, we must be realistic about our talents and our time, both in terms of writing a story and our ability to promote it on our own (which the vast majority of traditionally published authors face, as well, thus throwing a point toward the self-publishing position).

The only odds that are in your favor as a self-published author is the chance to actually have a title for sale on Amaxon. com.  And the only odds in your favor as a traditionally published author is that, at some point, an box will be delivered to you door full of copies of your latest title, without having to write a check to make that happen.

But first, before we choose our strategy, we must choose our stories carefully.

That’s the most important and least heralded argument of all in this face-off.  And on this, count there is no debate whatsoever relative to what that means.

Because the whole thing is still a cloud of dust, one in which the morning email ad from Amazon might include the next Jo Nesbo or John Grisham or Debbie Macomber  right next to the next Joe Blow ebook (a bad example, because that’s also something the self-published writer has absolutely ZERO control over).  Sooner or later the dust will settle and some sort of qualitative vetting mechanism will surface (it’s already happening, with websites that review only self-published or small press titles, and bookstores and magazine stands that carry only traditionally published titles), herding books into niches and levels, and when it does we’ll be right back where we left off when traditional publishing went dark.

In the art world there are mall poster stores, mass produced art stores, county fair art booths, community art shows. local galleries, hotel resort galleries, art district galleries, big name galleries and major auctions for collectors.  Nobody is confused.  We are heading for something like that, but in the meantime we are being seduced into believing this is a level playing field.

It isn’t.  Both are minefields where the dead outnumber the survivors.

Our job is to figure out which business we want to be in, and then be there when the walls and storefronts go up, still in the game.

Click this link — The Great Non-Debate – to read the non-debate commiserating and illuminating email exchange between Linda Needham and myself on this issue. The good stuff is mostly hers (I’m mostly bitching and moaning, truth be told), with a lot of encouraging and sobering truths we need to ponder before we can truly decide with clarity.

Linda Needham is a multi-published, USA Today bestselling author of traditionally and self-published historical romance.  She is also a multi-produced playwright, librettist, tap-dancer and proud grandmother.

 

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20 Responses

  1. I don’t have anything published whether it be the traditional way or self-publishing. I’m working on it though. For me, having a novel traditionally published is what is going to make me feel that I am truly an author. Once I have reached that goal, I may go for the independent publishing / self-publishing with the help of a small press company. Although digital books are popular, anything I publish I want in actual book form too. It seem that there are a lot of readers out there who prefer having those pages of paper to turn.

  2. @ MikeR: didn’t ayn stpiud misteaks … that it was neither the best of times nor the worst of times … and that it did not begin on a dark and stormy night on top of a sopping-wet doghouse at the hands of a beagle.

    😉

    I’ve been a big Peanuts fan since I was a child

  3. @Curt –

    To be perfectly honest with you: “No.”

    Until and unless your author’s-name reaches the iconic status of “Stephen King,” “J K Rowling,” or “Larry Brooks,” face it … your name, and therefore your product, is “Not A Brand.”

    However, none of those names ever would have =become= “a Brand” (let alone a million-dollar one) were it not for the following often-overlooked ingredients: an editor, and a marketing department.

    The editor worked to be sure that the book that finally wound up in your hand contain didn’t ayn stpiud misteaks … that it was neither the best of times nor the worst of times … and that it did not begin on a dark and stormy night on top of a sopping-wet doghouse at the hands of a beagle.

    The marketing department, meanwhile, strove to interest newspapers outside of St. Paul in a comic-strip that nobody had yet heard of which had just ditched the name, “Li’l Folks.”

    And so, “no, I’m very sorry.” The present state-of-affairs … and six months(!) from now it could well be very different … does not, in my opinion, yet have the necessary set of ingredients in place.

    Mind you, those ingredients ARE NEEDED! 🙂 Clearly, both the demand to write great stuff, AND the demand to read great stuff, are not now being served by today’s business models, all of which are clearly just wilted-souffle’s from yesteryear. But, IMHO, they’re simply not =here= yet. (Underline: “yet.”)

  4. MikeR: So, you don’t think some kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval would help? It would essentially provide the same quality/gatekeeper function as a publisher.

    I know a lot of readers at work, and we swap books and many go online for e-books, but many have also grown weary of taking a chance on the 99 cent specials that have a great and promising opening, and then give the reader a quick descent into incoherence.

    There are some jewels out there, but you’ve got to swim through the crap to find them, and readers are increasingly unwilling to do that, and will instead shop for books just as you describe.

  5. @Curt –

    I have never heard of “awesomeindies.net,” and I would very frankly lump them in with everyone-else who found a domain name that they could reserve. The root problem, in each and every one of these cases, is that, while all of them may have identified “a problem,” from the author’s point-of-view, none of them have identified “a solution,” from the point-of-view of the one and only person who has a dollar-bill in his hand.

    You can “sell a seal” if you want to, but that won’t have the slightest bit of influence on actual customer behavior unless you have the wherewithal to SELL THE SH*T OUT OF the supposed significance of that “seal” so as to persuade millions(!) of buyers to look for it.

    No, they’ll take the course of least resistance. Now that Borders (alas …) is gone, they’ll go to Barnes & Noble, they’ll buy a latté, and then they will browse.

    Once they’ve found a book, they’ll go home and order it on Amazon. In paper or in electronic form.

    And, let’s face it: a title that can be bought “on-paper OR electronically,” might(!) be bought electronically …

    … but a title that “can only be bought electronically,” probably won’t be bought at all.

    In the hard, cold, merciless world of Marketing, the unsuccessful people strive to change public behavior to match their notion of what public behaviors ought to be. The successful ones observe what public behavior actually is, and are prepared to sell to it without change while also perhaps offering an alternative.

  6. Linda,

    Excellent advice on contests.

    Publishing is a dark world, and it is depressing to contemplate, especially to an outsider looking in and hearing two pros talk about it this way.

    Self publishing is a siren song. Even if you were to finely hone your story and professionally edit it, you’re still throwing your masterpiece into a vast, foaming sea of crap.

    The only hope I see for self-publishing to become viable (and given purchasing trends, it can become viable) is if some credible organizations step in and grade self-published books.

    Anyone heard of these guys? awesomeindies(dot)net

    I can’t vouch for them specifically, but such organizations, established as credible, would give interested readers some assurance of quality. That trusted seal of approval (that should be hard to earn and based upon strict criteria-kinda like an editor/publisher, huh?) would assure the gentle reader that nuclear spiders will not jump out of the last page of a romance novel set in Victorian England.

    Also, some have discussed self-publishing sites setting the cost bar higher in the hopes of discouraging the raging manifestoists.

    Chuck Wendig discussed this at length on his blog…

    terribleminds(dot)com/ramble/2014/02/03/slushy-glut-slog-why-the-self-publishing-shit-volcano-is-a-problem

    I think self-publishing can gain a larger audience if some kind of controls are put in place that perform the same gatekeeper function as traditional publishing. So, professionally-written and edited books that met the standards would get the seal, and those that don’t meet the criteria could still publish, but without the seal. Search engines like on Amazon, etc could easily adapt to such a tiered system and weed out the chaff for the reader.

  7. Linda,

    Excellent advice on contests.

    Publishing is a dark world, and it is depressing to contemplate, especially to an outsider looking in and hearing two pros talk about it this way.

    Self publishing is a siren song. Even if you were to finely hone your story and professionally edit it, you’re still throwing your masterpiece into a vast, foaming sea of crap.

    The only hope I see for self-publishing to become viable (and given purchasing trends, it can become viable) is if some credible organizations step in and grade self-published books.

    Anyone heard of these guys? http://awesomeindies.net/

    I can’t vouch for them specifically, but such organizations, established as credible, would give interested readers some assurance of quality. That trusted seal of approval (that should be hard to earn and based upon strict criteria-kinda like an editor/publisher, huh?) would assure the gentle reader that nuclear spiders will not jump out of the last page of a romance novel set in Victorian England.

    Also, some have discussed self-publishing sites setting the cost bar higher in the hopes of discouraging the raging manifestoists.

    Chuck Wendig discussed this at length on his blog…

    http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/02/03/slushy-glut-slog-why-the-self-publishing-shit-volcano-is-a-problem/

    I think self-publishing can gain a larger audience if some kind of controls are put in place that perform the same gatekeeper function as traditional publishing. So, professionally-written and edited books that met the standards would get the seal, and those that don’t meet the criteria could still publish, but without the seal. Search engines like on Amazon, etc could easily adapt to such a tiered system and weed out the chaff for the reader.

  8. CHIP <>

    Whichever way you choose, there are other ways to skin that editorial beastie!

    BEFORE EDITORIAL EXPENSE — For 17 of the 18 years before I sold to AvonBooks/HarperCollins, I was soooo on the wrong track in the character/conflict department. My prose was excellent, my understanding of conflict sucked. My world-changing epiphany came to me one night in a blinding flash and caused me to restructure the book-in-progress. But in the midst of writing the novel, I entered lots of different romance-genre writing contests with partials of the book in order to see if I was on the right track.

    CONTESTS — I chose each contest based on what I needed to get out of the results. I wasn’t looking for “wins”, I was looking for brutally honest critiques from a wide ranging panel of stranger-judges. Some contests wanted just the synopsis, some wanted three chapters and a synopsis, or the first meeting of the hero & heroine, or a single chapter. I only entered contests where I was assured of a detailed critique *and* where the final round was judged by at least one editor whose name I knew from the Big 7 or 8, as it was back then.

    RESULTS
    As the scores and results started coming in from the various contests over the course of about 6 months, I could see what was working and what wasn’t. When a single judge commented negatively on some element, I let it go–nothing’s more debilitating than trying to ‘fix’ your story for everyone’s taste, but when 5 or 6 judges took the time to responded negatively to that same element, then I knew it was a problem and set out to address it.

    Turns out that I was on the right track, as I won six of the contests and placed 2nd/3rd in the other six, and, at the same time, put myself and my book into the hands of numerous NY editors.

    I finished the book with confidence, engaged a powerhouse agent, who, two months later sold that book (in a mini-auction) in a contract with a second book (which I hadn’t even started writing) and my career took off.

    RESOURCES — Be brave and clever and look around for opportunities to put some hard-scrabble experience on your manuscript before you send it out the door.

    Write! Write! Write!

  9. Thanks to both of you for revealing your discussion! It is reassuring to read an exchange between two professionals mirroring the one going on in my head as I educate myself on these issues. You have reinforced my conclusions: (1) excellent execution of craft is the thing being sold; (2) a saleable product must be—with exceptions so few as to be irrelevant—a duet performance by writer and editor; and (3) it is foolish to self-publish without, at minimum, hiring a professional editor. After I’ve finished revising my manuscript to my own satisfaction, the question for me will become whether I want to pay for my editor up front out of my pocket or on the back end out of a publisher’s.

  10. My earlier point was simply that I perceive that “self-publishing,” while emotionally gratifying, today(!) suffers from two crucial shortcomings: (1) lack of a gatekeeper to maintain such product-quality as there is; and most importantly, (2) marketing.

    Close your eyes and visualize the warehouse in that scene at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” (The “top men” have invited you into … the Amazon bookstore.) There are millions of books in there, and let’s say that every single one of them is equally convenient to put your hands on. Which one do you choose? Literally, how do you =find= which one to choose, as you dodge the forklift trucks that are bringing in thousands of new titles every day.

    The problem is clear: Amazon’s keyword-search and optional reader-review system are literally the only two things that any reader presently has to buck a multi-million to one chance of finding the very book that she wants – that would be “your book,” of course. Paying for it and taking delivery is no problem, but, good luck finding it.

    Although internet technologies have delivered vast amounts of information to our doors and browsers, and now even to our hands, there is virtually no organized taxonomy for the information; not even a Dewey Decimal system for it all. (There -are- attempts to provide it, e.g. ‘dmoz.org’, which today continues thanks to the financial sponsorship of (uhh …) AOL, which by-the-by is where most of Yahoo’s index comes from. Google, ubiquitous and well-known that it may be, is actually fairly primitive.) Basically, “finding the stuff” is still the problem – the one that we haven’t solved yet – and it does stand in the way of the success of self-published material as a =business= enterprise. Today.

    I’m very confident that these issues will be overcome – all of this stuff is so incredibly new – and in the meantime there is certainly much to be said for “cost of goods sold equals zero.” But we are not yet looking at a centuries-old “mature marketplace” yet. I have no doubt that electronic media will prosper – I felt that way since I watched the movie “2001” – but I think it will take more time than we impatiently wish for it to.

    I intuit that what will become more and more prominent is serials – magazines – in some 21st Century form. Material will be successfully sold, in increments, by creating well-known “honeypots” to attract verticals of common-interest, and =there= electronic (but not necessarily “self”) published materials will finally begin to thrive. People will continue to act upon “good reads” recommendations, not necessarily coming from one-another, simply because “keyword-searching” among millions of entries in a database – no matter how you attempt it – is a hopeless quest. Even when a method of providing taxonomy for all this data IS discovered, “magazines,” “publishers,” and “editors” and yes, “marketers” will still be fundamental to … real profit.

    And is “real profit” a legitimate goal? Yes, I think so. If the word’s really getting out, you’ll be making money thereby. And, if you’re not making money, the word’s probably not getting out. Profitability therefore serves as a litmus-paper of sorts, reduced to a single number. Not the only one, nor the only important one, but meaningful nonetheless.

  11. @Linda

    Yep, there was a pony an Edsel and a clap of thunder. “Jack Kerouac couldn’t get published today.”

    Then, lightening struck twice in the same place. ” It’s the long tail that matters. Cumulative sales build a career.” Followed by the second strike. “It’s the long-tail view that counts.”

    Craft was everywhere to be found. And through it all, the not so thinly veiled implication that this writing thing could be described by one four letter word , —work. aka Pay your dues.

    But, I discovered your edge. It’s in plain sight for all to read. You wrote. c.a. 1972. You wrote at T-Ball games, during spare time and on lunch breaks.

    The edge. It’s right there, c.a. 1972. You escaped the time gobblers. Facebook, Texting, Twitter and the ever present temptation–the selfie. You WROTE. You studied your discipline, aka Craft and WROTE.

    Thanks to both you and Larry for a great Non-Debate.
    P.S. Anyone who knows the Edsel, knows! 🙂

  12. <>

    JOHN V — “producing a compelling story” — exactly what Larry and I were non-debating. Creating successful commercial fiction that rises to the top of the heap is–has always been and will always be–the most difficult, and possibly the oldest, profession in the world.

    DUES — I paid my dues for 18 years before I sold my first book to a traditional publisher in 1995. Those dues included: taking workshops and classes, studying stacks of writing books and magazines, attending writing conferences and retreats, joining a dozen local and national writing organizations, submitting to agents and editors, being stymied and buoyed by rejection letters, entering writing contests, participating in critique groups, schmoozing with fellow writers. Oh, and of course, writing — nights, weekends, holidays, in the bleachers at T-ball games, during play rehearsal, through my lunch hour . . . whenever I could find a moment.

    With my dues came an insight into the writing life, the knowledge of story structure and character development, of craft, a visceral understanding of the Hero’s Journey as the Handbook for the Human Experience, the realization that promo and marketing is a crapshoot, and a profound gratitude for those published authors who generously shared their wisdom and expertise and made me a better writer.

    COMMERCIAL FICTION — If you want to write *commercial fiction*, that is fiction that sells to ravenous readers, you gotta be willing to pay your dues, whatever the cost, however long it takes.

    THE QUICK & THE GOOD — In today’s world of print & eBooks you really need to have 10 novels available across this ever-diminishing marketplace before you start getting noticed by readers in sustainable numbers. At that point, a new reader (new fan of your compelling commercial fiction) who finds your newest release will snap up your backlist and tell all their reading friends! That’s how the money finds its way into your bank account.

    SELF-PUBLISHING IS A CHOICE — At the risk of repeating myself — self-publishing is a choice. A *new* option for authors to put their books in front of readers when a traditional publisher isn’t the right partner. Lazy/clueless authors who use self-publishing (eBook or print) as a way to slip their less-than-compelling, non-commercial fiction past the editorial gatekeepers are going to fail because they will discover that the gatekeeper is now your eager, intelligent, reader. And you should never, *never*, NEVER disappoint a reader with a dull, poorly executed book. It’ll cost you big time and irrevocably.

    PAY YOUR DUES — Which ever choice you make on your publishing journey, traditional or self or hybrid, print or e- or both, craft the best book you can write. Listen to your editorial gut, not your roommate’s flattery, and pay your dues!

    Good writing to all!

  13. So now I got around to reading the non-debate. Excellent stuff.

    Here’s why we can all win: “And once a writer senses a ray of hope, no matter how dim, there’s no changing their mind. Which is a good thing, I suppose.”

    It is indeed. If every writer were to adopt a reasonable, realistic attitude about publishing, there’d be no writers.

  14. I loved the great non debate. Lots of good information here: pros and cons on both sides while keeping the focus on producing a compelling story.

  15. Although it’s a year off yet (a few more drafts first), I have thought about this. What I decided is that I like to write. I’m not a marketer or a self-promoter. Anyone who has read my posts on this website also knows I need an editor!

    I’ve purchased some self-published books and found their quality quite variable. With a lot of them, I thought, “A good editor would have caught that.” With a few others I thought, “blech!” There were some good ones also. But, overall, I recognized that I will need an editor, and I will need help to get the book out there.

  16. Just a point of information in response to one of the above comments.

    The belief that self publishing is the same as vanity publishing is an outdated idea left over from the days when vanity publishing was the only way to self publish. In those days, self publishing had a stigma attached, because it was thought that your book was so bad that the only way to get it published was to pay to have it done, but these days, with the changes in technology and publishing, those beliefs are rightly changing

    These days, self publishing and vanity publishing are two different items. You can self publish by vanity publishing, but that is only one of the options available to you

  17. Look. I haven’t anything published yet. I’m writing a lot and I’m studying the c*** out of Larry’s books and the books of two other writers I value. I want to master the craft so that when you wake me at 3 AM I am able to recite it like a poem in school (not that I was ever good at that).

    But that is my foundation. That, and a story I really want to tell (not think I want to tell) Then and ONLY then can we talk about publishing it. When I’ve reached that point I – honestly – won’t give a c*** about having it self- or traditionally published. Because I did the best I can within my possibilities, and if the first book sells only 2 copies, then the 10th will probably sell 20 copies. I don’t care that much. I want to write and (as selfish and exhibitionistic as I am) I want other people to read it. If there is only one person who likes it, I won!

    I’ll give it my best and throw it out there. And then I just go on as a writer.

  18. I’ve left the self-publishing world and have entered into traditional publishing, simply because it’s a huge investment with no guarantee of returns. There are so many people under the ‘book marketing’ umbrella that are lining their pockets with indie or self-pubbed author’s dollars; it’s become too much for my budget.

    Instead, I concentrate my time on the writing. My inventory of completed manuscripts grows constantly in hopes that one of them will make it to the big guys…if not, even small press is better than self-pubbing. At least it won’t cost me a dime. It doesn’t bother me that it could take years before I see my work published; I think that’s half the problem with indie authors…they want instant gratification and will pay to get it.

  19. “The only odds that are in your favor as a self-published author is the chance to actually have a title for sale on Amaxon. com. And the only odds in your favor as a traditionally published author is that, at some point, an box will be delivered to you door full of copies of your latest title, without having to write a check to make that happen.”

    This is what I’ve been saying to my clients ever since I started working as, how shall I say it, a self-publishing consultant.

    I tell anyone I work with (and anyone I don’t) they’d better be writing because they need to write and want to be good at it, and not because they plan to be rich and famous.

    Haven’t read the non-debate yet but I really dig this post, Larry.

  20. I’m of the opinion that, in the popular mind, “e-book” and “self-pub” have gotten very mashed-up together and that they are not yet sorted out. But they are, I think, very different.

    “Self-publishing,” I think, is simply “vanity publishing,” because two things are missing: (1) quality-control (editing …); and (2) marketing. It’s the lack of marketing that kills ya. You simply can’t do that on your own. Whether you wind up with a box of beautiful books that’s been relegated to supporting some heavy object in your garage, or simply a file that no one on earth knows to exist, vanity-publishing dies for lack of marketing and has no credible means to provide it.

    “e-books,” I think, are still an emerging technology. Handy on an airline flight, yes, but it still leaves you – leaves me, at least – with the funny-feeling of having paid for something that you can’t actually touch. (Which is why I still buy CDs, and vinyl.) There are unquestionable advantages to it, though, as I was recently reminded when I took about three hundred pounds of “three-inch thick computer books concerning obsolete products” to the paper recycler.

    “Print on-demand (POD)” is a technology that absolutely blows me away – I’ve seen it. A digital printing press is churning out one paperback book after another … all different … and they’re =good= paperbacks. (The printer told me that the equipment can do hardbacks, too.) The key is: “all different,” but also, as the man was quick to point out, “already bought and paid-for.” Yeah, the equipment cost between $1 and $2 million dollars, but it actually is profitable at such a price.

    I agree with you that “debate” really is and would have been pointless. A sincere and perhaps well-intentioned notion. Entertaining to the audience, perhaps, but not really beneficial. As they say, “biz iz, as biz iz,” and all that any of us can do about is to try our best to sell things.

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