Where Are We?

I think of myself as someone who really enjoys the written word. I used to be an avid reader but would not really consider myself much of one anymore. Why is that though? Is it because I am no disciplined enough, because I do not find myself as drawn to books anymore? I do not think has to do with either of those things. I think that reading has just managed to disappear from our culture a bit compared to the way that we used to see it. I wonder if I took a poll and people were really honest if they would be on my same page. Where will reading be in the future? Will we listen to books rather than read them? Will books become plot summaries instead of books or will we continue to lose ourselves and our imaginations to the classic novel? I think reading will always be around but I do wonder if there is going to be a large shift in some of the ways that we do read. There already is a bit of a shift, but it is minor in the grand scheme of things. What does everyone else think?

Publisher Interview

Here is my interview with ink brush publisher, Mr Craven... How did you get into publishing? Wow. Well, it goes back a long long ways. Back in the 70’s I started a literary magazine that published only poetry and published that for 7 or 8 years then I published a few collections of poetry through the publisher that was publishing the poetry journal for me. It was something that I had edited and put together and they put it out. Then when West TX A&M university joined the TX A&M university system and wanted to have a press series with the TX A&M university press the university president named me the series editor. I put out a book a year, nonfiction, dealing with topics of interest to people in West Texas and then I retired from teaching. I was an English professor. I’ve published some 25 books myself. After retirement from being a professor, I looked around the presses to publish some of the novels I’d written and discovered how difficult it was. It seemed nearly impossibly for writers of literary fiction or poetry to be published with the major presses. This was in about 2008. I started toying around with the idea of starting my own press. I realized that the publishing industry was changing very fast, learned what direction they were going in, discovered print on the mend was the coming thing and certainly the thing of the future. So I learned how to create books. I had to learn typeset, blank covers, how to upload to the appropriate printers etc. and then how to distribute books. I put out 3 or 4 books the first year and then 12-15 after that. What do you think the most important aspect of publishing is? For me, its getting really good books by fine writers into print so that those who would read them would have them accessible to them. Where do you think not only publishing but book culture as a whole will be in the future? Of course a lot of it is being taken over by electronic books. Amazon has sold huge numbers of books. I sold more eboooks than print books. Even though I keep hearing people say they’d rather read print than an ebook they all end up buying a tablet or something. Plus that technology is changing and improving so fast that a lot of people read books on their phones. Its possible for someone to have an ebook and read it on their phone then pick up their ebook reader and go from the same page as where they were reading on their phones. Its almost magical in term of whats available. Books will always continue to hold a fascination for people. Its how people get most of their information and get the most contact with our language. There will also be people who will also be interested in picking up a print copy of a book. With these new amazing printers, they can print a library quality book in about 4 minutes, I don’t think the print book will go anywhere. Print on the mend books, get reprocessed electronically and become e-books usually. Do you think that since people can self publish on the internet that it will make it more difficult for certain publishing houses? It does some. The self publishing industry has always been somewhat separate from publishing of really good literature and there are exceptions; Robert Frost published his own books initially. Ben Johnson in the 17th century published his own work and we call it the works of Ben Johnson and he was one of the great literary figures of his time. The ones who end up publishing their own work are really the owns who can’t write. The put down term for self publishing is Vanity Press because the fact is that these days anyone with money can put out a really nice looking book. Lulu.com, amazon.com etc. I mean A LOT of money. These people that fancy themselves as writers can self publish. Have you found sales on the internet to be especially beneficial? I’ve put some books on amazon as kindle books. I haven’t found that sales change on the internet vs. in a book store. I only know about one person as a publisher who makes the claim that they have made more money. Poetry, nonfiction, literary fiction- they sell to a light audience either in print or as electronic books. They will sell over a number of years. A fine writer such as AJ Bradely, who is one of the best poets I know, will have an audience that’s very small but after a 30/40 year span he will have a pretty large one just because people don’t read poetry in high numbers. Of the books that we see on your website that you have written and have been published which are your favorites? I started with poetry and I spent decades teaching myself to be a poet but after that started writing and publishing fiction. I like all genres, poetry is one that I tend to publish more of simply because there are a lot of good poets who cannot find a press. Most small presses have to make some kind of profit in order to stay in business and I don’t. The reason that I don’t is that I am retired and I figured out a way to publish and distribute books without costing me a whole lot. In fact, the poetry books that I have put out have pretty much paid for themselves and that is only because of the most recent technology in book production and I don’t take out a salary, I don’t need it. Were you always interested in the book and print culture? As a child I just read a lot. By the time I got to university I wanted to continue that and I wanted to continue reading good books and not knowing what to do with such an interest I got an English degree. Then I realized I had to make a living, went to graduate school and then became a professor. Finally, what has been the hardest part of publishing in recent years and the most rewarding? The hardest part was simply learning all of the things that I had to learn. I do it all from a very good computer system that I have at my desk but it requires that I know close to a dozen different compute programs. I have to know how to do cover design, book design. It all required a lot of imaging which is a bit unnatural to the way that I function. Its not terribly easy for me. The fun part was, after I mastered computer design, to discover that I was pretty good at designing book covers and I’ve taken to doing that for several book presses.

The following link is an article by David Sedaris written for the New Yorker in 2009. The piece is titled "Standing By". Its hilarious. http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2010-08-09#folio=033 My thoughts; First of all, absolutely hilarious. Secondly, what is it about writing something funny? it seems much harder to really write something that will make a reader fall over with laughter. Are comedians smarter people? They certainly seem to be the unhappier of the bunch. Think about how many comedians have killed themselves. Anyway, thats besides the point. I just brought up this piece because I think its amusing, easy to read, but also seen in one of America's favorite, some would call it literary, magazines. The New Yorker is an American staple like TIME or LIFE- it is a part of the American newsstand, a part of our culture, a part of us. As times change and we begin to lose magazines on the newsstand and instead, they appear on our iphone stand, will it still be as much a part of our culture, a staple per se? Or will modernization change the good old American magazine?

reading to my children

When I’m older I wonder how I will read bedtime stories to my children, or if I will. Will I curl up in bed with them that first night that I read to them and crack the fresh spine of a new children’s book, or gently open up the first musty smelling page of one of my old books. Will they like my favorite stories of “Ferdinand the Bull” or of “Goodnight Moon”? Maybe culture, the world, will have changed so much that those books will no longer inspire the minds of young readers. Maybe they will already be born with different minds. What if babies came out reading? Not in our lifetime, but it is something to think about. No, I think our children will be raised on kindles and ipads and goodness knows what else. I think that books will begin to fade and they will become harder to find, they will become expensive. Only the rich kids in the private schools will have books and they will carry them around like some sort of status symbol in the fifth grade. The rest of them will be left to work with the bright screens that everyone else sees around them everywhere, all the time. Maybe there won’t even be a point in reading our children bedtime stories, I really hope that it isn’t the case but it’s such a mystery.