Long term intentions remain to continue with this writing. I’m not comfortable giving up my personal writing entirely, so I will return soon. I’m just currently a teensy bit surprised all the time when things do feel manageable, so I’m being cautious.

Anyhow, I feel a bit out of the loop lately, but I’m hoping to get totally back into the groove in the next couple weeks.

Right now, the nature of book publishing is changing dramatically. More and more books are being published and publishing houses are doing less and less of the promotion. Their budgets are stretched so thin they can only really promote the books that are already guaranteed bestsellers, so that if you’re one of the ones lucky enough to have a book coming out with an agent and publisher and the entire traditional path, you’re most likely going to see next to nothing done to sell your book beyond its distribution and the most basic of marketing. Self-publishing, which is now and will increasingly challenge the traditional modes of publication, is entirely reliant on the authors to promote their own works.

The problem, of course, lies in the fact that nobody likes to be overtly marketed to and authors in general tend to be somewhat clumsy about actually doing their own promotion; it’s consistently referred to as the thing they’re least comfortable doing. The stupidity of it all is that we as consumers are marketed to all the time. You’re hit with advertisements everywhere you go, all day long, from faceless companies selling products that you probably couldn’t care less about. And the funny thing about it is that we don’t really complain about that at all. But the second a small voice squeaks out and says, “Hey, I wrote a book, would you be interested in buying a copy?” out come the pitchforks and torches. Why is it that we’re totally okay with companies we don’t really like bombarding us with marketing, but we refuse the same to authors whose works (or at least the idea behind those works) we love? Because we’re all jerks, that’s why. We love to kick the underdog. We need to quit that.

The other half is that authors really do stink at marketing and promotion. They’re the worst at it, which is extraordinary because they already possess all of the tools they need to be fantastic at it but somewhere along the lines it all misfires. I mean, think about it: they can write well, they’re generally capable of empathy and seeing things from multiple perspectives, but a teensy bit of self-consciousness about the prospect of promotion causes them to fumble. Ask one to promote someone else’s work and they’ll do so with gusto and flair. Force to promote their work and you get: “Eeep…. my book you buy please? I no eat have in 16 days.”

That’s why I think authors should really take the time to read up on the subject and become comfortable doing it. It’s going to become more and more of a reality for them, so might as well. There are scores of books on the subject and many of them quite good at demonstrating what I think already most authors know but could stand to be reminded of. Because there is something good about marketing, too. It’s not monolithic evil, even if it’s the dark side with which we’re most familiar. Good marketing and promotion puts good products and good writing in the hands of the people who’d get the most out of it but would be unlikely to find it any other way. If you feel good about a work you’ve written, you’re doing a disservice not getting it out there. There is more to it than just “look at me” and actually, by having a popular blog and a trusted following, Nathan has already done it. If I could recommend a couple books, I’d read anything by Guy Kawasaki (Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions would be a good choice) or Bob Gilbreath’s The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning or read Seth Godin’s blog. None of those addresses the specifics of marketing a book, but I consider that a feature. These are the guys who understand marketing at its most simple and I think most authors are capable of extrapolating from that a strategy to market themselves. Maybe at the least they’ll see that marketing isn’t the dark side.

For what it’s worth, I think everyone should read a couple books on marketing, not just authors. We’re all engaged in self-promotion all the time to a greater or lesser extent and if you’re not comfortable with saying anything good about yourself and what you can do, well, you’re probably going to have a hard time at your next job interview. So, maybe don’t read those two books which are a little less helpful in that regard but read something else and read Seth’s blog for sure. It’s all about realizing the value that you have in yourself and in the work you do and that you’re doing a favor to others by giving them the opportunity to be aware of it. Don’t just make it about money. We’re all more noble than that.

Finally, there’s the contingent that refuses to think that any promotion at all is unnecessary and is, in fact, harmful. To them, I kindly say “stuff it.” They don’t understand and they’re the exact reason you can’t just count on word of mouth or the quality of good writing to rise to the top simply be virtue of its awesomeness. The universe does not, in fact, take care of anyone that way and it’s exceptionally naive to think it does. One of the comments on his post actually said that. It also said that he should either charge for his blog or shut up, also known as a “false dilemma” in informal logic. I can’t stand people like that.

This, by the way, again reinforces in my mind the reason we should put more faith in the experts, those with authority, even at risk of being labelled “elitist.” The trained critic, not the Amazon reader comment, I think has the best chance of being our expert promoter of fine writing in the future, but I think that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say that there are too many works and too many voices out there and it’s a sea of noise. Careful promotion that peeks out above the water has the best chance of getting the word out about the great works out there.

I’ve been in summer mode now for about a month, which means that I’ve basically screwed up my day-to-day routine (or had it screwed up or something like that) and I’m still wandering around the house mostly aimless. It’s good and bad. There are days, not many, but more than a few, where I’m on the computer for about an hour in the morning and that’s it for the whole rest of the day. Some days, I veg in front of the thing all day long. Others I’m running around with the kids all day. I’m busy, having fun, confused and bored all the same time. Aimless. Like I said, it’s good and bad. Anyway the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me. That is summer. (No, I haven’t killed…. yet.)

I’ve also been trying, sometimes more successfully than others, to unplug from the internet and clear my head from reading the news all the time and being a complete slave to my RSS reader. When there’s nothing keeping you busy, it’s pretty easy to get outraged by every little thing. Like, this one time, I was reading a blog, and there was this guy there and he was totally wrong about something. On the internet. The nerve of it. Yeah, so it was time for me to shut ‘er down for a bit and find something more constructive to do with my time.

Meanwhile, real life continues apace and we’ve bought a house and haven’t yet closed on it, which is a source of much excitement and stress and worry. They make it look like so much more fun on TV. I hope to live in the house now for another 60 years or so (that’d make me 97, which I think would be a respectable showing in the longevity game), just so we don’t have to go through moving again. Although, I will say that I’m looking forward to having an office with a door on it, my own personal man-cave of higher learning, and to unpacking all my books again and putting them on bookshelves and being home again. My first post on this blog had to do with packing my books up, so I’m stoked at undoing that. Unfortunately, it won’t be happening until late in July.

One more really bad thing that I have to confess: I haven’t been reading anything. Nothing at all. I’ve been on a complete reading break. I finished reading Freedom about a month ago and I was completely blown away. It’s as good as everyone says, no question. It seriously is. The consequence is that I’ve let it work itself out in the back of my head for a few weeks and haven’t really felt like following it up with anything. Meanwhile, some books are stacking up because I don’t stop collecting things to read ever, even if my output goes to crap. I imagine a lot of that will change soon, though and I’ll get back in the swing. I’d like to write up my review of Freedom at some point, and I sketched out some notes, but I don’t know if I’ll get to it and, realistically speaking, does the world really need another review of it? Feel free to pick from the other billion or, better yet, just go get your hands on a copy and read it. Time well spent.

I have, however, started another new project: a new blog devoted to all things German. I mostly intend for the blog to be a place for me to consolidate materials and ideas that I’d like to discuss with anyone who is interested in German culture or language in a way that’s simple enough for a learner. Mainly, it’s a way for me to consolidate in my mind anything that I find of interest or any thoughts I might have that are related to German studies, German language, theater, art, music, food, culture, news, teaching, teaching materials and the like. I am a German teacher, I need to devote a good chunk of mental energy that direction and keep myself honest, and that’s going to be my place to share ideas and advocate for the study of German in all of its beautiful, sexy and apparently completely unfunny glory. I’ve decided to call this blog: Deutsch Schmeutsch. Still working on links and on an about page, but that’s all coming soon.

Otherwise, this weekend and for the next week we’re off on vacation! It’s very exciting and I’m looking forward to a little bit over a week of sunshine, beach, screaming children, good food, drinking beer in the afternoon and just not stressing about anything for a time. So, completely unshockingly, I’m just going to come right out and say that there probably won’t be a blog update between this Friday and about June 22 or so. Try not to cry.

Second, Jennifer Egan dissed “chick-lit” and now Jennifer Weiner among others are dissing Egan and there’s just too much damn lit/genre snark going on on twitter. To get started, go go here. Weiner even started an #eganfail hashtag. And you know what really fails? All of it. Give me a break.

The Kindle Shop at Amazon.De is only accessible for customers from Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

Visit the Amazon.Com Kindle Shop to look for titles that are accessible in your country.

Temporarily living abroad? You can change your country setting on the My Kindle page.

Thus, I could set my Kindle to German, change my address to German, maybe even set up a new account and get my Kindle on it, or I could even try setting my PC to use the free Kindle software with a different account than my regular American account, but you see the point. The point is a restriction of access.

Boo. Getting your hands on international movies, music and books has always been such a pain and I’ll confess, I don’t understand what all the trouble is with international copyrights that it results in setting up artificial barriers to trade in the digital era. Music’s a prime example of this. Early on, when iTunes first came out, you were able to purchase German titles right off the iTunes Germany page. Now, you can no longer even access that part of iTunes, even though technologically that capacity obviously exists. In fact, what we should be looking at now is an increased sharing of ideas around the world, where you can get everything instantly in this supreme global market, where technology allows us to make all of these borders disappear… but no. No, instead everything is gated and the technology goes to waste.

I can make the same complaint about regional encoding of DVDs as well. It’s not like that’s going to change anytime soon, either. In fact, you can’t even watch streaming video from Germany on a lot of websites unless you spoof a German IP address. It’s frustrating and I struggle to see how any of that does much good for normal people.

There is an upside, though. It means that International Book Import Service, this wonderful business based in Lynchburg, Tennessee, from whom I’ve been buying my German books for going on 15 years now, doesn’t have to bother with that sort of competition. Plus, over time, their website has gotten better about listing titles and allowing you to order online (used to be you’d have to call in by phone, which also wasn’t bad because Barbara seemed to remember everybody by name – an era of personal relationships that is, sadly, dying if not dead now). And, I’m definitely in favor of small businesses such as theirs not being swallowed up by larger corporations, though I’ll admit that the ease of access and convenience that goes into buying a Kindle book is something I’d welcome.

First, are you sure that it was all that inevitable? In the vast scheme of things, Amazon is a big player now. Libraries still are, too, but there’s the impression that they’re waning, especially when cities and states balance their budgets during the recession. You just never know, but Amazon on the whole might have more clout and staying power than they’re given credit for. On the other hand, it helps to sell Kindles, which is their money making baby.

Second, Guy Gonzales said it better than I could:

Funny how pundits always give Apple benefit of the doubt, rarely to Amazon, though the latter is arguably more innovative and experimental.

I’m all for shaking my fist at big capital when it comes to publishing, as has been well documented. I don’t like it when a single retailer controls so much of the market and even less when they begin to dominate the almost the entire chain of book production; writers gotta write still, but after that, I can imagine a dystopia in which Amazon becomes the one and only source for the written word. I think the reasons for that dislike are probably pretty clear.

But credit where it’s due. This is a *good* thing Amazon’s doing, even if self-interest is involved. It’s hard to see how this isn’t a win for everyone and, especially, for books and libraries.

If you study literature or film or, really, if you’re in the liberal arts and you go to grad school, you’re going to get hit in the face with a lot of Theory (capital T). There’s good reason that most undergraduates are spared this (I was) and it’s not because they’re too young or immature or even stupid to understand it, but because doing it requires a leap of faith and a buying-in that most aren’t quite ready to do just yet. They’re still taking courses outside their major and they’ve got a million things going on. When you’re in grad school, you think everyone in the world goes to college and it’s grad school that’s rare – I mention that as an aside because everyone everywhere sees the world as a fishbowl sometimes – but because of that perceived rarity, you’re willing to accept and be open to more ideas.

That first hit with Theory is huge, let me tell you. All of a sudden, you’re expected in short span to read Althusser, Marx, Freud, Lacan, de Saussure, Said, Bhabha, Butler, Kristeva, Derrida, Foucault, Benjamin, Adorno… this list could go on for quite a while and even conjuring these names up now, names I’ve not thought about in a long time, is engaging in nostalgia and feels like I’m just touching the edge of something immense. Anyway, the first criticism you always here at this time, and I’m pretty sure I said it myself so I’m not excusing anyone here, is that these writers are just masturbating. It’s said with a sense of self-assurance that is at once cocky and fearful. Because, after all, you’re the first person to have ever thought such a thing and boy aren’t you clever and if you’re standoffish enough, cross your arms hard enough and put your head back and look down the nose a little maybe nobody will notice how worried you are and my God! it just sucks being this awesome all the time, what a burden.

Anyhow, their writing is hard to read. Really, really hard. Deliberately hard and you sit there wondering why they’re such bad writers, as if that’s the right thing to be concentrating on. If you’ve never read deeply into philosophy, there’s a very steep barrier to entry. So, naturally, rather than take that climb, it’s a whole lot easier to diss the climb itself as unworthy. I’m not going to stroke their long dead white egos by seriously reading them. I’m going to just go ahead and point and declare that the emperor has no clothes on. I’m rebelling and I’m doing it by making the laziest argument of all.

Fortunately for me, I had a teacher who didn’t let me off the hook that easily and I’m very grateful to her and always will be. I ended up taking the leap of faith and decided that I wasn’t fit to judge until I had immersed myself in it. If you think about it, it’s a big risk to take. I most certainly did not enjoy myself at all when starting to read these critical works and they were just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire language and mode of thought there that, until you’re already in the middle of it, makes no sense. To get to that center, you spend a lot of time reading the same page over and over again for 30 minutes at a time, rubbing your eyes, wishing you could just skip to the end, but parataxis makes it impossible to skip at all. Your legs are broken and you drag yourself through it.

It’s hard to say if it’s worth it. It was for me. I think that once I began to understand how ideas were interrelated and how they described a different, sometimes much deeper understanding of everything in reality and in fiction at the same time, it opened up many directions of thought that I probably would otherwise never have. Mostly, I learned to apply a different mode of thinking to what I read and saw. I was good at interpreting literature before, but it did make me much better at it, especially once I learned to put down the theoretical lens again (it’s an occupational hazard that once you pick Theory up, you can’t put it down again – resisted, though, it can be enriching to remember the fundamentals of close readings and not let your favorites lead you by the nose).

The most important thing I learned, though, was to get past that cheap rejection of the entire enterprise. I learned that sometimes you do have to admit that you know too little to judge. That’s not always easy to accept or even recognize. And, unfortunately, I see that happening so often in conversations I have, not just on the internet, but everywhere.

In his essay “The Triumph of Stupidity,” Bertrand Russell once wrote that “the fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” I came to learn recently, in the light of various discussions, that this is also referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In the study, the lowest performers always overestimate their ability and understanding, while the top performers never realize that they’re actually on top. In essence, the stupid people are too stupid to realize how stupid they are, while the smart folks are so critical of themselves, that they fail to see that they understand as much as they do. I’d say that sums up a lot of my experience: they more I’ve learned, the more I’ve come to realize that there’s just so much I do not know. So, I tend to waffle more than I should.

So, when I came across a recent article about the provost-elect at Kennesaw State in Georgia who drew fire for having cited Marx in an academic paper, it frightened me more than a little. Citing Marx isn’t at all uncommon and it doesn’t mean that you’re a communist or that you’re anti-capitalist or anything of that sort. Personally, I cite Freud a lot. It doesn’t mean that I’d consider it current practice in psychology; it means that his ideas might provide a model for understanding something else. Reading Marx and applying a Marxist reading to something sociological makes a person no more a Marxist rebel than applying Freud makes me a psychologist. Not that the public is going to understand that, though. The reason the Red Scare is scary is because it’s fueled by a great many people who don’t understand that they don’t understand. As an aside, there are many other things that might be questionable about this particular hire, in my view, including a few very shoddy articles that make too many broad, sweeping generalizations, and it might be a ham-handed application of theory to the criticism he’s attempting to level, but the truth is that the public saw the name Marx cited in a favorable context and that’s all they chose (or were able) to focus on. I’m all for public opinion, but not when it becomes a mob. Sometimes, the public just isn’t informed enough really to make the judgment it’s making, but there’s no telling them that.

And yet again, my point here has diverged from what I originally intended. I had meant to say that if we can get over that initial reluctance to engage and the easy, lazy dismissal of opinions different from our own, we can sometimes come to a better understanding and sometimes just have some really great interactions. I was fortunate enough to have had just one such conversation last night with my brother-in-law (Thanks, Dax!). There were a number of times when either one of us could (or even actually did) dismiss a perspective as unworthy too early, but every time, we recovered from that and, for my part, I came to several realizations I would not otherwise have had. It pays to stick to it and buy into the idea that there’s very likely something to be gained just for going through the process of discussion. There’s a reward that can come from understanding that there are all sorts of things we don’t understand.

I don’t believe there’s a necessary divide between highbrow and lowbrow or whatever. I think that the habit of reading is intensely pleasurable and it’s also hard. The pleasure of it is partly the pleasure of detection, the pleasure of recognition, the pleasure of response. I think you can probably tell from the book that I’m very optimistic actually about the future of literature and literary reading—I’m far from despairing and I don’t actually feel that there’s a crisis. What we need is to continue to show the power of reading, the pleasure of reading—and, again, more people experience that than we are sometimes aware of.

It’s nice to read something more up-beat and positive and focused on the act of reading of itself, as opposed to the publishing side of the discussion, which is sometimes so drenched with Kool-Aid on either side, one would think Congress has better chances of working together smoothly. Also, I think the last couple posts I’ve made have put me in the position of being a little snobby, but that’s not a position I really want or mean to take. I like to read for entertainment. I will buy every novel George R. R. Martin writes in the Song of Ice and Fire series without question (even though the 4th book just left me a little disappointed). I’m not saying that pleasure is all bad.

I do think, however, that truly meaningful works do more than just entertain. I think we can find those experiences in everything, but I do worry that left to just a mass-market, works with meaning and depth will be seen as “too hard” and will suffer diminished value to an even greater degree than they presently do. It’s the path of least resistance. In other news, people also don’t really go to see many independent and foreign films, they seldom go to art exhibits, and water is also wet. I find that a shame.

Garber’s focus on teaching “the power of reading” is what provides the ultimate glimmer of hope. That is, if it’s not neglected. It seems really important.

At the risk of sounding like a snob: non-sophisticated readers will not care if writing is non-sophisticated, and there are a lot more non-sophisticated readers than sophisticated ones. That’s millions of potential readers.  Publishers might like to believe that they have the finger on the pulse of what sells – or what should sell – but when mediocre writing is becoming a bestseller, this pretty much renders the slush pile meaningless.

I couldn’t agree more, though many of the comments there correctly point out that bad writing makes its way through the publishing houses all the time. The difference, I suspect, is that in most of those cases, such as with Snooki or the various Tumbler to Book Deal conversions, these represent just a money grab for the publishers. You can’t really fault them for that. They need the money or they’ll go under like any other business. The more serious literary imprints and presses aren’t doing that and, consequently, they don’t bring in the big money, either.

I also saw the point made that great storytelling trumps great writing. I am not so sure. I’d even venture to say it’s impossible to have anything more than the barest kernel of what could potentially be a great idea for a story without having it written down and stories, my friends, are made in the telling of them. It might be a really grabbing concept, but it’s not done until it’s written and half-thought out ideas are compelling and worthless at the same time. I might have a really great idea for a painting that would knock your socks off. Unless, however, I somehow find the talent, dedication and time to put that image onto canvas, the idea isn’t worth anything. Technique and craft matter, at least as much and sometimes even more than raw gifts. What makes a great story is, frankly, a great story in all of its magnificence and splendor, a great idea perfectly massaged onto the page, be it pixels or paper. That’s inseparable from the writing.