Authors Have To Start Over Now

Watched Margaret Atwood on Charlie Rose last night before I fell asleep. Just what I need. The U2 of the publishing world who still can laugh from the mountain top. For her the old world of publishing still works very well. For the rest of the world it is over. The old modality of selling books has changed and is changing at such rapid speed that week to week makes a difference. The world of book giveaways and social media dunning is here to stay.

The New York Times had a piece asking the question if social media was here to stay for business. Yes is the answer. We have all become Internet slaves now. Everyone except the Margaret Atwoods of the world who are in fact from a world gone by. She even looks rarefied. And Charlie guffawing over the grande dam author makes you wonder how this world ever worked anyway. It worked for the few not the many.

The Democratization of selling books has allowed other authors to have some pie too. You can actually think about  making a little for yourself by selling ebooks. Before only the Atwoods got shelf space and mid list authors were shoved into the corers if they ever made it into the store all. So I went to bed with Margaret staring at Charlie like the sycophant he was and preening as any queen should.

But she probably will be the last.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Buying Eggs

I needed eggs the other morning and so I jumped in the car and started driving for a local farm where they sell eggs off the back porch for a buck seventy five. I had scratched up the money from my pants pockets (times being what they are) and set off on my Sunday morning drive back into the rural America. The far west suburb of Chicago I live in is ground zero for where the boom died. On my drive toward the farmer I saw old stone entrance posts and gates of STONEHAVEN  or CREST FARMS with bright red flags advertising luxury homes. On the other side was only corn fields.

And I drove feeling more anxious. Hadn't these morons learned yet? That Americans could no longer afford luxury homes and that the market nay the culture for these type of homes had passed. In these high weeded lots sat several desultory McMansions that someone had taken a flyer on and like the pioneers of old found themselves isolated in a country they knew not. Like a wave retreating these fields will return to the Prairie grass. 

But I felt anxious. Something seemed terribly wrong. America seemed to have bet on all the wrong things. The thought that a million dollar home could make you feel better about yourself seems so delusional now after four years of super recession. And yet the red flags are new and the sign is freshly painted. COME PICK OUT YOUR DREAM HOME. I slowed down to look and then I stopped and just stared at the lonely landscape of American capitalism gone bad. I saw no American dreams here.

And so I finally reached the old farm house with the swinging sign EGGS and pulled up to the back porch. I crunched across the drive and swung open the door to the nineteenth century home. The cooler whirred and the box for money sat there open. I threw in my dollar seventy five and fished out a dozen eggs. No one was up in the house and I shut the door quietly and walked back to my car. Then I drove back toward home with my eggs and I felt strangely peaceful.

Funny that just a simple task like buying eggs off a farmers back porch should give me such serenity. But maybe I had just touched a time when all the choices were simple. A man produced eggs and sold them to his neighbors and expected the money to be left behind. Simply amazing.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The March of the Digital Age

If you watch Keith Obermann then you inevitably see the same contributors, one of which is Howard Fineman the political editor of Newsweek Magazine. Howard usually brought a sort of lighter side to the discussion, giving sage assessments of candidates and the strange machinations of our polarized country. Last night Howard was on but he looked curiously unkempt. His hair was longish and on his collar. He looked like a man who might not have gotten a good nights sleep. He was with Keith at the desk instead of in a remote studio. Something was up.

Keith Obermann then wished him good luck on his new assignment. Newsweek Magazine is probably going kaput. The magazine has become so thin it was in danger of blowing away and now it will be a little thinner. Howard then told Keith he was joining the Huffington Post and had to get up on social networking. Again he looked cheerfully optimistic, but like a man who has been drafted a second time for combat duty, there was a strange deflation in his smile.

Lets face it, the Howard Fineman's of the world are becoming extinct. The march of the digital age is supplanting longtime journalists like so many broken levees as the flood waters of economic realities wash over print media. It is not Howard's fault he will essentially be a paid blogger from now on, it is that his time has passed, or that era of one man one salary one view has passed. You could see Keith almost hugging his desk as he shook Howard's hand, wishing him well, thinking--there but for the grace of God go I.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in the fall.
www.billhazelgrove.com

The Firewall of a Book for the Writer

Writing a book is very remote. You work on books for years and years and then it is sent out. Reviews come back from many sources. Some are paid reviewers (though less and less) and many are book sites and bloggers. But they come back commenting on a piece of stone. You cannot change the book. The book is finished and someone may or may not like the book, but there is nothing you can do.  Very rarely will an author take another crack at a book and make changes after it is published.

Not so in the blog land. The comments that come back hit you right away. You literally just finished writing the thing and people are telling you what they like and don't like. Many times the comments get personal. This is unfortunate and a real byproduct of a medium that is so open. Because the writer needs a firewall. He needs something between himself and the reader or he becomes influenced and loses his objectivity. Death for the writer.

Some might say that is the advantage of the Internet. That the net is more real time, interactive, and therefore more malleable to what is now. That may be true for information driven blogs, but for fiction or even for editorials which use the same device as fiction, this does not work well. Writing is highly subjective. We have all read the bestseller we thought was terrible. Or the book a friend doesn't like and we love. This is the nature of writing. But somehow the writer must remain above the fray. He must have something between himself and the reader. A firewall that allows him to write in isolation.

So all one can do is turn off the comments or ignore them. To have your ego stroked or torn down is an infringement on the author's vision. It is simply not the same as a critique of a story or a novel. On the Internet, sadly, things get personal very quickly.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in the fall.
www.billhazelgrove.com

Mark Twain and blogging

The first thing you realized when you read Mark Twain's biography is there is nothing new under the sun. He wrote satire and lampooned politicians and just about anybody else. And he was attacked for it. People attacked him in the press, in letters, personally, physically. He literally had to leave California because of people he had offended in various editorials. Then he would give satiric speeches to huge audiences that were comedic and cutting.

Cut to the modern writer of today. If you write on the Internet at all then you lay yourself open to all sorts of criticism. Write some satire or something political and it can get downright nasty. But mostly you end up with people sniping at you though the great firewall of the Internet. When else in life can you insult someone without facing them?

Writing a book is a much safer bet. The book comes out and you get a few reviews but basically people have to accept it for what it is. The very give and take of the Internet is much closer to Twain's kind of writing where people reacted quickly and let him know it. So far the bloggiing has been one of putting a piece out there and then having people react to it with comments. I wonder when people will have to start leaving town to get away from their critics?

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man.
"Funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."
                                                    Chicago Sun Times

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Blogging is Risky Business

A lot of people have stopped blogging. There are lots of reasons to not blog. You don't get paid. You burn out. You don't think anyone is reading your blogs or anyone cares. All these contribute to a collective blogburnout. Sometimes you just don't have anything left to say. Then there is a final reason and this is a big one--people don't like what you say and they let you know it.

I'm a novelist. My books go out there and I get reviewed by newspapers, reviewers, and people online. There is feedback but the book is done and it is pretty much you either like it or you don't. Not true in the blogging universe. You put out your blog and you get instant feedback and a lot of it is not good.

That is because most of the people who bother to comment are offended or disagree with what you have written. Some times it gets downright nasty. Certainly in the polarized atmosphere of our political landscape it is almost impossible not to piss off the right or the left. There is very little middle ground here. And if you are an author then there is another thought--you are making people mad who might buy your books.

I had a man the other day say it was nice knowing you. He had read my David Letterman essay and did not agree with the rapaciousness of Sarah Palin's career arc to the White House. That's fine, but can we not agree to disaee.? In the cyber world most people don't. That is what makes blogginng so brutal. It is instant feedback and the next day when you face that screen you have that little voice of discord in your head. Will I rack off more people? Am I doing myself harm? I know people have stopped blogging because it became nasty and they didn't want to turn away potential customers.

The opinion piece or the edtiorial is an offering. It is saying, here, did you think of it this way? It is an exploration of an idea. That is part of intellectual discourese. But of course in the time of cable bullies, we all know everyone does not get to put in their view. The podium now belongs to whoever speaks the loudest, writes in the most vitriolic vein, or silences the oppostion with email assaults. So it is not surprising people drop out of blogging. You basically have a choice--either say what you think or don't.

It takes thick skin to be a novelist and handle bad reviews, rejection, and the uncertain life of the fiction writer. It probably takes even a tougher hide these days to blog and remain honest.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/