The Ventilator of Publishing: A Mighty Blaze

The first thing you realized is that you are were all alone. The bookstores had closed. Your publisher had closed. The library had closed. Your agent was in shock. And you, you have a book coming out in the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu. Now what? And you quickly realize that you will have to do everything your self. Publishing as you know it ceased to exist. When a book comes out you are dependent on a push from your publishers, libraries, bookstores, reviewers. That push is now non existent and it is down to you and your book.

So you are flailing. Enter A Mighty Blaze. This is essentially a Facebook site run by eighteen writers who volunteer their time to promote the new books coming out during the pandemic. It is a lifeline, but more than that at a time when publishing is on life support,  A Mighty Blaze is the ventilator of publishing. On the Tuesday of publication A Mighty Blaze blasts out posts and likes and tweets and retweets to let the world know that even in a pandemic books are still being published. Followed by bookstores, agents, publishers, the literati now  behind ZOOM screens; A Mighty Blaze gives a face to the author who has effectively been silenced by this pernicious virus.

Eventually the publishers will return, the bookstores will open, the libraries will begin again and hopefully A Mighty Blaze will still be here. But if it withers after the normalcy of publishing returns then we can only be thankful that in the worst of times we saw the best of some people who put the collective importance of publishing books first and gave of their time and their passion.

william hazelgrove

Publishing A Book During A Pandemic

Herny Knox's Noble Train  will be out May 12, 2020. It is my fifteenth book. I have published in almost every situation imaginable. I have published during wars (First Iraq War) during horrible downturns in the economy (2008 recession/depression/) I struggled for years to get my first novel published and was handed the proverbial 250 rejection letters before finally a small publisher took a chance. Since then I have had good advances, lived the literary dream, movie deals, bad deals, lawsuits, triumphs, crushing defeats, and comebacks.. I have had to start over many times in the last thirty years since graduating college and deciding to become a full time writer. But I have never, ever published a book during a once in a century Pandemic.

It is like publishing into a void. Its not that the normal promotion hustle until you drop of modern publishing is hard enough...this...this is like publishing a book in a ghost town. It's not that I have stopped working, I work at home of course, it's just everybody else has and so I might as well be yelling into the night. All the pop-sickle stands are closed. Everyone has gone home. My publisher has gone on a three week furlough. The libraries where I give one hundred paid speeches a year are all closed. The trades are all working from home (PW Booklist, Kirkus) and I have yet to see a review. Only my agent has stayed at her post and so we are like the last of the Mahicans, two warriors not sure what battle to fight.

What makes this different is that the great Ferris wheel of publishing which is vast has for the moment just stopped and everyone is just waiting. Think of a party where you are the last guest and you are walking among the empty champagne bottles and picked over food. My editor let me know the books were in the warehouse last week and I should be getting my advanced copies. This is a good thing. At least the book will come out. But the question is then what? Barnes and Nobles is for the most part closed. The independent bookstores are closed. Amazon is still chugging along but busy with getting the nation toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

So I have to say publishing a book during a Pandemic is different. Maybe this is how authors felt when the Nazis marched into France. A sort of...now what? But it's your job. And so in a way I am back to where I started with my first book when no one knew or cared who I was. So I have a book that has just been published. I have a book and I better get to work selling it any way I can. I have always thought the authors job is also to sell so I have begun doing lots of Zoom presentations. I have always done lots of social media but it was always in support of larger efforts. Now it is back to square one. A brick at a time. More Social media. More zooming. Zoom might just be the ventilator of publishing for authors until the mighty Ferris wheel starts again. Just keep it all going...at least until a vaccine or a therapy. 

The Predators Who Prey on Authors

Occasionally I'll get a call from an author predator. It begins like this. Yeah hey this Mike from Doowop Press and we really love your work and want to talk to you. Mike will then precede to tell me how much he loves my books and they would love to publish my work...for a  small fee. Usually 5 grand is where it starts. I don't return these calls but they stay on you. I haven't heard from you...are you ok? Eventually I block the number.

But many authors fall prey to these predators. Unpublished authors are looking for validation and unfortunately these companies know this. And they make their money off of authors who are desperate to get their work out there and then five or ten grand later the book dies a silent death but they are already on to their next victim. It gets even worse with the movie predators.

Hey William we read your novel and think it would make a great movie. Usually two people work in tandem. One is a person who initially contacts you and then they bring in the big gun agent who is not an agent at all. We can get your book in front of top line producers and they will make it into a movie...for a fee. Again it is in the thousands. The word Hollywood is Christmas for most authors and so this is a strong play and unfortunately many authors get fleeced finding out too late they have no contacts at all and worse they never read your book.

Publishers are supposed to pay authors not the other way around, Movie producers are supposed to pay authors. Agents are supposed to work on commission. But just hearing that someone loves your book is a tonic to the gin of years of struggle and it is that drunkenness of perceived success these predators bank on. 

The Death of the Book that Didnt Happen

Oh it was supposed to go the way of the IPOD. You know the book. It was over. We would all be listening to or reading our books on kindles and those anachronistic tombs would be just hanging around the shelves waiting to start a good bonfire. But...but...it didn't happen. Wait a minute. You mean the economics behind ripping a .99 cent song or spotify didn't apply to books? Come on. People are driven by economics and convenience and it surely is cheaper and easier to download a book than lugging around a pound and half of books in your backpack. So...RIP book.

But then it didn't happen. Maybe it was the college class of advanced fiction or intro English that tipped me off.   I told the students on the first day. Yes you can download the books if you want. How many people have kindles? Crickets. How many people download books to their computers. Crickets. Wait a minute. The vaunted eighteen year old tech savvy demographic was not behaving. At least not for the pundits and doomsayers of books. Then sales of ebooks flatlined and I started doing back to back book signings in Barnes and Nobles around Chicago. I mean lots of them. Twenty or so around the holidays and then I got my second shock.

My books are not discounted. I am not Tom Clancy and my publishers decline to break the price on my hardcovers. So my books cost around 32.00 or 36.00 out the door. People didn't blink. They didn't even ask the price. They just bought and bought and bought. No sign of the Kindle or Nook anywhere. I sold 24,000 dollars worth of hardcovers last season....so why didn't the damn book die? Well...people who read are different animals than those who rip songs from the Internet. Also, we work on our computers. Yeah that thing we lug around and haunts us in our sleep to the point we have to get stoned or take a drink to calm our jazzed brains does not lend itself to pleasure. And reading is pleasure.
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Now there are those who say well virtual reality will replace the book eventually. Yawn. Forget about the research that says when we watch something our brain just about goes to sleep and that words are about the only sparks that conjure up a scene in the tabula rasa of our brain. Virtual reality replace books. Sure it will. Just like we all drink lattes and have tattoos and ear rings and live in urban areas and have sleek new phones and cars. Not. Most people shop at Target. Pay the mortgage. Hope their kids have a better future and if they have a moment for a good story and have a book they will read that over just bout every other delivery device So lets hear it for that old thumbed and yellowed bit of parchment between  the covers. Long live the book...the book....the book. 

Selling Books at Printers Row Chicago

You get there early and no one is in your tent yet. You unload your books williamhazelgrove.com and position them on the table along with your bookmarks, water, pad, money for change. Other people arrive. The temperature will soon be in the nineties and your tent is in the middle of Dearborn Street. This is one of the few times you are shoulder to shoulder with other authors selling books. This is good and bad. You are all after the same customers and it is a bit of  an open market with everyone pitching. Nine O'clock rolls around and the first people pass by.

Your books are hardcovers but this doesn't matter. People will pay 30.00 for a book they want. The  man across the street is selling everything for three bucks. You begin to sweat and now you are pushing up against the other authors because suddenly the tent is full. It is already hot, heat rash hot, and the water is not enough. The heat is an enemy that zaps your energy and you need every bit of it to pitch your book over and over and over.  This will go on for two days.

You would like to think you are beyond Printers Row. That your books should magically sell themselves and there are a lot of self published authors there. Your books are more expensive with a big publisher who will not discount. But this is the Midwest Mecca for books and it is long hot and grueling and you fall into bed exhausted and dehydrated at the end of the day. Your books sell out twice and at the end you take home a lot less books than you came with.

You wake on Monday wondering where the weekend went and then you remember, Printers Row. You will be there again next year with another book.

Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt

The New Art of Selling Books

Selling books keeps morphing. Before it was the bookstore and then it became the Internet. Authors were the man sitting behind the desk who magically sold books at signings. This was the golden age. The public wanted the book and the author was there to give it to them. We have seen  lots of photos of the dapper author sitting behind a table with one arm up and a book under his pen. Then the Internet came along and knocked that author right on his duff. You now sold books on the net and hours logged on social media hopefully converted to book sales.

Then came the ebook. Game over  or so everyone thought. Surely the Ipod was a cautionary tale and books would soon be devalued as a quaint artifact of the printing press era. Certainly Kindles would rule the day. But then a strange thing happened...readers rebelled. They quit plugging in their Kindles and what do you know a song is different from a book. Something about an intellectual exercise and readers prefer something tangible versus bits and bytes. The ebooks revolution fizzled down into the black screen of an ereader on a bright sunny day.

So people went back to buying books. But there is a different way to sell now. The author cannot sit behind his table any longer. He must get out there and "hand sell" his book. This was the way books were originally sold before conglomeration and mass culture. The bookseller would introduce the customer to a new book and the customer would buy. What a concept. So we are now in a new era. Authors... get out from behind your tables.


Madam, President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

The WGN Rick Kogan Show On a Snowy Night in Chicago

It takes forever to get there but you make it and you are hungry. You duck into Billy Goats and stare at the old journalists on the walls while you eat your two cheeseburgers chips no fries. There is John Belushi on the wall. Hes gone too. But you are there to go on at ten with one of the few real  journalists still left. Rick Kogans show is unique. He reads the books and wants to talk about them. As you emerge from the underground on the slushy sidewalks of Michigan Avenue you can feel Studs Terkel and Nelson Algren maybe Al Capone. They are all there on this cold wintry night.

But you are there to do the show and so you wait across the street  in a Starbucks and kill time. The Tribune Tower is massive and you can see the WGN studio through the window. You used to live not far from the studio in a high rise but that was a long time ago before kids and the suburbs. But the books always pull you back into the city You know you will be up back here one day with all those dead Chicago authors.

So you walk up and down Michigan Avenue and the snow is coming down harder. Not many people out now. It is Sunday night after all. A ten o'clock slot of live radio for thirty minutes is coveted. Especially with a man who can talk books. You finish a cigarette and look at the clock. Its cold. It's time to go into that Chicago night again and fill the air waves. Last of the Mohicans.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

The Million Dollar Novel

Ever hear of someone who wins in a state lottery? I have.  A couple from Indiana I knew won five million. They bought matching shirts and matching Cadillacs. White. They didn't change much but they were rich. Now there is the million dollar novel. In the industry they call it seven figures. Someone just got a seven figure advance. Someone just won the lotto. In a time when advances are going by the wayside this is nothing short of amazing.

So what is in the million dollar novel? A story of two half sisters in eighteenth century Ghana who don't know about each other. Sweeping. Epic. So if I wrote about two half brothers who didn't know each other in say seventeenth century Ghana I would get a million bucks? Ok. Maybe not. Maybe the writing is so unbelievable that the publisher just couldn't contain them self and the agent who sold it at William Morris knew he had a million dollar novel and it was all just a foregone conclusion

But what about the other writers who are writing about half sisters or half brothers in eighteenth century Ghana. They are out there. Actually it was out there a  long time ago in the Color Purple. Two sisters who lose contact and then find each other. But somewhere someone has written another sweeping saga of two sisters who don't know about each other until they do. And it is well written and well researched. And it will never see the light of day.

You can not quantify the million dollar novel. It is as capricious as the lottery and the couple from Indiana who won the five million. One novel gets rejected out of hand and one gets a million dollars. They could easily be the same novel. Many times they are.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Jack Pine...
 

Why Writers Can't Write Another Book

The amazing thing that has come out of the Harper Lee Saga and it is a saga now is that we are finding out she could not complete a follow up to To Kill A Mockingbird. As an author this is nothing short of amazing. Here she has the publisher telling her just give them anything because this book has headed for the moon and anything you publish will sell like crazy and just give us something. She could not.

And the question then is why? So we delve into the saga. Here is a woman who submitted a manuscript that was rejected by the publisher all those years ago. That manuscript is what is being published now. But the publisher saw no book there. So she told her to rewrite it. More than that she told her to bring in each chapter as she went along. This kind of hand holding does not usually happen these days. This process went on for two years.

TWO YEARS. She rewrote with the editor for two years and at the end out came To Kill A Mockingbird. But then then they said ok write something else. She could  not. So then you have to go into what makes  a bestseller. Timing. A story. The intersection of history and events. Luck. Writers are aware of all these things. That is why only a few hit. But then there is that next book. Why could she not produce something else?

Harper Lee might have been a one book writer. She might have had nothing else to say. We can say now that without that heavy editorial hand there would be no To Kill A Mockingbird. And once writers are cut loose to go on their own then they have to fly. Incredible as it may sound, Harper Lee simply couldn't come up with another story.

Maybe the price of mega success is just that.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
 

The Funny State of Literature

The vapidity of winter probably is a good metaphor for what has happened to literature in the year 2015. It is cold out. Zero. The wind whips against the windows and nothing really moves. As I read Richard Fords Let Me Be Frank With You it is clear what has happened to serious writing in this early part of the twenty first century. It has gone the way the of the LP and the CD. It is simply not relevant to a large segment of the population.

Harper Lee is bringing out a rejected manuscript. Why would an old woman do that who has a secure place in literary history? But of course content is king and so the more the better. Amazing this modality should nibble at the stalwart of classic lit but there you have it. We don't know if she wanted it out there or someone else but it doesn't really matter. What matters is there has been a watershed and there is no going back.

We are writers brought up on filmic imagery. Our scenes are much more relevant to a Parenthood than a reader of E. M. Foresters A Passage to India. It happened to the music industry. The same juggernaut that has pumped out elevator vocalists from American Idol now pumps it out from Dystopian set pieces like Divergent or randy Army manuals like Fifty Shades of Gray.  It isn't so much that any of this is so bad its just that it is not so good.

Then you read Richard Ford and you remember again that literature was never about that. It was about cracking the existential moment. The wonder of being alive in the year 2015. And it is still there but people would have you believe it is not. There is much more money to be made in pulp than art. But like the winter that howls even now. There is that suspicion we are mortal.  And the great consolation is this.

Literature will live on despite our best intentions.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher...Library Guild Selection

 

The Luxury of a Book

I was thinking about going on vacation and I thought I should download a book for the week. But then I realized I didn't want to read on my Kindle. I wanted a book and I thought what a luxury. Funny thought but there it was. Something not tied to a computer. An actual pulp based reading machine that needs no power and is glare proof and I don't have to plug it in. And it doesn't say something to me I don't want to hear.

And I even saw myself browsing for the book. Wow. Picking up books and looking at them and putting them down. Why it was something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. A real honest to goodness interaction with something that does not glow or buzz. And it does seem luxurious. To sit in a chair by a lake with a book. Something about sitting by the lake with my kindle just doesn't do it for me.

And so that is what I will do. I will treat myself to a book. Hell I'm worth it. I can pay a little extra to have the tactile sensation of turning real pages. I don't have to justify the drive to the bookstore and the extra time it will take.

Sometimes....you just have to go for it.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...a Real Book
 

The Pitcher is #1...How Books Are Sold Now

            The Pitcher is currently #1 in these categories.

• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Urban
• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Literature & Fiction > Sports
• #1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban Life

 

The Pitcher is selling more right now than monster Bestsellers published by the largest publishers. Book selling has changed permanently. The fight between Amazon and traditional publishers is really the last Battle of the Bulge in a war that has been going on for some time. The fact is that books used to be sold very differently.

 

The stage was narrow because of the physicality of bookstores. Literally stores could only stock so many books and so the Big Authors or Bestsellers were put out where everyone could see them. These books were purchased first and behind them were some obscure midlist authors that were purchased occasionally. Finally was everyone else who never saw the light of day. There just wasn't room.

 

Now in the digital age authors are on equal footing. Of course the Bestsellers dominate the bookstores and always will but people are shopping with their computers and that is taking the lack of space out of the equation. Independent bookstores are still vital because they do bring forth the undiscovered but for the digital shopper the author can bring him or herself forth and have the same displaying power of even a giant like Grisham or a James Patterson.

 

Now a book must still be good for the digital world. No amount of behind the scenes pushing can make a bad book last.  It may sell but books especially in the digital world are sold by word of mouth and eventually the bad book falls. But if your book is good and you work hard then you at least have an equal chance as the big boys.

 

It is truly a different world out there.

 

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher

 

The Changing Face of Literature

Chapters are getting shorter and shorter. At least mine are. I don't know if literature is changing or I am but the last two books have about sixty chapters with 220 pages. And people tell me this is the way books are going. Our shrinking attention span demands these shorter bursts. Of course flash fiction is the new kid on the block that may or may not be the future.  Hard to say.

But I cant help but wonder if the internet has done its dirty work and is starting to rewire all of us. It would make sense that something we spend hours and hours interacting with and reading would change all of us. At the very least we might rebel against longer discourses that tend to take a while to get to the point. The point in the internet world is usually in the first sentence. Don't bury the lead right.

But fiction is a building process. A river if you will that we have to get used to the water first. And this takes a little time and a little acclimating. Sometimes the water is cold and rough and we have to find our way across. Then we get out payoff. But maybe we don't have the patience for that. Maybe we want to jump in swimming or not at all.

Anyway. I will try for some longer chapters next time. Maybe to just prove I can still swim.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher...on Summer Sale
 

Novels Are Changing

Novels are changing. Mine have changed. Is it the influence of computers...the Internet? Hard to say. But they have changed. Yes there are the big  novels still being published but the market seems to be moving toward the staccato chapters that tell a story in bursts. Short novels for people who are extremely busy. The cousin of flash fiction is surely the novels of sixty scenes crammed into two hundred pages.

That is not to say this is bad. I have moved along as a writer to the point where I want to tell a lot of stories versus just a few big ones. I would say I spend an inordinate amount on the net and maybe there is some spillover. I thought it was just me but I spoke with a writer in LA who said he sees the same thing. Novels are just shorter and the chapters are many.

Literary novels once upon a time were composed  of long scenes. But that was for people who did not have a phone beeping every few minutes or House of Cards or Game of Thrones cued up. But of course we reflect our environment and novelists should be of their time. So I will end this now. My phone just went off.


www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

 

The Words You Should Hear From Your Agent: I Love Your Book!

I love your book! If you don't hear that then move on. I have heard everything from you are going to make a million dollars to  keep writing baby. I have heard agents say they like my work they can sell my work they see my work as highly marketable. But those three words I love your book are really what you are looking for. Why? Because if an agent doesn't love  your book then they will not do what it takes in a very tough market.

It is a litmus. A bad agent is worse than no agent at all. Because you sit around waiting to hear and a lot of times you are waiting for nothing. Many agents have lots of clients and you could be way down on the food chain. That means they are not pushing your book and that means you should move on. But many authors don't and their work suffers.

So you really want to hold out until you get those three words. I love your book. You probably want an exclamation point after that sentence. You really want someone who loves your book almost as much as you do.  And that is someone hard to find but worth the wait.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher

Selling A Novel In Todays Market

I was coming out of a Literary Festival the other day and I saw something that made me think we have passed into a new world. There was a car and on this car were the trade reviews and quotes from a novel with a picture of the cover on the side of the card. These were painted onto the car and not just temporary. I began to read the reviews from Library Journal, Rick Kogan, Booklist, Kirkus written on the back and the hood and the sides of the car.

My assumption was this was some self published author who figured why not put his book on his car. But no. This was a press that did this. And so we have passed into the age of anything goes. Some might see this as evidence of clever marketing or some might see it as desperation against the titanic wave of cultural marketing that is now our society. So lets take it as a marketing ploy.

Do people sit in their car and read reviews from Library Journal on the trunk of the car in front of them? No. Would they buy a book they saw on the side of a car? Would they remember a Publishers Weekly quote streaming by on the hood of a car? Who knows. Probably not. But the point is that this publisher has reached the point of trying to advertise their book on the same footing as a real estate agent selling houses.

So again...desperation? Market savvy? Idiocy? Who knows. I did read the reviews and I did stare at the cover. Too bad I can't remember the name of the book. I'll just have to catch that novel as it passes by at sixty miles an hour next time.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Publishers and Social Media

I am doing a speech on Selling Books Through Social Media tomorrow and it occurs to me very few publishers really understand Social Media. Take Simon and Schuster who paid a guy six figures for his tweets that were supposed to be the ruminations of a guy on an elevator with the Masters of the Universe. You know Wall Street Guys. Problem. Turned out he lives in Texas and made it all up. But S and S will go ahead with the book of his tweet hits.

So that shows they don't get it. Social Media is ephemeral and not quantifiable. It is an effort to throw a pebble down a mountainside and see if you can get an avalanche going. But there is no certainty a pebble or a boulder will get the landslide going. Think of it as a Sonar Ping going out into the ocean and hoping it will hit something and that ping might then come back with information and maybe something that will lead to sales.

But to take the ping as evidence of a pending sale is wrong. The ping is the ping. And even if you have a million pings that does not mean those people pinging back will plunk down money on a book of tweets. The leap is mighty. But as the saying goes there is a sucker born every minute and that guy in Texas has to be laughing his ass off.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....sometimes a dream is all you have

Components of a Bestseller

Bestseller. It has a ring to it. But what are the components to a book that make it take off when another book sputters. First. It has to be good. And maybe that lets out a lot of books. Good is defined by the reader who tells another reader who tells another. Bestsellers are a word of mouth phenomenon when it is all said and done. Even today with the Internet the word is still passed on from trusted source to trusted source.

This is why the people who buy  two hundred five starred reviews get little traction. The reader is missing in that scenario. And yes bait and switch is alive and well. We will still download a book that looks great from the Amazon reviews only to find we have been had. The reviewers were friends or family or they were bought and paid for. This sadly happens.

But the book that is honestly reviewed by someone who really loves it is a double edged sword. Not only will that person review the book they will then tell someone about it. It happens more than you think. I get asked a lot what I am reading and I will rattle my brain and say...well this is a great book that I read a while ago. I even helped sell a copy of Wilson's biography when a man picked it up and stared at it and I spouted out and said, 'That's a good book." We talked and then he bought it.

Yes of course you have to market. Yes you have to do all those thousand and one things to get people to notice your book. But really the real test is is your book good enough to have someone in a Barnes and Noble blare to someone else "hey I read that book! It's good." That is the acid test of any potential bestseller.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

The Long Slog Toward Spring and hopefully a Book

The holidays are over. On this we can agree. We have gained weight and added to our treasures and depleted our bank accounts. We have eaten everything under the sun and drank quite a bit too. We have made merry and now we are snowed in until the first peek of spring sometime in April or May or even June if you live in Chicago. And so we begin the long slog toward something brighter. Maybe summer.

As a writer you hope to have something for the spring. Maybe it is the change of seasons letting you know that time is slipping away. Add a birthday or a death in the family and you really feel times acceleration. The seasonal shift is always a shock. Like winter we think we can just outlast it all and that is a victory too.

But you want to have something to show for all this hibernatory living. Lets face it there is not much to do between now and the first warm days of spring except to work. Maybe that is why the work ethic in the Midwest is so fierce. The cold makes you just hunker down and grind through it. Hard to do that if it is seventy five and sunny outside your window. So time to grow your hair long and finish off that first draft or that final rewrite so you will have something to emerge from your cave with and say look; these brutally cold months were not in vain...

I wrote a book!
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Why People Still Buy Books

I noticed that my sale of print books on The Pitcher keeps pushing past the Kindle copies. They usually sort of play it out like a major leaguer versus a minor league team with the kindle downloads leading the way. But lately the books have been fighting back and staying there. So in our ebook digital I don't know what to do with all these pulpy books and CDS age why are people still buying books? I have come up with a few ideas not based on any science at all.

One. We are creatures of habit above all else. We see this with people who still have land lines and don't carry smart phones. I talked to a man who is a general contractor who never got a cell phone. Business is booming. How does he do it. He says people just get hold of him. And of course there are people who run around with legal tablets instead of IPADS. This is their preferred method. So it must be with books. There are people who like the feel of a book and do not like burning their eyes on screens.

Second would be physicality. Lets face it with a download you do not have a thing. You have some code that produces words on a screen. That's it. You have no evidence you just paid nine bucks for a book. And when you finish reading your code the book disappears versus that book that sits on your shelf or all time and calls out to you every time you pass it. You own something with a book.

Finally people like the experience of reading a printed page. There is a difference. Your eyes engage with the word differently. You have a tactile sensation. I have been reading WILSON the monster biography and I could never read that  in a kindle. Why? Because Woodrow Wilson was a man of the early twentieth century and I just couldn't see him dancing in the light on a screen as compared to me getting coffee and jelly all over him and even dropping him in the tub once.

Or maybe it is because we are not bits and bytes but flesh. We are real. So it is with books.

www.williamhazegrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have