Check out this fascinating look at the evolution of publishing by O’Reilly’s VP of digital initiatives. Are ebooks the new quad type?

And this Week in Review in the NY Times on the history of the relationship between reading and socializing. Didn’t they read Dickens out loud around the fire? And is that the same thing as joining a chat group to hash over the subtleties of megapopular fiction?

Your little dose of reality, folks, from the people who know.

You’re not going to get rich as a writer. You’re not even going to get the $150,000 advance this heartbroken author got and spent on living expenses so many years ago.

You’re probably not going to make much of anything.

Write because you love it. Because you love this work.

Okay, I have to comment on this: Publisher’s Marketplace says today that, “Disney Book Group publisher Jonathan Yaged is leaving the company for the plum job of chief operating officer of HouseParty.com, a company that organizes modern-day Tupperware parties, PW reports.”

It’s more lucrative now to be the boss of Tupperware parties than a major publishing group?

To live outside the law you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”

Okay, guys, this week we’re going to focus on independent publishing. Because independent publishing has problems.

The biggest one is that people don’t take it seriously. And I don’t mean the people who don’t do it. I mean the people who do.

Hey, people—you people, the ones who jump into self-publishing your first draft first novels the same year you decide to be become a writer because, you know, everyone’s getting rich on it these days, so you might as well, too—GET A GRIP.

I know we all adore our own fiction. It’s like Phantom of the Opera around my house, all these stories and half-novels and full novels and bizarre fictional forays only a mother could love. You bet. I’ve been doing this for decades. I could bathe in my stuff. I could spread it all over the floor and roll around in it, and chances are I’d actually disappear. I’ve got that much unpublishable shlock around. And you know what? I heart that crap!

However, I’ve also been around long enough to know something really, really, really important about it. It is Number 1, Class A, Best-of-the-Breed Humiliation Inducer.

Publication isn’t necessarily about getting admiration and flattery, my friends. Publication is about eyeballs. Strangers’ eyeballs. Lots and lots of strangers’ eyeballs. Lots and lots and lots and lots of indifferent or even hostile strangers’ eyeballs.

Not the eyeballs of love.

The world is not populated by your mother. Or your father. Or your spouse, best friends, or kids. Not all of us out here have your personal best interests in mind.

I saw Jamie Lee Curtis on the Tonight Show once (was it the Tonight Show? who knows? who cares?) complaining that the last time she’d been on her host had not been sufficiently adoring of her new children’s book.

“My kids were really mad at you!” she said in all sincere affrontery.

Oooh. You really don’t want Jamie Lee Curtis’ kids mad at you for not being sufficiently adoring of her new children’s book. Because they are certainly the ideal objective audience for such a thing. Is it a real blockbuster, a guaranteed Caldecott winner, the kind of book no half-way intelligent child could possibly put down? Well, those guys would know.

WAKE UP!

We’re standing on the threshold to a whole brilliant, revolutionary, unexplored panorama of the publishing future right now. Anyone can publish. And this is an opportunity that has rarely ever occurred in the history of literacy before. We are so damn lucky to be alive and writing right now!

But the more the reckless amateurs keep peeing in the pool, the harder it makes it for talented, hard-working, long-term dedicated writers to bring serious quality and large-scale respect to the world of independent publishing. If you want to become one of those talented, hard-working, long-term dedicated writers. . .yeah. You have to spend some time developing your talent, putting in long hard-working hours, dedicating yourself to the craft of writing over the long term.

Becoming a writer isn’t something you just go out and get, like a new pair of shoes.

I read a fascinating piece this morning by Henry Baum on the Self-Publishing Review about why self-publishing isn’t taken seriously. He’s talking about Lulu’s marketing of Poetry.com, which they just acquired. (I’m sorry—”Need Help Rhyming”? Are you kidding me?) I’m really fascinated by his comparison of independent publishing to the punk rock movement of the late 1970s. Does indie publishing have the same potential for greatness as indie rock and filmmaking? I think so.

I also read the piece by MCM (why the pseudonym?) this post links to. I love the idea that independent publishing can become—not a stepping-stone to traditional publishing—but a viable literary form in its own right. Are we writing in the best of times, or what?

Is there more money in traditional publishing? Yes, there certainly is. Boy, howdy. Are there more eyeballs? Absolutely. Is it a better reflection of the very best literary production of our times?

Is it, really?

What do you guys think?

(And stay tuned for my interview this week with Michelle Davidson Argyle and Davin Malasarn of the Literary Lab, who just brought out Genre Wars, along with Scott G. F. Bailey, and will be describing their experience of working with Lulu.)

“How dare they ignore the fact that I’m annoyed!” I like his attitude! Read Paul Hartsock’s analysis of the e-book shenanigans.

This piece on author’s rights by Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware has been around awhile, but a client forwarded it to me yesterday, and it’s well worth your time.

Author Jacqueline Lichtenberg has written a long and eye-opening post contradicting the standard publishing wisdom, “You determine your own success or failure by just how compelling your story is.” Lichtenberg is looking at TV shows as fiction, as well as books, for which I think she builds a good case. Pay attention to what she’s saying, folks! This is the keystone.

Her post, in turn, refers to an article by Andrew R. Malkin describing his career in publishing promotions.

And Malkin refers to Seth Godin. I mean, these days who doesn’t?

Dani Shapiro has written this for the LA Times on how the publishing industry has completely changed in the last twenty-five years, so that the dream of writing you probably grew up on is no longer the dream of publishing you think it is. I can’t tell you how important it is for you to understand this. I just heard yesterday from an award-winning fiction author with numerous published novels whose agent won’t even shop her latest novel around. This is not at all unusual. I know another award-winning fiction author with numerous published novels whose agent stopped shopping her novels several years ago. Now more than ever the only real point to writing is for the joy of it.

But, fortunately, the Bloggess found this, and I think all writers should watch it every single day before they start in.

MacMillan (including Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, St. Martin’s Press, and Henry Holt) is going head-to-head with Amazon over pricing, with the result that Apple’s sudden appearance with a more flexible price structure has tipped the scale. Although the “news” is that Amazon has pulled MacMillan books from its store, I’m guessing the actual scenario was more like MacMillan saying, “If you won’t play ball, Apple will,” and Amazon saying, “Don’t let the screen door hit you on your way out.” Bluff and counter-bluff, except MacMillan (so long as they’ve got Apple) can live without Amazon, and Amazon can’t live without MacMillan.

I feel for you, Jeff, but you lost this whole stand-off the minute Steve refused to back you up on it. And he’s your competition—he doesn’t have any reason to back you up. Even if you pretend it was always intended as just a “gesture,” you shouldn’t have tried to play it tough. You’re acting like a mob goon at a diplomat’s poker game. And the other players are all eyes wide-open.

On the other hand, Wired magazine has written an incredibly in-depth analysis of how Apple altered the landscape with the iPhone, which industry pundits are saying is what they’re doing now with the iPad—it’s just that they’re not marketing to the average user what’s truly important about it. Which is a polite way of saying, “They think you’re too dumb to understand.”

(What they really mean is these extremely important negotiations are going on behind closed doors, and Jobs is not about to get the buying public involved in them. It’s hard to bluff your opponent when the cards are jumping out of your hand shrieking, “This is what I’M going to do!” It doesn’t matter if your opponent can see more of your master-plan than your cards can. You’re risking a lot on your opponent agreeing with you that your cards don’t know the true score, particularly when it’s not in their best interests to do so, particularly when your cards might very well find out more than you expect and take offense at the insult to their intelligence. Again. I really don’t think Apple should be treating potential customers like they’re stupid enough to pony up $800 for a desktop—but then again, Jobs is a pretty darn successful marketer, and maybe what he knows that I don’t is that the bulk of them are.)

Hey, remember our conversation about workspaces? Well, get this. What do you suppose happens to it in an earthquake? Does it float in a tsunami? Would it become a snowball in an avalanche? Could you get one disguised as a giant peach?

And this is perhaps the most amazing news of all: did you know the Internet is made of cats? Wow, does that explain why mine are so tired they have to sleep all the time.

UPDATE: I have long suspected that everyone out there reads my blog before they come up with their own opinions, but now I know for sure:

Gizmodo.

John Scalzi (via my sys admin via Tim O’Reilly on Twitter).

John Scalzi again, with hot sauce.

Charlie Stross.

And someone’s recommended the Book Depository to replace Amazon, which we will add to our list of bookstores, except virtual.

Pee-Wee Herman gets an iPad!

Oh, look! Something shiny!

That’s my first reaction to the official Apple description of the iPad.

My sys admin sent me links to about six in-depth computer industry articles on the much-touted Apple e-reader yesterday, which—since I am just a tiny bit OCD—I read all of. By the time I was done, you bet I’d convinced myself it was the only e-reader out there. I couldn’t remember anything about the others, even their names.

Marketing: Win!

But then I went back to the official Apple page and re-read it with a more jaundiced eye. And you know what I discovered? No matter what the thing actually does, what they have chosen to peddle in their marketing spiel is less than. . .what word am I searching for?. . .intelligent.

The VERY FIRST feature they laud is that it’s LIMITED. Huh? Yes. It is apparently now a virtue to only see one thing at a time. Which is odd, because that’s what I do anyway. But this is a big deal to Apple—they claim this is how web pages “were meant” to be seen. Fascinating. I didn’t know they invented the web page. Much less that all other similar gadgets force you to look at more than one even when you don’t want to. I’ve learned something from them already!

The SECOND thing they announce is that I can now “see and touch” my emails “in ways you never could before.” Good god. So that’s completely scared me off that feature.

The THIRD feature is that this thing can show me my photos the same way my digital camera can. Okay. Well, my laptop can, too, except for this exciting new business about displaying photos “in a stack.” Oh, wait. . .I get it. What they mean is they’ve fixed it so little bits of the bottom photos stick out around the top photo, giving it a kind of real-world look. Which, again, is what I get from my real photos in, well, the real world. Except better. Also, I’m OCD, so I keep my photo stacks tidy without edges sticking out. So they all look like the top photo, except really thick. If you’re listening, Apple.

Also, I love the photo they chose for marketing the large photo display: adolescent, bright blonde, blue eyes, very white teeth, pink shirt to show it’s a female, because of course everyone would rather look at a female. Particularly a female adolescent. I wonder if they could have tried any harder to represent the Aryan Uber-Race.

Is this supposed to appeal to the 30% Asian population of Silicon Valley? the 30% Hispanic? The 15% “other”? They’re obviously not even wasting their time with blacks, much less the middle-aged, who make up the vast majority of their highest-educated, most-experienced, professional target market. Oh—well, of course. I’m being myopic. This is supposed to appeal to a much greater target market than just Silicon Valley. Like the entire world, which. . .uh. . .includes China, with its single largest ethnic majority on the planet. . .oh, yes. And which includes that 25% black.

This is also looking stranger and stranger, considering that by now I’m getting it their main marketing thrust is toward BIG. And EASY TO READ. Guess who needs stuff to be EASY TO READ? That’s right. Retirement-age Boomers. Who are a vast target market. Represented not at all by that photo.

So, the FOURTH & FIFTH features are all about video. Again, what’s the selling point? LIMITATION. No pesky buttons! You see what they tell you to see. And, according to them, you love it! “You feel totally immersed.” Except I don’t, because this object is about as big as a lunch plate, and I am much bigger than a lunch plate. For anything even close to total immersion, I still have to go to a theater. Welcome to the Monkey-House, Mr. Jobs.

Now, the next four features are total gimmes: you can use Apple stuff! Oh, boy! iPod, iTunes, iBooks, the App Store. . .I am SO going to buy this gadget because it “allows” me to buy exclusively from the people who sold it to me! I also buy magazines just because they come with those cool subscription inserts.

They also offer maps. Not exactly a GPS, but GPS gets a bad rap in a lot of quarters, what with its inability to distinguish a good neighborhood from a bad one. Is this GoogleEarth they’re using here? I have no idea. It says nothing about where Apple gets their satellite photos, just that by looking at them I can “see more of the world.”

Okay. . .that was tea spurting out my nose. Hang on a second—

Okay, I’m back. Now there are three more features offering 1) a calendar, 2) contacts (sounding dangerously close to offering me friends there, guys), and 3) a device-wide search. All of which I have on my laptop. Oh, yeah. And which I also have on paper, especially that thing hanging on my kitchen hutch, which my son and I always make a big deal about going to our local indie bookstore and picking out every year. (He got to choose cats this year, a win with all of us. I am currently in disgrace because last year I chose out-houses.)

Actually, I also keep my contacts list in my purse. It’s really tiny, covered in strikingly-dated stylized leaves from the 1990s, and full of erasures. I call it my address book. And it is a heck of a huge improvement over the gazillions of scraps of paper on which I used to carry phone numbers and addresses in my pockets when I was a teenager, which my mother cured me of by throwing them all away one time when she did the laundry.

I realize I’m skipping one of these types of features. I’m saving that one for last.

ALSO—and I know you’re waiting for this feature on the edge of your seats—along with all these utterly amazing other features, I could even get A HOME SCREEN. That’s right, people. It “features” a desktop. For those of you out there languishing and pining for one of your very own. Gazing over the shoulders of strangers in public. Weeping into your pillow at night. Apple has heard your cries.

Now, we’re all writers here, right? A lot of us make a living or at least part of a living writing ad copy. We all know how valuable every single word is, what a high premium each little area on the page goes for, the huge selling potential of white space. But read this copy here. It’s all about one thing. Repeatedly. And not even a very important thing.

These feature introductions consist almost entirely of pointing out that this is a touch pad. “Touch the screen!” it says. Over and over again. Nothing about the actual touching is revolutionary—it’s all the same stuff I do with my laptop mouse. Once for this, twice for that.

Only Apple will let me touch THE SCREEN.

But I don’t want anyone touching my screen. I don’t even own screen-cleaner. Spit and the corner of my shirt, that does it in an emergency, the same Mommy Solution I use on everything else. What my life really needs is fewer such opportunities. If you could work on that one, Steve, I would be truly grateful.

And the final feature? The real kicker? The one that’s sold me on this $500-$830 ($830! During a Depression!) gadget hook, line, & sinker, no questions asked?

It comes with a notepad!

You read that right. A real, live, (well, not-live) imitation, yellow lined-legal pad just almost exactly like the stack I get for $29.99 at the local stationery store every six months and keep under my desk. Except this one’s shorter, necessitating twice as many page shuffles. And it takes it upon itself to circle things without my permission. And I can’t fold it in half and stick it in the back of my belt or my purse or a shopping bag when I go someplace where all I intend to do is write. And I can’t use just any old pen or pencil I find lying around on it, feeling—along with A.A. Milne—that smooth, gentle, gliding motion under my fingers, triggering the creative part of my brain, starting things trickling out of the dark recesses of my subconscious down my nerves, into my fingers, out into the light of day, where I can thrill to them, mull over them, share them, alter them, wallow in them. . .write them, write them, write them, write them down. . .

Huh. Maybe when they say the price is “unbelievable” they’re really just having a nice chuckle with us all. Ha, ha, Steve! I get it! What a great little kidder you are.

(And for those of you who still haven’t had enough of the subject, check out Scott Adams’ opinion. UPDATE 3/3/11: This link has been removed because it turns out Scott Adams is a jerk.)

J.D. Salinger has died at the age of 91.

I’ve always admired Salinger for his unshakable dedication to craft rather than publication. I love the line quoted in this article: “There’s. . .peace in not publishing.” Read that full quote. Read it and understand it. Read it and apply it to your allegiance to your own life. Read it and make your peace.

Salinger was a craftsperson. He created living, breathing, three-dimensional characters moving and speaking in a real world not because he thought those were the characters that would sell, but because that’s what made him happy. He wrote because he loved to write. And he certainly lived to regret the publicity that came with accidentally striking a nerve with his readership.

I have a theory about Salinger’s work and his desperate determination to guard his privacy. I think Salinger loved a man once, a brother-type (he had no brothers), someone he looked up to who taught him a little about philosophy and life and meaning. Someone who died young.

I think he wrote his books as an expression of his love for that man. And I think he guarded his privacy to prevent the media from discovering who it was and defacing that man’s memory.

Salinger gave every indication that he continued to write long after he stopped publishing and even granted his heirs permission to publish what he was writing—earn whatever they wanted from it—so long as they waited until he was gone.

We can be pretty certain the next few years will not only see a goldmine of Salinger stories hitting the market, but I believe we’ll also learn who the model for Seymour Glass really was, how Salinger knew him, and where he died.

My opinion? I have no doubt this all happened in France, a very long time ago.