eBooks and Printed Books: the current state of these two arts

Mike Shatzkin posted another of useful blog posts today, here

He wrote, among other things, that printed books are not going the way of the Dodo as have CDs or videos which are now usually found online. This is because printed and eBooks have different uses for different people and because there are so many types of books.  For example,  when I cook I set my iPad up on a stand (ironically a stand manufactured to hold a printed book for a typist) and I thereby dispense with pages flipping closed. I also read this way for the same reason as I eat breakfast or lunch - it is an ideal way to read a newspaper or a novel without having to deal with keeping the book open at the right spot.  Also when I find myself standing in a long line, or waiting for some reason or other for someone else to act before my turn comes, I pull out my iPhone and open a book or newspaper and read. I cannot carry a book around easily, even the wrongly name pocket books.  Very few printed books actually fit into any pocket I have and the few that do (mostly those produced by Shambhala - though I don't know if the make those little tiny ones anymore)

But, on the rare occasion when I have leisure, there is not much better than sitting in a big comfie wing chair and reading a printed book.

What he said that made the most sense to me was that heavy readers - and I suspect all readers - will for the foreseeable future, and do now, read both eBooks and printed books. Some types of books work well only as printed books, others work best as eBooks, most can be presented in both formats.

An Apple a Day update

I have been trawling through the recently liberated images at Wellcome  for the past few days. I am  nearly finished and have found a few very promising pictures to spice up An Apple a Day a bit.  Another day or so and I will be finished, then start to read through the manuscript again looking for good spots to post these, and any other places where I see image gaps.  Then, I will upload the  new version to kindle and to Lulu and begin a bit of a marketing campaign.  After?  I have begun a second poetry collection for the iBookstore which is waiting.

In the meantime here is an image from the Wellcome Trust:

Since I posted this, An Apple a Day, second edition has been uploaded to the Apple iBookstore. The other eBook retailers do not handle images well, so I am still working on the Amazon version - or rather a friend who knows a bit about CSS, etc. is trying to fix the photos for me. (September 11, 2014)

Writing Happiness

How does one write 'happiness'?  I don't mean those singular moments when something unexpectedly good happens and elation occurs.  I don't mean those breaks in the general, default unhappiness of life.  I mean, how does one write a character whose default position is of being happy?  My default position is of a general, underlying sadness.  Life is something one gets through with perseverance and determination and well, an FU attitude.  I will persevere in spite of the normal situation of struggle, two steps forward, three back.  But I now know well some people whose normal situation is happiness.  Not that they are grinning fools, but that normally they sing, or look at the sun and the trees and treasure loved ones.  Once in a while, they experience bad times, bad moments, tragedy even, but this does not shake their general perception of life as being good.

I have no answers here as my life's situation does not allow for a normal position of happiness.  I would have to be a madman to be happy.  But I am a writer and to put it more particularly, a writer who is firstly a poet.  I write emotion.  So, how do I write happiness?

Solitary confinement

I am sentenced to solitary confinement in my soul. I speak and my words echo unheard and unknown. I have read through the blogs of authors mighty and rich. I see how they write and then write some more. What is this magical place where they live?  This charmed land of time free to spin their thoughts and let them live? My country is one where others rule, where duties whip me most cruelly till my words bleed out of me in great gory pools.  I stand and look blank and empty as my life lies about me mocking as I try to move.

Just some morning thoughts of dull regularity, another day as I put on my skin.

The Library and the Writer

Last month I received my annual PLR cheque for books I have in public libraries and where borrowing activity has been detected. I don't get a lot of money for this as yet, but it is always welcomed as a surprise each February.  Thinking about this while making breakfast today I linked it in my mind to this Jeremy Greenfield piece on the debate over who is an author or writer, Why Self-Published Authors Should Call Themselves Anything They Want.   Some of the books in libraries, in fact all but one, were commissioned by local historical groups.

The legacy publishing and writing industry want to arrogate to themselves the rather high sounding title 'author'.  To them, only a writer who has been published by a legacy house has the right to be called an author. Everyone else is a mere writer. I thought that nonsense at the time as I quite happily call myself a writer because that's what I do.  Some of what I write is published for profit, some is not.  To call myself an author I somehow feel I would have to have one of those 1950s head shots for a back cover, and wear a tweed or corduroy jacket with tie and smoke a pipe, gazing off to stage left or right with a look of deep wisdom on my face.  The reality of course is me in my pyjamas [rarely without as I get rather cold now that I am older], hair shooting off at crazy angles and mug of coffee to hand.

But, to get back to the PLR payment.  Does the fact that I get a cheque each year from the Canadian government for books borrowed from libraries allow me into the guarded guild of authors?  Does that trump publication by a legacy publisher? I do have one book published that way, but the Canadian Authors' Association used to demand two such, though now I believe one legacy publication is enough. I noticed they have a section on self-publishing but do not seem to understand it well.  Well, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other as I will write and publish any way I can regardless of what some snot of an author might think.  And I cannot see why I would spend good money joining an elite club.  I like wearing my pjs too much.  Or nothing at all.  Maybe one day I will be included here in Bare it for Books

Writer's Love

How do you write love?  Do you need to have a firm 'definition'?  By definition, I mean a concept bound within clearly defined lines.

Love is a relationship.

If I must have a definition, this seems as good a place to start as any.  This definition is loose, the lines are in pencil and an unsharpened, soft lead pencil at that.

There are many kinds of relationships which allow considerable scope for writers to write love.  Love, by this very pencilled in definition can mean anything from pornography to God is love. [My apologies for mentioning anything so crass as faith - but see my History of Religion blog].

A 'Giver' and a 'Taker.'  This can be love.  One submits and one takes that submission.  Most often used in pornography I would say, but toying with it can make erotica play with the line between porn and erotica and be quite effective in taking a reader [not to mention the writer!] into the alternate reality of anything written [both fiction and non-fiction present alternate realities].  It can also figure in deep character studies.

Pure Joy.  This is the rarest I would say and in today's cynical and jaded world, the most difficult to make palatable to readers. Here two souls, two hearts, two bodies take joy in each other, in a dance that mimics ideas of eternal bliss.

Impure Joy. Two real people with real character flaws and real strengths bonding firstly as friends - friends being those who stay together while recognizing differences and irritations - and then as lovers, both in spirit and sexually.  The most fun and satisfying to write, I would say, as it allows for sparks to fly as well as happiness to settle in to both writer and reader.

There are probably others, well certainly there are many, but off I go to my day job!

Back at it

Well, my funk didn't last - whether it was long or too long is impossible to say.  Yesterday I began reading Catullus again.  In a long ago blog post in a blog I deleted during a previous Grand Funk, I noted that Catullus and Cohen were the two influences on my own work.  I listen now to Leonard Cohen's dark words in song, but Catullus!  I have not read Catullus since I found an unexpurgated copy in my High School library back in the late 1960s. I have always imagined (with no evidence whatsoever) that it was placed there by my Latin teacher, Mr. Whealen (called oh so wittily by my friends and I, Gaius). School officials in those repressed days probably thought it boring old Latin.

Here is one example:

I’ll fuck you and bugger you,

Aurelius the pathic, and sodomite Furius,

who thought you knew me from my verses,

since they’re erotic, not modest enough.

It suits the poet himself to be dutifully chaste,

his verses not necessarily so at all:

which, in short then, have wit and good taste

even if they’re erotic, not modest enough,

and as for that can incite to lust,

I don’t speak to boys, but to hairy ones

who can’t move their stiff loins.

You, who read all these thousand kisses,

you think I’m less of a man?

I’ll fuck you, and I’ll bugger you.