The Good Word

"I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes over 700 of which I wrote myself—"

- Henry David Thoreau

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The above quotation, taken from Thoreau’s personal journal, refers to the author’s effort to self-fund a publication of his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. After the work failed to sell, the published presented Thoreau with the 700 surplus copies.

This entry shows Thoreau’s humorous detachment despite the fact that in the mid-nineteen century self-publishing required an extraordinary investment with similarly grave risks attached to it.

Today, however, that is not the case.

In, fact a relatively new website called CreateSpace is making sure that anyone can self-publish at little to no risk by ensuring that books are printed only as they are ordered.

The problem? It seems that plenty of basement-dwelling entrepreneurs are using this service to re-publish works in the public domain and then to sell them on Barnes & Noble and Amazon while undercutting the paperbacks of their incorporated competitors.

This means that my copy of The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton, which I ordered on Amazon and paid around $15 for has approximately two spelling errors on every page and quite possibly might not even have the same general content as the original text.

Take a look. Would you discern this to be a fraud? Admittedly the fact that they call him Gilbert is a hint, but I wasn’t on my guard at the time.

How about a “for instance” to put this all in perspective?

Searching for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court on Amazon, here is a rundown of the publishers of the first page of results:

1. digireads.com, an independent (i.e. basement dweller) internet publisher
2. CreateSpace
3. FQ Books (non-existent publishing company)
4. Oxford University Press
5. Paramount’s film starring Bing Crosby
6. Kindle Edition
7. FQ Books (Part 2)
8. Library of American’s Twain collection
9. CliffsNotes
10. Saddleback (Children’s Edition)
11. Another movie
12. Piccadilly Books (A seemingly real company that is nearly a year old)
13. FQ Books
14. FQ Books
15. University of California Press
16. FQ Books

The Rundown:

Of the results that were actually physical, unabridged books, right around 70% of the first page of results are from non-existent publishers.

I found this percentage to ring true when I surveyed the books purchased online by my students for summer reading.

And who is making this possible? Take a look at the lower right-hand corner of CreateSpace’s homepage:

That would be our beloved Amazon.com ensuring that between Kindle and CreateSpace every legitimate publisher will be out of business within a decade.

But why am I all fired up about this?

1. It hurts legitimate publishers, which means that even if you fight it by patronizing actual bookstores, the majority of people who don’t take this precaution will still exert enough buying power to take down publishing companies.
2. You have no recourse when you end up buying a crappy edition (Amazon gives you no phone number, no physical or e-mail address by which you can contact the basement dweller).
3. Amazon is encouraging it, probably because they can take a higher percentage of the profit from every book sale by double-dipping as publisher and marketer.
4. Like music piracy, there is no real way to prevent millions of individuals from taking part in it.
5. Unlike music piracy, you may or may not get a legitimate copy.
6. Unlike music piracy, it isn’t actually illegal.

So, what do we do? Have you been taken in by this scam?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this two-part post, you might want to catch up…

While CreateSpace is certainly an abomination and one of the many downsides to the existence of an omnipresent source of unlimited fact and fiction (read: the internet), I think that giving a general dispensation of the right to publish has its merits as well.

Here is a random smattering of my favorite reasons that the internet exists:

Internet Comics – No need to mass appeal of Cathy (nearly 35 years of leftover outdated/obvious stereotypes) or Garfield. Niche humor rules on the web.

1. xkcd - “A webcomic of sarcasm, romance, math, and language”

2. Married to the Sea – Husband/wife team of Drew and Natalie, producing some of the funniest material around.

3. Savage Chickens – Doug Savage’s daily sticky-note comics. Check out the main/recurring characters here.

Information – Despite recent questions regarding how to (or whether to) correctly cite these sources of “common knowledge”, sites like Wikipedia are a huge boon to those of us who wish to know a little about a lot.

1. Wikipedia – Any information you could ever want about a subject you know nothing about (if you are already mildly educated, a book is still going to be your best bet). The requirements for editing are, at least ideally, rigorous and at least it’s better than watching Gilligan’s Island.

2. YouTube – A vacuum of space where leisure hours go to die, practical when used in moderation. Here is the video version from the speech above.

3. Bartleby – A massive database of public domain works, competently edited and free of charge.

Ease of Access – Direct access to digital media is one of the best things about the past few years in the history of the internet. Although these businesses are not all instances of self-publishing (and they are generally preceded in their innovation by the pirates they oppose), they are at least ensuring that Wal-Mart doesn’t get their cut of ever song and video game sold.

1. Steam – Buy and download from an increasingly extensive library of video games. Frequent deals give you bestsellers and classics for $10 to $20.

2. The iTunes Store – Not only can you buy songs and videos, but the App Store allows to directly purchase products made by Average Joes who use online marketing as one of the few remaining open-avenues to achieving the American dream of financial independence.

3. Hulu – Free shows and movies. A limited selection, but the best alternative for someone who doesn’t wish to be a slave to Comcast and can’t wait for Glee on DVD…

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore he says,
"Awake, O sleeper,
   and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."

- Ephesians 5:13-14

________________________________

To begin (again), I’m a natural lake-dweller, but I’m not beginning my third year of living and teaching in Colorado.

Being an English teacher is, I think, an especially difficult job – I won’t say vocation, because that has yet to be determined.

There are times when I feel that my instruction is inadequate or, to a degree, even deceitful. To get past the hows and on to the whys seems to be the province of this subject alone, and, to impart of a knowledge of the big truths, you must always be coming at them by half-truths – I must shout down the grotesque sensuality of the people of Huxley’s Brave New World one day and critique Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter the next.  

(NB: It is a shame that English class must take the place of Philosophy, Theology, Elementary Ethics, and Remedial History.)

When I teach grammar, spelling, vocabulary, or the occasional Latin class, I see that there is a comfort about teaching certainties. Either a noun is the direct object or it isn’t; either that is the way the word is spelled or it is not – the knowledge imparted has the inflexibility of brick.

The problem comes when you ask the student to take the raw materials of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and etymology and undertake to build something new with them.

Perhaps it is harder yet to ask them to assess the relative merit of an existing structure.

You would think then, to trample the metaphor, that the minimalist structure of Thoreau’s four-walled cabin on Walden Pond might be a good place to begin.

I found myself though, once again, caught between two truths (which, as always, were really legion). I wanted to show the virtue of Thoreau’s experiment while questioning his motives and conclusions to encourage critical thinking.

I was impressed to find my students able to find the logical flaw in his argument for the divinity of solitude (his false premise that God himself is lonely). They were similarly able to find merit in his argument for vegetarianism (the natural repugnance to the shedding of blood). They were even able to intelligently discuss the way in which transcendentalism departs from a traditional understanding of the relationship between body and soul.

However, there was one significant impediment to my feeling satisfied with the unit, and that was my own seeming hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy of my attempt to teach them about a true love and relentless pursuit of wisdom while I was spending fourteen hours every day in front of a computer screen, grading and preparing for the next day’s lessons.

The hypocrisy too of my answering their objection to Thoreau’s seeming idleness by reminding them that “Mary chose the better part”.

I felt like a white-washed academic tomb as I found myself wearing a tie from 5:30am until 8:30 and sometimes nearly weeping for nostalgia on my planning periods while reviewing passages like Thoreau’s rowboat-games with the loon.  (NB: None of my students knew what this fantastic creature was without Googling it and discovering one of the most prodigious living waterfowl.)

So, was this feeling more nostalgia or more moral conviction?

As of yet I’m not sure, but I find, like Thoreau, that there is something much more cold and inhuman about the naked peaks and the red-dust valleys than the thrilling knee-deep snow of a New England winter.

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

- Henry David Thoreau

Ever wonder why it seems like you are fighting a losing battle? Check it out (fast forward past the first 45 seconds).

Not that I agree with the anti-Muslim tone, but if you wonder why Christianity and Western Culture are dying...

Funny to see that the culture that wins is the one that chooses to have babies. Luckily China is marginally worse off than we are as far as reproduction goes.

Here are the abortion stats: Nationmaster

Russia is #1 and the U.S. narrowly misses the top 5. Keep in mind that those stats are not just "per 1,000", but "per 1000 per year".

So, if Russia has a 20/1000 rate, that means that of the 500 of those people who are women and the 250 of them that are of child-bearing age 20 had abortions this year. But, what is that like in comparison to Russia's birth per year? Well, the chart below will show you that since data has been available (1957) there has not been a single year in which reported abortions have not exceeded reported live births. In 1967 nearly 73% of all babies in Russia were aborted.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-russia.html

Also, keep in mind that those are just the reported abortions, often illegal abortions surpass legal and these stats certainly don't count "Plan B" type abortificant pills. Finally, while Russia is clocking in at 2-5 million abortions per year, China and India, though lower in rank as far as per capita goes, are cranking out 13 million and 11 million dead babies per year, respectively.

I've heard of popes issuing "bulls," "edicts," and "encyclicals," but what about "I told you sos"?

Orthodoxically yours,

-Z

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