Parting is No Sorrow At All

Over the course of the last couple of months, I've decided that publishing and I are going our separate ways.

There's no excuse at all for the chaos the industry is experiencing.

Once upon a time, maybe ten years ago, the Old Guard began moving out. The gentlemen and ladies of the age of A Gentleman's Pastime retired to their summer homes. In the meantime, the up and comers were people who could afford to live in New York City on $20,000 a year because they had their trust funds to make up the difference.

The industry was repeatedly stabbing itself in the gut and wondered at the same time where all the blood was coming from.

I began seeing the problem with publishing over thirty years ago, when I worked for a small magazine.

But ten years ago, there wasn't just one problem. There were many, many, many problems. And now when S&S cry and mourn loudly about a lousy year, I have no sympathy.

A friend of mine bought a Rocket reader and I thought, this is a new beginning and I don't think that many people are paying attention.

I went to industry conferences and soaked up every word. What the leaders in publishing didn't realize was that they were running on the same track and due to have a head-on collision with technology. The few that came to their senses made feeble attempts at correcting them.

One thing that I heard and shuddered at was "We've made books too precious. People don't want to throw them away." Now the industry is making certain books entirely too precious. The Kindle is a wonderful thing to behold, but could I loan a friend of mine a book that she just has to read? I somehow doubt it.

Five years ago, I heard one of the head honchos at SanDisk talk about putting a year's worth of school books on one thumb drive. It only made sense. But nothing was done with it.

Publishing has ignored technology at its peril. Technology will kill the publishing industry as it exists today. This was something I said at Unnamed Co. over and over again. I was smiled at politely and told to run away now, dear.

Oh, and the Big Idea that won me my "prize" at Unnamed Co.? Barnes and Noble has it and anyone with a smart phone can download the app. Unnamed Co. is still off wandering in the woods.

Publishing is going to be forced to change. The people coming to the fore now grew up with technology and expect nothing less in their workaday lives and in the products they offer.

I realize that there's a great deal about publishing that I was never savvy about.

For the first few months after I was laid off from Unnamed Co., I faithfully followed the comings and goings, I read PW Daily, I checked it out at the library.

Changing publishing is like trying to stop a train with one hand. You'll just be - briefly - an ugly blot on the landscape but you won't slow the train for one second.

I give. Not that anyone would notice.

Moot! Moot! Damn It! Moot!

When I worked in Florida as a programmer (PL/1, an esoteric language dedicated to an IBM platform, then "c", why yes, I am smart, thank you), one of my several bosses was proof that you didn't have to be too finely educated to get along in the world.

His butchery of English pained me and I was known at the time to correct him in a little whisper because the agony of those words going out forever into the universe without the proper edit was too much to take.

I got to the point where he didn't bother me. In fact, I began to scorn him because he got his finger caught in my car door and when he saw the blood, he nearly fainted. It wasn't like he lost the tip of it or anything. Band-Aid and good as new. What a sissy.

His favorite word was "mute". Not as in "unspeaking" but "no longer valid". In fact, that word is moot. Moot. Not mute. Moot.

Today I was in a meeting with Stavros and a couple of programmers and Stavros said, "Well, it hardly matters now. It's mute."

"Moot," I whispered. "It moot. Like a cow. With a 't'. It's moot."

And really I just want to stand up, slap the papers on the conference room table and shout, "It's moot, damn it! Moot! Moot!"

I don't know whether I would rather turn on my heel and storm away or press his face into a dictionary, but that would mean touching the back of his oily Grecian Formula'd head.

But I just sat there. And was mute.