brianrayfiction.com Blog

Off the cuff, I’d say the publishing business has grown as tangled as the Christmas lights in someone’s attic. If it were ever simple, everybody knows those days are now gone – and big name authors can’t even agree on the ethics of e-books. Take Sherman Alexie, for example, who said at the latest Book Expo convention in NY, that he would rather sell his books on a street corner than sign off an e-book rights. (That’s my metaphor, not his, although that’s what Luddites might be doing ten years from now).

Alexie went on to say that he finds the Kindle an symbol of elitism in the publishing and literary world. But that statement strikes me as an oxymoron. The publishing world already has a large, entrenched elitist faction who decries things like Kindles and e-books. Isn’t it elitist to call the Kindle elitist? And why would Alexie want to hit a woman on an airplane reading one, as he said? These gadgets do cost about $400. However, I tend to want to hit people who carry on interminable-loud-conversations on airplanes or folks who crank up the volume on their I-Pods on cross-country flights. Nope, I have to say I’d be happy to see a cabin full of people quietly ensconced in Kindles any day.

In fact, I think we should go ahead and empty the libraries now. In fact, I advocate this: all libraries can be relocated inside drab gray buildings where librarians do nothing but scan, scan, scan, until the world’s books are efficiently and conveniently stored in cyberspace. Imagine the crystals Jerel gives Superman that contain the knowledge and literature of a dozen worlds. Next, let’s build an enormous temple out of all the books in stores and libraries. Next, let’s douse the temple with gasoline, now only $3 a gallon, and then light it up. Third, turn the libraries and bookstores into Apple retailers and McDonald’s. Okay, okay, some of them can be Applebee’s.

What else about Book Expo? Ah, there’s the issue of trend chasing (as opposed to trend setting). Apparently this year the tables were stacked with vampire novels attempting to snatch a small piece of that Stephanie Meyer market. It’s good to know that at least one thing hasn’t changed thanks to the Internet. There will always be a herd of copycats.

Of course, I wasn’t at the Expo. The past several days I’ve been scrubbing every inch of my apartment in preparation for a move. Ironically, the dogs have stopped barking. Maybe the fumes of cleaning chemicals wafted upstairs and drove my neighbors away. If so, that would be good incentive to clean more often.