I Wish I Were Born 30 Years Earlier

"Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it's all free, and you read freely, you're not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you're like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.

Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check, and our babies got shoes. But in the New Era, writers will be self-anointed. No passing of the torch. Just sit down and write the book. And The New York Times, the great brand name of publishing, whose imprimatur you covet for your book ("brilliantly lyrical, edgy, suffused with light" — NY Times) will vanish (Poof!). And editors will vanish.

Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I'm sorry you missed it." -Garrison Keillor for the Baltimore Sun

Now, I think Keillor is right and these ideas are daunting. I wish I were born 30 years earlier so I wasn't an English major looking for a job in an industry that is both revolutionizing and falling apart at the seams. Not to mention, as Keillor puts it, editors are vanishing.  Perhaps it's time to abandon my editorial dreams forever. With the industry turning itself inside out - not to mention the fact that our economy is still shitting the bed - it just doesn't seem like the job of my dreams (or anything resembling it) will ever be within grasp.

Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan

I stumbled across this short story and became completely absorbed (while I should have been working). Anyhow, it's awesome and you need to read it too. Immediately. It's a wildly imaginative and refreshingly original piece about a mysterious bookstore and how ebooks and ereaders are changing more than just the way we read.

There is something to be said about stories written about books/bookstores/book mobiles. They get me every time.

Read Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four Hour Book Store in it's entirety for free right here. Now.

Letters to President Obama

This morning I read a piece in the Washington Post that details the ten letters of "unvetted correspondence" President Obama reads daily. Written to Obama from the American people he governs - he considers these letters "among his most important daily reading material". These letters address a wide array of topics spanning from fan mail that offers support to citizens demanding jobs or healthcare. "Each day, 20,000 letters and e-mails addressed to Obama are screened for threats and then sent to a nondescript office building in downtown Washington. Hundreds of volunteers and staff members sort the mail into categories before a senior aide picks the 10 destined to provide Obama with his daily glimpse beyond what he calls 'the presidential bubble'."


It's amazing the amount of effort that the selection of these ten letters require each day. However, I think the importance Obama places on these letters says a lot about his commitment to the American people. " He gravitates toward messages that 'inspire,' and prefers mail that provides a 'counterbalance to business in Washington' and transports him someplace else." Kudos to you, President Obama.


Anyhow, this piece got me thinking about the importance of handwritten letters and why exactly they mean so much. One of my favorite books to page through, Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant To See, is great because it offers a sense of intimacy to its readers; offers them a connection to the writer because of it's unflinchingly honest characteristics. One of my weekly addictions is checking the Post Secret blog - "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard". (There are also a handful of Post Secret books that have been published.)


Again, there is something to be said about how personal handwritten letters are. I've been carrying around a handwritten letter in my wallet for about two years - not because I read it everyday but because it is so meaningful to me I want it to be with me always. What is it that makes handwritten letters so meaningful? Maybe because they are individualized and purposeful, reflective and emotional.


There is probably some sort security measure that prohibits the publication of Obama's letters, and if there weren't it would take a lot of work to get the consent of the writers to be published, however I think it would make for a really great book - a collection of the letters Obama read everyday. Is anyone on that?

Recession Professions

I have been out of school for almost a year now, sending out resume upon resume to any job that is some-what related to what I want to do: work in publishing, ideally doing editorial. I’ve had a few interviews here and there and mostly get the same response; “we are looking for someone with more experience”. Okay, fair enough. Editing my university newspaper and interning at a small publishing house in Madison (I love you Bleak House) probably can’t compare to someone who has been in the industry for a few years. But how am I supposed to break into an industry that is firing more employees than they are hiring? How am I going to become an editor in a world where people would rather renew their Netflix subscription than their newspaper? Where ebooks are more talked about than actual literature? The thought is somewhat daunting.

I googled recession-proof jobs today and it doesn’t look pretty. Perhaps I should have studied to become a pharmacist (sorry mom) or a computer system administrator.  The only problem with that is that those things don’t interest me. What does is the written word (yeah, I’m a dork). So, the only thing to do is keep plugging away. Hopefully soon someone from HR will discover all the talent and drive I poses.

Okay, time to send out some more resumes…