PUBLISHING TODAY

Why do writers write? A few in every generation decide early on they want to be writers, get a Masters in English or Creative Writing and hunt for a do-anything job in a publishing house. Many begin to write in the evening and, after a year or so, complete a novel or a memoir. Some are fortunate to have their effort read. However, only a few may actually get published. One of these writers may become the darling of a publisher, write a book every year, make the N.Y.Times Best Seller list, and live happily ever after. 

At the beginning of the 21^stcentury the publishing industry experienced significant changes. Technology like e-books and Print on Demand became available, bookstores changed ownership, publishing personnel changed jobs, and new presses appeared. Men and women of all occupations with computers and printers decided they had a story to tell and wanted readers. Manuscripts from butchers and bakers, doctors and lawyers and even a professor proliferated like dandelions on a summer lawn, and thousands of unsolicited ones unread filled publisher’s waste paper baskets to overflowing.

            Surely, among those myriads of manuscripts awaiting the shredder, there must be a few gems, which will never be published. I think of a verse from Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyardthat goes,

            “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 

             The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: 

             Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, 

            And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

            

  Literary agents increased in number and self-publishing presses offered frustrated writers the opportunity to “publish” their work. For a healthy sum, such presses will accept a manuscript and produce printed copies of books for the author. Marketing of these books is left to the author who can use them to distribute to friends and family to satisfy his desire for readers. As my wife would say, “It is what it is”. 

            

FAMILIES

Connie and I recently attended a family party at my daughter Diane’s home in Westchester County.  She and Ronnie, gracious hosts as always, called her grown offspring to greet us. Two of them with their spouses presented their kids to me, my four great grandsons! The boys regarded me with a lack of interest and promptly ran off to play, leaving me to calculate that I was responsible for a family of 20 souls including six spouses.

I suppose the family first appeared among early humans when a few of them banded together for protection and support. In later eras, love and affection also became motives.

Admiral Richard E. Byrd had lots of time to think about his family while he spent many months alone beneath the Antarctic ice with only a radio for company. In his memoir Alone, he wrote:

At the end only two things really matter to a man, regardless of who he is; and they are the affection and understanding of his family. Anything and everything else he creates are insubstantial; they are ships given over to the mercy of the winds and tides of prejudice. But the family is an everlasting anchorage, a quiet harbor where a man’s ships can be left to swing to the moorings of pride and loyalty.

I wonder if the family will continue to exist in the distant future. Nevertheless, I expect that my family will continue to grow and I hope, to prosper. (I quoted Admiral Byrd in my novel Incident in Geneva.)