Grub Street Printing Newsletter #63, July 2014

Do you have a web site? If so, you probably get recorded calls that begin, “Hi, I'm Sharon (sometimes Susan out west) your local Google specialist”.

Since it's a recorded message, anything (including all the blue language and invective I hurl back at old Sharon) is just a waste of time and breath (and at my age I'm increasingly cognizant of the finite amounts we have of each). Since some of our cordless phones don't have Caller ID, but even if they do, after stopping whatever I'm doing to walk down the hall to answer the phone call from Sharon, I feel entitled to a little psychic relief, and with children no longer running through the house, I unleash a full and increasingly creative barrage of invective that would make the devil himself blush. Cathy just smiles and asks, “Sharon?” and I nod.

Satisfied that I've created an ever more efficient way of cursing thieves and liars to eternal damnation, I continue my previous activity psychically cleansed if karmically damaged.

There is no greater proof of the impotence and corruption rampant in our federal government than the flagrant disregard corporations, ranging in size from Bruce the Window Cleaner to Wall Street banks sniffing out mortgage refi clients, exhibit by their incessant calling of persons unknown and unconnected with their enterprises, flagrantly breaking the “No Call” rules Congress introduced in 2003 as a way to rile up their contributors who throw bigger bags of money to legislators when they've been riled.

That these organizations have banded together with the lobbyists like the Association to Send Senators Hoards Of Loot Everyday to fight for their God-given right to behave like petulant jack-asses says more about campaign finance laws than corporate morality (an oxymoron if I've ever heard one).

Now this “Sharon” (who might be a shrew of the first order but it's doubtful she's stupid enough to use her real name) says she's a Google specialist. I've been using Google without need of a specialist for many years so I assumed that since Google knows more about me than I know about me, they simply called my phone number (which they of course already had) and decided to help me make better use of Boolean parameters when I did my searches.

Except that skank Sharon is to Google what I am to RR Donnelly...I've heard of them and know what business they're in. And that's about it.

It turns out that Sharon works for a company called Pacific Telecom Communications Group. Given that they use the word Pacific in their name, I've decided that they are either located in Southern California (having crawled out from under a rock in Death Valley) or outside of the US, probably in one of the Asian nations that sends us some sort of fatal flu each fall.

I want to believe that no one is so bored with life that they've actually listened to Sharon's spiel, but having attained a wizened perspective after all these years, I've come to revise P. T. Barnum's observation that,”there's a sucker born every minute.” While perhaps true during the 19^th century when Barnum was milking the suckers, the population of our country has expanded and to update his maxim, “there are at least dozens of suckers born every minute” would be more accurate.

But probably somebody ( I HOPE none of you) has actually forked over money to these cheating charlatans who promise zillions of clicks on your website but deliver common, freely available advice on search-engine-optimization (SEO). (At least that's what a Google search says they're hawking.)

But what's even worse than that is that it wouldn't even matter if we were all intelligently cautious and ignored their irritating come-on. While PTCG will happily take our dollars, they have an even greater revenue stream that makes our continual harassment inevitable.

PTCG collects money from telephone companies every time their information is displayed on your phone when you answer.

So the important thing isn't that you buy their lousy product or even listen to their insipid pitch. They're just happy when you pick up the receiver or press the little green icon, or whatever it is you do to answer your phone.

Of course the question becomes why hasn't the might of the Federal Government slaughtered these vermin? It's certainly not because they're unaware of their existence. They seem to know all about them.

Apparently the burden of dealing with life or death matters like “did the IRS mess with the Tea Party”, and “what planet is John Boehner really from”, annoyances that the hoi polloi endure are allowed to fester. Our letters and emails of complaint pile up in a warehouse or are routinely scrubbed from Washington DC servers so as not to interfere with the real business of governance.

So if filling out an FTC form ratting out these perps makes you feel like you've contributed to the peace and happiness of future generations, who am I to tell you that you're wasting your time? As a child of the 60's, I say “If it feels good, do it.”

Myself, I revel in the millions of combinations and iterations afforded by the richness of the American English vernacular and will continue to try to ensure that no one associated with such shameful deportment has even the most minute opportunity to enjoy anything but eternal pain and strife in their afterlife.

Hey, you do your thing and I'll do mine. I suspect we'll each have an equal level of success in eliminating this vile harassment, but mine makes my wife laugh.

 

Check Out This InfoGraphic

From the moment you click on this you'll get a second by second account about what's being sold in America in real time. Book sales are shown foremost but sales from Amazon to Walmart to 7-11 and even coupon savings are shown. Note that ebooks sell in great volume but the dollars aren't even close to printed books.

Weighing In on Amazon vs. Hachette

Stephen Colbert has weighed in on the Amazon v. Hachette (his publisher) brouhaha and has asked his legion of fans to purchase Hachette's title Californias online from Portland based Powell's Books, as well as offering free “I Didn't Buy It At Amazon” labels from his website.

Book Expo Attendance Off

Attendance at this year's BookExpo was down slightly (again) while their one day cheapie tickets (aka Book Con; take that either way I suppose) sold all 10,000 available tickets in three minutes. The Comments following the linked article indicate Book Con was not an unmitigated success. See you in Chicago 2016 (follow the link: are Atlanta and Dallas really in the same destination class as prison camps?).

Monopoly vs. Cartel

This business writer assures us the fuss over Amazon and two major publishers is merely a monopoly fighting a cartel. With 2,675 publishers in the US alone, that's one hell of a big cartel. The writer then admits that as an author, he's displeased with the publishing industry business model (surprise!).

Ultra Short Print Runs

I still work with a lot of new authors/publishers and the question about how few books can they produce comes up frequently. While Grub Street Printing shies away from ultra-short runs (less than 100), LightningSource (a division of Ingram Book Distributing) does very short runs of digital books and claims that their average print run is between one and two books per order.

Ebooks or Print

Now that the dust is settling, the fact that only 4% of readers exclusively read ebooks means that if you want to reach the broadest reader market, printing conventional books is necessary.

The Almost Lost Art of Craft Bookbinding

When all books were bound by hand, creativity was used to enhance their looks and functionality. This short, non-technical article describes some techniques which are so uncommon now that soon there may not be binders capable of their execution.

Authors Validate Words

Over the years I've noticed that many in the book industry nurture a curiosity about word usage and origins. For the budding lexicographers, here is what the printed word has meant to linguistic evolution.

Print Is Still Big

After riding out a tumultuous couple of decades, the world of print may have diminished a bit, but it remains a huge industry with incredible reach.

Letterpress Never Died...

...nor has it faded away. I bought a $5 book online for scanning, but when it arrived it was a lovely mid 50's letterpress edition with just-visible impressions from the type. I really didn't want to take it apart to scan. Here's more on desktop publishing, circa 1820.

E Bonds, Not eBonds

The sale of US Savings Bonds plummeted in 2012 after the Treasury Department decided to go paperless. Now some legislators are advocating a reversal of the paperless only bonds (H. Res. 97), saying the program provided a savings plan for many low income earners.

Final Thought

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.... What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. Henry David Thoreau

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #62, June, 2014

Happy 20^th birthday Amazon!

Next month marks a milestone for the folks at Amazon.com.

And while I've sold books through Amazon, I can't bring myself to say, “God bless Amazon” (unless we're talking about a rainforest).

Look, twenty years ago there was no storm cloud that could have foretold the disruption that could be wrought on the publishing industry by a nerd from Princeton.

There were no rules then. Thousands of hopeful e-entrepreneurs tried to make a buck any way they could in the wild west that was gloriously described as ecommerce. Everything from Pampers to Purina was available online, and services from licit match making to illicit rendezvous promised a brave new world, Y2K be damned.

In that spirit, Jeff Bezos realized that book retailing was one of the more moribund retail sectors with the newest rules written sixty years earlier when publishers, desperate to sell books during the depression, instituted “return” privileges to book stores in a valiant attempt to keep the presses rolling.

And forty years later Borders and Barnes & Noble learned to game the system by lining their walls with enough titles to fill a 5,000 square foot showroom. The problem for publishers was, their books were wall paper that changed every ninety days when the books were returned for credit and perhaps then immediately reordered.

Bezos saw a way to streamline book selling that concentrated on deep discounts and cheap and fast shipping. And every book that was available would be available, either through his warehouse network or directly, shipped from the publisher. And that worked so well he expanded into Pampers and Purina after the first wave of start-ups crashed and burned.

And it was fun and exciting, especially because there were no rules. After the tech bubble burst in 2000, legislators seemed especially receptive to keep ecommerce growing, even though the local communities the legislators represented were beginning to falter as Main Street saw dollars floating away to other cities in other states.

As you read the attached newsletter, the portrait of a company that believes it has an obligation to further disrupt the industry by dictating business practices to its suppliers emerges. Now I suppose if you're building cars, suppliers come and go and if you lose one, another will take its place producing an identical part to identical specs. That's not really possible with books, although it seems Bezos would like the industry to approximate such a scenario.

Another article explains that some government lackey issued a patent to Amazon for photographing objects against a white back ground. The stupidity of some government employees is surpassed only by the chutzpah of a company like Amazon that would file such an application, perhaps with hopes that all photographic techniques might be patented with royalties collected each year on April 15.

Amazon is tax averse and drops some money here and there in an attempt to alter the perception that they're bad neighbors, but Amazon executives are asked not to visit certain states lest their presence trigger local tax opportunities.

And how could Amazon be bad? President Obama has twice visited their warehouses, a seeming nod to today's youth that their future lies in the services arena, supervised and judged by computers that will eventually replace them and owned by companies that let their employees pay the taxes that the companies themselves could otherwise owe.

 

Sixty Largest Publishers

Are you curious about who the real heavy-hitters in publishing are by sales rank? You'll find the list here (hint: Pearson wins handily).

Amazon Tries to Bully Hachette...

Apparently the feud between Amazon and Hachette has escalated to the point that Amazon has dropped some Hachette titles, dragged their feet on shipping their titles, and now it seems won't even be offering JK Rowling's newest, The Silkworm, as a conventional book, although ebook and audible versions can be ordered. The roots of the conflict aren't clear yet.

...and Bonnier

Flexing one's monopolistic muscle seems to be addictive as Amazon attempts to also dictate terms to Bonnier, a Swedish publishing conglomerate. The debate over the heft and scope of Amazon's influence has re-ignited.

Backlist eBook Rights

The question about ownership of rights to produce ebooks will apparently be debated in federal court as HarperCollins sues to block Open Roads release of an ebook of the 1972 children's title, Julie of the Wolves.

Out-Amazoning Amazon

An extremely ambitious entrepreneur makes some telling statements on the demise of Borders and starts an enterprise to compete with Amazon...on price!

Book Business or eBook Business?

I get that ebooks are here to stay. But readers prefer ink and paper books 60% to 40% and publishers prefer conventional books overwhelmingly ($). So why does this email edition of Book Business have seven out of nine articles focusing on ebooks?

Amazon! Really?

I'm guessing that somewhere in your house you have a photograph of someone or something in front of a white background. Henceforth, all such pictures will be covered by a newly granted patent owned by Amazon. Stephen Colbert comments on the idiocy of it all.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

Mass Market Paperback Pioneer Dies

Mass market paperbacks appeared in the late 1930's and were as disruptive to the industry as ebooks were over a half century later. Their sales didn't surpass hardcover sales until 1960, possibly with the help of Oscar Dystel who introduced Catcher in the Rye, East of Eden and many more classics for Bantam Books. Mr Dystel died at the age of 101 on May 28.

Do the Graphic Arts Include Printing?

Every printer I work with (and myself) has horror stories about working with a clueless designer whose knowledge begins and ends at a Mac Pro screen. The trouble is, after twenty some years of digital design advances, many of the instructors remain as clueless as their students about the leap from RGB to CMYK. Does it matter? Is print THAT important.? Check this out. (Hint: If your designer knows what rubylith is, they're okay.)

Which Cities Read the Most?

Data collected between April 2013 and April 2014 (based on book and magazine sales) ranks Ann Arbor 6^th in book purchases in America. The top twenty cities are listed here. But it's been pointed out that if you factor in the community's library circulation, the rankings are pure bs. They simply rank per capita online book spending which may not correlate to book reading.

Warning: This Novel is Rated G With Objectionable Language

In an effort to protect people from dealing with some of the more distasteful life experiences, certain colleges want to put warning labels on literature so readers aren't confronted with the more painful episodes that life presents. But isn't that the point of reading literature, to be challenged?

Final Thought

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”

George W. Bush

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #61, May 2014

If the name Baker Johnson, Inc. rings a bell, I've known you for at least nine years. It also means you remember the capabilities and markets we served back in the day.

But the great thing about Grub Street Printing is that none of those caveats apply anymore. Printers specialize in producing books that take advantage of their equipment's capabilities. Sheet-fed printers, like Baker-Johnson, Inc., tend to be most efficient on shorter runs. The web printers we work with like runs so long they wear out their plates running them.

But guess what? Grub Street Printing doesn't own any equipment! We serve about 99% of the book manufacturing marketplace because we work with printers that have all kinds of money invested in every kind of press or binder you can imagine (except gravure and I've never been asked to quote a book produced gravure).

In hopes that you'll forgot the limitations of our days at Baker Johnson, Inc., I offer the following.

1. Grub Street Printing does digital...lots of digital. Since we are a part of a small press (we published our first book in 2002), learning about and using digital methods was a natural step for us. Even if you're using a printer that we don't happen to work with, we don't mind spending as much time as necessary to help you get your book ready for CreateSpace or LightningSource at no charge to you. It's fun, remember?
2. Last month we requested pricing on an oblong casebound ultra-short run 4/c (CMYK) and got competitive pricing from three different printers that had the equipment to efficiently produce such a book. Never assume Grub Street can't produce unusual books.
3. Grub Street Printing has produced quantities as low as 100 and as high as 37,000, competitively and of the highest quality.
4. Baker-Johnson, Inc. also specialized in perfect bound books, but one of the first books American Perspective (our small press) produced was a 500 copy casebound book with dust jacket and slipcase, utilizing seven different paper stocks, foil stamping on cover 1 and spine, and blind embossing on the case and slipcase. (Sorry. We're sold out.) Casebound is no problem and our pricing is fantastic.

5. Mechanical bindings are no problem either; plastic comb, plastic spiral, wire spiral, double O wire...you get the point, right?
6. Full color offset books are no problem either. We have domestic and international printers delivering the highest quality work at the lowest prices we can find anywhere.
7. By utilizing our network of free-lancers, we can put you in touch with just the right person to lend you a hand. We work with editors and designers across the country. I've personally worked with some of these pros over twenty-five years and will gladly vouch for their talent and creativity, but of course references are available.
8. Speaking of services, when you need a bar code in a hurry, email us your ISBN and pricing preference and we'll send the files to your designer or printer within 24 hours. Free, as in no charge.
9. We have a small program that tells us exactly what your next soft cover title will weigh and what it's bulk will be. These aren't real difficult calculations anyway, but this little spreadsheet takes about 10 seconds to figure it all out at once. I'll even share it with you for the asking.
10. And while it's probably not applicable to you, since closing Baker-Johnson, Inc. I've taught classes in book production and publishing which means that I still enjoy working with first timers, self publishers and micro-presses. That's how it all starts, isn't it?

So that's about it. We can pretty much produce any kind of book in any run length you want, cheaper than the printer you're using.

Which means I'm glad Baker-Johnson, Inc. never had to compete with GrubStreetPrinting.com 

 

Coming to a Store Near You This Saturday

Saturday, May 3, is “Free Comic Book Day” which sounds like one of my childhood dreams come true (although they were only 10¢ back then). Click here to find a participating merchant near you.

eCommerce Discovers Print

To boost profit margins, the digerati have discovered that print indeed has an audience and can positively support online marketing campaigns. What insight!

Millennials Prefer Paper Coupons

The generation of Americans who have grown up using multiple digital services prefers couponing with paper and ink coupons. I suspect that's because digital offers are subject to bait and switch and retailer double-talk.

A New Eco Font

After learning that the Garamond font used less printing ink than Times Roman, I changed this newsletter's font to Garramond. It has always been a popular book font, easy to read and scale. Now a new “eco-font” has been introduced, Ryman Eco, and freely distributed. It's very nice but I find Garamond much easier to read. Download Ryman Eco here. (Apparently not for use in Open Office.)

The Use of Trees...

Unfortunately, while discussing the eco benefits of these new fonts, the statement, “Of course, using no paper at all would do a lot more to help the environment” which is only partially true. There are more (and healthier) trees growing in America today than there were when the Pilgrims landed, thanks to (for profit) forest management.

...and Water

One billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and critical regional droughts have focused scientists' attention on safeguarding current water supplies and rethinking usage from dwindling sources. Since it takes 2 ½ gallons of water to make one sheet of 8 ½ x 11 paper, manufacturers need to rethink their use of water used for manufacturing paper.

Bookshelf Snooping

I'm shameless about walking over to someone's bookshelf and checking out their collection. I think you could almost guess someone's age by the books they display. Here's an interesting look at some of the most influential titles in the collections of the rich and famous.

3D “Ink” from Water Bottles

I remain unconvinced that 3D printing has much to do with printing, but an interesting twist in that technology is a new “open source” converter that makes 3D printer filament from used water bottles. Now your 3D printer can build the parts for a converter that will replace retail filament with DIY.

More Design Challenges

Graphic designers always seem to have interesting creations that display their skills and creativity, like these business cards designed for historical figures.

What Are Libraries For?

After reading about a library without books in Texas, I now know that libraries need to be more than paper and ink repositories. This story of a young man teaching himself how to build a prosthesis on the local library's 3-D printer demonstrates that good libraries are for free, unstructured education.

Inkjet for 4/c Book Production

In the way that toner-based printing changed how we thought about book production, warehousing and fulfillment, 4 color (CMYK) inkjet book printing may offer the same options for full color short run book printing. I just quoted such a title, and believe me, the economies are NOT readily available yet.

Employee Owned Print Shop Adds Book-selling

Collective Copies, a copy shop in Western MA, will add book-selling to its printing business. It also publishes titles as Levellers Press and its imprints.

Playboy's Future from the Past?

Struggling for a foothold in the digital age, Playboy has found profits in issuing anthologies and in this case, a reprint of Issue #1.

Perspective on Fonts

While I'm not a big fan of TED talks, this video on the changing art of font design by Mathew Carter is a refresher course, offering a modern perspective on how different media require different fonts.

Final Thoughts

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” George R.R. Martin -

Game of Thrones

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #60, April 2014

Are you concerned that a college degree is unaffordable for your children or grand children? Does the prospect of mountains of student loan debt taken out by starry-eyed young adults who want to believe that somehow the loans will not haunt their financial health in their near-term future concern you?

Here's a tip. Move to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the sooner the better. In 2005 it was announced that all graduates of the Kalamazoo school system and are eligible to attend college will have their tuition paid for by the Kalamazoo Promise. Even students who transfer into the school system as high school freshman qualify for 65% support. A group of anonymous donors fund the program, and so far has spent over $20 million on higher education for 3,831 students.

Former Kalamazoo schools superintendent Janice M. Brown (the only person that communicates directly with the donors) said the long term goal is to boost Kalamazoo's economy, which like many Midwestern cities in the 21^st century faced a loss of industry and a resiliently stagnant economy.

And nine years later, by any criteria, the Kalamazoo Promise works.

I thought of the Promise today when I read another article about Kalamazoo in the Detroit Free Press entitled Kalamazoo Quietly Emerging as a Literary Hotspot. I expected an exaggerated puff-piece written by the Chamber of Commerce, but it seems like there is actually a modest expanded literary presence in the city with the funny name. 

I don't expect that anyone from the Iowa Writers Program in Iowa City will turn green with envy, but a rebirth of arts and culture in any small Midwestern town has surely drawn some attention from cities with underfunded libraries and those watching area youth migrate away from their hometown.

Might the Kalamazoo Promise and this mini-Renaissance that Kalamazoo is experiencing be related? Maybe, maybe not. But any city that goes all in to support its young adults pursuing their higher educations is bound to reap some rewards down the line and what could be better than adding writers, poets, and teachers to a community many thought could have been sucked into the black-hole vortex of shrinking employment opportunities and population loss that many formerly prosperous Michigan towns still face.

Vook Offers Ebook Sales Reports

Vook has announced a new sales reporting service that can track daily sales and issue a monthly report for all of your ebook titles. There's no charge for the service.

Leveling the Playing Field

The closing of a Barnes and Noble in my boyhood hometown spotlights the uneven application of tax laws. How is it fair that one retailer selling a product collects sales tax on it (all the while paying state and local property and business taxes) while another retailer selling the same product doesn't?

What's a Fair Ebook Royalty? 25% or 50%?

Since most publishing costs associated with book production don't apply to ebook distribution, some authors will not allow their work to be sold as an ebook for 25% royalties.

Conservative Book Bubble Bursts

Books written by conservative politicians, pundits, and researchers have been on a tear for the last fifteen years, but it appears the party is ending. Sales figures show a saturated market that only attracts readers to books by famous, successful authors, usually elected officials.

  Branded Print Magazines Are Growing

The print and bind industry has seen entire markets disappear in the past fifteen years. Now corporations are discovering that producing their own ink and paper magazine can be cost effective. These publications build brand loyalty stronger than pixel marketing or placing ads in consumer magazines.

Printing Isn't a Growing Business, So...

Kathie Gillespie, owner of A&B Printing in Las Vegas NV realized her business (and industry) weren't growing so she's transforming her shop to enter a business that does: growing and selling medical marijuana. If her permits and inspections pass muster, she will operate the first legal dispensary in Southern Nevada.

Say Ya To Da UP, eh?

If you live in Michigan you are either a Yooper, if you live “above” the Mackinac Bridge in the Upper Peninsula, or a Troll if you live “beneath” the bridge. Having strong Yooper roots, I'm pleased to see that Merriam-Webster has conceded that “Yooper” is indeed a word.

Garamond Saves

Not only is Garamond a beautiful font for books, apparently it can save you money if you use an ink jet printer because it seems to use less ink. If federal, state and local governments used it, it's estimated it would save taxpayers $400 million each year.

On Being a Successful Writer

While ignoring prominent exceptions to the rule, (think Walt Whitman and Charles Dickens ) perhaps the most important trait shared by successful writers is to be born and raised in a wealthy family. Unfortunately, poverty has again become the norm for many writers.

Day One Seeking Submissions

When Amazon's digital only literary journal Day One debuted last October it did not solicit submissions, the plan being to troll MFA programs for content. Day One has just announced that it is seeking submissions. As of now, there are no guidelines, just this: dayone-submissions@amazon.com.

Is White Bright?

Selecting an appropriate text stock for your book can be confusing,. There is shade, brightness, opacity, bulk, finish and whiteness to consider. We can help decipher all the various paper properties to help you in your paper selection, much like this explanation of the difference between whiteness and brightness.

Digital Shortfall

A decade or more ago we were awash in digital fervor, imagining all the possibilities that e-everything seemed to offer. In more sober moments, someone would look up and ask, “But how do we make money on it?” Apparently that remains the question.

Unbelievable

The Harvard University library houses over 15 million books, but three share a bizarre distinction; they're bound in human skin, the newest as recently as 1880.

Final Thought

“If I'm engrossed in a book, I have to rearrange my thoughts before I can mingle with other people, because otherwise they might think I was strange.” Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #59, March 2014

I miss real, honest to god telephone books.

I know. You think it's because I'm an unrepentant Neo-Luddite. That I simply like anything and everything resembling a bound book. That I just like the idea of RR Donnelly pounding out hundreds of millions of telephone directories, thereby preserving the livelihood of hundreds if not thousands of printing crafts people. And that I miss massive tomes like the Manhattan directory which boosted many a toddler to table level on Thanksgiving.

 Well it's all of the above, plus one more. Telephone directories are still relevant and always have been.

I ran into an old friend at Kroger's the other day. We had a nice chat, but as I was driving home I realized there was something I meant to ask him that had just slipped my mind.

I hadn't seen him for a few years and if I'd ever had his phone number, the scrap it had been written on had been shuffled into non-existence a while back. No problem though; I'd just look up his number.

Well, that was the plan.

We have a nice collection of telephone directories. Every few months one company or another leaves a stack of them down by our community mail boxes and we always grab one. It just makes sense to have the newest most up to date directory available, right?

Well, that's the theory.

When I got home and was ready to call him I reached for the newest telephone directory. Oops. Business and yellow pages only. Hmmm, I didn't remember getting a directory like that before.

Well, duh. It was the YP directory: THE Yellow Pages. I picked up another directory, checked the head trim and saw white pages in the back. This one must have the information about actual people.

Not. It was the Livingston County Yellow Book, complete with white page listings of every business in the county (except mine). And a 2007 Washtenaw County directory. And a 1995 Hamburg Elementary directory. And a neighborhood directory from the house we moved out of in 1999, and a 2005 Dexter phone book.

I ran downstairs to the recycle bins to find a real directory with phone numbers of the diminishing populace who cling to their land line phones in a twenty mile radius. Too late, it had already been delivered to that great pulper in the sky.

So now all I had to do was turn my computer on, wait for it to boot up, then wait for Firefox to load. I entered his name in the Google search box. Since I couldn't remember how to spell his last name, the white pages gave me an address in Escanaba. Not him. I tried a variation.

One thing I liked about directories was that all you had to do was get somewhat close in guessing how to spell a last name. If your guess is in the ballpark, chances are you can scan up or down the column of names to find the person you're looking for. Sometimes analog really trumps digital.

I tried another spelling, then another. There he was, and with another click or two I got his phone number. And for a mere $.99 I could get even more personal information about him.

I saved my money.

So getting his phone number only took five or six minutes thanks to the belief that real phone directories were just 21^st century buggy whips.

Weeks later, while traveling to Denver for grandson Myles' birthday party, we found a motel along I-80 rather late one night. We were both too tired to jump back in the car to find a place to eat after a ten hour drive. I thought we could just order pizza or something from a nearby restaurant that offered delivery. Like independent bookstores, I'll put in a little extra effort to find a locally owned, family operated eatery. (Ever had a Runza in Nebraska? Based on the billboard count I'm pretty sure it's the Nebraska State Food.)

There was no telephone directory (white or yellow pages) in our room. Our key cards had the telephone numbers of four local Domino's Pizza stores, but if it was to be pizza, perhaps a smaller restaurant could also deliver. The laptop was already on so a quick search found...Domino's. And Pizza Hut. And Little Caesars. And a truck stop we'd just passed that sold pizza by the slice. Then a nice local restaurant that seemed to be about 20 miles away.

Flabbergasted, I went to the front desk to ask the young night clerk where I might order delivery pizza. He pulled a telephone directory from under the counter, and as he was copying down names and telephone numbers, he was describing each restaurant, it's specialty and in one case, its ownership since he happened to know the family.

After thanking him I asked why the rooms didn't have telephone books. He looked at me with thinly masked amazement.

“Well, nobody really uses them anymore, do they?”

Irony is so wasted on the young. 

 

Amazon – For Better and For Worse

This New Yorker article is perhaps the most wide-ranging analysis of Amazon I've read: it's history, business model and performance. Yahoo Finance offers a different take on Amazon and the industry.

Better Grades With Books

A recent study analyzed not only college students' preferences in textbooks, but also learning differences between print and pixels. By including the findings of other related studies, it theorizes that print readers enjoy better test results because paper and ink is less mentally taxing than backlit pixels.

He Must Know What He's Doing

After being promoted from running Barnes & Noble's Nook Media division in January, new CEO Michael Huseby has laid-off most or all of the engineers working on the Nook. Just a year ago Microsoft invested over $600 million in the Nook division giving it a 17.6% ownership stake.

B&N: Lifeline or Noose?

Last week B&N had another offer to sell a 51% interest in the company. The suitor, G Asset Management, also offered $5 per share for the recently down-sized Nook division as an alternative. The plan is to split the company (and maybe load it with debt, then run). Meanwhile, B&N posted an $.86 per share profit on sales that dropped 10% over last year. Reduced overhead is credited for the increased profit.

But What Will It Look Like?

Now that we know that Google has filed for patent protection for an ereader with two screens, speculation turns to exactly what such a thing would look like, let alone trying to figure what benefits may accrue.

Amazon Hosts the CIA

There is concern that Amazon's $600 million cloud computing contract with the CIA may include sharing vast amounts of Amazon's consumer data collection. While a petition to safeguard that information has been started, Amazon's privacy policy states that they can release consumers' personal data “when we believe [the] release is appropriate to comply with the law.” Wasn't this sort of blatant governmental invasion of privacy supposed to stop with Ed Snowden's NSA disclosures?

My County Gets an Indie!

After years of newsletter readers (i.e. you) putting up with my annoying whine that Livingston County no longer has an independent bookstore, an adventurous couple has followed their muse and opened the Blue Frog Bookstore less than twenty minutes away from us!

Unbelievable Writing Opportunity

Some people abhor train travel, but I'm not one of them. Amtrak is experimenting with a writers' residency program that would allow writers a chance to escape the static of everyday life and concentrate on literary creation as they roll across the country. And so far, they've been able to offer the residency gratis!

Creativity Needs Constraint

As more writers bypass professional editing, does artistic creativity suffer? Perhaps Twitter's character constraint is the model for avoiding intellectual sprawl. Should the new mantra be, “Less is more”?

What Is It About This Industry?

Mitch Albom met a 90 year old woman who opened her bookstore in 1942 in Manilla, Philippines. Between Japanese censorship, a devastating typhoon and a fire that destroyed her store, no one would have blamed her if she'd walked away from the book business. Instead, she runs nearly 150 bookstores today.

Do You Miss Newsweek?

If you do, you're in luck as the re-imagined, redesigned magazine begins publishing again on March 7 under the ownership of IBT Media.

Printing Books in 868

Because of the differences in alphabets and word representation, the first Chinese books were printed using blocks with characters carved into them. The Western alphabet supported movable type as we know it, but eight centuries before Gutenberg printed his first book the Chinese had published the Diamond Sutra.

Final Thought

The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries.
The Medium is The Massage (1967)                                  Marshall McLuhan