Anyhow, Smashwords is so democratic it’s ridiculous.

Then Paypal threatened to stop working with them if they didn’t get rid of some of the rougher sex books, and the CEO Mark Coker did a lot of negotiating– and apparently won. See http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/03/paypal-revises-policies-to-allow-legal.html .

To which I commented  Monopolies are generally evil, and I hold no brief for Amazon.com– although why Amazon’s evil makes Barnes & Noble and Big Publishing into good guys is beyond me.  B&N with their end-of-the-aisle bribe stacks and books with a shorter shelf life than yoghurt.  Puh-leeze.

I personally have published with big publishers, small ones, university presses, and an independent co-operative press.  While I am, at least for the moment, still a member of the Authors Guild, I do not find them representing my interests.  AG works for  Scott Turow and  others who make a lot of money selling books.  I’m glad Mr. Turow and his ilk have a guild to represent them, but don’t let the Authors Guild fool you into thinking it does anything for people who don’t sell a lot of books.

So we’re living in interesting times.  Lean back and enjoy the ride.

This may be what it means to be a really tremendous writer of story and narrative: everything in the end is in service of momentum, so there is less available for the second reading.  This, then, a tentative definition for literary: that there is still plenty there when you read it a second time.

BUT NOW- it has finally happened.  It is finally possible to borrow from the library.  I had to go in person first to get my card renewed  (and I ended up promising to present a program for the library in the spring!) and they were very helpful showing me the website for the regional pool of library e-books, many with waiting lists, but I made the experiment by using “advanced search” and skimming over available books, and found Sarah Waters’ newest.  I now have it on my Kindle, for two weeks, anyhow, and I’m thrilled.  I don’t know how this works region to region, but here you get up to 5 books, and there is no extension– you go back on the waiting list if you didn’t finish.  Fine, who cares.  To borrow a Kindle book, you get sent to Amazon, and I had a little to-do about which email was my sign in, and actually ended up calling and speaking to a human being, but the next phase is beginning to happen….

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?ref=technology

In the Amazon business model, there’s no advance, and often no agent, although some agents are beginning to participate as publishers.  I have to say that my sympathy for the big commercial publishers  (not that Amazon isn’t or won’t be one soon) is very limited.  They dropped me unceremoniously 25 years ago– well, not entirely true, that was Scribner’s.  My last big publisher was HarperCollins for the Marco kid books, and that was only fifteen years ago– anyhow, the bottom line is, Conventional publishers dropped me and a lot of my friends– mid-list and literary writers of high repute and great accomplishment– and we’ve been scrambling ever since.  I’ve used small presses, nonprofit presses, university presses, cooperative presses:  I’ve published with all of these, as well as with Scribner’s and HarperCollins, and had Sc & HC been more nurturing of me when I was not a best seller for them, I might be less ready to embrace the Great Change going on now with ebooks and self publishing.  There are myriad problems including, at the very least, who are the gatekeepers, but also vast opportunities.  And for me, a lot of fun too.  The opportunities include simply being able to make books available to people who who might want to read them– miniscule numbers beside what bestseller oriented publishers except, but human beings, readers, communication.  I have been having a great time with my various ventures.

New Book of Short Stories by MSW From Hamilton Stone Editions

Re-visions: Stories from Stories is a collection of spin-offs from myth, fiction, and the Bible. From a new look at Adam and Eve and why they left the Garden to a grown-up Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the confessions of Saint Augustine’s concubine- each story offers a gloss on the original as well as insights into how we can live today.

“The stories were so vivid and natural that after a while I forgot of them as based on actual classic myths and felt them alive in my modern world, real as any other stories. My favorite was the one about Lazarus (for the wonderful imagery about fire and moths and desire) –but so many engaged and moved me.”
– Leora Skolkin-Smith