My care package from Wilmington arrived with the new cell phone. A Samsung. Along with an article written by the head of a local university press, outlining the potential dangers of unlimited self-publishing. I’m on both sides: anyone should be able to publish whatever they want, no matter how bad. Yet I agree there many people so uneducated they cannot tell fact from fiction. (The real problem is that our social system favors the uneducated for they are in the majority.) Most would agree that some alternative should exist to the traditional publishing houses, who are notoriously inept at spotting talent. Like Edgar Allen Poe. The new publishing concept is called “print on demand”, where the book is not created until you’ve paid for it. As with so many industries, however, you can be certain the computerized versions try to preserve all the money-making steps that often don’t even exist any more. This will ensure the startup costs are so high that there will be no overall savings to the consumer for at least a decade.
My prediction is that it will be a while before books are replaced by electronics. The Kindle, a device by Amazon, is an example of overkill. It costs $400+ and holds more books than anyone dumb enough to buy one could read in five lifetimes. (At last count, that means 3,500 books with no pictures. How long before Playboy takes care of that?)
I do see an opening for vanity publishing. There are places you can self-publish on line, but right there is a turnoff to many savvy authors. If there was some place locally where I could drop in and see the actual workings, I would choose that hands down to uploading my precious creation to some out-of-state stranger. To me, a web address is the computer equivalent of a post office box.
The term “deflation” is in the news once more, about how utterly evil it is. I don’t buy that. Deflation is where prices start coming down, and they talk like it is some kind of disaster. Even if it is, I would not personally mind it, in fact, I would like to live through it myself. If millions of Americans can lose $25 per hour jobs and become $8 rent-a-cops, I don’t see why businesses can’t lower their dollar figures as well.
Which brings up another curious trait in some people. While they can understand a person quitting a job to take one that pays better, they have trouble understanding why somebody would fold up a business and go into something else. They falsely conclude that the first business “failed”, and therefore those operating it must be failures. Yet the true failure in life is to regard working for somebody else as the right way to make money.
Theresa called this morning for nearly an hour. We are on the same wavelength regarding self-employment. I gather from her it would be as easy or easier to start up the flyer here as in Wilmington. I’ve mentioned the business to people and it is obviously very familiar territory. So why isn’t anyone doing it? My gut feeling is that they were trying to have the sheets duplicated out of house which is the single most expensive variable cost of running that business. Recall I have the projected costs down to $61 per thousand, a quarter of what others seem to be spending.
Another aspect is that here, unlike North Carolina, I have the space and most of the equipment. I’ve got a line on an excellent used photocopier with a service contract. I want a guarantee we can use their machines if ours fail. It doesn’t matter to me where the business is set up. I’m no stranger to working from home and I absolutely love it. I miss the socializing with office women but not enough to miss the office. It is generally agreed between Theresa and I she is the one who pounds the boards. She’s the front department.
And all the while, the crows are gathering . . . .
