Dear Livejournal, I know you know I think you suck but that's no reason not to give me my comment notifications, you gremlin-infested antique. Love and kisses, Sam.
This morning I read an unsubstantiated statistic that the median age for publishing a first novel is 35. I am going to pretend this is the product of research and study, rather than the anecdotal wild guess that it probably is, because it means I'm more or less ahead of the curve.
I picked it up off a
Metafilter discussion that I had to stop reading, eventually, because I got all excited and confused and angry, like when I watch the Cubs get
slaughtered by the Pirates (the goddamn
Pirates, people). Some of the anger is legitimate as there are some
douchebags in that discussion, but I have to remind myself when people start talking about the cost of publishing and the cost of e-books that not everyone has 2800 willing readers (yep, we broke 2800 a few days ago, I say when we hit 3k we party) and the training or software to typset and layout a book themselves, which hinders my "wtf are you arguing about this for" reaction a little.
Part of the problem with originating the concept of Extribulum is that I'm not quite sure where to put it from here. I don't really know enough about publishing, and I'm not clever enough about business, to figure out a way of applying it and thus saving the big publishers from their own "e-readers are a fad" folly. I don't know nearly enough about economics to coherently discuss piracy and its impact on any given industry, especially the publishing industry. This journal, as much as I love it, is kind of a fluke; I can't guarantee that I could replicate the process for a book someone else wrote, even a book handpicked by me for it. I can read articles till my eyeballs fall out, but I don't have the kind of head that can pull all the threads together into something revolutionary.
But I'm finding that in a way I'm okay with that, the same way I'm okay with a day-job and self-publishing for pocket-money instead of getting an agent and pro-publishing (and, given the stats, probably having to keep my day-job anyway). Someone out there is a clever spark and is going to make something happen that needs to happen; the best I can do is keep doing what I'm doing and documenting it so that if they need it, here it is.
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