Introduction

   This is the first post to my very first blog.
   Why bother?
   Well, I have been an avid reader my whole life and for a good part of my life I have had a desire to be a writer.  I am now seventy years old and have managed to gather a few opinions on the world of books.   I think I would like to share what I have learned over the years.    This won't be a place where I rant about how things aren't the way they used to be, how the good old days are long past, and how young people just don't have the brains to know a good book when they see one the way WE did in my day.   Rather this will be a call for change.   I think the publishing industry has its head in the sand, or maybe in a darker place, and that everything we know about books is changing.   This change is snowballing the publishing industry toward oblivion.   And it's because if this, the web.  
   I am a die hard Kindle fan.  I am now on my second Kindle, a DX, and never touch a traditionally bound book if I can help it.    And I am now a huge proponent of the self published book.   This blog will be part book review, part soap box, and part clarion call for change.
   Some history is in order.   When I was sixteen I wrote my first novel.   In those days you typed out the book on a device called a typewriter (a now extinct machine - the last factory making them closed in India this year).   When the book was typed you sent it off to a publisher and waited.    Usually the book would return with a thump on your doorstep.   Inside would be a terse note saying the work did not fit their plans.    A line that indicated they actually read it was a jolt of encouragement.    You then sent it to the next publisher and waited.   
    Oddly enough, my book was picked up by a publisher and set for publication.  Thinking back on it, the book was dreadful and why it was picked up is beyond me, but that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to relate.   Once it was accepted, an editor was assigned to you and the process of turning the book from a jumble of words to a real novel began.   I'm sure every editor saw himself as Maxwell Perkins.   I became very good friends with my editor.   His suggestions were very helpful.
  As it turned out my book was never published.   I did get some money for it, but that's a different story.   I'm talking here about the process.
   Jump ahead fifty some odd years to a book my daughter recently wrote.   She's a dance teacher and wrote a children's book for fourth graders.   She had a captive focus group who read the work as it was being written, and she ended up with a book kids really liked.    What was the process she had to follow to get it published?   Well, publishers no longer read books.   Now you have to have an agent.    If an agent likes the work, they want you to hire an editor to read it.   In Anne's case, the editor said the book was fine, which indicates he never read it because it had all sorts of spelling errors and duplicate words.  Spell checkers work only up to a point. Anyway, it went back to the agent ready to go.   And then nothing happened.   Nothing.
    So Anne had another idea.   Why not try self publishing?   I my day (i.e. fifty years ago) a self published book meant you were a looser.    It meant you actually paid to have the book printed.   And the price was not cheap.   As I remember the minimum cost in 1956 was about three thousand dollars.  Anne, on the other hand, went to CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company.    The family got together to edit the book and get rid of the embarrassing misspellings, etc. and Anne put it up on the web for free.  Free.    It then went on Amazon as a printed book.   For free.   The book is TURTLE SOUP AND TIRAMISU  by A.E. Ramsay and sells for $7.99.   She's in the process of setting it up as an eBook which will go to both the Kindle and the Nook.    If she wants copies for herself she can order them for $2.50 each.   It's printed on demand, so there is no inventory.    The book now can be found in a number of local book stores, where it has sold, and has been reviewed on Goodreads.
   Let me think about this.   Why would any author with a brain in his head not publish this way?   The publishers have become surrogate printers and apparently add no value to the process  beyond the fact that they can warehouse books, ship them to stores, and take them back when they don't sell.
   In this blog I will discuss this whole process even further and try to review self published books (and others).  I will also rant about eBooks, which I think are the real future of publishing.