Alan Jacobs

Yes, there is a traditional gamer lifestyle. God ordained that it’s one man, one joystick. Read your Bible folks, it’s right there… in Sega Genesis.

[gallery] Little River Canyon, Alabama

‘Here’s the secret to living in a log house: You got to love the color brown,’ Kevin said. 'But you can hang a picture anywhere.’

[gallery] thegetty:

“I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower—and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the world.”

Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her sister. Elinor only laughed.

—Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, published on October 30, 1811

Wooded Landscape by Paulus Lieder and Landscape with a Bare Tree and a Ploughman by Leon Bonvin, The J. Paul Getty Museum; Fantastic Oak Tree in the Woods, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, The Getty Research Institute

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My father-in-law, James Lynn Collins, died last night, at home, in his own bed, surrounded by family, at the age of 90. (If you have to go — and reliable evidence suggests that you do — there aren’t many better ways.) The top picture is him with his beloved daughter, who would become my wife; the bottom picture is him with his beloved grandson, Wesley; the middle picture speaks for itself, I think.

Two stories. First: Dad sang beautifully and played the guitar — in fact, he learned some of his first guitar chords from Hank Williams (yes, the Hank Williams)— and had in his mind a vast repertoire of Baptist hymnody. Two days ago, when he was fading, his son asked him who he hoped to see when he made his crossing. He smiled and murmured, “When by His grace I shall look on His face, That will be glory, be glory for me.”

Second: If you knew Dad, that picture of him with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, holding a shark, is a bit comical, because he was the kindest and gentlest of men. But he was also a big strong man, and he could get roused when his family were endangered. When he was in high school, for instance, there was a local bully whom everyone lived in terror of, and you can tell a lot about what kind of guy he was when you hear that people called him Cat Killer. But he made the mistake of picking on Dad’s younger brother Gene, and paid the price. And just a few years ago, at Dad’s seventieth high-school reunion, an old classmate whom he had never known very well came up to him and said, “Lynn Collins, I’ll never forget you. You’re the man that whooped Cat Killer.”

[gallery] “But the Weyerhaeuser headquarters seem purpose-built, rhetorically and materially, for one of Seattle’s growing companies. As Way noted to the Seattle Times, its brawny, low-lying aesthetic is still the dominant one for Pacific Northwest Modern. If you weren’t told that the building was from 1971, would you know? It’s amazing to me how well this headquarters has worn, unlike some of its glassier and boxier East Coast counterparts. Residential communities have grown up nearby, and the thinking behind Weyerhaeuser’s original site choice—equidistant from Seattle and Tacoma, near the airport—remains appealing to many. Rather than embarking on a massive, top-secret earthwork to recreate a childhood memory, or trumpeting an open plan that is hardly revolutionary, Facebook, Apple, or even a local university could use Weyerhaeuser’s historic building to test a more interesting and less heroic theory: that adaptive reuse can be the most environmental choice of all—even in the suburbs.” — Alexandra Lange.

But our current fetish for the urban trumps all other considerations.

As Megan McArdle reminds us, “Publishers are middlemen. Everyone hates middlemen.” Maybe we can think a little more clearly about all this if we drop the term “middleman” and think about what publishers do.

I’ve published a dozen books with a variety of publishers, and here’s a partial list of what they have done for me:

• edited my text, several times, looking for and correcting errors of all kinds
• transferred the text from a word-processing document to a typesetting environment
• chose a typeface and a design
• laid out the text according to that design
• designed a cover
• solicited endorsements
• sent the book to the printer
• distributed the book to bookstores (including online ones)
• created multiple digital version of the book
• distributed those to sellers
• sent review copies to appropriate sources, and followed up when necessary to encourage reviews
• arranged for some combination of readings and (TV, radio, online) interviews
• kept track of sales and mailed me royalty checks

Almost all of these things will need to be done, in almost all cases, if you want your book to be successful. And you can do them all yourself, if you are so inclined, and then keep all the money you make — if you make money. But you’ll have to put out money first, especially if you want hard copies. Even if you’re content to do an e-book only (thus dramatically reducing your sales opportunities), you’ll have to make major investments of time and energy — which will leave you less time and energy for writing. Then there’s the question of whether you actually have the skills to do any of this well.

So maybe you’ll want to farm some of that stuff out? Well, okay, but that will cost more money up front — and the more of it you farm out, the closer you’ll come, as Guan Yang has pointed out, to re-creating publishers — but out of your own pocket, and assuming all the risks yourself.

So take that route if you want. As I’ve said, it has worked for some. But know what you’re doing.

As for me, I plan to continue to seek contracts with publishers. I am very grateful for all they have done over the years to assume most of the financial risks of putting my books out there, and to take out of my hands a great deal of work that I don’t want to do and wouldn’t do very well. I write better than I design, market, sell, and distribute; and I enjoy writing much more than I would enjoy doing any of those things. The publishing system seems pretty well designed for people like me.

A lot of work goes into publishing a book. Someone needs to edit the manuscript. The manuscript must be typeset and copy-edited. A cover has to be designed (most self-published books are terrible in this regard). The book needs to be marketed to readers, which can require producing ads and seeking out publicity. Paper books have to be printed, stored, shipped to distributors and bookstores, and sold; returns need to be managed. E-books have to be converted to various formats, ideally not just using automated tools.

Self-published authors can try to do all of these jobs themselves. Many attempt that, and it shows. Or they can outsource some or all of the tasks. When doing so, it’s best to use professionals who have tried to publish a book before. Maybe a team that’s used to working together. Perhaps the people even sit in the same building, so that they can quickly coordinate.

Congratulations: You have just re-created publishers, but without advances.

The essay is called “Vanishing Act.” The tag line: “How does a man disappear?”

Yes, Martin Sklar had disappeared, all right; so thoroughly that it was virtually impossible to imagine anyone ever tracking him down. But James Livingston is not just anyone. He had what it took to find Sklar, even when the onerous task took him to “the middle of nowhere” — to the “outer darkness,” to an utter “backwater.”

So where — you may ask, with bated breath — where did Livingston finally run Sklar to ground? What obscure and unvisited corner of the globe? Borneo, perhaps? The Central African Republic? Outer Mongolia? Please. It would have been child’s play to find Sklar in any of those places. No. James Livingston did what perhaps only James Livingston could have done: he tracked Sklar all the way to his remotest refuge, his place of absolute isolation: Lewisburg, Pennsylvania — where Sklar taught for many years at Bucknell. As the tenured holder of an endowed chair.

Such isolation! Such “utter obscurity”! Why, did you know that Lewisburg is more than one hundred and fifty miles from New York City? A thought not to be borne. But thank goodness James Livingston, with an intrepidity and resourcefulness scarcely to be imagined, made the journey and (more remarkable still) lived to tell the tale. A Pulitzer would scarcely be sufficient to reward such a feat of investigation and reportage.

[gallery] The Wear, Durham