The more complicated the index, the more complicated the solutions to translate it for digital use. For example, the indices often contain multiple page references per item. Should publishers keep the page numbers as a means of having individual items to link to each particular reference, knowing that page numbers no longer apply? Regardless of what solution is reached here, since the linking is manual work, the more complicated the task becomes, the more expensive and the more prone to error the task becomes.

To be honest, of course, creating a digital index is not any more manual or prone to labor than creating a physical index, but digital publishing, though booming, is nowhere near the point of paying the sums of money that index experts (fairly) demand, and the basic reading experience that current devices aim for actually preempt putting anything close to this effort into a product. (Tablet publishing is another beast, perhaps to come to bear, but perhaps not, consider my solution below.) Therefore, we rely on the same companies to whom we outsource our digitization work, which itself even poses problems in titles that contain only narrative text and share the same escalating problems of complexity.

To respond to the index problem, I recommend implementing a solution to aggressively remove all indices from all titles. You may not feel like this is a perfect solution for your books, but let me offer the primary positive reason for which we made this decision.

All ebook readers (devices, apps, and other instances) have search functionality. Readers will have varying comfort levels searching for important terms, trained by their use of Google and other search engines. The solution is not perfect but is actually more likely to return what the user was looking for than an index, especially when you consider the human error that goes into making the digital index.

The ability to search for relevant terms is synonymous with a level of comfort with technology assumed in owning an e-reading device and provides an opportunity to improve reader experience without notifying them that a more frustrating option (a digital index) could also have been available.

Again, my existence has recently been acknowledged by a business I mentioned by name: Publishers Lunch. (Such is a symptom of the power of blogging plus Google Alerts: if you mention them, they will browse.) I said in my last blog post that to get mentioned by them by name was one of my professional ambitions. Well, they mentioned me by name!

I’m decidedly excited about this because I’m refusing to react as I reacted as a Twitter n00b back when. I could construe the actual mention, “[Keep trying, Greg Freed]”, as sarcasm, something I would otherwise be likely to do because a lack of context defaults to snark, my primary form of casual communication. But instead, I’m taking it as at least one of my previous employers took it: as a light hearted joke and maybe even encouragement.

I mean, I don’t know the Publishers Lunch people (I met one at a barbeque once) and they don’t know me, but we both take publishing seriously, which is where the ambition and mention both find their source. But something I consider strange happens when I tell people in publishing about this particular ambition: the general reaction is to kind of sneer and ask why. And I can understand this reaction from people who have received the honor before: like any award, it must lose its luster after you win it. And I can understand this reaction from people who assume they’ll be worthy of a legit mention some day: publishing is small, and insulation can give rise to snootiness bordering on arrogance.

But I am neither of these types of people; neither established nor confident of my coming establishment in the industry. I am a southern semi-intellectual who bought access to this particular echelon through a master’s program, and there’s every chance that if I don’t assign goals for myself, nothing will ever happen for me.  And if one is going to begin assigning goals, baby steps are the best way to start. Leaps and bounds only occur once you’re really settled, really rooted to your place.

I want to thank Publishers Lunch for this mention. Getting mentioned by the industry-leading news magazine is only a baby step to someone like me, someone who consistently over-reaches, constantly takes bites bigger than they can chew. But what Publishers Lunch did here was to divide one of my first steps into more manageable pieces and then give me one of them as a gift: I have been mentioned by name in Publishers Lunch. Now I just have to get mentioned in earnest, which was the only goal I saw before.

You see? Now, because of their generosity and humor, I feel like I’ve made a kind of progress and success, which I wouldn’t have otherwise felt. And that’s the outcome of attaining an ambition. If this were a video game, this would be an achievement I’d have earned through just playing the game.

Have you ever set a professional goal that’s been looked down upon by others? Have you ever achieved part of a goal that you didn’t realize before was a goal in parts? Tell me about it in the comments below!

So then, too, my professional ambitions. Being in publishing for a good many years now and having studied it both as a professional and academic, one of my ambitions is to make it I to Publishers Lunch, the primary form of industry news, an email sent on a daily basis with a summary of the news available on Publishers Marketplace.

This ambition has already split into steps, or degrees. My first goal was just to get mentioned in some way. Well, not only has my employer received several mentions since I started working there, projects over which I’ve had direct professional control have ended up there as well. And I had an increasing level of control over each project, so each mention is more satisfying than the one before it, a pleasant escalation.

So what’s the next step of this single ambition? To get mentioned by name, of course! Something like “The brilliant Greg Freed who has shown an unerring tenacity for generating book-quality books for the ebook market, has hit another homerun with this series, showing e-publishers and electronic producers everywhere that not only can high quality be attained but soon will be expected by customers everywhere.”

Like most of my dreams, an unmitigated delusion of grandeur, of course, that I do my damndest to live up to. And I won’t be sad if I fall a little short: falling a little short inversely implies quite a lot of successful movement. Which connects this next step in the Publishers Lunch ambition to another ambition of mine, which I’ll address in my next post!

Have a great day doing whatever it is you do, and DREAM LARGE. Share your ambitions in the comments below.

Ashley and I moved to Jersey City from Dorchester, MA in August 2010. In some ways, it was better than my move to Boston from Dallas because I had more lead time to know it was coming (two months vs. two weeks). On the other hand, having a significant other I had to consider made the going more difficult.

Ashley provided these challenges:
-that we disagreed on when we should move
-that I needed to get a larger place than I might otherwise have looked for
-that she brought two cats
-that she needed to be able to commute to Montclair, NJ for school

So we needed to find a place that was pet friendly, large enough for two people, a medium-sized dog, and two cats, and within a reasonable commute from Montclair. I, of course, intended to work in the city proper. The most ideal choice for this arrangement, geographically and by available transit, was Newark, but we have enough friends and family knowledgeable about Jersey to warn us off of that choice (crime, neighborhood quality, etc). So we were limited to Jersey City or Hoboken.

Hoboken has an average rate, for one-bedrooms, between 1300-1600 and can cost more depending on how nice you want to go. Downtown Jersey City is in the same price range, and Ashley and I were trying to keep our rent closer to $900-1200. Therefore, Jersey City Heights was the most ideal neighborhood.

However, Ashley was working and attending school, and I was piecing together my memoir for submission to Emerson, and we were tight on cash regardless of the time constraints, so we could only realistically make one trip to Jersey in order to make our decision. We decided to go with real estate agents since we couldn’t research any of the places ourselves, and we set up three appointments with three different agents (not ideal, but all of the agents were returning different locations so it was difficult to limit the appointments to one). We also scheduled to see a fourth apartment, shown by the building manager instead of an agent. As the date came, all of the agents cancelled, so we were left with only one appointment: the one shown by the building manager.

In most cases I would recommend this tactic, all considered. You get to meet the person responsible for your apartment’s upkeep, and no agents means no negotiating over fees means that you can keep discussions about price limited to per month and utilities. The apartment we saw was nice enough, but the neighborhood put me off, as did the manager, but choice was not on our side at that point: Ashley loved the unit, and we decided that we would do whatever it took to make at least the first year work. So we signed the papers, for better or worse.

Over the six months, my hesitation about both the neighborhood and the building manager proved pretty true to point, so I always urge you to trust your instincts insofar as your situation allows you to. Jersey City Heights (the cliffs above Hoboken) provide good access to Manhattan but only decent access to Hoboken–the 87 bus is not reliable but is the only constant mass transit down the cliffs to the city. To get out to Montclair, Ashley has to get the 87 into Hoboken: it comes only on a sporadic schedule, maybe on time 1 out of 3 time slots, and those changing day by day. NJ trains seem to be reliable, though, so there’s that, at least.

Therefore, when you move to a new city, be sure to thoroughly research your neighborhood, your landlord, and your transit situation. If you don’t have an adequate knowledge of these variables, you’re putting yourself at risk of a shock the moment you land.

More to come soon, probably tonight.

Jon Stewart is a comedian who satirizes the news, in particular the 24-hour news cycle.

Rachel Maddow is a commentator who comments, sometimes with satire, about political conflict in America.

The primary difference between them, and why according to Jon they’re not on the same level, is that Jon’s focus is on the news process while Rachel’s focus is on the political process. However, Jon’s show is so overtly political in nature that it’s hard to separate his content from political content. Jon’s show, at least according to the argument he put forth in the interview, is only accidentally politically focused. He talks about politics because news stations talk about politics. Rachel, on the other hand, talks about politics because she’s a news person, and politics is news. Therefore, her show’s focus on politics is purposeful and limited, basically different from The Daily Show’s purpose.

Therefore, the “game” that Jon references isn’t the political game, to say that he could become a political force. He’s not particularly critical of politics in general. The positive influence he seems to regret not having is on the news process: he regrets that he can’t create a news station from scratch that focuses on conflicts in the country other than the political. Rachel, on the other hand, is part of a major news network and has, presumably, the leeway to use different rhetorical approaches on her show than has been seen in the past. Jon referenced Keith Olbermann as one of the first movers in MSNBC towards the left to take up the polarizing begun by Fox  News. And while MSNBC seems offended at the accusation that they’re trying to be to the left what Fox is to the right, the change that Jon wants to initiate is that MSNBC be something other than the left to Fox’s right: he’s essential asking Rachel and others to find something other than politics and a narrative other than left vs. right by witch to define their news programs. He, being a comedian that comments on the news rather than a journalist who comments on politics, cannot initiate that shift.

Essentially, Jon wants to remain a comedian who satirizes the news, but he wants journalists to grow beyond people who comment on politics. The new conflict Jon proposes is corruption vs. not-corruption, which he seems to think is the primary purpose of news in the first place. Is this the type of news set forward by sites like OpenCongress.org and sites dedicated to the open sharing of governmental data? I’m not sure that’s what he means, because that process would allow the focus to remain only on politics and the political divide. But at least it would make the political conversation a little more complex and thereby a little more realistic.

Perhaps if Jon set out in particular terms what he means by the axis of corruption vs. non-corruption, news stations could pick it up and run with it. He is clear, however, that he is not a news person; he is a comedian that comments on the news. Rachel would do well, in my opinion, to realize that she is not a news-commentator but a news commentator, not one who reacts to the news but one who relays news, and thereby is much more fundamental, as Jon Stewart recognizes, in setting the tone of our nation’s media than Jon, whatever his ratings and media prowess.

But what we’re talking about in specific is children’s books from publishers across the board, and the children’s market across all industries is unhappily tainted with reports of corner-cutting. Perhaps we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a children’s book printed in China used that same ink mentioned in The Name of the Rose or a cheaper variant with the same implications. I suppose, all things considered, we’re lucky the books aren’t printed with lead ink!

Now I haven’t done the research on this, but I can’t really believe that the use of Indonesian pulp is an unsolvable problem. Any given forest is a renewable resource, and I don’t have many reservations about using wood, especially in the creation of paper. But I work under the assumption that if an action can be a sustainable practice then it should be. Is Indonesian paper cheaper because of the cost of labor? Then pay them to make a sustainable tree farm.

I’m not even advocating bringing the work back into the States, although perhaps I should. Keep it cheap to keep your margins, but people will pay for books that don’t promote deforestation. Make a cross-industry marketing initiative with a little foil sticker and a cute banana-eating monkey with proud wording that says, “No virgin pulp!” (It’ll be about as true of your copy as your pages, but that’s off topic.) On the other hand, if you just get your jollies from cutting down rainforests in order to print a book about conservation for children, well, there’s really nothing anyone can do for you.

**

Capillaries are so small as not to be seen by the unaided eye. Therefore, the best European science use to believe, as ridiculous as it seems today, that blood did not circulate through our bodies but was constantly generated and discarded. It wasn’t until William Harvey came along and in his book On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals offered several obvious but previously unseen arguments about how difficult it would be for a body to maintain a non-circulatory blood supply including food intake and waste based on the amount of blood pumped by the heart per pump. Harvey may not have know what capillaries were, but he proved that blood must circulate, which lead to their discovery. This book singlehandedly initiated the controversy about looking at the human body as a machine instead of as a mystery, from which comes all of modern biology (most true to this tradition neuro-psychology). Regardless of the metaphysical implications of such a view, the outcome of modern medicine itself encourages the pragmatism of such a system.

A few hundred years later and in the same spirit, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations served a similar role by replacing general mysticism about what wealth is and from whence it comes. Like blood cells, every dollar has an orgination point and follows a measurable path to a knowable destination. Adam Smith may not have known what I refer to as the problem of profit, but he did know that some abuse would occur once a system of the circulation of wealth was known, and so he listed some duties to which the people should hold their sovereign. Sovereigns’ general failure to maintain these guidelines because of power’s loyalty to laissez faire has in general lead to the Marxist theory of capitalism–that capitalism holds within itself the seeds of its destruction–and the peoples’ desire to maintain Smith’s duties of the sovereign has in some places inspired socialist movements.

Despite the dollar’s basic adherence to the law of conservation and the hundreds of years since the establishment of a system of economy, Americans continue to treat wealth as if it were a part of impregnable Fortune, and this is more true the lower the monetary class of the individual in question. But I liken the American economy and Smith’s wealth-circulation application therein to describing a patients’ bleeding to death in terms of Harvey’s system of blood-circulation. Harvey describes a closed and efficient system, and modern science makes up for this error by explaining why some blood is lost and where new blood comes from such that it remains essentially a closed system. But the circulatory system becomes open when wounded, sometimes losing blood at a rate faster than it can replace the loss. These situations can prove fatal, and this is exactly the situation of the American economy.

Profit is one means by which the closed system of the American economy is compromised. Importation and out-sourcing are other wounds, but these are mostly managable by law and extremely small compared to the problem of profit. The American economy exists within a system of world economies, and importation and out-sourcing are means by which these economies interact with each other. Profit, however, is the means by which wealth is removed from circulation within a system. Therefore, importation and out-sourcing can be seen as blood donations, basically useful and on occasion beneficial to both parties, whereas profit is a bruise, a self-inflicted wound in which all material is lost and from which no benefit can be derived.

**

Follow-up posts will include why profit-money can be considered as having left the system and a rebuttal to the argument of incentive.

I thought, when I read the article, that a disenfranchised public would hail the article as an answer, as in “Yes, that’s where our power went, and that’s where those idiots came from.” But apparently that was only my reaction. All things considered, NYBooks must look to old fashioned Republicans like part of the liberal elitist power structure, those nanny-government supporters who want to tell us what to do with our money and are okay with the government ruling us as long as it’s their government–which is the exact same stance as Rush Limbaugh, according to my father. And as long as we have two parties fighting to control what we do with our money when we’d rather do what we damn well please with it, how are we supposed to make a choice?

Our political situation

That’s been the status quo of politics since I began becoming politically aware: the choice is between the better of two evils. We assume, supposedly since Nixon, that politicians are hacks who will disappoint us but someone has to go into office, so it might as well be the evil closest to us instead of a more distant evil. We approach politics like this on a mass level, but it leads to a destructive cycle: whether we know it or not, selecting the better of two evils means that we are already powerless; sensing however obliquely this powerlessness, we become passionate in politics in an attempt to reclaim the lost promise, selecting the voice we feel most closely identifies with us, generally a candidate for the presidency despite that office’s isolated power; that voice fails because the political arena is such that the majority vote is always fleeting while a term lasts for several years; and then the individual who became passionate about politics once again resumes his powerless grumbling. Frustration is the name of the game.

The modern American scene reflects this cycle exactly on all counts even as the political arena suffers several specific changes. The Republican party is no longer (if it ever was) a conservative party. As I see it, the Republican party is focused on centralizing military power it then exercises for economic purposes. The Republicans do not want to tell you what to do with your money, they want to centralize all the world’s wealth into their pockets. This is done through low corporate regulations and high military power, but the military power requires government growth, which we saw under George W. Bush, and the agenda will not have ended with his presidency. Republicans are growing government.

However, as we repeated under the tutelage of our highschool government teacher, Republican is supposed to mean “small government” (supposedly attached with “big economy”). This contradiction can only be addressed by witnessing the Republican party’s drift into demagoguery vis a vis the Tea Party movement.  Lack of government control is the birthplace of Republican wealth, giving them the assumed advantage in their attempt to claim the voice of the outraged independents. But as the Democrats move left and the Republicans (seemingly) move right, both in attempts to reengage shrinking support bases, we the people don’t trust either the Democrats or the Republicans to build government control that will be worth anything to us in the end. Hence the Tea Partiers, a libertarian movement, therefore supposedly more closely connected with the Republican party, but really just an amalgamation of angry but powerless independent voices.

The recalibration of both major parties has blown a large hole in the echo chamber of our political scene, and while Lilla focuses on Fox News and the Republicans role (he is talking specifically about the Tea Party, loosely and mistakenly affiliated with the Republican party), Americans have lost faith in our political institutions for any number of historic and prgmatic reasons. But I see distrust in politicians and political institutions as two different things. We distrust politicians because we assume they are hypocrites (sort of defines the job) but political institutions because they are bloated and inefficient. Government bureaucracies are all-around stuck in the sixties when they last received a major vote of confidence, according to Lilla. And while the world and private institutions have changed to meet (partly) the capabilities of rising technology, bureaucratic offices themselves have made little or no movement towards convenience or efficiency.

Addressing elitism

The above is, with a little modification, what I take from the article. How can my reading be justified against my father’s?

Perhaps as the common criticism of me states that I am arrogant, I portray myself as part of the elite or at least consider myself a part of the elite. But I don’t take that criticism of my personality seriously, no matter how often it is flung my way, and so let me put move past it.

Perhaps it’s that being young and not living through Nixon or Reagan I never lost faith in authority per se even though I grew up with a complete distrust of politicians. But then what is the definitive split I see between authority and politicians that allows me to trust the one and not the other? I would say it’s my perception of the echo chamber.

First off, as Lilly alludes to, I do not see myself represented in any politician, but all things considered, it would be difficult for a politician to represent me in the face of America’s power structure. I am anti-corporate, I support open use rights’ managements, I believe in transparency on all levels even despite the undirected rage towards the status quo that I see around me. How would you represent that in a Washington so obviously ruled by special interest and corporate agendas?

Second, I sense a difference in having my voice echoed back to me versus finding one of my ideas in another voice. The echo chamber works as sound waves do: when one compression wave is met by another compression wave of equal frequency and force, the compressions negate each other. This type of silence makes me very wary. On the other hand, when I see an idea or observation I’ve had offered by someone else idly or in an argument–even if that argument is not necessarily connected to the way I would have used the observation–I feel that this instance reacts as energy does: transverse waves complement each other just as two flames grow in size when touched together.

I believe that this is the core separation between how I read Lilly’s article and how my father reads the same material. My father is looking for a politician that will offer his ideas back to him wholesale, increasingly difficult as the parties slide away from the independent zone towards a mutual growth of government power. The only politician that still espouses the ideas of my father’s youth is Ron Paul, who he supported emphatically, but Ron Paul failed as a presidential candidate and I do not realistically believe that there is any going back to the age of basic Republicanism he argues for.

The libertarianism of Ron Paul and the Tea Party movement are not directly connected. As Lilly says, the neoconservatives are trying to control the Tea Party by following it, but if this tactic works it will end in more government power, not less. Even while the rhetoric of the Tea Party is less government, the result will be the further increase in military and presidential powers as we witnessed under George W. Bush post-9/11. However, in politics the first party that can use the keyword without impute wins the debate, and as Lilly says it’s only a matter of time before the people who want less government realize that the Republicans onboard with the Tea Party want more government.

I’m not sure it’s all likely the fall out the way Lilly projects, but I do appreciate his analysis. My father does not appreciate his analysis. I will either have to find a way to bridge this gap or relegate myself to the liberal elite and watch my future book sales suffer. What a challenge.

**

i hold piracy a subject near and dear to my heart. i follow copyright conversations in detail, especially when my mind is working at full capacity (not during school breaks!). i will state outright that my sympathies are with the copyright violators. i state this bias even in the awareness that i plan to work in an industry whose income trickles (book publishing is not particularly lucrative) only from sources of intellectual property and that i myself am currently generating and plan to continue generating such sources: all of the creative work on this blog was birthed in the hope that it would be remixed or shared. (i also understand that a blog and a book are two very different things.)

what one would see, should one attempt to engage this cultural conversation, is a series of ethical attacks between those in power and those unthreading the power. i would like to break this strand of conversation, for as any reader of alistair macintyre’s after virtue (or any watcher of modern politics) would know, moral arguments are no longer the means by which people reach stasis or compromise but are merely one process in a set of processes meant to elongate engagement in order to put off reaching stasis or compromise.

the primary tool for nipping this rhetorical weed should be capitalism, except that the piracy movement is so drowned by psuedo-communist propaganda  that to speak in terms of practicality about it might seem an insult to the fanatics. but let us speak seriously: the eighteen million (and growing) users of file-sharing services do not think of communism specifically when they download any given file; rather, the great majority will think of entertainment or at least the delay of boredom. they download either because it is easier or cheaper than locating the media by another means. that is, file sharing is popular from a user standpoint because it is practical.

i would like to use a paraphrase from one of my favorite new york times articles to put the conversation in immediate perspective. business decisions are not moral decisions. we allow, via capitalism, businesses certain leeway in regards to tools reserved from them in the past in order to bolster their financial prowess. a business is never under moral attack, even were the psuedo-communistic rhetoric to work in full sway, which it never will. only the pirates can lose to moral attacks, but they are so popular now that they won’t. to paraphrase another favored source, CEO of the MPAA as caught in this documentary, the MPAA’s role is not to kill piracy for it will never die; their role is to hinder as much as possible the consumer from using pirate sources.

i therefore argue from a business perspective that piracy endures because it is emminently practical: the end-user recognizes it as such and the arch-rival specifically names the goal as hindrance, not victory. Piracy is a capitalistic outcome to the problem of availability even despite the pseudo-communistic propaganda offered by its most vocal and energetic proponents. The question is why capitalism is being outlawed rather than embraced in this economic environment.