Courtesy of wikipedia.org.
A writer on my social media page announced he’d published his first book, recently. Overjoyed, he included a favorable comment from a well-known book review company. “I’m a genius,” he concluded tongue in cheek.
Like a first kiss, his elation was understandable. Who doesn’t love to be admired? I’d read excerpts from his book on his social media page and thought a good review was warranted.
As the novel was a small press publication, I knew the review had been purchased. For Kirkus and other large companies, freebies go to authors of the Big 5 publishing houses. In the good old days, paying for comments was taboo, like submitting fees to enter a literary competition. But times have changed. Even so, I mourn the way money has infected the industry.
For example, today, artists face a minefield of scammers, those who pass as book promoters but do it poorly or not at all. The only service I’ve ever purchased is the one writers tend to overlook. A good editor. Asking friends to comment on a manuscript doesn’t do the job. Friends want to remain as friends, after all.
Ignorant of the midfield they would face, many people confess they’d like to write a book. Do they know the number of readers is diminishing, I wonder. Probably not as I’ve heard them confess they do little reading themselves.
In 2025, I will publish my final book. Grimahlka and Other Fantasies. Like my memoir, Getting Lost to Find Home, it will be an imprint of Rutherford Classes. Despite the stigma of self-publishing, I delight in having control of my property. After contracts with small and medium-sized houses, I have nothing to prove.
The following year, in 2026, my blogs will continue to appear on this webpage in the Write Away section, but I will leave all social media platforms. That will reduce my exposure to new readers, sadly, but numbers have never been my game. A rose blooming alone in the desert still lifts its petals to the sun.
Admittedly, 2026 seems too far into the future to announce my intentions. Still, I’ve chosen to declare my long goodbye so those who have yet to subscribe to the blog have time to consider joining me here. Like all writers, I cherish my relationship with readers, a mind-meld …so intimate, so insidious, that even [-] authors don’t always comprehend it. (“The Lost Cause,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vanity Fair, Nov. 2024, pg. 65.)
Even so, in 2026, I’m pulling the plug on Facebook, Tumblr, and X. What I seek is the sanity of the analog world.
