Different yokes for different folks

Friday, October 1st. Robin Crew was brought in for questioning as a person of interest in the brutal murder and dismemberment of his free time earlier this week.

Police Chief Warren Bignews released a statement earlier today. "Although it is clear that Mr. Crew was not willfully involved in the heinous act of savage time killing that took place on Monday, we need to assess whether or not his self-inflicted, obviously masochistic schedule has left him without the ability to properly nurture his free time."

Mr. Crew released only a rambling, incoherent statement to the press about deadlines and duties as his defense. Leading Psychronologist Arthur Bull, best selling writer of "The proper care and feeding of Free Time" has suggested Mr. Crew is a Chroniopath, or one who feels time has no rights.

One interesting thing I should mention. Many publishers will give you free copies of upcoming books in exchange for reviews. Do you run a bookclub? Or a book review blog? You might be able to wrangle free materials out of them, but keeping up might be harder than you think. For starters, you need to do quite a few books. Most people don't read that much. It also means reading what they send you and doing so quickly. It also means focusing exclusively on front list. I dunno about you. I love books, but I'm not a bibliophile. I love video games just as much. I also watch movies, read the ocassional comic and listen to old radio dramas sometimes. Also, except for a few authors, I generally won't even read trade paperback. I wait for mass market. Save some money and give books time to get some reviews from people whose opinions I care about. The reccomendations of bookstore owners mean nothing to me. They may pick fantastic books, but they have a vested interest in selling them. Why did I start reading Lisa Sees? Because an old family friend whose opinion I respect reccomended her highly. If you don't read everything the minute it comes out, this situation may not work for you.

See, I had the privelage of being in a room full of book marketers today and they discussed the books they were reading. Most were recent. Some weren't out yet. One was reading a book from a few years ago that was being re-launched. I was reading a book hundreds of years older than myself. They looked at me like they'd never heard of the idea of "classics" much less the book in question, which is world famous. "Backlist? What's that?" It may be a big part of the business, but not for marketing. And marketing runs these endeavors, giving away promotional copies and whatnot.

Maybe it's just that I'm still mostly on the outside, but the sheer volume of information people in publishing walk around with is astonishing. The names and books they'll recognize instantly are on lists miles long. And if you say you're reading Catch-22 they'll ask if it was the one about the sad old Russian written by that drunk guy. And you'll just be left wonderinf who the hell they're thinking of and where they went to highschool that they've never read Catch 22.