Sales, By the Book

At one point in my life, I was thinking of writing a non-fiction book. It's something I always wanted to do. My plan was to use some of the articles I've written for this website as a foundation.  But then I looked at the average sales of non-fiction books from this article:  "The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing." Ugh.

3. Despite the growth of e-book sales, overall book sales are still shrinking. After skyrocketing from 2008 to 2012, e-book sales leveled off in 2013 and have fallen more than 10% since then, according to the AAP StatShot Annual 2015. Unfortunately, the decline of print sales outpaced the growth of e-book sales, even from 2008 to 2012. The total book publishing pie is not growing—the peak sales year was in 2007—yet it is being divided among ever more hundreds of thousands of print and digital books.

4. Average book sales are shockingly small—and falling fast. Combine the explosion of books published with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. According to BookScan—which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books (including Amazon.com)—only 256 million print copies were sold in 2013 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined (Publishers Weekly, January 1, 2016). The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 2,000 copies over its lifetime.

5. A book has far less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore. For every available bookstore shelf space, there are 100 to 1,000 or more titles competing for that shelf space. For example, the number of business titles stocked ranges from less than 100 (smaller bookstores) to up to 1,500 (superstores). Yet there are several hundred thousand business books in print that are fighting for that limited shelf space.

It's stunning to me that the total number of copies of non-fiction print books sold each year is less than the number of Americans.  Someday I might again reverse, but these numbers put the kibosh on my book-publishing passion.  For now, It's good to know that I have a website where I can publish my ongoing, evolving, thoughts on a number of topics.  I can write about anything that interests me.  At a minimum, it serves as a personal diary.  As a bonus, there is a fair amount of traffic coming to the site, which leads me to hope that some others are finding some of my thoughts to be useful.  I started this website in 2006 and it has served well as a platform for developing my ideas and interacting with others who show an interest.

I have a lot of new ideas I've been working on (including many dichotomies that I had intended to feature in my book). Most of these ideas concern cognitive science and philosophy. If my work life cooperates,  I'll be carving out more time in a typical day to work on my ideas - - I hope to publish more ideas to which I can lay personal claim, though everything I write is with a heavy debt to hundreds or thousands of other people I've encountered in person or through their writings.

Onward!

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Harper’s Letter on Justice and Open Debate

We are now beginning to hear the other side of a much-needed debate advocating for the need for robust and open debate. Too many careers have already been threatened or ended by a misstep or two on an invisible ever-changing minefield containing far too many untethered and unsustainable ideas. And whatever happened to do unto others? Here is the final paragraph of the Harper's Letter signed by numerous artists, thinkers and writers who fear for the future. The document is titled: "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate":

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

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On Gibran, Silence and Friendship

I have been able to find increasing amounts of solitude lately. Part of this is that my daughters have been away at college, but there have been other reasons that I will merely characterize here as opportunities for growth.

Spending more time in solitude has enabled me to desynchronize from my surroundings, which has allowed me to reintroduce myself to myself (the Fundamental Attribution Error be damed!). The quiet is also fertilizer for groves of spouting thoughts that are much more colored and varied than those philistine thoughts that push their way out when we are trapped in environments of commotion.

Last year I had the opportunity to travel to Lebanon. While there, I toured the Kadisha Valley north of Beirut. It truly felt like a holy place based on its deep history. I knew I was following in the footsteps of the many others before me as I hiked through the valley. I took the following photos while there, including the bottom photo, a grove some of Lebanon's ancient cedar trees (they are so revered that they appear on Lebanon's flag).




I thought of these images as I read Maria Popova's article, "Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself."  Gibran was born along the Kadisha Valley in a town called Bsharri.  As I hiked, it seemed to me that the Kadisha Valley was exquisitely designed for evoking poetic thought.  That's how it was for Gibran.  Popova features an excerpt from Gibran's 1923 classic, The Profit, on the topic of solitude:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.


Gibran also explored silence in the context of friendship:

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.” And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.


I was touched by these inspirational verses.  I hope you have enjoyed these writings too, as well as these photos.

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When women write the screenplay of a movie, look what tends to happen . . .

The Bechdel Test, applied to some of the highest grossing films. The results are categorized by whether the film was written or co-written by women. To pass the test, #1 - Film has at least two women in it. #2 - Who talk to each other, about and #3 - Something besides a man. Yep, it's a pretty low bar. This study shows that when women are more involved as writers, the female characters are more active and interactive.

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The cost of interruptions

When I'm trying to write, I really get frustrated with interruptions. That's why I try to write at times when interruptions will be limited, and I turn off my phone and close my email while I write. Today I discovered that the effects of interruptions have been measured. This stunning conclusion is complements of Gloria Mark, Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine:

How long does it take people to get back on task? We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.
The article offers that not all interruptions are the same, and in fact, some interruptions are beneficial. However, the author of this article echoes my own general frustration:
Are we becoming more superficial thinkers? I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can’t possibly be thinking deeply. There’s no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there’s just no way I’d be able to think deeply about what I’m doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you’re on the treadmill like this, it’s just not possible to achieve flow.

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