I have a confession to make: I’ve been thinking I should get a device. I know I’ve gone on the record for how much I loathe devices. But it’s going to become a professional liability to not understand and participate in this craze that is sweeping the nation. Drink it, dude. I don’t know. GOd help me, I was hoping to retire before I had to cross this electronic bridge but it’s all happening so fast. I wish I could have had an enhanced e-book for Food and Loathing. There could have been links to Dunkin’ Donuts, Entemann’s, and Little Debbie. THere could have been clips of people at OA meetings talking shit about themselves and pretending to be grateful. There could have been a simulated psychiatrist’s session where a girl cries and a middle aged white man in a window pane suit and saddle shoes tells her to stop crying wolf. And then there can be an app for calorie counting and weighing yourself and calibrating how much you hate yourself. And then you can link your fine ivory ass to Assbook and make friends or frenemies with other people who also hate themselves and like to post pictures of themselves at National Parks. And then you can tweet the whole motherfucking thing. Maybe I’m not ready.
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I spent a few days thinking of ways to mortify Betsy in this space, but I don’t have a copy of her updated book, and I don’t have the patience to click on every link in her blogroll looking for things to hate. I considered writing about how your publishing ‘team’—your agent and editor and publisher—functions like a family, more specifically a family in which your publisher fucks you under the stairs while your editor pretends not to notice.
I was on a flight from Amsterdam to Newark the other day when I noticed that every other person was reading a Kindle. Then it hit me. I am almost fifty years old and I might never have a book published. By that I mean a real book that I can hold next to my heart and then put away on a shelf. Even better, on my mother’s shelf. Something I can finish. Something I can dedicate. I have written all my life, but nothing has ever been really truly finished. I enjoy my status as a late bloomer, but now I see I may be too late for a real book.
you invite me to your house, I’m going to rifle through your medicine chest. It’s that simple. In that spirit, I want to know what you’ve got on that dang Kindle. I can tell you what’s on my bedside table: Henrietta Lacks, Tinkers, some book about Russian novels with a Roz Chast cover, Savage Detectives, Stuff, Words in Air (I never finished the last 80 pages because I didn’t want it to end), and a book that has the calorie count of every food on earth). So what are today’s most sophisticated and critical writers and readers downloading, i.e. the readers of this blog? Or if you’re still holding out, what’s on the night table?? Hit me.
A soccer mom buddy is reading the Franzen on her Kindle. I submitted a new project to 16 editors on Friday; they all wanted it for their Kindles. Friends, I can feel it. Just like the answering machine, the VCR, the cell phone, the IPod, and sanitary napkins with wings — innovation will win out. I noticed at B&N that you could get a Kindle cover from Lily Pulitzer, Coach, and Burberry. Now, that’s special.
Just this week, Newsweek reports that Kindle sales exceed Amazon’s hardcover list. A new weekly digital magazine is launching headed up by former magazine journalists and editors. The NYT reports that ebooks have gone from 2.9% of trade book sales to 8.5% over the last year. Predictions are up to 40% within 3-5 years. And, for fuck’s sake, Pete Hamill is publishing his new book only in an e-book edition. Though he did wonder what he’d sign at the book signing. Good question.
I wish I had something to say to inspire you tonight, but my tank is low if I’m going to be honest. I know I’m not an ER nurse, but sometimes this work is incredibly draining. Worse, I know that whatever anxiety I’m feeling whether it’s waiting for an editorial response, waiting for money, waiting for an offer, etc. it’s far worse for the writer. I have all these children living in my shoe. When something doesn’t happen for one, it’s bound to happen for another. One writer is getting tons of attention, a fat new offer on her next book, foreign sales galore. Another writer can’t get arrested. And three years from now their situations might be reversed; fickle are the gods of publishing.
Agents’ lunch today. Major topic of discussion: 
Betsy Lerner 