*Image by Hark A Vagrant

Say you've never read a book before. I know, impossible. But just picture yourself as someone who has somehow gone through life never having read a book. And then, somehow, you want to begin. Maybe all your friends have finally convinced you that volunteer illiteracy is craziness, I don't know. Anyways, you want to dive in hard and read a crap ton of books. Well, if it were any other time period, the answer would be stupid simple: go to a bookstore and buy a book. Well, thanks to the internet and some major media conglomerates, this is no longer a simple question. So, new reader, what do you do? Well, you follow this guide. That's what. Follow the answers to these questions and you will be on your way to a fruitful life of literacy. 

How many books do you want to read? 

One. I just want to read one book.: Just go buy the book. 

The entire Harry Potter, Twilight, and Star Wars collections: Buy a Sony Pocket Reader, as you will recoup the cost of the $200 reader as soon as you've purchased your 20th $9.99 book, and you'll have them all with you in a tiny package. You also won't be burdened with the physical copies when the fad is no longer acceptable.

Every book published in the 20th and every other century: If you don't mind swapping them in and out of your collections, the Sony Pocket or any sub-$250 reader will do. If you want them all at once, go with a reader with expandable memory and lots of readable formats (epub, mobipocket, LRF, etc) because some books are only available in some stores. You will also have to buy some physical books, as not every published book has been digitized yet. 

Why are you even suggesting ereaders? I already have an iPhone

Well, hey, that's great. You have an iPhone. Or you have a Blackberry. Or a laptop. Or you've pre-ordered an iPad because Apple said they do books now. Swell. The problem tech companies and many people don't realize is that there is a huge difference between passive and active reading, and that while it may be somewhat sane to sit for 8 hours a day and work on a computer, it's something else entirely to read large amounts of text for large amounts of time. Ask any editor: their (and your) eyes suffer for it. Ereaders don't emit any light, and the good ones don't reflect light either (this counts out any reader with a touch screen, since the extra layer is reflective and produces glare) so you're not staring into a tiny sun. This isn't just me talking, either. Studies show that "1 out of 6 patients requiring eye examinations have a computer-related eye problem." The options for reading shouldn't be Lit-screen device VS ereaders VS books. It should be a combination of ereaders and books. 

Books take forever to get through. Can't I just watch the movie when it comes out? 

There's a lot of debate about that, actually. Sure, it might take a while to get through War and Peace, but the average book is 300 pages. An hour of reading before bed kills one of those every week, if you're slow. The advantages of passive reading, as opposed to only reading short passages online, are paramount. Increased imagination is only one thing. The more people read, the more educated their opinions of the world become. They more they're able to communicate. And even though books are probably the slowest form of learning the news, they are the most effective way of deeply informing the populace on serious issues that take time to understand. 

Books can be boring. But you know what? Don't read those books. Don't finish them. Put them on the shelf. Go get another book. You're never going to run out of books. Read the stuff that makes you want to read the next page. Don't listen to anyone regarding the quality, either. Are harlequin romances the only thing that gets you to pick up paper? Read those. Da Vinci code? Read that. Whatever it takes, read it. Even if everyone thinks it's a bad book, if you like it, read it. Reading, unlike playing video games, driving cars, or eating, is always going to be good for you. The idea is that once you get into the habit of it, you will become addicted. Books are one of the few things in this world you should be addicted to. 

Why would I want to join a book club? And how would I go about doing it?

Book clubs can be awesome (this press began as a book club, and Éisee and I met at a book club). They can also be boring. Here are two basic things to remember in maintaining the quality of a book club:

1) Digressions will happen and are important

2) Alcohol is wonderful. 

Okay, that second one only pertains to the adults in the audience, and even then only to a point. I've been to a few book clubs where people definitely needed to be separated due to having one too many. But that's a rare exception. Have the book club in a bar, or a cafe that has a license. Or, have it at home. Anywhere. Just make sure it's cozy. Keep the topic on the book only so long as people seem to care, then socialize your heart out. You will learn things about the book you didn't think while reading it (and which might make you want to reread it). Oh, one other piece of advice: it's not a book report. It's okay if you didn't pick up on a piece of subtext. 

In terms of finding book clubs, try Facebook or Twitter, or go to your local bar or café and ask the owners if there's a club running. If you can't find anywhere, try asking on craigslist in the community section. If all else fails, you might have to make your own. I'll have advice on that in a different blog.

Okay, I'm going broke from buying books. Thanks a lot, book pusher. 

Books, pound for pound, are an incredibly cheap medium. Twenty bucks buys you a week's worth of entertainment. You're not going to get that deal with anything else. Still, it can definitely pile up. Here are two fairly obvious tips:

1) Trade with your friends, or with people online. There's absolutely no law says you can't re-sell your books or swap them for others. And even if there were, who's going to enforce it?

2) See that run-down building over there with the daycare? That's a library. There's thousands of free books in there. Go to it. Give it a hug. 

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All of this seems pretty obvious to dedicated readers, but none of this advice is for you. It's for the majority of people who read less than a book a year. It's for the people who can't seem to find the time to get a new hobby, even though they blow through hours and hours playing crappy flash games on Facebook. You know who you are.

Competency in publishing from K Sawyer Paul on Vimeo.

Oh, right, Apple's Tablet thing is coming out next week. 

the last time major publisher Random House published from the slushpile was in 1991. Many publishers do not even look at un-agented unsolicited manuscripts anymore due to legal concerns or tight funds in today’s economy.

The thing to learn from this? Get an agent. That's the new step.

–When you start out, try writing faster, and lowering your standards (this isn’t a typo, I really mean to say “lowering”).

–Don’t allow yourself to get stuck on one idea, or seduced by working on a very small piece of your prose for too long.  Your aim should be to get as much of a zero draft as possible, as quickly as you can. Later on, you can revise to your heart’s content, and work toward “getting it perfectly right,” so long as you realize that you’ll only approach, and not achieve that goal.

This lends itself to a popular sentiment that's growing with modern authors: the zero draft. It's less than a first draft because it's often so scattershot. My zero drafts are usually written in a speed-writing haze, like a Nanowrimo novel. Once I have enough weight in words, I then go in and pick it apart, grabbing the parts I need, discarding those I don't. Then I write a good first draft. 

found, for example, that illegal copies of “Freakonomics,” bySteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, were downloaded 1,082 times and “Angels & Demons,” by Dan Brown, 7,951 times. 

Among other popular stolen books, of course. And then, of course, the caveat:

Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Company, a book industry consultant, said many people who might illegally download an e-book would never have bought it in the first place.

See? There you go. One of the reasons pirates, er, pirate as much as they do is partially do to the complete lack of demos that any ebook store has. I can't, for instance, download a book from the Sony Store and give it back 6 hours later if I don't like it. It's mine, forever. So can you blame me (or the pirates) for downloading a copy and seeing if I like it first? Well, actually, you can. Because I doubt anyone who steals the Da Vinci Code is going to go and buy the real ebook once they have the stolen one. 

Still, though. 9 million? that's it? That's pretty good, I'd say. The music industry wishes they only had a 9 million problem. 

Stop spamming people with your writing from K Sawyer Paul on Vimeo.

When Amazon "sells" you a Kindle ebook, they don't really sell it to you. If you read the fine-print, you'll see that they're waving their hands furiously and declaring that you aren't "buying" the book, but rather "taking a license to a limited set of uses" for the book. Whereas a book that you buy comes with all kinds of rights, such as the right to sell or give the book away (Jeff Bezos: "[W]hen someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.") a book that you license from Amazon comes with a very small subset of those rights, as defined by a lengthy and difficult-to-grasp "license agreement."

It's such a silly notion that even Amazon can't keep its story straight. Take this press-release in which Amazon trumpets that its "customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books." Purchased, not "licensed."

Or consider this ad (courtesy of Elix): "Kindle publications are sold by Amazon Digital Services, Inc." Again, sold, not "licensed."

I don't get the problem. The fine print says you are licensing a copy of the ebook from Amazon. At no point in time does it say you don't own it, however. That's always been a matter of debate amongst rights-activists like Doctorow. The license gives you access to, I believe, 5 users granted access to the ebook. That, to me, sounds exactly the same as the Sony Store, where buying ebooks there nets you a 5-user license. Except that Sony has claimed numerous times that you own the books you buy from them, the license is the same. It's actually identical to iTunes' licensing before this year, where buying an mp3 meant you could listen to that mp3 on 5 computers. But you owned that, too. As far as i'm concerned, if Sony and Apple consider that owning a file, I don't see why Amazon can't also consider it ownership as well. 

It's not hypocrisy to sell you a license. It's still selling. Doctorow, like many "ownership" obsessed folks in the publishing industry, really doesn't like the DRM tactic, and that's his right. He doesn't buy anything from these companies apparently, and that's his right too. But people really didn't have that many problems with iTunes when it had the 5-user agreement. I haven't had any problems with Sony's 5-user agreement. And I'm sure people who own Kindles have absolutely no problem with the 5-user license. To me, it sure as hell beats the DRM infused on my real, physical books. Sure, I might be able to lend them or sell them, but once they're out of my hands, I can't access them. That's some pretty crummy protection against piracy, if you ask me.

The book industry is coping with the fact that on Christmas Day, for the first time in history, Amazon sold more digital books than paper books, and also with Google's designs on digitizing every book they legally can. So, as you can see all of the silos in the publishing industry are desperate for innovation.

Really? Is the book industry coping with that? Is it sitting in a corner, looking at a scrap book of photos from the 30s, when nobody did anything else but read? Of course it wasn't, because half of the people living in the 30s couldn't read, let alone purchase things that weren't edible. Also, the book industry isn't a person. If you feel sorry for the book industry, you are crazy. The book industry doesn't exist as anything other than a buzz term. 

And even if it did, I think it would be happy that there was a new medium out there that has literate buyers excited to buy books again. Crazy how lowering prices from a $36 hardcover to a $9.99 ebook might garner some extra sales. I would think the book industry would be happy Google is digitizing books left and right and creating a store where subsidiaries go to authors and publishers, because at least there's one company out there willing to do the grunt work. But yeah, the book industry isn't a person, so feeling happy for it means you are crazy, too.

If you're a reader, read. Buy books. Support the authors you love. If you're a writer, write. Talk to your fans sometimes. Let them know you appreciate their support. That's the book industry. Everybody else involved, and this goes towards publishers, booksellers, and every other tech and non-tech middleman can go straight to hell.