Where have all the book sales gone…

Wondering Wednesdays

Wondering Wednesdays is a new feature I’m introducing here at the blog. Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips and Thankful Thursdays having been so helpful in providing a little structure for coming up with ideas. With a Friday Finding appearing last week, it seemed like Wednesday could have a theme, too.

I started out thinking it might be Wednesday’s Woes (and we may detour into that some weeks), but it seemed a little less woeful to devote this post to things about which I am wondering.

This Wednesday, I am wondering about book sales.

When I was a kid, I loved my school fair every year. It wasn’t the rides or the goldfish toss or the occasional celebrity appearance by Batman.

It was the book sale.

Tables and tables of used books set out in the cafeteria at five for a quarter or something insane like that.

I would spend hours looking through them, and then I would buy armloads.

And I am wondering what is going to happen to used book sales now that we are all transitioning to Kindles and iPads and Nooks and eReaders of all shapes and descriptions?

In the last few years, I have noticed fewer and fewer shelves of books at flea markets and street fairs. Thrift stores still have them. The library periodically (no pun intended) does a fundraiser of a book sale.

Aren’t they going to run out of material? Won’t books–actual hard copy books–known rather snidely these days as “dead tree books”–become so rare that they will no longer be available at a quarter apiece? Will those terrifically musty, dusty stores–where you take in a stack of old paperbacks and get store credit of one-fourth the cover price to be applied to new stacks of old paperbacks you can purchase at one-half the cover price–will they just disappear from lack of product to sell? What about the “Take One, Leave One” shelves at marinas all up and down the Intercoastal Waterway?

I like my Kindle. It sure makes it easier to travel with plenty of reading material. Mine uses eInk and no back-light, and it is easy on the eyes. I really like it.

But I can’t read it in the bathtub without worrying about dropping it, I can’t lend a book to a friend, I can’t sell those I’ve finished at a yard sale, and I will never be thrilled to discover the one Mr. & Mrs. North murder mystery I don’t own in a cardboard box in the back of garage.

Win something, lose something.

I’m wondering if we are ahead.

Tooting your own horn

You don’t need money to toot your own horn. You just need a horn.
—from a Citibank ad, of all things

A playwright is always his or her own first producer.

That’s an inconvenient truth.

It also applies to almost any kind of artist.

I’m extremely sorry to have to tell you this, but the chances of somebody knocking on your door to offer you a recording contract when they hear you singing in the shower are slim.

Your private journal, however steeped in literary eloquence, isn’t going to bring you a publisher if no one ever sees it.

You’ve got to get over all that early training about only speaking when you’re spoken to and acting like a lady and being modest and so forth.

Put your stuff out there.

Marketing is key. And it’s not just for Fortune 500 companies any longer.

These days, we all have access to a relatively inexpensive marketing tool that levels the playing field. It is easy–and important–to have your own website.

A lot of web hosts provide powerful tools to get you up and running quickly. In order to put your own stamp on your design, however, I highly recommend that you achieve a basic understanding of HTML (main markup language for web pages). Even if you use any or all of the various WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editors that allow for drag-and-drop design and which have come a long way since the early days, understanding the underlying codes is invaluable when there’s a problem.

Being able to edit the HTML can save you hours of confusion and frustration.

And this Tuesday’s Tip is a pointer to a great online tutorial, W3Schools, and a reminder about a nifty little program that makes editing that code much easier: Notepad++.

W3Schools is a terrific reference to all the major web design languages. It has great interactive online tutorials and lots of examples for beginners and a searchable reference for more knowledgeable users. I use it all the time.

And once W3Schools has helped me figure out what the code should look like on my webpage, I go to Notepad++ to help me implement the solution.

It’s possible to edit HTML in the regular old Notepad that comes with Windows. Notepad++, however–free to download and use–provides a number of additional features that will make you wonder how you ever survived without them.

It lets you edit multiple documents in the same window. Great for cutting and pasting useful bits of code from one page to another.
It allows color coding of syntax. Comments in one color, keywords in another, etc. So much easier to read the code that way.
It allows collapsing and expanding of sections of code. Just make the whole table disappear (in the code), while you work on the rest of the page, for example.
It allows search and replace across multiple documents. If you change the directory structure of your website, you can globally replace all references to any particular path.

There are other features I haven’t yet explored, but those alone have saved me hours of time.

We’d all like to spend all our time on creative endeavors. But if we want those endeavors noticed, we might have to toot our own horns.

Sometimes you CAN put off until tomorrow…

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

I procrastinate a lot.

And I usually feel guilty about it. The world is set up to reward those who get things done. Even your sneakers urge you “Just do it.”

Laziness, in my case, leads to some extraordinary efficiency–because I am going to find the easiest way to do something if it kills me–and to many missed opportunities. (Could have had this post done a week ago, for example.)

Today’s Monday Miracle, though, is the discovery that procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Here at Casa Lagarto, I don’t have much furniture, but I do have a labyrinth. I’m very fond of the labyrinth, because hey! It’s a labyrinth! Do you have one? And because my mom and I made it together, and because it was a cool way to use up some slate that was just sitting in the yard when we bought the Casa, and because it is a lovely peaceful way to spend some time outdoors.

When we laid out the slate, it was clear that maintenance was going to be a factor. I live in a subtropical climate. Grass and weeds grow like…well, like weeds…if given half a chance.

Being lazy, I didn’t do much prep work. We pretty much just drew the pattern with a non-permanent eco-friendly spray paint and dropped the stones where we wanted them. There was no digging or grading or anything.

And there we had the labyrinth. On top of the grass. (There wasn’t really so much grass right then. More of that anon.) The slate varied in height from thin little…um…slates…to slabs over two inches thick. Clearly, it was not going to be possible to mow the labyrinth as it existed on the first day.

I pondered the situation and decided that I was going to have to set each stone into the ground. You know. Level. So a mower could pass over it cleanly. But it was hot, and we had just moved a whole lot of rock, and it seemed that the digging part of the project could wait for another day. Meanwhile, I would use the weed whacker to trim the grass in and around the labyrinth.

That was two years ago.

The digging part of the project hasn’t happened yet. It was always too hot or too cold or I was too busy with other projects. Honestly, I just didn’t want to do it. Even weed whacking seven circuits every week or so was not enough to convince me that the effort involved in sinking them into the ground would be worth it.

They sank a little bit over time.

And then–Tropical Storm Debby!

The uphill side of all the stones is totally level with the ground. The downhill side not so much. But a little fill dirt will take care of that. And any fool knows it is easier to drop dirt than dig it up.

So, I’m not gonna need to do any digging to get my labyrinth in shape. (In fact, had I done it at the beginning, I’d be digging again to dig it out!) I’ll probably be able to mow over it this time next week.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Oh, and the grass?

That’s another area where procrastination helped.

We had a lot of bare spots in the yard. And then we made more by hiring some guys with a stump grinder to get rid of the cypress knees and some tree roots so we could mow. ( I’m tellin’ you, between the labyrinth and the cypress knees and the sweet gum balls, the back yard was a death trap for lawn mower blades!)

And the Man of the House (hereafter to be known as the MotH) kept wanting to buy sod.

I don’t know much about laying sod, but I have a pretty fair notion that it’s not like rolling out a carpet. I was not enthusiastic. I kept saying, “We just have to give it a chance. It’s not getting enough water,” and putting on the sprinkler when my memory of the necessity coincided with our designated watering days.

Plus, we put out a little grass seed now and then.

Recovery was slow.

Until Tropical Storm Debby.

Now, the lawn is doing rather well. And the MotH is no longer muttering about sod.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing. And neither are tropical storms.

Outsmarting Yourself

I cannot play the guitar.

I cannot play the guitar, and it’s my own fault. I outsmarted myself.

Now, it is possible I was never going to be able to play the guitar well. Maybe I didn’t have the dexterity in my fingers or the musical ability. I certainly don’t have much of an ear. (Digital guitar tuners. A most excellent invention! I really like this one.)

I do, however, have enough of an ear to love music. I bought myself a guitar when I was a teenager, along with a book entitled something highly original like “How to Play the Guitar.”

I learned some chords. About six, I think. Maybe seven. C, F, Dm, D, Am, Em, G7. I learned to strum. I learned to pick out a melody. (I can still play the first nine notes of “Dueling Banjos.” Not a lot of call for that, believe it or not. Go figure.)

I spent hours warbling away with a collection of music books, a guitar pick and extremely sore fingers. And I mean hours! It’s a wonder my parents didn’t kill me. Fortunately, it seems that my noise sensitivity is not inherited. Not from them, anyway. We survived this period.

I still have the guitar, the music books and the picks. And a great admiration for guitar players.

But I cannot play the guitar.

One of the reasons I never got beyond those six or seven chords is that I picked up a book or an article somewhere about transposing. And suddenly, I didn’t have to learn any additional chords in order to play all those songs I hadn’t yet mastered.

(Wow! That is looking back through rose-colored glasses for sure. As if I had ever mastered even one song.)

Let us pause for a moment, in the interest of honesty, and amend that ‘songs I hadn’t yet mastered’ to ‘songs written with chords I didn’t yet know.’

Suddenly, I didn’t have to learn any additional chords to play accompaniment for any song in the books. I spent hours working out the transposition and penciling the new chord symbols into my music. I mean hours. I thought I was so smart to have figured that out.

I wonder what would have happened if I had spent those hours learning and practicing the new chords.

Honored Guest

The missing Chinese proverb—and a stroke of luck

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…No!

It wasn’t a galaxy far away. It was just something lost in the mists of my mind.

I think it was a Chinese proverb. But it might have been Japanese. Or something somebody made up. (Some days the mists are foggier than others.) I just don’t really remember, and I’m sorry about that…because I like to give credit where it is due.

However, the proverb—whatever its origin—was something to the effect that you should treat your house as if an honored guest were about to visit.

We all know what that means, right?

Impending guests, honored or not, tend to jump start the housework.

Suddenly, we look around, and we see things with new eyes. Truth be told, they are probably far sharper eyes than any guest is likely to bring. And, honestly, my most honored guests are the ones I can trust to turn a blind eye to some of my less-than-perfect housekeeping. Nonetheless, a guest on the horizon is a definite motivator.

I’ve had a stroke of luck recently along those lines.

I was expecting an especially honored guest around the end of May. Much cleaning and polishing occurred. (And some actual decorating, because, see, the guest room was not actually ready at the point the invitation was issued and accepted.) And then my honored guest was unable to come for the anticipated visit.

But my house was clean, and my guest room ready, so I figured I was ahead of the game. Plus, it wasn’t a straight-out cancellation, but rather a postponement. So, now, whenever housework weighs heavily—and you know it does, because there is always something more interesting to do—but whenever it weighs heavily, I remember that the honored guest is still pending.

And I gather up my dust cloths and my vacuum attachments and I get to work. There are still a few months to go before the rescheduled arrival, but I figure it will be easier to keep the house clean on an ongoing basis than to launch a massive recovery effort closer to time.

And you know what?

I like having a clean house.

It’s okay if I turn out to be the honored guest.

Lizards are letting me down

Friday Finding

The lizards over here at Casa Lagarto are not holding up their end of the bargain.

See, we have a lot of lizards here at the Casa. Chameleons and geckos and skinks…and a truly shivery nekkid-looking thing that bears more of a resemblance to a snake than one would think would be quite safe for a lizard. Other than the nekkid-looking thing, I am quite happy for the lizards to hang out here. (As long as they stay outside. That’s part of the deal.)

Lizards are good for eating bugs. And bugs…well, you know.

Oh, sure. There’s that cycle of life thing and the food chain and all that. But bugs, to me, are kind of like the garbage dump. We all know we have to have them, “but not in my backyard.” (And the garbage dump doesn’t generally display the vampire tendencies of the mosquitoes. So there’s that.)

But lately, we’ve had an awful lot of grasshoppers. And not just any grasshoppers, mind you, but the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers–otherwise known as the Georgia Thumper. These things are huge.

You want to see a picture? Click here for a shot taken by Scattergun UK and posted on Flickr.

That shot doesn’t provide any reference point as to size, but take it from me. They are HUGE. Like, I’m not sure a fight between Godzilla and a Grasshopper in a Japanese horror movie would end with Godzilla taking home the title.

(Okay, okay. They are not that huge. But they are bugs! It adds a certain ick factor.)

And they are decimating the plants. The leaves on my canna lilies are all raggedy-looking. I think they’ve started in on the hydrangea, and I knocked one out of the camphor tree yesterday.

There doesn’t seem to be anything you can spray to control them. You’ve got to take them out one at a time. My husband is on grasshopper patrol. But, you know, you can’t spend all day lying in wait for insects.

And I would have thought that the lizards would have done more to prevent this problem.

I’m disappointed in them.

More stuff that’s going well

Thankful Thursdays – # 2

Thursdays are devoted to stuff that’s going well-because there’s a lot more of it than we usually think, and because there’s a theory that putting your attention on the good stuff attracts more of it to you.

Some–okay, most–of you have probably heard of The Secret, the 2006 bestseller purporting to let you in on the secret to getting anything you want. Some people leap wholeheartedly into that kind of thing, and some people start thinking ‘snake-oil salesman’ when they hear about it.

I tend to fall into the middle camp. I haven’t managed to manifest a million dollars yet, but some experiments have yielded interesting results. And one thing that certainly can’t hurt is to pay attention to the good things in your life. If it doesn’t bring more of them to you, it reminds you of the joy of the ones you have.

Ergo.

Thursdays in this blog are devoted to thankfulness.

This Thursday, I am thankful for tech support that works. Specifically, I want to send a shout out to MailChimp. MailChimp is the service I selected to handle my email list for my News Flashes as well as the blog posts. If you received this post via email, it’s thanks to MailChimp.

There were some good reasons I picked them in the beginning. Their base service is free, and the volume limit they offer for that very attractive price is high enough that you can give them a serious test before you have to pay anything. They give you a lot of control over the look of your emails, so you can do that “branding” thing pretty well.

And their support is awesome.

Aside from having extremely clear online instructions and documentation, they’ve got a LiveChat thingy* that actually works. Reps comes on really quickly. They generally grasp the problem right away and have solutions to offer. They are friendly and funny and fast. They never try to pass the buck. You don’t hear “Yeah, see, that’s probably a problem with your website host. We can’t troubleshoot that for you.” (At least, I haven’t yet. I suppose it’s possible that I might run into something that is genuinely outside the scope of their service, but so far, they’ve really tried to solve every problem I’ve had.)

In addition, and this is more of a benefit than you might think, the chat chimes when the rep responds. Unlike many other company’s live chat, you don’t have to sit there watching the window while the rep handles some untold number of other clients. You can do something else in the rare instances that you need to wait for a response, because the chat will chime and let you know the Chimp has chatted. (No offense to the MailChimp tech support staff who are more human than most.) I really love the chiming. It’s a serious selling point for me.

And if you’ve got a question and it’s outside chat hours, they respond to emails within hours.

Their instructions are clear and concise and they fix the problem.

And that chimp is slightly hilarious!

So, today, I am thankful for the menagerie–the MailChimp and the FatCow** are doing me proud.

* ‘ thingy’—a technical term for that which I cannot immediately think of the word
** my website host

Honest Numbers

Happy Independence Day!

I was digging around for something to write about today, when I discovered a little known fact. (Note: When I say something is a ‘little known fact,’ there’s a good chance that just means I didn’t know it until now.)

My digging began in the vicinity of the Fourth of July—which is, of course, today’s date. At first, I had the entirely unoriginal idea of presenting you with a list of fun facts about the Fourth of July. But it’s so easy to turn up pages and pages of fun facts about the Fourth of July in any search engine that it quickly became clear I would simply be listing things you could find out some other way.

No added value. And we can’t have that.

I did, however, find out something that is slightly harder, although by no means impossible, to suss out.

Four is an honest number.

It may, in fact, be the only honest number. (I haven’t done all the research, but it seems likely on my initial examination—i.e., two or three minutes of thought.)

What does that mean?

Well, it doesn’t mean that the number four—notwithstanding its ability to bring you Sesame Street on occasion—is capable of chopping down a cherry tree and then refusing to lie about it (George Washington [not]) or of walking miles and miles in the snow to return some change (Abraham Lincoln [probably]).

It means that four is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as the number for which it stands. F O U R, 1 2 3 4

It probably won’t take you too long to realize that this is not actually a mathematical concept. It’s more like a linguistic one. Because it only works in English. Well, it might work in some other language. I don’t speak them all, so I can’t really say. But it is safe to say that it doesn’t work in every language. And math, really, kind of has to work whether you speak Patagonian or Serbo-Croatian.

So, it’s kind of a useless idea, it seems to me.

Except to open the door to something else I want to say.

In this election year, we are going to be—already are being—inundated with statistics. This plan will lead to x number of people without health care. That plan means that y children are z times more likely to…whatever.

Here’s the thing about statistics.

I spent a lot of years compiling them for various clients, and I’m here to tell you that a) the margin of error is probably greater than they are disclosing—because data analysis is hard and people make mistakes, b) sometimes the analysis is set up in such a way that it leads to a skewed result—because data analysis is hard and people make mistakes, and c) every now and then, if the results aren’t what those who commissioned the analysis really want, they might just change them—because giving up a pet theory is hard and people make mistakes.

So, by all means, pay attention to the statistics. It’s good to have as much information as you can. But, in the spirit of Independence Day, remember to preserve some independent thought, and question those statistics.

Four is an honest number. All others are to be treated with suspicion.

(Note: Here’s another little known fact. Four is also a Smith number, which piece of information I bring to you because, ha! my last name is Smith. What I don’t bring to you is an explanation of what a Smith number is. That’s ‘cause I don’t really understand it. Shhh!)

Treasure Hunt

The holy grail of disk space

Way back when I bought this PC–which has provided remarkably trusty service over the years–it seemed like it had unlimited disk space. 140 Gb. How could anyone possibly use all that?

One lives and learns.

Programs get bigger. I want more of them. There is music to store. There are graphics and videos to edit. There is data to crunch. And there is odd and esoteric research to hang onto because, who knows, I may write a book or a play about that someday.

And the next thing I know, my PC has only about 5 Gb left and has slowed down to something that would insult the speed of a baby if you called it a crawl.

I do have external drives, but there is a lot of data I like to keep on the local drive. That’s the one Carbonite backs up under their basic plan, and while I love Carbonite, I am not quite ready to increase my backup budget just yet.

I am also not quite ready to install a new larger hard drive. We won’t discuss whether this is out of the same frugal–i.e., penny-pinching–impulse or out of long and dismal experience of what happens when you start taking your computer apart . (I will say that it will be a lot easier to get to it the way my office is set up in my new house than it was in the past–when there was a lot of crawling involved–and, once, a hacksaw–but that is definitely another story!)

So, I have reached a point where I have to evaluate what’s on this drive and make some decisions. Some files can be moved to an external drive, of course. Some files can be archived.

And, let’s face it, there are probably a lot of files that can simply be deleted.

To keep or not to keep.
That is the question

And that brings me to a couple of nifty little programs.

(Before I tell you about them, let me give you one other very important Tuesday Tech Tip. Don’t just take my word for it. Read other reviews before you use anything recommended to you in a blog. ALWAYS have a current back-up before you start deleting files. Use common sense. Proceed at your own risk. Remember–your results may vary. I’m telling you what I’ve done. I’m not guaranteeing it will work for you.)

About a week ago, I got a lot of disk space back using Easy Duplicate File Finder. It’s a free program for both PC and Mac users that will compare files in selected directories and provide a list of those it has identified as duplicates. You can view them, move them, rename them or delete them.

Almost 10 Gb had been swallowed up by dupes.

Today, however, another 5 Gb has disappeared. More drastic action is needed.

So, I just found: Directory List & Print. It’s freeware–although there is a paid version that has a few more features–and it’s really simple. It does exactly what the name suggests. What I like about it, is that unlike Windows Search, I can easily copy the directory listing to Excel or Word for storing, sorting, editing, printing –and, unlike redirecting the output of a DOS dir command to a file, I can choose which pieces of information to include in my list.

I can then go prospecting for disk space.

It should be easy to find the major candidates for deletion: the temp files and backup files that are outdated. I’ll be able to scan the list for other possibilities as well as use it for the plodding, methodical check-list-y approach I just know is coming.

Amazingly, I’ve already gotten rid of over 8,000 files one program has generated in unsubmitted crash reports. That’s half a gig recovered! (That may not sound like much, but I’m pretty sure this is going to be a tedious process of knocking off little minnows of files nibbling away at my disk space and not identifying any Great Blue Whales swallowing Jonah-sized sectors on the hard drive.)

Those crash reports were just sitting out there taking up space for no reason. I’m not sure I’d have noticed them if I hadn’t run this program and generated this list.

Every time I do something like this, I swear I’m going to be more diligent and disciplined with data storage as I go along. This is what is known as a pipe dream. Not having access to a personality transplant, I’m glad I’ve found these two programs.

I’ll let you know how the Great Disk Space Recovery Project is getting along.

Daunting Deadlines

Daring to dream

I’ve been thinking about deadlines a lot lately. Not surprising, really. After all, I’ve just started a blog. People can talk all they want about “blog” being short for “weblog.” It’s really short for “OMG! I haven’t written today’s post yet!”

The really ironic thing about this plunge into blogging is I hate deadlines. I don’t join writers’ groups because I have such a horror of them. The idea of 10 pages a week freaks me out. I can’t imagine being a journalist with a story due every day.

And yet…here I am.

I didn’t think about the deadline part of the blog when I began. I thought about the social media aspects, the marketing possibilities (eek!), the opportunity for self-expression. And, yes, I thought about giving myself a reason to write regularly.

This never translated in my mind into having to write regularly.

You know.

A deadline.

The odd thing is that when I have a deadline, I am more than capable of meeting it. I have pulled all-nighters to write papers and computer programs, to get a website up, to learn software and/or 17^th Century French history (L’etat c’est moi – and that’s about the extent of my French¹), to learn lines, and to drive to Charleston.²

So, why does a writing deadline seem such a burden to me?

I honestly am not sure.

But I guess I’m going to get over it, or crash and burn here. And I guess it’s also true that you always invite into your life that which you need to learn.

So, today’s Monday Miracle is that I made this deadline. And I haven’t run screaming into the night at the thought of all the other deadlines to which I’ve committed. (We used to call them “drop dead dates” at one place I worked. It doesn’t make it sound any better.)

I’m giving myself this opportunity to get past my dread of deadlines. It wasn’t what I thought would come out of this blogging adventure, but it should be useful. After all, as Napoleon Hill once said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Deadlines are good.

Only, let’s think of another word, okay?

(Comments open for suggestions.)

¹ Except for that tour I did of The Little Prince and those few scenes I learned phonetically.
² Charleston. Also The Little Prince tour. Van broke down, transmission had to be rebuilt overnight, 8 am curtain at a school – long story.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Monthly Archives: July 2012