Another factor is how the industry encourages low self-esteem amongst writers. As aspiring authors, we’re constantly given subtle reminders that our words don’t have value. After a while, it’s only natural that some people actually begin to think this is true.

There are Thousands Others Where You Came From
A friend was offered a gig from The New York Times who wanted him to travel on a newly launched upstart airline and write about the experience. The Times has a strict policy against accepting freebies so my pal wouldn’t be able to fly the friendly skies courtesy of the air carrier. But the editorial budget was lacking so the Times informed my friend that they could not spring for his ticket. The only money involved was the $200 pay for the article.

“Well, it’ll still be a byline in the Times, so it might be worth the expense,” he said. Then he checked the price of the ticket he would have to purchase: $350. So he was going to have to pay $150 a chance to publish amongst all the news that’s fit to print.

And the unspoken, yet abundantly clear insinuation from the editors was, “If you’re not willing to do it, there are thousands who are.” I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve written where I’ve lost money, where I’ve spent more to write the piece than I made. And part of this is simply what you have to go through as you start to build a career. Unpaid internships, volunteer work, and just doing whatever needs to be done is a fact of life whether you want to be a writer, accountant, rock star, or ditch digger.

But at the same time, it’s like the stereotypical Hollywood director who still employs the casting couch method. There are ten other blondes chilling out in the waiting room if you’re not willing…

Deadbeat Editors
Talk to any group of freelancers and you’ll hear story after story like this. You will also hear endless tales of financial woe caused by deadbeat editors. It’s unfortunately not unusual for freelancer writers to have to hound magazines for payment. These publications somehow manage to pay the paper suppliers, and they somehow manage to pay the printers, the distributors, the designers, and all that. But when it comes to the sap who wrote the 200 word restaurant review? Well, he better hope they’re feeling flush.

I once went almost a year of begging a publication that is, thankfully, no longer in business for pay. And I had friends on the staff who were mortified and humiliated. But their boss’s attitude was, “What’s he going to do?” Unaware of the larger issues bedeviling the publication, I actually hoped for more work at the time.. And I didn’t want to develop a reputation as being difficult. So I meekly and politely and aw shucksy asked for my pay. I actually felt bad for expecting the magazine to live up to it’s contractual obligations.

Blogger Ed Champion has, pardon the pun, championed freelancer’s right to get paid for the work they perform. He once wrote me a helpful and encouraging email that summed it up well. “Writing is as legitimate a labor as anything else,” he stated and offered some very timely advice and contact information for my collection efforts.

Nonetheless, many aspiring authors do not have the fortitude to take a strong stance with editors or they don’t want to cause waves. So they accept the purgatory of being told “it’s in the accounting department” for years and years.

Now, for the record, I’m not saying that all editors are deadbeats. In fact, the majority of them are hard-working, underpaid people struggling to do a good job, no different than you and I. Even for the assholes, I don’t think they consciously think, “Screw him, I’m just not going to pay.” It’s more subtle than that. The industry just makes it a bit easier to ignore some scribe from Scranton than other vendors and business partners.

Exclusive Submissions, Busy Agents, Honorarium Copies, and all the Rest
There are tons of other factors that can cause a real self-esteem problem amongst writers. Tiny, shithole journals that do not accept simultaneous submissions but want 1 year to read a short story, agents who can’t give an interview without mentioning how busy they are at least 734 times, magazines photocopied at Kinkos that only provide contributors with two copies, editors who reject a manuscript and include a subscription card, and so forth. All of these issues can easily make a writer think his or her work doesn’t have value or that he is bothering people if he actually expects to be compensated.

Let it be said that I am not suggesting that a writer’s life should be easy. I don’t expect the industry to kneel down and lay out palm fronds to ease anyone’s passing. Since I was 14-years-old, I have always held two jobs at a minimum. I am realistic about the economic possibilities of writing as a career and willing to put in the work.

But I also realize that there comes a time for each writer where they need to truly, deep-down believe in the fact that their work has value. Unfortunately, too many of us never reach this point. Too many of us toil away, hoping for a few crumbs, but too afraid to ask.

But what we do not do often enough is complain about ourselves.

Yesterday, I posted a item about Douglas Coupland’s new fashion line. And I received a bunch of emails from readers who thought this line of business was one of the following:

–Unseemly for a literary author
–Wasting time that should be spent on new writing
–Callously mercenary

Now, there’s an argument to be made about whether a sufficient market exists for author created and endorsed products. Admittedly, we don’t have the fan bases that rock stars and movie stars have. But that’s another topic. Today, I’m discussing writers attitudes towards the activities of their colleagues.

While Coupland’s sartorial taste may not be to my liking, I cannot comprehend why he should be attacked for diversifying his business interests, taking on a new challenge, and occupying himself in some manner other than being locked in a garret churning out words.

We, as writers, all have to make choices with how we want to run our careers. But we, as a group, are the only profession on the planet who do NOT try to take advantage of opportunity. Meanwhile, we sit back and watch every fucking person with the slightest bit of name recognition take over our own industry. And every other industry they can get their hands on.

You’re a clothing designer who won a show? Write a book.

You’re a mid-level receiver who makes a catch in the Super Bowl? Write a Book.

You’re a superstar athlete? Write a book. And sell shoes.

You’re a comedian? Write a book.

You’re a politician? Write a book.

You’re a former staffer for a disgraced politician? Write a book.

You’re a businessman? Write a book.

You’re a reality show flash in the pan? Write a book.

You’re a movie star? Write a book.

You’re a musician? Write a book.

You’re a hiker who cut off your own arm? Write a book.

You’re a revered, critically acclaimed, seriously rigorous chef? Write a book.

You’re a food personality on television? Write a book. And host a game show. And sell cookware. And wrist bands. And sell a magazine with your name on it . And even hock god awful hideous sunglasses.

But, if you’re a writer who wants to be taken seriously by your peers? Then you’d better not do a damn thing other than put words on paper. And you certainly better not expect to earn any income from it. And in some ways, we hinder our own profession with that antiquated notion.

Yes, you have the choice to maintain complete focus on your writing if that is what you choose to do with your career. Take the Cormac McCarthy or JD Salinger route. Be “pure” and “unsullied.” That is a perfectly reasonable and respectable decision.

But don’t criticize another writer for diversification.

As writers, we face plenty of struggles and obstacles in our career. But we should not place even more hurdles in our way with ivory tower ideals of what our colleagues “should” be doing with their time.

One of the many reasons that major media markets are losing ground with their book coverage because they waste space and words providing criticisms that astound no one, surprise no one, and are in no way shocking, educational, or illuminating. In short, they waste our fucking time. They squander the precious little coverage on books they don’t like. A more effective strategy might be to focus on some hidden gem that is being overlooked. Maybe introduce new writers to the culture at large. But my advice to at least a certain segment of critics is “Stop your petty bullshit crusades against writers that, in the whole scheme of things, don’t make much of a dent in our pop culture.”

Case in point, the recent New York Times coverage of Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel Imperial Bedrooms. Now, in the interest of full disclosure: I am an unabashed Ellis fan. I did not like the new book quite as much as I had hoped, but as a whole, I am a huge fan of his body of work. I’ve stood in line at those sketchy booksignings he describes in Lunar Park, you know, the ones where the author sucked on throat lozanges and was sick with a “head cold” the whole time. I am an Ellis admirer and I honestly do think he gets a raw deal in my ways. With that out of the way, let’s look at the matter at hand.

The esteemed Gray Lady saw fit to publish not one, but two negative reviews of Imperial Bedrooms. First, Erica Wagner wrote on Thursday, June 17 that “I can well believe the haunted fascination that sparked off Imperial Bedrooms.” But the resulting novel falls flat.”

Okay, fine. Critics don’t have to enjoy every thing they read.

Then Janet Maslin wrote on Wednesday, June 23 that the book “is without shock value. It’s a work of limited imagination that all too deftly simulates the effects of having no imagination at all.” She even goes so far as to state that the sense of dread in the novel is because the “options have narrowed” for the author himself.

Which brings me to my point… well two points actually:

Did Anyone Expect Any Different?
Is there anyone in the book world who is surprised that The New York Times did not like Bret Easton Ellis’s new book? I mean, there’s a better shot at Fox News endorsing Nancy Pelosi for President or PETA suddenly throwing a dinner party featuring foie gras. Just take a look at their history of Ellis examination.

–In August 2005, A.O. Scott reviewed Lunar Park and wrote, “The problem with this novel is not that it is a fast, lurching ride to nowhere. Of course it is; it’s a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The problem is that it does not have the honesty to admit that it wants to be more, the faith that readers will accept more or the courage to try to be more. It is the portrait of a narcissist who is, in the end, terminally bored with himself; that it may also be a self-portrait doesn’t make it any more true.”

–In January 1999, Daniel Mendelsohn reviewed Glamorama by writing, “It’s a mystery to me why some people are complaining that Bret Easton Ellis’s latest novel is nothing more than a recycling of his controversially graphic ”American Psycho” (1991). ”American Psycho,” after all, was a bloated, stultifyingly repetitive, overhyped novel about a fabulously good-looking and expensively dressed Wall Street sociopath who tortures and dismembers beautiful young women, whereas ”Glamorama,” as anyone can see, is a bloated, stultifyingly repetitive, overhyped book about an entire gang of fabulously good-looking and expensively dressed sociopaths who torture and dismember both women and men — and lots of them. Clearly, Ellis’s authorial vision has grown broader and more inclusive over the past decade.”

–That same month, Michiko Kakutani also reviewed the same novel by writing that “Bret Easton Ellis doesn’t need the National Lampoon to turn him into a parody — with Glamorama, he’s done it himself. This glutinous hodgepodge of a book takes all the most glaring flaws of Mr. Ellis’s recent work — compulsive name-dropping, an obsession with designer clothing, a fascination with gratuitous, gruesome violence and a cast of interchangeable fatuous people — and tries to pass them off as a novel.

–In September 1987, Scott Spencer reviewed The Rules of Attraction and stated, “Yet these moments of humor are infrequent. Mr. Ellis has it within his grasp to become a satirist, but for now his method of aping the attitudes of the burnt-out works against him. He seems as passive in his regard of social rot as, say, the editors of Interview. Nothing seems to surprise, disturb or even affect him, and though this deadpan effect is surely deliberate and is in large part the reason for Mr. Ellis’s popularity and warm critical reception, one closes the book feeling that this time out the author has stumbled over the line separating cool from cold. Where we ought to be saying, ‘Oh my God, no,’ we are, instead, saying, ‘Who cares?’”

–In 1985, Mary Jo Salter reviewed Less Than Zero, and remarkably, had words that slightly, kinda, somewhat bordered on praise. “I hated reading the book for more than 20 minutes at a stretch, but that was partly because Mr. Ellis succeeded in making its world hellish,” Salter wrote. “The novelist is only 21 years old and has precociously fashioned, despite an obvious stylistic indebtedness to writers from Hemingway to Joan Didion, a tone so distant that he almost seems to write by remote control. That is control of a kind, and augurs well.”

Does the Times Have to Stand Strong to Stop the Ellis Juggernaut Sweeping the Nation?

As I stated earlier, I am a fan of Ellis’s work. And I do think he deserves are more respected place in our literary landscape. But I’m also not blind to the fact that Bret Easton Ellis is not exactly a cultural phenomenon. Imperial Bedrooms might flirt with the bestseller list, but it ain’t Harry Potter. Nor are kids choosing sides between “Team Clay” and “Team Rip.”

I can understand if a critic or group of critics feel like they need to strike a blow against a tidal wave of popular opinion. If someone at the Times wants to tilt at the Twilight-Potter-Gossip Girl-Skinny Bitch windmill, then be my guest.

I can also understand if a critic feels they need to be the lone dissenter against a prevailing attitude of critical acclaim. Bill Clegg’s Potrait of an Addict as a Young Man just wasn’t that impressive to me, yet, every other literary reader seems prepared to elevate it to pantheon-ic status. That’s a circumstance where I might feel like having my solitary voice of dissent heard.

But the National Book Award and the Pulitzer are safe, Bad Boy Bret won’t be hoisting those trophies any time soon.

So why should The New York Times bother wasting so much space on a book they don’t like? Ellis will sell however many copies of Imperial Bedrooms that he’s going to sell, with or without the critical negatives. Hardcore fans aren’t going to be dissuaded by Maslin and Wagner’s recent opinions, they’ll still slap down their twenty bucks. And how many middle-of-the-road Bret Easton Ellis fans are there? I don’t imagine there are too many people out there saying, “Whew, I was going to purchase that new book but the Times saved my bacon! I’ll know to avoid Imperial Bedrooms now.”

I don’t have an answer to that question. And while I want to be very clear that I’m not advocating book reviews to be wholly positive, cheerleading affairs, I have to wonder if the more than 2,000 words dedicated to completely predictable negative reviews could have been better allocated to other books.

I love sports. And I love books. And I’m fascinated by coaches. So I should love sports books by coaches, right? But I just don’t.

Today’s yawner came with the news that New York Jets head football coach Rex Ryan is set to write a “nontraditional autobiography” that will be published by Doubleday next year.

Now, some observers have pointed out that Ryan hasn’t accomplished that much in his single season as a head coach. Most frequently, these coach books come on the heels of winning a championship in the given sport. But Ryan’s club finished 9-7 and lost in the AFC Championship Game. Josh Alper, for example, humorously points out wrote that readers should “Just look for ‘Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Rex Ryan’s Guide to Leadership’ at the top of a best-seller list near you.”

On the other hand, Ryan is in the Charles Barkley-mold in that he has a sizable ego and mouth (in a good, fun way) and he always provides good quotes, good stories, and whirlwind of “what’s he going to say next?” whenever he speaks. He comes from a legendary coaching family and his father, Buddy Ryan, would surely provide enough good material for a book.

But the problem is that so many of these coach books are so generic, sanitized, cliched, and paint-by-the-number affairs that they strip away all individuality and uniqueness. Maybe Ryan and his highly-successful co-author Don Yaeger will buck the trend. Unfortunately, I’m not placing any bets on that.

I blame two of my favorite coaches for creating the coach book template: Pat Riley and Rick Pitino. Back in the eighties, they both capitalized on their smooth personas and championship credentials to pen a series of highly successful books melding coaching tactics with business examples. They became highly sought after speakers, appearing before Fortune 500 companies and commanding hefty fees. As a result, it seems like every coach after that has positioned themselves in this business leader space. Therefore their books are correspondingly dull, tedious, and repetitive. They strive to be inspirational, to show you the hurdles they’ve overcome, and how they lead men to victory. But it’s all the same. Read one and you’ve read them all.

So I do hope that Ryan and Yaeger do something different and maintain the original voice the coach uses in the press room. Because the last thing the world needs now is yet another same old, same old coach book.

Aspiring authors are frequently advised to read their target markets, try to discern editorial tastes, and learn from published writers. As useful as those tips can be, it is also infuriating when you read an article that defies belief.

I was in doctor’s office recently and picked up the February 2009 issue of Conde Nast Traveller. Admittedly, I don’t normally read this magazine and can’t speak for editorial preferences or the style expressed in issues over the course of a year. But in this particular magazine, an article on dogsledding in Greenland caught my attention because of gorgoeous photography from Tiina Itkonen.

Unfortunately the writing failed to equal the photos. After almost every paragraph, I wondered, “How in the hell did this make it through an editor’s review?”

The journalist, Bob Payne, seemed completely addicted to commas. The opening paragraph of “Going to the Dogs in Greenland” had 53 words and seven commas. A later paragraph boasted 47 words and six commas. Here’s an example:

“On just such a sled, my guide, Johannes Mathaeussen, and I are about to set out on a four-day adventure across a white, treeless landscape. The sled, little more than a narrow wooden platform on runners, is piled about three stories high with all manner of gear and supplies, including a shotgun whose barrel I keep catching a boot on when for practice I climb atop the pile, where I am to ride, Mathaeussen tells me, ‘like a cowboy.’”

Granted, it was early in the morning and I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a doctor’s office as opposed to studying in the intellectually stimulating Slushpile.net library. But I had to read the part, “including a shotgun whose barrel I keep catching a boot on when for practice I climb atop the pile, where I am to ride,” approximately 3,239 times in order to figure it out. At this point, I should be able to recite the line with the eloquence of a classically trained Shakespearean actor but I still can’t get the freaking thing to flow nicely. Maybe Anthony Hopkins should give it a go.

Here’s another dozie:

“Our twenty-dog team, knowing that they are about to be given the word to do what they are bred for, which is to run, are yapping excitedly and straining against the metal ice screw to which their traces are still attached.”

Payne’s style was clearly not a straight-forward manner of journalism. And that’s great. I applaud the use of a more individual and distinctive writing voice as opposed to the boring USA Today style that barely exceeds telegram text. But some of these sentences were so clunky, so awkward that it’s challenging to understand how they made it to publication. As writers starting out our careers, it’s frustrating to try and learn the craft while seeing things like this in print. And, to be painfully honest, times like this can make you question your own taste and knowledge. It’s easy to discount your own judgment and say, “Well, shit, that article was printed in a relatively major magazine, so who am I to criticize it?” Ultimately, though, you must have confidence in yourself while remaining open to educational opportunities.

So here’s my slight alteration of the article, which I will submit to magazines forthwith, in anticipation that they will accept my query, for which is it what I endeavor to do with my career, and since I’m eager to learn from successful writers, I strive to improve my own style.

“On just such a desk, my mentor, Comma McCommerson, and I are about to write a challenging article across a white, punctuation devoid computer screen. The desk, little more than a narrow wooden slab, is piled about three stories high with all manner of reference materials and interview transcriptions, including a stapler whose barrel I keep catching a mouse cord on when for practice I dive into the pile, where I am to write, McCommerson tells me, ‘like a clauseophile.’

The almost forty-editor team at Conde Nast Traveler, knowing they are about to be given the word to do what they are trained for, which is to edit, are grabbing their dictionaries and honing their points at the pencil sharpeners to which their desks are still attached.”

But some of the ideas expressed in this article have really been festering away for me as the days passed. So I’m wading in, admittedly a bit late.

The article begins with, “ICM agent Binky Urban does not believe it would be possible to write much of a novel about modern book publishing.” The superagent is quoted as saying, “It’s such an internal, sort of cerebral job. ‘And then I edited …’? I don’t quite get how that would work, to tell the truth.”

Urban is a publishing legend and I like many of her clients’ work. But that notion that a job can make a book (or any artwork) interesting or dull is the exact same thinking that causes our television channels to be glutted with cops, doctors, and lawyers. Does anyone on this planet really need to see another primetime drama about a tough cop with a rebellious attitude or a sexy lawyer on the prowl? I just counted 23 crime shows appearing from 8pm-11pm on CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. If anyone in Hollywood has a great show about system testers or insurance agents, sign me up. I’ll watch it fanatically. Just don’t give me another fucking show with people holding badges, I beg you.

Same way with books. I hate the thought that an industry or job title can be so quickly dismissed as dull. Another industry insider is quoted in the piece as saying, “Our lives are small, hard and short.” That statement was intended to support this notion that publishing employees are unworthy of literary attention. However, I think that quote indicates the exact opposite. “Our lives are small, hard and short.” Sounds like characters in a Steinbeck novel or a Larry Brown short story. Great stuff for the basis of literature.

Other folks quoted in the article disagree and argue that publishing provides a great backdrop for a book and that maybe the right author just hasn’t come along yet. Part of the problem is that so many aspiring authors churn out awful stories about writers. Admittedly, I’ve committed this particular creative writing class sin myself. However, just because a good one hasn’t yet been published doesn’t mean it won’t work. So I’m siding with those people who think it’s just a matter of time, but back to the naysayers for a moment.

There’s also a sense in the article that editors don’t think anyone outside the publishing business would be interested in a book about the biz. They feel there’s not a big enough audience of non-book people. I’ve pitched books on the publishing world before and agents and editors responded that the ideas were good, but too small, too much of a niche, too magazine-y. It’s entirely possibly my pitches weren’t good enough and those explanations were just to reject me politely. But one question remains:

How big of an audience do you need?

A few years ago, I gathered data on the world of aspiring authors for a piece I was writing. Keep in mind that these statistics are a few years old, but I would wager the numbers have only increased in the interim. Or, at least they had increased before our nation’s recent economic difficulties might have weeded out some upstarts.

–The Association of Writers and Writing Programs detailed more than 350 writing programs in the United States.
–Nationally, there are hundreds of writing conferences. A website listed literary and writing events in the South alone. 38 events were scheduled for the first six months of 2005 and the average registration cost was $285.
–A spokesperson for the Gotham Writers Workshop reported they had upwards of 6,000 students per year. Based on information from the website, the average cost of their classes was $283.
–Writer’s Digest had a circulation of 150,000 and Poets & Writers Magazine had a circulation of 70,000.
–There were more than 300 literary journals in this country and none of them are read in a dentist’s waiting room so it’s safe to assume that these journals were kept in print with circulations comprised almost exclusively of other aspiring authors, professors, and industry types.

Once again, remember that those figures are almost four years old. A check of Amazon today reveals 668 titles in the fiction writing reference category. 1,982 titles come up under the newspapers & magazines category. Look at how frequently major, mainstream outlets like the New York Times feature stories on the publishing industry, even if those pieces do nothing but declare it dead.

Shit, the very fact that you’re reading this blog means you’re interested in publishing and writing.

So I ask you once again, how big a fucking audience does there have to be to support a publishing book? I know the old cliche that sometimes it seems like there are more people writing books than reading books. I get that.

And granted, the pool of aspiring authors and publishing insiders doesn’t equal a cultural phenomenon like, say Hannah Montana or American Idol. So maybe you don’t invest a $6 million advance and gear up a print run of 700,000 copies. But you’re telling me that all those folks buying writing magazines, and writing-related reference books, and paying for conferences, and getting MFAs, and reading articles about publishing lunches, and posting on messsageboards like Absolute Write, and paying for subscriptions to Publishers Marketplace, and paying for contest entry fees, and keeping agents and editors burdened under a mountain of submissions couldn’t support a book with a respectable and reasonable print run and advance?

Ultimately, I’m just not sure the reading public is so apathetic to the idea of a publishing-related book. I wonder if it’s not publishers and agents themselves who don’t want to deal with it.

Athletes, fans, and sports writers frequently argue that since baseball had no rules against steroids during what we now consider the “juiced era” players who fail drug tests cannot be punished. Going forward, these people argue, the league can suspend players who use illegal substances. But we can’t do anything about past transgressions because the collective bargaining agreement didn’t provide penalties.

Admittedly, I’m no lawyer, but when the laws of the country prohibit something, doesn’t it stand to reason that the sport shouldn’t allow it, even if it’s not expressly stated? I know professional sports organizations, owners, and athletes like to think they’re above the law, but they’re not.

In an an article today, FoxSports columnist Ken Rosenthal continues this line of reasoning. For the most part, I agree with Rosenthal’s suggestions. But then he trots out the “there was no rule” idiocy.

“Don’t tell me that steroids were against the law; baseball did not enact its own penalties until 2004,” Rosenthal writes.

What!?!?

So let me get this straight… no matter what you do, if the sport doesn’t outlaw it, then you get to continue earning millions?

Suppose it’s proven that a pitcher, long reverred for his lethal right arm, detonates a nuclear warhead in Des Moines, Iowa and kills 60,000 people. He admits his crime. If, for whatever reason, he isn’t incarcerated, can he still collect a paycheck for throwing fastball strikeouts?

Is Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, going to hold a press conference and say nothing could be done? Let’s tweak Selig’s recent statements on the Rodriguez situation to fit this hyperbolic example.

“What Nuke Johnson did was wrong and he will have to live with the damage he has done to his name and reputation,” Selig would say. “While Nuke deserves credit for publicly confronting the issue, there is no valid excuse for using weapons of mass destruction, and those who use them have shamed the game. It is important to remember that these recent revelations relate to pre-program activity. Under our current nuclear program, if you are caught using warheads and/or weaponized plutonomium, you will be punished. Since 2005, every player who has tested positive for such use has been suspended for as much as 50 games.”

Once again, as it’s painfully obvious, I’m not a lawyer. And the Rodriguez scenario is slightly different because he failed a test that was voluntary and supposedly anonymous.

But it seems logical to me that the laws of my country filter down to my place of employment. If you work for Random House, do they have to explicitly instruct that you’re not allowed to murder someone? If you’ve got a publishing contract with Penguin, does it have to state that you will get into trouble if you commit treason? If the rest of our society operates like baseball, then we’ll have to start including the entire federal, state, and local penal code into contracts.

“The adult trade division has been crippled to the extent that books in production cannot be attended to and are now ‘frozen,’ something that I’ve never heard of before (and this is my third layoff in a twenty-year publishing career),” writes the insider. “Many here are surmising that the adult trade division is rapidly being dismantled and discarded. Among those laid off were a 79-year-old acquisitions editor who had signed [four] Nobel Prize-winning authors in her career [Drenka Willen] and a senior designer with over thirty years of stellar service. We who worked at HMH are heartsick at the gutting of these two prestigious and respected companies, Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt.”

Galley Cat goes to to relate that those employees still collecting a paycheck are basically hand-cuffed from actually being able to do any good work. One respected editor, Galley Cat points out, is still at HMH, but “through no fault of her own been forced into a position where her ability to build upon the strong portfolio of books and authors she’s cultivated over the years has been severely crippled.”

Besides my general sadness at the state of this once great company and all the people affected, I have one question: were things at HMH really hanging by that slender of a thread? Or, is this some ploy by corporate overlords to cast off the divisions and simply write off a loss?

Admittedly, my business acumen is fairly lacking. I’ve been so immersed in getting my Beanie Baby empire set up on this great new website called eBay that I’m a little out of the loop. So I’m not going to try and pretend to be all Wall Street Journal about this.

But although the majority of the publishing industry is shaken right now, and other companies have certainly laid off staff recently, why do none of them have the feel of total collapse that permeates the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt situation? And why were the braniac brass at HMH the only ones idiotic enough to actually announce they were freezing acquisitions? Surely other publishers are being more judicious in their selections, but they’re not actually going out in public proclaiming that the mail slot is closed.

All in all, it’s just a sad situation. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can get through today without more bad news.

But sometimes, these books make no sense to me.

On Monday, Publishers Weekly reported that Algonquin has acquired Hodding Carter’s new book, A Year of Living Within Our Means. “After 10 years of profligate spending fueled by real estate flips, refinancing and credit card debt, the author will write about living on what he actually earns,” the report states. “In order to do so, he and his family of six will mine cost-saving techniques from the Great Depression and the first cookbook in America, and stay within their budget, whether that means growing their own food or bartering for things they need.”

So let’s get this straight… you’re writing a book about something millions of people do every single freaking day? And getting paid for getting your life in order?

Admittedly, many people in this country are not responsible financially and they abuse credit and get in over their heads. That’s not the case for me because I’m able to spend my afternoons swimming in the sea of gold coins, like Scrooge McDuck, that I have stored up in the Slushpile vault. But for many people, handling their cash flow is a problem. And given our nation’s poor economic conditions, life is only going to get harder for many people regardless of their financial habits.

But many others do manage to stay within their means. Using credit responsibly, delaying big purchases, not even bothering to keep up with the Joneses, those are a course of daily life for millions of people. So what’s the big deal here?

Maybe Carter’s book will reveal some truly innovative techniques, beyond simply saving crumpled balls of used aluminum foil in a drawer like grandma used to do. So maybe when the book comes out, we’ll all learn a thing or two. But at this point, this is exactly the kind of deal that makes me say, “Huh?”

Maybe I’ll write a book about going a year without smoking cigarettes. Or, I’ll write a book of A Year of Not Drunk Driving. Or, I’ll mine old school texts about following the law and then write 12 Months of Not Getting Arrested.

The difficult economic times are putting a toll on everyone. But freelancers getting stiffed isn’t a recent phenomenon. Even during the good times, it can be a challenge to get paid, because too many publications don’t care about the writers.

There are several places that owe me money. One of them sent a letter to freelancers explicitly saying they were not going to be able to cover the expected payments. At least that they tried to notify people. Another magazine shorted me some cash on several articles after I hounded them for months. And these interactions were well before the recent downturn in the economy.

Luckily, I’m supported by the tremendous wealth in the Slushpile.net coffers, which I have recently relocated to a highly secure Mason jar in the backyard and into offshore accounts after the failure of several American banks. But even if the money isn’t an issue, the principle of freelancers doing work and not receiving compensation is an all-around shitty aspect of this job.

Keep fighting the good fight, Ed.