Should you publish your own book?

Google "self-publish" and you'll find countless websites exhorting you to become your own publisher. Self-publishing is quick. It's easy. It can be cheap. Best of all, you are in total control. No more wasting time with publishers or agents who just don't get it.

For a different opinion, read Melissa Foster and Amy Edelman's op-ed piece, "Why Indie Authors Don't Get No Respect", first published, ironically, on IndieReader.com ("a venue for discriminating book-lovers to find and purchase books published by the people who wrote them."). Publish your own book, these authors say, and you're likely to get bad editing and crappy covers. By bypassing the "gatekeepers," you will release your book into a vast pool of unfiltered and usually inferior content. That's no doubt why the New York Times will not review self-published books, and it's why I duck and run whenever I see one coming my way.

But I may have to change my opinion.

Last week I reviewed (not for this blog) two books published by small but conventional publishers. One  was so unattractively designed outside and in that at first I assumed it was self-published, or perhaps a galley. But no. This was the final copy.

The other book looked somewhat better, but the copyediting and proofreading, if any had been done, was abysmal. The text was sprinkled with typos, of course, but it also featured misused apostrophes, incorrect capitalization, dangling modifiers, faulty parallelism, misspelled words and names, incorrect punctuation, homonym faults, misused words, incorrect citations, mistakes in subject-verb agreement--and even a running head that actually dips down and interferes with the first line of type.

Sheeeeesh.

As I was recovering from these two books--both of them worth reading, by the way, and certainly worthy of better treatment than they got from their publishers--I got an over-the-transom request to look at a self-published book. I was heading into my instinctive crouch when I suddenly thought: How could it be any worse than the books I'd just reviewed from conventional publishers? So I checked out the author's website. Hey, not bad! Good design. Good marketing. Much better than the publishers' web pages for the two authors I'd just read. I may regret this, but I agreed to look at her book. I hope she used a competent editor.

I still agree with Foster and Edelman, at least on principle. Gatekeepers, editors, and designers can vastly improve the quality of published material. Most self-published books interest few people beyond their authors. But you know, if publishers think they can no longer afford expert designers and editors, then why would any author in his or her right mind want to accept their lower royalties?

Should you publish your own book? Probably not, unless you're willing to hire a team of professionals to ensure a good product which even then will be rejected by most book stores and reviewers. But before offering your proposal to a publisher, be sure you're dealing with a house that still places high value on design and editing. When publishers stop doing that, they make themselves irrelevant.

Number-One Hits: Not Just for Birthdays

The Andrews Sisters

A lot of my Facebook friends are sharing links to the number-one hit song on the day of their birth. Listening to the song can be disconcerting. One friend, after discovering his was by the Andrews Sisters, wrote, "Will someone spoon oatmeal into me for dinner?"

(If you want to find your song, click here.) Mine was a song I'd never heard of - somehow I didn't pay much attention to the hit parade when I was in my bassinet. What with diapers, bottles, and sleep deprivation, my parents may never have heard of it either. I just checked the top hits on the days my daughters were born, and they were completely unfamiliar to me too.

So I got to thinking, this meme has it wrong. The important song in my life isn't the number-one hit on the day of my birth. It's the number-one hit on the day I was conceived. That song might explain my existence.

I immediately checked out my idea by looking up top hits on my daughters' probable dates of conception. OK, scratch that theory. One song was barely familiar. The other was "American Pie." Well, yes, "I can still remember how that music used to make me smile..."

The top hit on my own probable date of conception, though, seemed sweetly appropriate: Francis Craig's "Near You." (If you want to estimate your date of conception, click here. If you were born in a leap year, choose 2012 as your birth year; otherwise, choose 2011.)

But hey, the hit parade is more for teenagers than for sober young householders. What song was popular that Sunday afternoon when Mr Neff and I, aged 19 and 18, snuggled in a parked VW and decided to get married?

Groovin'

On a Sunday afternoon ...

We'll keep on spending sunny days this way

We're gonna talk and laugh our time away

I feel it comin' closer day by day

Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly . . .

More than 44 ecstatic years later, the music hasn't died, though it's getting more and more difficult to groove in a VW.

V IS FOR VENGEANCE by Sue Grafton

Wow. This is Sue Grafton's best alphabet mystery yet.

Well, I think it is, and I've read them all, beginning with A Is for Alibi (1982), which begins with these memorable first lines:

My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I'm thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.

I've loved all 22 (so far) of Millhone's adventures for being witty and smart, but not deep or noir; for having a kick-ass female investigator who seems like a real person, not an action figure; for including the same lovable minor characters from book to book (Rosie the Hungarian restaurant owner, Henry the fatherly landlord) without ever repeating plots or becoming predictable; and for appearing year after year after year.

But since I grab them as soon as I can get hold of the library copy, and since last time I read one - U Is for Undertow - was 20 months ago - I can't be absolutely sure that V Is for Vengeance is the unquestionable pick of the litter. I can only tell you that as I was enjoying Grafton's deft handling of multiple plot lines and points of view, I kept thinking of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series, and that is high praise indeed.

Both Connelly and Grafton, inspired by mid-20th-century greats Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, have taken hardboiled detective fiction and humanized it. Their detectives not only age but also change and grow. Their supporting characters are decent but flawed - or deeply flawed but, usually, still showing traces of grace. Their settings - Los Angeles for Harry, Santa Teresa (a pseudonym for Santa Barbara) for Kinsey - feel real: both authors know, for example, that Californians use the definite article when referring to their freeways ("the 10"). Their books take us well beyond the borders of genre fiction. These are not just page-turners; they are fully-fledged novels.

In V Is for Vengeance, Kinsey's part in apprehending a shoplifter plunges her into a labyrinth of organized crime. Who is Dante, and how does he make so much money? Is Nora's husband stepping out on her? Why does Marvin keep changing his mind? Is it wise for Kinsey to keep hanging up on the persistent reporter? Why is Pinky so nervous? What's going on with Dante's little brother and the vice cop?

And will the risk-inclined Kinsey finally make a fatal error?

I confess that the last question didn't worry me as much as it might have: I know that four more books are on the way, and I am grateful. If you're already a fan of Kinsey Millhone, I guarantee you'll love this one. If you have yet to make her acquaintance, you don't have to read the other 21 novels to appreciate V Is for Vengeance. Read it now. You can - and probably will - fill in the backstory later.

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY by P.D. James

I had this idea of combining my two great enthusiasms—one is for [Jane Austen's] novels, and the other is for writing crime fiction, detective stories—and try and do them together, and I enjoyed it immensely. I think she’d probably forgive me, because I have kept very closely to her characters, and I think I've made a sort of picture of life at Pemberley which she would have approved of…

 – P.D. James in a recent radio interview

Six years have gone by since the end of Pride and Prejudice when three of the five Bennet girls got married: Elizabeth to the stubborn Mr Darcy, Jane to the affable Mr Bingley, and Lydia to the odious Lieutenant Wickham. Now even Mary, the studious sister with limited people skills, is happily settled as a vicar's wife, and Kitty lives contentedly at home with the elder Bennets. What more could Jane Austen possibly do with this group? No one is desperately looking for a wealthy spouse or falling in love with an unsuitable person; thus no one can gossip, compete, despair, fall from grace, or wildly rejoice.

P.D. James has come to Derbyshire at just the right time.

Baroness James, as I'm sure you know, is one of the best crime writers alive. Her detective fiction bursts out of the genre: most of her books are well-crafted novels with fully developed characters and intricate plots. Her usual detective, Adam Dalgleish, is not only a brilliant investigator but also a poet and a heartthrob. She of all people would know that beneath the apparently smooth surface of life at Pemberley,  disaster lurks.

I'm not going to tell you about the murder or the suspicions or the trial, and I'm certainly not going to drop hints about the surprising dénouement. I'll just point out that Death Comes to Pemberley is a fun read, though not as much fun as Pride and Prejudice or, for that matter, the Dalgleish books (but then what is?). It begins in full Jane Austen mode—

It was generally agreed by the female residents of Meryton that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn had been fortunate in the disposal in marriage of four of their five daughters

—and continues with the occasional hat tip to Charlotte Brontë:

From time to time the wind howled in the chimney, the fire hissed and spluttered like a living thing and occasionally a burning log would break free, bursting into spectacular flames and casting a momentary red flush over the faces of the diners so that they looked as if they were in a fever.

Much of the story, however, concerns neither ladies' relationships nor nature's staging but rather the public lives and utterances of various men: Messrs Darcy, Bingley, Alveston, and Wickham; Colonel Fitzwilliam and Captain Denny; Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, Mr. Justice Moberley, Mr. Mickledore, Mr. Cartwright ... The comedy of manners quickly turns into a courtroom drama, and Elizabeth quietly leaves the stage.

In her author's note James says, "I owe an apology to the shade of Jane Austen for involving her beloved Elizabeth in the trauma of a murder investigation." If an apology is needed, it is for quite the opposite reason: Elizabeth should have been more present, more involved, more significant to the story. Fortunately she returns to prominence in the final chapters, not—alas—with her original maidenly wit and cheek, but sweetly affirming her husband as he drones on and on, waiting for just the right moment to spring a surprise on him.

And yes, everyone lives happily ever after, which shouldn't be a spoiler. What, after all, would you expect when justice is served and romance flourishes?
___________________________________

P.S. If Jane Austen would lend some of her superfluous commas to P.D. James, both authors would be easier to read.

Yesterday in U.S. health care policy - a step in the right direction

Yesterday a provision in the Affordable Care Act went into effect: health insurers' profits must now be limited.

In response, Rick Ungar, a journalist specializing in health-care policy, posted a feisty column on Forbes's Policy Page. Provocatively titled "The Bomb Buried in Obamacare Explodes Today - Hallelujah!," the article looks at "the provision of the law, called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect—85% for large group insurers—on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit."

Knowing how much Steve Forbes hates the Affordable Care Act (see, for example, my November 10 post), I started reading Ungar's post with trepidation. Was his "Hallelujah" sarcastic? Was he wincing when he wrote that the medical loss ratio provision would lead to "the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry"?

Evidently not. Insurance companies can't possibly make a profit once this provision is enforced, Ungar writes, and their parent companies are "fleeing into other types of investments. They know what we should all know – we are now on an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans and thank goodness for it." Ungar thinks the results will be good for the rich, who will still be able to buy expensive insurance for luxurious care; and good for the poor, who will finally be able to "get their families the medical care that they need." His Hallelujah is genuine.

I completely support the medical loss ratio provision, but I believe Ungar should have mentioned that the poor are unlikely to be able to get the medical care they need unless there is a federally enforced mechanism for limiting costs. As far as I know, there is no such mechanism in the Affordable Care Act - the providers' lobbies saw to that. So federal funds will continue to subsidize providers' profits (as long as the providers aren't insurance companies), and prices will continue to rise way beyond the means of poor and middle-income families.

I also believe he is mistaken when he suggests that "the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry" will lead to the advent of a single-payer system. As T.R. Reid points out in his excellent 2009 book, The Healing of America, "the United States is the only developed country that relies on profit-making health insurance companies to pay for essential and elective care." Those other OECD countries, however, do not all have single-payer systems. Britain, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Spain do. France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland do not. Like us, they finance health care through competing private (but not-for-profit) insurers. There is no reason we could not do the same.

The United States has taken an important step forward by limiting insurers' profits. We now need to do something about profiteering in other parts of the gargantuan health-care industry. If we truly want to improve our health-care outcomes, provide health care for all Americans, and still spend less money per capita on health care, we need to take lessons from other developed nations, all of whom are ahead of us in all categories (see, for example, this 2010 article on a Commonwealth Fund study, or check out the facts and figures yourself at the World Health Organization's detailed database search page).

Or we can continue down our present path of allowing lobbyists to finance elections and line the pockets of our elected representatives in hopes of reversing or indefinitely deferring any meaningful health-care reform.

NEVER SAY DIE by Susan Jacoby

"Susan Jacoby has long made it her project to uncover ill-formed, cynical 'junk thought' and administer a cold dose of reason and logic against it," wrote Ted C. Fishman in the New York Times ("It Gets Worse," 2/25/11). "But Jacoby is no Mr. Spock. Her rationalism is delivered in an angry barrage peppered with enthusiastically snide asides."

"In her book, Ms. Jacoby serves as a reality instructor. Bad news flows from her as profanity from a rap group," wrote Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal ("Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive," 1/29/11). "Imagine a modern-day Cassandra but one ticked to the max."

OK, Never Say Die isn't for everybody. Sheeesh, if neither the NYT nor the WSJ liked it, perhaps it isn't for anybody. But don't quit reading yet (I promise to keep this short). Though I agree with Messrs Fishman (aged 52 at time of writing) and Epstein (aged 74) about Ms. Jacoby's style (she is now 66), I still think she offers some insights that we neglect at our great peril (I'm 63):

1. When AARP magazine and self-help books dispense relentlessly upbeat advice and unfailingly inspirational stories, they focus almost entirely on the "young old" - people in good health in their 60s and 70s. Rarely do they look at the "old old" - people in failing health and/or over age 85, when fully 50% have Alzheimer's disease. Boomers who believe that the optimistic sources are giving an accurate picture of old age are in for a big shock.

2. To the extent that we live in a dream world in which old folks are happy and healthy until they suddenly, painlessly drop dead (while parachuting out of an airplane, perhaps, or in the midst of wild sex), we will not as a society provide for the real-life needs of real-life old people and their exhausted caregivers.

3. If we want to continue providing adequate health care for seniors, we're going to have to provide adequate health care for everyone else too. People will not vote to pay Grandma's medical bills if they can't pay their own.

Check out Susan Jacoby's short Newsweek column, "The Myth of Aging Gracefully" (1/30/11), for a preview of her position. Here's a sample paragraph from chapter 7 in Never Say Die, "Greedy Geezers and Other Half-truths":

The myth of young old age, which simultaneously overestimates the earning potential and underestimates the needs of the dependent old old, also poses a major impediment to any serious, reality-based discussion of social justice for both old and young. Healthy old old age is costly, and unhealthy old old age is even costlier. If, as a society, we see longevity as a good thing, then we're going to have to pay for it. But all we are hearing from public officials, now that the brief period when conservatives could use the health care debate to prey on the fears of the elderly has passed, is how to pay less to support longer lives. If there really were such a thing as a radically new brand of old age in which everyone can take care of himself or herself, there would be no reason to worry. Society would be off the hook. The boomers - healthy beneficiaries of this wonderful new old age - would surely be able to tote that barge and lift that bale until the very end.

The revised liturgy: medieval words, modern sexism

The bishops have spoken, or at least succumbed. This weekend American Catholics began saying new words at mass. Well, perhaps new is incorrect - the aim of the revised liturgy is to bring back older words that are closer to medieval Latin. In a time when the Catholic church has been rocked by scandals of almost Renaissance proportions, this move is supposed to make American parishioners feel more holy. It is also supposed to bring us in line with European-language liturgies, whose translations are closer to the medieval text.

Yesterday I went to the 10:30 mass at St. Michael's Catholic Community. The Bishop of Joliet, resplendent in purple robes and gold miter, processed medievally down the center aisle behind an honor guard of Knights of Columbus wearing feathery hats. When he greeted us with the customary "The Lord be with you," half of us responded "And also with you" while the other half said, medievally, "And with your spirit." By the end of mass, we had all caught on and were saying the revised words. I didn't feel especially holier. I did, however, feel greater kinship with European Catholics, who rarely attend mass.

Catholics sometimes reproach Protestants for acting as if the Holy Spirit stopped working with the church in the first century, after the New Testament books were written. Tradition, Catholics maintain, is the Spirit's continuing work in the church. Even the Spirit, however, has a bad century now and then, or at least a bad continent. Apparently the words he inspired the Western European church to use in the 11th century were superior to those he inspired the American church to use in the 20th century. So now instead of simple words like one in being and born, we're back to medieval words like consubstantial and incarnate; and instead of affirming our faith as part of the believing community ("We believe in one God ..."), we're back to medieval individualism ("I believe in one God"); and along with with our guilt-ridden medieval ancestors we can strike our breasts and confess that we have sinned "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

And of course we are just as sexist as ever. More so, in fact. A medieval priest did indeed say "Pray, brothers" (oráte fratres), but not at every mass. More likely those words were spoken to brother priests at  concelebrated masses, not to male and female parishioners at typical parish masses. And the medieval creed did indeed affirm that Christ came down from heaven "for us men" (propter nos homines). Never mind that any 21st-century English-speaker hears that as "for us males," whereas the Latin means "for us humans." Why change good sexist texts that are already close to the Latin words, even if the meanings have completely changed?

Alas, as Fr. Nonomen lamented in Commonweal magazine, "the majority [of parishioners] won’t care. They will dutifully learn all the new responses and musical settings and generally remain unaware of the powerful changes this liturgical language is likely to work on the church their grandchildren will inherit." Or will not inherit, as more and more of us get tired of medievally resplendent bishops making excuses for bad decisions by incompetent men in high places, and quietly drift away.