THIS CRAZY BUSINESS OF WRITING...OR WHY BOOKS GO OUT OF PRINT....

It's a strange paradox that popularity and length of a series makes it more difficult to get out another book after a certain time has elapsed. Isn't this a strange business, this issuing of books?

Due to a tax decision that equated books with cans of tomato soup as far as inventory goes, publishers now print very close to the actual demand: warehousing used to let a publisher print once and issue books for years on demand. This doesn't happen nowadays, because nobody wants to be taxed on inventory. The unhappy result of the judicial decision is that literature is instant and gone-again, and the industry has made its adjustments to that fact over the last couple of decades, though in my own opinion the industry is on its way toward something totally different than printing and shipping from a single national location.

Why? Shipping costs: that price increase happened, too, over the years the industry was adjusting to the Thor Tool Decision. Cost of paper, another big increase, not unrelated to shipping, and environmental laws. That's why books have gone up in price. If you want to take a quick aside to see further details on the way the money divides up, I've confined the numbers to a file I call bookbiz.

The warehousing decision hurt sf and fantasy more than it did some fields because we are a body of literature that depends on development of   ideas: that is, sf writers trade ideas like tennis balls flying between players. One predicts, another takes up the theme; fantasy has some of those characteristics, and if the whole backlist isn't available, the newer readers don't have any way to access the wider culture behind the books. I'm not talking about series, which are their own problem, but just that finding, say, the Hugo-Winners, is a major undertaking...not to mention H. Beam Piper, Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore, and a whole list of thematically essential-but-not-in-print writers who are part of the mental databanks of the longterm readers. All those books need to be available to subsequent generations for the good health of the field and for the continuation of an intellectual dialogue that began in the mid-1800's and still goes on. For the new reader, it's like not having Wilde or Shakespeare in print and trying to become well-read in English literature.

Satellite download of books to regional printing centers as certain newspapers do now might be one answer to the distribution and backlist nightmare. Internet download to hand-held electronic books is already upon us. There are times I myself wonder about the feasibility of putting out certain novels as shareware: pay if you liked it, but download time is long and fraught with frustration, and readers would miss the colorful covers and the feel of a book.

So what's to do? Support your local bookstore as well as the online stores: they have their headaches in this whole transition, and personally, considering what I know of the industry of books, I believe bookstores exert an invaluable influence---sometimes a slightly skewed, too quick influence, but what other system we now have can drive the creation of a picture essay on the Roman Empire or the solar system? What other channel is there to enable artists and historians and scientists to get together and produce work not for the classroom, but for the living room? And what ordinary channels but highly individual bookstores and very big bookstores can present your demands to the publishers? You think, perhaps, of the idealistic publisher with a personal project...yes, it still happens. But the funds to handle that perhaps risky project come from the sure successes.

Think about a world with no way to finance or create a picturebook, a photo essay...a history or a novel. The internet is a wonderful place, but it's a fine juggling act of freedom and marketplace. We need to preserve both the freedom and the marketplace, because a book is both art and commerce.

Whoever can preserve both in the system that evolves will deserve the thanks of the whole book-loving  community.