Ed.Note -- The following response by writer, Eric Chaet of DePere, Wisconsin, concerns Word Bites #22: "FEWER NOSES STUCK IN BOOKS IN AMERICA, SURVEY FINDS" * Eric is, in many ways, a writer's writer, but a writing mind worth reckoning with--and worthy of a much larger audience. (Please give him your time, read his books, and pass him on.) Maybe not the "last of the individualists" (in a time in America when individualism seems out-of-style...a violation of the Patriot Act)) but certainly on the endangered writers list of free thinkers. I continue to place him in that great tradition and context of Emerson and Thoreau. And we here in Wisconsin are glad to have him, as invisible as he is in this state.
--n.b.
Norb, It's said that there are essentially 4 kinds of markets, for every kind of product or service:
1. emerging market (first time buyers, full of uncertainty about how to do transactions, must experiment, only brands which dominate are likely to persist);
2. growing market (time to establish market share);
3. mature market (oligarchic domination, protecting market share & profit, alert to any emerging competition); &
4. declining market (which you are describing for reading of books in America--when attention to controlling costs is key, as volumes & revenues drop).
However, I have never thought I was in the book business, nor the song business, not even in the literature, or art, or philosophy business, or poetry business, etc.--though people I deal with assume that's what I'm doing, making successful transactions rare, even when the economy is said to be booming.
I don't like most books, stories, etc. I think that they are counterproductive, that they feed neuroses, & failure. I don't like most classical music, or most paintings in museums--though I love some classical music, & some paintings in museums.
I certainly am not glad when I see someone whose nose is perpetually in a book.
I am always on the verge of this state--to those who don't observe me closely, it IS my state of being--since I read so much more than they do. But I am doing other things that they are unable to perceive, a lot more than they do, too. (I get & spend less, which gives me major time to operate.)
I am in the human success business. It's an emerging market, & has been for thousands of years. Doing business is tricky, there are no established means of transaction, those who are in the market to buy scarcely know where to turn, who to trust, what to pay, how. Usually, they are short of money, too--being concerned with something with such an infrequently immediate pay-off, & concerning themselves about as little with getting & spending as they can get away with & survive. And what almost everyone is doing almost always--normal life--poses many obstacles.
Almost every writer is in competition with me--not my ally at all. Likewise almost every publisher, almost every artist. Likewise almost every politician & clergyperson. Likewise almost every teacher. Those who are addicted to reading are hardly more likely to obtain a copy of one of my books, than those who disdain reading, generally.
My niche in the human success business is not books, but the work of Eric Chaet--work of all sort--that is, whatever of my work I can find a way to manifest, for sale, or (usually unconscious) trade--for instance, washing dishes in exchange for a meal.
Another angle: knowledge, for instance. There is an incredible amount of knowledge--yet few want much of it. Those of us who want it have access to more than we can absorb--though if we don't get psyched out by normal attitudes, we can absorb a great deal more than is conceivable, generally. Wisdom, too. Or the delight which energizes, available via, say, the work of Bach, Beethoven, Coltrane, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Havel, Dylan, etc. Havel writes books--so do those who sell millions of shallow romances & mysteries--pass-times. Havel & those writers aren't actually in the same business, are they? Is the person who sells wholesome food in the same business as the person who sells sweet or salty poisons?
The business of capturing rarely-realized truth, in such a way that it is of great benefit, however subtly--whether via delight or understanding or some combination--has been a rare form of enterprise all along.
For a while, novels were a major money-making & fame-conferring industry in the USA--briefly--say, Hemingway to Bellow--a generation, replaced mainly by film, songs, television....
The market shrinks, the market vastly expands--but forms of "prostitution" proliferate so greatly that "love" is lost in the crowd of the marketplace. Bad money chases good into hoarding. As with knowledge, few people seek out the best works of art (likewise history, science), works of conscientious genius, & benefit from them.
So if you are going to write, the odds are strong that it will be very difficult to break into print--or if you do, to get any circulation--or if you get circulation to actually, seriously be attended to.
On one extreme, everything depends on your ability to gain or buy publicity.
On the other extreme--on the ability of your work to survive long enough without publicity, much circulation, much concentrated attention, to seep into the consciousness of humanity, one person at a time, now & then, forever (or at least a very long time)--not just in the immediate future.
What we thought we were doing when we were younger, was a reasonable approximation. Now that we are older, & have a greater sense of the world, which is in the process of radical change, always, though we don't realize it when we are first seeking our place in it...now that we are older, we have a more accurate sense of who we are & what we are doing, in the midst of what is happening.
I'm in the human success business, the work of Eric Chaet is my niche. I have allies from all the times of the past, & plenty of allies in the future. Most of the people of the past, though, lived as though someone like I am was impossible, or, if possible--a joke. Most of the people of the future will probably live likewise--though I'm hopeful that the odds will change somewhat in my favor--over a long period of time, most likely.
Certainly most of the people--whether they are readers or in the book business, or not--alive now, are not my allies.
And, at least in the sense that everyone wants resources, and usually more attention than they are getting--everyone is my competitor.
Few are in a position to benefit from anything I do--they haven't prepared themselves. (For instance, you have to be able to read with some concentration to get what I write, though I write unusually clearly, I think. What I say contradicts what is usually said, in many respects. It takes some prepared-for self-discipline to get it. Like it takes some prepared-for self-discipline to listen to a Beethoven sonata.)
Some will take advantage of me--unless the future is greatly different from the past.
Almost everyone will disregard what I say & do. (I myself will question everything I have ever said or done, occasionally.)
So what's new?
I'm getting better at what I do, which includes getting it to those who are able to make use of it, & getting myself funded. I'm still not especially adept--lousy might describe it better--at getting the work to those who can make use of it, or at getting myself funded--but I couldn't be much worse at it, than earlier. I'm seeing some progress on the Eric-Chaet-gets-his-work-out-&-himself-paid front. And after decades of uncertainty, I am now confident of my technical skills, & of my ability to decide what matters & what doesn't--what I should share, & what is just my own personal business, my own lessons to learn.
The market for what I'm doing is tiny--but growing exponentially. (It's easier to double one or two than, say, 256 million.) I'm working on growing that market--like a garden--among the other things I'm working on.
Hope you are well, Norb. Your stories are certainly better than most of those being written & published. Make 'em count!
Eric
Books & booklets available:
How To Change the World Forever For Better, social philosophy, 1st edition (1990) gone, second edition (1994), 96 pages, available from Turnaround Artist Productions, 1803 County Road ZZ, De Pere, Wisconsin 54115, USA, for U.S. $10.
Poems for Uprising Ypsilanti Marlon Gillespie, 1997, 1999, 16 pages, copies printed upon demand, available from Turnaround Artist Productions, 1803 County Road ZZ, De Pere, Wisconsin, 54115, USA, for U.S. $5.
People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways, fiction/philosophy, 2001, available from Amazon.com or from Turnaround Artist Productions, 1803 County Road ZZ, De Pere, Wisconsin 54115, USA, for U.S. $15.
Leaning Into the Wind, current and still mutating (2004) 16 page collection of poems, copies printed upon demand, available from Turnaround Artist Productions, 1803 County Road ZZ, De Pere, Wisconsin 54115, USA, for U.S. $5.
Also posters: The Into-Traffic "signs," posters on cloth, varying from approximately one to approximately two square feet, U.S. $35 each, 1984-2000, each with indignant bearded face, but with a variety of sayings (list of sayings available upon request). More than 1,475 of these posters have been displayed on 5 continents‹the majority on American utility poles--the posting of which is the subject of much of People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways.
