In Lieu of Friday 20

I'm going to be on the road for most of the day today, so no Friday 20 this week.

Some random thoughts on the biz:

It is inaccurate to call winners of any award "the best in the genre" unless every person in the entire genre competes for said award. However, I doubt you'll ever see a genre trophy awarded that reads "the nicest, most popular members of our writing organization who mailed in their entry fee before we reached our cut-off limit" or "the most devoted campaigner, vote-beseecher and ass-smoocher, regardless of writing ability" or "for those who couldn't win an award until they found a way to automatically disqualify those who always beat them."

There was once a writer who wrote more than two million words during his life. Out of all that, he put out a single book (essentially self-published) that sold maybe 200 copies. The poor guy never made a living as a writer and had to do things like make pencils to keep from starving. After his death, more of his work was published and was read and beloved by such trivial lightweight fanboys as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi. As Henry David Thoreau would doubtless tell you, success is nice, but immortality cannot be bought.

Finally, booksignings have really changed since I used to do them. A friend of mine recently called her local bookstore to find out what time an author doing a signing would be there. She was given the time, and then sternly warned of the following:

1) she was not to bring any copies to the store to be signed; the Very Important Author would only sign books bought at that store during the signing, limit one per person;

2) the Very Important Author would not make out the book in my friend's name, but would only sign it, and

3) there was no guarantee that if my friend waited in line for hours (which she should expect to) that she would actually get a signed book before the store ran out of copies.

My friend did not attend the booksigning. However, she did consign all the copies she had of the author's books to the local landfill, and is now telling everyone she knows what a Very Important Jackass this author is. I'm puzzled. The author is about equal to me, fame-wise, so this VIP stuff is pure posturing. That and back when I did signings, we tried not to treat the fans who came out to see us like snot. Guess I'm behind the times again.

Have a good weekend.