Call Me What You Want's List: Behaviour

• So Tacitus—probably the most acute analyst ever of the autocratic rule of the Roman emperors—described the scene in his Annales, half a century or so later; he was no doubt relying on some hard evidence (a few modern critics have even suggested an eyewitness account), but inevitably recasting it in his own terms.

• • unread point

• it’s important to understand that they normally feel time-starved, so they’ll want you to “bottom line” everything to avoid wasting time with unnecessary information.
• Be sure to ask for their opinion

• One of the ways I research my characters is to try having a conversation with them by putting them in a situation that sparks lots of debate or general chatter. I write down all of the conversations, some may be useful later on, but most probably not. I was inspired by a Star Trek The Next Generation episode where Data was playing poker with Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking and I thought that was a great and unique situation. So to help get into the mindset of my characters we sit down and play poker.

• In a study by one of the leading dating sites on the Web, they found that telling a woman she was attractive actually made her more likely to reject you.
• Words like "sexy," "beautiful" and "hot" made a woman much less likely than average to respond to your initial overtures. Meanwhile attempting to show interest in her by mentioning some of her pastimes, favorite things, etc. resulted in a much higher than average response.
• We really hate to say it but women are scientifically proven to like "bad boys." Apparently there is something called the "dark triad" (dibs on the band name) of personality traits that still exist and even flourish in humans despite the fact that, evolutionarily, they are bad for the continuation of the species.
• Apparently, your first name can drastically influence how successful you are and, yes, even how attractive people consider you. According to a study of 6,000 people, men named Michael, James and David are the clear winners, with all three placing in the top ten for Most Successful, Luckiest, and yes, Most Attractive names. George and Paul on the other hand? Well, just resign yourselves to a life of minimum wage jobs, accidents and loneliness (unless you're a Beatle, apparently).

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• But research shows there is a least a little bit of a factual basis behind their bullshit. In his book The Game, journalist Neil Strauss entered the world of the pick-up artist and learned one important thing: Women like men who ignore them. According to his experience, your best bet at getting a girl is walking up to her group and completely ignoring her, while chatting away to her less attractive friends.
• We would write that off under our normal rule of "don't believe anything that is also believed by a man in a furry tophat" (and it's saved our lives more than once), but another study came up with hard numbers.
• The dating site OKCupid.com actually went through their database of pictures men had submitted, and tracked how many contacts each yielded. They studied 7,000 photos and determined that men who didn't look directly at the camera in their profile pictures received more messages on average than men who did. About 50 percent more, in fact, if said picture combined the looking away with an expression of disinterest (smiling drove down the effect some, but still not as much as eye contact).
• because clearly the men in the study were also expressing the fact that they were looking for a mate (or else they wouldn't be on OKCupid). So it's not about total disinterest. The data suggests it's about somehow showing that you're interested, but not in her.

• Dancing is a high-risk venture. Yes, there's a reason why dance clubs are usually just an orgy waiting to happen. But if you dance badly, you'd have been better off staying far away.

   

  Scientists say if you suck at dancing, it signals to women that you're a bad mating partner. It's a subconscious sign that your testosterone levels are lower than average, which means you're not up to a lady's baby-making standards. And your awkward moves on the dance floor may have evolved as a neon flashing sign to warn women to steer clear of you and your inferior DNA.

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• Hero History: Bouncing Boy

  
  --by Matthew Peterson   

      

  Or - “How To Really Make An Impact As A Legionnaire…”
• the early days of the Legion of Super-Heroes are a continuity cop’s nightmare, with strange developments galore as the team cameoed their way across the Superman universe, rolling through the accumulated lore of their parent title on their way to building an empire.  On the way, the varying writers made for some really inconsistent storytelling, such as the fact that all Legionnaires were supposed to have one UNIQUE super-power even though Kryptonian powerhouse Tom Welling and his identically powered cousin Laura Vandervoort were allowed to be concurrent members, or even the varying characterizations of Saturn Girl.  But of all the odd choices made in those days, you have to question the decision-making of a team that rejected the relatively-powerful Polar Boy, Night Girl, and Fire Lad, but inducted Matter-Eater Lad, Shrinking Violet, and today’s Historical subject.  
• Known primarily for his up-beat nature, Chuck Taine is the Legion’s everyman, the unlikely Legionnaire who nonetheless made the most of every chance he was given, the regular guy who still managed to bag the ultimate male fantasy wife.  This is your Major Spoilers Hero History of Charles Foster Taine of Earth…  Bouncing Boy!
• We begin this week the same place we did last time ’round, in Adventure Comics #276, mere moments after Brainiac 5 and Supergirl have made their bids for Legion membership.  Now, I will grant you that inflating and ricocheting around the room like a portly Daffy Duck isn’t exactly the super-power equivalent of gold bullion, but when you’re up against a man whose mind makes a Cray look like a Timex T-99 and a woman who can crush cars with her breasts, it’s easy to see why Chuck was overlooked.  Heck, even Dirk Morgna, the much-decorated Legionnaire known as Sun Boy paled in comparison to the star-crossed supercouple…
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• Astonishingly, both Dirk and Chuck were rejected from the Legion in this issue, as glowing and bouncing weren’t considered Legion material at that time.  Dirk was the first Legionnaire to join AFTER S-Girl and B5 (a story for another time) but Mr. Taine wasn’t so lucky.
• Chuck made a fool of himself by mistaking an advertisement for a bomb before finally showing how truly useful his powers could be when Saturn Girl faced down a criminal with electrical powers.  Chuck’s rubbery body and bouncing kept him from being grounded, making him immune to the electrical bolts, and he succeeded where even a founding Legionnaire failed to stop the villain.  Cosmic Boy himself reversed the decision on Chuck’s powers, and let the tenacious human basketball join the Legion.
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• Chuck was shocked soon after to find that his body could expand and take on a rubbery texture, (luckily he wore futuristic stretch fabric, though the fact that vertical white stripes are not the�portly man’s friend must have escaped him) giving him the ability to bounce to great heights.� A chance encounter with Lightning Lad gives him the idea that will change his life forever…
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• In a weirdly ham-handed 1960’s kind of way, you have to wonder if this wasn’t DC’s way of making even the fat kids feel like superheroes…� Once in the Legion, Chuck took on the role of cheerleader and unofficial morale officer, keeping his teammates spirits high even in the worst of situations.� Knowing how hard it was to be rejected, Chuck even took it upon himself to encourage the new crops of Legion applicants during tryouts, telling them the story of his three rejections, and reminding them that even if they don’t get in, they shouldn’t give up on their heroic dreams.� Shepherding the young superheroes would eventually become a career for him, ironically…
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• “If that idiot Bouncing Boy made it in, certainly my power of�mentally creating�many, many sharp angles on my stupid red jumpsuit will get me into the Legion!”� Heh…� I’m confused as to why Chuck styles his hair to look like�a Weeble, though.� The only thing I can think of is that Dippity Doo no longer exists 1000 years from now.� After Bouncing Boy has been in the Legion for a few weeks, the team is made aware of the threat of a villain called “Jungle King, the Monster Master” and draws lots to see who will face the terrible threat.� Care to guess who took the prize?
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• The Earthquake beast’s power brings down the entire wall, freeing the other creatures, and the Monster Master is defeated by his own beasties, thanks to Chuck’s quick thinking and bouncing abilities…� Even with this win under his not-inconsiderable belt, the future doesn’t look bright for Bouncing Boy.� As is always the case with the Legion,�though, there’s a killer robot or a precognitive computer or a strange ray-gun around every corner, lying in wait.� It’s a miracle that these people weren’t all melted into slag by the end of their second issue…
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• Even powerless, Bouncing Boy’s courage keeps him in the game, and he becomes the first Legion reservist, an honor seldom given to anyone who didn’t know Clark Kent in high school.� When the menace known as Computo breaks free, and begins capturing Legionnaires for his nefarious plans, Bouncing Boy shows the guts to step up, powers or no powers.
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• That Computo is a sadistic little Erector set, ain’t he?� Giving a guy his powers back so that he can fail to help his friends?� That is cold, folks.� Not only that, Compy claims that the powers will last 30 minutes, but they only last about ten.� Computo was defeated by Brainiac 5’s secret antimatter projector, and not long after, a super-genius named Zan Orbal decides to right a few of the wrongs that were perpetrated on the Legion by callous fates, including Matter-Eater Lad’s temporary obesity problem and the arm that Lightning Lad lost battling the Super Moby Dick of Space…
• What?� You think I make this stuff up?� Anyway, Orbal’s herbology skills put Neville Longbottom to shame, as he creates a series of potions that cure everything short of Saturn Girl’s ingrown pinky toenail…
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• Bouncing Boy once more leaps into action with his pals, and defeats the Wild Huntsman and his ever-so-effeminate little green hat.� Chuck also shows off his mental prowess, playing detective to discover the seeming betrayal of Gim Allon (Colossal Boy) and even acting as prosecutor in C.B.’s trial.� He also learned from his peers, taking Karate Kid’s self-defense class and earning impressive marks.� When the entire Legion loses their powers due to a villainous plot, Bouncing Boy shows that being a Legionnaire is about more than just super-powers.� Sometimes it’s about a mean right cross…
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• Though he occasionally seemed to flirt with Saturn Girl, (even vowing once that he would die to save her) the next phase of Chuck Taine’s life would take him in a very different direction.� With most of the team in the field, only he and Duo Damsel (the former Triplicate Girl…� a long story that I’ll get to later) remain at headquarters.� When a mission arrives, Duo D. sends her better half off on the mission, leaving her free for her date with density…
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• Gotta love the simple romances.� With all the drama of Timber Wolf/Lightning Lass and the sparks of Ultra Boy/Phantom Girl, it’s good to see one Legion couple who isn’t ready for a sub-plot on “As The Galaxy Turns.”� When her second self returns, Luornu is horrified to find that she’s created an entirely new life for herself, complete with a fiance and a new name.� Growing up on a planet where this kind of mental disconnection is the worst aberration imaginable, Luornu turns to the heart of the Legion for support.
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• Thankfully, Lu’s situation is only temporary, and she finds that having Chuck in her life is worthwhile, and the two of them continue their relationship.� When the United Planets reviews the Legion, and tells them that they must lose a member or lose their funding, Chuck quickly takes the initiative, ready to sacrifice himself rather than ask one of his friends or his beloved Duo Damsel to quit.� The only problem is, she’s as protective of him as he is of her, and has the same idea…
• 
• Chuck’s belief that he is “the least useful” of the Legionnaires is echoed in the attitudes of many of the Legion’s villains (as well as the writers who keep powering and depowering him with various changes of regime on the title) especially one Otto Orion, son of Orion the Hunter.� Having seen dear old dad defeated by the assembled LSH, Otto has decided to take them down one at a time, starting at (in his estimation) the bottom of the barrel.� Capturing Bouncing Boy as he returns from a mission, Orion reenacts ‘The Most Dangerous Game’, but he has seriously underestimated Mama Taine’s bouncing baby.
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• Chuck’s pride is uncharacteristically wounded by the snide attacks of a man wearing zebra skins and pigtails, and Bouncing Boy lets himself be taken into custody again.� But there’s a method to his madness, as the dip in freezing cold waters has done what Chuck hoped:� given him�a nasty cold to reckon with…� When you’re roughly 400 pounds of elastic with a tendency to ricochet, the last thing people want you to do is SNEEZE.
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• Now, we all know you can’t get a cold from being dipped in cold water.� But thanks to 30th Century super-science, even the most ridiculous wives’ tales (like getting a cold from being soaked, or stepping on a crack and it’s effect on matriarchal vertebrae) are true for the Legion kids!� The Human Billiard Ball returns home a conquering hero, but once again the “permanent” powers given him by the various elastic serums prove to be temporary.� Brainiac 5 is heartsick to give him the news that he’ll never bounce again, but Chuck won’t be beaten.� If his life as a superhero is over, then he vows to start a NEW phase of life…� as a husband.
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• Lu has likewise lost her super-powers (a long story blah blah blah fishcakes) and the two Legionnaires decide to tie the knot in style:�at the Nix Olympia mountains on Mars.� Their wedding is the first of the Legion’s big life-changing moments, as two of their own take the plunge in front of their teammates, The Wanderers (Silver Age Version, natch), The Substitute Heroes, and two DIFFERENT Martians (one who resembles J’Onn J’onnz, directly above the head of the person performing the marriage, and Tars Tarkas in the top row, towering over Sun Boy and Element Lad on the far left in the pink cape).�
• 
• Interestingly, (and quite off-topic) this two-page spread is sometimes referred to as “The Picture That Created The X-Men.”� When the late Dave Cockrum drew Superboy Tom Welling and The Legion #200, he asked the editor for this piece of art back, as he was an old-school Legion fan, and wanted it for himself.� The editor was going to give it to him, but publisher Carmine Infantino intervened, insisting that DC did NOT return original art, and angering Dave in the process.� Cockrum soon left DC for Marvel, and took over the pencilling chores on a relaunch of their lowest selling title, even bringing a character he had intended to bring to Legion with him.� That book was, of course, the All-New All-Different X-Men, and I wonder what the world would have been like if he had indeed completed his plan to have Nightcrawler in the world of the Legion…
• Not long after, the Legionnaire known as Chemical King was killed in action, saving the universe from World War VII.� With the active members off-planet for his funeral, only no-longer-Bouncing Boy is left to handle things at headquarters.� When the alarm indicates an intruder, he once again shows that it’s not the powers that make a Legionnaire, it’s their testicular fortitude, and Chuck has it in spades!
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• Worst of all, the intruder isn’t a villain at all, but a Science Police rookie named Dvron who was sent to take care of headquarters with the team off-planet.� Both Dvron and Chuck are quickly captured by the Legion’s defense systems (malfunctioning due to Dvron’s tampering.)� Dvron angers Bouncing Boy by calling him a “laughingstock” and Chuck punches the energy field in frustration.� His hand swells up as it used to when his powers were active, and�Chuck has a very dangerous brainstorm…
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• His powers fully restored, Chuck busts them free and repairs the systems, asking Dvron not to tell anyone about his new powers, since he doesn’t want to return to action and divert his attention from his beloved Luornu.� Awww…�
• The two of them travel with a group of colonists, and help to set up a new settlement, but when the Khunds launch an all-out assault on the Earth, even the retired-due-to marriage Legionnaires leap back into action.� Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel engage the Khunds on Earth, allowing their teammates to stop the war in space…
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• The secret of his returned powers out in the open, Chuck fights the good fight again, as the reservists find themselves on nearly active duty status again, with one crisis after another vying for Legion attention.� Forced to return to action, Chuck finds himself feeling guilt about wanting to return to his simple life with the girl(s) of his dreams, making the decision to leave the Legion…� His reverie is interrupted by Luornu, and he puts on a brave face.
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• Not long afterwards, the Legion is called to Orando, for the Royal Wedding of Projectra and Karate Kid, leaving Bouncing Boy in charge of headquarters again.� But this time, he brings his lady-love with him, taking advantage of a little down-time with the Missus, and coincidentally explaining how she’s the most important thing in his life.
• 
• Chuck and Luornu soon became the headmasters of the Legion academy, and Chuck’s enthusiastic and encouraging nature is once again given free reign.� Their joint leadership produces future Legionnaires Tellus and Magnetic Kid, and trains dozens of heroes to know that they can contribute, even if they don’t get into the Legion.� When the United Planets collapses, the Academy continues to operate, and after the Five Year Later gap, we find that Chuck is the leader of one of the finest military units extant in the world.� When the Khundian warlords�attack Earth at it’s lowest point,�Chuck and Lu’s�forces are more than ready to respond in kind…
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• Unfortunately for the Legion, the Khunds are under the control of Glorith of Baldur, a creepy little blonde who managed to usurp the power of the Time Trapper, and nearly destroyed the entire universe.� When the battle gets ugly, Jed Rikane (the purple skinned gentleman above, previously known as Power Boy) is killed, and Chuck’s battalion is thoroughly trounced.� Chuck is ready to leap into action himself, before Lu reminds him that his OTHER talents are needed.
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• With Glorith’s immense magical powers in play, the Legion has only one counter-force:� The White Witch, Mysa Nal.� Unfortunately, she has been broken by Mordru, forced to be one of his slave-wives, and hasn’t been able to return to her old self.� Bouncing Boy once again channels his morale abilities (combined with the military tough-love he learned with his recruits) to force Mysa back to reality.
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• Some years before, Luornu, Mon-El, Saturn Girl, and Brainiac 5 were involved in a conspiracy to attack the Time Trapper in his lair, and her last alternate body was lost, (See:� Story, long, explained later) but it is later discovered that she was NOT killed after all, but was instead enslaved by the Trapper and later Glorith.� With the help of the Legion, Chuck is able to reunite with BOTH his wives.
• 
• This is one of the few times, I might add, that anybody took a look at the sexual implications of being married to a woman who can create more of herself.� Soon after these events, the Zero Hour crisis began unravelling the time-stream of the 30th century, and the Legion was forced to intervene.� For the first time in their proud history, the team pulled even their oldest members out of mothballs, and united to stop the threat.� But even their powers were no match for the end of the universe themselves, and the team found themselves being erased from reality.� When only a few Legionnaires remained, they realized that the problem came from the Legion itself:� more properly, from the existence of the SW6 Legion, time-lost versions of the young Legion brought forward in teim.� The teams realize that they had to reconstitute themselves in order to reconstitute time, and Chuck and Luornu accept their fate as best they can…
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• Even in his last moments, Chuck works to keep everyone positive, even when it’s himself…� sort of.� The Bouncing Boys disappear from the universe, and the entire 30th Century hits a reset button.� A new Legion is formed, and many familiar faces join up.� But this dark and serious universe seems to have no room for a concept as gentle and silly as “Bouncing Boy.”� When rogue Daxamites destroy LSH headquarters, the Legion’s benefactor, R.J. Brande calls in a specialist, a young architect named Taine…
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• It’s here that we are given the full name Charles Foster Taine (and if you don’t get that, you probably think the Martians landed in Grover’s Mill.)� The young man is nearly overcome by hero worship for the Legion, but manages to do his job, even though the LSH keeps damaging the building.� At a time when the Legion members (drafted by the United Planets) are nearly at one another’s throats, with the leadership of the team in contention between Cosmic Boy and Leviathan, (Colossal Boy to those who hate biblical superhero names) it once again takes Chuck to make them all realize how good they’ve got it.
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• His words actually help to turn things around, bringing this new Legion together and remaining as part of the ‘ground crew’ to help with the repeated damage to the HQ.� He strikes up a friendship with Tenzil Kem, the head chef in the LSH commissary, and they console one another over being busted from hero to supporting cast member just because comics fans in the 90’s had no tolerance for whimsy.� They drown their sorrows in Kono Juice and three-dimensional billiards.
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• Elastic powers may not be in the cards in this reality, but Chuck’s eye for geometry remains keen, so much so that when aliens rush in brandishing weapons, he’s able to take out two elvabirds with one stone…
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• Tenzil and Chuck (along with R.J. Brande) are able to defeat the attackers, really Durlan shape-shifters in disguise.� When the Legion regroups after the Durlan assault, the team enjoys some downtime.� Chameleon, Spark, and Sensor prepare to go dancing with one of Triplicate Girl (now called Triad)’s selves, the flirtatious one, who invites Chuck along.� He’s not really a dancer, and when the quiet, shy Triad asks him out for tea, Chuck also is forced to turn her down.� Turns out he has tickets to a ballgame, and even thought Triad and Triad aren’t interested, luckily Triad is.
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• History repeates itself, as Luornu gives up her crush on Valor (the post-reboot version of Mon-El) for the man her alternate, original self married.� Chuck stayed on with the Legion, taking a higher profile role as the caretaker of their new Legion outpost, an orbital station from which the Legion begins operating.� When the Stargate systems begin to collapse due to the effects of the alien Blight, Chuck is one of the first to recognize it, and is key in devising the strategy to overcome it.
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• Several Legionnaires are lost through a collapsar, spending a year outside conventional space, a year in which the world of the Legion asks “Where are we going?� And why are we in this handcart?”� When the team returns to reality after a year, they find a few things have changed, and one of them goes a long way towards undoing one of the great injustices of the reboot era.
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• Chuck Taine has, in the Lost Legion’s absence, helped to create an entire planet, called LegionWorld, as well as developing his special ship, the Bouncing Boy, designed to act as a high-speed juggernaut, ricocheting off other ships as an offensive weapon.� Chuck acts as official pilot and majordomo for this new Legion, and becomes a much more integral part of the team afterwards…
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• Chuck continued appearing with this Legion until they were torn free of the timestream in the Teen Titans/Legion special, when the 31st century once again reset into the current Threeboot version of the Legion.� Chuck has yet to appear in this version of the Legion, except as a joke in the letter column, �but the last issue did introduce a character who seems vaguely familiar.� If this is a new version of Bouncing Boy, I’m kind of hoping that he gets the same reimagining that has made the rest of the new team so enjoyable.
• The greatest part of Bouncing Boy was reading about a character who was AWARE that his power was, essentially, ridiculous but wasn’t about to let that slow him down.� No matter what the odds, no matter how stacked the deck might have been, Bouncing Boy was ready with a joke or an encouraging word to keep his teammates heads on straight.� Being voted membership in a team so overtly powerful should be testament enough, but his career speaks for itself.� People can talk about their Element Lads, their Wildfires, their Tom Wellings and Mon-Els, but history has proven one thing:� When the chips are down, Bouncing Boy is the one Legionnaire who will always find a way to pull out a victory, even if it means that he himself comes out worse for wear…� and isn’t that what a truly great hero should do?

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• You can have brilliant ideas; but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.
• the story of rock star Bono's visit to then-Senator Jesse Helms' Capitol Hill office to enlist his help in the global war against AIDS.
• Bono had all the facts and figures at his fingertips, and launched into a detailed appeal based on this data. He was, in essence, speaking to Helms the same way he had recently spoken to executives and technical experts at the many foundations and corporations he had approached about this issue. But within a few minutes, Bono sensed that he was losing Helms' attention, and he instinctively changed his pitch. Knowing that Helms was a deeply religious man (and drawing on his own born-again Christian values), Bono began speaking of Jesus Christ's concern for the sick and poor. He argued that AIDS should be considered the 21^st century equivalent of leprosy, an affliction cited in many Bible stories of the New Testament. Helms immediately sat up and began listening, and before the meeting was over had promised to be the Senate champion for Bono's cause. 
• "woo": It's the ability to "win others over" to your ideas without coercion, using relationship-based, emotionally intelligent persuasion.
• "Here you have a rock star with tinted glasses and an elderly, conservative Southern senator. But when Bono had the good sense to switch from public policy talk about debt relief -- what we call in our book the 'rationality' channel -- to religious talk about poverty and disease -- what we call the 'vision' channel -- he touched Helms' heart. He sold his idea and, in the process, created trust."
• The word "woo," the authors note, has many meanings, but all of them relate to focusing on the person you are trying to persuade more than on your own needs and fears. "There is the obvious meaning related to courtship and romance," says Shell, "but there is also the more general idea of wooing people to seek their support. In addition, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton have recently used the word 'woo' in their books to describe the ability to easily establish rapport with many different people." However "woo" may be defined, the authors argue that effectively selling ideas -- using persuasion rather than force -- is one of the most important skills that everyone from CEOs and entrepreneurs to team leaders and mid-level managers need to learn if they want to be effective in their organizations.
• The Art of Woo presents a simple, four-step approach to the idea-selling process.
• First, persuaders need to polish their ideas and survey the social networks that will lead them to decision makers. To illustrate this step, Shell and Moussa recount how an unknown mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh turned his dream of being the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic into a reality. His idea was radical: He would make the crossing in a single-engine plane flying without a co-pilot or even a life raft. The idea was followed by his campaign to overcome people's disbelief that such a venture could ever work and to win over supporters in his hometown of St. Louis. Lindbergh started with contacts at the local airport who could see why his plan made sense and eventually worked his way up to the most influential businessmen in the city, using each person along the way to leverage an interview with the next.
• The second stage of the Woo process is confronting what Shell and Moussa call "the five barriers" -- the five most common obstacles that can sink ideas before they get started. These include unreceptive beliefs, conflicting interests, negative relationships, a lack of credibility and failing to adjust one's communication mode to suit a particular audience or situation.
• For example, when Napoleon was a young officer at the siege of Toulon, he set up an artillery battery in such a dangerous location that his superiors thought he would never get troops to man it. They would have been right had Napoleon relied on the conventional "authority channel" and issued threats and orders to get his way. Instead, he demonstrated his social intelligence by switching to the visionary channel and creating a large placard that was placed next to the cannons. It read: "The Battery of the Men without Fear." The position was manned night and day.
• Similarly, when Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on the notorious Robben Island in South Africa, he managed to obtain blankets and other necessities for his fellow prisoners by foregoing the expected high-minded appeals to politics and human rights. He worked instead on the relationship persuasion channel. By learning the guards' Afrikaans language and reading their literature, Mandela earned their respect and won them over to his idea of fair treatment -- even as he continued to face hostility from the officials who ran the prison.
• The third stage is to pitch your idea in a compelling way. Shell and Moussa note that at Google, employees selling ideas to upper management are given a challenge: to distill their business concepts into short, punchy presentations that get right to the essence of what they are proposing. This discipline forces them to figure out exactly what problem their idea addresses, how their idea will solve it and why their idea is better than both the status quo and available alternatives. The authors offer a template for pitching ideas in this format and give examples of distinct ways one can personalize an idea to make it memorable and distinctive.

• The final stage of Woo is to secure both individual and organizational commitments. "One of the most common mistakes people make in selling ideas," says Shell, "is to think that their job is finished once they succeed in getting someone to say 'yes' to their proposal. That's only the beginning. Research shows that in most organizations, a minimum of eight people will need to sign off on even simple ideas. The number goes up from there. So after you move the individual, you also have to move the organization."

   

  Shell and Moussa use a number of cases from business history to illustrate this point. For example, they tell the story of Charles F. Kettering, a brilliant inventor and engineer from the 1930s whom many consider an equal of Thomas Edison. Kettering invented such things as the automatic transmission and safety plate glass, but one of his best ideas -- the air-cooled automobile engine -- sat on the shelf for decades until the Volkswagen Beetle incorporated it. Kettering convinced Alfred Sloan, GM's top executive, that producing the air-cooled engine was a good idea, and the company's executive committee gave the go-ahead to make a limited number of cars with the prototype. But instead of following the idea through, Kettering went back to his lab to concentrate on the technical aspects of the project. The committee handed the production assignment to the Chevrolet division, whose top managers had never been brought into the persuasion process. They let the idea languish and it was eventually abandoned. "Kettering made a fundamental mistake: He didn't follow up and keep the pressure on," Shell notes. "He didn't do the political coalition-building needed to implement his idea."

• Andy Grove's 'Constructive Confrontation'

   

  Individual personality plays a key role in how you influence others, Shell adds. The book therefore includes two personalized "diagnostic" tests that readers can take to discover their persuasion strengths and weaknesses. One of the diagnostics is the "Six Channels Survey," which is designed to help people learn which of the key channels of influence they feel compelled to use most often at work and which they would prefer to use if given a choice. These channels include Authority, Rationality, Vision, Relationships, Interests and Politics. The idea is to help readers understand both how these six channels work and when they should adjust their pitch -- as Bono did with Senator Helms and Mandela did on Robben Island -- to appeal to different kinds of audiences.

• A second self-administered test, the Persuasion Styles Assessment, helps readers determine the degrees of assertiveness and natural social intelligence they bring to the idea-selling process. The authors point out that there is no one "correct" style of persuasion; rather, the key is being self-aware so you know how you perform and how others will perceive you.

   

  For example, Shell and Moussa illustrate the "Driver" style (a highly assertive type who gives only limited attention to the social environment) by examining how Intel CEO Andy Grove managed the persuasion process at Intel during his years as that company's leader. Labeled the "screamer," Grove could be intimidating to people who didn't know him well. But he was also willing to listen if people stood up to him and matched his passion. To facilitate communication, Grove instituted what he called a culture of "constructive confrontation" that freed everyone to be as blunt and assertive as he was. The result was a high-stress environment, but one in which everyone could speak their minds.
• The Art of Woo goes on to describe four other distinctive styles with examples drawn from business history. Banker J. P. Morgan is given as the model for the Commander (a Grove-like person who has a quieter demeanor), John D. Rockefeller exemplifies the Chess Player (a quieter person who attends strategically to the social environment), Andrew Carnegie's life provides the example for the Promoter style (a gregarious type who uses high levels of social intelligence), and Sam Walton is the model for the style that strikes the balance among all the others -- the Advocate.
• "Whenever a new idea might affect resources, power, control or turf," Shell says, "politics will be part of the problem at the implementation stage. You need to prepare an idea-selling campaign, not just a presentation."
• True yes- and frighteningly so. It illustrates why political personalities- whom we instinctively loathe because of their chameleon-like and Machavellian instincts- rule over us. 
   
  The ability to speak the other man's language, empathize with his prejudices, wear his skin and tell him what he wants to hear- these are what wins elections. It's also what guarantees success in corporate environments. The result is, too many skilled political animals make it to the top, while those that can get things done suffer for the sin of not being sufficiently oleaginous. 
   
  Many people cannot violate their personal integrity to the degree needed to persuade others. If you think Christianity is hogwash, how would you persuade Helms using Bono's approach - without being an utter hypocrite? If you think a new product will boost the bottom line, why should you have to deploy the skills of a snake oil salesman or back room horse-trader to get it approved? 
   
  Things won't change. Corporate politicians will become leaders, while the execution wonks will remain their subordinates. But I can't help feeling that the organization that is better at looking at the underlying idea - rather than the way it is packaged and sold- will always have some sort of competitive advantage.
• For the first time someone has taken the care to study the bewildering array of successful styles that all of us encounter throughout our work-lives. Typically, and simplistically, we tend to dismiss them as "politics", "sweet talk" or worse. This framework is well thought out and looks like a good place to get started.

17 more annotations...

• Racism
   Which is the faith that a certain kind of person is morally and/or intellectually inferior to people like you. It involves you likening yourself to one set of strangers, and distancing yourself from another set because of how they look. It’s herding in it’s most primitive, childish form (based on the easiest, most obvious means of classification) and involves a great deal of denial and clinginess on your part. To adhere to this doctrine you need to be able to ignore truth, and your own personal defects.
• Technology
   What OS you run on your computer supposedly says everything about your character, your ability to reason and your willingness to conform. Your pursuit of faster, smaller, more powerful technology is really about filling the gaps in your empty life, and gives you something to ponder and to yearn for.
• Art
   The ability to see some kind of mystical beauty in scribbles is not unlike divining the future from chicken entrails or seeing the spirit world with Ayahuasca. A painting is a painting, a piece of craft, no more significant than needlework or cake-decoration, it may be admirable based on detail and the amount of time and effort put into it, but important? No.
• Wealth
   For most poor people the pursuit of wealth is tantamount to the pursuit of happiness, which is what your average religion is about. You get 72 virgins by blowing people up, or you can get 72 escorts by paying for them with your Visa. It’s the reward you get for working hard at the right thing, and being smarter than the people who don’t believe in your brand of hard work.
• Health
   Being overly concerned with your health is the same as the pursuit of everlasting life, the closest thing to eternal happiness you will have on this Earth. You won’t be able to live forever, you will get old and infirm at some point, but in desperation you try to make things better anyway. It’s a means of feeling better than other people, too.
• Work
   Work gives you a sense of order, a means of classifying people, a way to look down on, and something to aspire to. Life for you is not about achievement or acquiring wealth, it’s about working for others, having your days plotted out for you so that you don’t have to think.
• Sex
   No matter how many times you have done it before, you keep thinking it will be good at some point. You always have hope in the next encounter, the ne
• Love/Romantic Relationships
   Pretty much everybody’s idea of the perfect life involves having somebody else in it who thinks highly of them and who craves their happiness, and wants to be with them. There is the hope that this person will show up one day to make everything right. It never happens and everybody settles with the next best thing, but they never stop hoping for better even though it never comes.
• Family
   It has been so sentimentalized that everybody thinks it is automatically a good thing. It doesn’t matter that there has never been a happy family in the history of families, nor does it matter that your friends are closer to you, still people think that family is at the core of having a happy life.
• Education
   If you only get educated enough your life will sort itself out, you will be happy, have money and friends, and peace. It never comes no matter how many courses you take, no matter how well you do with material, but you still think that if you just had one more thing to add to your resume, everything will be so much better. It’s also another pedestal from which you can look down on much of humanity.

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• During the last few minutes of Game 6 of Boston's second-round series with Cleveland, poor Kevin Garnett looked like Forrest Gump right after Jenny pulled her top down in her dorm room. On one play, the ball swung to KG at the foul line; no Cav was within 10 feet of him. Strangely, he panicked, thinking about shooting an open J before realizing, Wait, I'm seven feet tall, that would be dumb, and barreling toward the basket to rush a clumsy jump hook. For a former MVP who makes $22 million a year, it was an astoundingly incompetent sequence. 
    
   It also wasn't a surprise.
• Garnett's crunch-time woes have been the dirty little secret of this storybook Celtics season. Sure, he saved the franchise and made the C's relevant again. He's also the reason they might not win the 2008 championship. Put simply, Garnett shrinks from pressure more times than he comes through. The NBA is a simple league to figure out: In a playoff series, the best player prevails unless his supporting cast is significantly inferior to the other team's. So when Boston's best player can't dominate close games against a quality opponent … um, that's a problem.
• The intriguing wrinkle with Garnett is he plays differently down the stretch by not playing differently. Selfless and passionate for 48 minutes a game, eight months a year, he can't raise his game because it's already raised. Like Nigel Tufnel's guitar, he's already up to 11.
• Sometimes, when Garnett's adrenaline kicks in during crunch time it's like watching a diabetic in the midst of a sugar rush. His body can't handle it. When he succeeds, he loses his mind, pounding his chest, belting out profanities and hollering at the crowd like a crazy person. When he fails (and it's happened a few times this season), his mistakes are unbelievably amateurish—intentional fouls when the team doesn't need them, taking too many steps on his signature fall-away, that kind of stuff. The pressure gets to him. You can see it. In Game 4 of the first-round series with Atlanta, after a near-altercation with Zaza Pachulia, the camera found KG on the bench and he was practically hyperventilating.
• Now, Garnett isn't the only NBA star who has struggled in big moments. Wilt was famous for it. The Mailman choked so many times I once wrote, "You know you're watching ESPN Classic if it's 2 a.m. and Karl Malone looks like he's about to throw up." David Robinson was an extremely nice guy who played like one in big games. 
    
   C-Webb passed the basketball like it was a hand grenade in the clutch. Clyde Drexler always seemed like he'd just downed too much caffeine. Even one of my favorite Celtics, Kevin McHale, got the yips. In Game 2 of the 1984 Finals, his legs shook after he missed that free throw before Gerald Henderson's famous steal. 
    
   The list of guys who came up short is as endless as the one of those who repeatedly came through in the clutch (Michael Jordan, Sam Jones, Reggie Miller, Dennis Johnson, Robert Horry, Larry Legend … ). The question is, how do you end up on one list or the other? What makes for clutch? Is it part of your DNA, or something that's honed through experience and repetition?
• Here's my answer: It's both. One of the most fascinating things about Jordan's career wasn't that he nailed the title-winning shot against Georgetown as a freshman, but that Dean Smith called the play for him. If someone is born with ice water in his veins, you know it. Smith knew it. Then again, get enough reps with anything in life, and you're more likely to succeed. Trying not to sound nervous when I started to do TV and radio a few years ago, I'd overthink and make myself nervous, battling a rush of adrenaline right before my segment started. I've learned to channel that energy now—I can speak in front of large crowds and everything. Why? Because I got my reps.
• How far can experience actually get you in matters of clutchness? After Garnett jumped from high school to the NBA, he played eight years without ever getting past the first round. Fellow high schooler Kobe Bryant landed on a talented Lakers team, failing famously as a rookie (remember his hideous air balls that ended the series against the Jazz in 1997?), then getting swept by the '98 Jazz and '99 Spurs. Name me one memorable Kobe moment from his first three springs. You can't. But 28 meaningful playoff games provided him with valuable pressurized situations. By the time the 2000 postseason rolled around, Kobe was asserting himself, capping it off with an MJ moment in Game 4 of the Finals for a championship team.
• By contrast, poor Garnett was trapped on lousy and half-decent teams until 2004, when he carried the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals, submitting an ESPN Classic game of his own against the Kings (32 points, 21 rebounds in Game 7) in the second round. But just when it seemed as if he was getting the hang of clutch, Minnesota imploded, missing the playoffs in its next three seasons with KG. Now he's slightly past his prime. Can you blame him for not being clutch when he never got those reps in his formative years? Probably not. Think of his career like a video game: Spend a ton of time playing Grand Theft Auto, and you're much more likely to complete a mission than some guy who doesn't own a PS3, right?
• Fair or unfair, Garnett will always be measured against Tim Duncan, who has already carried the Spurs to four titles. It's easy to forget now that TD had his own blips and stumbles along the way, or that he played in 71 playoff games before famously demolishing the Nets with a 21/20/10 line in the clincher of the 2003 Finals. Wired very much like Garnett—completely selfless, phenomenally competitive, thoughtful as a teammate—Duncan learned to channel his intensity, saving peak performances for when they mattered most. He figured out that there was a crucial difference between a ho-hum January game in Atlanta and a must-win playoff game in LA. He's clearly developed a reliable mental alert: All right, unless I grab 20 rebounds tonight, we're going to lose. Or: If I don't take over this game right now and score every time down the floor, we're cooked. 
    
   Bill Russell had that switch. So did MJ, Bird and Magic.

7 more annotations...

• Isn't it interesting how many people dream of writing a book? It's sweet, and it's (mostly) harmless, and I guess I once semi-shared that dream, and I guess one or two brain cells still make room for the possibility that I will someday write a book (fat chance). But, but, but ... Then I followed the book-publishing industry for 15 years.

    

• Fact #1: Millions of people are working on books, or believe that they could write a book, or are planning to write a book.

    

• And I'll bet that for many of them a part of that fantasy is the making - a - living-as-a-freelancer -doing-something-interesting-rather- than-working-as-a- flunky-in-a-boring- job element. But how many people in the country actually manage to make a living writing books? A couple of hundred.

    

  Millions would like to do it. A couple of hundred actually manage it.
• In other words, your chances of making a living writing books are perhaps better than are your chances of ever playing in the NBA. But not all that much better.
• Technical pause here: there's an important-to-understand distinction that needs to be made between "book publishing" generally and "trade book publishing," which is what most of us think of when we think of book publishing -- ie., the biz that creates the books that fill up the local bookstore. Book publishing generally is a fairly substantial industry, and most of the money in the field -- 2/3, if I remember right -- doesn't come from "trade book" publishing. It's generated by the sales of products many of us almost never think of as books: medical reference books, atlases, textbooks. This end of the biz operates in the semi-rational way many businesses do, with similar profit margins and incentive structures. There's real money to be made here, other words. You can get rich writing and/or publishing textbooks, for instance, even if it's a very competitive industry.
• Fact #2: Most people who write "serious" trade nonfiction actually lose money on their projects.
• Biographies? Serious travel books? Moneylosers for most of their authors. How so? Well, say you're lucky and your agent nails a $100,000 contract for you for a biography you're dying to write. Sounds good, huh? But run the math: First, subtract the agent's fee (10-15%), and then subtract taxes. You've got to write the book on the, say, $55,000ish that remains. Keep in mind that almost all books take longer to write and publish than expected. But, heck, you're a fast worker -- it'll only take you 3 years. That means you'll be living on $17,000 a year. And wait: you've gotta do some research -- what's a biography without research? Visiting some archives, interviewing whoever's still alive ... Guess where the money for these travels and adventures comes from? Your own pocket.

• As a consequence of these sorts of realities, most serious-nonfiction writers either hold down fulltime day jobs (healthcare!) and do their writing during the evening and on weekends (whoops, there goes the private life!), or spend a lot of the time that they'd like to spend writing chasing down grants, fellowships, and stretches at writer's colonies instead. (This bunch is usually very worried about health care. See my posting on health care and the arts here.)

    

  Not long ago, I ran into a woman acquaintance I hadn't seen in years, during which time she'd written a first-class biography of a famous man. We bumped into each other shortly after her book had been released, and I assumed she was basking in the good reviews, and exultant about the way her publisher was promoting the book. "This must give you a great feeling, as well as a great platform into your next book, no?" I said.

    

  She rolled her eyes and told me emphatically that she was never going to write another book. "What I'm looking for now is a nice little not-too-demanding job with an office, regular hours, a health plan, and a regular paycheck," she said.
• Fact #3: The people in trade-book publishing who make the money generally aren't the authors.
• Fact #4: Writing a book isn't fun.

• So why do people do write books? I come up with these possible explanations:

  
   
  • Some hope to hit the jackpot despite the odds.
     
  • Some have a dream about being an author, or taking part in "literature."
     
  • Some are obsessed lunatics -- ie., they feel they just gotta.
     
  • Some don't know better (these usually never write a second book).
     
  • Some have other ambitions, and writing a book is a step along the way.
     
  • A handful are determined to be trade-book authors as a career, and know what the game consists of, and have (or think they have) the tenacity, toughness, talent, luck and energy to succeed.

• All of which leads me to a Blowhardish musing. It's such a pain to write books, it's such a bother to go through the publishing process -- what kind of person is willing to put him/herself through this? Answer: a very narrow demographic -- the obsessed and the ambitious. Exceptions allowed for (hi Hugo!), this would seem to mean that most of the books we've interacted with over the years have been written by people who are nuts. Let's grant that a few of these nutcases have talent and brains -- still: funny, no?

    

  And this is a big part of why I generally celebrate digital media -- because the new tools give people from the non-nuts range of humanity a better chance to contribute and take part in the conversation that is "culture." How many such "normal" voices have really been heard in this conversation before? But these days, if you write and publish a blog, for example, the publishing part of blogging is trivial, at least once you've set the blog up (or in the especially inept case of the Blowhards, paid a good webteam to do the hard stuff). You can say what you have to say, press a button -- and what you have to say flies right out there and becomes part of the ongoing culture-thing. Never before in the history of blah blah blah. Very cool, in any case, and I'm going to follow how this affects the tone of the culture-conversation with interest. Blogs have already had quite an impact on journalism. What kind of impact will they have on the cultural world? (Huge, I hope.)

• Over the years, a few people have asked me for advice about writing books -- fools! Still, I tell 'em what I really believe: Since you probably won't make money on your project anyway, why not do it in a way that minimizes your trouble and results in something that pleases you? How to do this? Publish your book yourself. (Self-publishing is a growing and happening thing.)

    

  But why turn your urge to create into "writing a book" in the first place? You say you've got a story to tell? Well, why does it have to be a book? You'll burden your life with a tedious project for a couple of years, you'll probably overstretch your material, and then no one will read the results. Why not realize your project in a manageable and pleasureable way instead? Put in a month of writing, keep it to a compact length, and post it to the Web. (There really aren't many stories that need more than 50 pages.) It's certainly true that no one may pay attention to your work despite its being out there on the Web. But at least you'll have told your story, enjoyed the process, made your work available -- and you won't have ruined your life, or broken your heart.

    

  No one listens to me, of course, and it's probably better that way. I confess that The Wife berates me (lovingly and charmingly, of course) when I go on like this. She says I'm being a killjoy. Lots of people dream of writing books. What a harmless dream -- why kill it? And she's certainly got a point. I, on the other hand, feel that my point isn't to crush anyone's dreams. Why not make this basic information available? But maybe The Wife is right. It's certainly true that, after 15 years of following the book publishing world, I do sometimes wish people would be a bit more realistic in their thinking and talking about books. But is that an awful wish? Where books and publishing are concerned, maybe it is, I don't really know for sure.

    

  Best,

    

  Michael
• UPDATE: Please be sure to read the comments thread on this posting, which is full of lively thinking and reacting. Aaron Haspel adds a lot to the conversation in his new posting on the subject here.

  • One should never write a book with the goal in mind of writing a book.
    
    The book is only a means to communicate heart-felt ideas. If you don’t really care about the ideas, hey! go ski and/or play golf.
    
    I speak from experience. I wrote a book; I didn’t really want to. But I didn’t think anyone else would do it. So I had to.

  • Will: I think what von Mises was getting at is that real artistic geniuses are always unsatisfied, though they may be fluent. That’s where the agony comes in. Writing is hell for me, and I’m no genius either.
  • 4 more sticky notes...

  • • Hmm. So, according to Ludwig von Mises, if I enjoy writing and it comes fairly easily, I must not be a genius. Gosh, and there I was, beginning to wonder.

    • The productivity of labor has become so high in this country that most anyone who has bothered to acquire some marketable skills and is not grimly devoted to his job is awash in leisure. Trollope, who produced 40-odd novels by arising at 4 AM daily and writing for two hours before his day job at the post office, would envy us. The Marxist fantasy of a people milking cows in the morning and practicing drama criticism at night has nearly come to pass, though not in the way that Marx intended. You want to make money and write in your spare time, be my guest. You want to make money writing, write romance novels or technical texts. You want to make money writing serious books about your cherished passions, go whine to someone else.

    • The activities of [artistic geniuses] cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation…
      
      Neither does the genius derive immediate gratification from his creative activities. Creating is for him agony and torment, a ceaseless excruciating struggle against internal and external obstacles; it consumes and crushes him…
      
      The creative accomplishment of the genius is an ultimate fact of praxeology. It comes to pass in history as a free gift of destiny. It is by no means the result of production in the sense in which economics uses this term.

    • It is to obsessed lunatics that we owe the greater part of the world’s permanent literature. For most of history authors not only didn’t make money from their work, but often risked their lives by publishing it.
  Add Sticky Note
• There are enough books in the world. You want to write the ones that are good. The minute you write books because you need the income not because you think you have a good subject you should just stop. There are 60000 books published in this country every year and most of them are crap. You are making someone make a serious commitment, not the money but the time, to sit down with a book and enter this world. You want it to be good. You want the book to be special and they are not always going to be special but at least you want that to be the ambition.
• In my own (ex-)line of business, I see some parallels. Professional (performing) classical music offers a reasonable living to a small number of people in the world. In order to get good enough, and compete with the small handful of world-class players, a musician will have to spend many thousands, often hundreds of thousands of dollars achieving that goal. A starting spot in a major orchestra, is currently about $60,000 a year. Starting spots in the average minor orchestra is about $15,000 - $20,000 a year. Professional grade (string) instruments start at about $15,000. The instruments are merely the competitive edge. First class players have probably been paying for instruction and instruments (some of them) since they were five or six. Most practice (without pay) for many hours a day. Conservatories in the US turn out some 10,000 to 20,000 excellent players a year. There are 6 top grade symphonies in the country (in the SF Symphony class). Each orchestra has some 100+ players, who will probably remain with the orchestra for at least a couple of decades. What sort of person goes into the professional classical music performance industry, expecting to make a reasonable living? Sounds like the same sort of person that sets out to make a living as an author... Of course, unlike authors, it is very hard to convince an orchestra to hire you, if you are an untalented player.

• Hey Alexis, You' ve got good instincts, and The Wife would agree with you about the "relish" thing, although I remain convinced (deludedly, apparently) that I'm just performing a public service. But glad to see you doubting my motives ....

    

  Anyway, the "couple of hundred" figure was given to me by the guy who runs one of the big authors' organizations, so the figure's trustworthy even if I'm not. I can't imagine anymore more quaified to make a decent guesstimate than he.

    

  I said to the guy, How many people in this country make a living from writing books? He said, Do you want to include all kinds of books? I said, No, just bookstore-type books. No textbooks, and let's not include people who write computer-instruction books. And he said, Oh, in the low couple of hundreds.

    

  So yeah, the figure would include sci-fi writers, mystery authors, self-help authors, literary people, etc. The authors of all the stuff at the local Barnes & Noble, minus the computer section.

    

  As I say, one of the surprises of the field is how many even very big names can't and don't get by on what they make from their books.

    

  Can anyone think of a similar industry -- where the people who produce the product don't generally make a living doing so? I can't, but maybe I'm overlooking something obvious...
• Actually, I can think of one right off the bat.
   Child care workers. I know this because I am currently doing a child care survey analysis on wages and benefits in Dane County, WI. The average salary for an inhome child care worker is roughly 15k--that's gross. She will work 13-15 hours a day, have no benefits (healthcare!), and getno paid vacations. And the corker is that it doesnt matter if you have a Masters in Early chidhood or are Mrs Joeblow off the street with only a high school education. Workers who care for kids in centers have it only marginally better--they may get paid holidays. Still no healthcare etc. And unlike authors or musicians, these are the folks who are taking care of the majority of the children in this country.

• Another industry: acting.

    

  Only about 1 in 20 professional actors support themselves entirely by acting. This at first occasions rather sad but heartfelt discussions as people struggle to make sense of the idea that they are "really" actors even if they can't support themselves acting.

    

  I wonder if Wallace Stevens worried that he wasn't "really" a poet since he made no money at it.
• Over the years, I've hung out in the furthermost reaches of publishing and talked now and then with writers who are rather more in the thick of things. So I've wanted to comment knowledgeably on Michael Blowhard's initial posting, and even made a couple of attempts that I ended up deleting. I think MB said it all pretty well the first time. Even so...maybe I can add a few odds and ends after all...
• Felicity said something above that may have put a finger on a major factor. That people read at all any more. It seems as though more people want to write a book than actually read books. The perception endures of the successful writer as the wealthy fellow who stays at home all day and makes lots of money by sharing his imagination with his legions of adoring fans. The fans are actually watching TV and the writer is in competition for a share of the declining audience that still reads for pleasure with a lot of other would-be writers who want in on this sweet deal, too. Did something like this happen to poetry, another field where there seem to be more people who want to write it than to read it?
• At least in the science-fiction field, the theory used to be that success was cumulative. You'd write part-time in addition to your day job for some years, building up a following of loyal readers as well as a backlog of novels in print. Eventually, the continuing royalties from your previously published novels added to increasing advances for your latest works would add up to enough of a steady income that you could quit the day job and write full time. As I understand it, there have been changes in how publishers do business that have undermined this model for all but the most successful writers: books aren't kept in print as long, books aren't allowed to sit on booksellers' shelves as long, and as a result there's been a virtual elimination of what used to be called the "mid-list" -- the slow but steady selling titles that were an author's bread and butter. It seems to be getting more to the point of "Best-Seller or Die" for any given book. A working writer could probably explain all this better than I can.

• Are there other industries that have a ratio of paid creators to paid sellers comparable to book publishing? Yes, several that I have worked in:

    

  Game design - Thousands of designers, perhaps as many as a few dozen who make a living (this neglects role-playing game designers, of which more later.) There are thousands of stores in the US alone that sell games, each of which has at least a few employees. There are more hundreds of people employed in printing, assembling, and distributing games. As for the designers, a distributor of my acquaintance used to tell prospective game designers: "Take $50,000 in cash and put it in a suitcase. Go to the middle of the highest bridge you can find and throw that suitcase as hard as you can. At the end of this process, you will not be worse off financially, you won't have a garage full of unsalable games, you won't have suffered the pains of trying to sell your game, and you'll be done years earlier."

    

  Role-playing game design - Again, a few dozen people making a living, hundreds of others spending nights and weekends (or retirement funds) trying to make a living. Very similar to book publishing in the amount of hard work required, but there are many more self-published authors.

    

  Hobby accessories - Whether model railroad scenery, after-market RC car pieces, or doll-house furniture, this is another garage industry (or set of industries).

    

  The unifying theme seems to be that the people doing this are trying to find a way to have their fun and eat it too. 8-)

    

  From an economic point of view, I'd guess that the combination of expected monetary reward (in the long term) plus the nonmonetary reward of working with your hobby (more illusory than real) result in people entering these industries with wildly inflated opinions of their own prospective success.

• There is so much to read and to look at online, it's like being in a vast storehouse full of treasures - literally acres and acres full of gold, jewels, and valuable artifacts - and you can only take as much as you can carry in your hands. You don't know what to choose so you just keep looking, briefly examining and laying aside one piece of treasure and then the next and the next and the next. The Internet is like that for me. I find many sites where I want to spend more time reading but instead I just keep on surfing and finding other interesting sites. I always plan to come back to them... "later." ...

    

  I might actually be reading more now; it's only the routine that has changed. Maybe the availability of so much reading matter makes it seem like I'm not reading as much as I should. It has never occurred to me that I should try to read every book and magazine in the public library, but for some reason with the world's biggest library right here in the corner of my dining room I feel guilty about passing over anything I'm the least bit interested in. I feel I have to read it all.

• One alternative to job versus starvation may be to live somewhere off the beaten track that is very cheap. I have lived for 22 years in a small New Mexico village 75 miles by air from the nearest city, and in a determinedly un-chic part of the state.
   I live in a 100 year old stone house with 4 main rooms ( a nice piece of "Alexandrian" vernacular architecture) that cost me less than a cheap new car does today. My newest car is 13. My wife currently works part- time in the local post office. At times she has worked full- time, and often had no job at all. Our main expenses are books and travel.

    

  And travel itself can help pay the bills. We have in the last decade spent time in London, France, Zimbabwe, traveled twice to Mongolia, and are heading for Kazakhstan in the fall. All trips were at least work-related, and the last 3 paid for up front. What other life would give me freedom to do what I like and write about it? A job that paid for a month here and there would take all my time...expensive!

    

  Isolation was more of a problem 20 years ago. Now, with blogs, e-mail, and internet it's not even a factor. I "talk" every week with people in England, New York, Latvia, Finland, Russian, Kazakhstan and more. There is more info a click away than you could have had in, say, Victorian London.

    
• I would agree with the "50 page" theory. I never read books because I don't think there are many subjects out there that deserve book treatment, and I don't have time for somebody to cover their ass and stuff all the facts in a book. I always skim what I read anyway, so why not just chop it down and turn it into a little pamphlet or magazine article?
• By the way, another real economic setback as well as a lot of work in the off hours (goodbye, private life) is having children. If you're into watching TV and saving cash, don't write a novel and don't have kids. Man, the kids really get ya.

• Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of individuals who believe that taxes and the huge government that results from it are good for us. How many authors would be able to suppport themselves if they didn't have to support millions of nonproductive government workers at the same time? How many government workers read? How many of them are so bored with their jobs at the IRS or the CIA that they're writing a novel in the hopes of escaping from their boredom? How many of the government thrillers are competing with other "art" to be published? Think of all the tax accountants and attorneys who make their living by pushing tax-related papers, who never produce any books, cars, houses or products that add any enjoyment to life?

    

  The huge cut that the government sucks out of the markeplace at every level, the author's advance, the agent's salary, the bookstore's income, is money that creative people can no longer use to support creativity. It's time they don't have to write and it's money that they no longer have to buy the books that add value and enjoyment to their lives.

    

  Yes, the money ends up in the hands of others and they will spend it. But what will the recipients of those tax dollars spend it on? Baseball? A wide-screen TV for watching football games? Will they spend it on great stories about the nature of existence and survival when their own survival is guaranteed by the money they can take at the point of a gun from those who produce and sell art?

    

  Nobel Prize-winning ecomonist Milton Friedman noted in FREE TO CHOOSE that taxes distort markets. Once taxed, it is impossible to determine what real value is anymore because the price of something (the price paid to an author for his work or a bookstore for a book) is no longer an accurate measure of its real value to individual consumers. Markets become glutted with useless trash and real value falls by the wayside. Sounds like the book market that you described!
• Leave the lunatics alone...we need writers. Moby Dick sold only 3000 copies in the USA, and the critics were scornful of it. Jack Kerouac was rejected by every publisher on the east coast when he wrote On The Road...it took five years to find a publisher, and he was forced to make humiliating changes to it.(the ms has recently sold for two million.)But boy am I glad those guys stuck to their writing.
• I would also like to note, the low rate of pay for both writers and childcare workers is based on the notion that people think these are easy, low-skill jobs.

• Responding to the point way above about childcare:
   When I lived in San Francisco, it seemed as if every waiter and half the carpenters were 'really' artists of some kind - painters, actors, writers - or on a spiritual quest of some sort.

    

  I was a carpenter/writer, and when our son was born we found a pregnant artist who wanted to run a small daycare to pay her way. Not being the kind to do things by halves, Sterret Smith had got a degree in child-something-or-other, and instead of actually living off her daycare income, it seemed as if she plowed it all back into toys and improvements (I built her a child-sized play loft, thus circulating our dollars nicely). I loved her paintings but was much more impressed by her childcare. She was truly a master in the art of starting children off in their lives. These kids had their imaginations stimulated every day, and learned how to resolve disputes without an adult's intervention (or with a minimal one) to a degree that still shows in my son's mid-teen years.

    

  I began to wonder why there were so many young people waitressing or hammering so they could occasionally act or write, but few if any doing the same so they could be daycare providers. The latter seemed much more worth doing, or at least as worth doing, but we had all somehow absorbed the notion that it is an unromantic boring slog. For me, it probably would be, just as for some writing is pain and agony (whereas I have had months of ecstasy at the best points in novel writing) but for Sterrett it wasn't. Of course, she had endless dirty diapers, and the money wasn't good, and she depended to some extent I suppose on her husband, except that he was a freelance writer himself...

    

  I wish childcare could be seen as more of an exciting area to work, money or not. Maybe there could be some way of starting an upward creativity spiral inb the field... Or maybe Sterrett should write a book about it... and suffer further penury.
• Every once in a while I get an e-mail from some person who has read a poem or work of fiction of mine, written maybe 30 or so years ago, telling me my words have touched them and moved them enough to contact me. Nothing can replace the feeling that comes from receiving that message. The magic of the well written word cannot be denied.

• You said "Hey, my English profs didn't tell me about this!". Right on! There is a lot more they didn't tell you..

    

  LIKE -- universities are totally geared and set-up to make money and are businesses,not benevolent institutions designed to see you succeed.

    

  LIKE -- when you decide to become a writer (or English student)make sure you do not ignore the fact there is competition in every field and though it seems unfair, others will succeed,
   and no matter how much you love it,
   you can fail consistently.

    

  LIKE -- those who do succeed were destined to succeed through
   their "success gene", that little sting of DNA that makes them blind to failure and are driven to success like a moth to a campsite lantern, even if they
   studied plumbing they would end up owning a string of shops.

    

  LIKE -- higher education is a brainwashing and re-programming process designed to produce worker-bees on various levels, it is NOT a process designed to make you rich or successful, the sooner you realize this, the more successful you become, they are there to sell seats.

    

  LIKE -- people don't buy creative writing to entertain someone else's ego, they buy creative writing to be entertained.

    

  
   The list goes on what universities don't tell their students. What they DO is sell dreams and a "product" which is a program designed to align your thinking with an agenda. What YOU have to do is figure out what that agenda is. Once you have done that you will have as much money as you can possibly stand.

• Popular Rock and Pop bands don't make millions and zillions of dollars producing beautiful tracks of symphonic
   masterpieces, they were intelligent business people who sell well produced songs about the money making themes like SEX, DRUGS, MURDER, WAR all of which the Beatles were a prime example of in the new commercialization of popular culture.

    

  Most of outrageously successful and popular rapper groups have management who know it is not a matter of selling a new rhythm thousands of times for a large price, it is a matter of selling
   an old rhythm millions and millions of times for a small price.

    

  The frustration that you are feeling, the melancholy emotions, come with the sad realization people don't want to pay you for what is GOOD and what YOU want to believe in. But they will pay you for what they have been programmed to believe in.

    

  A few tricks are writing new twists and imaginative new versions on; the masses are entertained by raunchy murder themes, they are entertained by raunchy horror themes, they are entertained by raunchy sex scenes, they are entertained by raunchy drug themes, they are entertained by raunchy sad sad scenes.

    

  I can understand your frustration with writing for a planet of people who are
   destined for failure by their core obsession with other peoples misfortunes
   and their lust for sex, drugs and violence. But that is all that entertains them now that the "shock value" bar has been raised so high.
• Sure its a sad commentary on the state of our civilization but you brought up the subject of how (or how not) to succeed in book publishing. Simple, write for self-destructing audience. Just how sick is our world? With 80 million copies sold, 65 titles and 37 languages, Chicken Soup for the Soul� made international publishing history.They were rejected by 140 publishers.

• I will say that I detest the traditional publishers. They lie. They cheat. They never tell you how many books are out there, not to say, it's some big KGB secret re: how many really sold. They do deals with other big pubs, and get behind mediocre books due to big names, or friendships. All the chains get paid to show certain books up front in the stores. It's all a big money raquet, in which we lowly writers rarely get to partake. So, question:

    

  Is there something in between traditional publishing and blogging/ self-publishing. ONe hopes yes. This one doesn't have a clue. Best, Louise

• I think a thread that ties the books, movies, TV, and music industries together (and these are the most frequently cited ones in our postings above). They're all big money entertainment industries, geared toward creating bland, middle-of-the-road stuff that everyone will buy. It's largely because of the consolidation of media ownership, and the high stakes of the industries, that this is happening. If it wasn't the case that a huge proportion of books were sold in chain stores, which do big-money deals with the publishers, for example, there'd be a greater variety of books.

    

  As Michael said, it's the proliferation of middlemen (agent, publisher, layout/designer, editor, bookstore owner) all of whom DO make a living that sucks up the money.

    

  Another thing that has cracked me up about practically all the books I've worked on is the way the actual writing is viewed as a small detail by the middlemen. I'm in music journalism, and often write entries in music guides. many of them are good books and pay decently, but their approach has always amused me. They have a concept, it's sold, it's put into production, it's designed in many cases, and then they call me (along with twenty other writers) and say "we need 20,000 words in three weeks." If they don't get it in three weeks, the production schedule is thrown off! Im currently writing an encyclopedia, and it's the same thing; the publisher, a well-respected textbook press, had the whole thing put into production before word one was written. Now I have to compromise quality to get it done on time!

• And a quick note of appreciation to those who say, Yeah, but writing books isn't the only way to get by from writing: Well, of course you're right, and many thanks for reminding us, and for giving examples of such. I will point out, though, that this posting wasn't intended as a comprehensive survey of how people get by from writing.

    

  It wasn't intended as a pro-books-writing or anti-books-writing piece of cheerleading either. People can and will write books no matter what my opinion is, which is as it should be. Instead, I simply wanted to confront people's fantasies about writing books for a living with a few of the actual facts of the field. People who fantasize about writing books for a living aren't daydreaming about scraping by on reprint rights, stays at writers colonies, writing freelance travel articles, chasing down fellowships and teaching gigs, and pulling together encyclopedia entries on ridiculous schedules, which is what the professional book-writer's life often consists of. They're daydreaming instead about getting paid a decent living for writing the books they'd love to write. And the general books press isn't letting them know what the field really consists of. Hence this blog posting.
• I see a lot of comments by writers--published, unpublished, manque, parkay. What I don't see are comments by writers and publishers saying, "You damn fools! Send me your stuff. I'll take an honest, fair look at it. If within three pages I can tell it sucks, I will send you a letter saying it sucks. If it's as good as you say it is I will try to get it published." Don't agents and publishers troll the Internet and the blogs hunting for innovation and talent?
• One profession which, I believe, is even more poorly treated than that of the novelist is the screenwriter. Because they are so expensive to produce, the ratio of written screenplays to produced films is even lower than that of written to published novels. The cost also makes it prohibitive for most people to produce their own. Despite this, everybody thinks screenwriting is easy and thousands upon thousands of screenplays get written that will never see the light of day. Furthermore, although well paid by many standards, screenwriters are poorly paid by film standards, with a small handful of writers making anything near what a mid-level actor or director can expect to make. But, the killer for me is that writers have no respect in Hollywood, where they can slave on a project for years only to have it be taken away from them and given to somebody else. (I have never heard of this happening to a novelist!)

• It took me 8 years to write my first novel, (a piece of crap), 3 years for my second (moderately awful, on the same level as Clancy and his ilk - you know, cardboard characters and boring plot), and two years for my third (which, read the reviews, really is damn fine).

    

  And when I got the third one published, I discovered that if you're not published by one of the 'BIG 6' publishers, *nobody will review your novel*!

    

  It's as if there's some kind of conspiracy going on. And if nobody reviews it, no bookstores will stock it. And it certainly won't appear in any chains, like hotels, airports and so on, because ALL those outlets buy only pulp paperbacks from the New York Times (yech) 'best seller' list - and all those are chosen arbitrarily from the BIG 6 publishers.
• Out of date farming methods are contributing to the erosion of the top soil. The solution, no till farming, currently is not being embraced due to the cost of re-equipping farms. The longer the nations of the world keep from practicing no till farming, the greater amount of the worlds farming top soil will be eroded, leaving less farmable land over time.
   Further complicating matters, this huge world population is tearing through the rainforests of the world recklessly. The world is currently experiencing a mass extinction rate comparable to the fabled asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. The casualties of our resource use and pollution policies are not limited to the land, but the world�s oceans as well. Though there are people who are working to save the environment, the combined effects seem only to slightly slow the inevitable. With the onset of the pacific region reaching new levels of industrialization, unchecked pollution emissions are contributing to global warming. Complicate this further with a thinning ozone layer and years of past industrial pollution and we have our current state of environmental problems.
   The 6 billion people or more who walk the earth contribute to the potential of a highly communicable disease spreading through out the world. Modern travel by airplane now makes it possible for a particularly nasty airborne germ to make its way around the world in three days. Many people, even in the most industrialized and modern of countries, can�t afford medical care. However, tens of billions of dollars are spent every year for entertainment. Among the highest paid are the few artists, directors, actors, authors, and professional sports people. The point has been made that we pay the people who take care of our children, our future, maybe 15K a year for a 13 to 15 hour day. However we will pay entertainers tens of millions.

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