>From Wash (DC) Post "Caveat Lector" explained ... {{<Begin>}} The Wired Word By Jonathan Yardley Monday, April 10, 2000; Page C02 With regard to the online publication of books, a subject addressed rather gingerly in this space several weeks ago, there is more to be said; indeed, there is so much more to be said that this bids fair to be the new millennium's equivalent of the previous one's debate over public funding of the arts, a question I managed to beat into the deadest of dead horses. For the moment, though, there is this to be said about online publishing: It seems certain to give whole new universes--cyber-universes, if you will--of meaning to the ancient practice of vanity publication. That thought is provoked by an e-mail from a reader somewhere out there in the cyber-void. Her friendly and enthusiastic message reads as follows: "I know electronic authors who report that, if it were not for the Internet, they would not be able to publish their works. This is due to the fact that first-time authors have a difficult time finding traditional publishers who will accept and print their work. These authors have found a way to bypass their competition--already established/published authors. We are indeed living in a wondrous time . . . maybe I'll write my own memoirs!" What my correspondent is saying--and she is absolutely right--is that in the new world of the Internet, anyone can write and publish a book. People who fancy themselves to be writers but are turned away by established trade or university presses can now skip the vanity industry and go directly to press. No longer will it be necessary for those desperate to get their words into print to undergo the expensive--and in some instances humiliating--process of paying a vanity press to publish those words, usually in ugly volumes that bookstores decline to stock and that almost never come to the attention of potential readers. Now a would-be author needs only the minimal funds necessary to set up a Web site, the time to type or scan the manuscript into that site, and the energy to bring it to the attention of readers. What that person will then have is not a book in the traditional sense--printed in ink on paper, bound in cloth and glued or sewn at the spine--but if one believes, as many do, that a book is a collection of words rather than a physical object, then that person will most certainly have written, and published, a book. The vanity publishers must be scared to death. Why should anyone pay them for the shoddy products they print and fail to distribute when printing and distribution are now available, to all intents and purposes, for free? If the Internet puts them out of business, God bless the Internet. But the established publishers are shaking in their boots, too, as numerous reports from the industry make plain. Not merely do trade and university publishers face the possibility of untold lost revenues from books that authors may now decide to self-publish on the Internet, but they may lose as well their traditional role as gatekeepers of literature. Radical egalitarians doubtless find that exhilarating: equal-opportunity book publishing, open to all, no questions asked. The old unpublished-author's complaint--Why don't good books get published anymore?--is passe. Every book will get published now, so long as its author has the will and the way. Liberation is at hand for all those much-rejected manuscripts locked away in attics and basements or lurking in the tight confines of floppy disks. But if you think this is a good thing, think again. In publishing as in just about everything else, untrammeled democracy is a mixed blessing. In making publication available to all, the Internet bypasses the editorial process that attempts to separate the wheat from the dross, the publishable from the unpublishable. It operates on the assumption that all written words are equally worthy, or, if you prefer, equally worthless. It has no standards, because none are required. No risks are taken, no gambles are made, by contrast with real- world publishing in which every new book--like every new product of any kind-- entails risk and in which, therefore, informed judgments must be made about what (a) deserves to be published and (b) stands a chance of turning a profit. The egalitarianism of the Internet is appealing, but it rests on an untenable assumption: not merely that all of us are created equal, but that all of us are equally meritorious and interesting. Thus we have news Web sites in which the opinions of readers are solicited ("What's Your View?") and displayed in a format that gives equal weight to the informed and the ignorant; at last count Washingtonpost.com had registered more than (!) 2,600 "opinions" about gay rights in Vermont. Thus, too, we have Amazon.com, which invites customers to be book reviewers, a phenomenon that was given its due last year by Tracy Lee Simmons in the Weekly Standard: "Amazon.com has . . . provided America with the true democratic forum to talk about books--a world where everyone's a critic and all voices are equal. And mostly what it shows is the fragility and frequent worthlessness of opinion. T.S. Eliot once claimed that the purpose of criticism was 'the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.' In our gabby age, elucidation and correction are the first to be sucked down into the mud of opinion." Now not merely is everyone a critic, everyone is an author as well: a novelist, a poet, a historian, a social scientist, even, yes, a memoirist. Let the typing begin. Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] © Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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