SHS Continues to Grow--Now 25,000 Visitors per MonthFor
I was happy last November to report that we were up to 20,000 visitors a month here as SHS. Well, since then, thanks to you all, we've passed the 25,000 mark. I am most grateful.
The issues we discuss here are often overlooked or given short shrift in the mainstream media. That's the nature of the business, I guess. But the importance of human exceptionalism and the threats posed to human moral worth (from my perspective) by utilitarian medical ethics, assisted suicide, radical animal rights ideology, and the like--will determine the kind of society we leave to our posterity.
But how to focus attention on these somewhat arcane matters? Authoring books is the core of what I do, but those projects literally take years to do right and the market for what are called "mid list" books has shrunk considerably from when I began my literary career in 1987 with the publication of The Lawyer Book: A Nuts and Bolts Guide to Client Survival. (I am 2/3 done with the animal rights book project and anticipate that it will be published about this time next year.) Moreover, once a book is actually released, gaining attention for it in a world in which about 70,000 books are published each year can be difficult. The day of the big book tour is over unless one is a mega celebrity or received a 7-figure advance thereby justifying the publisher spending tens of thousands on publicity. If no one knows the book is out, it is a book nobody will read.
For years, I have also written (and still write) articles in response to news events, and I love doing it: But let's face it, with the cacophony of views out there, few remember the columns they read even last week. Moreover, the media has a short attention span and is increasingly tabloid in its focus on the trials and tribulations of celebrities and pseudo celebrities, reducing the opportunities for commentary about bioethics and related issues in both electronic and printed media.
In such a milieu, I realized that only a sustained and focused output--that is hopefully interesting and entertaining--had any hope of maintaining attention to these core issues. But unlike my mentor Ralph Nader, I couldn't run for president. So, I was a bit frustrated and at a loss about what to do. Then a friend suggested that I try my hand at blogging, which being somewhat set in my ways, was a foreign concept to me. But he was persuasive in his pitch that communication was in the midst of a revolution, and that I had to adapt or whither on the vine. So on January 27, 2005, he set up my Blogger account for me and I started Secondhand Smoke with an entry about human/animal chimeras, dubious about the impact it would have and worried about the time it would take from other advocacy endeavors.
No more. For the last three years we have had slow but steady growth. This blog now is read all over the world and by media, which often quote from it or use it as a resource to find other sources for stories. And, some of its entries get passed around by other bloggers, multiplying the effect.
Blogging has become a core activity of my work. The reactions of my readers, both those that agree and disagree, are very helpful letting me see how people are thinking about these issues, allowing me to fine tune my advocacy strategies. Blogging also allows me to follow stories for their duration, creating a good historical record, while at the same time, it focuses my thinking and stimulates ideas for further development in other media.
Are we the New York Times? Obviously not. Nor are we Little Green Footballs, Daily Kos, or The Corner. But I believe we are having an impact here. And it seems to be growing.
So, I will keep on keeping on, as we used to say in the 60s, hoping to continue our steady growth and grateful for your participation and support. I look forward to continuing our discourse.
Labels: SHS Grows
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:01 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Congratulations on reaching 25,000 blog readers, Wesley.
Your comments on mid-list nonfiction books are dead on. One thing that has driven self-publishing has been the demise of conventional publishers' mid-lists. Several publishers decided in the mid-1990s to drop these authors, even though their books were profitable. Everyone in business wants instant riches, and slow but steady doesn't cut it any more. I have been buying far fewer new books over the last several years than I did in the 1980s, entirely due to this phenomenon.
After many (20+) years of research on a technical subject that I believed sorely needed a new reference work, a couple of years ago I finally abandoned the research and the project. The reason was lack of interest from publishers, period. (Long story short here. And self-published works aren't taken seriously by reviewers or many others, who think self-published = vanity press.)
I wish you luck and success with your future books. But it's a brave new world for so many authors now.
The dropping of mid list books even though profitable shows that publishing has lost its purpose. And it has taken on the shallow trappings of show business. This forces many worthy projects out of production.
Think tanks and the books they put out make up for a little of this, but not nearly enough. Intellectual vibrancy is sacrificed when a big celebrity gets $5 million for a book that will never make a profit, at the expense of 20 or so midlist authors who might.
Another problem, which is kind of a chicken and egg issue, is the loss over the last 20 years of most outlets for publicity. Rush Limbaugh may be well and good, but he has driven at least 500 locally produced shows off the air. Add in Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the other syndicated heavyweights, and we have thousands fewer opportunities to discuss the contents of books. Those shows needed guests, and when I first began writing books, they were the grist. I did 65 plus radio shows for THE LAWYER BOOK. None of those shows exist anymore.
Plus, TV talk went from Phil Donahue and Good Morning San Francisco, to Jerry Springer. Oprah features authors but only of a certain kind. Larry King used to do more books, especially on radio, now he is all show biz all the time--whether entertainment or politics.
Finally, papers have cut back on book reviews.
So, to get attention for a book you need the big name, who demands the big bucks, taking midlist types out of the publishing equation. I feel very fortunate for my relationship with Encounter Books allowing my work to continue to be published commercially.
Don't forget that readership is dropping, too. I have to find the link again, but there was a study put out recently that shows that while blogging and other electronic media based communication is up, readership of the traditional book is down. It's a shame, really, because I'm a bibliophile. Then again, in addition to biographies, the complete works of Keats and Byron, and books on electronics, my collection contains sci-fi, fantasy, true crime, Star Trek (a genera of its own, thank you), and a copy of "Final Exit for Cats" that a friend gave me when I got a kitten years ago, so I dunno how much impact books have had over the last thirty years...
Book readership is down. Is that a factor of books being discussed less? Or is it that young people, who also don't read newspapers in as high numbers as their parents and grandparents, now turn to other media?
I think if you go to most any public high school, pick ten kids at random, you will find that at least half have difficulty reading...period.
It's sad. My granddaughter gets excellent grades as a junior (at least accoring to the schools standards) yet has difficulty reading a menu in a restaurant.
Mort
Young'uns do go to other media, such as online print information - you can find all kinds of e-mags to take the place of traditional print media, and those require at least as much critical thinking as a book. Written word hasn't changed, just the way it's presented.
The problem is that kids are reading what's available, and a lot of serious books aren't available online. Also, not every young person goes online to find out what's going on in the world - you should see how many hits Brittney's latest whatever generates in comparison to SHS.
I asked some of the kids who work at the grocery I'm at if they read anything at all, and they limit their reading to their friends blogs, some comic strips, and whatever they're required to read for school. Two of the girls couldn't get the more subtle jokes in Get Fuzzy comic strips.
It wasn't a scientific study by any stretch, but eh, it does kinda color my view of young people's reading abilities, and their desire to read.
As to my comment about book readership being down, I say such because the fewer book readers there are, the fewer books being published and available at the local library. At least on some topics.
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