“[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
—
Interview by David Brancaccio, NOW (PBS) (7 October 2005).
Kurt Vonnegut
Quotes
Great Advice From Ryan McSwain
So there you have it. I expected it to take six months, but it took me three years to finish plus another year to release. There were many weeks and even a few months when I didn’t have the time or energy to work on the book at all, but finishing is worth it. If you take one thing away from this post, I want it to be: whatever your dream is, don’t give up. Even if it takes you years instead of months, don’t give up. Even if you realize the only way your work will reach your audience is if you put it out there yourself, don’t give up.
Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed
“Amazon believes the value exchange between publishers and authors is fundamentally broken,” said Scott Jacobson, who worked on the Kindle team at Amazon and is now at the Madrona Venture Group. “In a world where authors can hire their own editors, market their books through the web and social media, and get production and distribution through Amazon or other services, publishers will play a lesser role and their share of the economics will be diminished.”
So writers should get more and publishers less, an assertion with which few writers would disagree. But Amazon also believes that books should be cheap. This makes the pie smaller for everyone; Amazon argues that the publishers will make up on volume what they lose on each sale.