KINSELLA: Is writing a book the best road to immortality?
· Toronto Sun
If you are a normal human, you are looking for ways to be immortal.
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You paint paintings. You sing songs. You build buildings.
Some people run for high public office; they figure they’ll be remembered that way. Same with people who become soldiers, or athletes, or priests or rabbis or ministers, or teachers, or whatever. If they’re any good at it, they’ll be remembered for a while. Maybe a long while.
Lots of ordinary people have kids. That’s one sure-fire way to be kind-of immortal. Even if you don’t cure the common cold, Junior might.
Me, like my colleagues, I write stuff. Some of it is meh, some of it is okay, some I wish I could go back in time and throw my typewriter in the lake. (And then jump in after the typewriter.)
Presently, I’m flogging a book containing my writing. It’s got 334 pages, a spiffy cover design, and it’s been put out by the nice folks at Penguin Random House. It’s selling okay.
I liked what Edna St. Vincent Millay said about putting out a book.
“A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down,” said Edna, who wrote some pretty good ones. “If it is a good book, nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.”
It’s early days, so I don’t know if people think they book is good or bad. I’ll find out soon enough, I guess. The pants are down, Canada.
I’ve typed out some other books over the years. Some sold, some didn’t. Some were not-bad, I reckoned, but nobody else seemed to think that. Some were not very good, I thought, but they sold. Go figure.
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Over the years, the book-flogging business has changed a lot, mainly because journalism has changed a lot. Back when I started, in 1992, newspapers had fat classified sections, and fat sections about automobiles, and they had not-as-fat book sections and book editors.
So, your publisher would pay for you to get on airplanes and go around the country to say smart things about your book into microphones. They had book agents, who mainly just drove you around for interviews.
If you were lucky, your publicist would get you on Barbara Frum’s TV show or Peter Gzowski’s radio show. Being on with Barbara or Peter, even for a few minutes, meant you could sell lots of books.
I haven’t been asked to appear by the broadcaster who employed Barbara and Peter, by the by. This may be a coincidence, or it may be because I have put criticisms of that broadcast network in my book. To be specific about it, I think they have platformed antisemitism, and have said so, out loud. Just a hunch, but I don’t think they’ll be inviting me on there to talk about my new book anytime soon.
Global, CTV, Bell Media and a bunch of radio stations have, however. Newspapers in Israel and the United States, too. Most of the book-flogging has happened over a phone line, or over a Zoom thing. Nobody really travels the world, anymore, to push a book.
Does this mean that nobody reads books anymore? Nope. That’s not what it means.
Nearly a billion dollars worth of books were sold in this country in 2022. Just three years later, there were $1.15 billion in print sales alone – meaning, not including e-books or audiobooks. Those sell like crazy these days, too.
Fiction sells well, especially romantic stuff. Kid’s books, as well. Most of the books are purchased by the people who plan to read them, while about 12% of them buy books as gifts.
Where are they buying them? Wonderfully, Canadians are buying books at independent bookstores, of which we have many. About one in five books get bought at the independents. Indigo is the biggest player, and they are terrific and very profitable.
So, you want to be immortal? Have a kid, sure. Climb a mountain. Create a masterpiece. Cure herpes.
Or, go write a book. Better yet, read one. It may give you the secret of immortality .
( Kinsella’s book, which he uncharacteristically did not mention until the very last line, is The Hidden Hand: The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda, published by Penguin Random House)