Book Banning: Ignorance Hard At Work

Our democracy may come complete with free speech, but America has plenty of people who think that only applies to speech with which they agree. Writers everywhere should be concerned about censorship and book banning; these practices are just as troubling (and dangerous) as the collapse of the newspaper industry. In May, a Michigan high school teacher was directed to remove Toni Morrison's The Song of Solomon from her advanced placement English class. The protestors objected to the novel's profanity, sexual references, and violence. I don't know what's more absurd -- pretending that high school seniors somehow need to be protected from reality when America has some of the highest teen pregnancy rates of any industrialized nation, along with shocking levels of violence and incarcertaion -- or that in the name of "morality" it's a good idea to ban the very type of intelligent discourse that might prevent social ills.

Read this blog post from January Magazine for more details:

http://januarymagazine.com/2009/05/toni-morrison-novel-banned-in-michigan.html

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Picture courtesy of Johanna Ljungblom at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/778658

The Buzz About Self-Publishing

When I was scouring the Web for blogs and websites for my under-construction Link List, I saw that many writers were talking about this article in the Sunday New York Times Book Section: "Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab."


For self-published writers hoping to be discovered by a major publishing house, this article is bubble-bursting. Many writers, however, are aiming for a smaller market, or a very specific readership, which I thought was an aspect the article didn't address in much detail. My upcoming Lulu.com book, for instance, is a compilation of writing prompts. I briefly considered putting together a proposal and going for conventional publication, but then I did a quick Amazon check on books of writing prompts. I didn't count up the number of hits I got, but it didn't take me long to see that the odds of getting a book of prompts published is slim. However, for my non-fiction book about my years working for the police department, I don't think I'd go with self-publishing, even if I'm unable to place it conventionally--but not because of the "stigma" of self-publishing. It's just not the type of book that does well, typically, as a self-published title.

What do you think? Is self-publishing becoming more accepted, or do you think it still carries a negative image?
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Photo courtesy of Zsuzsanna Kilián at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1067227