Pub day
and why you should support the independent press
I’ll get back to my regular bookish/political programming soon, but, before that: my book is out today and here’s why you should buy it.
We know journalism, publishing, all forms of traditional media are, in some ways, on the decline. Newspapers are closing, reading in general is down, and we’re all being deluged with a glut of content — much of it not produced by humans. You know, and are likely mentally drowning in, the overflowing trough. More American adults placed an online bet last year than read a single book, according to a recent article in The Atlantic. As a society, we are barrelling towards post-literacy.
I’m not hopeless. I’m not rich either.1
I’ve seen plenty of capable, even stellar, journalists get sacked or squeezed out of the business. I’ve seen aplenty of promising book projects go to the market and then wither on the vine. Editors and agents have learned what kind of books sell, which don’t.
I don’t want to let the market forces decide what we read. I want editors to take chances, publish challenging, surprising, wonderful work that might not always ride the right market wave, or even, in the whirlpools of the attention economy, stay float. That’s why you should support Haymarket, and — and here I grub — why you should buy my book. Or, truly, any book.
I wrote (just above) that journalism and publishing are in some ways on the decline. In some ways they’re doing the opposite of declining. Banging new publishing houses, including Haymarket (not new, but not so old either), Deep Vellum, Hagfish, Dorothy, Coffee House, and others are bringing out great, weird, hard, otherwise overlooked and important books.
And on the journalistic side, local nonprofits, from Hell Gate in New York, Block Club in Chicago, Sahan Journal in Minnesota, or LOOKOUT, where I scribble for a living in Arizona, are slinging it to keep you informed and keep the government and those in power accountable. I urge — here I am again at the grub — and ask you to support any local nonprofit media outlet, another realm that’s doing the opposite of declining. At LOOKOUT we are gumptious, scrappy, very serious about our craft, and deliver hard-hitting accountability stories on the LGBTQ+ community and more. So find your local non-profit, or one of the bigger regional or national ones (The Appeal, High Country News, The Marshall Project to name a few of the many gems) and support them. Subscribe, dish out a few dollars (at least) a month, and share the news with your friends and neighbors. According to that same above-cited Atlantic article, fifty years ago about half of twenty-somethings read the newspaper everyday. Today, less than ten percent do, and most of them do that in short spurts on their phone.
Besides buying my book (it’s currently less than $12 bucks on Haymarket’s site) you can also share or support this newsletter.
Here’s a link for the virtual launch tonight, when I’ll be talking with Silky Shah, Harsha Walia, and Dan Denvir.
And here, again, is my list of upcoming events:
Last, here’s a link to an excerpt, published today in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/immigration-camps-how-to-close-a-camp/
This is my third book, and for each of them I’ve gotten the same advance: $10,000. For my first book that barely covered research expenses. For my second, I made back my advance and have earned about $1,000 more in royalties — certainly welcome, but a pittance in today’s inflationary spikes. We’ll see if royalties come in for the newest one.