The Buie Knife

Woodward, Bernstein and the Press Alone Did Not Expose Watergate

With the revelation that a former FBI official was "Deep Throat," a myth is perpetrated that the press alone exposed Watergate. As heroic as Woodward, Bernstein and The Washington Post may have been, the Watergate cover-up probably would have succeeded without the bipartisan integrity of a lot of people in all three branches of government. Read Edward Jay Epstein's piece.

Hope for Reducing Poverty Comes from Coalition of Liberals, Evangelicals

"The natural alliance for antipoverty measures at home and abroad is between liberals and evangelical Christians." -- David Brooks, New York Times

Newspapers Must Build Vibrant Online Communities

Susan Crawford, a Professor at Cardozo Law School who teaches cyberlaw and intellectual property law, thinks

A Great Overview of Blogging

If rules are made to be broken, definitions are made for refinement. The definition of blogging I posted earlier is not necessarily the "final word."

Secrecy, Centralized Authority Define Leadership Style of Bush, Republican Congress

The principles of open government, practiced "in the sunshine," and transparent decision-making, have been thrown out the window by the Bush administration. Secrecy is the rule of the day.

And the principle of free and open debate, with government officials feeling free to express their concerns or dissenting opinions within the administration without being accused of disloyalty also seems endangered. Officials who had doubts about weapons of mass destruction or the wisdom of the war in Iraq had to keep their mouths shut. It is now apparently the duty of every government official to suppress their individual opinions, tell the president what he wants to hear, and march in lockstep behind their leader, who makes up his mind before he has all the facts.

President Bush and Republican congressional leaders are "consolidat[ing] influence in a small circle of Republicans and marginaliz[ing] dissenting voices," the Washington Post reports. During the Bush presidency, we've seen:

"a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy..."

In his penchant for secrecy and intolerance for dissenting opinions, Bush makes Lyndon Johnson "seem like a piker," quips Bill Moyers, who worked with Johnson and had a falling out over just those issues.

12 Groups I'm Helping Connect Through Virtual Families Site

I started www.virtualfamiliesandfriends.com years ago to show that some good can come from divorce. I'm trying to show families how they can maintain warm, close personal relationships with loved ones despite distance, divorce, extended work assignments away, or simply living apart. Using new technologies such as webcams creativity and resourcefully, they can nurture each other on a daily or weekly basis.

If you know anyone who would be interested in this material, send them over to www.virtualfamiliesandfriends.com, post a message there or here.

Here are the 12 groups or target audiences I have identified that we should reach:

'Digital Immortality Is Within Our Grasp'

By 2050, we'll be able to upload our brains, our human consciousness, and achieve digital immortality, according to Ian Pearson, Britain's leading thinker on the future. (The Observer of UK)

Publish-on-Demand More and More Attractive to Authors

Buie on Publishing. Premise Number Four. With traditional publishing, an author is likely to earn 10% or at most 20% on book sales. Sell 3,000 books at $10 a piece and make $3,000 or at the most $6,000. It may take years to sell 3,000 books because small and medium-size publishers are unlikely to spend much of anything on marketing your book. Expect to do the marketing yourself.

Alternatively, publish or print-on-demand could be far more lucrative. The average publish-on-demand author sells about 100 to 300 copies. He sets his own book price (the printer typically takes about half.) An author can easily earn $10 a book. Sell 300 book, and earn $3,000. Sell 3,000 books through publish-on-demand, that's $30,000.

Publish-on-demand has less prestige, of course. Book reviewers for the larger newspapers and magazines generally won't review publish-on-demand books. Many bookstores won't carry copies. But I would not be at all surprised to see far more publish-on-demand books, some of which will find an audience. Once an author has made back the time he spent writing the book and a reasonable profit, he may feel far more inclined to sell the manuscript to a traditional publisher, who will be far more interested, because the book is far less of a risky investment, because it has already found its audience.

Publish-on-demand books tend not to be well-edited. It is said that if you represent yourself in court, instead of hiring a lawyer, you have a fool for a client. I also believe an author who tries to be his own editor has a fool for an editor. Everyone needs an editor. Hire or barter an editor.

Drill Deeper:

• Publish on Demand (Google search)
• ''Companies like Random House and Simon & Schuster are in the process of investing in highly valuable properties. They want to find Deepak Chopra; they don't want to find a writer necessarily who has an audience of 10,000 people,'' says John Feldcamp, founder and chief executive of Xlibris. He predicts ''companies like us will support the lion's share of content out there.'' See New York Times article,  "How to be Your Own Publisher."

Authors Must Work As Hard On Marketing As On Writing Book

"Fewer Americans are reading books than a decade ago, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, but almost a third more are listening to them on tapes, CD's and iPods." -- "Loud, Proud, Unabridged: It is Too Reading," New York Times article on the growing trend of listening to books.

Buie on Publishing. Premise Number Three. Given the intense competition for people's attention, if you want to write a book, or have written a book, you'll probably have to work as hard marketing your book as you did writing the book. Most publishers will spend almost nothing on marketing. They probably do not know your market -- your potential readers -- as well as you do, or as well as you should.  They certainly have less emotional investment.

You've got to do far more than send hand-written notes to reviewers. You've got to "create buzz" for your work.

Think not of marketing a book first, but of marketing interesting ideas or stories or helpful information in small, digestible, bite-size pieces. Specialists or experts on certain subjects are in more demand than authors are. A storyteller is in more demand than a novel. A lecturer or speaker is in more demand than a non-fiction book. A columnist for a newspaper, magazine, or web site is more widely read than a book author because he asks less of his audience.

Getting people to visit a web site, subscribe to an email newsletter, read a blog, watch a video clip, read an interview, listen to an MP3 file of you reading your book are far easier than getting people to read or buy your book.

Getting people to listen to what you have to say via radio or a downloaded mp3 file onto an I-Pod or laptop, which they can listen to while driving or doing some other mindless task, is far more possible than getting them to sit down and read your book cover to cover.

But if you can get them to do one or all of those things, they are far more likely to buy your book.

One thing leads to another. A blog can lead to a writing assignment for a publication, or an invitation to speak before a group. If you have a book, speaking before groups will lead to book sales.

You will sell more books from public appearances than online or in bookstores, unless the book really takes off.

Aspiring Authors Take Note: Just Because You Write a Book Doesn't Mean People Will Read It

"A record 195,000 new works came out in 2004, a 14 percent jump over the previous year and 72 percent higher than in 1995....[However,] the actual number of books sold in 2004 dropped by 40 million from the previous year." (AP report on Yahoo.) 

Buie on Publishing. Premise Number Two. People don’t buy or read books as much as they used to. There are far more books published today than there are people who read books cover to cover. There has been a dizzying explosion of information. There are so many ideas competing for our time and attention. "So many books. So little time!...So many magazines online. So little time! So many web sites. So little time! So much mail. So little time!"

How many books have you bought that you have not read? Be honest!

With all the distractions and entertainment possibilities today, getting tens of thousands of people to sit down, focus and read a 200-page book is asking a lot, unless they've made some personal connection first. Someone whose tastes they respect recommended the book to them. To read your book, they've got to be really interested in the topic. "What's in it for them?"