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[> [> [> Subject: Re: little guy versus Big Business
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Author:
Wes
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Date Posted: 09:29:16 07/10/09 Fri
>>>And the moral of the story is; "Don't believe that a
>>>little guy is powerless."
What a lesson this is in the power of the Internet. There used to be a saying, "Don't mess with people that buy ink by the barrel and newsprint by the ton." I don't think that statement is necessarily true any more, but the Internet is making up for it -- it just requires catching people's fancy or the temper of the moment to make an end run on the conventional wisdom.
Spearfish Lake Tales is admittedly an end run on the conventional wisdom. As I've said before, I hawked "Snowplow Extra" around for years before giving up on it, and just deciding to write for the fun of writing. Every click on the hit counter, ever dollar of donations, is my way of thumbing my nose at those people in New York that didn't think there was a market for my writing.
I don't think Internet publishing is a fully developed phenomenon yet, by any means. But it's fun to be in a situation where my writing has to stand on its own merits with my readership, rather than who I can impress in the publishing industry. The Internet has empowered me as a writer, and I'm happy and a little proud to be on the leading edge of that change.
Thanks everybody, for reading, for donating, for purchasing. You're helping create a new world!
>The reason I thought this was so funny has to be
>because of the last couple of chapters of 'Blue
>Beauty' - I was just thinking what Myleigh and the
>Spearfish Lake crew could do to whatever airline lost
>Myleigh's harp.
Trey already made a pretty good start at it.
I don't fly airlines any more if I can avoid it, and I usually can. I'm going to let go a teaser from a future book that probably says why as well as anything:
"Randy had really come to dislike flying -- maybe even hate it. Not that he feared it, because he didn't. But, if given the chance he would really rather travel by almost any other mode of transportation, which included pack mule -- not that he'd ever ridden a pack mule, but in his imagination it had to be better than being stuffed like a sardine into a can full of strangers. As far as he was concerned, getting a ticket was ungodly expensive and complicated, getting on a plane was a crapshoot at best, the airline treated coach class passengers like cattle on the way to slaughter, kept them in the dark about what was happening and fed them shit if they fed them at all. It was a miracle if you left on time, and a greater miracle if you actually arrived at the destination on time -- and a still greater miracle if your checked luggage arrived at the same place and time you did. Beyond that, the bastards had their hands out every time you turned around, expecting you to pay through the nose for the privilege of being treated that way. Randy had not been on a plane since the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, but the horror stories that he heard on the news about the increased security and check-in waits made airline travel even less appealing."
And that was 2001. From everything I've heard, things haven't improved. The problem is that the cheap crap drives out the good stuff -- always has, always will. As long as people are willing to bottom-feed price without regard to the quality of service, they are going to get what they pay for -- and so will the rest of us.
-- Wes
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