Paperback Problems

The loose stitching. The softened page edges. The white rub-off on the spine and corners of the cover.  If you read, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about paperbacks and their curse -- hold one too long, or in the wrong way (especially transporting them), they can get pretty ruined, and as Lemony Snicket wrote in The Wide Window, "There are few sights sadder than a ruined book."

And as true as that is, unless you're using a tablet (bless your poor soul), you're gonna have to hold your books to read them. None of us have unlocked the psychic-powers power up yet, unfortunately, so until then, it's gonna have to be with your hands. 

Some methods are worse than others -- my mother is guilty of folding paperbacks when she reads them so that the covers touch (just writing that made me shiver). That is one of the reasons my father's Piers Anthony novels look like hell... but not all people abuse books so much. Yet still, opening them creases the spine, which rubs off the print -- especially when the paperback is larger, which means it has to be held longer. The oils on your hands can get on the corners and edges and collect dirt, the pages get a little fluffy and dark, and overall books just get absolutely battered in bags. 

I may not have a solution to all these problems, but here are some of my tips in avoiding totally decimating your precious paperbacks. 

1. Improve how you transport them

When you tote around books, it can be hard to keep them from rubbing against the sides of your purse, backpack, or satchel -- and often, these things are made of material that likes to... harass paperbacks. My backpack has a little front pocket where I put my books, and it's made of a sort of lightweight canvas, which means it has a rough texture. This is book torture. Prolonged storage in a bag with this material (and purses/satchels are no exception) will rub your books apart, especially if, god forbid, you toss them in with things like your keys, pens, makeup, or what have you. To counter this, I started sandwiching my books between two sheets of cardboard to act as a sort of cushion, and put a large plastic Ziploc bag between them. Also make sure to drape the edges of the open bag over the cardboard, so it stays open. With this method, what pushed up against my books was the soft, non-harmful material of plastic, and the cardboard keeping the bag stiff absorbed much of the brunt of the canvas material of my backpack. It has really kept them looking good, too.

2. Hold them differently

My hands sometimes get pretty sweaty, and sweat is a prime source of book torture. It shreds printing on most traditional paperbacks -- maybe no so much on plastic-covered ones, but that's not the case on the paper ones. This is especially true on their spines. Another problem is when I sit at a table or desk and rest my book there. It can end up folding the little bit at the bottom of the spine too, and that drives me nuts. A countermeasure for this is to just not hold the book by its spine. Hold the covers, and rest the spine on something soft and cushioned, like a folded blanket or pillow. It honestly works wonders, and siting with a pillow in your lap is a pretty comfortable way to read. 

3. Be careful putting them back on and taking them off of the shelf  

Scooting books around on the shelf can peel the edges of the spine and roughen the paper. If you want your paperbacks to be in peak condition, then minimize how often you move them this way. Better yet, just don't move them this way at all. Lift them off the shelf, set them down nicely, and then rearrange in the same fashion. Slow and steady wins the race.

Obviously, you can't protect every single book form every single little dent and tear, but being diligent and careful is at least a step in the right direction. I'm sure all of us wish books were just impervious from harm, but paper and paper materials just don't work that way, so we need to make an effort to acknowledge what to do about the issue, and work toward fixing it one little bent cover at a time.

Until next time, keep watching, keep writing, and most importantly, keep reading. 

The Struggle for Meaningful Content

I've been trying desperately to establish an author platform for a while now. From pretty much... every source I've read or seen on bringing yourself some traffic, there seems to be a need for a kind of regular content relating to your actual label.

Given that I have an end goal of getting published to a larger audience, I'm trying to, of course, attract attention. But not the attention of just anyone, I mean the attention of people who would be likely to buy and read a book in the first place. And, as I've heard, the best way to start is social media. Of course! Why wouldn't it be? People are constantly on social media, and have been for years. So, for years of neglecting the lifestyle, I hopped on to try and whore out advertise myself.

My first foray into the game was a Twitter page, which can be found here. For its credit, it did attract a decent amount of attention at first, and I don't tend to lose followers (like SOME platform I can think of). But it's also not like anyone else has been following, or even so much as liking my tweets. This is alright. None of my tweets actually need to be liked, or seen, nor do I really need to be followed - but there's definitely some importance on being "out there" for the beginning of a career. A part of it may be the first strategy, which was shallowly following hashtags -- those got... some attention, and they still do if I post in writing hashtags, but not the kind of stuff I needed. 

Then it was Facebook. This is a more personal web space (I guess), and it's only been a way to connect with family and friends. Obvious, obvious, but just in case, I keep my profile public and post all of my Instagram photos there just in case

Next, I tried YouTube. Please don't make me talk about that. 

When that didn't work so well (I didn't try very hard, but I quickly realized that I hated everything that had to do with video creation) I went to Instagram. Now, Instagram happened to be the best platform for things I enjoyed making, which was amateur book photography. I don't pretend like any of those pictures are any more than a quick setup with a book and my phone, but despite their nonprofessional appearance, I happen to like creating them quite a bit. And I won't lie, I've gotten a teensy bit of traffic from most of them. But what hurts a bit every time I post one is the amount of people that actually like them is made up of people I know, not people looking to find an interesting new photo of a book (and possibly following as a consequence, and one day seeing news of my newly published story). Not to mention the types that tend to follow are accounts that just want others to follow them, and leave if you don't.

But the largest issue with this is that, despite the pictures not being top tier pieces of art, they take time to plan, money to create (with props and whatnot, let alone buying the book), and they demand locations -- locations that I'm running out of. Plus, with my measly traffic, I am not going to go driving out everywhere further than two or three miles for some silly phone photograph. 

So here's the gist. Content from creators has to be "meaningful," but what is "meaningful" in the first place? 

Pretty much all that I can offer (for the time being) from social media can be found better in other places, but this won't be true forever. I do not, by any means, see this blog attracting any attention at all, and that is also okay. It's mainly for me right now, to have an excuse to write a few times a month about things without a limited scope. After all, on sites like Goodreads, IMDB, etc., the type of writing published has exclusively to do with reviews. This is a given, and it's not like I don't enjoy writing a good review here and there, but is it "meaningful" to anyone but me? That is the million dollar question.