Hi guys!

Wow. Your post on Konrath’s blog blew me away and there are at this very moment thousands of heads exploding over thousands of keyboards.

The sounds of a revolution.

For those who haven’t read it yet, stop what you’re doing, go pour yourself a stuff drink, then go to JA Konrath’s blog and read it. I’ll wait here.

Okay?

So–Barry and Joe–your number crunching abilities are extraordinary and I bow to them, not being very numerate myself , but in all your analyses of the coming world of publishing, there’s one thing I missed in your conversation.

The world.

Yep, the world of 1.8 billion English readers. 1.8 billion readers who up until now you reached with difficulty. Oh, sure, your books could eventually make it to Australia, New Zealand, India, the UK, Ireland, Canada, but not without huge corporate friction that ate at your royalties, requiring sub licensing agreements and new covers and two and sometimes three corporations all taking their share of the pie. Not to mention all those English readers in Europe, Africa, Asia, where the American edition was sold at a huge markup because it’s an imported good.

Imagine those 1.8 billion English readers having instant access to your books. Press a button and there you go. They haven’t digitalized yet but when they do, the sky’s the limit.

And then of course there’s the rest of the world that loves American books but must read them in translation. The translation you have no say over, and in which (sorry guys) your text was probably cut by the translator to fit local editorial book sizes.

Not to mention olive-green garage door covers.

Now imagine a world where you control the translation, the cover is the same cover you chose. Right next to your book in English on amazon, there’s a button on amazon.de for the German language edition, or on amazon.jp there’s the Japanese edition, etc. And you get all those royalties. All of them, with no intermediaries. It will cost you about € 5000 and you’d have to find a translator you trust, but once you do and have paid the cost (which you’ll probably make up in 4 days of sales) all those royalties go straight to you.

Hark! What’s that sound I hear? Of pitchforks being sharpened at the gates of the Bastille? And that fire on the horizon? Those are the torches.

Allons enfants de la patrieeeeeee….

The two events are unrelated, honest! If ever there’s a person who wishes to keep bookstores alive, ’tis I. However, the sad and brutal truth is that San Francisco lost its major bookstores more or less…while I was there.

You know how when a city is beloved and familiar, you immediately rush to go to all your favorite places? That’s what we did upon our arrival. Very near the top of the list is the Barnes and Noble at Fisherman’s Wharf, which is a fun, albeit very touristy, place anyway. going there is a real outing for us, we love the crab at those funky filthy stand up places along the bay.

To do it right, you take the F line. Again, funky, something San Francisco does superbly well. It’s a tram line that goes from the Civic Center, down Market, past the Ferry Building and all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf. All the trams are antiques, salvaged from castoff trams from cities around the world and the US — Milan, Buenos Aires, St Lous, Boston–restored and put into service.

So–you take the F tram and it trundles along some of the most beautiful cityscapes in the world, right down to the bay, with the Bay Bridge to your right and the Ferry Building to your left, takes a left and takes you all along the waterfront. At the Terminus, the Barnes and Noble is about a five minute walk away. An extremely pleasant five minute walk.

The bookstore itself is set in a low-lying red brick complex surrounding a little plaza area with some greenery. The store–ah, how to describe how fabulous it is? A huge space with a loft-like second story, all wood, with light streaming in from huge windows. Air, light, books. It’s magic. Thousands and thousands of books yet it smells clean and fresh, not musty.

It’s a place to dive into and spend hours floating around it. It has huge, well-stocked genre shelves–romance, thrillers and mysteries, science fiction and fantasy. Very well-selected literry fiction section. Wonderful magazine section. Lovely coffee shop. It is sheer magic.

Was.

To my horror, having happily taken the F line, walked with increasing anticipation under a brilliant blue sky, I walk up the steps and…don’t believe my eyes. The windows are boarded up. thinking this must be a mistake, I try the doors. Locked.

I must have looked insane. Massive cognitive dissonance. This is where the Barnes and Noble is but…it’s closed.

Cody’s closed a few years ago, as did the huge Virgin Megastore, 3 stories of books and music. So Barnes and Noble and the Borders are more or less It.

I felt real grief. Two passing women saw my discombobulation and we stood there for half an hour, commiserating with each other. The area now has no bookstores, none. One of the women said that at least there were the two downtown Borders and when I said that the newspapers said Borders was sliding into bankruptcy, she looked horrified. No other word for it.

To be continued…

PS — i’m posting blogs I wanted to post from SF, but I only had my netbook with a sticky keyboard, so

the psts wooold hve ooked lik thi