August 2005 – Page 4

B16 To Heal Schism?

CNS offers the following news brief:

Pope to meet with head of schismatic Lefebvrites

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The head of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay, was scheduled to meet with Pope Benedict XVI in late August. A Vatican official who asked not to be identified told Catholic News Service Aug. 23 that the meeting between the pope and Bishop Fellay would take place Aug. 29 at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence outside Rome. The Holy See press office would neither confirm nor deny the report. Bishop Fellay is one of four bishops ordained against papal orders by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. He is the current head of the Society of St. Pius X, which was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre after he broke with Rome over liturgical reforms and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. On the society’s U.S. Web site, Bishop Fellay wrote that he felt the April 19 election of Pope Benedict offered "a gleam of hope" in resolving what he called a "profound crisis … shaking the Catholic Church"[ SOURCE.]

I don’t know if this will come to anything (or if the source is even accurate), but B16’s chances of healing the breach with the SSPX are far larger than JP2’s were.

Pre-16 was vocally supportive of the Tridentine rite of Mass, engaged in respectful dialogue with people in the Traditionalist movements, and he has a willingness to talk about and frankly acknowledge the crisis in the Church and in Western Civilization that JP2 didn’t (he tended to put a marked optimistic reading on matters).

All of that gives B16 advantages that his great predecessor didn’t have, but he also has another advantage, and it’s a big one: He ain’t the pope that declared the excommunications. That’s just gotta personalize things for you if you’ve been excommunicated by a pope, and one can see how it would make it hard to reconcile that THAT pope.

But with his successor comes a new start, and if the successor has already been sympathetic . . .

POD Publishing

A few years ago there was an ad on TV (by IBM or Xerox or someone like that) which was about a class being lectured by a sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic creative writing professor.

The professor was explaining–in his sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic manner–that it costs publishers thousands of dollars to produce, publish, and warehouse a book and, therefore, the vast majority of his young, hip students were doomed never to be published.

Through the micro-lecture the commercial contained, one of the hip, young students is shown smirking and rolling his eyes, until finally he can’t take it any more when he hears about the money aspect, and so he gets up and says, "That’s not true!"

The then explains to the sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic–and now shocked–professor, and to the rest of the class, that there’s this new PRINT ON DEMAND (POD) process that uses digital technology to keep a stored record of the book, which can then be printed a few copies at a time, whenever there is an order to be filled. Even if the order is only for a single copy.

"So now," the student concludes, looking at the hip, young students around him, "we can all get published!"

The professor frowns. The class cheers. Go to the IBM (or Xerox, or whoever) logo. End of commercial.

When I saw this ad, I immediately rolled my eyes. It was unlikable for a whole host of reasons (like dissing old people and professors in a classic example of contemporary "cult of youth" prejudice).

But let’s think this through:

Haven’t we had Xerox machines for an awful long time? (At least, longer than any of the hip, young kids in the ad have been alive?) Couldn’t they "get published" by using those? Further, can’t anyone who wants to today go online and start a web page or a blog and get published that way?

Of course, that’s not what they mean. The kids in the commercial want to get published by having their work come out in the format of a book with a square spine and a full-color cover and all.

Okay, haven’t we had vanity presses for longer than any of these students have been alive? Anyone who wants to can "get published" through those with a real square spine book with a four-color cover and everything.

In fact, isn’t there even an appeal to vanity in the student’s joyful declaration that "Now we can all get published"? (It being, of course, understandable that an unpublished author would want this. It’s a very human and very understandable desire.)

What’s new here?

Basically this: Digital technology allows the printing costs to be lower since the book is produced in an on-demand manner. There also aren’t the same warehousing costs.

But the costs will still be substantial, at least if you want a professionally done book (as opposed to something you wrote and edited yourself in Microsoft Word). There are still all the charges for editing, copy editing, proofreading, typesetting, and cover design that the print on demand process doesn’t magically do away with.

Print on demand publishers also are frequently hooked up to the Internet and to online booksellers like Amazon, but vanity presses are starting to do that, too.

What we’re talking about here is just a somewhat cheaper vanity press process.

Done right, that not a problem. It blends into the self-publishing phenomenon, which can be entirely profitable and respectable (or a total disaster). Some folks have had very good experiences self-publishing, including using POD technology to self-publish.

But it is unjust and manipulative to hold out print on demand as a magical way of getting published to the aspiring author as if using this process would mean the same thing as getting published through a professional publisher.

What print on demand will mean for the typical user is that the person will get the satisfaction of knowing that a few dozen or hundred copies of his work have been printed off and sold (possibly to the author himself so he can give them away to relatives and friends) and that if someone stumbles across it on the Internet that that person could order a new copy.

That’s all fine and good, but it does not mean:

That there will be more than a small handful of copies in print.
That the book is professionally edited.
That the book is professionally designed and laid out.
That the book is remotely as good as one done by a professional publishing house.

As a result, indiscriminate use of POD technology will create an "amateur" stigma that continues to attach to many POD authors, just as if they had used a traditional vanity press.

Because basically what we’re talking about here is just a new way to get vanity press-quality books done–at least as long as it’s done with a "Now we can all get published" approach.

Getting published through a service that is undiscriminating among authors will not mean as much as getting professionally published, and it is unjust to and manipulative of POD commercials or services to pretend to authors that it will.

If he wants to do professional quality work through a print on demand service, that’s great. He’ll achieve respectability as an author, and he’ll deserve every bit of it.

But technology (thus far) can’t bring writing up to professional standards, and if this technology is used as a means of publishing material that would have been eliminated at the slush pile stage then it will simply result in more bad books being in print and more dissappointed authors out there.

Amazing Lunar Discoveries!!!

Today, August 25, back in 1835, the New York Sun began publishing a series of articles about exciting discoveries about what exists on the lunar surface.

These discoveries were made by the British astronomer Sir John Herschel "by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle."

Herschel, the article declared, had established a "new theory of cometary phenomena"; he had discovered planets in other solar systems; and he had "solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy." Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, the article revealed Herschel’s final, stunning achievement: he had discovered life on the moon!

The article continued on and offered an elaborate account of the fantastic sights viewed by Herschel during his telescopic observation of the moon. It described a lunar topography that included vast forests, inland seas, and lilac-hued quartz pyramids. Readers learned that herds of bison wandered across the plains of the moon; that blue unicorns perched on its hilltops; and that spherical, amphibious creatures rolled across its beaches. The highpoint of the narrative came when it revealed that Herschel had found evidence of intelligent life on the moon: he had discovered both a primitive tribe of hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans living in pastoral harmony around a mysterious, golden-roofed temple. Herschel dubbed these latter creatures the Vespertilio-homo, or "man-bat".

The picture above is of the "man-bats" of the moon flying in the moon’s "Ruby Colosseum"!

LEARN MORE! (And SEE more PICTURES! Including of the "Biped Beavers"!!!)

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLES! (Articles linked on this page)

Selling Bad Stuff

A reader writes:

If someone is
working at a store that sells something like condoms, would it be morally
wrong for the cashier to sell the item to the customer? Would it be
cooroperation with evil? What about something like softcore pornography
that may be sold or rented at some stores or movie places? Would the person
who is responsible for checking those items out have any moral obligation to
not sell such an item to the person? I thought of this when thinking about
people refusing to sell birth control at pharmacies. To what degree would
it be cooperating with evil when you know what they’re likely to do with
such items, and what moral responsibility if any does a person have if they
work at a store that sells any morally questionable items?

This is an excellent question that is becoming more and more common in our culture, particularly for people with entry-level jobs. It applies all over the place, from supermarkets to convenience stores to pharmacies to video stores to movie theaters to cable companies to Internet companies to . . . well, just about everywhere (or at least that’s what it seems like).

The best thing to do would be to turn to the Church’s official guidelines on cooperation with evil and apply them to these situations.

Only we can’t do that, and for a very good reason: The Church doesn’t have such guidelines. I suspect that it will in the not too distant future, and precisely because the de-Christianization of culture is forcing these questions to the fore more and more.

There are places in Church documents which mention different forms of cooperation, such as in Pre-16’s text on supporting abortion and going to Communion. However, if you look in the Catechism or other official documents for an authoritative taxonomy of these terms and what they mean and what they do and don’t apply to, you won’t find one.

Anywhere!

The universal magisterium of the Church simply has not addressed the subject of cooperation with evil in a systematic fashion . . . yet.

There’s not even an agreed upon locus classicus in one of the historical theologians that can be used as a reference point. (Something I checked out a piece back.)

As a result, one has to fall back on texts that reflect the common opinion of learned persons, such as THIS ARTICLE IN THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA or THIS ONE BY FR. WILLIAM SAUNDERS.

Unfortunately, these aren’t always as helpful as one would like, and in the opinion of some conservative, orthodox folks (myself included) not all of the principles that one commonly reads in these texts are formulated in the best manner.

That being said, let’s do the best we can:

The first major distinction we have to look at is between doing evil yourself and cooperating with someone else’s doing of evil. You can’t ever do anything instrinsically evil yourself. That is right out. Fortunately, the situations you were asking about involve selling stuff, and selling stuff isn’t intrinsically evil (otherwise the economy would grind to a halt). So in selling stuff, you are not operating evil (if I may put it that way), you are at most cooperating with someone else’s commission of evil.
There are different kinds of cooperation with evil, and some are never morally permissible. The main difference among the kinds of cooperation is between what theologians call formal and material cooperation. Basically, you formally cooperate with an evil if you help the person who commits the evil in some way and you approve of the evil. Material cooperation occurs when you help the person in some way but you don’t approve of the evil.
Formal cooperation with evil is ALWAYS WRONG. Therefore, if the person selling stuff approves of it being used in bad ways then he is formally cooperating with evil. This is not allowed. It is right out.
On the other hand, material cooperation is potentially justifiable. It is so because (remember) you yourself are not doing anything evil. What you’re doing is morally permitted. It is what someone else is doing that is wrong.

To help illustrate this point, let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a supermarket checker and a customer plops a pack of condoms down on the conveyor belt. You pick the object up and slide it across the scanner and hand it to the bagger. Is there anything wrong in your actions themselves? No. You do these same actions for every other item you scan: bread, butter, hamburger, whatever. (Okay, the bread has lots of evil carbs in it, but that’ll get taken care of in the same cooperation with evil considrations we’re delving into.)

None of the actions you are performing are wrong. It’s what the customer is going to do with the condoms once he gets home that is wrong.

Or maybe not. For all you know, the customer may be a pro-life scientist who is buying the condoms so he can test them in the lab and prove that they aren’t effective at stopping the AIDS virus and so "safe sex" is bogus. Or perhaps he’s a Hollywood prop guy who wants to use them to generate the scales for a giant sandworm in a remake of Dune (that’s what they did for sandworm scales in the first version of Dune). Or who knows what! The fact that the most common use of these things is evil doesn’t mean that that’s their only use (however uncommon some of the others may be).

The same is true of virtually all the bad things people sell today, and this multiplicity of uses (even if the legitimate uses are rare) only further illustrates that none of your actions themselves are wrong. It’s what the customer (most likely) is planning to do that’s wrong.

Now: Because none of your actions are wrong in materially cooperating are wrong, Catholic moral theologians are agreed that materially cooperation is morally justified . . . sometimes.

It’s when we ask "When?" or "In what circumstances?" that things get murkier. The basic criterion that is proposed, though, is that there has to be (a) a proportionate reason for your cooperation given (b) your form of involvement and (c) the alternatives available to you.

In the case of a checker in a supermarket, there is basically nothing you can do on the alternatives front. You can’t refuse to sell what the store carries without getting fired. Neither (under the vast majority of circumstances) could you convince the customer not to buy the condoms. Even trying to do the latter would–again–get you fired. So there are basically no alternatives short of getting fired.

Being fired basically hurts you but doesn’t do much (in most circumstances) to change the fact that the evil act will get done. If you get fired, the manager himself or a different checker or even a different store will sell the customer the condoms. So if he’s determined to use them in an evil manner, that’ll happen anyway. You’ll just be out of a job.

When it comes to your involvement, moral theologians distinguish between remote and proximate involvement. The basic principle is that the more remote your cooperation is, the less of a justifying reason you need in order to cooperate. The more proximate your cooperation is, the more of a justifying reason you need.

The difference between these is not always clear, and there is a spectrum between them. But since you are only selling the condoms, that’s at least somewhat remote. (Let’s not even go into how you might cooperate in their use in a proximate manner, okay?)

So: We have a grave sin (contraceptive sex) that is likely to be committed, but your cooperation is remote and there are no effective alternatives to this other than getting fired (which even the won’t stop the act from happening in all likelihood).

This form of cooperation can be justified if you have a proportionate reason to the above situation. What might be proportionate to that?

How about getting fired!

Unless you’re well off, you likely need a job. If you’re working as a checker, you likely aren’t qualified for a whole lot of different positions–or at least ones that wouldn’t put you in similarly problematic situations (like movie rental clerk or movie ticket salesman or bookseller or what have you). You may be studying for a position that wouldn’t put you in this kind of bind, but that’s the problem with entry-level jobs in today’s culture. They just tend to pose this kind of dilemma, especially ones that allow you to work around a school schedule so you can study for one of those higher, better positions.

Now, perhaps you could find a new job that won’t do this to you. And if you can do so, it would be morally praiseworthy to pursue this possibility. But it requires a lot of effort to do that, and in the meantime, if you refuse to sell the condoms then you’re out of work and a whole host of bad consequences may follow (like losing your apartment, your car, having bad things go on your credit report

It thus seems to me that–given the gravity of what may happen to a person who loses his job over this and the chances of him getting a new, entry-level job that doesn’t pose this kind of dilemma–and given that there are no alternatives other than getting fired then it seems to me that a reason may well exist that is proportionate to what is needed to justify performing selling actions that are themselves justified and sufficiently remote from the evil act that the customer is likely to perform afterwards.

(Sorry if that’s grammatically hard to process, but I’m writing at the end of a long day.)

Now, if you change any of those conditions, the moral evaluation is likely to change as well:

If the person is well off and doesn’t need the job then he might ought to quit.
If the person has available to him another, equally good job that doesn’t involve this dilemma (like moving to the butcher’s department or the janitorial staff) then he might ought to take it.
If the person has an alternative, such as a storeowner who could say with relative ease "Y’know, we’re just not going to sell those things here," then he ought to pursue it.

But for an increasing number of people in our culture today, particularly in entry-level jobs, proportionate reasons for this kind of remote material cooperation are likely to exist. I’m not saying that they do for everyone. Do not get me wrong on that point. But given what’s happening to our culture, they will exist for a larger and larger number of people.

Non-Catholics & Cremation

A reader writes:

A neighbor of my parents’ recently passed away after a battle with colon cancer. A memorial service will be held in the coming days; she is not Catholic, so there will be no funeral mass. Her remains will be cremated (possibly before the service, I do not believe her remains will be present, body or ashes), and her wishes are to have her ashes scattered in a flower garden in her back yard.

I asked my mom if this "scattering of ashes" is going to be private or extended to other close friends. My mom has been one of the primary caregivers for this neighbor in the last few weeks as her time came to an end and mentioned that she hoped they would be able to participate/observe when her ashes were spread.

The deceased and her family are not Catholic so I assume they cannot be held to the teachings of the Church. But out of respect for her humanly body, I would feel it inappropriate to be a witness to the dispersal of her ashes. I have not been "invited" to witness this event, but since it’s an emotional time, I guess I want to be prepared to know if I should plan to avoid this part or go thru it because of the feelings of those involved.

My questions are:

1) Would it be wrong for me as a Catholic to witness the scattering of her ashes?

No, it would not be wrong. As you may know, the Church holds that cremation can be morally permissible as long as it is not done as a deliberate sign of disbelief in the faith (which it very seldom is, from what I can tell).
Given the moral permissibility of cremation, that leaves the question of what is to be done with the remains or "cremains" as they are called.

We should then treat the cremains with respect, but what form respect for the dead requires varies dramatically across different cultures. In our American culture, many people feel it to be respectful to the dead to scatter the cremains in a nature setting of some kind. Others find it more respectful to deposit them in an urn, which may itself be placed in a mausoleum. There really isn’t much cultural consistency on this point.

Ultimately, as long as deliberate disrepect is not shown to the cremains, it doesn’t matter so much what different cultures think is respectful. God’s going to put the person back together at the end of time, anyway, and it’s not like the person will be harmed in any way based on where his ashes are or whether they are in one place.

Current Catholic regulations require that the cremains be deposited in a container, but these regulations have disciplinary rather than doctrinal force. This is the way we Catholics currently show our respect for a person’s cremains, but it is not required by divine law that this be done. (Over the centuries, almost any container one could come up with might get broken and the ashes scattered, anyway. It’s not like we can build indestructible urns guaranteed to last until Judgment Day no matter what happens to them.)

Since it is not a matter of divine law and the parties in this case are not Catholic, there is nothing intrinsically evil about their proposal. I find it personally distasteful (a flower bed in the back of a person’s house?), but this is more revealing of my own cultural preferences rather than what is mandated by divine law.

Since what they are proposing is not intrinsically contrary to divine law nor contrary to the law of the Church (in that the law binds only Catholics), you would not be lending your endorsement to an evil act by attending.

2) If it would, how best would I share this with my Catholic famiy that either a) is not aware of this, or b) is aware, but will be there anyway (if invited to do so)?

Since the act would not be intrinsically contrary to God’s law, I would not even bring it up with them. Just comfort them in their time of grief.

Non-Catholics & Cremation

A reader writes:

A neighbor of my parents’ recently passed away after a battle with colon cancer. A memorial service will be held in the coming days; she is not Catholic, so there will be no funeral mass. Her remains will be cremated (possibly before the service, I do not believe her remains will be present, body or ashes), and her wishes are to have her ashes scattered in a flower garden in her back yard.

I asked my mom if this "scattering of ashes" is going to be private or extended to other close friends. My mom has been one of the primary caregivers for this neighbor in the last few weeks as her time came to an end and mentioned that she hoped they would be able to participate/observe when her ashes were spread.

The deceased and her family are not Catholic so I assume they cannot be held to the teachings of the Church. But out of respect for her humanly body, I would feel it inappropriate to be a witness to the dispersal of her ashes. I have not been "invited" to witness this event, but since it’s an emotional time, I guess I want to be prepared to know if I should plan to avoid this part or go thru it because of the feelings of those involved.

My questions are:

1) Would it be wrong for me as a Catholic to witness the scattering of her ashes?

2) If it would, how best would I share this with my Catholic famiy that either a) is not aware of this, or b) is aware, but will be there anyway (if invited to do so)?

Since the act would not be intrinsically contrary to God’s law, I would not even bring it up with them. Just comfort them in their time of grief.

World Misspent Youth Day

Now that you’ve missed it, Pope Benedict XVI has allowed The Curt Jester to lift the veil of secrecy on a parallel event to World Youth Day held in Bonn, Germany: World Misspent Youth Day!

"I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the first annual World Misspent-Youth Day that was held in Bonn, Germany. Our event was much more low-key than World Youth Day going on adjacently in Cologne and the Holy Father did not want WM-YD to upstage WYD. The above is the official logo for WM-YD which has St. Augustine pictured on it since he can truly be considered to be the patron saint of misspent-youth. World Misspent-Youth Day was open to those 35 and above who in their youth lead lives not exactly pious, which really means open to all of us 35 and above. This was the first year for this event and of course there were problems and other wrinkles (which only makes sense) that developed. In spite of that I believe it was fairly successful and that we will see future WM-YDs in the future."

GET THE PARODY.

The bad news is that I wasn’t also invited to relive my misspent youth with the Holy Father. The good news is that I’m still too young to attend this event.

Self-Publishing

Yesterday I ragged on vanity presses–and for good reason. Many of them are outright scams, and others operate in a very shady zone.

I want to make it clear, though, that I don’t diss self-publishing at all. In fact, I’ve considered it myself.

What happens in self-publishing is that you basically start your own publishing house.

Why would you want to do that, though, when there are lots of publishers out there already?

If the answer is that your manuscript won’t be accepted by a professional publisher then that’s usually a bad reason to self-publish. It usually means that the manuscript isn’t up to professional standards. (It can mean that the manuscript is aimed at a very small market that the big publishers don’t serve, but then there are lots of small market publishers who you could sell it to.)

Here’s the best reason to self-publish: You stand to make more money. By being your own publisher, you get to keep all the money the publisher usually keeps. Hence, you stand to make more.

Only maybe not. Standard publishers already have established publicity and distribution chains set up, and you’d be building one from scratch. Unless you have a really hot product, you likely couldn’t sell as many copies.

On the other hand, if you do have a hot product, you may be willing to push the product in a more aggressive way than an existing publisher and you might sell more copies.

You might even sell enough that the book trips a big publisher’s radar and they get interested in purchasing the rights from you to print an edition of it themselves.

So why wouldn’t you want to self-publish?

Because in exchange for getting to keep the money a publisher usually does, you also have to do all the things a publisher usually does, as well.

This means that you have to (or pay someone to):

Observe the legal requirements needed in your state to create a new business.
Edit your manuscript.
Copyedit your manuscript.
Proofread your manuscript.
Typeset your manuscript.
Design the cover for your book.
Get blurbs for your book.
Find a printer.
Negotiate with the printer.
Shepherd the book through the production pipeline.

And that’s only the beginning! After your book gets back from the printer, you’ll have to (or pay someone to):

Write ad copy.
Design ads.
Purchase places for ads.
Contact booksellers.
Obtain placement with booksellers.
Try to get the book picked up by major distributors (not the same as booksellers).
Fulfill orders.
Do your own book keeping.
Pay your own taxes.

Aaagh!

And those are the reasons I ultimately chose not to self-publish.

I want to write, not be a publisher.

But I wanted to make it clear that I don’t have anything against self-publishing. It can be very profitable and respectable–or a total disaster.

If you’d like to learn more about self-publishing,

GET THIS BOOK.

How Not To Get Published #2

Yesterday’s tip for how not to get published dealt with a way to avoid being published altogether. Today’s tip isn’t quite as good, because it will result in you getting published, only in a highly undesirable way.

You may have been flipping through the back of a magazine at some point in the past and seen an ad that said something like "Writers Wanted!" or "Get Your Novel Published!" or "Be A Published Author!"

Today’s tip is this: Answer those ads!

Why? Because professional writers never do, which means you won’t be in competition with the professional writers. In fact, it’ll be easy to get the publishers who place these ads to accept your manuscript. These publishers need amateur authors. Otherwise, they won’t stay in business.

Why don’t the pros answer these ads? Well, there are two reasons. One is that they usually don’t even see these ads, because they aren’t placed in the kind of trade journals that writers read (if they read any such journals). The other reason professional writers don’t answer these ads will become obvious.

Here’s what’ll happen if you do answer one:

You’re likely to get a brochure explaining how exciting and prestigious it can be to be a published author.
This brochure will hint that you might even write a bestseller (you never know . . . ).
Your manuscript will be evaluated for free!
If accepted, your the publisher who placed the ad will edit it, typeset it, proof read it, print it, and market it for you!
All you have to do is send in your manuscript!
Oh, and one other thing: Because of the high cost of doing all the things that the publisher does, you’ll need to reimburse him for a fraction of these costs, to prove you’re serious about the project. Otherwise, he can’t afford to print your bestseller-in-the-making.
What are you waiting for???

So you send in your manuscript and get back a note saying that the publisher is very excited about your manuscript, which the publisher feels has great potential, and he is anxious to start working with you. All you need to do is send in your check to help him underwrite his costs. Payment plans are available if you can’t send it all at once.

So you send in the money, and once it’s all in the publisher starts work on your manuscript. A long time goes by, and eventually you get a shipment of books in the mail.

Your book is in print! Yay! Hooray!

It’s not that attractively designed, and the text is hard to read, and the binding will fall apart as soon as the book is opened, but IT’S STILL IN PRINT and, what’s more, YOU are a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!! Yippie!!!

It’s at this point that things start to go wrong.

Your "publisher" doesn’t fulfill on the publicity and distribution that he promised for your book. It’s all up to YOU to get the thing sold. But you didn’t want to be a publisher, you wanted to be an author, and so after giving away a few copies of the book to friends and relatives, most of the ones you got end up sitting in your attic or garage. . . . for YEARS. Nothing ever happens with them. They never make the bestseller list. Nada.

Still, it flatters your vanity to say that you are a published author, and that’s why the kind of publishers who place those ads are called VANITY PRESSES.

Real (i.e., non-vanity) publishers don’t place those ads. They don’t need to advertise for authors (especially in magazines that have nothing to do with writing). They get more manuscripts than they can publish. Remember the slush pile?

Real publishers make their money by selling books to large numbers of readers. They then take a portion of this money and pay royalties to the author. The author himself doesn’t pay anything because the publisher doesn’t make his money off the author but off the readers. Authors like working with this kind of publisher since (a) the author doesn’t have to pay anything up front and (b) the publisher has a track record of getting his books sold to enough readers that he can stay in business (which is more readers than the author himself can usually sell to).

Vanity presses, though, make their money on authors. And the money the author pays isn’t just part of the costs of publishing the book. It’s the whole amount. Often it’s inflated above what a real publisher would have to pay to get the same work done.

The vanity publisher, for his part, has little interest in producing a quality book for the readers (if there are any) because that’s not where he makes his money. As a result, he spends as little as possible on publicity, distribution, printing, binding, typesetting, editing, and anything else involved in book production. He doesn’t care if the hypothetical reader would like the book at all because that’s not where he makes his money.

Instead, the vanity press’s publisher wants to please the author by telling him how great his work is, how much potential it has, etc.–anything to get the author to cough up the money (usually in the thousands of dollars).

Vanity presses are the Dark Side, the quick and easy path to getting published and leads to ruinous results. They presses are the bottom-feeders of the publishing world. As a result, professional authors don’t want to have anything to do with them.

In fact, if you are an aspiring author and have had any dealings with a vanity press, you are well advised not to mention this fact in your cover letter to a real publisher, as it will brand you as a sucker and as someone who doesn’t know how the industry works and, further, as someone who probably can’t write.

Now, not all vanity presses operate in the ham-fisted manner I described above. Not all of them are total scams. Some are even semi-legitimate. There’s a kind of grey zone in which vanity presses blend into simple printers who authors that want to self-publish go to. (Self-publishing being a venture that can be profitable and respectable–or a total disaster.)

But if getting unhappily published is your goal then, by all means, answer those ads!

No Boom Today. Boom Yesterday.

Today, August 24, back in the year A.D. 79, Mt. Vesuvius blew its top, burying Roman towns such as Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Interestingly, prior to the erruption the crater of the mountain had been used by Spartacus and his comrades to hide out in. That was around 150 years before the big explosion, though.

When A.D. 79 came:

The eruption is thought to have lasted about 19 hours, in which time the volcano ejected about 1 cubic mile (4 cubic kilometres) of ash and rock over a wide area to the south and south-east of the crater. Pompeii, Herculaneum and many other towns around Vesuvius were destroyed, with about 3m (10ft) of tephra falling on Pompeii. Around 2,000 people are believed to have died in the town, the vast majority as the result of suffocation by volcanic ashes and gases. Herculaneum, which was much closer to the crater, was buried under 23m (75ft) of ash deposited by a series of pyroclastic flows and mudflows. Due to the lack of remains found in the town, it had been long thought that the inhabitants had escaped, but hundreds of skeletons were discovered in the 1980s in the former beach-side boatyard, where they had taken shelter. Many of the victims and other organic objects (such as beds and doors) were carbonized by the intense heat, which reached temperatures of up to 750°. In one of the more gruesome discoveries made in Herculaneum, many of the victims were found with the tops of their skulls missing — their brains had literally exploded in the intense heat.

The total number of casualties across Campania is unknown but is likely to have been upwards of 10,000 people. Pompeii and Herculaneum were never rebuilt, although surviving townspeople and probably looters did undertake extensive salvage work after the destructions. The towns’ location was eventually forgotten until their accidental rediscovery in the 18th century. Vesuvius itself underwent major changes – its slopes were denuded of vegetation and its summit had changed considerably due to the force of the eruption.

The explosion was also witnessed and written about by such notable literary figures as Tacitus and Pliny the Elder.

GET THE STORY.