Really Published

I find this really amusing - my Kindle is now dog-eared.

I don't mind a bit. It seems right to me that my Kindle should look like my paper books - well-used and a bit tattered from being carted about hither and yon. I've had it for coming up on three years now and I still love it.

Last night we did drinks and dinner with another couple to celebrate David's birthday and the gal was asking me about my experiences with e-publishing. She wanted to know if I *could* get paper copies of my books. I told her it varies with my contracts, but I vaguely recall that the Carina contract promises me some bound paper copies for promotional purposes, but I'd have to look at it again to be sure. And, if the book sells well or seems likely to do well in print, they have the right to do that. Which is why they call it "digital-first" publishing.

"But if you ever decided to have these books published, you could, right?" she asked.

"They are published," I tell her.

"Right. But if you wanted to have them really published, so you could hand a copy to your mother or something - could you do that?"

I didn't mention that my lovely mother has a Kindle of her own.

It will be interesting to see how long this notion of "really published" lasts. She seemed to think I'd be longing for the validation of a print book. And, to be fair, I know plenty of authors - especially ones looking to get their first book published - who really want that. They make what I think are dubious decisions between publishing houses, because they want print books, too.

This is not something I care about.

I have a print book. (Wyoming Trucks, True Love and the Weather Channel) It's very pretty; it has many stars on Amazon. Book resellers will nearly pay you to take it. I've sold in the neighborhood of twice as many copies of Petals and Thorns, which apparently doesn't really exist, as they ever printed of Wyoming Trucks.

If that sounds like I'm bitter, I'm really not. It's all well and good to have a hardbound university press book and have people say lovely things to you about it. But having people actually read what I write is far more rewarding.

It doesn't get any more real than that.

The Kennedy Lending Library

Did I mention?

I spent the last couple of weekends finishing going through the moving boxes and bins. Oh yes, I totally mentioned this, in light of my darling man's bin o'bullets.

So, it was really last Sunday, this Saturday and part of this Sunday. That I spent dealing with the garage and all in it. But I've now been through every box and bin, extracted what I wanted, bookshelved the books that need to be out in the world and re-stored the rest.

Thus I restored the deserving to the shelves and re-stored the rest.

Hey, at least I amuse myself.

Why, you ask, was this so important, what with Christmas shopping, decorating, tree-trimming, menu-planning and baking to conduct?

I was tired of empty bookshelves.

It's a whole-house thing. People are coming to stay for Christmas and my house wasn't yet totally together. Right: because my bookshelves were empty.

So I got them all out. Sorted all my books into piles. By priority of love. By author. And I decided who I needed to have out, readily available and who could live in boxes in the garage. Yes, for those of you who like to give me grief about my lists, I'm making a database, with box numbers, for the books in storage. Just a few short, sweet steps away.

See, in the old house, I had a full wall of built-in bookshelves. Plus a bookshelf in my office, one in David's office and one in the basement. The Annex, doncha know. I also kept a literal wooden chest in the dressing room that was my TBR pile. It was my TBR treasure chest.

Did I mention the new house has no storage?

No basement. No attic. Just an oversized two-car garage with shelves. We have one "small" built-in bookshelf and three portable bookshelves we moved, including the annex bookshelf. They absorbed more than I thought.

At a guesstimate, two-thirds of our books are "out." Which isn't bad.

How I chose ended up being like love. Oh yes, I first I tried to be methodical: which books do I regularly reference? Which topics will I be writing about, mulling over, nostagically wanting to revisit in the near future?

And what about the vistor/vanity aspect? I found myself evaluating which books might be on the shelves that would say something about me. Which led to which books might I mention, over dinner, say, that someone would want to borrow?

In the end, as love always does, it came down to what I like having near. I don't care what anyone else might think. Even though I might not re-read Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight series in the near future (make no mistake: I'm now seriously contemplating it), I have it on the shelf. As I have had since I was, oh, twelve, thirteen, something like that. And because I couldn't let any of her other books feel bad, they're all out, too.

Yes, I have everything she's ever written.

Which is also true of my other great loves. A.S. Byatt, Ann Patchett. Orson Scott Card, Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Carey, Diana Gabaldon, Margaret Atwood. They all have their space on my limited shelves.

It's a kind of homage, really.

And maybe that's what I realized, in doing this. That the likelihood of my opening and referencing the book has nothing to do with it. I like seeing them there. Just like I like to see the art on the walls, hear the music on the cd player and watch the sun set outside.

It's enough to set my juices humming.