I had an early dinner last night with a friend. The restaurant was near where I lived while in graduate school. Plenty of seats were available at 3 p.m. The food was good, the service excellent. We talked for a couple hours about writing. While enroute home it sprinkled rain as warm weather held on to autumn in the face of winter’s imminent arrival.
Like many, I followed the U.S. Congressional hijinks regarding a continuing resolution to fund the federal government from tomorrow until March. So far, nothing passed. I had no expectations as the Congress has a poor track record of passing budget bills on time. The situation was complicated by Trump’s largest campaign donor taking the issue to his social media platform. It’s been more than a year since I deleted my account on X, so I don’t know the details. We’ll see if they pass something before midnight tonight.
When I sent 20 copies of my book to friends and acquaintances, I didn’t understand what a big ask reading it would be. Given that about half of the U.S. population didn’t read or listen to a single book in 2023, I should have been more skeptical of the printed book format. Reading appears to be in decline as a favorite way for Americans to spend their free time.
I discussed this with my publisher and they suggested my observations were accurate and recommended I consider an audio book format should I broaden the reach of my book. That idea is filed away with other sales pitches until I hear back from more of the 20 book recipients.
Writing a book will be the format for the second half of my autobiography. The die is cast on that, yet once it is finished, I may consider other types of writing as my main work product. Not as short as a blog post, but readable in the increasingly shorter attention spans of potential readers. How in the heck did we get to this place?
I’m bunkering in for the holidays, which this year are even weirder than in previous years. We gave up Christmas decorations five or six years ago, and the family is split this year with one of each of the three of us in different cities. We are in process of working something out. There are four or five days in which to do that. I am reasonably certain we will be more timely than the federal government has been in passing a budget.
Journey Home 
3 replies on “Final Day of Autumn”
Happy Solstice. I’m reading a book called The Expected One. It’s interesting but I have gotten to be such a slow reader! I wonder if this is a phenomenon.
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Audio books? If you audience is largely relatives and folks you know, hearing the story in your voice may be a bonus for them.
I continue to appreciate reading myself because it’s a more efficient way to transfer information. I do more than half of my reading these with ebooks because of the particular ways my aged vision interacts with my old body. It’s easier for me to hold a light tablet and read. My wife reads more paper books than I do, but loves audio books too, because she can listen while doing other tasks — but so much of my task-time involves audio work I don’t have the regular ear-free-for-audio-books intervals she does. An Ebook edition would be another thing to consider — and automatic voice to text on computers and tablets is getting pretty good these days for those that want to listen from the digital text — but you know you audience more than I, a stranger, does.
I commend you on finishing the first volume, and your gumption to tackle the next.
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When I read books it is usually paper for regular ones and ebook for mass market books. If my eyesight fails, I’ll start with ebooks so I can enlarge the font, and then move to audio. When I refer to “expanding the reach” I mean making the book available to the book-reading public for sale. Depending on set up costs, I would make it available in as many formats as makes sense. My bias is paper book centric because that is all there was during my formative years. Long way from making that decision. Cheers!
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