A Sentimental Interlude

I’m taking a break for a few days to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Tony and I will be going back to the scene of the crime—meaning the French Culinary Institute, where we got married, on the Saturday night you get an extra hour. Hard to believe that it was two whole decades ago that we promised to love, honor, and humor each other.

For the moment I’ll leave you with an economic think piece I wrote that’s now sailing around the net. A year ago, who would have guessed that I could understand, let alone write about, new economic models? I mention this because life beyond therapy (or, as I put it last week, losing therapy-the-religion) allowed me to pursue all sorts of ideas and questions; with my mind free of the minutiae of self-analysis I can tune into what’s around me in new ways. That too is something to celebrate.

Here’s a lovely, and undoubtedly wise, creature that spent much time on one of our trees last week.

Psychotherapy as Pseudo-Faith

(Note: This was originally posted on Jennifer Haupt's My Faith Project blog, which explores experiences of faith beyond the confines of institutional religion.)

When we hear the word “faith”, we tend to think of it as always a good thing, that faith is ultimately rewarded or at least a badge of strength or integrity. But faith can also be misplaced. I know because this happened to me. Fortunately, this hasn’t left me cynical or afraid. Rather, coming through it has opened me to possibilities I couldn’t have found my way to before.

What did I place my faith in? Psychotherapy. For much of my life, my entire belief system revolved around it. Therapy guided my morality (facing emotional conflict was good, avoidance or—worse!—denial, was bad), values (the unexamined life is not worth living and all that), who I turned to (therapists, of course) and behavior (the rituals of the therapeutic encounter) not to mention my schedule and, I shudder to recall, financial priorities. It was like a full-fledged religion with its sacred texts (Freud et al) and minions of fellow worshipers around the world.

You see, I was hooked on therapy because regular sessions helped me manage what I now know as a mood disorder (mixed anxiety and depression). Plus, therapists assured me that once I “worked things through” I would no longer feel bad. This gave me something to hold onto. When shaky or in despair I could remind myself of my future deliverance: as soon as I swept out the cobwebs in my unconscious I’d be fine. So after I published a book and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself I thought, “Hey, why not be a therapist?” I mean, who knew more about therapy than me?

This accelerated the spiral I was already in. I saw that I could help people, but my own emotional pattern would not budge. Yet how could I give up therapy? It had become my whole life. Finally, after things got so bad I had to do something, I managed to wrench myself away—and got my life back.

This is the story I tell in The Therapist’s New Clothes. It wasn’t until corresponding with Jen that I realized that the book is as much about faith as it is about therapy: it’s about the crumbling of a belief system I had put all my faith in. This loss was painful but I’m stronger for it. For me the pseudo-faith that seduced me was therapy. Anyone else have this kind of experience with therapy?This is the Tomb of St. John the Divine at the Great Mosque of Damascus. Tony took this picture while on a cultural diplomacy trip through the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Question Marks

First, here are the latest stores stocking the book: The Book Works in Del Mar, CA (they have a special Mind-Brain series); The Bookloft in Great Barrington, MA (they take Berkshares); and Village Books in Bellingham, WA, which now has its own Espresso Book Machine! And this just in: Warwick's in La Jolla, a longtime favorite and a true mecca when I lived out there.

Now for the questions part: I continue to be confounded by Amazon. (I know I’m far from alone here.) They initially priced the book at $23.95. I felt that was too high so was willing to lose $2 in royalty to offer it at a fairer price. Now, inexplicably, they’ve got it listed at $12.20 (44 % off). This makes it some $2 cheaper than at the Northshire and $2 more than I pay per copy. Hey wait a second—I didn’t forego $2 per book so that Amazon could undercut my publisher. Questions abound: What does this mean for me strategically? Should just order a bunch from Amazon myself, paying $2 more but then 1) improving my Amazon rank (something I haven’t paid attention to) and 2) receiving that $2 back in royalties? Will I ever be able to reach someone at Amazon or will the price continue to vacillate seemingly of its own accord? For the time being, it appears that Amazon’s got the book for cheap (super-cheap with Super-Saver shipping.) As for my lower royalty, oh, don’t mind me...the satisfaction from the higher Amazon ranking will just have to suffice. (Here’s something to think about: are authors so addicted to looking up our rankings that we let the company do whatever it wants?)

Another question: Did I price the book too low? I had rationalized it by thinking I'd make more sales if it’s priced more accessibly. But is that really the case? Truth is, I see that books are selling for $15.95 (or even higher!) that have less incisive wit, fewer life-changing epiphanies, and, well, are just not as all-around fabulous. Am I stuck with $14.95 forever? What would happen if I raised it a dollar? And what would be the best way to do that, just quietly change the price and hope nobody notices? Or would I announce it to give people the chance to get it at the lower price? (Wal-Mart-type day-after-Thanksgiving stampede…)

Now for a marketing question: I now have bookmarks—quite eye-catching, thanks to Amy’s design. Which is the better use of them: 1) to draw attention to the book in stores; or 2) to place in books sold as an extra?

My son once said that if he were to put our dog, Thembi, in a comic, he would always draw her with a question mark over her head. I thought that was quite astute; she always has this wonderful curious/concerned look about her. So in the spirit of inquiry and inquisitiveness, here is a picture of Thembi (she's asking: "Does my winter coat make me look fat?")

On the Road, On the Air

Last weekend my book and I helped celebrate the Grand Opening of the Brunswick Community Library. It’s a nice “little-library-that-could” story: the previous building was small and cramped and the library was about to lose its charter. But the library’s valiant staff and the town’s redoubtable readers put together a fundraising campaign so that they could build a larger, more accessible facility. I spent a sunny fall afternoon with many enthusiastic folks, including goat-herding rabbis, the founder of the Music Mobile, and the head honcho librarian, my friend Julie Zelman, who, among other impressive accomplishments, has aced the Weekend Edition puzzle live on National Public Radio (and has the monogrammed coffee mug to show for it).

Speaking of radio, I now have the podcast for my interview on Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s show “Writers on Writing”. I’m less than thrilled by how I came across, but I guess part of that is just the oddness of hearing one’s own voice. To me, every “um” or half-second hesitation is magnified about a zillion times. Funny how one forgives others their imperfections. Still, I came up with some good stuff. Like the phrase “the therapy-industrial-complex”. Thought that one up on the spot.I've been watching this dahlia plant grow all season, and here it is the first of October. Just holding on to a bit of summer color...

On Sustainable Publishing, With Margo Baldwin of Chelsea Green

Much of my reporting these days has led me to books published by Chelsea Green, most recently this Time.com article on Slow Investing. Chelsea Green has been at the forefront of the politics and practice of sustainable living, in both the content of their books (landmark titles on social justice, organic agriculture, and renewable energy) and how they publish them; the company has been printing on recycled paper since 1985 and is a founding member of the Green Press Initiative. Since Chelsea Green is just up the road (okay, over several mountains and up a bunch of roads) in White River Junction, Vermont, I thought I’d toss a few questions over to President and Publisher Margo Baldwin.

JDS: It seems clear that the publishing industry faces some big changes. What are most publishers today not dealing with as we move toward new structures and models?

MB: They’re not dealing with the issue of outrageous advances, nor the inefficiencies and wastefulness in the entire system. In part because of the returns policy—where bookstores can return unsold books—we have an overproduction of books and additional shipping and books ending up in the landfill. This is a large part of why many publishers are not profitable.

JDS: Can Chelsea Green break this mold?

MB: We are to some extent held captive. But we go our own way. We have a Green Partner Program with independent bookstores that sets up a nonreturnable policy and the store gets a deeper discount. We have nearly 50 stores in the program and it’s been very well received. The chains will never do this. However, we do what we can on our end by trying to control what we ship out.

JDS: Where will the impetus for change come from?

MB: E-books will force change. This will certainly eliminate the returns question. Change will be coming to the industry no matter what. Just what this will mean, everyone is trying to figure out: what kind of devices will people use, what sales channels will dominate, etc.

JDS: Where do you see the Espresso Book Machine fitting into the mix?

MB: We used the Espresso Book Machine to get two books printed so that Howard Dean could have copies for the Colbert Report. But there’s waste there too. Every book gets trimmed down from the 8 1/2 X 11 size. The cost of goods is ten times higher than with a larger print run. It has a role in publishing in niche situations, but I don’t see it as making a big change.

JDS: Will a technological advance be the changemaker?

MB: The Ebook is more of a solution. Somehow we’ve got to grapple with the fact that paper production is one of the most environmentally-damaging processes out there in terms of toxic emissions, carbon production, and use of natural resources. We will always have some books. But I think some kinds of books will migrate to electronic format. Any kind of “consumable” book—you read it, throw it away. Genres like romances and thrillers. Some readers go through two, three, five a week.

JDS: I’ve read that despite industry troubles Chelsea Green is doing well.

MB: We’ve always been the leading edge of organic, rural living, a topic now coming into a wider audience. We’ve been toiling away on the frontier all by ourselves, and now, after 25 years, finally we’re being recognized. It’s the right content for the times. Also, as a company we’ve been conservative in how we run things. We’ve had slow, organic growth.

JDS: It sounds like the company’s path mirrors the content of some of your books. What do you think of the notion of “Slow Publishing” that I introduced?

MB: In terms of emphasizing personal relationships, as between publisher and author, I agree. Plus the notion of scale. There’s an appropriate scale for different books, and publishing “houses” thrived when they were on the scale of a household. But I’d say “slow” publishing with fast turnaround. Publishers are not grappling with the speed of information today. It takes a long time to get a book out, still a good six to twelve months. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Coming NOW to a Bookstore Near You!

The Therapist’s New Clothes is now being printed through Lightning Source as well as by my old standby, the Espresso Book Machine. This means it will carried by the major book distributors and you can order it through any bookstore—or suggest that a bookstore or library carry it! I am told it looks just the same but the cover is glossy rather than matte. I will check it out tomorrow when I give a reading at the Northshire.

This new distribution is all in the realm of the theoretical since I haven’t seen any links or actual sales; everything has to be handled through the store or library ordering. So if anyone sees the book on a store’s website or is able to order it successfully please let me know so I can start to make sense of how this works.

Here are various and sundry book-related posts that have surfaced in recent weeks:

--An interview in The Miami Health Examiner

--An interview on the blog My Faith Project

--A piece in the apparently controversial Self-Publishing Review

--A piece in the SPAN newsletter

Too much abstraction makes me crave something tangible. Here is an heirloom tomato ripening in our garden.

Small Is Beautiful

When people ask how The Therapist’s New Clothes is doing, the answer I give is that the numbers are small but reactions are big. I don’t have a commercial publisher, with its industrial-scale marketing and distribution behind me. People learn about the book through encountering my work on the web, through word of mouth, through my telling them about it personally. Of course I want to kick this up, and plan to. But the way readers are responding to the book makes up for the (predictably) modest sales so far. Acquaintances who picked up the book on a whim call me to say “wow”. An editor I admire told me it's "quite a tour de force”. The book has been accused several times of keeping folks up late, since they couldn’t stop reading. One friend wrote, “If there's anyone who could write a page-turning memoir about psychotherapy, it's you.”

Every time I hear from a reader, friend or stranger, I feel that kind of warm satisfaction that only comes from personal connection. While I know this alone doesn’t mean “success” in a traditional sense—and that I do have larger ambitions for the book—I also know that this matters to me. In my writing on local economies, I have encountered Jane Jacobs’ ideas on how the small, social exchanges around the buying and selling of goods lend vitality and meaning to daily life in our cities and towns. As this post’s title suggests, I’m in touch with the work of the E.F. Schumacher Society, which challenges the all-too-American notion that bigger is always better. In most industries, including publishing, in order to stay viable one often feels pressure to focus on volume to the point where other goals and intents get lost. With books, for example, an author must make back the advance or risk losing the publisher’s interest. Under such terms, it’s hard not to watch the numbers. I’m wondering if there’s room for different views of writerly success than what we tend to rely on, one where meaning holds as much weight as profit. What do you think?Here, from the woods below our house, is an example of the industry of squirrels.