Words and pictures

What is the value of words and pictures? Of ideas?

I have now self-published but am only just starting the journey of (hopefully) being accepted by a large publishing house. If I hadn't embarked on that journey, this blog would have been started much later or not at all. I am trying to post—mostly words—here, weekly, for free, and simultaneously to get my books—mostly pictures—printed, in bookstores, not for free. In both efforts I am learning a lot about the Information Age, and the value of ideas.

My father receives The New Yorker magazine. Along with walking our black lab Hugo and either shoveling snow or jumping in the pond, season-dependent, one of my favorite activities when I visit home is to catch up on old issues. In the July 6, 2009 issue was a book review by Malcolm Gladwell, of Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price." Gladwell takes issue with Anderson's thesis that "information wants to be free," arguing that just as the infrastructure and maintenance of power lines and plants is necessary to deliver even electricity that could be generated freely, so too there is a non-negligible infrastructure for delivering ideas. The cost of transmission electronically might approach zero. But a number close to zero multiplied by several billion, as in the case of the number of YouTube videos streamed, is still a large number. According to Gladwell, YouTube, offering free content, is set to lose "close to half a billion dollars" in 2009.

Then there is the question of content. The obvious item to discuss would be not ideas, but chocolate.

People place some value on quality, and are willing to pay for it. Gladwell points to an experiment in which a majority of people selected fancy truffles over Hershey's Kisses when they were priced at 15 cents and 1 cent, respectively, but selected the Kisses over the truffles when the prices were 14 cents and free. Amazing that only 1 cent in both cases made the difference! But read in reverse the experiment is equally astounding: When two chocolates both cost anything, most people were willing to pay 15 times more for quality.

There are two further issues which Gladwell hints at but does not delve into. One is format: How do we like to receive our ideas? There were several predictions that books would essentially fold with the advent of the Internet. This has not happened even despite Kindle, because some of us, me included, enjoy actual books. There is a fabulous cartoon by Berkely Breathed that comes to mind: Opus dreams of curling up with his favorite copy of "Winnie the Pooh" and in the last panel ends up tucked into an armchair staring dejectedly at the CD that his friend Milo has given him.

Second is the broader issue of "support of the arts," seemingly a doomed enterprise in our current politico-economic climate. People are willing to support, beyond the cost of the goods received, those we think are producing quality material and/or effecting positive change in the world. Whenever I buy a Real Change newspaper, I give an extra dollar to the homeless street vendor who is selling it. Real Change is to my mind doing both the above-mentioned things.

Before concluding I must state the following:
1) I am not trying to place my books or blog on the same shelf as Real Change, nor compare my experience to that of a homeless street vendor. Check the paper out—it is truly high quality reporting.
2) I will continue to occasionally watch YouTube as long as they are free, especially the brilliant explanatory-lyrics take on "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
3) You are welcome to send me (or any member of my family) quality organic fair-trade dark chocolate, but please do not feed any to Hugo.

And now I want to share with you some pictures—for free!—sampled from the first third of my second book, "Late One Night." Enjoy!