If you attached a pipe to the Internet, by that measure you would have enough hot air to heat the entire earth under a suffocating cloud that would make the direst predictions of global warming a mere glowing ash in a spent bonfire.

I am a miniscule consumer of but an atom of what is out there in cyberspace. Normally, I “read” ten or more on-screen newspapers and visit about the same number of so-called information aggregators while browsing through countless other sites: each offering a gaggle of opinions from every spectrum of worldwide political bias known to man.

This usually occurs after I devote forty minutes or less to the home delivered paper edition of the New York Times, a habit I am unable to break after decades of effort. There is no rehabilitative cure for this malady although it does require a daily dose of blood pressure medication. It is only after this feeble attempt at comprehension that I tackle the informative treasures of the Internet. That takes another half hour of my time and I am not a speed-reader.

I note that I have just written four paragraphs and I would be quite surprised if a potential reader who has stumbled across this tome has “read” more than the first paragraph. To them I say welcome and stick around.

In fact, I truly believe that most people in our distracted society do not read past the first paragraph of a body of words. Perhaps I am exaggerating and should use sentence instead of paragraph. Considering the limitations of time, such a method seems to have a certain logic.

For example, when reading the New York Times, I have only to read the first sentence to know exactly what an editorialist or op-ed pundit is writing about. Same old same old. Nothing really new there. Editorials are ho-hum. Op-ed mavens are repetitive and predictable. This one is a self-righteous do-gooder. That one bleeds for the impoverished. This one can’t get Sarah Palin out of her craw. That one is universally nasty. That part of the pundit stew takes about five minutes. I’ll spend a lot more time with those wonderful offbeat feature stories.

When I visit the Huffington Post, I know at a glance what each blogger or alleged reporter has to say, usually by reading the first sentence. Once you’ve established the bias, you know exactly what’s coming next. Ditto for The Daily Beast and the various aggregators like Drudge. I do nose around for something new and original. Occasionally a nugget does emerge, but it is rare.

For those who are politically like-minded the reinforcement is salutary, like a warm shower, and the readership is likely to exceed the first paragraph, perhaps all the way to the third or fourth. None of this dismays the writer of this predictable word-bloat. The writer is so caught up in his or her own brilliance that he truly believes that the reader has stayed with him until the end of his effusion. Present company excepted of course. What in the world are you doing staying with me this far into my profound exposition?

Actually, if you continue to develop the “one paragraph” habit you could get so good at it that all you need is a single word to absorb the piece. Eventually, you might even be able to merely glance at the words and in a quick blur get the gist of the writer’s thrust. I am not yet at that stage, but I am getting there.

Of all those gajillions of words being pumped out in cyberspace and onto the imploding printed material, I am willing to bet the barn that most people “read”, perhaps the word should be “glance”, at less than the tiniest sliver of information. The irony is that those who earnestly spend the time at this ignoble occupation truly believe that they are well informed citizens able to make considered decisions on such items as polling, political candidate preferences and other matters that require their participation in the democratic process.

Perhaps I have inadvertently stumbled upon a strange phenomenon. I am beginning to suspect that there are far more writers out there than committed readers. I am astounded by the number of people authoring self-published books, both through e-books and print on demand technology without even considering the amount of composition that is being spewed out on the Internet via e-mails, text messaging and through the infinite social networking sites.

I assume these book writers follow the usual patterns: memoirs, spiritual musings, self-help, instructional material, children’s books, young adults and adult fiction in every genre imaginable. Indeed, they are easily uploaded by authors to all the publishing sites and are available for purchase. It is a thriving business for author exploiters.

There are more than half a million “books” being published every year in the English language alone. Over fifty percent of these titles are self-published with the other half or less published by traditional publishers. With the continued ease of publishing technology one could easily imagine this number to reach millions within a year or so with a backlist at some point in the future approaching over a trillion. Think of the dollar amount being expended, not only on producing the books, but also on the various marketing ploys required to get these books noticed by potential readers.

If we add to these authors the vast amount of bloggers that are pounding away on their keyboards, offering their various nuggets of personalized opinions and instructive material, you get a writing population that is staggering.

Consider, too, that these heavy breathing wordsmith’s are competing with a vast array of visual content providers, pointing their lenses at every manner of human adventure and concocting an endless menu of cartoon animation and you begin to understand that words might actually illuminate the imagination with far more power than the contrivance of the merely visual.

As for the primary subject of this essay, my first paragraph analogy may have a very short shelf life. With so much being written, I wonder if one’s judgment on reading further will be best served by creating an enticing title and, barring that, the mere look of the type of font being used as a reader’s lure.

To tell you the truth, I am overjoyed to see so many writers enter the literacy fray and I wish them luck in their effort to connect with readers. The next essay I write will be about readers to whom getting to the end of a book or blog is a sworn commitment.

As to how many “readers” have reached the end of this essay, I dare not contemplate. But for those happy few that have remained I hope they will consider the expenditure of their time useful.

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Books have been my life, both as a writer and a reader. I am well aware that younger generations seemed to have eschewed reading, surrendering instead to the lure of other distractions, of which there are many. I’m not sure this is true and I do not explore statistical analysis to prove the point.

I can only judge the joy of reading by my own experience. Nor can I pinpoint how reading became my passion. Perhaps it was because my mother was a passionate reader of popular novels. Between her domestic chores, she would tuck herself away on a living room easy chair and read those novels which she got from the lending libraries that were a staple of life in those days, where for pennies a day you could read books borrowed from a store in the neighborhood without going to the public library which was a longer distance from our modest Brooklyn apartment.

From the age of eight or nine, I haunted the Stone Avenue Children’s Library in Brownsville, about a mile from our home and I can remember arguing with my older cousins on the literary merits of my choices. To me such adventure series as Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Boy Allies, The Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift were the epitome of literature.

It was only years later that I learned that these books were created in a writing factory founded by a man named Stratemeyer who had a stable of writers who ground out these books according to strict guidelines. It didn’t matter to me. I loved them.

I suppose I graduated upward to Robert Louis Stevenson’s great adventure books like Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and those three great books by Nordhoff and Hall, which began with Mutiny on the Bounty and, if I remember, ended with Pitcairn’s Island. I’m sure, given the time, I could name a hundred others. But it was somewhere around age sixteen or seventeen with the sap rising that I began to seriously widen my range. There was nothing, nothing to compare with my discovery of those great writers who gave joy, solace, insight, wisdom and meaning to my youth. They thrilled me and are permanently engraved in my memory.

Many are out of fashion today and that is a pity, although I seriously believe some will be resurrected and once again revered. Some still are although it may not be fashionable to admit it.

I love the short stories and novels of Hemingway, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, John O’Hara, Thomas Wolfe, John  Dos Passos. John Steinbeck, W. Somerset Maugham and numerous others. In college my European novel class at NYU under the brilliant tutelage of Dean Ranney brought me the joys of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Balzac, Anatole France, Thomas Mann, Stendhal, Victor Hugo and numerous others. Many still resonate and have morphed into the popular culture in another incarnation. Les Miz is a good example.

And no literary education could ever be complete without the novels of Dickens, Eliot and Trollope, Austin and the Brontës and later ones like those of George Orwell, Doris Lessing and countless others. Indeed, if one hasn’t read Orwell’s Coming Up for Air or Lessing’s The Fifth Child one has missed a blast of glorious insight and two great stories.

It pains me to hear that some of my favorites are not considered in the top rank of great writers in the eyes of the so-called literary establishment. As one who does not believe in literary cliques and fashion, I can still root for the resurrection of the passionate novels of Thomas Wolfe, (not Tom), the great short stories and novels of John O’Hara and Somerset Maugham. Indeed, who, but the most elitist literary snobs, can dispute the wonders of Wolfe’s Of Time and the River, O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra and Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. Stick around long enough and they will make a well-deserved comeback. At least, I hope so.

Call me an ingrate for clinging to such nostalgic hero worship and toting up my own list for grand literary achievements. Oddly, I feel somewhat sad for those who have not partaken of those wonderful writers. In my day, most of my peers had read those works and we could discuss them for hours on end. Today getting even any book discussion going is rare, except perhaps in the formal setting of a book group. In my day a book discussion was a common staple of conversation.

I don’t much care what the so-called literary establishment thinks and champions. The writers I have cited thrilled me and still do. Some time has anointed as classics. Others are waiting their turn. Indeed I have learned to trust my own judgment in what I read and what I write and to hell with the prevailing opinion of others. Not all. Merely most.

Indeed being anointed a literary heavy is often transitory. As proof name ten winners of the Nobel Prize for literature. Stumped? Try five. Do the same for the Pulitzer, then the Booker. This does not mean that I don’t love the novels of my contemporaries. Philip Roth comes to mind.

Reading is a deeply personal experience and reading works of the imagination is one of the great joys of a fulfilled life. If people eschew reading, they impoverish themselves.

Worse, considering the long odds of getting a first novel published by a traditional publisher, the odds of a second or third novel getting published are even steeper unless, of course, sales lightening strikes, a very rare event. Even an established writer with a portfolio of a half a dozen or more novels published, perhaps someone whose work has made a best seller list in the not too distant past, is also facing the danger of career extinction under the present traditional publishing paradigm

The genre novelist, meaning one whose writing fits a specific category and all its subsets (e.g. romance, mystery, children, young adult, graphic, religion based, and on and on), has a somewhat better shot at sustaining a career although the field is choking with aspirants. This is also true in the memoir category, many of which are written, arguably, as if they were first person novels.

While this cautionary tale is directed at so-called mainstream novelists, serious writers of fiction, the large majority who consider the act of story telling a sacred calling, are facing the longest odds of all. Even within that category, the confusing subsets of commercial and literary novels, so difficult to define, are having a tough time both at entry level and those with a reasonable track record. Publishers define the latter as midlist novels, a shrinking category.

Today’s author of mainstream fiction published by traditional publishers faces a monumental hurdle. The electronic book phenomenon is accelerating rapidly straining the coffers of the publishing industry. While it is presently single digits in overall revenue of the publishing business, that volume of electronic books will grow exponentially. The future for the traditional publisher is gloomy indeed. And they know it. Their business model is imploding.

So what will happen to the author of mainstream novels and the aspiring author whose gut ambition is to write novels?

The good news is that technology has made it possible for any individual author to publish his or her work and offer it up to a reading public on computers and numerous electronic devices. Businesses are growing like weeds that sell digital conversions in every format including print-on-demand. Such individual efforts outside the traditional publishing paradigm used to be called vanity publishing and have now morphed into a somewhat more respectable name, self-publishing. All barriers to publication have been removed. Cause for celebration? A very cautious “maybe” since the odds of finding a reading audience to sustain a career as a novelist or even make enough sales to cover the costs of self-publishing are slim indeed.

Not only has self-publishing spawned a digital conversion boom, it has opened the way for a flood of new ventures that promise to package the deal and sell the self-published author possibilities and stratagems that will lift his or her authorial name above the chatter. This includes methods to navigate the social networking sites, get reviews on book review sites, promise a high spot on search engines and include e-mail blasts and paid advertising and other allegedly sure fire solutions to achieve greater sales. A new category has cropped up, the so-called writing coach, an occupation that falls somewhere between an editor and a cheerleader or a one-on-one creative writing course.

The entrepreneurial boom in selling a self-published author a path to allegedly realize his or her hopes and dreams is now a swiftly growing cottage industry. Apparently the thirst for writing books is going through the roof in volume and intensity and there is no shortage of “experts” offering novelists a leg up to publishing success for a price.

Indeed, there is enough evidence that self-published authors in the distant past have achieved literary stardom, although those examples are more historic than contemporary with little relevance to today’s glutted marketplace. Nevertheless it is a powerful selling point for the new entrepreneurs in the book world. While not disparaging their efforts, I would only urge caution and consider any touted “success” stories with a healthy dose of skepticism.

To some self-published novelists even the slimmest notoriety provides enough satisfaction to appease his or her ambition to achieve authordom. There is a lot to say for that as well as acquiring bragging rights that one is a “published” author.

Indeed, there are myriad ways to get one’s authorial name out there in the balkanized universe of cyberspace. Some actually result in brief bursts of recognition, like shooting stars that flicker and quickly die.  Many are satisfied to have found such a spot of limited recognition.

Unfortunately, recognition of this type does not guarantee readership or sales. Indeed, a novelist might expend great chunks of energy, time and money into establishing recognition without generating any appreciable sales of his or her books. The imponderable is how this recognition translates into readership and how this readership is moved enough by the novelist’s work to recommend it to others.

Sadly for the vast majority of aspiring novelists there is only the most modest hope of achieving any sort of traction despite all the so-called drum beating hawked by the new entrepreneurs. If one’s expectations are low enough, self-publishing for the wannabe novelists could be a personally satisfying path indeed.

Note I am not in any way disparaging the quality of self-published work. It does not come with the stamp of approval of the traditional publisher, but then those in that business have made some monumental mistakes themselves and most of their published novels do badly, although they do fill up their catalogues and validate their publishing creds.

For the novelist who has already established a brand name through years of producing novels through traditional methods and who is beginning to hit a wall of reduced advances or outright rejection, there are some cyberspace solutions beginning to emerge, but this essay is not addressing their options. That will come at another time.

We are discussing here the mainstream novelists seeking an audience who have chosen by necessity or design to publish his or her own work. Whatever the odds, it is unlikely that they will abandon their hopes and dreams and they will jump at any chance to see their work in some form available to readers. Some will never quit trying, despite the long odds of achieving a readership that will assure a writing career and will try anything whatever the cost in time or money.

Considering that writing a long work of the imagination, a minimum of 70,000 words which traditionally defines a novel, is time consuming and labor intensive, and considering that a reader must consume many hours in reading such a work, one can only admire the tenacity and dedication of those who follow the path of self-publishing. Most are convinced that their novels offer insight, enlightenment, awareness and psychic value to the lives of those who will take the time and effort to read their work. They strongly believe in their talent.  Many dream of that movie deal or adaptations in other languages and many harbor the validation of honors, prizes and celebrity.

Who would dare inhibit such glorious aspirations? Not me. I believe in big dreams. I believe, too, that one should confront them with courage and realism and beware of those who wish to take advantage of this hunger to create and share their imagined world with others.

Whatever the odds, some people really do win the lottery.

My discussion here will be exceedingly narrow-gauged since my interest is confined to those authors who compose long works of the imagination, particularly novels, those efforts usually written by obsessed and compulsive souls who consider themselves literary artists, whose need to create their stories is profound and necessary to their mental health and well being.

I am one of them. If you are one, you will know what I mean.

Those authors may or may not confine themselves to various recognized genres, of which there are numerous categories, but they are essentially serious creators who have a specific need to work the vineyards of their creativity. Most would like to be well-paid for their efforts and to command the attention of as many readers as possible recognizing that they are an integral part of a two-way communication system.

While they know that their work is the essential underpinning of their lives and they will, indeed, welcome the traditional rewards of fame and fortune, their battle for attention, meaning to be read, is the Holy Grail of their effort. For them, especially to those who have just found their calling, the challenge ahead will be monumental.

As the window closes on the methods by which authors become known, such as best seller lists, reviews in mainstream media, the ever narrowing landscape of libraries and academia and the shrinking output of novels distributed by traditional publishers, the beleaguered author, out of necessity, is beginning to seek other ways to find readers who will respond to his or her work.

Note that I have left out the possibility of a novel that is adapted for a movie. The movie industry is the one place where a book, if the title is retained, will be able to generate the widest possible exposure, especially if it is a world-wide hit.  Vast sums are spent on promoting movies and, if one’s book is lucky enough to be made into a movie, it could be like winning the lottery. But getting a book adapted into a hit movie, which plays over and over again on television, is such a long shot and beyond an author’s control, that I hesitate to mention it in the context of this essay, despite being the recipient of such largesse.

That, too, may be a window that is closing as movies migrate from auditoriums to home screens. I will leave it to the movie industry moguls to wrestle with their future and confine myself to the book business and the author’s current dilemma.

Of course, none of this calculates the mysterious effect of “word of mouth,” but that is an issue defying logic and is based on unpredictable variables like luck, timing and content and a strong belief in the alignment of stars and other astrological and miraculous events.

The tsunami of digitization and the rise of the e-book reading device will, within the next decade, totally change the business paradigm for paper book publishers and the big box store chains they supply. The marketing monopoly and publicity control enjoyed by these entities will splinter into countless niches and make it almost impossible for an author’s name to be branded with the ease enjoyed in past years.

The traditional mass media outlets which once could command the attention of vast swaths of consumers are quickly disappearing. With printed newspapers and magazines shrinking at an alarming rate, swiftly approaching oblivion, and television and radio exploding into thousands of niches and the Internet spawning new sites every second, the informational universe resembles the infinite barely comprehended star studded universe of the heavens.

In the years ahead, getting someone’s attention for more than seconds will be the major challenge for anyone seeking to individualize a name, a product or an idea. In the context of this discussion, one can reliably predict that the traditional publishing industry that relies on the printed paper book will morph into some other form, yet unknown.

For the obsessed author whose ambition to become a read novelist there are numerous options, none of which may offer a satisfactory solution to his or her needs. Whole mini industries have been created around editing, producing, marketing and publicizing individual books. Whether competent or not, there are enough disappointed and frustrated authors out there who will be lured into such services, hoping for the miracle of a great outcome.

What used to be called vanity press has now morphed into what is called alternative publishing. It is author motivated. The author assumes the responsibility of being his or her individual publisher and, for a price, there are countless services that will perform all the duties of a mainstream publisher. Technology has made it possible for an author to put his or her original publication between hard or soft covers, create an electronic book and put it in any distribution channel that currently sells books. After all, you can’t be a player if you’re not in the ballgame.

Indeed, there are numerous publicity services being offered that, also for a price, can get your authorial name around and there are those social networking sites where you can bang the drum for your book and many “experts” who will promise and sometimes deliver getting your authorial name to the top of various search engines.

Since purchasing services on the Net, where overpromising and fraud is rampant, I would urge an author to thoroughly check out vendors before buying and ask them to provide bona fide references by previous clients, who should be consulted as to their experience with the vendor and their success rate. Indeed, even if the vendor is ethically satisfactory, the chances of presently developing a sustained and profitable reading audience is, at best, very challenging.

There is no doubt that some successful form of author instigated business plan will emerge as the curtain goes down on the traditional methods and channels of book distribution. This is a transitional moment reminiscent of the horse and buggy making way for the automobile. At first it is slow, then gathers speed and the old technology is replaced by the new one. It’s the way of the world, unstoppable. In the book business it has passed the point of no return.

Because we are currently as they say, betwixt and between, many authors, all of whom sincerely believe they are producing excellent work, armed with blurbs by established authors, are, after a long and frustrating attempt to find an agent or a traditional publisher, turning to self-publishing to satisfy their compelling need for their work to be available to readers.

Certainly, there must be some very successful self-published books but they are probably in such categories as self-help, spiritual guidance or how-to and other genres that are institution oriented, ancillary products of other enterprises or filling some missing deep need. I must reiterate that this is not the area of this discussion.

At this stage, self-publishing constitutes the only sure way the aforesaid author, rejected from mainstream publishing for whatever reason, to whom writing is akin to breathing, can bring his or her work to market. After all, it does satisfy his urgent desire to see his book in print, whether in electronic or paper form. But the expectation of getting his money back, especially if one counts the expense of sweat equity, is very dim indeed.

Getting known within a tight little circle might be enough of a reward for such an author and keep alive hopes for a widening circle of readers in the future. Indeed, there have been cases where an alternatively published book has attracted the attention of mainstream publishers, but they have been more miraculous than common and probably will diminish as the traditional well dries up.

The day is coming when authors of works of the imagination will have little choice than to take full control of their own publishing enterprise. Many will find ways to establish themselves within various niches and some will make their way from tiny rivulets of attention to raging rivers. Experiments will abound.

Creative paths will be discovered to market and publicize their works. Some established authors are beginning to take the bull by the horns, but many of them have had the advantage of branding opportunities that took place before the swift rise of digital technology. Those who have not had this advantage of timing will have a tougher ladder to climb. Nevertheless, that old tried and true cliché that necessity is the mother of invention will assure a future for the dedicated writer and his or her twin, the dedicated reader.

Don’t despair, fellow authors, there are still vast battalions out there to whom reading novels is equally as necessary to the enriched life as it is to writers who create them.  Since the dawn of time, nourishing the mind through stories hatched in the imagination has been as essential as food for the physical body.

I wish that after all those years spent in the literary trenches, having pioneered ways numerous and various to keep my authorial name alive and compose more and more works of the imagination, might have resulted in some sure fire solutions to the dilemmas faced by my fellow writers. About the best I can do is to urge everyone who pursues this glorious art to fight frustration and discouragement, continue to imagine, write, and tell your stories and experiment with ways to attract that illusive reader twin.

For us, there is no other option.

To be sure my last name Adler had some public recognition while I was growing up. There was once a company, apparently deceased, named Adler that marketed what they called “elevator” shoes which had a built-in uplift that added two inches to a man’s height. Beyond that, I never met another person named Adler through school, the teenage years, my Army days and my early working life.

The reason I am suddenly obsessing on what to others might seem trivial is the fact that in two movies being released this year “It’s Complicated” and “Sherlock Holmes” there are characters named Adler. Never before have I seen any movies where the characters are named Adler. This rather coincidental and supposedly unremarkable event has led me to consider the fact of a name, my own, and how it has impacted on my once vaunted sense of individuality.

Like most of us who haven’t changed our name, I had nothing to do with naming myself. I was named Warren, after a great grandfather named Wolf. It is a tradition in Jewish ritual to name one after a dead relative, not a live one. I suppose there is a Talmudic explanation for this, but I do know that my name in Hebrew, which is used in prayer rituals, is Zev, which means Wolf.

It doesn’t stop there since in a ritualistic sense I am Zev ben Naftali, Wolf son of Nathan. This has always been rather mysterious to me since my father used the name Sol. Not once had I ever heard him called Nathan, nor did he ever sign Nathan as his first name. My mother, too, had a similar situation. Family legend had it that she was named Fanny, although on her immigration papers, her name was written as Fagda. To me as to everyone else, her name was Fritzie and that is the way it was expressed and signed on every document I ever saw including my birth certificate and report cards.

If you are not bored out of your mind with this family trivia, I have been led to believe that such names can be blamed on immigration officials who could not understand the language of the immigrants who came to America and just wrote down what they sounded like. My mother’s family name was Goldman and I doubt very much that this was the name of her family in the little shtetl of Kozin in the Ukraine from which they hailed.

My father’s last name Adler, which means eagle in German, was probably changed by some immigration official in the empire of Austria-Hungary although he spent the first ten years of his life in London’s East End. For years I used to believe it was an ethnically Jewish name until I discovered otherwise. Indeed, in one of those fits of egomania that often afflicts upwardly mobile idiots, like once we were, we wanted to put a “family” crest on our plates until we discovered that the Adler “crest” was a double eagle, which apparently was the symbol of the Nazi SS, which took care of that crazy notion.

As for Warren, I have a feeling that it was popularized by President Warren Harding, whose sleepy administration was of recent memory when I first saw the light of day in Brooklyn, New York. I can still remember the rare Warrens who graced the silver screen in the golden age of Hollywood, the black and white days. Who remembers the suave Warren Williams and the blundering Warren Hymer?

Thus, I was named Warren Adler, no middle name. For some ethnic cultural craziness middle names were also verboten. My wife Sonia, known as Sunny, does not have a middle name. Bereft of such a middle moniker my Army dog tags were stamped Warren None Adler. To make up for this noneness, we gave middle names to our three boys.

Except for the fact that it was impossible to create a nickname out of Warren, I really like my name. In roll calls, both at school and in the Army, I was either called first or second, which gave me a kind of egocentric self-distinction. In fact in nearly six decades I never met another Warren Adler. I thought I was the only one with that name on planet earth. Until I got to Hollywood.

I was there a week, when we were invited to a preview movie showing at the Director’s Guild. Unfamiliar with the parking protocols I pulled up in back of the building and, in searching for a space, was startled to find my name painted in one of the convenient parking spots. I was stunned. Was this some weird supernatural welcome? Chills, as they say, ran up and down my spine. One of the movies based on my novels “The War of the Roses” was not yet in production and although it was my tenth novel, most of which were published in other languages throughout the world, I did not consider that my name warranted such distinction. Not by a long shot. I was shaken.

It was later that I learned that the then counsel for the Director’s Guild had my name, or by his lights, he had mine. Having never met another Warren Adler, I thought it would be really cool to introduce myself and I called him in the hope that we might meet. Frankly, I was thrilled to find another Warren Adler, even if my vaunted personal exceptionalism was destroyed.

I called a number of times, but never received an answer which puzzled me. It seemed such a harmless gesture. Only later, did I learn from a mutual acquaintance that he might have had another motive that had not occurred to me. His name, meaning mine, had been imprinted on thousands of books all over the world and he might have been sick and tired of the comparison. Although he had quite a distinguished reputation in his field and was a renowned name in movie directorial circles, he might have harbored writing ambitions and it was irksome to see my name, his name, on books and movie screens.

For the first time in my life, I was confronted with this dilemma, which must have afflicted others with a name recognition coincidence. I am not talking about the more common names of Smith or Jones or Cooper and thousands of others. Those who have such last names are used to similarities and expect them. Perhaps it speaks to the narrow circles and the limited geography and less than universal communications of my early years.

Imagine the trials of someone with the name Barack Obama or Winston Churchill or Marilyn Monroe or Hillary Clinton, albeit not the ones that were attached to those in the public arena. I am hardly in that category but I’m sure you get the point. To compound the coincidence, I began to discover that there were, indeed, other Warren Adlers in the world as well.

Perhaps it proves the point that we are not as individually distinct and unique as we think we are and that we are part of something, a kind of super-ego, well beyond our tiny selves and that, in some profound way, we belong to each other.

I am reminded of that film by a number of recent solicitations on the phone, on the Internet and on the street corners to answer survey questions designed to discover my preferences for various products, political leanings and specific attitudes to this or that.

In other words, they want something from me. They want me to give them my personal treasure. I choose not to.

I never respond to these surveys. It is an act of rebellion. I refuse to have my preferences pigeonholed and numbers crunched into some statistical mish mash designed to create a strategy for some advertiser or politician to gain access to the pockets or votes of other people, myself included.

It is the results of these statistical surveys that determine pretty much everything that we buy, watch, listen to and vote for. Our behavior is tracked, parsed, coded, sliced and diced and categorized into every conceivable subset from our age, race, sex, geography, language, down into every personal detail of our daily doings. We are literally stripped naked, externally and internally. Our individuality is broken down into sub-atoms of attitude and preference. Our uniqueness has been erased by the tsunami of the marketers.

If this sounds like high dudgeon, it should. Even though I know that the statisticians have now put people like me into a new category marked rebellious, difficult and non-conforming, I take my stand strictly on the basis that it is nobody’s damned business what I prefer, what I eat, what I think, what I read, what I watch, what I listen to, what sexual preferences and fantasies turn me on, what I love and what I can’t stand. I hate the idea that everything that I am will become a statistic that will determine some mass activation of a product or an idea.

I am well aware that the powerful statistical survey industry will find ways to ridicule my revolutionary tone and come up with a thousand reasons why my attitude is counter productive to the mass culture and somehow destructive to our values and dangerous to our commercial and political system. They will point to the accuracy of their surveys and analysis and cite scientific evidence that underlines their theories.

From their point of view, the accuracy of their statistics proves their worth. They will claim that such statistics are the heart of game strategies. By their surveys and statistical analyses they claim they can predict future outcomes. If that is true, then we must have some built-in instinctual herd instinct gene, much like sheep, who are controlled by a few sheep dogs, who round us up, and lead us to be sheared or slaughtered.

It could be that most people want to be herded, told what to eat, vote, buy, do. It comes under the umbrella of “community.” Many people may really want to be like everyone else within their preset category. Billions of dollars are bet on such statistical outcome predictions. Game theory depends on it. Indeed, they may be right. So what?
I am probably an anomaly, outside the mainstream. Actually, I believe in community and am willing to observe tribal rules. I am not an outlaw, but I prefer being an outsider, a non-participant to these obvious manipulations. There are many people who don’t understand that they are being manipulated. Nor do they care. I do. It violates my sense of self.

There are certain inner boundaries that I consider sacrosanct. There is something inside me that cries out for my individuality. I do everything in my power not to be pigeonholed. I don’t want to tear down the structure, I just want to declare ownership of my secret private place and to keep it locked away from prying eyes and ears.

In another age such an attitude would by symptomatic of the once acclaimed label of “rugged individualism”, a term much derided in our contemporary world.

I keep wondering what would happen if none of us ever answered a single survey or gave away our inner treasuries, the core of ourselves. Indeed, I have often been tempted to answer such surveys by deliberately giving false testimony, but that seems a bit too aggressively sinister and telling deliberate lies goes against my grain.

I do recognize that this lofty ambition to preserve my individuality may

Unfortunately, for those authors and their copyright heirs who see themselves as potential financial beneficiaries, I would suggest they don’t break out the champagne.

The primary reason for those books to be out-of-print in the first place, with few exceptions, is because they were deemed by their original publishers as a no longer promising investment, taking up precious warehouse and catalogue space. This is not to say that they did not merit preservation as viable entities, perhaps masterpieces, but for a variety of reasons, some patently unfair, they were relegated to the so-called dust bin of the book trade.

There were also many books lost to posterity when their publishers expired through death or business failure or simply got lost in the shuffle of history.

In many cases, these books do enjoy a modest life-cycle in second hand bookshops and Internet used books dealers. In libraries, they are eventually discarded. Libraries rarely rebind old books anymore. No additional royalties are ever paid to authors by any of these existing venues.

What authors can expect from this massive digitization is, above all, availability. The out-of-print books will join the millions and millions of digitized books in cyberspace, tiny particles in a vast crowd of text, novels, plays, poetry, and textbooks on every subject known to man, the contents of countless libraries. To quote the great Bard, “words, words, words,” an avalanche of words. It will be a Tower of Babel reaching to infinity.

With this endless rejuvenation will come the hopes of living authors, the heirs of dead ones, and other assorted claimants that they will enjoy an unprecedented revenue flow from readers who are just aching to download out-of-print books on the devices that are now exploding worldwide.

By what technical miracle will these digitized books come to the attention of the potential reader? This is the key issue for those who see in this process resurrection, rediscovery and perhaps, a big perhaps, some revenue flow.
As an author of works of the imagination, novels and shorts stories, I rescued my books from out-of-print status a dozen years ago by having my rights returned from the many publishers involved in the original publications, both in English and foreign languages. I resurrected them in all digitization and print formats and they are, of course, available now wherever books are sold.

My objective was to keep my authorial name alive in the only venue that can guarantee, at least theoretically, perpetual survival—the Internet. The objective is to keep the brand alive for as long as possible hoping that a new breakthrough book or rediscovery of an old one will create interest in all of my past works, which will never ever go out-of-print and, with luck, be recycled into movies or capture the imagination of future generations. Everyone has fantasies, hopes and aspirations. That is mine.

The problem is how to find a way for these works to rise above the incessant chatter, to be noticed, bought and read. That is the central challenge for both the author and the publisher, finding readers in an environment that has become a patchwork of a jillion niches.

With mass media outlets in print and television which can set the marketing fires ablaze with their reviews and best-seller lists declining precipitously, one can speculate with reasonable accuracy that they will slowly disappear as mass communication portals. The once dominant newspapers that were the target of choice to disseminate news and cultural happenings will morph to the net, shrunk to niche proportions along with a vast array of competitors that will splinter any attempt to make a big blast marketing push for a single book.

Marketers in the near future will be faced with how to carpet bomb the niches to gain attention, a challenge of epic proportions. All of the creative juices of the advertising and marketing world are attempting to meet this challenge and few have come up so far with an economically feasible plan.

Book publishers use the mass media to ignite the spark of word of mouth, which is the way most books gain real traction. Sometimes it happens naturally, albeit miraculously. But with the big box bookstores wrestling with present and future decline what will be left is the Internet which, so far, Amazon has mined successfully to sell its huge basket of books through its enormously successful portals. But when the time comes when the original kindling, no pun, of the mass media slowly loses heat all the Internet portals selling books will need to revamp their focus to satisfy the swiftly growing e-book audience. Of course, none of this will happen overnight, but my own best guess is that it will, indeed, happen sooner rather than later.

Publishers, too, will have to reorient their marketing strategies as they are faced with a cyberspaced distribution setup. Undoubtedly their strategy for survival will be to hone their communication skills and use the money saved on warehousing and printing to carpet bomb the Internet to gain exposure for their books. It seems a logical ploy but no one can be sure it can work successfully in such a moving target environment. Nevertheless, they will have the bucks to experiment.

Perhaps the day of the best-selling author will expire, lost in the Tower of Babel of the future. Branding authors will be harder and royalty advances will, as a consequence, decline. Serious novelists bent on a lifetime career and financial stability will have a hard time adjusting to the new reality.

Internet bookstores will depend strictly on volume and price wars are sure to proliferate. Publishers, who still control the commercial content gateway, will use the Internet to publish more and more digital books to chase their cash flow. Certain genre categories like romance fiction, mysteries, science fiction, series books and others will probably do well on the Internet although they, too, will run into problems of scale as more and more content comes into the infinite digital marketplace.

For the individual author, which is my focus, the challenge will be monumental. Can the major publishers one day discover the technique of carpet bombing the niches and get the word out for their authors? Or will they abandon their reliance on their few star sellers and bow to the lure of the niches by increasing their content output in every genre and category?

Will the individual author who tries to beat the odds through self-publishing rise above the chatter to gain enough audience to sustain themselves economically? At this moment there are thousands of sites offering self-publishing and promotional services to writers, ignored by the commercial publishing community, who thirst for self-expression, ego satisfaction and dreams of literary celebrity, fame, and fortune and who yearn to make their mark on an indifferent world.

The publishing business is not alone in gaming the future revolutionized by digitization and the Internet. Yes, fellow authors your books will never go out of print ever again, they will be available. That is no small achievement.

Reading is a two way communication system. This means that creating the text is only half the process. The challenge is to connect the two halves. It will not be easy.

Books will never go out of print, a term that will have to be revised. In fact, all books that have been out of print, via Google’s vast undertaking, will be reincarnated. Everything ever written and published will be available to everyone who is tethered to cyberspace, which means the bulk of the literate world.

Moreover, everyone who creates content, whether it bears the indicia of a traditional publishing house or is self-produced, will be able to enter the world library, easily accessible to the eye-balls and minds of every literate person on the planet. Soon, very soon, the availability of e-books will permeate every electronic device across the full spectrum of gadgetry from laptops to cell phones to e-book devices to whatever new technology bursts upon the scene.

Thus the bound paper book as we have known it over the centuries will no longer dominate the business of printing, distributing, wholesaling and retailing content. That cannot be good news for the best selling author, book stores and traditional publishers and it may or may not be good news for the average author who has managed to eke out a living writing content of every category in fiction, non-fiction, and self help for every age and demographic.

It will seem like good news for the writer who will finally be able to have his work available for access by the multitudes. At last, the traditional gatekeepers to the world of publication will be demolished. All fences will be down. Anyone who believes their work should be read by others will have this opportunity for mass dissemination.

Unfortunately, the economic reality for the author and publisher is still illusive. The marketing challenge will be enormous. The day is coming when the marketing universe will shift almost completely to the Internet. Print media as we know it is in its death throes. Television and the Internet are swiftly merging. Availability of entertainment media is proliferating to infinity.

From the point of view of the individual author who cherishes the exclusivity of his lengthy copyright, who has labored with fierce determination to compose original content which he or she hopes is meaningful, important and for the ages, the outlook is somewhat cloudy. In fact, downright discouraging.

Considering that the marketplace will be glutted with perhaps centuries of out of print books with hundreds of thousands added by the vast army of wannabe writers from every corner of the planet, how will it be possible to rise above the cacophony to be heard, noticed and ultimately read? Worse, how can an author’s work expect to be monetized in an environment in which reading matter is mostly offered free of charge.

There is, of course, an opportunity to advertise in various ways on websites where eyeballs will temporarily reside, but the fickleness of an amorphous public will require a complete rethinking of advertising strategies. The cost per thousand measure used for years by advertising agencies is swiftly becoming irrelevant as a measure of real penetration.

How then will the individual author’s work be noticed, huckstered, promoted and monetized? I have been wrestling with that problem ever since I had the notion to digitize my then published novels more than a dozen years ago. Frankly, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that digital books disseminated over the Internet was the future and that original work could be protected through the life of its copyright and forever in the public domain via cyberspace.

Being ahead of one’s time has its psychic satisfactions, but the pace of creation will quickly outrun it. Surely, someone will figure out how to rise above the chatter and find the illusive key to the marketing dilemma. We all know that word of mouth is the only sure fire method of wide dissemination. But what happens when everyone is working their mouths at the same time?

It is obviously a boon to have one’s work available. You might even be able to forward it to vast multitudes. Much of these offerings will land in spam files. Publishers determined to stay in business will hurl fusillades of advertising at hundreds of websites hoping to score sales. They will go on a niche hunt, much like trout fisherman pick the right fly to match the ever changing insect hatch to lure their prey.

The on-line bookstores will be happy to take your money to place your material front and center and allow reviews, both biased and unbiased to analyze your effort. Lots of books will be sold somehow at much lower prices than the traditional paper book. Price points will be vastly changed.

It is still too early to tell what works and what doesn’t in today’s transitional environment. The phase out from the printed to the electronic book is just beginning and will take time to make the shift. The fact is that the book industry is entering a dark tunnel. There might be light at the end, but the chances are it will be greatly diffused with niche bright spots here and there.

At this moment in time many authors should be delighted that their books will be available for readers. That is certainly good news. To be “back in print” is a lot better than oblivion. At least the author will have a fighting chance for recognition, if not fame and fortune.

Dream on.