Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

I spent a good deal of Wednesday and Thursday reading and digesting bad news about the book business. (For a nice roundup of what Galley Cat called “Black Wednesday” check out this post from New York Magazine.) I want you to know how DCWYTBMA is going to handle the crisis.

After a lot of thought I’ve decided that the answer is not much. This site has always been dedicated to you doing exceptional work, finding a large audience, and doing it in a way that preserves your dignity and celebrates your humanity. The economy may make this mandate more of a challenge, but then again, it may not. What are a few layoffs to an already impossible dream?

The bottom line is that no one knows how this will all turn out. The only thing that’s certain is that in hindsight the guesses that were right will look like the obvious choice. Epic romances written in light verse with a dash of time travel thrown in? [Slaps forehead.] Why didn’t I see that? Order will emerge out of the chaos, but you can’t tame the chaos. That’s why they call it chaos.

Let’s continue to focus on the basics:

1. Taking risks
2. Maximizing the strengths of a genre or form
3. Executing the fundamentals
4. Serving your audience
5. Building and supporting a community of like-minded artists

I feel like these core concepts are essential enough to be relevant no matter what the state of the book business is. I also feel like they’re flexible enough to be useful should we be forced to stop writing books and start programming literary holograms.

So keep reading and commenting and sending me links and questions. Barring something catastrophic, I will continue to be here for you.

I’ve been meaning to write about the blog-to-book phenomenon but the A.V. Club has saved me the trouble. Their delightful roundup/rundown “Why buy the cow? 27 popular websites that became books” shows that while there is much to be maligned, there is also much to be celebrated.

Yes, some of the sites (and their subsequent books) cited in the article are shallow, infantile, unessential and perhaps even contributing to the decline of our culture. (I’m looking at you, Stuff on My Cat.)

But there are also examples of writers and artists who used the Web to find an audience for otherwise unmarketable projects. If you’re not an established writer (and increasingly if you are) it’s getting harder and harder to sell projects that are perceived as too small, too quirky or even too voice-driven. It’s encouraging to see that the Web can provide a back door.

Still, there is a larger question behind the A.V. Club’s feature. What do we want out of books?

Is a book just a shape an idea can come in? Or are books a form whose unique qualities need to be articulated, respected and perhaps even fought for?

Do we reject books that aren’t sufficiently book-like (whatever we decide that is)? Or do we embrace anyone and everyone in the hopes that a healthy book industry will ultimately take care of the good even as it tolerates the bad?