Changing Times

I had a drink with a friend and neighbor who's at the top of his field, the best adventure writer there is, a frequent contributor to Outside Magazine, National Geographic, and many other publications. He's a few years younger, but mostly of my generation.

We were talking about the change that has swept publishing. In his magazine world he no longer gets the sort of top dollar he once received; magazines can't afford it. And that cuts into his ability to go to exotic places and do memorable things. I was telling him about all the solid and respected authors I know who can't find contracts, and how ebook publishing has radically altered our traditional publishing world.

We talked of the hundreds of thousands of self-published books, and all the self-published articles. Most of them are competent, but few shine, and scarcely any are outstanding. He sees all this as a generational change. Young people understand the world of social networking and electronic publication and publicity and promotion, and some of them succeed handsomely in a new world that is hard for people of my generation to master.

We worked differently; promotion and sales were up to our publishers. Our task was to write the best material we knew how to write, and then polish it to make it better, and then find ways to freshen it and add depth to it, until it glowed. And that, my friend said, is the generational difference. As we age, we can continue to do what our generation did; work toward excellence in every respect, and leave the younger generations to their social networking and promotional efforts, where we have fewer skills.

We smiled at each other, each of us glad we lived out most of our publishing lives in the traditional world of magazine and book publishing. Our writings will last.