Going Forward as a Commodity? (10/17/14)

Time out on the road is inefficient, but to tell you the truth there is very little FREE Time. I lose hours getting stuck in traffic and commuting from place to place. I spend a good deal of time in bed recovering from poor eating, sleeping, and general lifestyle habits while bouncing around the country. However, when I do get out in a city I try and make the most of time there. I like to learn a little bit about the city I’m visiting, people in general, and myself.

One area where I try to make sure that I invest some of my free time is with my friend James. At first glance James and I couldn’t appear more different. He’s a retired professional football player that came from a rough side of town in Alabama. I grew up in a world of privilege. Black vs White. However, when you strip away all of the labels we’re actually very similar, but because of our different life experiences we have an amazing opportunity to learn from one another.

Shortly after meeting James he told me that he walked away from football early in his career because he didn’t like being treated like a commodity. He turned his back on all of the hard work he put into making it to the NFL. I was able to understand what James told me, but it wasn’t until recently I was able to honestly empathize with him.

There are all sorts of people that get treated like commodities and are eventually discard like waste when they have no more value. Sorry for the stereotypes, but think rich guy who loses all of his wealth and beautiful girl leaves him in the dumps or the inverse rich guy kicking his girlfriend to the curb for a new younger model. You can really see this phenomenon anywhere if you’re willing to look for it. So I understood what James was talking about, but I got to experience it at a Barnes & Noble in Michigan.

I visited the store to see if I could find a copy of Average Joe’s Story: Quest for Confidence on the store shelves. Surprise, surprise there wasn’t one to be found, but that really didn’t bother me too much after I looked around to see what the patrons were doing. Just outside of the in store Starbucks a woman had three books she had collected to read. She was reading one, and using one as a coaster for her venti frappuccino concoction. At no point did she consider how her actions and the minor damage from sweat ring would affect other people. I won’t buy a book that looks used let alone one that exhibits any sign of damage. So when that book doesn’t sell because people don’t want to buy a used book it gets sent back to the publisher, is basically destroyed, and the author and publisher eat the cost.

Another group of young ladies also had a stack of books in the coffee shop. A diligent employ who was cleaning up around the store stopped by and asked, ” Are you still using these?” That may have been a subconscious slip of the tongue, but that statement inferred that it was okay to treat the books sitting on the shelves for sale as if they were library books. That group of ladies could have purchased that stack of 25 books, but the employee’s statement connoted that it was just fine for them to use them then leave. I felt enraged and my book wasn’t even in the Barnes & Noble Library. Of all of those books in that store the average author might be lucky enough to see a dollar per book. That doesn’t even take into consideration what the authors could get charged for the returns to the publisher.

My body never took the physical punishment that James’ did, but I can now honestly say I empathize with the way he felt back then. That’s why if I choose to go forward with writing a second book there will be some changes that are made to the contracts I use. However, the way I see things currently I probably will not write a follow up to Average Joe’s Story.