Lois Bujold asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

During a meandering discussion of the progress of publishing technologies, a reader on my chat list came up with a question about paper consumption over the years. I thought you all might be interested in the answer, too... ?

Lois McMaster Bujold
My paper consumption has varied over the years. In the beginning, it was a 3-ring notebook and some pencils, a laboriously typed first draft with two carbons (one for Pat and one for Lillian) and a final draft ditto (but not dittoed.) I could not afford photocopying.

Paper consumption went up as I entered the computer years, and could print out test readers' copies at will. My agent also needed two copies of the final, one for the publisher, one to be photocopied multiple times for foreign submissions and shipped overseas. So during the 90s, one novel could consume a nearly 10-ream carton of paper, and that was just on my end. Not to mention keeping the post office busy lugging it all back and forth.

Around the turn of the millennium, I started submitting e-files to Baen, often with a paper copy backup as well. It took a long time for the supporting paper copies to drop out, as publishers gradually joined the 20th Century, or rather, old staffers retired or died and were replaced by newer ones. It's only in the past few years that my submissions process, including to and by my agent, has become entirely paperless.

It's also only in the last few years that my writing has become paperless. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen was the first novel I wrote without making a complete running printout, punched and put in a binder as I went, although I still printed certain sections for various purposes. So it's only as I reached the Penric tales that I have started to use no paper at all, except to print out a section to take to a reading or something.

My recent galleys have all come as pdf files, too. It took me a bit to get used to that, but I've converted now. (It probably also helps a lot that I now have less unwieldy computers with better screens to read them on. My new Lenovo X1 Yoga is downright addictive. It does splendid things for manga.) Don't underestimate the impact the improvements in reading devices have had on fostering all this.

So on my end, a case of paper has dropped to a fraction of a ream, over the past... urk, it can't be 20 years...?

At my last move, three years ago, I donated a whole packed bedroom of manuscripts, paper files and whatnot to the collection at Northern Illinois University; better them than me. I lugged all that stuff after me for years, and I so don't miss it now.

Ta, L.

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