Monday, February 16, 2009

Almost There

In the next week, I hope, City Ubiquitous will be available on Amazon.

This will be the end of one phrase, researching, writing, and getting the book to market, and the beginning of the next: marketing the book.

For many academics, the notion that one would "sell" ideas is an anathema, at least we perform it to be. As Stanley Fish has described in recent pieces in The New York Times, many members of the professorate fantasize of a world in which ideas are unconstrained by such pedestrian concerns as popular opinion and monetary value. Information, and how we produce it, should be free.

To be fair, a great many of these folks manage to do just fine for themselves, financially. But like well applied makeup, it is rude to ask how the illusion is crafted.

Me, I have no problem admitting that I've worked more than a decade on my articulation of omnitopia (certainly, not the only one around), and that I seek at least some modest compensation for all that time and labor. In short, I'm happy to enter the marketplace of ideas with a book to sell.

So I await the news that Amazon has placed City Ubiquitous on its virtual bookshelves. And I look forward to whatever happens next.

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