automata

I read a lot of content online. An absolutely absurd amount, really. It’s the ADHD in me, I need to be constantly absorbing something to ever really come to any kind of rest. I’ve never figured out how else to do it, but I just constantly engage with information wherever I am, under whatever circumstances there are.

Anyhow, all this reading online has given way to an uptick in wanting to read more books, here in meatspace. So, I’ve been trying. I had a realization, and I just thought I’d share it.

It doesn’t really cost me anything to write for the internet. I could spend a really long time, writing a large amount and releasing it piece by piece like a blog or even releasing a 100+ page e-book or something like that, but the reality is that without the intention of materializing the effort into physical books, there’s a lacking.

Is this really true? Maybe not so much as it used to be, especially in the advent of the 20XX GPT-era, but maybe a little bit still.

Publishing a book means that someone has to okay a print. Someone has to source the paper. Someone has to organize the binding, confirm the cover design(s). Someone has to make deals with merchandisers. Someone has to deal with shipping. It just never really ends, when you think about it. A thousand people jump to work once someone has written a book.

Along the way, these things may act like checks and balances to make sure the thing isn’t a piece of shit in the first place. Is the book any good?

I guess all I’m really getting at is that there’s a higher implicit bar for writing quality when you’re reading a book. I guess when you put it that way, we all knew that already.