I just wrote a piece of wisdom on how to get published.
When Whitaker Online first started, I wrote an article called “The Bead Buyers.”
“The Bead Buyers” discusssed the sort of wisdom I offered you about publication today. As an old hand with great experience I told you the inside story of how publication works.
In the “Bead Buyers” I told you the inside wisdom that a real expert would give you about making a fortune in dealing with the Bead Buying Tribe.
The expert you hired would explain to you that the Bead Buyers were only interested inthe bead they stuck in their noses. The expert woud explain to you which color of beads they loved in their noses.
Your expert would explain to you, in detail, exactly how to deal practically with these bead buyers.
But the expert never said that the bead-buyers were bright.
Am expert on Latin American business will tell you they don’t DO things unless you approach them just right.
They miss EVERYTHING as long as you know Senor Pincillado and know how to take your time.
So when the real world gets to them, it rolls over them like a tak over a chariot.
But the expert has to keep in good with the South American businessman, so he doesn’t SHOW any contempt for them.
The bead-buyers and the New York publishers are hopeless rubes.
Without their monopoly status, they wouldn’t last a week in the real world.
#1 by Dave on 05/04/2006 - 11:00 pm
Very few people (only a handful) in any generation deliver anything of real value in their writing and performances. The irony, of course, it is precisely that tiny bit of content of real value that persists over generational time, regardless of how popular or widely distributed it was at the time or writing or performance. Everything else is entirely forgotten. This is a phenomenon that is completely disconnected from the media and publishing business.
Accordingly, to become popular as a writer or pundit is as likely as winning the lotto. Tips from experts are not going to help.
I sometime wonder about BW’s followers’ estimation of BW. I have been a follower of intellectuals all my life and I happen to know for a fact that BW is at the top of the class. I mean that literally, he is the top of the class, bar none. Therefore, no one need concern himself or herself about promoting “The Best of BW”. Rest assured, BW’s ideas shall promote themselves. That is the way life works.