Blog

How to Publish a Book

This consolidates some posts I originally put up on Tumblr, mainly so I can find them. (Tumblr’s search is a nightmare.) You can find them here, here, and here.

Ebooks

  1. Write the book. This is, believe it or not, the fun part.
  2. Edit the book. Slightly less easy, but you have to do this, no matter what anyone else has told you about “minimum viable product” or what have you. You can force your friends to read it, you can have a program read it aloud to you, you can read it backwards, you can hire someone to line edit your work, you can do some or most of the above, just get it edited. (Additional point: when hiring a professional, if you’re happy with the plot, ask for line or copyediting; if you’re not sure about plot points or need to flesh out some scenes, ask for developmental editing; if you just need guidance, you may want to start with an editorial letter.)
  3. Get a cover. You can make one yourself or pay someone to do it. You’re going to want it to be about 1600×2500 pixels and 72 dpi. It’s good to have a really nice cover, because covers sell books.
  4. Typeset the book. I use Atticus to create an epub file. If you are also doing a print version or you are a mild to medium control freak, I recommend it. Vellum and Reedsy are about the same, I think. If you have a lot of illustrations–big ones, I mean, not just an author photo–or you are a big-time control freak, you should beg, borrow, or steal a copy of InDesign. You can use Calibre to compress your output epub file if you want to make sure you earn every available penny. However, my book is 6mb and it is about 8 cents to download. Also, if you’re trying to do this on the cheap, you really can just do it in Word. The layout won’t be as fancy, but you can do it. (Layout granularity, from least to most granular, is probably Word->Atticus->InDesign.)
  5. If you want to publish under a press name that is not your name, you will need to start a business. Laws around taxes and registration may vary depending on where you are, but in general, you will want to register your name with your state or county registrar (for me, this cost $30 and I had to get a piece of paper notarized). Then you can get a business checking account (for me this part was free–I went through the bank I already have accounts with). In the US, sole proprietorships like this are taxed as pass-through entities, so you will pay personal income taxes on whatever money you make, but you don’t have to pay corporate income taxes. If you are publishing books that could possibly get you sued (e.g., The Big Book of Welding While Juggling or Now You’re Cooking with Napalm) you may want to form an LLC. Talk to a lawyer.
  6. Open a KDP account. If you hate the Zon and want to only publish somewhere else (Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, whatever), that’s fine–the process is about the same. If you think you previously had a KDP account and then didn’t use it, search your emails etc. to try to find out, because if they figure that out, they’ll close both accounts and then you won’t get paid.
  7. Add your new title to the catalog (you will need to add metadata, like your name, series name if there is one, and a description of the book) and set the prices. Unless your book is super big, you’ll probably earn more if you select the 70% option. For some reason, I changed a few of the prices. If you’re planning to publish on several platforms, I don’t recommend this–just set your price in one place and then let it convert those. Otherwise, you’ll have to reinput everything over and over, because it’s in the terms of service that you need to price things the same on Kobo as you do on Amazon (and so on).
  8. Set the day of publication and tell people about it. Like your mom. Your aunt who’s always so supportive. Your friend who has been listening to you bitch about how hard writing is for the past six months.
  9. ???
  10. Profit.

Q: Hey, I want my book in several online stores, not just Amazon.

A: You have a few options. Draft2Digital/Smashwords and IngramSpark both distribute digitally to various places so you only have to set things up once. But they take a cut of the profit for this service. My impression is that D2D is better for ebooks in this regard, however you should check the rates and make your own determination. You can also set up independent accounts with each store and upload your stuff. This is a PITA if you ever plan to update anything, but you can do it.

Q: What happens in step 9?

A: You know. Meet other indie writers and try to gain their trust. Read a lot. Work on the sequel. Get some sleep, because deadlines are exhausting, even self-imposed ones. Learn about advertising. That sort of thing.

PAPERBACKS

There are a bunch of options for POD publishing now. IngramSpark, KDP, Draft2Digital, Lulu, etc. Other websites like Barnes & Noble will let you set up paperback publishing but outsource the actual printing to IngramSpark (IS). I think a bunch of these services do. IS is also slightly better if you want to have bookstores sell your book, have it in libraries, etc., because most bookstores won’t order from Amazon, for obvious reasons. For Dionysus in Wisconsin, I’ve done both IS and Amazon, letting IS distribute to anywhere that isn’t the Zon. The last time I looked at the rates, IS was the best place that wasn’t Amazon, although that’s not saying much. D2D’s recent survey about AI and subsequent rejection of licensing their authors’ books to LLM companies wins them a lot in book, too.

OH, IS allows preorders for paperbacks while the Zon doesn’t.

First, you’re going to need to write and edit the book. We went over this in pt. 1. Please refer there if you have any questions on this step. Okay, here is the exhaustive list of what to do once you’re ready.

1. Decide what size the physical book should be. Look around your house at books in your genre and select the size that is most pleasing to you. This is called the trim size. Somewhere from 5″x8″ to 6″x9″ are the most popular, thus the cheapest.

2. If you uploaded your text into a typesetting program like Atticus, tell it your trim size, preferred typeface size, line spacing, and margins and have it spit out a pdf. Otherwise, set Word up with those specifications. KDP has a helpful site where you can calculate the correct inner margins for your number of pages, while I think somehow IS just requires a .5″ or .625″ margin for all sizes (this doesn’t make sense; I assume you just have to fix it after seeing a proof?). The book’s gonna be exactly the same, so just do the same thing in both places.

One thing I couldn’t find any guidance on is what size to make the typeface and line spacing. I wound up going with 11 pt typeface and 1.4 spacing. I figured this out by printing out the first page of my book, cutting it out at the correct size (5″x8″) and comparing it to pages in similar books until I found one that looked readable and pretty. Anything from 10-12 is probably fine, also 1.1-1.4 spacing, but keep in mind that small/densely spaced typefaces will make your text look more intimidating. Someone on Mastodon said 1.5 spacing looks like a student paper, which I also agree with.

There are loads of websites that detail what typefaces to use for what types of books. “Look at your genre and try to match” is reasonable advice here too.

3. You need not just a cover, but a spine and a back cover. Books are three dimensional objects!

If you hire an artist, they should just be able to provide a wrap-around cover that is appropriate dimensions (again, KDP and IS both have templates). It should be a CMYK PDF of at least 300 DPI resolution. If you’re doing it yourself, I suggest laying out the entire cover on one large sheet of paper/canvas and doing your art like that rather than trying to photoshop together various pieces, unless you are really, really good at color leveling etc. Make sure you use open access typefaces or that you have rights to use them, ditto for any images you collage into stuff.

GIMP is a great free photoshop alternative. ImageMagick is a free image manipulation program that is incredibly powerful. I had to use ImageMagick to flip my cover file into CMYK and create a PDF. The command you want is this:

magick "inputfile.png" -colorspace sRGB -colorspace CMYK "outputfile.pdf"

Note that this same command can be used to change between whatever formats you want. You don’t have to specify a colorspace, either.

magick "inputfile.png" "outputfile.jpg"

is a valid command. See the ImageMagick documentation for more.

4. Submitting your file for stuff: copyright here, LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) here. Neither of these is obligatory, but both are cool in their own way. LCCN is a way for Library of Congress to pre-catalog your data (creating a stub record in OCLC) so that if a library acquires your book, it’s easier for them to get it on the shelf. You need to submit your request for this PRIOR TO THE MONTH OF PUBLICATION. However, you don’t need a final manuscript to submit, just a summary of the book. Also, note that you can only retroactively submit your MS for copyright registration for THREE MONTHS after publication, so decide now if you want it. And yes, everything you write in the US is automatically copyrighted, but having a certificate to prove it is nice in a court battle. Also also, you WILL want a finished copy of the text to submit when you make this request, or else you will have to submit two printed copies. By MAIL. So you have to GO OUT OF YOUR HOUSE TO THE POST OFFICE. UGH. (You are requested to send in a print copy for the LCCN program too, so make sure you order extras. And some for awards.)

5. OKAY, assuming you got everything done, now you need an ISBN.

Do you really? Kind of. If you’re only publishing on KDP, they’ll give you a free one. But you can’t reuse it if you try to also publish on IS. The reverse is also true. Technically, the entity that assigns the ISBN is the publisher, so this makes Amazon/IS the publisher of your book. Also, it makes editions slightly weird if you’re doing paperbacks through more than one p lace (technically, it’s supposed to be one ISBN per edition). ANYWAY, in the US you buy ISBNs through Bowkers. Don’t let them sell you barcodes or any of that garbage. Just buy your ISBN(s).

Sometimes, people report putting in information in KDP and then having the ISBN rejected as “in use” when inputting it into IS, so do this next part all at once. First, assign your ISBN to your book in the Bowkers database. Then assign it to your book at IS and save as draft. Then assign it to your book at KDP and save as draft.

One other note. If you have set up a business to be your press name (mine is Winnowing Fan Press, because the main character’s name is Ulysses and I am a GIANT NERD), that will be set up as your publishing house in Bowkers. You won’t have an imprint unless you specify one. (An imprint is like a special line of books, so Harlequin has a “digital-first” imprint called Carina Press that specializes in LGBT+ romance, because why would you publish LGBT+ romance in paperback first, ugh.) BUT Amazon will ask what the imprint is for your ISBN and it will be THE NAME OF THE PUBLISHING HOUSE. Why is Amazon using the term differently from everyone else? I DON’T KNOW. JUST GO WITH IT.

6. Upload all your files. Look at the previewers/e-proofs to make sure everything looks okay. Panic and reupload them five times with minute changes.

7. Set a price.

For real at this point I hope you’re done making changes, because you suddenly have at least three versions across two different sites to update if you suddenly decide to add a credit for your author photo or something. (cough)

How to set a price the easy way: look at other similar books in your genre (your comps) and just set your book to that price (hopefully you aren’t losing money that way).

8. You can order a physical proof at this stage. But if you want author copies, you’re going to have to publish your book, meaning it becomes publicly available. I think that if you get through the KDP screens and hit “publish book,” it goes live. So…save it as a draft; don’t hit the go button until you’re ready. IS meanwhile lets you make it available for preorder.

Deadlines: Try to get everything done and uploaded by five days before your planned publication date.

Addenda to previous parts

  • Even if you are doing this as a hobby, even if you’re not going to be a working writer, you should make a budget at the beginning and write down what you’re spending. You might want to give the episode on Towards a Poor Podcast from the late, great Start With This a listen. Also, listen to the one about giving feedback while you’re at it–it totally changed my mind about giving and receiving criticism on my writing, even though my podcast is unscripted and I’m not workshopping theater pieces right now.
  • It’s best if you can figure out everything (cover, finalized text, back cover blurb) and THEN upload it to all the various websites. Otherwise you’ll wind up with mismatches. (My book, for example, has a slightly different cover in the ebook on Amazon compared to the print version, another different cover on Goodreads, and slightly different wording on the back of the book text in some places.) I should emphasize the interior text is all the same. I just messed that up.
  • There are some errors you may not catch until you see the print version, if you’re doing one. I recommend uploading your files to KDP, ordering a proof copy, making any updates, and THEN uploading the files elsewhere. IngramSpark is much slower to approve files compared to Amazon.
  • They say that you don’t ever really finish a project, you just give up on it, and this is true. I made the last changes to the text on Monday of the week it was published, and then I forced myself to stop looking at my proof copy because there is a deadline you have to meet to upload your files and I needed to stop. making. changes. in order to meet it.
  • When creating a cover, note that there is a variance in trimming things, so don’t assume that the area outside of the trim line on the cover is going to be invisible.
  • They say all you have to do to find a typo is open the freshly printed book. In my case, my husband found it.
  • Previously, I suggested you could use InDesign for ebook design. Technically, this is correct, but because screens are different sizes, you can’t…nail the text down, I guess? You have to allow reflow or things will look super weird. I don’t know, if you’re using InDesign and/or doing something really graphics-heavy, you need a guide that is more in-depth than this.
  • Everyone hates marketing.

Em oi! #453: Outsider Art

Em oi! #453: Outsider Art Em: I'm trying to figure out the plot of this novel. Bryan: The one you're writing? Em: The one I'm revising.
(copyright EH Lupton 4/14/24) Bryan: Isn't it a little late for that? Em: No. Anyway, it's like a reverse art heist. Bryan: Okay...
Em: They break into the art gallery and do something magical to the painting... And when the rich people take it home, demons come out. Bryan: Oh, like Banksy.
Em: ... Em: ...yeah, exactly.

Technically, Banksy is regarded as a street artist or guerilla artist, although I’d argue that’s a subset of outsider artist. Outsider art is art created by people who are largely self-taught and exist outside of the conventions of the art world. That group, as you can imagine, is pretty broad, and includes “naive” artists (self-taught but want to be mainstream) like Henri Rousseau, mentally ill artists like Adolf Wölfli and Robert Gie, folk art, and, well, me, I guess.

Once, when I was in Baltimore, MD, before a marathon (I think it must have been the Marine Corps), I went to an exhibit of art created by mentally ill patients. Some of it was like a giant boat made of glued-together matchsticks. Some of it was like this: a self-portrait carved out of a single apple tree log by a man who had never shown any interest in art, then made this, then never made art again. It raises an interesting question of how the art-making process exists within a human. What, indeed, is art? Is art always intentional? Are we unfairly dividing art into two categories whereby one is the product of some sort of delusion or other uncontrolled mental process and the other is the result of specific creative direction? (Yes.) If someone writes novels compulsively to cope with stress, anxiety, or depression, is that essentially the same as building a giant boat out of matchsticks?

Anyway, before I veer off into fruitless discussions of Deleuze and Guattari, the comic. Over the last few books, I’ve developed a process, which includes: 1/ write a first draft. 2/ Revise to fix plot problems. 3/ Another draft to fix remaining plot holes and fancy language. 4/ Send book to editor and accept changes. 5/ Final draft to make the language as good as possible. So the book we’re talking about is currently in stage two. And B did, in his way, fix the plot. He probably doesn’t even know how.

I’m going to file this one under N8354 B3 L86 2024, for Visual Arts–Art as a profession. Artists.–Banksy.

Em oi! #452: An Honor to be Nominated

Em oi! #452: An Honor to be Nominated Em: I got the email about a month ago-- Nietzsche: Okay, ja... Em: And I've been very anxious since then... Nietzsche: Mmm...
Em: (out of frame) And it's not like it's a bad thing, so I don't know why I feel this way. Is it that I care too much about--- Mary Oliver: You can head out, Nietzsche. I've got this. Nietzsche: Danke.
Em: Mary Oliver! Mary: Dearheart, you can worry all you want. It's fine. It just inevitably comes to nothing.
Bryan: In the last panel, you should make out. Em: That feels appropriate.

(In case you haven’t read it, Mary Oliver references this poem. Nietzsche dressed as the Overman first debuted here.)

In case you missed it, Dionysus in Wisconsin got shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in gay romance. The ceremony isn’t until June, so I get to spend the next few months either being anxious or being fêted, depending on who you ask. The other nominated works (you can check them out here) are also tremendous, which is awesome and intimidating all at once. In a very good article on being nominated for things, John Scalzi refers to all the works nominated together as a peer group. It’s hard to conceptualize myself up next to those other writers as peers, because their books are so good.

Awards are weird. On the one hand, they can draw attention to works that otherwise have been overlooked, create critical conversation, and recognize people who do work very, very hard and often receive very little. On the other hand, as an outsider, they can often seem to reinforce mainstream, middle-class values and recognize works that have already received recognition. Not for nothing, the Pulitzer board declined to award a prize for Gravity’s Rainbow the year it was released, because some of the board believed it was obscene and unreadable. (Which it is, but not in a bad way.)

That is to say, in a certain sense, it doesn’t matter if the Barbie movie gets an academy award (or even a nomination); it’s already proved its point by grossing a billion dollars worldwide. It’s already won.

For every book I’ve read that had justifiably won the award it was nominated for, I can name one that wasn’t very good and made me wonder what the judges had been thinking. And of course, there’s the terrible conundrum of the writer who wins a major award early in their career and then never quite achieves that high again. 

Anyway, as of this writing, my biggest feeling right now is just…happiness. As someone who was always kind of a weird kid, who wandered for a long time without much acknowledgement that my writing was what anyone wanted to read (remember this comic? yeah, bleak times), it’s nice to feel like, hey, actually, someone did like it after all. More than one someone.

I just want to take this moment to thank everyone who’s read the book already, or who heard the news and is reading it now. You guys are the best. If you ever get to Madison, let me know. I’ll make cookies.

Gonna file this under BF608 L86 2024 for Philosophy, Psychology, Religion–Psychology–Will. Volition. Choice. Control. (Feel a little bad for psychology, which still shares BF with parapsychology and occult sciences. That feels like a statement at this point.)

Em oi! #451: Technically

B: ...she'll become thy bed, I warrant thee, and bring thee forth brave brood. E: Wow.
B: What? E: I mean, you do the speech very well. I just don't much like Caliban.
B: Why not? E: He's, like, sexist as hell. I guess he's not portrayed as a hero, but...
B: He's literally a monster. E: Oh yeah.

Back before we had many small children, when he had time for community theater, B used to recite the speeches he was working on while we went running together. That was always fine when he was doing something fun (Twelfth Night) and always a little weird when he was doing a villain (Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus has a very good one[1]). Now we’re back to doing this because he has a show next Saturday (9/23, here in Madison)–and he’s learning a scene from The Tempest. Which is a great scene, but also interesting to be doing excerpts from in public. (Also, when we actually had this conversation, we were on dreadmills at the gym, so. But it’s a hell of a scene.)

All right, announcements.

I had a poem in the August/September issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. The poem is called “Anxiety #243,” and you can buy a copy of the issue here. If you just want to read the poem, you should sign up for my newsletter and then check out the most recent back issue. I have another poem coming out in the next couple of weeks, and you should definitely sign up for my newsletter if you want to be notified!

I will be reading at Rainbow Space Magic Con at the end of September. I will also be appearing on a panel about writing fantasy and historical accuracy w/r/t the middle ages, a topic about which I have many possibly controversial opinions. Registration is free, so go sign up. I’ll send out a newsletter with the actual schedule once I know it.

I also recently came out with a new T-shirt. It looks like this:

Em wearing a turquoise shirt with a black, red, and white design that says DO NOT SUMMON DEMONS IN THE LIBRARY with a little flame-headed demon.

Click here if you want one. There are a few color and size options (also children’s sizes, because my 6yo wanted one), and also stickers and metal signs, in case you want it in your own library.

Finally, for fans of Dionysus in Wisconsin, book two will be available for preorder in October and out in January.

We’ll file this under PR2833.W5 L86 2023, for English literature–English renaissance (1500-1640)–The Tempest–Criticism. (I’m not 100% sure about that W5–I don’t have access to that table anymore, but I used it last time I did a comic about Shakespeare, so I am guessing it means “Criticism.”)

Footnotes:

[1] From act 5, scene 1:

Lucius:
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

Aaron:
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
 Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
 Few come within the compass of my curse—
 Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death;
 Ravish a maid or plot the way to do it;
 Accuse some innocent and forswear myself;
 Set deadly enmity between two friends;
 Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and haystalks in the night,
 And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
 Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves
 And set them upright at their dear friends’ door,
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
 Have with my knife carvèd in Roman letters
 “Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.”
 But I have done a thousand dreadful things
 As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
 But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

It’s an amazing speech! Who doesn’t want to twirl their moustache so heartily? But you can see why we used to quiet down when we passed one of the neighbors…

Em oi! #450: Oversize Shirt Season

Em oi! #450: Oversize shirt season Drawing of a red plaid shirt Text: It's oversize shirt season, the best time of the year.
Text above panel: Copyright E.H. Lupton 2023 July 31 Panel text: cool mornings? Going to the grocery store? Hate your body? Oversize shirt! Drawing of Em wearing the red plaid shirt and giving a thumbs up.
Drawing: Em holding an axe, the sleeves ripped off the shirt. Text: It works for camping... Drawing: A sailboat with the sail made of red plaid cloth. Text: Sailing...
Text: Perfect for hiding in a cave from the sun. Drawing: Em crouched, holding the shirt above her head. Dialog balloon says "Hiss." Oversize shirts forever!

To be honest, I have only been camping once. It might not involve axes.

Lots going on around here! Not just related to the wearing of plaid shirts, either. I’m very gradually rewriting book 2 in preparation for a January 2024 release. (If you haven’t read book 1 yet, why not?) I have some poetry coming out in upcoming journals that I’m excited to tell you all about when it arrives. New merch dropping soon. My 6yo (WHAT) is starting first grade in three weeks? Maybe more comics if I can figure out where I put the scripts and also if my hand cooperates. I don’t know, just a ton of stuff. If you want to make sure you see it, sign up for the newsletter.

I have lost my access to the main LOC website, but someone has recreated the classification on Wikipedia. So this will be classified as NK8800 L86 2023, for Decorative Arts–Other arts and art industries–Textiles.

Quilt Pattern: Rainbow Bearclaw Star

This is my own pattern, but I believe in releasing these things into the wild, so I’m gonna tell you how to make it.

The original is a crib/baby quilt, so it was envisioned to be 40″x40″, which means each square is 8″ plus seam allowance (typically I use a 1/4″ seam allowance, but I don’t sew especially scant on purpose). Feel free to do your own quilt math and make it bigger or smaller. If you want like a 50×50 lap quilt, you could add a thicker border around the edge. I don’t care. It’s your quilt. Make yourself happy. You don’t have to use the same colors, either, but I will refer to the colors in this quilt when I describe the pattern.

Here’s a diagram that shows the squares:

There are five types of squares that get repeated.

For type 1, I cut a circle out of the focal material and basically glued it down using an iron-on applique product. Many of these have names like “Heat and Bond.” Ask the old ladies at your quilt store if you’re not sure which one to get. After I appliqued it, I stitched around the circle with a thread in a pretty color using a zigzag stitch. Because the stitching does take up the fabric a bit, you may want to cut this square a little big (like…9″ instead of 8.5″ or even a little bigger) and then trim it if you need to. You will need five circle blocks.

For type 2, I did these as two flying geese, because there are ways to make a lot of flying geese pretty easily. You could also do it as four half-square triangles, or an orange square on point and just sew on the corners. I don’t care. I don’t think one way is inherently superior, although depending on your fabric, maybe you want fewer seams. Or maybe more seams is easier for you. You will need four blocks like this. For your 40″ quilt, each finished flying goose (before it is sewed into the square) will have to be 8.5″ by 4.5″.

For type 3, you have four half-square triangles (HSTs): one orange/yellow, two light green/yellow, and one dark green/dark blue. Since there are four of these blocks, that works out to four orange/yellow, eight light green/yellow, and four dark green/dark blue. Each finished HST, prior to being sewn together, should be 4.5″ by 4.5″. (Damn it, that’s math. I wasn’t gonna do that.)

Blocks 4a and 4b are mirror images. Each one contains a square of light blue, a square of dark blue, a dark green/light blue HST, and a light blue/light purple HST. Be careful when you assemble these–it is easy to get confused, especially if you don’t especially like rotating shapes in your head or whatever. You need four of each (so eight total with these colors). These are also 4.5″ x 4.5″ for the hypothetical 40″ quilt.

Block 5 is essentially the same: one light blue square, one light purple square, and two light blue/light purple HSTs. You need four of these, and again they’re 4.5″ x 4.5″.

I put on a dark purple border. If I’d done better math, I would have made it bigger, but whatever. I usually want at least a 2.5″ wide border; smaller than that looks a bit weird in my opinion.

Tips: Iron everything at every stage. I press my seams to the side rather than open. Spray starch if you have to. Quilt it in the way that makes you the happiest. Bind it with either more dark purple (if you have enough, I didn’t) or black (if you have enough, I didn’t), or both in some kind of random arrangement (ding).

That’s it. Easy, right?

Em oi! #449: Cranespotting

A drawing of a bald eagle.
Two birdwatchers. One is pointing at something, the other is smiling. Text: "Normal birdwatchers."
A drawing of Em looking at a great blue heron.
Em raising a hand. Text: "Me." Em says: "HI, BIRD!"

First of all, hat tip to B for the title.

It took me a while to admit to myself that I really like birdwatching. In the beginning, I just told myself that I was out for a run and looking around, and there was something funny about shouting, “Hi, bird!” as I went past. I could only really identify large birds–hawks, vultures, wild turkeys, cranes, that kind of thing. Then I started taking photos of birds to ask my mom (who genuinely is a birdwatcher) what they were. Then I started taking photos of birds I saw just to show off to my mom.

Then one day, I realized I had two birding-related apps on my phone.

Then I found myself excitedly emailing my mom that I’d seen a GREEN HERON when I took the boys over to a local pond for a walk.

So yeah.

Not long ago, I was out for a run and a guy heard me saying, “Hello, hawk!” to the hawk I stopped to photograph.

That’s all for today. If you see any birds, tell them I say hi.

Em oi! #448: Post-Pandemic Blues

Em and a woman with blond hair are talking to each other. Blondie has a cup of coffee and is saying, 'Hey! Haven't seen you in a while. How have you been? Doing anything fun?' Em replies, 'Oh, hi! Um...'
A table labeled The Thought Process, with things Em has been doing on the left and what she thinks about them on the right, connected by arrows. I've been working on my novel, arrow, No one cares about your unfinished novel, no one cares about your weird hobbies. Working on my podcast arrow Everyone has a podcast, arrow No one cares about your weird hobbies. Kid did something funny arrow Don't talk about your kids all the time. Baby trying to crawl arrow Don't talk about your kids all the time. Super anxious all the time arrow TMI. Working on a quilt arrow No one cares about your weird hobbies. Training for a 50k arrow No one cares about your weird hobbies, arrow Sounds like bragging.
Em: Life has been pretty quiet. Also I've forgotten how to make small talk. Blondie: OMG, I know, right? Please help me.

Hey, I’m back! It only took a year plus two months, approximately. I feel like I should offer some explanation, but… *waves hand vaguely at everything* you know.

I spent most of the last year editing a podcast called Ask a Medievalist. You should check it out if you haven’t already. Also I had a baby. He’s doing pretty well. How have you all been?

I’d like to say I expect more comics soon, but I can’t make any promises. I guess we’ll see.

Maya the shiba inu.
I feel you, friend.

Em #447: There Will Be No Retweets

In Heidegger’s lingo, “das Gerede” refers to the distractions sort of generally. It also means “talk” or “chatter.”

I wrote the script for this comic on May 21st, which is to say I wrote it down on May 21st–it had definitely been kicking around in my head for much longer. The “everything is reminding me I’m going to die” line was originally about COVID-19. It…still feels really relevant, but for different reasons, and as usual I feel weird for using Heidegger… so let’s talk about Heidegger. It feels like a good time to talk about white supremacy in philosophy![1]

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a Nazi. I’ll lead with that, because even though his big masterwork Being and Time was written well before any of the stuff I’m about to talk about happened, his Nazism tends to feel like such a central fact to his life that I think I need to put it in front. I’m going to say in a minute that he was a more complicated guy than that appellation usually permits, but let’s not lose sight of it. Philosophically, he’s sort of loosely associated with both phenomenology (the study of consciousness from a first-person perspective[2]) and existentialism; he was a student of Husserl. His academic career benefited from his association with the Nazi party, as he was elected rector of Freiberg University, and either implemented or allowed to be implemented some of the party’s political policies, depending on who you ask and how generous they’re feeling–he may have stood up for some Jewish colleagues and helped them keep their jobs, though others claimed he denounced colleagues and blocked them from jobs, and he certainly denied student aid to non-Aryan students. During his time as rector, he made several speeches tying his philosophy put forward in Being and Time (aka Sein und Zeit) to Nazi ideology. He stepped down from his rectorship in 1934 and thereafter distanced himself somewhat from Nazi politics, although he didn’t leave the party. After the end of WWII, he was banned from teaching until 1949 as part of a denazification campaign. He became a professor emeritus in 1950 and I suppose did whatever it is that retired professors do until 1976, when he died.

This comic touches on a small piece of his philosophy, but there is a lot more. In an excellent essay in the New Yorker, Joshua Rothman writes,

Heidegger had developed his own way of describing the nature of human existence. It wasn’t religious, and it wasn’t scientific; it got its arms around everything, from rocks to the soul. Instead of subjects and objects, Heidegger wanted to talk about “beings.” The world, he argued, is full of beings—numbers, oceans, mountains, animals—but human beings are the only ones who care about what it means to be themselves. (A human being, he writes, is the “entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue.”) This gives us depth. Mountains might outlast us, but they can’t out-be us. For Heidegger, human being was an activity, with its own unique qualities, for which he had invented names: thrownness, fallenness, projection. These words, for him, captured the way that we try, amidst the flow of time, to “take a stand” on what it means to exist. (Thus the title: “Being and Time.”)

I don’t believe he’s widely taught in undergraduate philosophy departments; certainly when I was a student at UW-Madison, he was not being taught, as far as I am aware[3]; I see now he is included in a class on Existentialism that also includes Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, which is…an interesting combination there. I think his lack of inclusion is due at least as much to the fact that he’s extremely difficult to parse as his politics (although I should point out that every philosophy department routinely teaches Kant, you can’t NOT teach Kant, and he’s also difficult). On the other hand, he seems pretty popular in the amateur philosopher world–Philosophize This! did three episodes on him, A Partially Examined Life did three episodes. If you look on YouTube, there are plenty of videos like this one, which informed this comic (I count at least five other introductory videos). My rival, Existential Comics, has done a LOT of really funny comics about him.[4]

So why do we amateurs, who are not bound by the rules of academia[5] keep returning to Heidegger? Probably because his ideas have a certain resonance with us as people living in the exhausting modern world. It’s easy to see that we genuinely do immerse ourselves in distractions that keep us from thinking about the reality we’re dealing with; our experiences are rarely unmediated, whether it is because we are continually viewing things through our phone’s cameras or reacting to things online rather than engaging with them in real life. Being and Time was written in 1927, but it still feels very contemporary and relevant. As an environmentalist, I wholly support the idea that people need to get more in touch with nature in order to get more in touch with their authentic selves (at one point, Heidegger recommends taking long walks in the country). As a specifically difficult text, it also probably engenders a certain amount of satisfaction in the readers that leads them to want to talk about it, which may also account for some of the fascination. Or, quoting Rothman again, “You don’t spend years working your way through “Being and Time” because you’re idly interested. You do it because you think that, by reading it, you might learn something precious and indispensable.”

Heidegger also has the advantage of having been defended, pretty ardently, by Hannah Arendt (this is the complicating part of his biography), who was herself a pretty legit philosopher and also a German Jew. She was also a student of Husserl’s who briefly studied under (and had an affair with the married) Heidegger before completing her PhD in 1929 (Germany was a pretty cosmopolitan place at the time); she then fled Germany in 1933. She defended him post-war, even knowing that he had been a Nazi. This is sort of where his biography gets tricky, because both their relationship and the extent of his Antisemitism weren’t really known about until after his death. He also wrote some stuff in his last book, Only a God Can Save Us, that suggested he was at least disillusioned with Nazism by the end. Of course, with him being dead for like 40+ years at this point, we can’t exactly ask him to weigh all of this and explain, and even if we could, what credence could we attach to his explanations?

Is Heidegger really such an important part of the history of philosophy that we need to keep talking about him? This question comes up a lot when dealing with former Nazis, and in a lot of cases the answer has been, “No, we should chuck the Nazis out”–but coincidentally, this seems to be the choice when the results of whatever research they were doing is rubbish. For example, the medical community doesn’t pay any attention to what Mengele did[6]. On the other hand, Wernher von Braun actually…designed the Saturn V rocket. So, you know. In a broader sense, this is a question that comes up again and again with reference to what has been termed “cancel” culture, whereby a mob will publicly shame someone, typically a celebrity, for real or imagined crimes, and then basically try to ignore that person, cutting them out of society. Does the person get to resume their livelihood? When, if ever? No one is quite sure yet.

For me, the question could be framed more specifically as “Why do I continue to return to Heidegger?” There are ultimately a few reasons. First, there is something compelling about this tiny piece of his philosophy that speaks to me, just like it speaks to so many others. Second, I take a perverse delight in co-opting the philosophy of someone who would have been unhappy about the idea–Heidegger blamed a lot of the modernization he hated on Jews, and saw them as “uprooted from Being-in-the-world”–i.e., incapable of authenticity (Rothman’s quote and summary), so for a Jew to demonstrate the same anxieties and concerns with modernity that he does has a certain ironic appropriateness. Drawing him providing advice to me, someone he probably would not have had time for in life, is extremely funny to me. Third, I like to use him to remember that even smart people can be seduced and make extremely terrible decisions, and that it is a good idea to stop and think things through once in a while.[7] Reading more about him, Heidegger is basically the banal kind of evil you meet every day, a bureaucrat looking for an edge more than a guy personally shooting babies, just rules-bound enough to make life a little more difficult for everyone. But at the same time, I have to feel like maybe there aren’t any innocent Nazis, just like there aren’t any good cops.

But. More and more, watching the George Floyd protests, I’m reminded that a lot of normal people in Germany were probably like Heidegger–secure in their privilege, and not very brave. No one, on a day-to-day basis, stands up to the police, because there’s no accountability, so people have literally taken recordings of people getting murdered in front of them and yet done nothing to intervene with the actual murder. I don’t know if we can exactly blame anyone for not wanting to put their own lives on the line; in part, perhaps it’s a demonstration of how afraid people are. The cops aren’t going to come over here and start busting heads, so we can film them, but if we try to intervene, well–who knows what amount of restraint they’re willing to exercise. (Having written this and then watched a week of protests, I can tell you the answer is “none”–it doesn’t matter who you are, the police will beat you if you get in their way.) You might have called these people collaborators in Nazi German, but looking at the way people in the US have been about, for example, the Trump Concentration Camps at the border, ICE abuses, the long-time abuse of civilians and especially Black people by the police, etc., etc., I think that might be a little strong. Collaboration implies active participation or approval in some way. Heidegger was, arguably, in the weakest sense, a collaborator. Instead, I think we could say that these problems are so big, pervasive, difficult, and frightening that instead of facing them (for longer than a few news cycles), people tend to retreat into das Gerede–the chatter that distracts us all from the Real. Now that the typical outlets of das Gerede (Twitter, Instagram, FB, Reddit, Imgur, etc.) are all full of images of protest and conflict, we have nothing to distract us. The problems will be faced; they must be faced.

Whenever big protest movements come up, people seem to think in terms of the things they would lose were the movement’s ideals to be enacted, both explicitly and not. Defund the police? Then who will find our stolen cars? Give women rights over their bodies? Then how will we be able to keep them powerless at home? If I told you to stop teaching Shakespeare, you might rightly protest that there would be a huge gap in the curriculum, leaving out some of the greatest works of literature in English. But because any class has a limited number of hours per week, limited weeks per semester, and students have a limited number of semesters in the time they spend at school, leaving things out can also offer the opportunity to add things in that are now overlooked. Already any philosophy curriculum suffers from history–there are so many philosophers from Thales onward. Who could we include if we didn’t spend time on Heidegger? What level of excellence would it have to attain to be worth the trade off? 

There’s a kind of false argument people often bring up when affirmative action comes up that suggests that if you decide you’re going to try to hire someone nonwhite, someone nonmale, you’re somehow giving them the job out of pity, because they couldn’t possibly just be the best candidate for the job. But I think one thing we’ve learned is that they often are the best candidate, and without diversity initiatives we would have overlooked them and hired another mediocre white guy. So I want to start a diversity initiative in philosophy, and make the claim that just because there are a lot of smart white guys, maybe there are some philosophers who also have interesting, illuminating, even genius things to say who are different from the milieu. This is my modest proposal–no matter how much we are willing to smooth over Heidegger’s crimes, no matter how much of a singular genius he may be (and I think more and more that this is a myth, there is no such thing as a singular genius), maybe we could do better.

It has been difficult for me, sitting at home, to not be able to protest. I feel like words are no longer useful (who needs another think piece? The answer is always “no one”), but words are all that I have to give (I mean, you can give money too–see this next footnote for some resources[7]). Words about the way philosophy is studied are the smallest potatoes imaginable; it’s just an area I feel like I have a little bit of something to say about that maybe other people aren’t already talking about in a better way. So I press on against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past.

Join me next time, we’ll do Fanon.

Citations:
In addition to Joshua Rothman’s article linked above, this essay benefited from:
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Heidegger
Martin Heidegger on Wikipedia
Heidegger and Nazism on Wikipedia
Hannah Arendt on Wikipedia
Hannah Arendt on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The title is from Amanda Palmer’s album There Will Be No Intermission, aka the album most likely to make me break down in sobs in front of my computer. Saddest song. Favorite song. 

[1] After I started working on this, I realized I had a lot to say about the “canon” of philosophers as taught in normal classes (or even as philosophy afficiendos, the philosophers we most pay attention to), who are pretty much exclusively white and male until you get into the late 90s and after, and then still like 90% white and male, as well as the deficiencies of my undergraduate education in general. But this essay is already over 2,000 words long, so I have not said every thought on the matter. 

[2] Other major phenomenologists include Hegel and Kant.

[3] I took mostly classes on Philosophy of Science, so studied philosophers like Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Godel, as well as a fair amount of Plato. So it’s possible they were doing classes on Heidegger and I just wasn’t interested at the time. Side note–other major philosophers mentioned here who are not being taught: Husserl and Arendt, both of whom were Jewish. And I do not recall reading any texts by major philosophers of color during my tenure there (we barely read any women–only in my ethics course, really). Side side note, it’s interesting how almost every concept in philosophy is attached to the person who thought it up with the exception of the trolley problem, which is very widely known but most don’t know it as the brainchild of Philippa Foot. Interesting.

[4] Just kidding, we’re not rivals. They’re great.

[5] Rule one: thou shalt stir up benign controversy so people will cite your paper

[6] This is what I have been told, anyway. I have not been able to discover any articles with a cursory search.

[7] It’s worth noting that Heidegger’s disenchantment did not come from, like, the mass murder parts of the Nazi philosophy, so even smart people can make relatively huge errors in judgement.

[8] Free the 350 Bail Fund is the bail fund for Madison, WI. And this site lets you split a donation among several different worthy organizations. And there’s always the ACLU.