1) Send-off Dinner. Before I left, Doreen Hulsey and her fascinating family (including longtime piano teacher) invited me for a going away supper to send me off. I know Doreen through the St. Louis Writers Guild and the Ethical Society.

2) Homecoming Dinner. Upon my return, Liz Sommers and her husband Kevin E. invited me to a welcome home dinner. They both worked for the anti-apartheid movement and asked such intelligent questions, listened so intently, and threw in such great stories of union organizing that it made for a rapt evening in Madison, Illinois.

3) Root Canal. Am I crazy? Maybe. But, I'm so grateful that tooth #20 waited a week to send me signals of excrutiating pain. I hadn't been to the dentist since my move from Northern California a year ago June. Finally, I got dental insurance through Authors Guild on the basis of my literary journal publications. It's gonna save me a bundle now! Plaza Dental got me right in and fixed me right up. I like the folks over there. Nice feeling and ambiance. They even let me wear the lead apron for my security blanket. I like the weight.

4) New Review of Sightlines. Gregory Robson, at Resident Media Pundit, posted a review of "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary"

5) Blogging Award? Yvonne Perry's Writers in the Sky honored me with the Brillante Weblog Premio Blogging Award saying,

Janet Riehl's blog http://www.riehlife.com/ has a wide variety of topics as she takes us all over the world with her poetic writing and daily insights. Her literary journey is dotted with photos, clip art, and useful links to other people's work. She has a great list of resources, too! Her blog is interactive and invites a lot of comments.

I investigated a little further and found that the award was more in the way of a game bloggers play...a blogging meme...rather than a full-fledged award. You can read about this in two excellent posts here: Museum of Hoaxes and Heart and Hands.

When I shared this information with Yvonne, she thought maybe I would be offended or she ought to take it off her blog. I said, "No, the award, coming from you, is a real award." It reveals something interesting about the blogging and internet culture...about memes and the awards game in general.

6) Art patronage on the move. Joseph La Marque came over to install the finished mounts for Lloyd Kleine Harvey's delicate and elegant twig sculptures. We are experimenting with ways to make Lloyd's work more stable and attractive to collector's. I think we have some winners here. Joseph La Marque is an artist in his own right, and when he does work in support of other artists, his minimalist aesthetic and knack for the simple solution comes into play wonderfully. We're viewing these mounts as prototypes for Lloyd to use when he exhibits his work with the Regional Arts Commission...and are thinking he might even use the mounts as he's making the work. We'll see what Lloyd thinks soon.

7) Audiobook nearing final stages. "Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music" is now in in the homestretch of applying for mechanical licenses for the music used on the four discs that are still in public domain, copyrighting my father's songs, and making decisions about packaging and quantities. Hoping for a release in early October. We'll see. Scott Kidd was the audio engineer on the album and now is my point person/project manager who's been a godsend. Scott has a compatible way of thinking and working that's pure pleasure.

Family Poetry Book. My father's been busy while I've been gone. Soon he'll be giving me the files for our next book project: "Worth Remembering: The Poetry" which is an anthology of his poetry, family and friends poetry. Poetry books are a bear to do as the must be spaced properly. Oh, for the novels!

And you, dear readers? What are your be-gratitudes?

Hal Zina Bennett is the author of over 31 successful fiction and non-fiction books on creativity, health, shamanism, and personal development. He teaches seminars throughout the U.S. and has support groups for writers in four states. As a creativity and writing coach working with writers, literary agents, and publishers, he has helped over 200 other authors develop successful projects — including several New York Times best sellers and "Oprah" books. His client list has included: Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil), Judith Orloff, Shakti Gawain, Jerry G. Jampolksy, Dharma Singh Khalsa, Stanislaf Grof, Michael Samuels, MD, and many others.

His own book titles include Write from the Heart, Follow Your Bliss, Spirit Animals & the Wheel of Life, Spirit Circle (a novel), and Zuni Fetishes: Using Native American Objects for Meditation, Reflection, and Insight. His earliest success, The Well Body Book, with Mike Samuels, M.D., helped launch the self-help health movement and sold over a quarter-of-a-million copies in six languages.

Hal's extraordinary understanding of the creative process has won him an important place in both mainstream and independent publishing. He lives in a remote area in Northern California (near where I lived when I lived in Lake County). We are fortunate to have Hal with us here today to talk to us about the shift in the 21st century publishing paradigm.---JGR

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Janet Riehl: Hal, as we’ve discussed what’s happening in publishing today—from traditional mainstream publishing to small presses to university presses to Print on Demand (POD) technologies that author-assisted publishing makes use of, you’ve consistently argued that what we’re seeing here is a paradigm shift in how books are made and distributed, and by extension, how each of the players—author, publisher, and so on—are now regarded. Could you say more about this?

Hal Zina Bennett (photo by John Curry)

Hal Zina Bennett: We need to be saying, "Look, technological change has always spearheaded new paradigms in every society they've touched." Think in terms of how the world was changed by Gutenberg's printing press, by the sewing machine, the cotton gin, railroads, the internal combustion engine, the splitting of the atom, chemistry and so on.

Technological change doesn't just change how Bibles are printed, fabric is produced and stuck together, how people move around on the planet, or how we produce energy and manipulate our biology.

Technological change totally changes how we all live, how we think—it produces huge consciousness shifts.

It's no different with Print on Demand (POD) or the digital production and dissemination of the written word. In the world of writing and publishing, POD and ebooks are spearheading huge shifts in our consciousness. Defending these technologies, and independent publishing, as being better or worse than the old paradigm represented by commercial publishing, misses the point by a country mile—or more.

Riehlife: What’s your sense about most of the deeper, more important questions we, as authors and publishers, need to be asking at this point?

Hal: We've got to look deeper at what it means to be able to produce and distribute the written word in these new ways.

We can't just take the position that people took with the advent of the internal combustion engine, who argued in favor of the horse versus the horseless carriage. That's blind and unimaginative. It prevents us from exploring the wider scope of what these new technologies mean to us all. You know, these technologies are not going to go away. In fact, they are growing at a tremendous rate.

We need to dare to be prophetic. How does the technology change society? How is it revolutionizing the way we think and act and feel? What new creative freedoms do these technologies promise? What’s the downside—and I don’t mean simply comparing what’s self-published to what’s published by corporatized publishing companies.

Riehlife: Where does the dialogue need to go to become effective?

Hal: My position is that you've got to shift the dialog entirely, from a defensive posture, of saying indies are "better than," or that commercial publishing has its limits, too, to a more fully proactive position of envisioning a very new paradigm.

iUniverse's Diane Gedyman and Susan Driscol, in their book “Get Published!” have articulated a path that is at least pointing in the direction of the new paradigm.

Trouble is that a lot of people who don't know the realities of commercial publishing are basing their arguments for that old paradigm on sheer fantasies about publishing that way, and most of what's said is naive, uniformed, and mostly silly. Take it from someone who has made an excellent living working in that industry for the past 40 years!

The world is already moving way beyond comparison between traditional commercial publishing ala NYC and these new delivery systems for the printed word! Anybody still caught up in the old defenses of self-publishing versus commercial publishing is living in the dark ages.

Riehlife: What do you see as some of the advantages of this shift in the paradigm?

Hal: At the very least, POD and ebooks democratize the dissemination of the written word, in ways that are probably at least as dramatic as the way that Gutenberg's little invention made it possible for millions of regular people to own Bibles (at the very least) for the first time in human history.

That's a huge shift of consciousness! There are some who still argue whether it's a good thing for people to be reading their Bibles without the "quality control" and the "learned interpretation" of the high priests, of course. I suppose the same could be said for those who argue that putting control of the printed word into the hands of multi-national corporations is a good thing.

Riehlife: There’s currently a debate that we can tag “quality control.” What would you say about that?

Hal: Is it a good thing to let just anybody publish their own books? What about quality control? Do we trust just anyone—rather than Bertelsman (a multi-national corporation) and his ilk—to screen what our society makes available to readers? Is it too idealistic to think that maybe it's a good thing for readers to have more choices?

Riehlife: What kind of trends do you see emerging?

Hal: The road ahead still isn't very clear with these new technologies, but just as with Gutenberg's printing press, the genie is out of the proverbial bottle, swimming around in the ethers, mixing it up in the collective consciousness in ways we are only barely beginning to realize.

Watch carefully! Even commercial publishers are getting into POD to try out new writers, build their backlists and hang onto books whose sales fall below 500 or so copies per year.

As recently as six months ago, Publishers Weekly was predicting that ebooks were just a fad that was withering on the vine, and soon it would go away. Meanwhile, Sony has stepped into the picture with a pretty decent ebook reader and a large program that by now lists even front list books by mainstream publishers. A few months after that Amazon announced its Kindle program.

Amazon has invested over a billion dollars on Kindle, and they've signed up 60% of the big publishers, as has Sony for their ebook reader program. And Amazon also has launched a program inviting independent publishers to join the Kindle program.

Look carefully, There are over a dozen successful ebook distributors around, some of them, like www.ebookwise.com, doing very well with the rather old-fashioned (by now) Rocket ebook and Palm technologies.

And nearly every computer company is now making their aftermarket documentation available in Adobe Reader and Palm formats—with some introducing Kindle and Sony reader formats.

Riehlife: What does this paradigm shift mean for authors and readers?

Hal: It gives a creative boost and new freedom for authors. Readers having a greater range of choices. More widely, the world consciousness is profoundly affected by the explosion of independent publishing that these technologies produce.

Take a look at the parallel changes in independent film-making, made possible by the digital revolution; independent films now dominate that industry.

Similar things are happening in the music industry; the old guard has all but disappeared in the recorded music world.

Will the same picture repeat itself in publishing? I think that corporate publishing will continue to dominate, and that’s okay. But I also see expanding education programs, and independent services such as editing, distribution, and PR, to help authors make the most of these technologies.

Think potential parallels between publishing and the music world—with iPods, etc.—and the independent film world’s Netflix and Spiritual Cinema Circle. Independent distribution is happening for books on the Internet, and I don’t mean just with Amazon. Explore the ebook world on the Internet. There’s a whole world there that seems to be ignored by the media, even the independent media.

I think we’ll always have paper books. I love them, and most of the writers who are around today have a special love affair with printing on paper. It’s not easy to cozy up with an ebook reader, for example, but I’ve got to confess that I have a certain fondness for my “old fashioned” Rocket ebook reader.

You know, there’s something rather nice about lounging in bed late at night, staring into the glow of its screen and reading a good mystery. And in that little handheld device I have, let’s see, ten other books that I can instantly switch to if my interest wanes on the one I’ve been reading. Hmm. You see, those simple pleasures are part of what’s driving the digital revolution.