When Values and Wants Collide

Over the past while, as I've written on this blog of going from one crisis to another, someone has occasionally contacted me to offer help.

Each time, I've felt conflicted about accepting that offer.

Daphne and I began economicus ridiculous for the primary purpose¹ of enlightening people about what life looks like when viewed from the bottom of the poverty well. Our purpose was never to gain sympathy or help for ourselves.

Through our work with WISE, we saw how effective the deeply personal could be in changing people's minds or waking them from apathy. The stark brutal facts of our stories and those of the other women of WISE angered readers to the point of moving some to action. While WISE folded in late 2006 due to lack of funding through Status of Women Canada (thank you, Stephen Harper), Daphne and I didn't fold. Our lives continued as they were, with one difference: our anger was deeper, stronger, and stoked a furious determination not to allow our voices to be silenced. We would continue advocating for change, but now on our own.

On this blog and in our other writings, Daphne and I press on in the same style. We continue to be as brutally honest with our readers, and with ourselves, as we were when we told our stories for the first time through WISE.

Yours truly does not always succeed. I'm the quintessential introvert and baring all leaves me feeling terribly vulnerable and usually shaking until the writing is many hours or days in the past. Still, I expose the deeply personal in order to slam home the message that living like this is brutal and nasty. My writing is always about getting that message out.

When readers respond with offers of help, I reflexively feel that my voice has been diminished or the larger point somehow missed. I know intellectually this hasn't happened with the women whose offers I did accept (and, make no mistake, I've been grateful for the items provided); but I can't help but be apprehensive of the danger of economicus ridiculous no longer being taken seriously because one or both of its writers occasionally gets help from a reader.

I don't know if I've explained this conflict well and fear unintentionally offending people I don't want to offend. But I've decided against accepting help in the future from people who know me only through my writing or online contact.

I understand how people could be moved by some of my recent posts to the point of wanting to help. But I would rather they took what I have written and used it as their impetus to help, perhaps in a similar way, someone they already know or a stranger who lives nearby²; and/or to advocate, or advocate more, for change in all the ways they can imagine.

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¹A secondary purpose behind the blog was to share tips on getting by on next to nothing.
²Always ask if help is wanted before giving it and what type of help is desired. Accept the response without judgement or argument. Many of the desperately poor have the most basic of wants, often unrelated to physical need. A cup of coffee and conversation, for example, could make someone's week, precisely because the coffee is a treat not a necessity, and the conversation validates their humanity. Regardless, you're not obliged, simply in the asking, to follow through and provide the requested item or service.

Shameless Self Promotion

First, it's my birthday today. Sixty years of age. I made it!

Second, my name, the WISE book and economicus ridiculous get mentions in an article today in The Tyee.

The writer has done a good job on the issue. That's no surprise coming from The Tyee, an independent media organization that does British Columbians proud.

Self-Publishing OR How to Avoid Misrepresentation

From an article by Joan Bryden of The Canadian Press, regarding bogus reviews that appear on the cover of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's latest book:

"It is common practice for movie and book promotions to use snippets of reviews that often bear little resemblance to the original critiques."

It is also common knowledge that book publishers almost always have far more control than authors over a book's title, distribution, promotion, cover design and content, and so on. Even what goes between the covers can be, and often is, heavily influenced by a publisher.

Which makes me glad that no publisher got back to me when I was hunting for one for the WISE book.

We ultimately published the book ourselves.

The reviews that appear on the WISE book's back cover are accurate and unsolicited. Further, I'd sought and obtained written permission from each of the commenters prior to quoting them. It never occurred to me to do otherwise.

Despite our being women in the lowest decile of income and locally-bound; despite our having no academic, promotional or other network to tap into; despite our having only electronic means to promote our book, our book more than beat the odds - and we accomplished the feat ethically.

With self-publishing, the situation described in Bryden's article can't happen unless it's intended by the author. As soon as a publisher becomes involved, authors lose much of the control over what happens to their book. They can - and publishers expect them to - promote it at book signings, online, through networks, and so on, but that's about it, unless it's explicitly placed into the contract that the author will have final say over cover design and content.

Compare the Stats: WISE book beat the odds

New readers may not know that I (Chrystal Ocean) was the Founder of WISE (Wellbeing through Inclusion Socially & Economically), a group created for and led by women in poverty. WISE folded in late 2006 due to cuts and changes to Status of Women Canada.

In the short period of its existence WISE changed lives. Its work continues to do so.

WISE's first project had many unexpected and welcome outcomes. They included the 192-page book Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the front.

A book not being part of the objectives for which WISE received its small Status of Women grant, I wrote, designed, published, arranged - and then paid for - printing of the book myself. It includes both the stories of the 21 women who participated in the project and the two project reports: an analysis of the issues and the storytellers' recommendations for change. It made no sense to any of us that our stories never be heard or read by others, except only by the funder.

One thousand copies of the book were sold. Now I learn how very well the book did compared to the number of books produced each year.

According to BookScan, which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books, only 299 million books were sold in 2008 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined. The average U.S. book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime.

Consider these facts:

• The Canadian book publishing market is 1/10^th the size of the US market.
• A book researched, written, designed and published by a woman living in poverty in a small Canadian community sold 1,000 copies.
• The podcast site for the book is approaching 15,000 24,000 30,000 visits.
• Academics regularly use the podcast site for teaching purposes.
• In answer to demand, the book is now selling in electronic form. That is, I'm making available the PDF files, cover and manuscript, that I sent to the printer. (Some people expect me to distribute the electronic form of my work for free. Such thinking suggests a double standard; ask most academics to do that and they'd go apoplectic.)