Eyeheart Everything (19 page)

Meanwhile, another thing happened entirely without me: Print On Demand. The publishing world has struggled for years now with how to love this bastard child of printing and the Internet, but I think it is the raddest thing ever. Basically, you can upload your book document digitally to a great big photocopier in the cloud, where robots hot-glue the covers so you don’t have to. I positively would not have bothered printing my own book in the middle of the night at Kinko’s, surrounded by muttering conspiracy theorists, sleepwalking office assistants and festive but foul-smelling methadrine addicts, if POD technology had existed in 1999.

(If I seem to harp on the hot glue, it’s because I have suffered enough hot glue burns in the last ten years to cover most of my body. The seven hundredth book is finished and I’m not doing that any more. A hundred of something is a limited edition; seven hundred is a minimum wage.)

Today, POD technology is enabling droves of young, headstrong geniuses, who lack editors or even proofreaders, to publish their brilliant, flawless first novels without even lifting a stapler. This is both good and bad; some of these people really ought to wait. But who am I to tell them so? In the area of Not-Self-Publishing, I have zero credibility. It seems the printed word has simply broken free of parental supervision for the time being. That will be awesome and that will suck. My one piece of advice for the brave new wave of POD self-publishers is: don’t forget the barcode.

This glossy new edition of EYEHEART EVERYTHING feels slightly bourgeois, but it’s now distributed via major catalogs, it can be shipped overnight (if you’re really that desperate), it’s more correctly spelled than ever, has much finer registration and no longer triggers airport metal detectors. Also, the story “UHF” now includes most of Dave Eggers’ suggested improvements. I love to make beautiful things, and I truly believe that the POD edition of EYEHEART EVERYTHING is the loveliest thing POD can produce. Plus, it remains an excellent tool for stabilizing a wobbly table.

But you may have to take my word for that; you may in fact be reading these words on a digital e-book reader, or a super-intelligent telephone, or a beam of pink light that implants short stories and medical advice directly in your brain. The future will be full of crazy stuff like that! I would never discriminate against your preferred book-input port. Please just know that there was once a time when people made books with their hands, out of paper and ink, and handed them directly to one another, and read them with their eyes, and held them to their hearts. It was sweet.

- mykle hansen - September 15, 2010 -