"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"

A message about the challenges we all face, from the publisher of Blue Ear Books.

Dear friends,

This past week’s news about the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post refusing to allow those venerable newspapers’ editorial boards to publish endorsements of a presidential candidate felt to me like a defining moment, a Rubicon. By the time you read this, more than enough eloquent outrage about it will have been expressed by others, and I won’t reiterate any of that, except to endorse Margaret Sullivan’s use of the adjectives “appalling” and “abhorrent”, as well as this sentence: “This is no moment to stand at the sidelines—shrugging, speechless and self-interested.”

My purpose in writing this letter is to articulate at least glancingly how and why Blue Ear Books publishes books—books in particular—and to address how, and why, we intend to continue doing that going forward, regardless of what the political and/or media situation turns out to be in the United States after November 5 (and January 6, and January 20).

My father used to like to say that in Haiti—where he worked for many years—“If you’re flexible, you’re too rigid. You’ve got to be fluid.” Anymore in the U.S. we have no very clear idea, often from one day to the next, what’s coming next: whether the light we see in the distance is the light at the end of the tunnel or a locomotive hurtling straight at us. So we’ve got to be ready for anything.

My dad also liked to cite Emily Dickinson’s dictum that we should “tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Truth is strong medicine, hard to take straight. That’s why writing and publishing are difficult things to do well, even in better times. Blue Ear Books exists because I believe that reading books—books in particular, because they train our attention in a way news coverage does not—is important to human civilization. “Reading is an act; you do it,” pointed out Ursula Le Guin. You can help civilization keep going just by reading a book! Reading helps us to understand, and understanding should always precede both judgment and action. The difference between me now and my younger self is that I no longer think it’s necessary for me to be the one writing the books, so now I spend most of my working time editing and publishing books by others I feel have important stories to tell.

If you share my belief, then you’re very welcome in the Blue Ear Books community of authors and readers. Over the past quarter century I’ve learned a lot about the business side of book publishing, and one thing I’ve learned is how much can be accomplished on lean resources by a nimble small publisher in partnership with mission-driven, enterprising authors. And the good that’s done by good writing is always mostly intangible—which often means that it’s actually much greater than you or I will ever know.

And that’s why your material support in purchasing books or committing to a $50 or $100 annual subscription goes a long way.

The editors of The Guardian write often about how that estimable news outlet’s journalistic independence is underwritten “in perpetuity” (as they proudly assert) by the sound financial foundation established by the Scott Trust set up in 1936 for exactly that purpose. The viability of Blue Ear Books is made possible, essentially, by the fees that most authors pay me (and soon, as we expand our capacity, one or more colleagues) to edit their books, when editing is needed. Additional financial support from readers helps us go beyond mere viability to wider impact and sustainability. That’s why I’m happy to give my personal financial support to The Guardian, and it’s why your financial support for Blue Ear Books is important and valuable.

The Washington Post’s decision not to take a position on the most consequential presidential election of my lifetime or yours was, clearly enough, dictated or spurred by its multi-billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. If you’re rightly appalled by that, there are things you can do. Among many other things, you can support independent writing and reporting by buying Blue Ear Books books direct from us rather than on Amazon, convenient though Amazon surely is to all of us who buy books and other stuff. You can subscribe to this newsletter. You can buy other books via Bookshop.org instead of from Amazon. None of us is, or should behave as if we are, beholden to Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Elon Musk, or any other billionaire.

Mind you, I’m not telling you not to buy books on Amazon. It’s all too true that more than half of all books sold in the U.S. are sold on Amazon, and Amazon’s KDP print-on-demand system is extremely useful to many independent authors and small publishers. I often find myself advising authors, by way of urging them to be realistic and pragmatic, that the only correct answer to the question “Can I buy your book on Amazon?” is a straightforward, unqualified “Yes.”

But we can function without Amazon and KDP, and Blue Ear Books will be moving in that direction. Our short-term goal—Blue Ear Books as an entity, and every author and reader individually—should be to avoid being fully dependent on Amazon (whose billionaire founder, not to put too fine a point on it, is the owner of the Washington Post). There are, for starters, other print-on-demand suppliers, and Blue Ear Books will be using those.

I plan to begin posting letters like this one regularly, and you can also expect to begin hearing more often from the authors Blue Ear Books publishes. In this moment when we don’t know what’s coming next and can no longer count on the credibility or integrity of storied bastions of the American establishment like the Washington Post, we must assertively claim space for honest discourse and build and maintain—book by book, newsletter by newsletter, conversation by conversation—our own credibility, integrity, and trust in each other and ourselves.

Thank you for your support, and watch this space.

Ethan Casey

Publisher, Blue Ear Books