Game Changer: Running Down a Dream

"It was a beautiful day,

The sun beat down,

I had the radio on,

I was driving."

I was driving through Western New York with my sister, on my way to visit dear friends who had recently relocated to the Finger Lakes. It was one of those crystal-clear days where the foliage is blindingly green (especially to Colorado eyes) and the sky a deep blue comparable to the one in Boulder this morning. The road twisted and turned among the hills and a gentle creek, and as we rolled along I reminded myself to take a moment to be conscious of the beauty around me. 

A moment though, and no more: I had publishing on my mind that day, and a perplexing problem that I was trying to think through. Having just returned from a year in Russia and the first Running The World research leg, and deep in envisioning the project as a book, a guide book, I was staking a lot of my future on this really big business going my way. Unlikely in the best of circumstances, and that day an email from an industry insider was sending off alarm signals in my head about the future viability of publishing companies.

"Brit," I said to my sister after an extended silence. "I bet you anything that, within two years, Amazon's going to be a publisher."

I was wrong about the two years, but right about a whole lot of other things, many of which you can learn about in this Fresh Air interview with Ken Auletta. E-readers have already rocked the publishing industry, and they're only just starting to roll out on a larger scale. This has important implications for traditional publishing houses as the method of content production and distribution changes radically from what it once was. In short, the outlook isn't brilliant for major industry leaders.

But it's awesome for writers.

After all, for a simple runner with a small endeavor whose success is not dependent on the whims and fancies of publishing houses of yore, the possibilities of production, the means of distribution, and the ability to instantly access an audience, this is a game-changer. The ability to produce, market, and profit one's own content on a large-scale, and even successful basis, is still difficult to wrap one's mind around. For a long-time writer who has too often offered up her hopes and manuscripts to the US Postal Service in a manilla envelope, and paid the $12 to whisk it away Priority to Publishing House X, and waited for the inevitable return of the self-addressed envelope along with a rejection stamp, the feeling that one's own potentials and future success is in one's hands is, well, a dream. A dream that could be run down and caught.

I remember that drive through New York. I remember feeling like I had an idea at that time, but I didn't really know what it was.

With every day that Blaze Travel Guides gets closer to launching, I get a better picture.