A VERY IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE!

Status: Living with the in-laws. (Week 10)

Watching: Nothing.

Listening to: Recorded Music.

Reading: A bunch of mangas.

TOPIC: RABID FAN BASES

While I still have the strength and energy to type this out (sick once again--due to stress and a lot of other factors in my life), I wanted to touch base on the rabid fan issue.
Yes...

The RABID FAN.

Recently classified by scientists as an offshoot of the Homo Sapien race of mammals--rabid fans are an eclectic group of harbingers whom have this little nifty power to make their cousin species' sick with aggravation and deep-seeded annoyance

Why?

Because rabid fans can.

Their unique power structure stems from their obssessed love for any particular book or fad which has consumed their sad little lives--which ends being very badly for them.

They cannot discern reality from fantasy--having hooked onto the idea that their target in question will somehow respond and give back what was stolen from them in the first place:

Their lives.

How can you spot a rabid fan a mile away--or anyone else showing symptoms of unnormalcy?

A rabid fan's behavior is a dead giveaway. If they are acting completely out of character or seem to be fixated on something beu-faux specific...?

Steer clear of them and their little armies of gnawing teeth and explosive anger.

You don't want to get them angry. Not one iota.

They seem to believe that whatever made them rabid in the first place, might reciproctate and give them their undivided blessings in retrospect.

By saying, "Thank You!"--for hanging on and making the target's life all that less enriching and more self-important.

Rabid fans can be found dwelling in special groups, borrows, or tidy little holes with chains of flowers and other fauna designed to enhance their little abode--while showcasing a lot of their choice items which is the soul reason why they are rabid in the first place.

Rabid fans are easily spotted by their sharp claws, gnawing teeth, beady little eyes, and choice apparel reflecting why they are so rabid in the first place.

It can be a phrase, a word. a singular title, or even a picture of their dwelling fixation and undying love.

To say something bad about the rabid fans' target of affection (or love) is to invite disaster.

In such dreaded scenarios, the offender is usually found with their arms and legs ripped off at the seams, their impersonables torn completely away from their bodies and their clothes left tattered and in shreds.

In some documented cases, rabid fans have been known to take a trophy part of their targeted aggression and have it on display for the whole entire world to see.

Why?

Rabid fans don't like their god or goddess taken down a peg or beaten into a nice and juicy pulp.

So they have been known to congregate into tightly woven circles; throwing up all kinds of deflector-shield technologies in order to preserve or protect The One from his or her untimely critics or flame-bots.

Rabid fans often have been reported to not have much of a social life and one has to wonder if personal hygiene or grooming is ever required.

So far...

Scientists the world over have yet to confirm or document the inner workings of a rabid fan--only suffice to say that without some on-hand experience in dealing with them...?

All that is written here is pure speculation and shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt--for fear that angering these undomesticated rabid fans will somehow trigger and emotionally aggressive response.

So, the next time you run into a rabid fan or their base, please, please, please...!--give them a wide berth and go about your own lives.

If you ever value them.

End documentary.

'Potter' publisher looks to promote next big thing

Status: Getting the storage unit and should start moving stuff over the next few days up until the first part of next week. (In theory.)

Wrote a little bit more on The Vampiress Hunter, but I plan on shifting to a little bit on The Price of Freedom and Stories of the Dead Earth.

Watching: Nothing.

Listening to: Nothing.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 555.

TOPIC: SOMETHING TO IRRITATE ME WITH EVEN MORE!!!!

Since Harry Potter has passed on, Scholastic has decided to try for something else with all the glitz, glitter, and endless migraines for people like myself whom are sick to death over the hype of Harry Potter, Twilight, and now this "39 Clues" saga.

Is it me or does this remind you of the days when reality shows started to be up and coming and then suddenly...everyone wanted to do it???

Because of Harry Potter, publishers have been milking this grandiose idea that people will be turned on by the thought of extravagant series that will wow the mass and woo the readers--and I'm just like: "Please...if there is a god out there...? Have him/her/it--shoot me!!!"

Put me out of my fucking misery...that's all I ask.

Getting traditionally published just isn't the same anymore. It really isn't.

It's now become a place where you have to come up with these asinine sagas that will grip the publisher, enthrall the target audience and bore normal people like me...? TO FUCKING DEATH WITH ALL THE OVERBLOWN HYPE!!!

(And here I thought Twilight was bad enough? SM's rabid fan base is getting their heart's desire by having Twilight out on the big screen this December 12th. But I don't expect it too all that well. The fall line up for this year's closing movie saga is piss poor and wanting. There's just nothing there to watch!)

So glad that I don't have to deal with the mainstream anymore. I'll be even more glad when the day comes when we don't have to become traditionally published just be called an "author".

But that's me. I still have a lot of writing to do--but not this month. It could be early next year when I start up again for real. (If things don't work out as well as I had hoped. We still haven't found a place yet. Housing's taking its sweet-assed time--despite our many unreturned phone calls--and the choices to pick is relatively slim to none. We may still end up having to get rid of all our animals. (Simply because--looking around--there is less space to camp out and nowhere to go. Everything's too overdeveloped.)

Anyway...here's the article.

***

NEW YORK - On Sept. 9, the U.S. publisher of "Harry Potter" will premiere a highly ambitious series with a mystery ending for readers and a couple of puzzlers for the industry: How big is the market for a multimedia story — and can a phenomenon be conceived by a publisher rather than created by the public?

"The 39 Clues" is a planned 10-volume set about young Amy and Dan Cahill and their worldwide search for the secret to their family's power. The first book, "The Maze of Bones," is written by Rick Riordan of "The Lightning Thief" fame and has an announced first printing of 500,000. Steven Spielberg has already acquired film rights to the series.

Designed for boys and girls ages 8 to 12, each book will have a different writer, including such best-sellers as Gordon Korman and Jude Watson. Backed by a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, "The 39 Clues" also features game cards, a contest with a $10,000 first prize and a sophisticated Web site that includes games, blogs, videos and thousands of pages of background.

"The word we always used was 'groundbreaking,'" says Scholastic executive editorial director David Levithan. "We wanted to be the first out there to introduce this kind of multidimensional thing."

A Scholastic team, led by Levithan and including about a dozen editors, thought of the series about three years ago, working from the idea of a treasure hunt. The essential outline, including the ending, was set by the publisher. Authors were asked to fill in the details, taking a thread, as Levithan describes it, and turning it into a blanket.

"It's a different kind of challenge," Levithan says. "To use a movie analogy, each director of the 'Harry Potter' films brings their own voice and their own vision to what J.K. Rowling has done. You still feel there's a consistency there, and part of the fun is seeing what they add to it."

Scholastic quickly decided that "The 39 Clues," its title an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps," would make an ideal multiplatform event. Readers might check out the Web site, just as kids who love online games might then turn to the books. A recent study by the American Library Association revealed that many librarians already use games to attract young people and, ideally, get them interested in books.

"I love the gaming aspect of 'The 39 Clues,'" says Jenny Levine, a digital specialist for the library association. "I could also see a lot of libraries forming '39 Clues' clubs the way they've had Pokemon clubs."

Books for all ages often originate with publishers, and countless best-sellers are made through marketing. But a blockbuster, whether "Harry Potter" or Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels, virtually always happens spontaneously.

"Harry Potter" was born in the brain of Rowling and immortalized by millions worldwide. The staff at Scholastic, and the British publisher, Bloomsbury, were sure they had a hit, even a classic, but not a record breaker. Other children's franchises, including "Clifford" and "Junie B. Jones," began simply as books and expanded only in response to public demand.

"I remember when 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' first came out; nobody knew it was going to be so big. That's how it works. You need the kids to grab onto a book and tell each other about it," says Beth Puffer, manager of the Bank Street Bookstore, based in New York.

"I can't think of a phenomenon that was presented that way from the start. This is a very unique situation."

Puffer and other booksellers are enthusiastic about "39 Clues," although unsure whether it will be a sensation. Kimberly Diehm, co-owner of the Neverending Story Children's Bookshoppe in Las Vegas, calls the first volume "a perfect tale" by Riordan, but says she has noticed little discussion about it among her fellow retailers.

Becky Anderson, co-owner of the Anderson Bookstores in suburban Chicago, says she is a little wary of the project's ambitions: "It was presented to us as the thing that's going to replace 'Harry Potter.'" But she was "blown away" by "The 39 Clues."

"We're investing big in this," she says. "I think we see it as a way to get some of those nonreaders into reading."

Other multimedia projects are being developed. HarperCollins is working with former Scholastic executive Lisa Holton on an eight-book series for girls. Dutton, a division of Penguin Group (USA), recently acquired a mystery trilogy by "C.S.I." creator Anthony Zuiker that will be complemented by an interactive Web site. Simon & Schuster will release "Spaceheadz," Internet sites and a series of chapter books co-authored by Jon Scieszka and Francesco Sedita.

"In the past we've made the mistake of demonizing other media, saying all TV is bad, all computers are bad, and all books are good," says Scieszka, appointed last year by the Library of Congress as the National Ambassador of Young People's Literature. "Kids know that it's not true; there is great television and there are great games. I just also want to make sure that we don't forget what's unique about a book, losing yourself in an extended narrative."

"I think it will be fascinating to find out if this is a trend that we'll be seeing a lot more of," says Dutton senior editor Ben Sevier, who added that he and other publishers would be watching how the public reacts to "The 39 Clues."

"It's hard to manufacture a phenomenon," he says of the series. "It's an enormous risk, and it signals an enormous enthusiasm."

Sky

THURSDAY'S LEXICON SOUND OFF.

Status: Writing on Chapter 146 of Starchild Duel. (Page 1,321)

Doing: Writing on this blog; answering e-mails; working out, and well...you know the rest! :0)

Watching: Nothing. Usually during the day hours--up till 5PM; the TV stays off.

Listening to: Nothing at the moment. Have a bit of a crushing migraine at the moment. (Weather changes yet again--forcing yet another sinus cold onto me.)

Reading:

Kushiel's Scion. Page 252.

Star Trek: Crucible: McCoy:-Provenance of Shadows. Page 11.

TOPIC: WHY DO SOME PUBLISHED AUTHORS TREAT THEIR FANS LIKE SHIT?

I know I'm going to get snarked on this one. I mean nobody should go and upset the Miss High and Mighty J.K. Rowling.

But a recent article in the New York Times had me pissed! So I had to stick up for book fans everywhere. If anyone here is concerned about copyright issues and the like--you can go and kiss my red and white butt.

This isn't about author rights and such, but how most fans these days have been treated like crap and garbage for so long--underfoot--by their uncaring authors.

Fans should be treated with respect and like a precious commodity. This article I read just proves that fans are run ripshod over the very people they look up to.

And the question is why? Why are some authors real bitches and assholes about how their work should be perceived and coddled? If they didn't want their fans to get this heavily involved in their work--impassioned would be more like it--then maybe they shouldn't have wrote it!??

Heavens to Mergatroid! Sheesh!

***

The thing about this article is that it reveals a lot of things about the state of mind of an overtly successful author whom pigeon-holed herself into just writing one series based on one concept--and never branched out to distinguish herself into a well-rounded writer over the years.

That's the one thing that has doomed Rowling forever and ever.

But she sits there and complains that someone is taking something from her that's already been a universally recognized and established cult icon.

It's not even close to being true.

Vander Ark's lexicon is nothing more than a dictionary-compendium filled with terms and definitions written about the HP universe--along with some of the book's passages and examples.

A fan's most exalted version of a fantasy guide come to life. And Ark is a die-hard fan. And he did it because he truly loved her work.

Not because he wanted to insult her intelligence.

The only reason why Rowling is trying to stop the lexicon from being published is because she had intended to publish a similar book--but Vander Ark torpedoed that idea out of the water--years earlier than she was expecting.

But also for control of the idea and the notion that she alone has absolute rights to the HP theme--and no one else. (Reason why she's suing RDR Books for copyright infringement.)

Which is why Vander Ark felt betrayed by her in this whole affair.

She's not doing this because she feels "angry" or "outraged", but because HP was a major cash cow for Rowling (to the tune of billions), and she doesn't want to see a penny of that being challenged by some then unknown fan on the internet.

So money is the sole reason for this suit. But it's a bit hypocritical for someone whom is sitting on $300M dollars in assets--isn't going to hungry any time soon--to complain about some poor fan's intent to publish an entertainment lexicon that charges only $24.

But what she wants from Vander Ark is "control". She's okay for the book to be published--but so long as it doesn't take away work that's been already in print for the last decade.

It would be a completely differently story if the man took the HP theme and characters and copy-cat her work on an entirely different level--but he didn't.

The article clearly is trying to make it so that Rowling is the victim here. When in fact, she went and endorsed the site from the get go, admitted freely that she often perused the site to keep her own facts in the books'--straight--and said nothing about keeping the site information from ever seeing print.

Not once.

And the idea that people won't read anymore HP books if the lexicon ever goes out to print is utter foolishness. How many here have read HP more than once? How many of you have read spin-offs, compendiums, and whatnot--on HP alone? Did it stop you from going back to reading the originals?

I don't think so.

That's like saying: "There's hundreds of STAR TREK books out there, I guess I don't need to watch any of the series, now do I? I got all the information I need right here."

Screw that! I'm still watching them! lol

The argument is lame to the extreme. In their minds, it's all about money-making schemes and everyone else--not counting the millions Rowling's raked in in toy endorsements and food-related contracts with major companies here in the States and over in Great Britain.

The lexicon won't take anything away from what's already out there.

What I got from this was some amusement as well: Ms. Rowling being so distraught over the idea that someone was going to publish this lexicon--it gave her writer's block.

On what? A book that can't possibly surpass the overpowering success of HP? This is what I meant by being "pigeon-holed" earlier. If you only write one thing and one thing only, you're not going to be able to branch out to other genre--let alone other books.

Because people will link you to whatever success you had before and they won't accept anything less than that.

That's why I branched out to as many genres as I possibly could. If any one of my books were to make it, I wouldn't be confined to just one book series. I have many to choose from.

Rowling no longer had that luxury. In the 10 years since the first book came out, not one other book came out to compliment HP as a companion book.

And the idea that if Rowling loses this suit, the "floodgates will open" and writers everywhere will "lose control over their material".

Pardon my frankness, but that's literal bullshit.

One? Fan-fiction on HP has been written for the better part of the decade. The moment the book went into extreme-success mode, all bets were off on fans, readers, and writers to not capitalize on the sensation which Harry Potter was generating.

How many spin-offs of HP have their been in the 10 years hence? I lost count.

Two? Since when did Rowling ever give a damn about writers everywhere? Ever since this saga of hers went gangbusters, this woman has been on a vanity trip that would make the 60s love and peace movement look like a cakewalk.

She's been so high on herself, salivating on her on self-importance, that she hasn't cared one whit about the rights of other writers--up until now.

This is all about herself. This is all about her. This act of hers--in this instance--is more of an insult than a nod to us writers everywhere. She's trying to cry victim over an act that is widely as being more asinine than having any real substance or value.

At some point in her life, she's going to have to realize that she has next to zero control over what happens with the Harry Potter books. People are going to continue to prosper off of her work--for good or not.

Three? Unpublished writers like myself have had our works on the net for the better part of the last decade. I'm working on 6 years myself.

So why would the publishing or writing world care about what I put on the net?

I'M UNPUBLISHED. I'M A NOBODY!

Hel~lo people! No one's going to care! (lmao)

And thus far, I haven't lost control over my work. My books are so massive and complex, who the heck is going to spend hours over hours on end--trying to take something that their collective 5th-6th grade education and comprehension skills can't possibly grasp--let alone understand well enough to duplicate and then try to publish on their own accord?

Personally? I'd give out the Freedom Medal if someone were out rightly successful in their endeavor 10 or 20 years down the road. I'd like to shake their hand personally and congratulate them on the one thing which I've been failing at for the last 8 years!

("Hey, buddy? What's you're secret?")

But...? That's not going to happen.

So I'm not worried. Because--again?--no one cares who I am or what my books are about.

And my wife--whom is an avid fan of HP herself (I'm not)--put everything in contrast to this court-room drama by saying this the other night: "Someone should shut the bitch up with a doughnut.“

Sky

FELLOW WRITER HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD

Status: Writing Chapter 27 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: Nothing at the moment. (It's 2AM...what'd you expect?)

Listening to: "Prisoner" by Kevorkian Deathcycle; "Six Feet Underground" by Division

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)

TOPIC: CAN OF WHOOP-ASS ANYONE?

Whether you like him or hate him, this guy (Christopher Rivan) is starting to become one of my personal fan favorites. (And I don't even know him! lol)

But what he said in a group I belong to had me in stitches. :0)

Please note: The group e-mail posted is the same; only the name of the respondee has been changed for privacy reasons.

***

The problem, *****, is that publishers don't DO that.

A publisher is going to accept and print what he thinks he can get someone to buy. You're right about that. What you're missing is what it MEANS.

We've all read, or even written, the dystopian drama about the future society where only the "right" sort of news makes it to press. Basically, that's precisely what publishers today do. If your book doesn't fit into some narrow little mold they think they know about the consumer, then they kick it back to you.We're all getting the pablum writing that the big publishing houses think we want to read. I'll bet Baen rejected ten books TODAY that would make it on your "read until it falls apart" list. You will NEVER see them.

I find that a lot more saddening than personally getting a rejection letter, because I really don't CARE if someone likes or hates my writing. (You pump out 75,000 words a month and you soon stop getting overly attached to your stuff.)

I point out JK Rowling's "paltry" nine rejection letters because I think we can agree that Harry Potter was the most groundbreaking and effective piece of fantasy fiction published in the last decade. Certainly it was a commercial success; Rowling is the first billionaire in HISTORY made purely through book sales. Yet some dumb-ass editors thought THEY knew better than anyone else. Some utter buffoons sat there on their high horses and rejected her.

A few of them even took the time to write scathing letters of rejection to her. I hope they get a paper cut in a really unfortunate location every day for the rest of their damn careers for that. You lose credibility when you complain about not having the time to read all the manuscripts you're sent every day, but then you take an hour and a half to write a letter whose only purpose is to make someone feel bad.I think you missed my point about Dan Brown and Kevin Anderson.

My point was simply this: it irks me to be told by someone that I don't pay the proper attention to details in my query letter, when the same industry allows such colossal blundering from their "established" writers simply because they are established. Writing a bad book is one thing, screwing up major details and releasing press notices that are complete fabrications is something else, something the publishing industry as a whole refuses to accept responsibility for.They make YOU, the person that spent most of your life working on this piece, jump through hoops, beg, plead, and cry, and when they finally deign to accept your work they pay you PENNIES on the dollar. Why?

Two reasons: 1) The publishing industry is NOTORIOUS for being inefficient. Books are destroyed at EVERY bookseller in the THOUSANDS every week. Talk to the employees at the local Barnes and Noble sometimes. At least one day per week they destroy books. What's worse is that on the next shipment there will be another case of the same damn titles!The publishing industry has massive overhead in storage and copyediting. These things cost money, and like any industry, the publisher passes the costs in two directions: to the reader and two the writer.

(When paperbacks were first printed, by the way, they had an estimated lifetime of twenty-three years. Now, with all our advanced technology, new glues, and fibers, that lifetime has been cut to FIVE years. Think about WHY the publisher might want to sell you a book that falls apart in months. Hardcover books published in 1650 are still in libraries, yet my frickin' copy of Terry Pratchett's "The Wintersmith" is already showing cracks in the binding and I got it for CHRISTMAS.)

and 2) It's always been done that way. Some shmucks are so happy to see their name in print that they'll tolerate being paid like they work at McDonalds. I'm not terribly mercenary, BUT, if I write it, then I need to get paid for it. No editor will EVER spend more time working on my writing than I have.The problems with self-publishing are NOT in the costs; you'll easily make more money per book through a vanity publisher than through the most generous traditional house. The problems lie in DISTRIBUTION and MARKETING.

Because you're self-publishing, YOU have to get on the phone and talk to the agents at the commercial buying houses and booksellers. YOU have to talk people into SELLING your book.Do the math, if you spend six months collecting rejection slips, you still haven't gotten paid-- and no one has read your book. If you self-published and spent the same six months marketing your fiction and just TWO booksellers picked it up, you're going to get a check.

Probably not a very large one, but at least you're making SOMETHING besides heartbreak.Now, I'll freely admit that most of my experience and opinion comes from non-fiction. I had a publisher seek me out for my NF. I was considering a vanity publisher at the time, and had the contract in front of me when I opened the email from the "traditional" publisher. Let's see. THEY were going to take copyright and distribution rights away from me.

They were going to pay me a whopping 7% (NF is about twice what Fiction royalties are.) per book, and they were going to lock me into a contract so even if I hated their guts, the rest of the four-book series had to be published through them until 2012. The book would be released in 18 months at an estimated 1% buyback (meaning I'd lose 1% of my royalties to buybacks.) THEY were going to assume all editing-by-proxy- - meaning that once I sent the book in, any changes they made were up to them, and I had no rights or legal say in the matter. (See Piers Anthony and "But What of Earth?" for an example of editor-by-proxy gone completely berserk.)Vanity publisher: I paid them $550 for the initial printing of a 420 page book. POD, so no buybacks and no warehousing. The book was released eight weeks after I sent it in.I market my book myself. I don't even BOTHER talking to booksellers or I could probably triple my royalties, but I don't need to.

I sell primarily through my website, which links to the publisher's ordering form. In the first quarter I made $1700 profit after repaying myself the initial $550 outlay. I also make 50% on books sold through them, and 10% on books sold through other retailers. I also retain all copyrights and publication rights. I can call my publisher right now and tell them I've found a better deal somewhere else.

That's MY book, and I get to decide what happens with it and where it goes. If you're willing to do the legwork yourself then self-publishing is the way to go. If you're not, or you can't get your head round the idea, then go the traditional route. There's no shame in it, in fact there's a lot of pride, but you WILL be part of a process that flatly doesn't give a rat's ass about you or your work. There isn't a single person in a major publishing house that would piss on your manuscript if it were on fire. There are thousands piled up at the door. Yours is just one more, and frankly, if they can get out of reading it somehow, then they certainly will.

Brace yourself, I'm going to get political here.

Traditional publishing reminds me of the media. A lot of people sit there in front of the boob tube and believe what the idjits on CNN tell them. They ignore spins and specific verbiage designed to get them to think a certain way (Ever wonder why our president is RARELY called anything but "Bush" while Hillary Clinton is ALWAYS referred to by title and her husband is ALWAYS called "Former President?" Why are the terrorists and murderers in Iraq placing IEDs in schoolyards called "insurgents? "

Why is it that the Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement to the press in 2002 demanding that major media outlets stop linking the words "Muslim" "Islamic" and "Terrorism" together in articles and stories?) However, if you're willing to do the work yourself, to seek out first or even second source materials, you're connected right now to the largest repository of knowledge and information in mankind's HISTORY.

In three minutes I can tell you whether the main headline on Yahoo! news is accurate or inaccurate, just by running some basic search routines and cross checking my sources. Most people don't do it. They don't take the time to be informed. I don't care whether you're left or right as long as you make the choice for YOURSELF. Most people don't bother, and the media makes it for them.

Which brings me back to the publishing houses. Once you're in, its easy. After you finally scale the wall, the publisher does EVERYTHING for you: marketing, scheduling, printing, release, distribution, promotion, intermedia discussion, etc. You just sit there and collect your (paltry) checks.

You have to do all the work up front. Write the novel, proof the novel, and then submit, submit, submit. It may take years of heartbreak and rejection, but eventually you might break through to the promised land. How about doing that work over a sustained period of time instead of up front? Put the same amount of effort into promoting a book you self-published that you would put into trying to get some jackass from Laser Media to read it.

Work as hard at marketing your writing to the booksellers as you were willing to work to market it to an agent.

I'll bet you make more in the long run.

MONDAY TRIPPIN'.

Status: Currently writing on The Price of Freedom--Chapter 185.

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out.

Watching: Evening News

Listening to: "Halcyon" by Chicane

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey

TOPIC: READING LESS AND LESS?

Government study: Americans reading less

NEW YORK - The latest National Endowment for the Arts report draws on a variety of sources, public and private, and essentially reaches one conclusion: Americans are reading less.

The 99-page study, "To Read or Not to Read," is being released Monday as a follow-up to a 2004 NEA survey, "Reading at Risk," that found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year.

"To Read or Not to Read" gathers an array of government, academic and foundation data on everything from how many 9-year-olds read every day for "fun" (54 percent) to the percentage of high school graduates deemed by employers as "deficient" in writing in English (72 percent).

"I've done a lot of work in statistics in my career, and I've never seen a situation where so much data was pulled from so many places and absolutely everything is so consistent," NEA chairman Dana Gioia said.

Among the findings:

• In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

• Money spent on books, adjusted for inflation, dropped 14 percent from 1985 to 2005 and has fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s.

• The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in reading prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

Some news is good, notably among 9-year-olds, whose reading comprehension scores have soared since the early 1990s.

But at the same time, the number of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly ever" read for pleasure has doubled, to 19 percent, and their comprehension scores have fallen.

"I think there's been an enormous investment in teaching kids to read in elementary school," Gioia said. "Kids are doing better at 9, and at 11. At 13, they're doing no worse, but then you see this catastrophic falloff. ... If kids are put into this electronic culture without any counterbalancing efforts, they will stop reading."

Publishers and booksellers have noted that teen fiction is a rapidly expanding category in an otherwise flat market, but the NEA's director of research, Sunil Iyengar, wondered how much of that growth has been caused by the "Harry Potter" books, the last of which came out in July.

"It's great that millions of kids are reading these long, intricate novels, but reading one such book every 18 months doesn't make up for daily reading," Gioia said.

Doug Whiteman, president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA), said sales of teen books were the strongest part of his business. But he added that a couple of factors could explain why scores were dropping: Adults are also buying the "Potter" books, thus making the teen market seem bigger on paper, and some sales are for non-English language books.

"There are so many nuances," Whiteman said. "Reading scores don't necessarily have any relevance to today's sales."

The head of Simon & Schuster's children's publishing division, Rick Richter, saw another reason why sales could rise even as scores go down: A growing gap between those who read and those who don't. Richter considers it "very possible" that the market is driven by a relatively small number of young people who buy large numbers of books. Test scores, meanwhile, are lowered by the larger population of teens who don't read.

"A divide like that is really a cause for concern," Richter said.

The report emphasizes the social benefits of reading: "Literary readers" are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work.

"This should explode the notion that reading is somehow a passive activity," Gioia said. "Reading creates people who are more active by any measure. ... People who don't read, who spend more of their time watching TV or on the Internet, playing video games, seem to be significantly more passive."

Gioia called the decline in reading "perhaps the most important socio-economic issue in the United States," and called for changes "in the way we're educating kids, especially in high school and college. We need to reconnect reading with pleasure and enlightenment."

"'To Read or Not to Read' suggests we are losing the majority of the new generation," Gioia said. "The majority of young Americans will not realize their individual, economic or social potential."