It’s in the Honesty
September 12, 2010

Sometime this week a donation button will be added to our website and blog page. The decision to do this has been a very long thought-out one and an extraordinarily difficult decision for me to make. But it has been one that I have not shared with anyone else here since I ultimately bear full responsibility for the site.

As most of you probably know, websites that can support themselves are rare. Rarer than good manners these days it seems. Some don’t pay their writers. Many take advertising either in the form of Google ads or banner ones. It has been my decision from day one not to have the former. I find them distasteful and ugly. They will never mar BiblioBuffet. The latter are harder. I have put off the idea of selling advertising for several reasons: I am not a good saleswoman. I am an even worse fundraiser. I can believe in a cause with all my passion yet when it comes to seeking money I break like a delicate flower. I simply cannot ask. Another reason is that I hold journalistic ethics very high. I am a firm believer in the separation of editorial and advertising. Those separators are being eroded in many newspapers that formerly upheld them, some quickly, others slowly and with care. But my standards tend to remain pretty stuck. I don’t want to compromise anything, not just for myself but for you, our readers. We have always striven to give you “writing worth reading” and to only write about “reading worth writing about.” And we believe we do just that.

But the fact is that BiblioBuffet costs money to run. It’s not much, a few hundred dollars a month. Part of the reason it is reasonable is that I don’t pay myself anything. I do pay the contributors—not anywhere near what they are worth—but I do pay them. (Other perks help, I think: the books, and most importantly for good writers, the freedom to write and say what they want as long as they continue to say it well.) There are occasional other costs including web development and upgrades.

So here is what I am asking. I would like our readers to help us continue to publish BiblioBuffet while I continue to search for other, more traditional funding opportunities. Will you help us by sending, either by check or by PayPal, anywhere between one dollar and five dollars per week? If monthly is better, that is fine too. I  need to raise a minimum of $400 each month. If we raise more than $500, I will provide raises to our writers. I will commit to you that none of the incoming funds will be used to pay me or the web developer; they will all go pay the writers and our managing editor. I further commit that when I am able to bring in more money myself to where I no longer need help, I will tell you to stop and remove the donation information from the home page. 

PayPal (we will pay the fee):
internet13 [at] verizon.net

Mail:
Lauren Roberts
P.O. Box 41804
Santa Barbara, CA 93140-1804 

I do not seek a handout. What I do seek is your subscription in the amount of your choosing. If you believe that BiblioBuffet is a good thing and if it enhances your reading life please consider a regular donation. And regardless of how this turns out, let me just say that BiblioBuffet has been the most joyful, wonderful, delightful, fulfilling thing I have ever done. I have met superb writers, worked with the best content editor ever, had interesting correspondence with several readers and lots of publicists, and had a blast doing it all. Thank you, everyone, for everything!

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Book festivals that begin next weekend are spread out pretty much around the country. If you are or plan to be in one of the following areas you may want to add the festival to your calendar.

On Saturday, September 18, the Capital BookFest will be held at the State Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Nearly a dozen authors will be appearing to talk about and sign their books.

Also on Saturday, September 18, the city of Sacramento,  California will host the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair at the Scottish Rite Temple from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. There is free parking, but fair admission is five dollars (mention the website linked here and get one dollar off). Fifty-four exhibitors of rare, used, and unusual books will be there. So should you if you can.

In my neck of the woods, just a bit north, is Central Coast Book Festival, which takes place on Sunday, September 19, in the delightful coastal town of San Luis Obispo, California. There is also a pre-opening reception on Saturday, An Evening with Leigh Ruben, the illustrator and creator of the comic strip, Rubes. Wine and snacks are available, and a book signing will take place after his presentation. Sunday’s events begin with a Character Breakfast in the library from 8:30 am to 9:30 am. Attendees have the opportunity to interact with actors from the SLO Little Theatre who will be dressed as favorite storybook characters; you should dress up too! Tickets for this event are $15. The festival officially opens at 10:00 (and runs until 4:00 pm) where more than sixty authors, publishers, and organizations will exhibit at the festival where workshops and panels, an art show, public readings, book sales and signings, and a comedy magic show will also entertain.

Beginning on Sunday, September 19 and running through Saturday, September 24, the city of Fairfax (Virginia) will be host to their Fall for the Book Festival. This popular book fair offers a full week of literary events including author presentations, panels, talks, book sales, film screenings, children’s activities, a book drive, and much, much more. The authors appearing write in the fields of business & finance, children & young adult, cooking, education, fiction, history & biography, memoir, philosophy & religion, poetry, politics & current affairs, and science & medicine.

The Pub House:
Wesleyan University Press, like all university presses these days, has expanded its lists beyond academia. You’ll find high quality trade publications covering a huge variety of interests including, at Wesleyan, poetry, music and culture, dance and performance, early classics of science fiction, film and television, history, literature, American studies, and local, that is, Connecticut, history and culture. And more. Among their science fiction books is a re-issue of The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (the same writer whose name is unfortunately attached to the infamous annual contest). First published in 1871, this story of an English man who falls into a deep chasm only to find himself in the subterranean world where females dominate, physical perfection rules, and technology is god. It is considered a classic by contemporary scholars, and the introduction places the work in context and describes the author’s interest in the occult. Finding Pete: Recovering the Brother Lost in Vietnam is the story of a woman’s search for her brother, a volunteer with International Volunteer Services in Vietnam, and one of the earliest civilians to go missing there.  Believing that all his letters home had been destroyed in a flood, she was stunned to find 175 of them decades later and discover the brother she had lost. A Spicing of Birds is an anthology of poems by Emily Dickinson with “evocative classic ornithological art” dating from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth  century. Dickinson was a well-known lover of birds, mentioning hem 222 times in her poems, and here thirty-seven of the ones most common to New England are featured. The perfect gift for bird and/or poetry lovers. And now the press is currently offering a 30% discount when ordering through their secure site. If you do this, enter the code W301 to get it.

Imaging Books & Reading:
Reading horror stories is not for everyone. But if you do like them be sure to hang onto your hair tentacles.

Of Interest:
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project, an archive of influential American cookbooks from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, was assembled by the Michigan State University and Library, is part of the Library of Congress now as part of its Digital Strategic Plan. The purpose is to collect and preserve “an ever-increasing amount of the world’s cultural and intellectual output . . . in digital formats [that] does not exist in any physical form.” Websites are added based on the selections by their recommending officers or curators and include but are not limited to United States government (federal, state, district, local), foreign government, candidates for political office, political commentary, political party, media, religious organizations, support groups, tributes and memorials, advocacy groups, educational and research institutions, creative expressions (cartoons, poetry, etc.), and blogs. You can search the cookbooks by date, interest, or simply alphabetically, or browse the gallery of antique cooking utensils and kitchenware.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren