I'm being Kindle-ized by Amazon.com., so my agent recently informed me.  The good news is that my first book, The Eighth Promise, will be downloadable in about six weeks from their site into the Kindle book pod. The bad news is that the royalty per digital sale is much less than for a real book sale.  I suppose the selection of The Eighth Promise confirms what I've suspected -- that after a year, the book continues to sell steadily although it's not showing up on any bestseller lists to my knowledge.  As my publisher's PR head told me, many books keep selling for years and even decades without showing up on any such lists - and yet kick out bodacious royalties. 

The proof is in the Royalty Check!

I was asked to  churn out an article for AARP that I finally entitled  Under One Roof: Filial Piety- What's Left of It? (And What Is It Anyway?).  What started out as a 500 word assignment on observations of Americans of Chinese ethnicity and filial piety morphed, with AARP's consent, into a survey of Post-80s Generation Chinese friends and university professors.  My  final essay numbered 4,318 words.  Rather than blanching, AARP decided to film me and my Mom and her primary caretaker, my live-in younger brother John, for a video to post to the Magazine's on-line web edition (which would include the full-text article).  We filmed our clip last Thursday on a rare, balmy SF day in three locations.

And then AARP wanted to contact my China based respondents to interview them for another video clip!  They all speak great English I assured them, and so I provided the contact info.  So, let's see how this last global segment kicks in.

But Whooo!!! - did this assignment digitalize and globalize quickly.  I have to figure out a new charging structure, especially for an association with 39 million members, including many of us!

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to appear on KALW's  91.7 FM "YourCall" talk show with Rose Aguilar.  The topic was what national issues should the Presidential candidates address leading to November 2nd?  I quickly pointed out that although flattered to be invited, I'm not a political commentator, or an expert on the environment, gun control, taxation, or any of the usual issues.  In fact, if anything, rather than spinning issues, we need a LEADER who can articulate a new and coherent national paradigm (in old school terms "vision") along the lines of FDR's WPA program and his unrealized American Bill of Economic Rights.  Then I was informed that I'm exactly the type of panelist desired,a  non-political type who is...and here comes the term that stoked my ego enough to agree to appear ---a  "Public Intellectual, tah-tah!"

As I write, my new business cards are being printed up -- "WILLIAM POY LEE, P.I." with a silhouletted trench-coated figure wearing a beret instead of a fedora.

Excised Words & Blogs -- so there seems to be a bit of a disturbance in the RedRoom force field around Censorship. As writers, we are the first line of defense of our Constitution's first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, press, and assembly.  Those guarantees are not only a sword to wield in defense of liberty, but also our shield when others randomly and arbitrarily, without even a "by your leave," excise our well-crafted words.

As an assembly and community of accomplished and thoughtful writers, it would seem that RedRoom management would be committed to the highest standards of freedom of expression.  We all signed a contract (did you get a hard copy?), and so a somewhat vague and arguably legally deficient contract clause hangs over our blogs like the sword of Demacles, quick to excise any member's words. Now,I realize that this is a commercial, for-profit site with venture capital investors who want their return, the sooner the better, and not PEN or the ACLU.  I know that RedRoom is a dot.com and not a dot.org.

Still, we are an assembly of writers by intention and design -  American writers I might add.  The Bush-Cheney and FOX-TV NEWS years notwithstanding, that still means something in this country and throughout the world. 

This high standard of artistic free expression is, apparently, not so meaningful to RedRoom management, and before getting engaged, I do wish to investigate this a bit further to see determine how serious an issue this is.

Perhaps our community - writers and RedRoom managers - would participate in a digital forum of some kind to seek to work out clear guidelines for all concerned?  

Perhaps a simple solution is that we elect a writers' group to vet or reject the staff's recommendations to excise before any action is taken?  I'm sure there's some consensual way to work this out so that everybody's happy and no one's free speech values are trammeled upon.

 So I would urge all of us to do a bit of fun homework towards chilling this tempest in a teapot quickly:

1. View George Carlin's live performance of The 7 Words You Can't Say on Radio. I think that's the title, but close enough to Google it.  It may be on YouTube, too, but airs  on HBO with some regularity.

2. Read, NT Times vs. Sullivan, the best and still most important US Supreme Court opinion on free press.  It's a libel case involving a newspaper and a public figure, but the discussion vividly recites the original intent and the history behind these fundamental democratic values. 

BTW, it is our words, images, film clips, etc.,for  which we are not paid, that add the sole value to this site. So, that gives us a measure of collective might as well as fundamental right.

(C) 2008.William Poy Lee