Author

Receive a mass email from my previous boss; he is advertising his two new books.

I shall leave aside my puzzle on to whom the books would benefit, a concern that I discussed several times in this blog. The pyschological fact is: Writing a book of mine is one of the most common dreams that people have, and highly intelligent or successful people are not spared.

Alas, the dream is now more easy than ever to fulfill. A number of word processing software are free, and it is not that difficult to find a publisher to put your work in press - provided that you could afford a small sum of money. (Well, I have some experience with the last point after I becoming a journal editor some years ago.)

And Vivian always reminds me that you could always publish on-line.

The real problem is, of course, the more easy to get a book published, the less serious the authors are. For some gourmet readers, it is indeed quite a torture to visit large book stores and try to discern which few are worth thumbing through.

PS. I won't be too critical. Many of you may know I write a small electronic book on my own specialty.