........................................................................................ - a weBlog by Snowy and me.

Friday 23 March 2012

Vanity Publishing

used to be a cottage industry
where small printing firms
bought advertising space
in semi-literary magazines,
to lure authors without agents
into believing that their talent
was worth the price
of the private printing their book.

It now means micro-talented youths 
who to prove that they have survived
been extruded through the mincer of fame,
extract more money from their fans,
and prove they have a personality
append their names to ghost written tomes
that pretend to be their lives.
Where the writing loses all the life
there was in it, before it is typeset.

Pity the trees pulped for such ventures,
pity the wildlife the trees no longer support.
Modesty is their undoing.

Pity the pseudo-sincere charity shops
that try to resell these mis-begat books,
now unsaleable, that devalue the charity
that they are for. The ghost writer industry
can move on, find others to write for
as fame becomes vanity
and the cause for further writing.

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