I just heard (from Tom Hurka) that Bernard Suits’ brilliant book The Grasshopper was turned down by several academic publishes before being taken up by Toronto University Press. One wonders what level of blindness and mediocrity could lead p[eople to make such a decision. It seems that any degree of real originality will meet with rejection by those with editorial power. Lately I’ve found myself complaining about this a lot. A review of my recent book Truth By Analysis contrives to ignore the core of my book, which is very indebted to Suits, preferring to grind ideological axes about conceptual analysis and the supposed merits of “experimental philosophy”. So he is still being neglected by dimwits and ideologues. Depressing. All I can do is recommend the book enthusiastically to anyone with a functioning brain and an open mind.

I wrote the novel Bad Patches back in the mid-eighties on a typewriter. I made some attempts to publish it but no takers. It sat around for almost 20 years. Meanwhile the internet came along and with it ebooks. Recently I had it put into electronic form and then I revised it. To my surprise I discovered it is possible to publish such books oneself through Amazon. So I decided to do that. The service is actually free and the book goes on one’s author page. It can be dowloaded to Kindle or a computer and it can be bought in paperback form. The price is very low. So no need to go via traditional publishers. The only issue is publicity–people need to be told it exists. I’m very interested to see if it finds any readers, and what they think. A commercial publisher has to make a big financial investment to put out a book, so it needs a substantial audience. But a book like mine is unlikely to appeal to a wide audience and might be enjoyed by only a few hundred people. In self-publishing the book I can reach that precious few hundred. This is quite a fascinating experiment in book publication. Let me know what you think. (You can also read the first couple of chapters for free.)