Being A Big Picture Person

Years ago I was fortunate enough to meet a very strong-minded woman.  She was from the south and didn't have the benefits lots of spare money would have afforded her, so I don't know if she even managed to go to college, not that I think much of that at this point.  She became a flight attendant.  This is a woman a terrorist does not want on his flight.  Susan is the kind of person who would cut a small hole in the fuselage and push him out like a rope of sausage.

Beyond all that was memorable, she always used to say "Be a big picture person."

I suppose it's hard to say look at all the great opportunities in publishing, when in your own little legacy publishing world, it's crumbling, collapsing and falling apart underneath your desk.  Good people are going to suffer.  Tina Brown and Ariana Huffington are not going to suffer.  Diane "It's Not Raunchy Enough" Reverand is not going to suffer.

Boo hoo.

What brought this on?  I read an article by some guy saying not only publishing is dying, books are dying, too.
How stupid is Jeff Bezos for bothering with the Kindle Fire when books are dying?  Books are dying because people want free content.  Well, I want free content too.  And maybe it can be free. 

If people won't pay for books some other way to pay authors will be created.  I don't object to advertising in my books.  I don't object to someone paying me to write. 

Big publishing?  What does that have to do with me?  In the big picture, the world is open to me.

(Photoshopped by me, of course)

By Zombie at yesterday's Occupy SF protest