Ranked 1,106,125 at Amazon Dot Com

by Michael K. Pastore

For most writers, the writing life is a never-ending struggle, a struggle of continuous risk, continuous learning, continuous work. Always writing, always rewriting, always waiting for the break, knowing that the break might never come. "Writers don't have lives," wrote Norman Mailer, "they sit around in little rooms all day and write." What happens when we emerge? Idealistic and impractical, with far more sensitivity than sense, we bang our heads against the walls of the commercialized world.

A rough scream surged from the depths of my astounded soul. My wife rushed into the room with a phone in her hand, ready to dial 911. But what ambulance could give first aid to outrage? What physician could cure disgrace? I sat staring at my computer screen into the website of Amazom-dot-con, the world's largest on-line bookstore. Quickly I had found my five books listed there. Underneath each listing, the books had been infamously ranked.

"Look at this!" I shouted. "A new ranking system! Books rated by popularity, like contestants in a beauty pageant! It's a disgrace to Literature!"

Out of Amazom-dot-con's database of more than 3 million items, my "best-selling" book had been ranked near the bottom, at 1,106,125. Which meant that 1,106,124 of Amazom's titles were selling more copies than mine. And my newest book, You're Ugly and Your Mother Dresses You Funny, was not even ranked at all. Amazom-dot-com had sold not even one copy since the book appeared in March.

By listing millions of titles that are passed over by the chain bookstores, Amazom-dot-con was doing a great service to thousands of small presses and their authors, who otherwise would not so easily be known. This kind of database of millions of published books -- that before Amazom was an expensive private database, only affordable for libraries, institutions, and professional researchers -- was now available to everyone, from the Web, for free. Free publicity worldwide. From an author's and a publisher's perspective, not to be listed in Amazom's database would be unthinkable.

But Amazom giveth, and Amazom taketh away. For books published by small independent presses, the Amazom ranking system is a guillotine. In the depths of my imagination, I could hear the dirges playing, and see the casket of my books being lowered unceremoniously into a shadowy grave.

I was rankled that the new book had not been ranked. It meant that I had spent countless hours writing a worst-seller. And I was miserable about it, and there was nothing that could be done. I spent a lovely day devoted to sulking, brooding, cursing the enemies of Art. Who was I to be neglected in this way? Henry Thoreau -- who returned to live in his mother's house after a glorious existence at Walden Pond -- had to earn his living making pencils and doing odd jobs. Herman Melville's funeral was attended by only five persons. Walt Whitman lived most of his life as a poor man, ostracized by the literati and called "a pig rooting among garbage." Were my ideas so radical that I should join these greats and be so thoroughly ignored?

You're Ugly and Your Mother Dresses You Funny was a very simple book. What I had written had been said -- by other unfashionable writers -- many times before. When working with children, adults should never resort to using bribes, rewards, threats, force, or punishments. Children are naturally kind, naturally creative. Instead of denying children their childhood world of play -- and then punishing them because they act like children -- grownups need to be re-educated, to learn how to nurture and optimize the child's creativity and kindness. But the "popular" books on the subject give readers the quick and easy solutions that provide only temporary relief, at best. The popular books say: Tell the child to do something, and if he doesn't do it, then punish him. Or: Offer her stars, and toys, and cash if she stops hitting her sister and gets her homework done. In my experience, these approaches are tremendous mistakes, mistakes that most of the world calls wise.

So tell me, I asked my self, what can an artist do? Write what's in his soul and get neglected, or say what people want to hear and be paid well and praised?

"Michael!" shouted the Mother. "We were just going to call you! Congratulations on selling so many books!"

"What do you mean, Mom?"

"Last week, your brother gave us his old computer. Your father is a genius -- he figured out how to plug in the immodium, so we can connect to the Interweb."

"And you found --"

My mother's voice gushed with pride. "We found your book and the number of copies they sold. I wrote it down: 1,106,125! Did you mail all those books yourself? How did you lick all the stamps for the postage?"

There's never a hole to crawl into when you really need one. I took a deep breath and wondered whether to stab my mother with the heartbreaking news. To be or not to be. Not yet.

"I have a very fast tongue, Mom. What other valuable discoveries did you and Dad make on your journey across the Web?"

"I wouldn't touch the mouse," she said, "it looks like a real mouse. But your father's not afraid. He typed in your name and found your books. And your new book is selling so fast that they can't even rank it on the charts!"

Morris Bishop's poem came home to my mind: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. But after we've practiced awhile -- How vastly we improve our style!"

I have a few qualms about lying to strangers, but I never, never ever, lie to my family, to my readers, or to my friends. (And the trouble that this truth gets me into is almost indescribable.) Fifteen nanoseconds of fleeting fame expired. It was time to undeceive.

I asked my mother to listen with her complete attention. I explained that the Amazom-dot- con ranking system meant that I was buried near the bottom of the heap, not dancing on the top.

"That's a horse of a different feather," the Mother said. "Cast your pearls before swine, and nothing shall be impossible unto ye."

A flash of perplexity resounded in her voice as she asked: "How come a big bookstore like that can't do a better job of selling your books?"

One of those elemental questions that can only be discovered by young children and by mothers of grown men. I told her about Thoreau's motto: "Rather than love, than fame, than money, give me truth." I explained how my writing was not designed to please and pacify the millions, but to inspire one person to see things in a whole new way. And these kinds of ideas were rarely popular, and the artists who transmitted them in their art were sometimes persecuted, usually ignored, and always misunderstood.

Was I a lousy writer who deserved to be ranked on the bottom of the bottom? Or could it be that I was one of the undiscovered souls that some day would be recognized? Time would bury me or reinvent me.

The Mother listened, the Mother understood. And in that moment of dialogue I grasped how I could free myself from my despair. I would fight this nonsense by nonparticipation. This week I would telephone the CEO of Amazom-dot- con. I would explain how the ranking system promotes the decline of quality literature, and discourages experimenting with new styles and new ideas. I would tell him he had a choice: He could either remove the ranking number and the "not rated" label underneath my books, or he could remove my name and my five titles from his database.

Then I wondered this: What great effects would ripple through our culture if everyone rebelled by nonparticipation? You don't like violence on TV? Then nonviolently disassemble your television. Think it's cruel to slaughter animals? Then become a vegetarian tonight.

It might be that, when we think about solving the problems in our world, we wait for help too much, we depend too much on forces from the outside. "If the soul within us does not change," wrote Nikos Kazantzakis, "then the world outside us will never change." Begin with yourself. Trust yourself. Without imposing these on others, live by the highest principles you can conceive.

All this I told to the great Mother. Full of tenderness she said, "Do what your heart tells you, son. First the world will fight you, and then they'll come around to your side."

The sea of faith. I asked the Mother if she believed that greed can be transformed by integrity, if falsehoods can be banished by sincerity, if faith can be rejuvenated by the heart of love.

"Let's hope for that, son," the Mother said with a colossal sigh. "And let's hope it will be soon."