Heather
Hello, and welcome to the Common Stacks podcast. I'm your host, Heather Teysko Common Stacks is a podcast that brings together professionals from within the library world, as well as interesting experts from other professions to engage in discussions around the issues affecting libraries and looking at the ways in which libraries are dispelling the myth of, "well, this is how it's always been done." This week we are talking with Henry Bankhead. He is the City Librarian at San Rafael Public Library. So I first met Henry years ago when he was at Los Gatos and he had just been working on some very interesting projects around community publishing. He was actually named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2014 for his work promoting self-publishing. And I just want to hop right into it with Henry and get started talking about his passion for self-publishing and for supporting indie authors and really having the library be a community hub for people to share their stories and have a place where all of those stories can live and be shared throughout the community.
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Heather
So we're going to get right into it. One thing I do want to mention is that Common Stacks is brought to you by Library Lever. Library Lever is a new kind of library, procurement brokerage launching in June of this year, though, we would love for you to check it out at LibraryLever.com. And while you're there, you can join our new community. It's a new social network. We're just standing up, just for librarians and library professionals to get together, to share and have fun. We really want to try to recreate the feel that you get at a conference where you are both having a fun time in the evening and having casual conversations, but you're also spending your days learning from each other, making connections. So we're building the space where we can all share and learn from each and have fun while we're doing it. It's completely free to join. You can sign up at community.librarylever.com. Or just follow the link on our website LibraryLever.com. Of course, you can also always leave us a voicemail there with show ideas or shout outs to friends, things you'd like to share just about libraries in general. Doesn't matter. You can do that at LibraryLever.com Join the community or leave us a voicemail. So let's get right into it.
Heather
Henry Bankhead, I've known you for a while. And when I first met, you was in the context of eBooks and, that was kind of how, how I think we met was working on some ebook stuff together, and you have done some interesting things specifically you've been a champion of self-publishing. Can you tell me about your championship of self-publishing?
Henry:
Yes. Championship? So yes. Thank you, Heather. I have been a champion of self-publishing and it is interesting to remember when, when just sort of the notion of eBooks was, was kind of radical in a way, but transitioning from that to around the time when I think the iPad came out and Kindle came back, like there was this period, I think in the early two thousands, when we talked a lot about eBooks and ePaper and stuff, and it kind of didn't go anywhere. But when devices started to appear like the Ipad and the first Kindle and the Nook was like considered to be a going concern at the time, it became more relevant. And I think at, at that time, and I'd like to also sort of qualify the self-publishing thing I'm I am, I'm like only interested in ebook self-publishing self-publishing paper books.
Heather:
Wow. That's interesting that you make that distinction.
Henry:
Yes, I am. I am fiercely the only into ebook self-publishing for reasons that I will talk about okay. Because I think that, that it, it is sort of, incalculably different than paper book self-publishing in a lot of ways. And so, you know, the big difference to me -
Heather:
As someone who has published, self-published both ways, I'm going to be very interested to hear what your thoughts on.
Henry:
And I mean, I think an interesting way to look at it, I think is book as, as object versus book, as consumable is on a continuum. And, and I feel like, you know, there are a lot of the stigma related to self-publishing had to do with the sort of control of the press by vested interests, largely circulating around the physical object, controlling these objects, sending them to bookstores this whole supply chain thing. And when you get into ebook self publishing, you can be free of all that. And so for me to be a champion of self-publishing is sort of being a champion of freedom of expression, being able to go directly to customers, not being controlled by some outside force decides what quality is.
Henry:
There's no accounting for taste. A lot of traditionally published books suck, and a lot of self-published eBooks suck, but you know, just the ability to kind of own the marketplace own the means of production straight up marks here. I think that's, that's, that's the sort of brass ring. And so my story is pretty much a story of relationships. So, so after being part of like demoing with people, how do you use Kindle? How do you use iPad? One of the pages said to me, Hey, have you heard about this local ebook publishing company Smashwords? And I was like, no, it's like, yeah, they exist. And so, you know, I met Mark Coker of Smashwords.
Henry:
Now they've merged with another company in Oklahoma, by the way
Heather:
I read that
Henry:
I saw that, oh, a larger company. And, and it kind of sense to kind of work together in a way that kind of caught my attention. They were co-branding with, with, with a a, a specific ebook reader, I think, and sort of saying, you know, if you're interested in eBooks and reading, you know, you might want to publish at. And so we co-branded with, with the library saying if you're interested in self-publishing, you know, here's a link to Smashwords and we followed that up with, you know, a couple of sessions on teaching people to use the tools of ebook self-publishing -
Heather:
Who did you get to lead those?
Henry:
It was Mark Coker and several of their employees. The one person, I can't remember their name but they were highly attended. And what became clear was that it was kind of a different game in the publishing and the reason it was even a game is that they distributed iTunes to the Barnes and Noble store, all these major platforms worldwide. And, and, you know, having been kind of made aware of the long tail <laugh> of like, here's all the popular things up here and then tailing out, you know, at the end of the graph, there's, there's no kind of warehousing costs for eBooks <laugh>, there's no transportation, you know, that there there's infinite, you know, ability to kind of iterate. Whereas with physical objects, it's a lot harder to iterate them. You know, they're just less flexible than texts on a page and separating out the, from, you know, the information within is like magic. It's like science, like magic, but real -
Heather:
<Laugh>.
Henry:
So, so like what, what was very compelling about the instructions? And, you know, the learning about self publishing is there were use cases of people that iterated their book from a book cover to, you know, editing it, changing it, and, you could sort of then see the marketplace respond to that. And so your book never goes out of print. Your book might be a book you're just given away for free. Your book could be priced at 99 cents, but because of the market agreement, Smashwords only takes like a quarter or less of that. I think maybe 20% and not until you sell the book, no upfront cost, none, none of this razzled dazzle. You know, we're giving you your welcome to the traditionally published family special. Now here's all this money now produce these many books, you know, you know, sign sign here on the line, like how many artists throughout, you know, the 19th and 20th century signed on the line.
Henry:
And then the people who were marketing their stuff basically took huge advantage of them made money. And the artist basically was poor. <Laugh>, you know, a recurring story, but here it's like, okay, the person, the creator is more at the center and they make collaborative relationships. They don't have to sign away their rights, even, you know, contrasting with Amazon though. Amazon has a place in this. So, you know, that seemed like an awesome thing. And there was a huge amount of interest in, in the sort of the library crowd. And it was a way for, for authors, you know, like going from a culture of readership, to a culture of authorship, and these are very closely related, you know, because authors create books that readers read <laugh>. And so, you know, at the same time, libraries were becoming more aware of, of being a place of creation, like 3D printing, like sewing machines, maker, space. And, and the maker space of words, what, what way is there even with a stylish, you know, like it is a very low cost intensive, you know, to create things out of words, is, is wholly abstract. It doesn't require, you know, complex machinery.
Henry:
Yeah. There's a literary culture around readership that funnels directly into authorship writers groups. And, and, you know, it became clear to me, you know, going to conferences, going to crowds of people, talking to board members in every crowd of people. There's a number of people who have written a book and are trying to publish it and have some for something they want to tell the world. And it's like creating a gateway for that. That's not with the sort of stigma of in indie publishing and, and the sort of quality control gateway, keeping of those big five publishers. If you're good enough to make it with them, then you're good. If not, you're sort of, it's a shameful thing, like not, not good enough to make it to big leagues. <Laugh> went to self publishing.
Heather:
And you know, what's also, what's so interesting though, is that nowadays, it, it matter they, the traditional publishers don't even necessarily care about what you've written. They care about your audience size. So that's like a really huge thing that you have to put on all your proposals, how many Twitter followers you have, how big your newsletter list is, all this kind stuff. But the thing is, if you have that stuff already, why not self-publish so you don't have to give all of those that money away.
Henry:
You make a very good point. Like in, in the good old days, the bad old days of Max Perkins, 1950, like the publisher did all that, but now even traditionally published people, they have to do all the social media stuff, the marketing. And so, I mean, I, I also, I am very skeptical of the cult of authorship and the individual, and more about like the, the, the artwork stands alone, you know, but, but as far as book marketing, the cult of the author has become like a marketable commodity and it's kind of F'd up and I kind of love those anonymous artists. <Laugh>, you know, just because it's way interesting. Like, I think Thomas Pension does anyone know who that person is, but, you know, whatever. And so, you know, I, I sort of took the ball and ran with it. And I think one of the things I think was the most significant that we did ProjectWise with Marcus, we worked with a, an English class at Los Gatos high school and helped teach them, you know, the tools of self-publishing and they all published an anthology of their original poetry.
Henry:
And because of preorders, all the parents were by it on iTunes. It was like, number one on iTunes poetry for the day it was released. And that was really kind of like an educational experience and like a great college application thing. Oh, I'm a published author. And, and they, they divided up into groups and some did marketing, some did editing, some did event planning around the thing. And we had had an event and they read some of the poetry and it's pretty accessible. And it was of a wide variety. You know, some, it was like people were crying, reading these poems, like serious feelings and stuff, and others were just kind of jokey, but it was like, oh my gosh, you know, like, like this is like, you know, in action. And we got into school library journal, blah, blah. It, you know, it was like, okay, you know, what better way to kind of expand the mind from like the stigmatization of only being able to fit through this little, you know, this, this narrowing gateway of quality versus like, okay, let's we can do something and then distribute it to the world. There's a weird movie called Henry Fool. That's just exactly about this. Like, like a sort of weird guy that everyone thinks is, is like messed in the head that becomes a appeal or prize winner and, you know but so, so that, that was like a very productive partnership.
Heather:
And you talk about distribution, cuz I'm also curious about what happened noise there. I'm also curious about what happened when people published through this partnership that you had with mark. And I think specifically it was that you had this branded like portal for people to publish through Los Gatos and, and then it go, would it go into your collection? How did that work?
Henry:
Logistically? you know, it, it was never a huge, but you know, some, some people we were able to sort of, you know, tag as coming through the portal, it was just kind of an association of like, okay, go to Smashwords and do your thing. And it was pretty much up to the person to do that. The second question was at the same time, we got an op shout out to Steve Potash at Overdrive. They, they were willing to integrate the entire smash boards catalog or the top tier of popular things. So that if someone's self-published on Smashwords, then it could be available through Overdrive. And we could request that it be available if we didn't see it in the initial catalog and we could buy it for 99, if it was free or whatever price, lower prices are, the, the kind of theme and self-publishing, and then have it through our ebook collection.
Henry:
So this anthology from the high school, we were able to buy and then post as part of our overdrive collection, which I see as sort of completing the circle as far as any random person who published through smash words, very low numbers, but, but just the ability to have it there. I think I had one or two that contacted me because I think for, for any local library and this varies throughout America, like even in Marin, it's like less, is less a culture of inclusion with relation to local authors. But at lo got even with when local authors came in with their, their self-published book, the physical item, we were more than happy to take it, catalog it and put it on the local author shelf, just because we want to form a good relationship with the community, if it's about summer thing or who cares as long as it's not hate speech crazy.
Henry:
And that now, like, you know, reality denial, you know, that, that, that that's like a great way to kind of include. And then those people would come in and see if their book had checked out. I mean, that's the, the element where I embrace physical self focusing. I think if, if you know, you're just handing me the book, you know, like versus trying to get me to buy it. And you're a local author and you want to be included. I think that the patrons also will see that and then get like kind of a little light bulb. It's like, I could publish my book, but I say,
Heather:
And so many authors don't know how to get into libraries.
Henry:
That's one of the subjects that Mark focuses on is like, how do you get into libraries? Like getting your book reviewed, you know, who do you talk to getting it into Overdrive? You know, through Smashwords is an easy way to get it to libraries sending me a file that used to happen back in the day. You can't do anything with a file. The ebook file doesn't work for me. <Laugh> but, but having it on a platform that I have access to. Yes. So there was a third part of the question anyway, that the, you know, there's still, I think within the profession, I went to an ALA session where rather than celebrating self-publishing and authors, they had a panel where self-published authors had to make the case of why they should be in libraries with librarians. Kidding. No, no seriously.
Henry:
And with librarians being all, like, I'm not quite sure, it's like, you know, what's the quality level. And, and I think that leads into the curation conversation where it's like li I think traditionally, you know, with physical publishing before the internet, for some reason, librarians were the sort of gatekeepers of quality. And I sort of feel like over time that it's continu been proven to be screwed up, like back in the 19 hundreds should fiction be in libraries. Oh my God. People doing recreational, reading, not education. Oh my God, what's the end of the world that they're going to be enjoying themselves. Not like working cuz early 19th century readers advisory was about like an education plan, you know, like, like not discovery or learning education. So, okay. Well let fiction in, and then it's like, oh my God, the against the ick library, Tulsa city county library, romance novels in the library. Oh my God. End of the world. Should we do this? It's just try, you know, it's like, okay, now romance is cool graphic novels. Oh my God, it's the end of the world. They're they're like teaching people to be save the worshipers or something or they're a bad thing. Oh, okay. Graphic novels are cool. So, so what's the next thing we we're at. We got a video game collection. Oh my God. Video games are the end of society. No video games are part of how people -
Heather:
Everything's the end of society.
Henry:
Isn't it? Yeah. So, so li I think libraries traditionally are setting up barriers, you know, and who, whether it's library supporters, you know, you know, and that, and that, that, you know, we we're always overcoming those barriers. So, so in terms of curation, my, my thing I've, I have two think two thoughts about it. It seems like not that far from censorship, if you're curating beyond what's popular, like we should give people what they want and buy what's popular and put it in the library versus saying like, okay, because this thing is popular. Maybe it's not good. It's like, who cares? What's good. What, what does good mean what you want to read in the library should be there, you know, and information about all kinds of stuff from all kinds of sources and like curating that beyond popularity and authenticity seems like overly up in people's business.
Henry:
And I think in, in, in, you know, putting as much in there and also building in the long tail. So like, if we don't have it, you need to, you, we need a way, and this works really well in overdrive. Sometimes for you to say, buy this thing, this one person wants this. We should buy <laugh>, you know, because they're requesting it. So, so patron driven acquisition. Yes. Not like 10 patrons have to want it, like, depending upon the price of eBooks or what it's about like having more flexible models. And I think, you know, in this way the vendors kind of have, have it over on libraries, you know, 26 circs what's for one circ, can I, can I get a one circ book? I'm, I'm giving you money here. You're not going to give me a one circ, it's gotta be five. You know, like, I think we're getting closer, you know, but, but you know, we're, it's, there's still work to be done, but, but the more that we can sort of show people, like, I, I remember the first time that I did a suggestion for purchase as a library user and they bought the book.
Henry:
I'm like, you care about me the same way. When I went into a library, Redwood city library back in the day. And I, I, I looked in the catalog there. This book wa was available. I went on the shelf, it wasn't there. I asked the librarian at the desk or whoever was sitting there and they got up, went in the back room and got the book for me. I was blown away. I'm like,
Heather:
Oh my gosh,
Henry:
They care that want a book. And I was like, light bulb. This is the best <laugh>. And they're not only care. They're more than happy to find it for you because you're connecting people with things that they want. That's why we do this job. Right. So, so, you know, the, the broadest, you know, element of, of, of providing stuff, you know, without writing barriers, I don't think of that as curation. I just think it as buying stuff for people. But within that, I think there's another element of the stuff we already have that we've decided to like, have a big tent and have a lot of stuff, curating collections within that. So people can sort of like better use it is, is very akin to me. When you get a box of those subscription vegetables from the farmer's market, you sign up to get the box and you got cold Robby, you got all these herbs, you never heard of Jerusalem artichokes.
Henry:
Oh my God, what do I do with this stuff? And then they give you a recipe. This is how you work with these vegetables. And so it's like the recipe for the library is the curation piece that I think is good, that, that, you know, reader's advisory. If you like, this might like that, have you heard of this wonderful thing? And John Green said it AU awesomely. It's like the ambitious baker. Like I, John Green was speaking at PLA. And I was like, you know, I was busy and there was a huge line and it was getting low. And an hour later I was running and I was the last person to be in the line with John Green to be like, I am not worthy. And I'm like, ambitious baker, ambitious baker. And he's like, what are you talking about? <Laugh>. And, and like, I had heard a quote from him where it's like library and, you know, like the reader's advisory is like the ambitious baker. It's like, you know, if you like my scones, you might like my, you know, or if you like my donuts, you might like my cronuts. It's like, it's like, you know, not enough to be just like, I'm giving you what you want, but I also know five other things that you might also want. This
Heather:
Was the good, so that kind of curation, yes.
Henry:
This, I bless. This is very nice.
Heather:
So this needs Henry's approval. Yes.
Henry:
Because it's sort of like within the context of what we have versus like the kind of, what are we going to decide to have, let's decide to have whatever is available to people what's popular, what they want and not, and not be kind of being the, like, against the ick library, because we are, we are the library. It's like, if you, if something's popular, we will have it. It doesn't matter if it's, it's like, think about music, you know, is there any, any sort of having quality music, like music that I, that I may enjoy you think of as noise, right? I mean, gimme a break.
Heather:
Yeah. It's like not a thing. Yeah. So I, so opening it up to listening to what your community wants and serving your community without judgment. Huh? That's almost like a, to of libraries of pretty much librarianship for not judging what they want.
Henry:
And yeah, and to me, whenever I hear curation, it seems like this hoytie toytie word, it reminds me of a cure, like, like a religious person, the cure it's like curating. It's like kind of a highfalutin word that people throw out there to, to be like, and I, I feel very sensitive to language the way that we use language, the difference between education and learning, you know, to be educated to learn, you know? And so,
Heather:
Okay.
Henry:
You know, I, I, maybe there's a better word for this, but, but like gate keeping versus, you know, ambitious baker, you know, gate keeping versus value, add, you know, like, you know, like providing more avenues of discovery, you know, like building in kind of associative kind of discovery pathways, the personal act of readers advisory, like, like for example, like I'm seriously into Palm trees. Anyone will tell you that really knows me. I'm I go down the street. I'm like, what kind of Palm tree, what kind of Palm tree? There was a time when I didn't care what a Palm tree looked like when I saw Palm tree, it looked like a Palm tree and nothing else. I met a person who was into Palm trees. I think maybe the virus of Palm trees got into my mind, like, like language is a virus from matter space because suddenly it was like, oh my gosh, there's, there's so many different Palm trees.
Henry:
I'm growing Palm trees. I'm looking at Palm trees, I'm finding out. And, and I, and the sort of, it was demonstrated to me how you're into Palm trees personally, by a person, if you had just described it to me, I'd be like whatever. And so we, as, as professionals, as library, staff, as librarians, I think I say library staff now, library people. It's like, we demonstrate to people, you know, the joy of reading, but also the joy of knowing about books and being able to kind of feed yourself in the library, similar to the farmer's marketing. And so, you know, that's a beautiful thing and I would never want to kind of cast dispersion upon that. And I think that it's, it's, it's like the poor step up child of that other thing that we now call customer service. But some people call reference, reference, like, like telling people, giving people and, and it's so hugely seen in, within, within, you know, youth librarianship.
Henry:
Cuz people are just like, I read, I read all the, the Magic Treehouse books. What's next, you know, give, give, give me some like referrals. Give me some advice about reader's advisory in, in, in children's librarianship is like a huge thing with adult. Adults are just weirder. They're, they're harder to help, but I think it's awesome. And, and the way that, that I've kind of run into, you know, things in life are by a demonstrate of another human being, making those connections, not something that you'd sort of read online or saw a poster of. Oh, oh, that can work. So yeah.
Heather:
So my question is to, cause we're getting I'm we're, we're, you're so fascinated to listen to. I could just listen to you talk for all day, but I also want to be mindful of your time. Just if a library is interested in opening up like this and providing self-publishing and in doing kind of community, community publishing activities, where, what, what, how would you recommend they get started?
Henry:
Yeah. Shout out to the Topeka Shawnee library, they did the community novel, but I think the, a great way to get started is to just do a series of programs about intro to self-publishing. Like I was sitting at Halloween like Halloween during COVID was like nothing I'm sitting in front of my neighbor's house, shivering around a, an outdoor fire pit and the guy next to me's, like I saw that self publishing thing you did at the library. I think that's awesome. I'm really into that. I was like, did they pay this guy? And then it's like, you saw the thing, the library. So just to do the basic contact Mark Coker, now I'm on zoom and, and do the intro to self-publishing like after I did this Portland and Seattle, I think King county or Seattle contacted me and they wanted to do like community self-publishing and big cities. You've got authors, you know, coming out of the woodwork
Heather:
And there's also NaNoWriMo, right. National novel -
Henry:
Can use NaNoWriMO. Yes. All it all integrates. I've never been brave enough to do NaNoWriMo. I know that you have,
Heather:
And I published two books on it.
Henry:
Yeah. Like and like many very famous books have been published in NaNoWriMo. That did well, but the national novel writing month is a great way to start, you know, awareness of as library as around the cult of authorship, you know, hosting a, a nano Ry Rome program in your library where NaNoWriMo authors meet regularly. And often the NaNoWriMo people have a low local captain coordinator person that you can work with. Yeah, totally awesome.
Heather:
And they offer resources for that. And they also have like they, so between mark and the nano Remo people, there's like a huge amount of resources for like editing and creating covers and like all that kind of stuff isn't there.
Henry:
Yes. And, and yes. And just, just to kind of be, you know, mindful of like editing and quality control there, you know, it's not like if you go to indie publishing that all goes out the window there, there's just a different way of getting there. Like, you know, readers, you know, you can pay people to help you edit. You can, you know, who are part of writers, groups read each other's stuff, but, but there's an, there's a burgeoning marketplace for those things. And, you know, I would encourage the, you know, just building knowledge about all the sort of free tools and pay tools for doing that. I'm always excited when, when we do this sort of intro to self-publishing like who in your community is really interested in this and the people that are like really interested and, and just kind of, you know, providing a place for those people to meet each other, to kind of meet the library, to kind of, you know, talk about issue used regard.
Henry:
I mean, I've had people come to the ones we used to give and when they realized we were talking about eBooks, they just got up and laugh. <Laugh>, you know, it was like that, that was like not a thing for them. And that's still not a thing for many people, you know, but, but I mean, I, I often I was like, oh, I never read a books. You know, only books. Well, have you tried reading on a Kindle paperwhite? No, no, well maybe you should try it. It's like, you don't need a light. It's kind of nice and you can increase the text size. It's like, Hmm. Maybe I <laugh>. But like, you know, it, it just, I think, you know, coalesces, you know, the community around some of these issues and, and when you can do it, like as, as a class group, I, you know, I think that that could be awesome.
Henry:
Like I, like, I did propose a PLA presentation once that was like a pre-conference where we would actually publish an e-book in, in like a day, but not enough people signed up. I mean, you could be a little aspirational, but this is what I'm trying to say. And I think the community novel thing is strangely compelling because novels are seen to be the work of one individual or two, three, but not like a whole crazy group though, though. Ken Casey did publish a novel as part of a writing class was kind of weird. I think it called sailor song. But you know, I think there's a number of different pathways and, and it's kind of low, low entry cost. Some libraries have gone a whole hog. Like I think Provincetown, you know, took the cost of actually library as publisher. So they actually tried to, you know, support authors.
Henry:
I think, you know, it's in terms of copyright and intellectual, you know, ownership when you just let the author kind of handle all that with their relationship with however they want to distribute. I think it's a lot cleaner, but I do like the idea of owning the means of production. So, so if libraries sort of incur local authors to self-publish, and then there's kind of more of an engine of creation around the library and you're hosting those books, it's more like you're a library of hyper localism and, and showing like what your community has to offer. Maybe you live somewhere where everyone's building wooden boats. Right. I can think of places in America and you're publishing your book about my secrets to kayak building, and then you're selling it, you know, because oddly enough, people pay more for nonfiction that, that tells you how to do something specific. I mean, I'm really into cookbooks. I never follow the recipe. I just kind of get ideas. I mean, I do sometimes, but it's a, like, it tells you how to do something that's like close to people's hearts, you know?
Heather:
Yeah, I get,
Henry:
I, I could see that becoming, you know, and having your library and community being, being the kind of,
Heather:
Yeah.
Henry:
The repository of, of like, you know, because it's sort of like eating your own dog food, if you're promoting in the library and you're like hosting writing there, then full circle.
Heather:
And so this is awesome. And yeah. So between mark and nano Remo, and I just, you also wanted me to bring up post literacy
Henry:
To you. Oh yeah, no, no, this is, this is complete nonsequitor, but, but okay. We're, we're talking all about like coding and decoding writing, you know, like there's a thing in your mind, you write it down, you put it on a thing. Then I get it over here. 5 million years later, I found it in the ruins and I de code it. I'm like, you know, like Caesars, Golic wars, acidities whatever. But, but I think this came up like that in, in a CLA presentation maybe 10 years ago that that really literacy coding decoding is an extra step in terms of human relationships. The language is a spoken thing, spoken word, you know, singing me muse, you know, Odis lobby block, you know, that, that like really affects people. You know, you listen to an audio book you're like taken away on a stream. You listen to the, the, the, and literacy is just sort of like, you know, a, a sort of addendum to that.
Henry:
It's a way of like reporting stuff. But it's also a huge barrier to people in, in certain languages when they have 5 million, like a lot of characters, it's hard to become literate. And it's a huge process. And a lot of the world is engaging with technology that, that could potentially, you know, make them receivers of inform and transmitters beyond literacy, sort of like text to like text to speech, you know, directly speaking to the, the, the device. And then speaking back to you and what would the world look like? You know, w where, if you were to empower a huge number of individuals to directly engage without having to decode and code and decode. And when this, this was, this was the thing I don't have all the specifics, but when this was like presented at CLA a lot of librarians just lost their.
Henry:
It's like, what are you talking about? Because we worship literacy as a thing unto itself. And it's not, it's, it's just a vehicle. The vehicle is communication between people. And if it works better to do text to speech, speech, to text, talk to your cell phone, it talks to you, you know, you could say words in a different way, spelling becomes immaterial. It's just like you say, you know, Palka, or Ecolo this, this town in Florida is called Palka, but it was actually Pico Lada from the Spanish, you know, words change, you know, you could have a much more fluid language, you know, I think it's something that you kind of have to look at in terms of what, what the, the point is versus, you know, in enshrining spelling and literacy as this kind of in and of itself, it's, it's sort of like a means to an end. I love, you know, like, like it is another gatekeeper people, you know, you have to hit this thing before you can get to this other thing. But if, if we change enough as a society where we're in, we're enabling text to speech right now it's happening, you know, you could actually empower people more and not seeing literacy as, as an empowering in and of itself, because it's also a barrier
Henry:
And like soap off the soapbox. Now think about it. I know it challenges everything we believe in, but I think that's what we need to do. And they were so funny when this thing came up, it was like, it was like someone at a <laugh>. It would be like, if, if you were at a gun show saying, no guns don't use them anymore. We don't need them anymore. It's like, it's like at the li library convention saying that, you know, because we've en trying literacy as, as core sort of be beyond not, not thinking there could be a place where we literacy was actually not needed, you know, and we worship it in of itself. And at the same time, the written word is, is an art form. I mean, seriously, I read some crazy literary novels where you're like, what the heck's going, going on here. But you know, that, that's the thing like calligraphy.
Heather:
Yeah.
Henry:
You know, or just like making noise. So I love all of it, but let's think about it.
Heather:
<Laugh> I, you know what I love the way your brain works. I love it. Sometimes
Henry:
I do. Other times, I think I'm just like, you know, howling to the wilderness.
Heather:
This is great. Do you have like a blog or anywhere where people can like -
Henry:
Gosh, should I do that? I mean, someone mean
Heather:
You want,
Henry:
It may to be determined.
Heather:
Okay.
Henry:
The blog aspect to me is like, what I'm talking about, the, the spoken word, you know, because I, I listen to podcasts like crazy. So I'd rather like emulate you and do a podcast and just like interview weird people and be like laity block. Because I, it seems much more flexible than Her is my written word that I'm talking about. Yeah. You know, just like here we are like, like, I love like chef's table type of things. And like, what kind of pizza is cool. Have you ever heard of the new Haven clam pizza? Oh my gosh. Have you seen this? It's like a white, white sauce pizza with clams. So, so yeah. Well, that's a great thing. Sounds awful. I love that. You're doing this. Thank you, Heather. Thank
Heather:
You Henry, for being on my show worthy on our show. No, you are. So I'm going to end it cuz we could go on forever, but sometime maybe you'll come back
Henry:
Sometime.
Heather:
Thank you to Henry Bankhead for sharing his passion for self-publishing with us. I really enjoyed that conversation and I hope you did too. Remember you can leave us a message at LibraryLever.com/voicemail. If you want to share a show idea, we also invite you to hop into our new community. It's a social network just for libraries and library professionals, to have fun and learn and make new connections and share our stories with each other. That's it. Community.LibraryLever.com. It's completely free to join. It's just a spot where we're all hanging out, sharing news and there's trainings. Great conversations that we're starting over there. So community dot library, lever.com and I hope to see you over there. All right. We will talk to you again in another couple of weeks. Bye bye.