The Environment and Print-on-Demand

More and more, the environment is my number one concern, and the primary cause that receives my charity money. Sure, mankind is embroiled in all sorts of dangers, but whatever ills there are, self-created or just the perils of life they’ll never get solved if the planet burns underneath our feet. You can even sell the idea to war pigs: if we lose the earth, we’re not going to have anything to kill each other for.

When it comes to preserving the environment, making sure there’s clean air, clean water, healthy soil, there’s always some excuse: oh we’ll lose jobs, oh it’s too hard, people will never go for it, big business won’t do it.

Something has to give. Soon. Or we’re all going to die.

Part of the theme of my novel, Where Did This Come From? is about how consumers (meaning, all of us) are a nature-like force. I wrote from that perspective as a way of (hopefully) increasing awareness. It seems fitting that the novel is a print-on-demand (POD) title. POD means no copies are printed in advance and potentially destroyed. Each copy is printed only at the moment it's ordered.

Of course, one reason I went POD is I don’t have an agent (yet.)

The second reason: I’m concerned about the potential waste that comes with traditional printing. Because the printing press takes time and effort to set up, a publisher has to guess how many will sell (forecasting) and print that much in bulk, usually in the thousands. Those that don’t sell slide down the bookstore food chain that descends something like this: store; bargain bin; wholesaler; yard sale; ebay; trash; recycle and/or landfill.

The third reason I’m a POD-person? Hell, I’m impatient. I’m not going to wait for popular taste to smile on me. Popularity will catch up with me later. In the meantime, I have books to write!

I would have liked to print Where Did This Come From? on some kind of alternative paper (see http://www.visionpaper.com/ to read about Kenaf) to really ram the point home, but that was a bit out of my league. Plus, recall reason three: impatience.

I once saw a bumper sticker that read “A world of wanted children would make a world of difference.” It had cute happy stick-figure people dancing under a smiling sun or something like that. It took me a while to figure it out and when I did, I was a little jolted by the idea of defending something as serious as abortion with stick figures, but I understand (and agree with) their point.

To expand on it, a world of wanted products, and not forecasted products, would make a world of difference in the environment. Weird how these things all connect, eh?

I’m more focused on the environment than ever before, especially since I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, which I highly recommend to every sentient being on this planet. I feel bad for holding Al Gore’s censor-happy, PMRC-founding wife against him. If he runs in 2008, he’s got my vote for sure. As will anyone who makes the environment, the planet, the thing from which all we really have springs, a top priority.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? Visit his website at www.LarryNocella.com.