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As many of you know, I am deeply interested in ways that developments in digital technology change our relationship to traditional cultural values, especially when it comes to the digital’s impact on reading, the cultural transmission of knowledge, and those mainstays of humanistic thought: books. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no cheerleader for all things digital. Sometimes, in the midst of hyperventilating digitalistas, I find my self playing the role of the skeptic. Nonetheless, it is pretty clear that there is a future for the book in digital environments.

All that is a way of introducing a curiosity I have fostered since the very first idea of publishing The Outspokin’ Cyclist: would the book be more popular as a paperback or ebook? Amazon’s Author Central gives authors unprecedented access to sales information about their books, and the geek in me anxiously set up my account in the days following the book’s release. Now that 2011 has come to a close, I have a reasonable spectrum of data to look back at.

A few caveats. Amazon’s Author Central graphs and figures report Nielsen BookScan data as well as Amazon’s own tracking.  This means that Amazon can report Amazon sales in real time but sales from bookstores only as often as those bookstores report sales. For most places, this is weekly. So, while there seems to be a pattern of weekend sales spikes, we have to interpret those spikes with a grain of salt. Another caveat is that when it comes to ebook sales, Amazon reports only Kindle sales. I don’t have a centralized method for tracking sales of epub versions.

So, the graphs.

Paperback sales

Kindle sales

A few conclusions: first, the paperback outsold the Kindle version more than 2:1 in 2011. Second, something we can see from the sales-rank graphs is that the Kindle consistently ranks higher than the paperback (difficult, if not impossible, to see in these small images. The thing to keep in mind is that each horizontal line marks a 100,000 place jump.). This is likely due to the fact that the set of books available on the Kindle is much smaller than the set of books available in print, and it is therefore easier to achieve a higher relative ranking. But the third thing I take away from these reports is that sales of the Kindle version appear to be increasing, while sales of the paperback appear to remain somewhat static (if not in slight decline). I wonder, then, which will have the longer shelf life.

 

Thanks to Taft Matney for this note about The Outspokin’ Cyclist in the new Crescent magazine. “As South Carolina’s larger cities work to make traffic flow more friendly and attractive for bicycles, Phillip Barron’s new book offers itself as a cyclist’s encouraging companion,” begins the brief review. If you have not yet checked out Crescent, do so; it’s a great new e-zine covering news and culture from the Palmetto (and crescent) State.

 

Amazon’s knocked the price of the Kindle edition down to $5.38. I didn’t know anything about this until I saw the new price on their website. Their loss is your gain.

Let me know if you pick up a copy of The Outspokin’ Cyclist this holiday season for the cyclist in your family.

 

I am excited to launch OccuPoetry today with new poetry by Carrie Osborne of Oakland, CA. A collaboration with my good friend Katy Ryan, OccuPoetry is a poetry project, publishing art in support of the Occupy Movement.

Read and listen here –

The Occupy Movement is speaking to people in all parts of the country (and even the world), and as the next few weeks unfold, you’ll see that the wonderful submissions we are receiving reflect this geographic diversity. As the movement adapts to dislocation from the parks symbolically occupied, the poetry will continue because the pursuit of economic justice grows only more intense.

Three times a week, OccuPoetry will publish poetry about economic justice/injustice, greed, protest, activism, and opportunity. Information on submissions is here - http://occupypoetry.org/submissions/

Please read and enjoy the meditations on language shared in OccuPoetry. If you want to share them, forward this email, share links through your favorite blog or social network, or print and read them aloud to friends. And let us know what you think.

 

Tomorrow is Corduroy Day, 11/11. But not just any old Corduroy Day, which comes once each November; tomorrow’s date marks one that comes only once ever 100 years. 11/11/11

Learn more with Bill Geist

 

With a literary nod to one of my favorite cycling websites, Cars R Coffins, I give you a verse from Planetary Man (Hombre Planetario), an epic poem composed between 1957 and 1963 by Jorge Carrera Andrade. Apparently, the Ecuadorian poet and diplomat drank the same water as the Minnesota bicycle/punk crew. Long before the age of the Ford Livingroom, he could see that car manufacturers were eager to fill the streets with the creature comforts we associate with home, to the detriment of whatever else is in the way.

XII

Hail to the car makers
Who have populated the planet
With rolling bedrooms,
Parlors, hearses,
On installments, chapels of amulets
And flowers, where the inflated vanity
Of their owners travels,
Oh speed lovers, who tear
The trees from their sleep!
Hail to the inventors
Of the Great Universal Vitamin
To heal the earth of its sickness.
(What should I do without my metaphysical anguish,
Without my blue disease? What should men do
When they feel nothing, perfect mechanisms
In uniform?)

Translated from Spanish by Phillip Barron

 

I wrote the columns for my last hometown paper. My new hometown paper has a feature on the book. Davis is the first town in the United States to achieve the designation  as a Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) by the League of American Bicyclists, so living here now means taking advantage of a previous generation’s forward thinking. Last September, Durham achieved the Bronze level designation and, I hope, is well on its way to climbing in the ranks.

Chloe Kim interviewed me a few weeks ago, and she wrote up a nice feature on The Outspokin’ Cyclist. From the article:

“We pulled together 30 to 40 columns that ended up in the book. We chose the ones that had mass appeal,” Barron said. “I hope in some way readers will see themselves in the books. I also hope they enjoy an expression of what it means to ride a bike on a regular basis. They were designed to be short, simple, easy-to-read pieces.”

Barron began working on his column “to get away from what I’d written before.”

“I would get frustrated that my work revolved around 2,000-year-old problems,” said Barron, who studied [sic] philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The columns were brief in comparison, and a relief from his university work.

“I was using simple, non-technical language that everyone can identify with,” Barron said.

Accessibility is a theme that runs throughout all of Barron’s columns.

Read the rest of the article on The Davis Enterprise’s website or find your copy of The Outspokin’ Cyclist online.

 

Lately, I have been writing more poetry than prose. Working at the National Humanities Center, I had the opportunity to meet and be influenced by some extraordinary poets, like Piotr Sommer, Mary Kinze, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. In the years since meeting each of them, the impression they left me with is that poetry is more accessible than I used to think it. And more meaningful. The opportunity to meditate on a moment, to express an idea in only as many words as necessary – these are gifts of language, and lately I have been finding satisfaction writing such meditations in verse.

I’m still looking for my own poetry community, but the recent (and excellent) interview with Gary Snyder in BOOM helps me narrow my search a little. If his categories even hint at accuracy, admittedly painted in broad strokes, then I see myself as more a west coast poet than east coast poet. Still, writing poems is one thing; subjecting them to the judgment of editors of poetry journals is another. And having some withstand that scrutiny, well, that is something humbling.

I have a poem — “Tape” — in the new issue of The Yolo Crow. If you pick up a copy in Davis or online (Vol. 23), please tell me what you think. And in the last few months I also published another in two parts in two separate places. “Sisyphean S-curve” appears in both The Scrambler (Part I) and Hinchas de Poesia (Part II). Check out the rest of the fine writing and art work while you’re visiting these two spaces.

 

This Sunday, October 9th, is the final Bull City Open Streets. Plan to head down to Central Park in Durham between 1 and 4pm to find the streets closed off to cars and plenty of room to enjoy biking city streets.

In Quito, Ecuador, Avenida Amazonas is the Andean capital city’s showcase avenue, linking the airport with the modern business district and the tourist district, La Mariscal. Amazonas ends just as the historic, colonial part of the city begins. Like Broadway in New York, Amazonas zig-zags across the city, sometimes at angles with other major thoroughfares. And with wide lanes, it is one of the most efficient routes from the northern part of the long, narrow city to the southern end.

And every Sunday, the city shuts Amazonas down to cars, letting cyclists explore the length of Quito without having to jockey with taxis, buses, or other petulant drivers. Children come out to ride, the elderly come out to ride, and serious cyclists come out as well. By opening the streets to people-powered fun, ciclovias create space for riders of all abilities to gain more confidence on the road and enjoy their city with fellow fans of two-wheels. Quito’s not the only city doing it. In fact, Quito got the idea from Bogotá, and ciclovias are popular throughout North and South America.

Bull City Open Streets is a Durham-based ciclovia project. Four times in 2011 (in May, June, September, and one more time this Sunday, October 9th), BCOS closes down city streets and creates some space for safe bicycling.

Mark Dessauer of Active Living by Design says, “these Open Streets or Cyclovias are a great way to introduce novice cyclists to safe and fun streets as well as show Durham’s policy makers that there is a sizable number of folks in town who care about biking and walking and would like Durham to prioritize these efforts.”

Check out the Bull City Open Streets website for more information - www.bullcityopenstreets.com

 

Thanks to Courtnee Felton of Sweet Georgia Brown for offering the first review of my new book, The Outspokin’ Cyclist.

 I appreciate the Zen nature of the book’s first part “Why I Ride.” The essays here convey the sentiment of taking time out for oneself and slowing down to smell the roses. Barron speaks to both the sports cyclist enjoying those rare moments of being in the zone and the commuter experiencing their city to a degree that only bicycles allow.

Read the rest of the review by the Pralene Supreme’s pilot over at her blog, and while you’re there, enjoy her other posts which always focus on both the slow bicycle lifestyle and the mix of fashion with bicycling.

Pick up your copy of The Outspokin’ Cyclist at Amazon or order it through your local bookstore.