Authors Electric

Umberto Tosi, New Year's Eve, 2026 "Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph, " wrote  Thomas Paine to George Washington in the darkest days of the American Revolution when the British Empire seemed invincible.  Mad King Donald-abused  America needs more Thomas Paines right now.  " These are the times that try men's souls," Paine wrote. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."  George Washington , then commander in chief of a demoralized, underfunded Continental Army promptly  had Paine's  The American Crisis   pamphlet, read aloud to them. Thomas Paine-Laurent Davos By the 1990s, when my youngest daughter took her first steps, I blessed the stars that seemed to finally give her generation respite from...

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there were no publishers. This may come as a terrible shock, but until only a little while ago, everyone published their own books.  When the book was first invented, there wasn't any alternative; you copied them out by hand on papyrus or animal skins, or inscribed them onto clay tablets, or carved them into rock. The modern printed paper book, as we know it,  started back in 1456 when Gutenberg turned out the first bible.  For several hundred years after that, there were only printers - no publishers, no agents. No middle-man at all.  You just wrote your book and took it down the road to your friendly printing press.   Which was sometimes operated by women! You had to have money, of course, to pay the printer, but if you knew lots of people you could do a bit of crowd sourcing and get all your friends and family to stump up the money for the book in advance and it was called Subscription Publishing. It was ...