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Theodore Roosevelt
> XXV. Prometheus Unbound
William Roscoe Thayer
. Theodore Roosevelt.
XXV. Prometheus Unbound
the winter of 191617, Roosevelt never relaxed his criticism of President Wilsons dilatory and evasive policy, or his efforts to arouse the American people to a sense of their duty to civilization. By this time the President himself felt that it was safe for him to speak up in behalf of Americanism. The year before, Roosevelt having been assured that it would be dangerous to make American and pro-Ally speeches in the Middle West, went straight to the so-called German cities, and was most enthusiastically received where it had been predicted he would be hooted and even mobbed. President Wilson ventured to follow him some time later, and suffered no harm. By the summer of 1916 he became almost reckless, as it seemed, in his utterances. He said to the graduating cadets at West Point: My conception of America is a conception of infinite dignity, along with quiet, unquestionable power. I ask you, gentlemen, to join with me in that conception, and let us all in our several spheres be soldiers together to realize it.
Once he declared that he too came of fighting blood. Meanwhile, how ever, the German submarines went on sinking ships; Bernstorff made his frequent calls of studied impudence at the White House; German agents blew up munitions factories and the warehouses where shells were stored before shipment; and the process of spreading Prussian gangrene throughout our country went on unchecked.
Worse than this, the military situation in Europe was almost disheartening. Imperial Russia had disappeared and the Germans were preparing to carve up the vast amorphous Russian carcass. Having driven their way through the Balkans to Constantinople they were on the point of opening their boasted direct route from Berlin to Bagdad. England, France and Italy began to feel war-weary. The German submarines threatened to cut off their supplies of food, and unless the Allied countries could be succored they might be starved into making peace. When they looked across the Atlantic they beheld this mighty Republic leaving them in the lurch, too busy piling up millions of dollars drawn from the Allies in their distress to heed that distress, and drugging their compunctions, if they had any, by saying to themselves that a nation may be too proud to fight, and that they had the best authority for remembering that they must remain neutral even in thought.
I need not describe in detail what Roosevelt thought of this. He himself expressed his scorn for making war by rhetoric. He knew that a man may boast of coming of fighting blood, and come so late that all the fighting quality in the blood has evaporated. Could not many of the Pacifists trace back to Revolutionary and to Puritan ancestors, who fought as they prayed, without hesitation or doubt, for the Lord of Hosts? They could, and their present attitude simply made their shame the greater. The Colonel had said very early in the conflict: I do not believe that the firm assertion of our rights means war, but in any event, it is well to remember there are things worse than war. In 1917 he declared: For two years after the Lusitania was sunk, we continued to fawn on the blood-stained murderers of our people, we were false to ourselves and we were false to the cause of right and of liberty and democracy through out the world. He kept hammering at our need of preparation. He told a great audience at Detroit:
We first hysterically announced that we would not prepare because we were afraid that preparation might make us lose our vantage-ground as a peace loving people. Then we became frightened and announced loudly that we ought to prepare; that the world was on fire; that our national structure was in danger of catching aflame; and that we must immediately make ready. Then we turned an other somersault and abandoned all talk of preparedness; and we never did anything more than talk.
At last, at the beginning of 1917, the German truculence became too great even for President Wilson to palliate. The Kaiser, whose atrocious submarine policy had already failed, decided that it could be made to succeed by increasing its horror. He proposed to sink indiscriminately all ships, whether neutral or enemy; but out of his Imperial generosity he would allow the Americans to send one ship a week to Falmouth, England, provided it followed a certain line marked out by him on the chart, flew a certain flag, and was painted a color which he specified. As late as December 18, 1916, the President had put forth a message only less startling than his too-proud-to-fight dictum, in which he announced that the warring world must plan for a peace without victory if it would hope to end the war at all. Peace without victory would mean, of course, a peace favorable to Germany. But the Germans, with characteristic stupidity, instead of using even a specious courtesy towards the President who had been long-suffering in their favor, immediately sent out their Once-a-week-to-Falmouth order. Perhaps they thought that Mr. Wilson would consent even to that.
President Wilsons friends have assured us that he devotes himself to finding out what the American people wants and then in doing it. He soon learned what the American people wanted, after it understood the purport of the Once-a-week-to-Falmouth order; and after the interchange of two or three more notes, he broke off relations with Germany on April 6, 1917. At last, at the eleventh hour, the United States by President Wilsons consent joined the great alliance of free nations in their life and-death struggle to make the world safe for Democracy. Now the President had to prepare for war, and prepare in haste, which rendered careful plans and economy impossible. At the start, there was much debate over the employment of Volunteers, the rating of Regulars, and the carrying out of a selective draft. True to his policy of timidity and evasion President Wilson did not openly declare war on Germany, but allowed us to drift into a state of war; so executives who do not wish either to sign or veto a bill let it become a law without their signatures. His Secretary of War, Lindley M. Garrison, the only member of his Cabinet who had marked ability, had resigned the year before, having apparently found the official atmosphere uncongenial. At the Plattsburg camp, commanded by General Leonard Wood, Colonel Roosevelt made a speech of ringing patriotism and of unveiled criticism of the lack of energy in the Administration. It was not a politic thing to do, although there seems to have been some confusion between what the Colonel said to the Volunteers in camp, and what he said that same evening to a gathering of civilians in the town. The indiscretion, how ever, gave the Administration the opportunity it had been waiting for; but, being unable to punish Roosevelt, it severely reprimanded General Wood, who had not been aware of what the Colonel intended to say. Indeed, the offensive remarks seem to have been extemporaneous, because, as it was too dark for him to read his prepared speech, he spoke impromptu. In any event, Secretary Garrison had due notice that Roosevelt was to speak, and if he had had any doubts he should have sent word to General Wood to cancel the engagement. The Administration made as much as it could out of this impropriety, but the public saw the humor of it, because it knew that Secretary Garrison agreed with Roosevelt and Wood in their crusade for preparedness.
Later, when Mr. Garrison resigned, President Wilson put Mr. Newton D. Baker, a Pacifist, in his place, and after war came, the military preparation and direction of the United States were entrusted to him. But it does not belong to this biographical sketch to narrate the story of the American conduct of the war under the Wilson Administration.
To Roosevelt, the vital fact was that war was at hand, the great object for which he had striven during two years and eight months, the participation in the war which would redeem the honor of the United States, call forth the courage of its citizens, make Americans alone dominant in America and so purge this Republic of the taints of pro-Germanism, of commercial greed, and of ignoble worship of material safety, that it could take its part again at the head of the democracies of the world. He thanked God that his country could stand out again untarnished. And then a great exultation came over him, as he believed that at last he himself having put on his sword, would be allowed to join the American army bound overseas, share its dangers and glories in the field, and, if Fate so willed it, pay with his body the debt of patriotism which nothing else could pay. He wrote immediately to the War Department, offering his services and agreeing to raise a division or more of Volunteers, to be sent to the front with the briefest delay. But Secretary Baker replied that without authorization by Congress, he could not accept such bodies of Volunteers. On being pressed further, Mr. Baker replied that the War College Division of the General Staff wished the officers of the Regular Army to be kept at home, in order to train new men, and then to lead the first contingents which might go abroad.
Meanwhile, at the first suggestion that Roosevelt might head a body of troops himself, letters poured upon him from every State in the Union, from men of all classes eager to serve under him, and eager, in this way, to wipe out the shame which they felt the Administration, by its delays and supineness, had put upon the nation. Then Congress passed the Draft Law, and, on May 18, Roosevelt appealed again, this time directly to President Wilson, offering to raise four divisions. The President, in a public statement, declared that purely military reasons caused him to reject the plan. In a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt he said that his action was based entirely upon imperative considerations of public policy, and not upon personal or private choice. Roosevelt summed up the contention with this flat contradiction: President Wilsons reasons for refusing my offer had nothing to do either with military considerations or with public needs.
Roosevelt issued an announcement to the men who had applied for service under himthey were said already to number over 300,000regretting that they could not all go together on their countrys errand, and brushing aside the insinuation of his enemies that he was merely seeking political and selfish ends. That is a charge, of course, to which all of our statesmen, from Washington down, have been exposed. Its final refutation comes from examining the entire public career and the character of the person accused. To any one who knew what Roosevelts life had been, and who knew how poignantly he felt the national dangers and humiliation of the past three years, the idea that he was playing politics, and merely pretending to be terribly in earnest as a patriot, is grotesque. And I believe that no greater disappointment ever came to him than when he was prohibited from going out to battle in 1917. Mr. Wilson and the obsolescent members of the General Staff had obviously a plausible reason when they said that the European War was not an affair for amateurs; that no troops, however brave and willing, could, like the Rough Riders in the Spanish War, be fitted for action in a month. Only by long drill and by the coordination of all branches of the service, organized on a vaster scale than the world had ever seen before, and commanded by experts, could an army enter the field with any hope of holding its own against the veteran armies of Europe. We may accept this plea, but the fact remains that President Wilson refused to make the very obvious use of Roosevelt which he might have made. Roosevelt was known throughout the world as the incarnation of Americanism. If he had been sent to Europe in April, 19 117, when he first requested, with only a corporals guard to attend him, he would have been a visible proof to the masses in England, in France, and in Italy, that the United States had actually joined the Allies. He would have been the forerunner of the armies that were to. follow, and his presence would have heartened immensely the then sorely perplexed, if not discouraged, populations which the Hun seemed sure to overwhelm. But President Wilson had shown no desire to employ any American on any task where he might get credit which the President coveted for himself. In his Cabinet, his rule was to appoint only mediocre or third-class persons, whose opinions he did not think it necessary to consult. It was quite unlikely, there fore, that he would give Roosevelt any chance to shine in the service of the country, for Roosevelt was not only his political opponent, but his most formidable critic, who had laid bare the weakness of the Wilson regime. When Cavour was assembling all the elements in Italy to undertake the great struggle for Italian liberty and independence, he adroitly secured the cooperation of Garibaldi and his followers, although Garibaldi had declared himself the personal enemy of Cavour. Personal enemy or not, Cavour would have him as a symbol, and Garibaldis concurrence proved of immense value to Italy. So would that of Roosevelt have proved to the Allies if he had been officially accredited by President Wilson. But Cavour was a statesman, who looked far ahead, a patriot uninfluenced by personal likes and dislikes. Roosevelt felt his own deprivation mightily, but the shutting-out of General Leonard Wood roused his angerall injustice roused his anger. As the motive for General Woods exclusion was not frankly avowed, the public naturally drew its own inferences. To him, more than to any other American, we owed what little preparation for war existed when we entered the war. He founded the Plattsburg Camp; he preached very solemnly our needs and our dangers; and he did these things at the very period when President Wilson was assuring the country that we ought not to think of preparing. Doubtless, in 1919, Mr. Wilson would be glad to have those sayings of his, and many othersincluding the too proud to fight, the laudation of German humanity and justice, the war-mad Europe, whose ravings did not concern us, the peace without victory forgotten; but that cannot be, and they rise to accuse him now. Macbeth did not welcome the inopportune visit of the Murderers and of Banquos Ghost at his banquet.
General Wood had to be disciplined for allowing Colonel Roosevelt to make his impolitic speech to the Plattsburg Volunteers; he was accordingly removed from his New York headquarters to the South and then to Camp Funston in Kansas. It was even proposed to relegate him to the Philippines. When our troops began to go to France, he earnestly hoped to accompany them. There were whispers that he was physically unfit for the stress of active war: but the most diligent physical examination by Army surgeons who would have overlooked no defects, showed him to be a man of astonishing health and vigor, as sound as hickory. On the technical side, the best military experts regarded him as the best general officer in the American Army. Nevertheless, in spite of his physical and military qualifications, President Wilson rejected him. Why? The unsympathetic asserted that Mr. Wilson took care to assign no conspicuous officer to service abroad who might win laurels which would bring him forward as a Presidential possibility in 1920. On the other hand, cynics, remembering the immemorial jealousy between the Regulars and Volunteers in both the Army and Navy, declared that an outsider like General Wood, who had not come into the Army through West Point, could expect no fairer treatment from the Staff which his achievements and irregular promotion had incensed. History may be trusted to judge equitably on whom to place the blame. But as Americans recede from the event, their amazement will increase that any personal pique or class jealousy should have deprived the United States from using the soldier best equipped for war at the point where war was raging.
While Roosevelt could not denounce the Administration for debarring himself from military service abroad, he could, and did, attack it for its treatment of General Wood, treatment which both did injustice to a brave and very competent soldier and deprived our Army in its need of a precious source of strength. Perhaps he drew some grim amusement from the banal utterances of the Honorable Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, whom he frequently referred to with appropriate comment. Two months after we entered the war, Mr. Baker issued an official bulletin in which he admitted the difficulty, disorder, and confusion in getting things started, but, he said, it is a happy confusion. I delight in the fact that when we entered this war we were not, like our adversary, ready for it, anxious for it, prepared for it, and inviting it. Accustomed to peace, we were not ready.
Could any one, except a very young child at a soap-bubble party in the nursery, have spoken thus? But Mr. Baker was not a very young child, he was a Pacifist; he did not write from a nursery, but from the War Department of the United States. In the following October he announced with undisguised self-satisfaction: We are well on the way to the battle-field. This was too much for Roosevelt, who wrote: For comparison with this kind of military activity we must go back to the days of Tiglath Pileser, Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh. The United States should adopt the standard of speed in war which belongs to the twentieth century A.D.; we should not be content with, and still less boast about, standards which were obsolete in the seventeenth century B.C.
Roosevelt had now made a contract with the Metropolitan Magazine to furnish to it a monthly article on any topic he chose, and he was also writing for the Kansas City Stay frequent, and often daily, editorial articles. Through these he gave vent to his passionate patriotism and the reader who wishes to measure both the variety and the vigor of his polemics at this time should look through the files of those journals. But this work by no means limited his activity. As occasion stirred him, he dispatched his communications to other journals. He wrote letters, which were really elaborated arguments, to chance correspondents, and he made frequent addresses. The necessity of hurrying on the preparation of our army and of backing up our troops with undivided enthusiasm were his main theme. But he delivered himself on other subjects almost equally important. He paid his respects to the Conscientious Objector, and he insisted at all times that Murder is not debatable. Murder is murder, he wrote Professor Felix Frankfurter, and it is rather more evil when committed in the name of a professed social movement.
Mr. Frankfurter was then acting, by appointment of President Wilson, as counsel to a Mediation Commission, which was dealing with recent crimes of the Industrial Workers of the World. Anarchists, when arrested, had a suspicious way of professing that they espoused anarchism only as a philosophical theory. Roosevelt branded several of the palliators of thesethe Hearsts and La Follettes and Bergers and Hillquits, and othersas reactionaries, as the Bolsheviki of America, who really abetted the violent criminals by pleading for leniency for them on the ground that after all they were only philosophical theorists. Roosevelt was not fooled by any such plea. When you, he told Mr. Frankfurter, as representing President Wilson, find yourself obliged to champion men of this stamp [the philosophical criminals], you ought by unequivocal affirmative action to make it evident that you are sternly against their general and habitual line of conduct.
So Roosevelt pursued, without resting, his campaign to stimulate the patriotic zeal of his country men and to rebuke the delays and blunders of the Administration. If any one had said that he was making rhetoric a substitute for warfarethe accusation with which he charged President Wilsonhe would have replied that Wilson condemned him to use the pen instead of the sword. Forbidden to go himself, he felt supreme satisfaction in the going of all his four sons, and of his son-in-law, Dr. Richard Derby. They did honor to the Roosevelt name. Theodore, Jr., became a Lieutenant-Colonel, Kermit and Archibald became Captains; and Quentin, the youngest, a Lieutenant of Aviation, was killed in an air battle.
Roosevelt was prevented from fighting in France, indeed, but he was gratified to learn from good authority that his efforts in the spring of 1917 to secure a commission and lead troops over seas were the immediate cause of the sending of any American troops. President Wilson, it was reported had no intention, when we went to war, of risking American lives over there, and the leisurely plans which he made for creating and training an army seemed to confirm this report. But Roosevelts insistence and the great mass of volunteers who begged to be allowed to join his divisions, if they were organized, awakened the President to the fact that the American people expected our country to give valid military support to the Allies, at death-grapple with the Hun. The visit in May, 1917, of a French Mission with Marshal Joffre at its head, and of an English Mission under Mr. Arthur Balfour, and their plain revelation of the dire distress of the French and British armies, forced Mr. Wilson to promise immediate help; for Joffre and Balfour made him under stand that unless help came soon, it would come too late. So President Wilson, who hoped to go down in history as the Peacemaker of the World War, and as the organizer of an American Army, which, without shedding a drop of blood, had brought peace about, was compelled to send the only too willing American soldiers, by the hundred thousand and the million, to join the Allied veterans in France.
Persons who do not penetrate beneath the flickering surfaces of life, regard these last years of Roosevelts as an anticlimax which he passed in eclipse; as if they were the eight lean and overshadowed years, following the splendid decade in which as Governor and President he had the worlds admiration and consent. But this view wholly misconceives him. It takes a man who had proved himself to be the greatest moral force in the public life of the world, and drops him when he steps down from the seat of power. Now, of course, Theodore Roosevelt did not require to walk on a high platform or to sit in the equivalent of a throne in order to be Roosevelt; and if we would read the true meaning of his life we must understand, that the years which followed 1910 were the culmination and crown of all that went before. He was a fighter from the days when, as a little boy, he fought the disease which threatened to make his existence puny and crippled. He was a fighter, and from his vantage-ground as President, he fought so valiantly that the world took notice and he brought new ideals into the hearts of the American people. He was just as brave and resourceful and tenacious a fighter when he led the forlorn hope, as when he marched at the head of the Nation in his campaigns against corruption and the mercenaries of Mammon. During these later years he gave up everythinghis ease, his probable restoration to power, the friendships that were very dear to him, even his party which no longer, as he thought, followed the path of righteousness, or desired righteous endsfor the Cause to which he had been dedicated since youth. Analyze his acts at any period, and you will find that they were determined by his loyalty to that Cause.
And how could so great a soul exercise itself to the full, except by grappling with adversity? The prosperous days seemed to fit him like a skin, but only in these days of apparent thwarting and disappointment could he show himself equal to any blows of Fate. At first he struggled magnificently against crushing odds, asking no allowances and no favors. He founded and led the Progressive Party and, in 1912, received the most amazing popular tribute in our history. And he would have pushed on his work for that party had not the coming of the World War changed his perspective. Thenceforth, he devoted himself to saving civilization from the reptilian and atrocious Hun; that was a task, in comparison with which the fortune of a political party sank out of sight.
His work demanded of him to rouse his country men from the apathy and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it, and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they trusted him. Never for a moment did they suspect that he was slyly working for the enemy, or for special interests here or abroad.
He, the supreme American, spoke for America and for the civilization which he believed America fulfilled. His attacks on the delays and the incompetence, on the faint-heartedness and contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one, Roosevelts demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it had to be driven through at top speed. And so of the other vitally necessary things. He ceased to warn Americans that they must be neutral even in thought; he ceased to comfort them by the assurance that a nation may be too proud to fight; he ceased to extol the justice and humanity of the Germans. That he suffered these changes was owing to the fact that American public opinion, largely influenced by Roosevelts word and example, would not tolerate them any more. And President Wilson, when he can, follows public opinion.
Roosevelt took personal pleasure in the bridging of the chasm which had opened between him and his former party intimates. On neither side was there recantation, but they could unite again on the question of the War and Americas duty towards it, which swallowed up partisan grievances. Many of the old time Republicans who had broken politically from Roosevelt in 1912, remained devoted personal friends, and they tried to reunite him and the discordant fragments. One of these friends was Colonel Robert Bacon, whom every one loved and trusted, a born conciliator. He it was who brought Roosevelt and Senator Root together, after more than five years estrangement. He gave a luncheon, at which they and General Leonard Wood met, and they all soon fell into the old-time familiarity. Roosevelt urged vehemently his desire to go to France, and said that he would go as a private if he could not lead a regiment; that he was willing to die in France for the Cause. At which Mr. Root, with his characteristic wit, said: Theodore, if you will promise to die there, Wilson will give you any commission you want, tomorrow.
Roosevelt never fully recovered from the infection which the fever he caught in Brazil left in his system. It manifested itself in different ways and the one thing certain was that it could not be cured. He paid little attention to it except when it actually sent him to bed. In the winter of 1918, it caused so serious an inflammation of the mastoid that he was taken to the hospital and had to undergo an operation. For several days his life hung by a thread. But, on his recovery, he went about as usual, and the public was scarcely aware of his lowered condition. He wrote and spoke, and seemed to be acting with his customary vigor. That summer, however, on July 14th, his youngest son, Quentin, First Lieutenant in the 95th American Aero Squadron, was killed in an air battle near Chambray, France. The lost child is the dearest. Roosevelt said nothing, but he never got over Quentins loss. No doubt he often asked, in silence, why he, whose sands were nearly run, had not been taken and the youth, who had a lifetime to look forward to, had not been spared. The day after the news came, the New York State Republican Convention met at Saratoga. Roosevelt was to address it, and he walked up the aisle without hesitating, and spoke from the platform as if he had no thoughts in his heart, except the political and patriotic exhortation which he poured out. He passed a part of the summer with his daughter, Mrs. Derby, on the coast of Maine; and in the early autumn, at Carnegie Hall, he made his last public speech, in behalf of Governor Whitmans candidacy. A little after this, he appeared for the last time in public at a meeting in honor of a negro hospital unit. In a few days another outbreak of the old infection caused his removal to the Roosevelt Hospital. The date was November 11th,the day when the Armistice was signed. He remained at the hospital until Christmas Eve, often suffering acutely from inflammatory rheumatism, the name the physicians gave to the new form the infection took. He saw his friends for short intervals, he followed the news, and even dictated letters on public subjects, but his family understood that his marvelous physical strength was being sadly exhausted. He longed to be taken home to Sagamore Hill, and when his doctor allowed him to go home, he was greatly cheered.
To spend Christmas there, with his family, even though he had to spend it very quietly, delighted him. For ten days he seemed to be gaining, he read much, and dictated a good deal. On January 5th, he reviewed a book on pheasants and wrote also a little message to be read at the meeting of the American Defense Society, which he was unable to attend. That evening he spent with the family, going to bed at eleven oclock. Put out the light, please, he said to his attendant, James Amos, and no one heard his voice again. A little after four oclock the next morning, Amos, noticing that he breathed strangely, called the nurse, and when they reached his bedside, Roosevelt was dead. A blood clot in his heart had killed him. Death had unbound Prometheus.
By noon on that day, the 6th of January, 1919, the whole world knew of his death, and as the news sank in, the sense of an unspeakable void was felt everywhere. He was buried on January 8th, on a knoll in the small country graveyard, which he and Mrs. Roosevelt had long before selected, overlooking Oyster Bay and the waters of the Sound. His. family and relatives and dear friends, and a few persons who represented State and Nation, the Rough Riders, and learned societies, attended the services in the little church. Just as the coffin was being borne in, the sun came out and streamed through the stained-glass windows. The services were most impressive in their simplicity, in their sense of intimacy, in the sentiment that filled the hour and the place of personal loss and of pride of possession of a priceless memory. The bearers took the coffin through the grove, with its bare trees and light sifting of snow, to the grave; and as it was committed, there were many sobs and tears of old and young. Rough Riders, who had fought by his side, cabinet ministers who had served with him, companions of his work and of his playtime, were all mourners now, and some of those men of affairs, who had done their utmost to wreck him eight years before, now knew that they had loved him, and they grieved as they realized what America and the world had lost. Death had to take him sleeping, said Vice-President Marshall; for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight.
The evil men do lives after them; so does the good. With the passing of years, a mans name and fame either drift into oblivion, or they are seen in their lasting proportions. You must sail fifty miles over the Ionian Sea and look back before you can fully measure the magnitude and majesty of Mount Aetna.
Not otherwise, I believe, will it be with Theodore Roosevelt, when the people of the future look back upon him. The blemishes due to misunderstanding will have faded away; the transient clouds will have vanished; the world will see him as he was.
I do not mean that it will reduce him to an abstraction of perfection, as ill-judged worshipers of George Washington attempted to do with him. Theodore Roosevelt was so vastly human, that no worshiper can make him abstract and retain recognizable features. We have reached the time when we will not suffer anybody to turn our great ones into gods or demigods, and to remove them far from us to dwell, like absentee deities, on a remote Olympus, or in an unimaginable Paradise; we must have them near, intimates whom our souls can converse with, and our hearts love. Such an intimate was Roosevelt living, and such an intimate will he be dead. Washington, Lincoln, Rooseveltthose are the three whom Americans will cherish and revere; each of them a leader and representative and example in a structural crisis in our national life.
Those of us who knew him, knew him as the most astonishing human expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did, his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in its scabbard, would have rendered him superhuman, had he not possessed other qualities which made him the best of playmates for mortals. He had humor, which raises every one to the same level. He had loyalty, which bound his friends to him for life. He had sympathy, and capacity for strong, deep love. How tender he was with little children! How courteous with women! No matter whether you brought to him important things or trifles, he understood.
I can think of no vicissitude in life in which Roosevelts participation would not have been welcome. If it were danger, there could be no more valiant comrade than he; if it were sport, he was a sports man; if it were mirth, he was a fountain of mirth, crystal pure and sparkling. He would have sailed with Jason on the ship Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and he would have written a vivid description of the adventure. I can imagine the delight he would have taken, as the comrade of Ulysses, on his voyage through the Midland Sea, looking with unjaded curiosity on strange towns and into strange faces, and steering fearlessly out to the Hesperides, and beyond the baths of all the western stars. What a Crusader he would have been! How he would have smitten the Paynim with his sword, and then unvisored and held chivalrous interview with Saladin!
Had he companioned Columbus, he would not have been one of those who murmured and besought the great Admiral to turn back, but would have counseled, On! On! It is of little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. I can see him with the voyageurs of New France, exploring the Canadian Wilderness, and the rivers and forests of the North west. I can see him with Lasalle, beaming with exultation as they looked on the waters of the Mississippi; and I can think of no battle for mans welfare in which he would not have felt at home. But he would have taken equal, perhaps greater, delight in meeting the authors, sages, and statesmen, whose words were his daily joy, and whose deeds were his study and incentive. I can hear him question Thucydides for further details as to the collapse of the Athenians at Syracuse; or cross-examine Herodotus for information of some of his incredible but fascinating stories. What hours he would have spent in confabulation with Gibbon! What secrets he would have learned, without asking questions, from Napoleon and Cavour!
His interest embraced them all, some of them he could have taught, many of them would have welcomed him as their peer. As he mixed with high and low in his lifetime, so would it have been in the past; and so will it be in the future, if he has gone into a world where personal identity continues, and the spiritual standards and ideals of this world persist. But yesterday, he seemed one who embodied Life to the utmost. With the assured step of one whom nothing can frighten or surprise, he walked our earth, as on granite. Suddenly, the granite grew more unsubstantial than a bubble, and he dropped beyond sight into the Eternal Silence. Happy we who had such a friend! Happy the American Republic which bore such a son!
Note 1.
July 14, 1916.
Note 2.
May 9,1916.
Note 3.
The entire correspondence between General Wood and President Wilson and Secretary Baker is given in The Foes of Our Own House hold, by Theodore Roosevelt (Doran, New York, 1917, pp. 30447.)
Note 4.
In June, 1915, Colonel Paul Azan, who came to this country to command the French officers who taught American Volunteers at Harvard, and subsequently was commissioned by the French Government to oversee the work of all the French officers in the United States, told me that the Camp and Division commanded by General Wood were easily the best in the country and that General Wood was the only General we had who in knowledge and efficiency came up to the highest French standard. Colonel Azan added that he was suggesting to the French War Department to invite the United States Government to send General Wood to France, but this request, if ever made, was not followed.
Note 5.
Official War Bulletin, June 7, 1917.
Note 6.
December 19, 1917. Letter printed in full in the Boston Herald, June 6, 1919.
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Barry Eisler: Over the weekend, I gave one of the keynotes at the terrific San Francisco Writers Conference. The framework of the talk (Surfing the Waves of Change) was broadly similar to a keynote I gave last year at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference; for the main ideas, here's a guest post Joe kindly let me post here, and an article I wrote for the Guardian.
One of the key updates in the talk I gave at SFWC had to do with bullshit—specifically, the prevalence of bullshit being peddled by various fixtures in establishment publishing. This was natural enough, because in just the last month or so quite a few publishing insiders have grown sufficiently concerned about restlessness among the peasants that they've ventured into the provinces to try to head it off. I don't think it's a coincidence that industry analyst Michael Cader, literary agent David Gernert, literary agent Robert Gottlieb, literary agent Donald Maass, industry analyst Mike Shatzkin, and Kensington Publishing CEO Steve Zacharius have all seen fit to engage some of the arguments that are both cause and consequence of the revolution in publishing ("Authors Guild" president Scott Turow, unsurprisingly, remains in hiding, perhaps because he senses how he would come off if he tried to respond to his critics). Along these lines, I was encouraged that one of the SFWC founders, literary agent Michael Larson, felt compelled to take the stage immediately following my talk to try to rebut some of its substance. I think this level of dialogue is unprecedented in publishing and will be enormously healthy for the industry, and I salute all the insiders who've elected to engage even though I disagree with much of what they're saying.
In addition to bullshit in publishing, another theme of my talk was that publishing is a lottery, but it was only after Michael's rebuttal that I realized I could have been doing a better job of integrating that notion with my points on bullshit. Here I'd like to talk about why, and to make that connection more explicit.
One of the things Michael pointed out was that my thoughts on the benefits of self-publishing don't apply to everyone (I certainly agree with that, and hope I made clear that I don't believe there's any one-size-fits-all publishing solution). After all, he said, ask Stephen King if he wants to self-publish, and King would almost certainly say he would not.
I thought about that point afterward. And then I realized—respectfully, because I really like and respect Michael—that it was bullshit.
Now, by "bullshit," I don't mean untrue. In fact, I think Michael's point very likely is true: while Stephen King has in fact dabbled in self-publishing (he even said, "My friends, we have the chance to become big publishing's worst nightmare"), this was a while ago, and today, given the treatment he gets and the money he makes within the legacy system, I don't think it's terribly likely King would be attracted to self-publishing (though potential fame and fortune aren't the only considerations an author might have in mind when trying to decide which publishing route makes the most sense). Regardless, note the following:
First, the "but don't you want to be Stephen King/James Patterson/Nora Roberts/J.K. Rowling" meme is widespread and frequently deployed by the publishing establishment. For some examples, just click on any of the links in the second paragraph of this post. More often than not, it strikes me as much more of an article of faith than a deliberate dodge, and knowing Michael, I believe he was referring to it sincerely as the former, not the latter. But it certainly is widespread, and for this alone it's worth addressing.
Second, the meme implicitly acknowledges that publishing is indeed a lottery (unless anyone advancing this meme would also argue that Stephen King-levels of publishing mega-stardom are in some way guaranteed or foreordained, neither of which would be a logically or empirically easy proposition). This implicit acknowledgment is of course, in my opinion, not at all bullshit, because as you know I do believe it's extremely useful to conceive of publishing as a kind of lottery.
But despite the kernel of truth, and despite the useful implicit acknowledgement, the meme is still bullshit (and all the more insidious as a result). I would even argue that "Stephen King!" has become one of the two primary dodges of the legacy industry (we'll get to the second in just a bit). Here's why.
First, let me briefly explain why publishing is, in fact, a lottery. It's simple. Hundreds of thousands of authors play it, and only a very few of them win.
Some people object to the analogy because they say it ignores the hard work of authors and publishers. But hard work demonstrably does not guarantee success. If it did, then those hard-working publishers would produce nothing but massive bestsellers. After all, don't they work hard on all their books?
Of course, hard work (and a variety of other factors) can influence your odds of success in publishing, which is why it pays to work hard. But the ability to influence odds doesn't makes something not a lottery. In fact, I can tell you how to instantly double your odds—double them!—in a regular lottery. Just buy a second ticket. Congratulations, you just influenced the odds dramatically. Is it not still a lottery?
No matter how talented you are, no matter how hard working, no matter how awesome and committed your publisher might be, statistically you are far more likely to lose the game of publishing than you are to win it. This isn't a bad thing. Nor is it good. It's just the nature of the beast. You could argue it's the nature of life itself. Our job is to do what we can to influence the odds, but it's foolish at best to argue the odds don't matter, or don't even exist.
Okay, now you're trying to decide whether a certain lottery is right for you. Whether it's worth playing. If someone was encouraging you to buy a ticket, and that person wouldn't talk about anything other than the potential monster payout, would you feel you were receiving accurate, complete, and useful information?
Or might you sense something was missing in the presentation?
Look, there's nothing inherently wrong with a lottery. Whether to participate in one is a personal decision. But to make a good decision, an informed decision, you need three data points, not just one. These are:
1. What is the potential payoff?
2. What are the odds of achieving that payoff?
3. How much will a ticket cost me?
Two quick hypotheticals to illustrate the point.
Lottery #1: This lottery offers a million dollar payout, a one-in-two chance of winning, and a ticket that would cost you only a buck. A one-dollar risk in exchange for a 50% chance at winning a million dollars. Who wouldn't buy a ticket to a lottery like that?
Lottery #2: This lottery offers a million dollar payout, a one-in-ten-million chance of winning, and a ticket that would cost you ten thousand dollars. You'd have to have a hell of a lot of money, and a hell of an appetite for gambling, to want to play in a lottery like that.
The same big prize, but two very different lotteries—one sensible for almost everyone, the other insane for almost everyone. And if the people promoting them gave you only that one piece of information—a One-Million-Dollar Prize!—while concealing the odds and the cost, how could you know what you were getting yourself into? How could you make an informed decision?
Well, you couldn't, of course. It's enough to make you wonder why the people peddling the legacy-publishing lottery only want to talk about Stephen King.
So here I'd like to talk about the aspects of the lottery that establishment types tend to omit (for what it's worth, again, I don't think these omissions are for the most part deliberately intended to mislead. I think they're more commonly caused by well-intentioned people having been so long and so deeply embedded in a system that they're unable to grasp its actual contours. A classic case of missing the forest for the trees).
First, let's stipulate that the legacy publishing purse is not a myth. It's real. J.K. Rowling became a cash billionaire in the legacy lottery. I remember reading somewhere that James Patterson makes over $90 million a year. The richest purses in the legacy lottery are almost obscene.
But now it's time to talk about the odds of you being the next J.K. Rowling. How many authors are there who achieved anything like a comparable level of fame and fortune in publishing? We can quibble over the details, but in general I'd say there have been maybe a dozen in the history of publishing. Though I'm happy to broaden the definition of mega-success and up the number of mega-winners to, say one hundred.
Now we have to measure those one hundred winners against the hundreds of thousands of authors who have tried to get into the legacy system and been unable to do so, or who have secured a legacy contract only to see their book underperform and their contract canceled, or their publisher otherwise decide not to do another book with them and cut them loose.
Okay, a hundred big winners; hundreds of thousands of losers (and some hundreds winning lesser prizes, which we'll talk about in a moment). Now we're getting some sense of the odds.
Please note that I'm not saying these odds should make anyone either embrace legacy publishing, or flee from it. Different people have different objectives, different appetites for risk, different inclinations. There really is no one-size-fits all. But regardless of differences, no one can make a sound decision about a lottery without information about the odds of success, and developing that information is all I'm trying to do here.
Finally, let's talk about what that legacy ticket will cost you.
First, it'll cost you your rights, which someone else will
own control for at least a very long time and in all probability forever (have a look at a typical legacy-publishing page-and-a-half, nine-point font, opaque-as-the-Dead-Sea-Scrolls reversion provision, and you'll eventually conclude that the gist of it is "You will never get your rights back, ever").
Second, it'll cost you time-to-market. Most legacy books don't see daylight until a year after manuscript delivery and acceptance. Many take much longer.
Third, it'll cost you a huge margin in digital. Legacy publishing typically pays authors 12.5% of the list price of a digital book. Self-publishing pays 70%.
Fourth, it'll cost you control over pricing, packaging, marketing, branding, and all other business decisions.
Fifth, it could cost you a good deal in conference and associated travel fees, as you fly from one writing convention to another trying to meet editors and agents and get them interested in your manuscript.
And those are the unavoidable costs, the innate costs. You pay these costs even if you win. That's the way a lottery works. There are also the risks: risks of crappy covers, risks of embarrassingly bad titles, risks of cargo-cult bios, risks that overall your publisher, upon whom you will be relying almost completely, will fail to do its job and will destroy your books chances as a result, and maybe destroy your career in the process.
But it's also absolutely true that in exchange for those costs, the risks might be avoided and you will become the next Stephen King.
It's also true that becoming the next Stephen King isn't the only payout promoted by the legacy industry. There's also the possibility of good conceptual editing, line editing, copyediting, proofreading, cover design, packaging, promotion, marketing, and paper distribution. Note that I say "possibility" of these things. They are not guaranteed, neither contractually nor empirically. The notion that "You write, we'll expertly take care of everything else" is the theory of publishing, the publishing ideal. It is not usually the reality. The promise of receiving expert editing, awesome cover design, crack marketing, wide paper distribution, etc., is itself one of the things that makes legacy publishing a lottery. Some people get it. Most do not. Conflating the theory of legacy publishing with the reality of legacy publishing is another central deceit of the industry.
Now, to be as fair as possible, let's expand the idea of what constitutes a winner in the legacy system still further. In general, I'd define it as the ability to make a living writing full time. But even that might be an unreasonably narrow definition. We could broaden it still further: the ability to make enough money from your writing to pay some bills and to occasionally take a nice vacation somewhere. It wouldn't be J.K. Rowling nice, but it would still be nice.
Well, wouldn't it be useful if the legacy industry could share some of that information, too? You'd think they'd want to. "Hey kids, not everyone gets to be the next Nora Roberts (but you might!), but lots of people get to quit their day jobs and write full time, or at least get to use their winnings to make car payments and periodically buy a vacation in Hawaii."
But they never talk about any of that. What you hear instead is only, "Stephen King!" and "We'll take care of everything but the writing so you won't have to worry!"
Look, if I'm full of shit on all this, then why don't legacy publishers share the data? If the story of their lottery really is so enticing, why not let us see how it really works? Why not talk about the odds, the risks, the costs? What's keeping them from anonymizing the last decade's worth of data: the range of advances; the number of books published per author; the number that have broken even for the publisher and the number that have earned out (these are not the same thing, and the suggestion that they are is another legacy publishing dodge. Publishers typically start to make money long before the author earns out her advance—precisely because author royalties are so low). For every entrant into the legacy lottery, what has been the purse? The number of manuscripts legacy publishers reject at the door would also be useful to know, because if you realize you only have a one-in-ten-thousand chance of even being able to play in the legacy lottery, you might rationally decide not to waste years trying (part of the cost of a ticket), and to start playing the self-publishing lottery immediately instead.
An intern with decent spreadsheet skills could do all this as a summer project. Why hasn't it happened? If everyone really is a winner in the legacy lottery, why doesn't New York get this story out? Wouldn't authors just swoon for it?
(Steve Zacharius did say in his exchange with Joe that he would "try to find answers to some of these questions," but I don't think he's gotten back to anyone since then…)
Yes, that was a rhetorical question. Because if authors were presented with the actual data—not just the purse, but also the odds and the cost and the risk—many of them might rationally decide they liked the self-publishing lottery better. New York understands this. So instead what we get is "Stephen King!" pixie dust tossed in our eyes, and all the rest omitted.
As long as establishment publishing is only willing to talk about the biggest winners in publishing, and as long as they deliberately continue to suggest that the ideal of legacy publishing is in fact the widespread reality, without also being willing to talk about the odds, the costs, and the risks of legacy publishing, you are being bullshitted.
Now, am I suggesting that legacy publishing is a lottery but that self-publishing and Amazon publishing are not? Of course not, and in fact I've repeatedly referred to the self-publishing lottery throughout this post. Let's go into a little more detail now, first for self-publishing, then for Amazon.
What is the high-end payout of the self-publishing lottery? So far, it seems to be in the low seven figures annually. What are the mid-range payouts? Hard to say, though over 150 KDP authors sold over 100,000 books in 2013 and certainly many more than that are for the first time making car payment and periodic vacation money. Other benefits include a dramatically higher per-unit digital royalty; significantly faster time-to market; and control over all aspects of your books and business.
What are the odds? Long. Again, I'm not aware of any solid data on this, but my impression is that even getting the lower-end "car payment and vacation" money payout has statistically speaking got to be a thousand-to-one shot.
What are the costs? A few thousand dollars in upfront fees for editorial, copyediting, proofreading, cover design, and formatting. There are few material opportunity costs, unless you had a legacy offer you decided to eschew in favor of playing the self-publishing game instead (and in fact, if your self-published book does well, that itself might lead to legacy offers. You'll also be acting as the CEO of your own business, with all the time commitment and aggravation such a role can entail (but note again that the notion that you'll be free of such commitments and aggravation in the legacy system is a promise customarily unfulfilled—legacy ideal vs legacy reality—and that therefore having to manage your own business is generally not a material difference between the two systems. For the most part, you can expect to be quite busy with the non-writing aspects of the writing business in both). Because you keep all your rights and maintain full control over all aspects of your books and business, your risks are limited only to your upfront costs.
What about Amazon Publishing, which I think can best be understood at a high level as a hybrid—higher digital royalties, faster time to market, and more control over business decisions, like self-publishing; the promise of outsourced business tasks, corporate-level marketing, and higher ultimate payoffs, like legacy publishing, plus, possibly a decent-sized advance. The odds of hitting at least the medium-level jackpot within the Amazon lottery (assuming you can get in—as in legacy publishing, a ticket in the Amazon system is not guaranteed) strike me as higher than those of the other systems, but as for my impressions of the other systems' odds, this is largely anecdotal.
The costs include: as in the legacy system, long-term and possibly permanent loss of your rights (in my experience, Amazon's reversion provisions are far more sane and certainly less opaque than those of legacy publishing, but the thresholds for reversion are still hard to hit); opportunity costs, in the form of the even higher digital per-unit royalties you would make in self-publishing and the even greater business control you would have there, and in the form of whatever you walked away from if you were presented with a legacy offer, as well. As in legacy publishing, there are no upfront costs with Amazon. As with legacy, there is the risk your book will be poorly published and die (though from everything I know firsthand and by knowing and talking with dozens of other Amazon-published authors, my sense is that this risk is statistically far lower with Amazon than it is in the legacy system). On the upside, in my experience publishing with Amazon means the opportunity to work with a group of exceptionally smart, interesting, fun, innovative, risk-taking people, which I count as a benefit and one I haven't heard of any Amazon author failing to receive. On the downside, I would note that in my opinion and in the opinion of more than a few of my peers, Amazon legal is becoming increasingly corporate and legacy-like in its outlook and its practices. It's still not remotely as bad as what I've experienced in the legacy system, but the trends concern me and I hope Amazon will reverse them.
I also think it's entirely fair to criticize Amazon for its own unwillingness to share more data about winners and losers within the Amazon system. I would only note this possible difference: in my experience, Amazon is so obsessed with secrecy that the company won't disclose even data that I know is tremendously supportive of the value they offer authors, including the terms of their publishing agreements (though again, in some respects these have been getting more legacy-like; Amazon, why not keep playing to your strengths?), and including the details of some of their biggest publishing successes. Knowing this, and being familiar with the impressions and stories of quite a few other Amazon-published authors, my sense is that Amazon's reluctance to share aggregate, anonymized data about the details of its lottery are driven more by an innate (and, in my opinion, unfortunate) impulse for secrecy than by a desire to obfuscate, but you could reasonably draw somewhat different conclusions, too.
That said, note that when an author self-publishes, the legacy industry is cut out entirely. Legacy publishers make no money on a self-published author's books. But Amazon does make money, by charging 30% for access to the KDP distribution platform. In other words, legacy publishing is institutionally, unavoidably, financially invested in spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about self-publishing. But Amazon makes money either way. Draw your own conclusions. You can draw similar conclusions about whatever biases I and other authors who are vocal about the revolution in publishing might bring to the conversation. Say what you will, but I don't think you can argue that my bottom line is dependent or even in any way affected by how other authors choose to publish their own books. The truth is, I don't care. What I care about is that authors have good information upon which they can make the decisions that are best for themselves. Can an establishment publishing insider who is steering you in a particular direction make the same claim of disinterest?
Overall, the biggest difference between the Amazon lottery, on the one hand, and the legacy- and self-publishing lotteries, on the other hand, is this: Amazon's unmatched direct-to-consumer marketing power. Legacy publishing has virtually no such power at all, though to some extent it can buy such marketing by paying Amazon to do it for them (in self-publishing, your direct-to-consumer marketing reach will be even smaller). If your sales are primarily digital, the paper distribution legacy publishing will offer you is relatively unimportant (it may even be less important than that), and legacy will be able to offer you almost nothing to market your digital books that you couldn't have done yourself. Whereas Amazon will be able to use its unmatched data on its own end-user customers, including direct email and on-site merchandizing, to market your book to an audience that is both huge (tens of millions of people) and targeted (people who demonstrably want to buy books). In my experience, that kind of direct-to-consumer marketing power is worth a lot. But will you get it? Not everybody does, at least not in the same caliber, and the question of, "Yes, Amazon can promote the hell out of my book, but how much will they?" is part of what an author needs to grapple with when trying to decide whether the Amazon lottery makes sense for her.
I believe the biggest shift we're seeing in publishing is precisely this: the foundation of the industry used to be distribution. Now that digital has broken legacy publishing's lock on distribution, new publishing will be built on direct-to-consumer marketing, which is replacing distribution as the item new authors most need and will have the hardest time outsourcing for a flat fee. Companies that can offer real direct-to-consumer marketing reach will be well positioned in the new world of publishing. Companies that can't will be in trouble.
Way back at the beginning of this post, I mentioned a second major dodge of legacy publishing. Sorry it took a while to get to it. It's actually a more general category, of which "Stephen King!" is in part a specific subset. What I'm talking about is the tendency of the publishing establishment to suggest, whether implicitly or explicitly, that all the benefits of publishing are in legacy and all the risks are in digital. This dodge is ubiquitous—have a look at the links at the beginning of this post and you'll see what I mean. And now that you know about the dodge, I promise you'll see it wherever an establishment publishing personage makes a pronouncement. And you'll be aware also that if someone is trying to have an honest conversation with you, that person will start by acknowledging that there are risks and potential rewards, costs and benefits, disadvantages and advantages in both systems. Anyone who suggests or even implies otherwise is bullshitting you, whether deliberately or otherwise.
To sum up: if we're going to have a useful conversation, it helps to start by acknowledging that all publishing systems are lotteries. After that, we have to acknowledge not only the systems' different payouts, but also their different odds, different costs, and different risks. Only now we can start to grapple with matching that framework with our own objectives, talents, skills, preferences, and personalities—overall, with our own unique circumstances—to make decisions that are likely best for us.
So what are some of the questions a writer trying to decide between the various systems might want to ask? I would include these:
How much is the advance? How much do I need the advance? Do I think that with higher self-publishing royalties, I can beat the contract (to see what I mean with that concept, follow the last paragraph in this Daily Beast interview)? If so, how long do I expect beating the contract will take? How important is paper distribution to me, and how important is digital? Am I in a genre like romance or science fiction, which are doing exceptionally well in digital, or am I writing something like a children's book, in which for now I could expect relatively few digital sales? How important to me is control over things like pricing and packaging? How important is time-to-market? How much do I like, and how good am I at, running my own business vs. outsourcing business management to someone else? How much do I trust my potential business partner to manage things well? How much do I hate what legacy publishers are doing today vs how much do I fear what Amazon might do tomorrow? Which system gives me more personal power to influence my odds of success, and how important is that power to me? Etc. If you make a decision without asking such questions, you're making a mistake, at least in your process (though you can still get lucky in your result). If you are asking these questions, then regardless of the path you choose, you're making an informed decision, and for you, the right one.
It really is interesting to consider the way New York tries to obscure the nature of the legacy lottery. The prize is never other than Stephen King. The odds are never other than that the reality you receive will always match the ideal you were promised. The cost of a ticket is never mentioned at all.
A Martian might find an honest and transparent conversation about the nature of the various publishing lotteries so entirely obvious and commonsensical that s/he would find it hard to understand why the publishing establishment is so intent on avoiding it. Of course, the Martian might not know about how long New York protested that their costs of digital book production were similar to their costs of paper production, when logic and just baseline common sense made such a proposition nonsensical (every single paper book a publisher prints and ships costs additional money, whereas the marginal costs of distributing digital books are zero). The Martian might not know that HarperCollins recently confirmed what any honest observer already knew (and what Joe knew at least as far back as 2010), which is that indeed New York has been making far more money from digital books than from paper, and sharing far less with authors. The Martian, in other words, might not know of New York's demonstrated habit of, shall we say, dissembling (in fairness, if the Martian had ever seen a New York publishing contract or a New York royalty statement, the Martian would understand that obfuscation is one of the traditions Traditional Publishing most assiduously honors).
So come on, publishing establishment. I know Scott Turow is too afraid to come out from under his rock and have an honest conversation, but I know not all of you are that cowardly. Some of you have been engaging already, as I've noted, and, as also noted, I salute you for it. Please, the comment section is yours. Prove that I'm full of shit. Share your data on payouts, odds, costs, and risks. I can't think of a better way, or a better opportunity, for you to prove once and for all that the legacy lottery is the best damn game in town.
P.S. I know this is a long post, and certainly not my first. I'd have liked to make it shorter because shorter would save everybody time (me most of all, because it takes longer to write these posts than it does to read them). But I find it's difficult to be brief when it comes to exposing bullshit. Bullshit tends to come with a ready-made and already generally accepted superstructure that allows the bullshit to act as its own automatic abbreviation. "Stephen King!" "It's so hard to get discovered in self-publishing!" (as though it's easy and guaranteed in legacy, or in any other business, for that matter). "When everyone can publish, there will be so much crap no one will be able to find good books!" (AKA, The Tsunami of Crap). "Self-publishing is so much work, you'll barely have time to write!" etc. are easy sound bites designed to play to people's fears. At a high level, they're a lot like "Death Panels!" "Socialism!" "National Security!" and other such political propaganda that's used to cow and manipulate the populace. Using logic, evidence, and argument to assuage the fears ginned up by propaganda requires a bit more effort. For more, I recommend Noam Chomsky on "concision."
Joe sez: I was talking about publishing being a lottery eight years ago, before the Kindle existed. It's an apt analogy.
And while I agree with Barry that luck indeed plays a part, and it is important to know payoffs, odds, and costs, more and more I'm looking at the bullshit many legacy pundits are spouting, and their unconscionable contract terms, and I think of it as less of a lottery and more like a carnival game. You know, the ones where you pay for three chances to toss a hoop around a stuffed animal, or to knock down a pyramid of blocks with a baseball.
See, those games seem like they're easy. But they are heavily favored toward the carnival. That hoop barely fits over the stuffed animal. Those blocks weigh a lot more than they look. And don't get me started on how impossible it is to lob a quarter onto a small glass tray or get a ping pong ball into a cup only a millimeter wider than its circumference.
Legacy publishing trumpets its bestseller successes, tempting authors to be the next John Grisham or Lee Child, without explaining how goddamn hard it is to sell in those numbers (unless you're John Grisham or Lee Child). They talk about big names and big advances like anyone off the street could get them. They talk about how essential they are. They say that if you're good enough, you'll be rewarded.
I find this pervasive attitude analogous to a giant stuffed Snoopy doll that you have three chances to win for just $1. The Snoopy doll is no doubt worth a lot more than $1. It's hanging right there in front of you, practically begging for you to win it.
But the carnies can offer that doll for $1 because few ever win. The number of losers more than pay for the occasional winner.
And I believe, like the carnies, legacy pundits know this. But they never come out and admit it.
For example:
Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius: If you look at the printed NYT list, how many of the mega authors are self-published? ….if indie publishing is as good as you're all making it sound…..why do you think that the biggest and most successful authors in publishing don't go this route? Why isn't Nora Roberts, Patterson, Lee Child, etc….going this route?
Carny: Look at this gigantic Snoopy doll! You're a Snoopy fan, I can tell. Well, the only way to get this doll is to throw a ring around it, and you get three rings for just a dollar. Don't you want to take home that doll?
Carny: Look at this gigantic Snoopy doll! You're a Snoopy fan, I can tell. Well, the only way to get this doll is to throw a ring around it, and you get three rings for just a dollar. Don't you want to take home that doll?
Legacy Apologist Mike Shatzkin: Unearned advances are a substantial part of author compensation. I know of one Big Five house that calculates that they pay more than 40% of their revenue to authors
Carny: People win all the time, and look what they win! Look how big that Snoopy is! I tell you, the odds are so good you'll win one that we're going broke here. This is our last Snoopy.
Agent Donald Maass: Authorship is a true meritocracy. (Sorry, it is.)
Carny: You're good at this game. I can tell. You're the best. And the best always wins. Give it a try, only three rings for a dollar. I'm sure you'll win that doll.
Carny: You're good at this game. I can tell. You're the best. And the best always wins. Give it a try, only three rings for a dollar. I'm sure you'll win that doll.
Agent Robert Gottlieb: Sometimes sharing opportunity with a publisher, wherever possible, creates greater opportunity for an author's career.
Carny: You can't find a Snoopy doll like this anywhere else. We're the only ones that have it. If you want it, now is your chance to get it. Three tries for a buck.
Carny: You can't find a Snoopy doll like this anywhere else. We're the only ones that have it. If you want it, now is your chance to get it. Three tries for a buck.
Agent David Gernert: I am not a fan of self-publishing in general. It removes the gatekeepers from the process, and if we come to a point where every person in America who is writing a book can "publish" it, it becomes much more difficult for readers to find the good ones.
Carny: Knocking down blocks with a baseball? That game is rigged. And they don't have a giant Snoopy doll. Trust me, this is the game you want to play. The one you're good at, with the big reward. Just three rings for a dollar.
Carny: Knocking down blocks with a baseball? That game is rigged. And they don't have a giant Snoopy doll. Trust me, this is the game you want to play. The one you're good at, with the big reward. Just three rings for a dollar.
So you buy the three rings and fail to win the Snoopy, because the game is rigged, The odds were much harder than the carnies made them seem. But every so often--it is rare but it happens--someone wins a giant Snoopy worth a lot of money, and they only paid $1 for it.
But who really paid for that Snoopy? The one who won it? Or all the losers who didn't win it?
Who pays for the mega-bestsellers? Do they pay for themselves, and make so much extra that they also cover all the midlist books that lose money?
Or could the opposite be happening?
Let's do some quick and dirty math.
Phil the Writer gets a $5,000 advance. He sells 5,000 ebooks his first year at a Digital List Price of $6.99—a reasonable number for a midlist author. The publisher earns $2.62 per sale (selling to the etailer at 50% of the DLP and keeping 75% of net) or $13,100. The author earns $0.88 per copy sold. He's earned $4400—still $600 short of earning out his advance. So the publisher made $13,100, minus the $5,000 advance, so it actually earned $1.62 per copy sold.
Jack the Writer gets a $2,000,000 advance. He sells 1,000,000 ebooks his first year at a Digital List Price of $6.99—a reasonable number for a bestseller. The publisher earns $2.62 per sale or $2,620,000, and the author earns $0.88 per copy sold (assuming a 25% royalty—more on this in a minute) or $880,000—still $1,120,000 short of earning out his advance. So the publisher made $2,620,000, minus the $2,000,000 advance, so it actually earned $0.62 per copy sold.
In other words, in this scenario, it is arguably better for the publisher to publish a lot of midlist books that don't earn out instead of a huge blockbuster that doesn't earn out.
And how about those huge bestselling authors who make higher than 25% ebook royalties? That means an even smaller per unit profit for the publisher.
Of course, as the sales for both ebooks continue, the profit per unit increases. But some publishers offer advances so high they will likely never earn out, and they also offer some bestsellers higher ebook royalties.
So who is really paying for whom? If you were a publisher, would you rather have Jack the bestseller, or 400 writers like Phil?
Pundits like to say that legacy publishers—by offering advances and paying all the costs of publication—take all the risk. They're essentially giving authors an interest-free loan that never has to be returned even if the book fails to earn out.
But is this really the case?
I submit that the loan isn't interest free. In fact, the interest on it is huge; paying it back at 12.5% royalties takes a lot longer than the 70% royalties an author would make by self-publishing.
As I explained in a recent post fisking Mike Shatzkin:
If you were a genre author offered a $100k advance earning 12.5% royalties off of the digital list price (25% of net, and publishers sell to Amazon at roughly 50% off their digital list price), and your ebook is priced at $4.99, you earn $0.63 per ebook sold. You need to sell 159,000 ebooks to earn out your advance. And when you do, you're stuck with 63 cents per sale, FOREVER.
The same ebook, self-published, earns the author $3.49 per copy sold. If they sell 28,653 copies, they made the $100,000. Every copy they sell after that, they make 5.6x more money than they do on a legacy ebook.
Which seems like a better deal for authors?
The same ebook, self-published, earns the author $3.49 per copy sold. If they sell 28,653 copies, they made the $100,000. Every copy they sell after that, they make 5.6x more money than they do on a legacy ebook.
Which seems like a better deal for authors?
And remember—even if the advance never earns out, the legacy publisher can still make money. The example of Phil the writer shows how.
And if Jack the writer had sold 1,000,000 ebooks via self-pubbing, he would have made $3,490,000, or $1,490,000 more than his advance (which he still hasn't earned out yet according to the figures I posted).
Isn't this looking more and more like a carny game where the publisher always wins? Especially when you include all the one-sided contract terms—non-compete clauses, next work option, term of copyright, etc.
Like carnies, publishers aren't in the business of losing money. They also aren't in the business of showing odds.
That's the distinction between a carny game and a lottery. Lotteries require the odds to be posted. Anyone who goes gambling has easy access to the odds in blackjack, roulette, and craps. It's simple math, and the gambler is aware of those odds.
With a carny game, the big fluffy Snoopy doll is hanging right in front of your eyes, promising itself as a huge reward for a simple ring toss. But the ring toss isn't simple, and the odds of winning aren't apparent. All you see is a big Snoopy—or a guest spot on Oprah and a #1 bestseller—without the carny or the legacy publisher actually telling you what your chances are.
As PT Barnum said, there's a writer born every minute.
Wait… I meant a sucker born every minute.
But as suckers, er… writers, we can arm ourselves with knowledge. We can share stories and read blogs and participate in forums and ask questions.
A few months ago, Brenda Hyatt updated her Show Me The Money! blog post, revealing average and median advances, royalties, and earn-outs for many legacy publishers. It's a must-read for any author considering a legacy deal.
It isn't up to me, or Barry, or anyone, to tell you what path to follow.
So why do Barry and I and many other authors blog about stuff like this?
Simple. Pain shared is pain divided. Joy shared is joy multiplied.
Share the pain. Spread the joy. Tell others what you've learned, good and bad.
And next time you go to a carnival, spend that five bucks on cotton candy, not on the ring toss. At least you'll get what you paid for.
P.S. A question that occurred to me after writing my bit was: If publishers are making so much less on bestselling titles, why do they keep offering huge advances?
I could think of a big reason: the long game.
The more copies a book sells, the less important an advance becomes because the publisher eventually absorbs it into total production costs. When enough copies sell, publishers are making almost the same amount on Jack's book as they are on Phil's book.
Carrie and Killing Floor and One For The Money and Along Came A Spider are first books (or first books in a series) by some mega-bestselling authors. These books continue to generate a lot of revenue, year in and year out, even though they no longer require marketing or advertising dollars. Backlist pays for the front list, in a sort of weird reverse-pyramid scheme. The old books front the costs for the new books until the new books become old enough to be money makers, which in turn pay for new books.
What a publisher makes next quarter is largely based on what they did years ago.
So a legacy publisher can afford to offer a 10 million dollar advance, because previous books by an author have shown, over time, to generate (or have the potential to generate) that kind of income.
There are also the instant hits, like Twilight and 50 Shades and Dragon Tattoo and DaVinci Code that also help to pay the bills.
A solid backlist and a few runaway hits, coupled with underpaying most authors with low advances and poor royalties, allow publishers to offer giant advances—even if those advances take years to pay for themselves.
As long as there is a steady supply of authors willing to accept what publishers are offering, the legacy industry will endure.
But 99.9999% of authors don't get the huge advance, just like 99.9999% of ring tossers don't win the giant Snoopy.
So what happens when authors wise up and realize they don't have to deal with publishers anymore?
Data Guy's nine-year-old daughter instantly understood what happens. She was reading The Passive Voice over her father's shoulder and said, "It's just like A Bug's Life. The ants are finally realizing they don't have to give the food they collect to the bullying grasshoppers anymore, while they starve."
Can't be more on the nose than that…

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Joe Mauer Welcomes Twin Girls Wednesday
It's official: Minnesota's own version of royalty, Joe Mauer, is a first-time dad. Mauer's wife, Maddie, went into labor late Tuesday night and delivered twin girls early on Wednesday morning in St. Paul.
The Twins catcher and his wife named the twin girls Maren and Emily.
Mauer missed Tuesday night's victory over the LA Angels to charter a flight back to Minnesota in hopes of being at the hospital on time to witness the births, which he accomplished.
Mauer will be placed on paternity leave and is expected to miss 1-3 games.


text:
GISIN Protocol Specification
Version: =$Version?>
Last Update: =$Date?>
1. Introduction
Every organization tends to collect data in a unique way. This document defines the protocol that GISIN users to transfer data between organizations in a standard way. For information on why the specification includes the features it does, please see the =$RequirementsURL?>.
This document is written for those who wish to provide data to GISIN through file upload or a web service and assumes you are familiarly with the Global Invasive Species Information Network (GISIN). The protocol specification described here has borrowed from other specifications wherever possible. See the DarwinCore documentation, the OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS), and Geography Markup Language (GML) for related topics.
Note: The documentation on web services has been moved to the new Web Service page.
1.1 Acknowledgements
A large number of individuals and organizations helped with the initial idea, content, and reviews of this protocol. They include; Jim Graham and Annie Simpson for coordinating and documenting the effort, Jerry Cooper, Bob Morris and Michael Browne for original work on the IASPS documentation which was a starting point for this document; Greg Ruiz and Jim Carlton for their Framework for Vector Science; Pam Fuller, Greg Ruiz, Brian Steves, and Shawn Dalton, for their development of NISBase as the ground breaking work on implementing invasive species data exchange; Michael Browne for facilitating the development of the status categories; Robert Hilliard, Kevin Thiele and Aaron Wilton for assistance in integrating vocabularies, Roger Hyam, Renato De Giovanni, and Markus Doring for help with implementing TAPIR; Donald Hobern and Hannu Saarenmaa for overall guidance, and Liz Sellers, Rob Emery, Jacob Asiedeau, Greg Newman, Catherine Jarnevich, Silvia Ziller, Andrea Grosse, Olivier de Munck, the staff of Invasive Species Specialist Group and the Global Invasive Species Database.
If we have forgotten anyone please let us know!
2. Overview
The protocol has been designed with potential data providers in mind, including, a recognition that these organizations will tend to have simple, flat databases, with minimal technical resources to modify their databases to make them available as a web service. At the same time the protocol must perform at high speeds to allow for both a large number of providers and for providers with very large data sets. The protocol is used by both the file upload and web service capabilities of GISIN.
2.1 Data Models
Below are the "Data Models" or types of data that are supported by the protocol.
Note: We broke out ManagementStatus and ImpactStatus from SpeciesStatus when we realized there could be multiple records for ManagementStatus and/or ImpactStatus for a single SpeciesStatus record (i.e. a single species and location). This allows us to keep the Model records flat.
2.2 Concepts
The GISIN protocol was created as an extension to the DarwinCore standard. This standard refers to each of the types of data in a data model as a "concept". Concepts can also be thought of as the labels over the columns in a table or spreadsheet file, or as the fields in a database.
3. Details
3.1 Common Concepts
The following Concepts are used as fields to identify the Date, Taxonomy, Location, and the Language for text results within the data for all Models.LKU_GISIN_Concepts::WriteModelTable($Database,0,"Fields","ProtocolSpecification.php",true,false,1); ?>
Note: If a provider does not support a particular Concept it should simply not return that Concept as an element of the record.
3.1.1 Dates
Dates are represented as documented in International Standard ISO 8601. This format is YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY is the decimal year in the Gregorian calendar. See Markus's web page for a quick summary. At least a year is required, month and day are preferred as well.
The Modified is the last date that the record was changed. This will be used by data consumers of if they cache data. If the provider does not maintain a DateLastModfiied in their database they should always return the current date.
The StartValidDate and EndValidDate represent the range of when a "status" data Model is valid. Data providers should return an empty element for the EndValidDate if the status is still current.
3.1.2 Taxa
ScientificName is the primary means of identifying a taxa. At least a Genus is required. Species, subspecies, variety, author, and date may be provided in standard taxonomic notation. Kingdom is recommended to be included in all requests with ScientificNames to resolve the few conflicts where the same genus appears in more than one Kingdom.
Examples of scientific names include:
Note: We need to define how Taxonomic Concepts will be included.
3.1.3 Locations
Invasive species location data can be in one of three forms: 1) country codes with additional concepts, 2) standard location codes, and/or 3) geographic coordinates.
Readers should recognize that certain providers will have only local names while others will have only geographic coordinates (of a variety of types). Consumers may request just LocationNames, just Geographic coordinates, or both. The data provider should provide all the information it has available that meets the requested content.
184.108.40.206 Location from Country Codes with Additional Concepts
International codes exist for countries and are available from the ISO 3166 and can be specified with the CountryCode concept. Once a country code is specified, a state/province should be specified with the StateProvince concept. If approrpiate a county (which includes cantons) should then be specified with the County concept. If available, the name of the local area can be specified with the LocalityName concept. A LocalityType should accompany a LocalityName to ensure it is unique. If names are not associated with a LanguageCode then they are assumed to be in the default language of the provider.
126.96.36.199 Standard Location Codes
Another approach is to identify the location of the record with a known defined standard (i.e. US_HUC, US_FIPS, AR_PostalCode, etc.). This is done by providing a LocationStandard and LocationCode. Supported LocationStandards are listed below. There can only be one location code per record.
Please contact a member of the GISIN steering committee to have a new standard added.
188.8.131.52 Geographic Coordinates
A precise coordinate can be specified with the DecimalLatitude and DecimalLongitude concepts. These values should be in decimal degrees. The accuracy of the coordinates should be provided with the HorizontalAccuracy concept and how the coordinates were created should be provided with the GeographicProtocol concept if this information is available.
Filtering for geographic coordinates is only supported for geographic bounding boxes with the DecimalLatitudeMin, DecimalLatitudeMax, DecimalLongitudeMin, and DecimalLongitudeMax parameters.
3.1.4 Languages
Languages are specified with IS0 639-2 codes. These are 3-letter codes. In some cases a bibliographic code and a terminology code is provided. In this case GISIN uses the terminology code. Some examples are below.
3.1.5 Globally Unique Identifiers
Globally Unique Identifiers, or GUIDs, are a mechanism to uniquely identify data that is moved around the Internet. GUIDs are extremely important both to make sure we are not duplicating records and to make sure that the originators of data are identifiable. GUIDs are also a means to allow corrections to data to be updated and to have old data removed from a system.
GISIN recommends GUIDs be attached to each record in the original source of the data. When this is not possible, providers should add a GUID and cite the original source in the Citation concept. If a provider changes the contents of a record that they do not own, they should create a new GUID and cite the original source in the Citation concept. Since GUIDs are used to identify a unique record, they should never be reused with a different record.
GUIDs must also be traceable or resolvable. Any GUID must be able to be used to determine the original source of a record, typically by entering it into a web browser as a URL (in the case of GISIN GUIDs, with the addition of http://www.). GUIDs must also last for a very long time (indefinitely). This means that a "GUID Authority" must be used to provide the GUID. An authority is defined as an organization that has made a long-term commitment to providing a resolving functionality for GUIDs.
There are a variety of formats for GUIDs. GISIN uses a GUID standard that is easy to read and resolve. The format appears as:
Where the values in brackets would be replaced with:
GISIN has volunteered to be a GUID authority so if you as a data provider do not have another authority to use, you can contact GISIN to obtain an InstitutionCode and CollectionCode(s) and then determine your own unique CatalogNumbers. The format for GUIDs from GISIN is:
3.2 SpeciesStatus
The SpeciesStatus model contains information on the status of a species within a specific location, and within a specific date range.
3.2.1 SpeciesStatus Concepts
SpeciesStatuses are required to support the following general Concepts:
SpeciesStatuses support the following additional Concepts. Possible values for the Concepts are listed below this table.WriteModelFields($Database,1); ?>
3.3 SpeciesResourceURLs
3.3.1 SpeciesResourceURL Concepts
SpeciesResourceURLs are required to support the following general Concepts:
SpeciesResourceURL support the following additional Concepts as fields:WriteModelFields($Database,2); ?>
3.4 Occurrences
Occurrence data are especially important for modeling present and future distributions of species. The GISIN system utilized other TDWG standards in the management of occurrence information.
3.4.1 Occurrence Concepts
Occurrences are required to support the following general Concepts:
Occurrences support the following additional Concepts:WriteModelFields($Database,3); ?>
The preferred datums are World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) or High Accuracy Reference Network (HARN) but providers may have data in datums that are not global and may not have the facilities to convert them to a global datum. Ignoring the datum can cause errors of thousands of meters! We highly encourage providers to provide data in WGS84 or HARN and consumers should always check the datum or else filter to choose just the datums they accept.
3.5 ImpactStatus
3.5.1 ImpactStatus Concepts
ImpactStatus represents the type of impact a species is having on a habitat. Multiple ImpactStatues should be provided for species that impact multiple habitats (i.e. marine and terrestrial).
ImpactStatuses are required to support the following general Concepts:
ImpactStatuses support the following additional Concepts:WriteModelFields($Database,5); ?>
Note: we need more quantifiable terms here
3.6 DispersalStatus
DispersalStatus represents the type of Dispersal a species is having on a habitat. Multiple DispersalStatuses should be provided for species that Dispersal multiple habitats (i.e. marine and terrestrial).
3.6.1 DispersalStatus Concepts
DispersalStatuses are required to support the following general Concepts:
DispersalStatuses support the following additional Concepts:WriteModelFields($Database,7); ?>
3.7 ManagementStatus
3.7.1 ManagementStatus Concepts
ManagementStatus represents the type of management activities involved with a species in a specified area. Multiple ManagementStatuses should be provided for if multiple activities are engaged in the same time period.
ManagementStatuses are required to support the following general Concepts:
ManagementStatuses support the following additional Concepts:WriteModelFields($Database,4); ?>
Carlton, J.T. and G.M. Ruiz. 2002. Principles of Vector Science and Integrated Vector Management. In Mooney, H. et al. (eds.) Best Practices for the Prevention and Management of Alien Invasive Species. Island Press
IUCN 2000. Guidelines for the prevention of biodiversity loss due to biological invasion. IUCN – The World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland
Appendix A - Issues
See the protocol issues in the technical documentation
Appendix B - Changes
$ThePage->BodyEnd(true,false,false); ?>


text:
The following helpful resources provide information on students that are English Learners (ELs).
|Resources for Administrators and English Learner (EL) Directors
Home Language Survey
"Success with English Learners" professional development for English Learners
|Resources for Teachers
WIDA & Indiana Academic Standards Summer 2014 Training
WIDA & Indiana Academic Standards Summer 2014 Training: The Indiana Department of Education's Office of English Learning and Migrant Education and the College and Career Readiness Division presented 7 training sessions across the state in summer 2014 as an overview of the WIDA English language development (ELD) standards and how they work in conjunction with the Indiana Academic Standards. This video represents a 1 hour highlight of the 6.5 hour training. For the full training, please access the WIDA section of the IDOE website at www.doe.in.gov/elme/wida
Collaboration & Connection for Our ELL Students power point
Collaboration & Connection for Our ELL Students: Trish Morita-Mullaney is a Visiting ELL Assistant Professor at Purdue University. She teaches graduate online courses for the ELL K-12 license and supports other related ELL classes for graduate and doctoral students. She coordinates with area school districts and service centers on ELL professional development for teachers and administrators. Her research focuses on the lived practices of teachers and leaders as they enact policy with, for, and among ELLs. Before serving at Purdue, she worked as a building administrator and an ELL District Director. She is a long-term member of INTESOL and is a part of the INTESOL leadership cadre. She was a significant contributor to the creation of Indiana's first set of ELL standards.
ELLs in Secondary Classrooms Part 1 Powerpoint
ELLs in Secondary Classrooms 1: In part 1, Dr. Katie Brooks and Dr. Susan Adams, professors in the College of Education at Butler University, share research behind the stages of second language acquisition and effective strategies that educators can use to facilitate the development of academic language in the classroom for our English learners.
ELLs in Secondary Classrooms 2: In part 2, Dr. Brooks and Dr. Adams discuss how to facilitate language development, including reading skills in the second language. Specific strategies are shared to increase interaction and provide language instruction through the content. In order for all English learners to be successful, Dr. Brooks and Dr. Adams share factors that must be considered when teaching long term English learners (LTELs) and students with interrupted formal schooling (SIFEs) with little native literacy development.
Information About Our Speakers:
Dr. Kathryn Brooks, Ph.D.
Katie Brooks is associate professor in the College of Education at Butler University and was the Principal Investigator of Project Alianza, a five-year US DOE Title III Professional Development Grant. Katie's research interests also include ESL student writing, ESL student engagement in mainstream classrooms, and teacher professional development.
Dr. Susan R. Adams, Ph.D.
Most recently the Project Alianza Director at Butler University, Susan R. Adams is assistant professor of Middle/Secondary education in the College of Education at Butler University where she teaches ESL education courses for preservice and practicing teachers. A former high school ESL teacher and instructional coach, her research interests include equity, teacher transformation, and ELL writing.
Information About Our Speakers:
Dr. Faridah Pawan
Faridah Pawan is an associate professor from the Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN). Areas of specialty include ESL/EFL teacher education, research in ESL and content area teacher collaboration in public schools in Indiana and in Beijing, China, and pedagogy in second/foreign language online teaching.
Anita Seralathan
Anita Seralathan is a doctoral student in the Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN). She was an ESL teacher in California and an EFL teacher in the Czech Republic and India. Her degree goal is ED.D. in ESL/EFL Teacher Education.
English Learners and RTI Webinars: This thee part mini-series, titled What Every Administrator Should Know about Separating Difference from Disability, is presented by Dr. Catherine Collier. Dr. Collier has over 45 years experience in equity, cross-cultural, bilingual, and special education. She has authored several books and articles on cross-cultural and multilingual special education. She works extensively with school districts on professional and program development for at-risk diverse learners.
What Every Administrator Should Know about Separating Difference from Disability Powerpoint
Integrating WIDA ELD Standards into RTI Processes for ELLs
Part I: Policy, Programs, and Challenges for English Learners
Part II: Pyramid of Resilience, Instruction, Intervention & More
Part III: Language Characteristics and Instructional Support for English Learners
Part IV: Step 1-2: Build Foundation and Establish Resiliency
Part V: Step 3-4: Differentiate and Monitor Instruction & Intervention
Part VI: Step 5-7: Resolve/Reference, Integrate, and Serve