MSI Press Blog

  How Books Keep Moving Long After Their Moment Has Passed Books don’t disappear when their sales slow down. They migrate. They circulate. They get passed from hand to hand, recommended in conversations, discovered in libraries, resurfaced in online searches, and remembered by people who read them years ago. This hidden life — the book‑o‑sphere — is where most books spend most of their time. A book can be: out of print but alive in libraries rarely purchased but frequently mentioned old but newly relevant quiet in sales but loud in memory This is why authors sometimes hear about their books more often than they see royalties from them. The book‑o‑sphere runs on attention, not transactions. For authors, this is good news. It means your work has a life beyond the ledger. It means your ideas keep traveling. It means your book is part of conversations you’ll never hear and moments you’ll never witness. And sometimes, every few years, it sends you a tiny royalty just to say ...

    Portland Kids Meet Belarusan Kids First, the Portland  kids met the Minsk kids in Belarus, and then the Minsk kids met the Portland kids in Oregon. Both trips took a lot of work, lot of collaboration, and a lot of breaking new ground. While I was in Minsk, accompanying the Portland kids as their guide and the person making sure that all the pre-arranged commitments were carried out—and the interpreter on site, the idea arose with the superintendent of schools that the Minks kids might benefit from a trip to the Oregon. This was right after the thawing of relations between the two countries and path existed at the time to make it happen. So, the educational staff and I met day after day when my time was not needed to be with the kids. The staff found out what kinds of documents would be needed to build an exchange from the Belarusan side and drafted them in Russian; I translated them into English. The faculty from the Portland Public Schools who had come with the kids ...