Shannon was in the Stumptown Comic area which I think was one of the more successful areas of the show. I really liked his drinking fish shirt (almost picked it up myself).

I missed seeing Monica Drake, which I think is wildly talented because there was no clear schedule posted about who would be where, when. I mean how hard is it to put the appearance information on the author's individual pages?

But thanks for your comments. It's a shame it wasn't easier to see Hodgeman!

And the John Hodgeman performance was impossible to watch because of the crowd. I was standing at the back of the rows of chairs and every time I slightly inched backward, I had someone from Workstock telling me not to block the aisle.

That's not to say I had a horrible time—I was able to talk to some cool local writers and artists (Shannon Wheeler and Megan Clark) as well as pick up information from Indigo Press and the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Discounting books is a tragedy in our culture. In some countries in Europe, it's actually illegal.

I have no idea why we all must get every single thing as cheaply as possible. When you think about movies they're two hours and cost $9 in many places. So that's $4.50 an hour (about). A trade paperback will run you $13. How many hours do you spend with that? It's total lunacy.

This of course leads to a whole host of issues (including publishers inflating book prices to adjust for discounting) and as you mentioned the total discounting of the value of writers and the words they write.

I'm very interested to see how the economy of words changes with the adoption of things like Kindle and other non paper based book delivery systems…

As for Powell's the problems with that store run very deep. The don't pay their employees anything near a living wage, the stores themselves are dirty and disorganized. The staff reflects these qualities and their ridiculous pay doesn't engender them to do much more than surf the internet all day long. Add to that the fact that Powell's has the same effect on indie bookstores in Portland as chains do elsewhere.

All that being said, authors should charge to give a reading. I don't understand why books, authors, indie bookstores are perceived as something that should be cheap or free. It's remarkable to me that in Portland, writers are charity cases. They see themselves as worth not much more than the $50 or so they get paid to write for the local presses or lit mags. I get paid $1 per word and when I've told PDX writers that, I've had reactions like "How could you ask someone to pay you that?" Excuse me?

Words are a commodity, just like a logo design or a cup of coffee. It's about time we start treating them as such. All of us, readers and writers alike.

The trend with Powells has been towards big author events where you have to buy a full price hard cover book to be able to hear an author read. I've never paid to hear an author read and never plan to. Author readings are marketing for that author and their works and there have been MANY readings where I've picked up several books by an author. These events seem to be great money makers and are often sold out, so I'm thinking that they'd rather have the Sara Vowell's of the world come under their wing and not Wordstock.

The introductions were written by the Wordstock staff and those who introduced authors had no knowledge when they agreed that this would be the case. A few days before the event, those introducing were basically told they were simply a warm body who would read something about COWs and Wordstock's stilted, pre-crafted introduction. And when people introducing began to flake — what writer wants to read that schlock?– they frantic organizers sent emails saying that very thing — people are flaking!!! Will you introduce someone???

The production was poor and the organizers were overwhelmed. Combine that with the fact that book industry trade shows like BEA are so far superior to these little city festivals and those in the industry are left wondering, why bother? I know that as a professional author and publishing-industry reporter, I'd far rather spend my time and energy at BEA than I would at these silly festivals.

I've been to the Convention Center a few times and I always find the space to be sucky. But I guess Wordstock is more than the book fair. There are a lot of things going on out in the community. Perhaps people are showing up for those.