When people like something I write (thank you), they often suggest that I should sent it either to the New York Times for publication as an op-ed piece or write a book about it. I am told at least a dozen times a week that something I am writing about should be a book.

And for much of my writing life, they would have  been.

The Mansion residents, the RISSE refugees, life on the farm, the Army Of Good, my life with Maria in the post-Trump world. Each of those things would have required only a simple phone call to my editor.  He would have jumped at any one of them. They are great subjects, there is much life and drama in them, there is much interest in them.

But in the new world,  they will never be a hard cover, commercial book, and frankly, I would never want to write a hard cover paper book about them.

Somehow, over the last few years, the blogging part of me grew, and the book part of me has shrunk.

I don’t know if publishing left me or I left it.

A kind reader posted this message on Facebook the other day: “I wonder if a book about this group and what they do would be a possibility, with profits going to their support. I love seeing their pictures, reading about their progress and the good work done by the Army of Good. Your pictures + their courage and spirit + your gift of words = pure gold. What do you think, Jon Katz?”

I wrote back that this was a lovely thing to say, (although I do wonder, Kim, how I am supposed to live if I’m writing books for free) and 20 years ago, I would have completely agreed, or already be working on such a book. I wrote a book every year for 26 years, and few few of my ideas were turned down.

Writers were supposed to come up with their own ideas.

I can’t think of a better or more topical non-fiction story or stories than the ones I write about every day.

But the truth is that very few publishers want books like this any more, they would be hard to sell, hard to publicize, tricky to market. They would not sell the big numbers corporate publishers want and need.

The truth is,  I am too small a fish to swim in their pond. Most mid-list writers like me are no longer publishing books at all.

Marketing departments, which have replaced editors as decision-makers in big publishing houses, don’t care for books like the one Kim is suggesting, they are not controversial or upbeat or sexy enough.

I finished a book last Fall and sent it to my publisher – it’s called Gus And The Lessons Of Bedlam Farm, and I like it a lot.

It includes material about the Mansion residents and the refugees. But if I didn’t center the book around Gus, it would never have been purchased at all. And seven months after I turned it on, my editors have not even acknowledged getting it, have not paid me for it, or set a publication date.

I doubt I will ever actually speak to the person who edits my book, i’ll get an e-mail file to edit, and unless I call (I am perverse sometimes) I will never hear from anyone there. It could not be a colder or more remote process. I do not rant about the past, but I never imagined having an editor I would not recognize on the street.

I’m explaining, hopefully not complaining. This is standard practice in corporate publishing now, I am no victim.  I’ve had a great run of 26 books. I am one of the lucky ones. My book will get published, I will eventually get paid for it, but I don’t like that life much anymore. I love the collaboration of a book, that used to be the idea.

I love what I am doing.

So I’m moving on rather than whine or complain.

I don’t waste much time on nostalgia or pining for the old days, I think nostalgia is a trap.

I started moving forward right away when I saw which way the wind was blowing, and my blog is now the center piece of my creative life, the base for most of my writing, the home of my photography, and the source of the income (voluntary payments and donations) that are the foundation of the new writer and his or her financial life.

I kept my focus on dogs and animals, but was now free to branch out and write about other things as well, things I used to write about and want to write about. In contemporary publishing, nobody would want my ideas on anything but a dog.

I think my younger readers know this is different from a paper book, but still a book. My audience is bigger than most books get, and much larger than the New York Times readership. This, my good people, is the book Kim was suggesting I write – it’s the blog.

The voluntary subscriptions and donations are the new income model for independent writers who wish to be free and exist in the new writing world. I was, to my surprise, prescient. Without my blog, I would not be a writer today, there is not enough income in commercial publishing for writers like me to survive.

I guess it’s time I declared my independence.

The writers who turned up their noses at blogging are mostly gone or looking for adjunct teaching gigs in colleges or online. I am still here, more relevant than ever, writing more than ever, with a wider audience than ever, loving it more than ever. I thank all of you for that.

But the truth is, as I told my friend on Facebook,  my blog is now my book. I have no  reason to go to a commercial publisher.

It is my life’s work. It is my living memoir. I believe it is the future of writing, and it fits me and my stile, and I am doing  the best writing I have ever done, typos and all. A paper book takes years to write and publish, is heavily edited, and is outdated the minute it appears. There is no money in publishing for color photographs, fewer reviewers and little media attention.

Even the most successful books don’t sell many copies any more, and most books sink and vanish without a trace. This isn’t to say books are dead, they are not. Independent bookstores are making a comeback and people like me love to read books on paper. But the writer’s world is very different, and woe to the writer who doesn’t get that and change.

People are always writing me to say they are shocked at how open I am, how authentic they believe me to be (thanks again).

But if I wrote a memoir and published my blog reports as a hard-cover book, everyone would oooh and aaaaah about how open I am, and how literary and bold a thing it was I am doing.

Openness and honesty is precisely what a good memoir is supposed to be. Why is it shocking to find it here?

I know the answer. The literary snoots and snobs are uneasy about blogs. The older ones still believe they are not for the serious writers. Maybe that’s so, I am a happy writer, I can’t say I am a serious writer. That’s for someone else to decide.

I do think my blog is bold. When I started it in 2007, very few  writers saw the potential of the blog, it was considered a tacky promotional tool to sell books. My editor and publicist were both horrified, one told me my blog looked like a Hallmark Card at Christmas. This is still true, except for the new generation, they grasp the meaning and potential of the blog.

I always saw the blog as a living memoir, and decided to be open and honest about it, that would make it different from all the hype-driven blogs writers were putting up, and the writers with money often paid someone else to write on them.

Of course I’m open. If I wasn’t open, if I wasn’t authentic, if I did not share my life good and bad, what would be the point of the blog at all? I’d just be some other writer trying to sell books, and many people in the world no longer read hard cover books.

I bet on the very scary idea that people would want to follow a life, rather than a book, if it was genuine.

I love the blog form of writing. It is not polished or self-conscious, I don’t have much time for proof-reading and I love the freedom of it. I love the immediacy. My writing is real, and present. My life is here in the moment.  I even love the interaction with my readers when they are not telling me what to do or accusing me of murdering my dogs.

So thanks much for following this blog, and thanks for thinking highly enough of me to suggest I be published in the New York Times or write a book about my life and work. I am flattered. But I think I’ve moved on now. The truth is,  I don’t really care if I’m published in the New York Times (done that), and they have no interest in me or my kind of writing.

I am proud of my audience. Many people stick with me in a very competitive and distracted world. That means something to me. My voice and strange ideas  reache people all over the country, so do my photos.

And I have the greatest gift in all of my writing life. I can write what I want, when I want, and take whatever photos I like for whatever reason I like.   I can tell the nasty jerks who feed on the souls of people to go to Hell.

None of that was true when I was a book writer.

For this writer, there is nothing better than that anywhere in the publishing world. And thank again for paying attention.