Rethinking S.W. Erdnase: Another View

I did something clever there, in the title of this post. I overlapped the titles of my two books about Erdnase, Rethinking S.W. Erdnase and S.W. Erdnase: Another View.

But in all seriousness, I am rethinking my third edition of S.W. Erdnase: Another View. I need to do some further thinking, before I decide on how to proceed.

A little while back, I uploaded the body of the book and the book cover to Amazon, and I ordered a couple of proof copies. They arrived yesterday! They look super-great! Here are a few photos. The gray band is something Amazon uses to designate proof copies:

Major kudos to my daughter, Elizabeth, for her work on the gorgeous cover. She created the images with assistance from an AI program called Midjourney, and I believe she did a lot of Photoshop work on this as well.

I see that the foregoing sounds kind of like one of those misleading click-bait-style things, like Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube video, “It’s Time to Come Clean,” with a thumbnail of a somewhat forlorn-looking Brandon.

If you are naive and stupid, like me, you actually entertain the notion that he is going to share something significant and, I don’t know, deeply personal, I guess. But no, it was just super-click-bait, and the video was ultimately highly self-aggrandizing. Most of his fans seemed to love it. I don’t know if I am even a Brandon Sanderson fan, but I’ll say this: That video did nothing to elevate my opinion of him.

And here’s another “But no”: But no, I’m not playing that game. So I’ll cut to the chase. I’m not sure when, if ever, I will be releasing the third edition. Some details follow.

Anyway, I had hoped—but of course this was foolish—that I would read a proof through and find (a) zero problems, or (b) problems of so insignificant a nature that I could ignore them.

I started to go through one of the proof copies word by word. I probably would not have gone through the entire work that carefully, but on some level I was a little skeptical.

And there were problems with this book, and I began noticing them quite quickly. I’ll give one example. Originally, I had intended to add two chapters. And in my Preface, I made reference to those two chapters. But in the end, I decided to delete one of those chapters, and I also added four other chapters. But I neglected to revise the Preface in accord with that.

But that wasn’t the only problem, though I don’t feel like getting into any of the others at the moment.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing, my review of the proof is going to have to be pretty careful (and time-consuming and stress-causing).

But there is more to the picture.

Y’see, as I observed the tasks and time-consumption that the third edition of S.W. Erdnase: Another View had required, I saw, finally, that there was no way I was going to do a decent enlarged edition of Rethinking S.W. Erdnase anytime soon. In an Author’s Note to the version of Rethinking now on Amazon, I said, “I had hoped that this would be an enlarged edition, but the press of several other projects has made it necessary that I postpone any enlarged edition of Rethinking S.W. Erdnase until 2024 at earliest.” As it is, that is probably an optimistic oversimplification. Realistically, I doubt that such will appear even in 2024. And it’s possible that I’ll decide not to enlarge it ever, or that I’ll just keep putting it off, and not deciding. (A benefit of not enlarging the book now was that the book appeared quite quickly after I decided to forego the expansion of the book for now.)

Also, sorry to be candid, or semi-candid, about this, but there are many other things I would rather spend time on than writing about Erdnase.

But there is another factor (actually probably several, but one main one). That factor is this: I think the interest in the Erdnase authorship questions is now at some kind of low point. Movement on the Erdnase thread of the Genii forum is slow, and participation on that thread has been at a low level now for months.

Back on November 18, 2022, Richard Kaufman reported that the Erdnase thread was then 200 pages long. The thread had begin in early 2003, so that is close to ten pages per year. I think that the default number of posts per page is 40. So, as of late 2022, there had been an average of about 400 posts per year.

Well, let’s simplify. Since late November, 2022, there have been roughly 85 posts. That’s maybe 85 posts over a period of about 8 months.

If I counted right, 18 of those posts were by me!

Posts have tended to come in clusters. I wonder if the gaps between posts tell us anything. If my observations are correct (and they are at least approximately so), there were gaps between posts of the following approximate times (just considering gaps of more than about 5 days, based on the stated dates of posting):

• 12 days
• 17 days
• 14 days
• 6 days
• 10 days
• 12 days
• 52 days
• 12 days
• 6 days
• 8 days
• 10 days

As an aside, there was actually a gap of four months starting on Christmas Day, 2021 (first day of gap).

Anyway, I am now trying to figure out how I want to proceed. I think I will probably drop the third edition of S.W. Erdnase: Another View down to “super-low status.” If I do that, I might work on it a little bit at a time, spread over a long period. If I proceed in that manner, I suppose that it might appear in 2024. But in view of the projected likely small demand, or to put it more optimistically, the unlikely large demand, I might decide to proceed in a different direction regarding S.W. Erdnase: Another View.

—Tom Sawyer

July 25, 2023

UPDATE: I have now officially dropped the third edition of S.W. Erdnase: Another View to “super-low status,” or a better phrase might be “super-low priority.” It might be months before I even look at it again. Other than that, I cannot be too specific, but I am pretty sure the book will not appear for at least a year.

One thing I might do is change the wording on the cover shown above, and use that as a replacement for the cover now on Rethinking S.W. Erdnase on Amazon. (I actually like the above cover more than the one now on Rethinking.)

I do hope to be posting further on this blog!

—Tom Sawyer

July 26, 2023