Apart from the odd customer for the Grothendieck translation, I never receive any orders for anything else. Then again, if most of the things advertised are also available for free, why should people be inclined to send in money for them?
This doesn t mean that the catalogue is not consulted. Indeed, near the top of the list in the monthly statistics is Hypatia, the first of two problem books dedicated to woman mathematicians. The reason for this, probably, is an exotic picture one finds on the ad in the catalogue , showing a closed convex curve with six tangents and their intersections. That picture captures a certain kind of groovy mathematiky feeling that gives the uniformed the impression of being in the presence of profound wisdom. Since January this advertisement has received 1000 hits, (out of a total 100,000 for the entire site.) But no-one orders a copy of Hypatia.
Let me explain: In September of 2008 I turned 70. Since the age of 17 I've been writing, learning how to write, and experimenting with different kinds of writing. This creative work extends to mathematics and music . Over the long haul, in the course of 54 years, obstinate determination has generated a very large opus. Yet only a few of these manuscripts have been picked up by publishers. The result is a over-sized backlog of works that, until the advent of the Internet, just sat in my room, in boxes and suitcases, on shelves, or, fortunately and only very recently, catalogued and stowed away in perpetuity in the Archives of the Olin Library at Wesleyan University.
Having reached the proverbial age of 3-score and 10, my overwhelming desire, (compared to which mere physical desire shrinks to a wart or blackhead) is that all this creativity be made available to the public. I can't wait around for the odd publisher, or the odd sale through the Internet. In fact, the best situation I've discovered with respect to sales that in which I stand in or near university campuses and hawk my Ferment Press books to the passing crowds.
Depending on time and place, there will generally be a market for a limited range of subjects. The excruciating inappropriateness of a day's work trying to sell a book entitled "Quantum Theory for the Public" in Hyannis, Massachusetts at the height of the tourist season is a lingering memory. Selling the same book in Harvard Square can bring in a comfortable $25 an hour.
The possibilities have sometimes be even better at MIT,where it's been possible to display the full range of Ferment Press books beside the walkway across Mass Ave from the main entrance, right by the bus shelter. Enough space is available at this spot to arrange my books in stacks, with mat-board signs placed flat on the ground describing their contents. The MIT cops allowed me to stay there if no one complained. To date no one has.
In these two venues, and in many others, sales are more or less restricted to the hours from 12 to 2, after which time they drop of "precipitously". The day must not be too cold, without rain or snow, or so windy as to blow the books all over the campus. Given the wildly fluctuating uncertain return,room and board must be guaranteed in advance.
Back to Ferment Magazine: The upshot of this fiduciary cul-de-sac is that my life's work, composed in states of "all poverties great and small", with those inevitable housing dilemmas, is now being given away for free, even though I am in the final quarter of my life and have no source of income beyond a very small inheritance that enables me to devote my time to the fanatical pursuit of writing, composing, study and research.
On the one hand, why should I have to give away my birthright for a mess of pottage in my old age? On the other hand I do have the audiences for my work that I never believed would ever materialize. Half a million hits per year is eloquent testimony to the value of what I do, quite apart from its uselessness in economic terms.
Am I self-infatuated? Do I see myself as a second Christ? Well, no, because if even a small part of the propaganda about this historical personage is accurate, he didn't make such a big deal about giving away everything for nothing.
The situation is not without its dire consequences, which can best be expressed in the form of a syllogism:
Premise I: All of my productive work is, and will continue to be, given away for free.
Premise II: This being the case, I sometimes find that I have no way to supply the basic necessities of life.
Conclusion: If I see something I need, I take it.
Eventually one gets used to my peculiar sense of humor.