Thanks for the... Umm... Encouragement

James Lileks offers a view of a newspaper-business reality pertinent to those who desire to write books for a living of which I've been informed in the past:

I should note that I rarely buy books - I work at a newspaper, which is a cornucopia of free reading material. You cannot imagine the heaps of stuff shoveled from the book room every day. I always want to take young writers to the book room and show them the mountains of books - unread, to say nothing of unreviewed. This is what you're up against. And this doesn't included the sixty billion paperbacks printed every year, half of which are pulped and set to Japan to make toilet paper. That's right: the end result of most American author's labors ends up hanging on a roll in a karoke bar in a Tokyo suburb.

But keep writing!

Gee. Thanks a lot.