It’s no news that the book industry is changing, and fast. Seems like every week brings a new iteration of an e-reader, a new entrepreneurial model that’s going to change the game for good, a new social media platform that is fast becoming The Number One Way to Promote Books for Free! Sure, it’s exciting, but it’s also enough to make an editor want to roll over and say, “Can somebody please brief me when this is all sorted out?”

And I know authors feel the same. I was recently lucky enough to have tea with the fabulous Diane Leslie, family friend, novelist,  and moderator of book groups at Brentwood’s most excellent Diesel bookstore, and she had me in stitches with the assertion that her real-life connections didn’t count anymore, because she wasn’t friends with them online.

Point being, even the most experienced of authors (in this case, a model author—a former bookseller who knows every writer and book person in town) needs guidance on navigating these busy new waters. Which is why, for every author (or editor!) whose head is currently spinning, we’re very pleased to be able to offer a great free resource for a limited time only—the incredibly valuable chapter on social media from The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. Arielle and David interviewed dozens upon dozens of experts in the field (Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mike Shatzkin, Debbie Stier, Workman author Ramit Sethi, and Workman friend Fauzia Burke, to name a few) and did an amazing job at distilling all the info into a totally accessible primer. Enjoy, apply, and, if you have any questions, ask away in the comments section or directly on the authors’ site.

Summer is long gone and Halloween is just around the corner. But for Barbara Flanagan, author of Flanagan’s Smart Home: The 98 Essentials for Starting Out, Starting Over, Scaling Back, it’s training season on the high seas. She’s guest posting a tale in which oceanic daredevilry meets consumer smarts meets a yet-to-be published money-saving Q&A. Whew. That’s a mouthful. Just cue the Jaws music and dive in!

Last week, the financial website Bankrate.com called to ask how to save money using ideas from Flanagan’s Smart Home, my guide to getting affordably green via a short list of dependable household products. (The interview hasn’t run yet, but I’m using it as a transparent lede. Shhhh…)

Anyhow, Bankrate called and I’d just finished a three-mile, open ocean swim, my longest haul yet after four weeks of practice in the coastal waters of Santa Barbara, my new home. After a summer of fog, the seasonably warm fall had arrived with full sun and seawater peaking in the high 50s—just like me, a novice sea athlete of a certain age.

Pumped with endorphins, I wanted to share the Zen revelation of long-distance swimming with my interviewer. The revelation, in short, amounted to this: The happier you are, the less you need. Or, to be more specific, an addictive sport, preferably one that requires minimal gear, does wonders at keeping you out of the stores and away from those website shopping carts.

I went on. Wouldn’t it be great if we bought household products like we sought out athletic gear: seeking high performance, longevity, and value in products made by companies investing in sustainable materials research, funding environmental causes, promoting land stewardship, using fair labor practices, and flaunting all this with website charts and videos?! Wouldn’t it?

Rose, my webby interviewer, was a young runner who knew lots about the engineering and evolution of of running shoes but very little about say, sofas. (Except for the letdown of IKEA models. So perky in the showroom, they live short, shabby lives once you cart them home.) She understood right away.

I described my search for a wetsuit, the magic second skin that turns the frigid ocean into a free spa.

At the start, I sought out a generic long-sleeved, long-legged “full wetsuit,” the kind surfers wore. Just like buying a black swimsuit. Size medium. Done.

No. It turns out wetsuits are made of neoprene, a synthetic rubber that comes in different qualities, expected life spans, densities, textures, and thicknesses. The neoprene is backed with a liner textile, usually nylon, with properties of its own. Furthermore, wetsuits are not seamless shells like Playtex gloves; they are made of curvy neoprene panels, thick and thinner, sewn together into different proprietary models, each designed to hug the floating human form with superior tightness. And the sewing? Very important. The best suits are blind-stitched (one-sided), glued, and reglued, to create the most watertight seams.

Next, I learned that the standard surfing wetsuit, available widely, was not what I wanted. The surfer, who spends time on boards, not in water, needs a durable, abrasion-resistant suit. The ocean swimmer, a totally different animal, uses a more fragile suit with a thick (5mm) rubber torso and upper legs that only keep the organs warm, but adds buoyancy to lift the body into a sleek, horizontal, free-style position. Thinner neoprene (3mm) covers the thighs and calves. And the thinnest (1.5mm) forms the flexible sleeves and underarms that help the swimmer reach and pull deep into the water hundreds or thousands of times per swim. Costlier suits boast shiny, “speed-enhancing hydrodynamic” coatings that reduce the suit’s coefficient of friction.

It was easy (well, for me) to get intrigued by wetsuit assembly. Manufacturers detail exhaustive specs on their websites. Gear shops and internet retailers hire salespeople who not only know the details, but are passionate about using the things. In my early, confused research, the local surf shop gave me a loaner suit to try out in the water, where the fit changes.

Rose, I went on, summer may be over, but its reminder—nature is worth keeping–will make us happier householders and safer consumers over all seasons. Let us heed the lessons we learn via our summer sports and apply them to buying, say, couches: Research more. Buy less. Buy from knowledgeable salespeople who’ll steer you in the right directions and teach you something in the process.

And (yes, that’s still me talking) let’s buy from stellar companies who brag about things like this:

—Starting The Conservation Alliance, a charity that contributes to environmental missions. (The North Face, REI, Kelty, and Patagonia)

—Being the nation’s largest consumer cooperative. Giving members a percentage of sales as refunds, and holding board members to high standards of environmental stewardship. Manufacturing a brand of “ecoSensitive” products made of recycled or “rapidly renewable” materials. (REI)

—Donating 1% of net sales to grassroots environmental groups.  Aspiring to build an entire line of products made of recycled textiles. Creating a Common Threads Recycling Program that asks consumers to mail in their old, unwanted Capilene underwear to be reincarnated; debris is shipped to Japan, where new machinery granulates it and forms it into pellets that are purified, polymerized, made into chips, melted down and spun into filaments to become fibers for new gear. (Patagonia)

I’ll be thinking about my wetsuit as I paddle my way into spending season. As, I’m sure, will Rose.

–Author Barbara Flanagan would also like to mention that she bikes to the ocean. This may not offset her use of virgin neoprene, a petroleum product that predates the next generation of more sustainable wetsuits made with limestone-based neoprene. But it’s fun.

In the spirit of Postcards from Yo Mamma (hi Doree!), I’m introducing a mini-installment of Emails from My Actual Grandma. Warning: The cuteness of what you are about to read may cause permanent damage to your eyeballs. Okay, it may not be baby pic cute (and I do want to get a montage of our Workman baby bonanza eventually–two more imminently on the way!), but pretty darn adorable, especially from my perspective.

Background: My grandmother appears in the book Be Thrifty, in a small but very VIP way. She’s feeling modest or something and didn’t want me to use her name–so for the purposes of this blog she will remain “My Actual Grandma.” (How’s that for a tease? Buy the book and see if you  can figure it out! Muhahahahahahha!)

Anyway, the point is, when her (yes, comp) copy of the book arrived, it started off a slow-building hurricane of thrifty activity. She’s already without a doubt the thriftiest person I know, but the book seems to have given her a newfound enthusiasm for the lifestyle. Basically, she’s pimpin’, thrifty style .

Right now the focus is decidedly on the cleaning section of the Home, Sweet Thrifty Home chapter.

Here she is on June 10th:

Hi, dear,

Am experimenting with soda and vinegar.
Even soda alone works wonders!  Also, the microwaving of lemons.
Love you,
Grandmother

I mean, the poetry of “Also, the microwaving of lemons”? But that’s just the beginning. Witness July 1:

Savannah, dear, I’m cleaning silver, sinks, tub, outside of frig with soda.  It’s so much more fun than using all those sprays.  And I had no idea it would even work on my everyday silver since I have only polished it once in eight years!!  Shame on me!

Love,
Grandmother

Yes, shame. Things are getting shocking. Plus, an addendum!

I want to get into some other chapters, but I really enjoy scrubbing the tub now.  I just look at it and smile!

More breaking news and smiles to come, but FYI, Abby Stokes, my grandma uses WebTV, and it’s really a lovely no-frills way for her to communicate with family (and high-school beaus!). Are you down with that, or opposed? Should she escalate?

Love you Grandma!

P.S. To share your thrifty tips, go here.

I could probably write a book about thrifty mistakes, but I’ll start by breaking the topic down into two categories. (That’s how you know things are serious, people. Categories.) Let’s call category one The Execution Mistake. You’re trying to be thrifty and you buy all this rice. You screw up the cooking time and end up throwing bad rice and good money down the drain. Or worse, you try to hem your brand-new pants and you end up with brand-new too-short pants that make you look like a nerd. (Don’t get me started on pants.) Basically, the stuff of tragedy.

Behind door number two lies The Personal Taste Mistake. That’s when you buy something to be thrifty and then find out you just don’t like that thing. You either have to try to act thrifty and suck it up and use the thing (whether it’s an unflattering shirt or a new type of grain), or you have to throw it, and your money, down the drain. Neither option is particularly appealing, so sometimes it pays to give an initially despicable purchase a little bit of time to grow on you.

Which brings me to Campari. Let me stock a bar, I thought, because Pia and Califia told me this was thrifty. I will entertain my friends at home, and we will drink delicious thrifty drinks from my at-home bar.

Turns out Campari is one of those things I only think I like (because it’s all sophisticated and bitter) but really ewwww I totally don’t at all.

I felt guilty about that now totally unthrifty bottle of Campari, so every once in a while I would try having some with soda. Yuck. Then one night, I made an amazing discovery . . .

Gin + Tonic + Loads of Lime + Splash of Campari = TOTALLY DELICIOUS

Adding a sprig of mint = I’M A MIXOLOGIST

Emboldened, I added a splash of Campari to a glass of iced tea. Too subtle. What did it need? Shockingly, MORE CAMPARI. At which point it became totally delicious.

A happy ending to a thrifty tragedy. Clink!

There are about four piles of untouched work sitting in various places in my apartment, eight or so long articles hanging around in the “Read me!” bookmark on my laptop, and countless stalled projects vying for space inside my head, but I’m in my kitchen, scrubbing my pots with baking soda and steel wool. Removing tarnish from the outside of my pots certainly isn’t high on my to-do list, but it somehow feels like a small step toward reclaiming my free time from the leaky overflow of office work.

Scrub-athon as instant vacation? Sounds like the good-old exfoliating spa treatment/tall glass of cucumber water combo. Which is exactly where I’m headed with this. Somehow we (and by “we” I mean a certain urban, work-centric population) have come to think of the massage, the overpriced cocktail, the shopping spree, as our reward for spending the bulk of our time at work. To put it plainly: My notion of taking care of myself has often involved springing for things I can’t afford. The phrase “I deserve it” has been known to run through my head.

But what is it exactly I think I deserve? I guess it’s been my belief (and I don’t think I’m alone), that at the end of the workday, it’s my god-given right to phone in the delivery order, prop my feet up, and take the proverbial load off. In other words, the notion of coming home and doing more “work” has not sat well with me.

As a side-effect of working on BE THRIFTY, though, over the past year I’ve been trying on another version of self-care. Saying no to that ten dollar cocktail, which I totally deserve, when I’m out with my girlfriends. Taking pleasure in filling my refrigerator with foods I’ve cooked or will cook myself, and in restoring my shabby apartment to a state of livability.

The mantra that runs through my head as I scrub isn’t necessarily “Thrift on, soldier,” but something closer to “Go ahead: You deserve it.”

It feels pretty good. And—necessity being the mother of invention—it’s even led to the creation of  a couple of highly delicious (and totally proprietary!) cocktails. Thirsty? Check back in next week.

A visual missive courtesy of Califia Suntree, one of the authors of BE THRIFTY: HOW TO LIVE BETTER WITH LESS . . .

Nothing like a dose of old timey propaganda to get you pinching pennies. “Beans are bullets”?! This is serious, people.

Want more? Check out this exhibit of war-era food posters.

Want to make something thrifty to eat? Check out the book.

A guest post from Ellen Gordon Reeves, author of Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview?

“Last week, an e-mail from CBS popped up: “Would you have five minutes to speak with Katie Couric today? She’s writing a graduation speech and has a couple of questions for you…” I have to admit, my first thought was that somebody was yanking my chain. But no. It was really Katie. She was gathering as much advice as she could from everyone she could think of before giving the Commencement address at Case Western Reserve in Ohio:  Al Gore, Attorney General Eric Holder, Michael J. Fox, Queen Rania of Jordan, Condoleezza Rice, quarterback Drew Brees, Chelsea Handler, General Ray Odierno, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Anna Quindlen, Sheryl Crow—and me. Sunday morning I watched the address via live webcast and basically had an out of body experience.”

(Nose Ring mention starts at 7:26!)

-Ellen Gordon Reeves (caniwearmynosering@gmail.com)

Wow. There certainly is something to be said for letting your kids dig around in the dirt . . .  Check out this BBC video about Matthew Berger, the 9-year-old archaeologist who unearthed (literally!) A NEW SPECIES OF HUMAN.

Set up your own budding entomologist with a readymade backyard toolkit in The Bug Book and Bug Bottle by Hugh Danks. Or encourage your maddest scientist to wreak experimental havoc with Sean Connolly’s The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science. She may not wind up changing the course of history–but then again, who knows!

If you haven’t done so yet, read Olivia Judson’s New York Times piece about the dangers of too much sitting and feel the fear. Then do something about it.

Oh, and yes, we have the book: The Step Diet, by James O. Hill, John C. Peters and Bonnie T. Jortberg.

Aren’t we prescient?

–Associate Editor Savannah Ashour is twitchy and proud of it.

In an apt segue from that last post, lets us journey straight from Bourbon Balls to the topic of New Year’s resolutions. Do we only make them to break them? Last week, the Times featured a nice list of realistic resolutions from Dr. Mehmet Oz: Commit to family night, go to bed earlier, floss.

Whether your goals are health-related or not, the point is that you’ll have more success if you make them practical, specific, and simple. Which got me thinking about a little gem in our library, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, by Robert Maurer, Ph.D. In a nutshell, the book argues that human resistance to change is a protective evolutionary device. This is the safe path to the cave; that one’s probably laden with poison ivy. Don’t try that leaf; it’s probably poisonous. Unfortunately, in a relatively safe modern context, this instinct can get perverted in a whole lot of self-defeating ways. The path to the gym is paved with scary, hungry bears! The brilliant solution, developed by Japanese corporations and used by Dr. Maurer in his therapeutic practice, is to break down the steps to the desired change into increments so small they won’t awaken your anti-change fear sensors.

Essentially, you’d break down your New Year’s resolution into a whole bunch of tiny steps. One woman in One Small Step started exercising by marching in place during television commercials for one minute a day. If you’re looking to make a change and feeling stuck, give Kaizen (and, ahem, our book) a chance.

My resolution? Have more fun in 2010. (No, it’s not specific, but since it’s positive and relatively easy to implement, I figure I can give myself a pass.) What’s yours?