"Rick" writes:

Sadly, however, this is the type of publishing crap that the media will tend
to grab and run with. Soon, you will be hearing the media print and say
that, "the kayaker was not using sponsons," the same way we hear, "the
cyclist was not wearing a helmet."

I doubt this very much. Biking is a popular sport, one that most
people do at some point in their lives. In contrast, most members
of the media and the general public barely know what a kayak is,
much less a sponson. To think that general awareness of sponsons
could ever approach that of bike helmets is, well, bordering on the
absurd.

I will be beyond astonished if this book has a real publisher.
Commercial publishers are interested in making money, and even if an
editor were to believe every word Sponsonboy said, their business
instincts would kick in before they spent any hard cash on such a
project. Specifically, they'd probably spend, oh, at least a couple
of minutes researching these "thousands of deaths", which haven't
exactly been making front-page news. This research would quickly
reveal two facts: 1)that the phrase "thousands of deaths" is an
exaggeration of at least an order of magnitude, even if you added up
all whitewater deaths over several decades, and 2)that the lack of
sponsons had fsck-all to do with any of 'em.

Nope, a real publisher won't spend a dime on this turkey. OTOH,
there are "publishers" who will be more than happy to take your
money to "publish" your unacknowledged and unappreciated work of
genuine original genius. So you can spend a chunk of our own change
and end up with a stack of _real published books_, which you can
then try and sell to anyone who gives a damn, or give away to your
friends, or use to start a fire in your woodstove, or whatever. It
all reminds me of that bit in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when
Hunter S. Thompson becomes alarmed at the idea that any lunatic with
$3.98 to spend can have his/her image appear on a giant display over
downtown Las Vegas, with a very large sound system broadcasting
his/her message to the world. There are a lot of messages out
there, though, so in considering which ones are worthy of your time,
it's good to look at whether the access to the medium was
legitimately earned through the merit of the message, or simply
bought.

--
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::
Mary Malmros
Some days you're the windshield,
Other days you're the bug.