All these supposedly "pro business" people who think a national plan is akin to socialism and a slippery slope to Soviet Russia need to get their heads out of their hineys.

National health insurance would mean that many, many more people could have the option of starting a small business without the fear or medical bankruptcy. Raise you hand if you've kept a job you hate, working for "the man" because of insurance for yourself or your family? Me! Me!

I have the luxury of freelancing because my husband has a great job with great insurance. His company indirectly subsidizes my small business, so I have a massive advantage that others in my field might not.

And I'm not convinced we "can't afford" to cover everyone. The hidden costs that insured people pay for the uninsured is absolutely massive.

The stuff that's really good survives. The stuff no one actually needs OR really likes, doesn't.

Like almost every household in America, we've spent the last year eating out very little, planning more, and eating at home. We invite friends over or go to their houses because it's cheaper than restaurant food. We realized we were eating out not because it was good but because we were being lazy about planning meals.

We still go out for birthdays. But then, it's someone's choice, someone's "favorite food in the world," and we enjoy it. It's an occasion. Restaurants like "TGI Frozen's" (and thanks for that name, whoever said that) don't make the cut.

The restaurant industry, like many other industries, is going to have to adjust to our national re-assessment of our incomes. Restaurant food, unless you're traveling for business, is a luxury item. If I'm having a luxury item, I want good food, not mass-produced food.

(you can tell I don't do the financials) add author royalties in that laundry list of where the money goes for a publisher.

(and I don't do the financials), 2/3 to 3/4 of the cost on the book is NOT in the print production. It's in everything else--multiple rounds of editing, layout, proofing, print correction, legal review, indexing, dustjacket design (and multiple rounds of correction), and marketing.

And there are layout concerns that are specific to a Kindle--I won't expound here but let's just say it has it's own complexities, and it's not a slam-bam-thankyou-ma'am from the print files. It's another round of layout (in HTML) for a different device.

In marketing a book on a Kindle, there are two pieces you don't have to do: shipping and printing. But, on a Kindle, Amazon takes a hefty cut for their services for all the IT back-end to manage Kindle files (35% of cover).

So far, the reduction in price is something we're sharing with our authors. The royalty structure still applies because it's based on percentage of cover. They make less, we make less too. The Kindle is so new with our readers that we really don't have enough data yet to see how it's all going to shake out.

So it seems on the surface like it ought to be a ton cheaper. It's not. We still have to do most of the work required for a print book.

You're right, locomotive boilermen don't need to get paid, because we don't have locomotive boilers any more. My uncle used to repair mechanical adding machines. He took his mechanical aptitude for small machines and moved to mail sorting and coin counting machines and did quite well.

What I'm trying to say is that if you take away the services that publishers provide, the general reading public might get something for nothing, but it generally will be worth what they pay for. About nothing.

I work for a small publisher that publishes nonfiction books in a specific niche market. Our authors are experts in their fields. With one notable exception, They Cannot Write. Just can't. When we publish a book, we add a lot of value--a whale of a lot of editing just to get them into readable shape. That costs money. We also market the book, so that the author's work gets into the right hands. It's not a nonprofit. No one's getting rich. But everyone gets something. Our readers get good value for their money. They get books they can't get anywhere else.

And yes, we produce our books for Kindle, specifically because Amazon controls the distribution so tightly. We looked at other methods of electronic distribution, but no one else has good copyright protection.

By saying everything we do ought to be free just because it's capable of being in an easily distributed format means that our readers have to work a lot harder to find what they want. They have to sift through mountains of incomprehensible drivel, and most will give it up after about 10 pages.

If everything is free, you get my slush pile--crappy, badly written information--for free. Also, it's spread from pillar to post all over the internet. I go find a new job. But something has been lost in that process for my employer's current readers who can no longer find the books they want, in any kind of format they can actually read.