RISK FACTORS

The risk factors of investing in Buckbee, A Writer, Inc., are significant.

  • To begin with, any time a company’s success is based on the performance of a single individual, risk must be assumed. In this particular case, the single individual is Buckbee. Let’s be forthright here: He’s not that talented. Exceptional writers are hard to come by; mediocre ones, easy. They are really a dime a dozen. (That, by the way, would put the value of Buckbee, A Writer, Inc., at or around 1/10 of a cent; and the value of a single share at or around 1/1000 of a cent. The initial offering price is approximately 700,000 times that. [See “Risk Factors”])
  • In addition to being a mediocre talent, Buckbee is not all that motivated. Oh, he may be overcome with whimsy from time to time. He may see a tree or a flower, or see the indentation in a pillow, and be moved by sadness to the keyboard. But these split seconds have a half-life twice that of a quarter of a second.
  • The publishing marketplace is dwindling. Take a look at your local bookstore’s literature section. It is like the Parlor Room in a Clue game. It sounds important, but it isn’t very big. The other rooms—self-help, religion, and travel—dwarf the Literary Fiction. It is possible—likely even—to visit a bookstore and find only a book or two by Raymond Carver. It is possible to ask a lovely store-worker where Salinger is, only to have her get that glazed look on her face, as if she were remembering a tire swing that she swung on when she was a plump, not-unhappy child. The short fiction that occupies the magazine rack is like a drop of water drying in the sun. The wet circle is getting smaller and smaller, and now it is just a pinprick of moisture. (“The Kenyon Review!” you may exclaim with great surprise, joy, and boredom when you see the solitary literary magazine.)
  • The competition is keen. Every year, MFA programs across the country spit out more and more writers. Everybody has to write a book for some reason. (It’s strange, really, because not many people are reading them.) For instance, the odds are, whoever is reading this document at this exact moment is thinking about—or has already become—a “writer.”
  • The competition from emerging technologies. For instance, the other day, a future Board Member of Buckbee, A Writer, Inc., observed a guy on a plane watching a movie on a laptop. The guy wanted to share the screen with his seatmate, so they built a bridge between their tray tables with a hardcover book (something by Bellow), then placed the laptop on top of the Bellow.
  • Buckbee’s health issues. He always seems to be complaining about something. Whether these complaints are related to serious (or even real) health problems are anybody’s guess.
  • Buckbee’s mental health issues. Suicide must be considered a possibility. From a purely objective standpoint, anyone who writes so much about sadness would seem to be at risk of self-mutilation. Anyone who dwells so much on the past—a girl on a stairwell, a girl on a ledge, a girl in a country painted blue and white—must have a screw loose. If an act of self-harm were to occur, the profit to the investors would be based upon whether Buckbee had established some professional momentum at the time of said act; or whether the act followed an attention-getting, tragic decline; or whether the act itself was committed with great élan, such as a collapse into a beautiful young woman’s arms, and the woman gathering Buckbee’s dead head in her lap as passersby fail to pass and traffic continues to move.
  • Bird flu. (And its effect on the number of consumers, the spending power of the unaffected and uninfected, and whether Buckbee himself capitulates.)
  • Logistical issues. Such as, the loss and/or destruction of bookkeeping documents; or the CEO’s failure to designate a chain-of-command in the case of his own death, illness or kidnapping; or a massive conflagration of the CEO’s documents or the CEO himself; or a plane crash which strands the CEO on a distant, uninhabited, womanless island.
  • A contagious apathy first brought on by Buckbee, the CEO, the Board, or the shareholders. Measures, of course, will be undertaken to prevent such an outbreak. For instance, “The Shareholder of the Year” Award. Also, an annual mixer at which drinks will be provided and companionship could possibly be obtained.