CNN on-line published an interesting article on self-publishing today, and sometimes it turns out that the responses are more interesting than the main article. I won’t go into a lot of detail, because you have a finger-clicker right there in front of you [and I hate taking the time to paraphrase what somebody else has already written]. To sum up, the article talks about Lisa Genova’s Still Alice, about a woman with Alzheimer’s. Good for her! She spent a year and a half working on the project and after several agents told her “nobody wants to read about Alzheimer’s” she published it herself. This isn’t an ex-cop sitting in a basement pounding on keys with dreams of being the next James Patterson, it’s a woman with a touching story that, as it turned out, touched at least 300 readers.
So the agent says, “300 sales wouldn’t even pay for my morning latte.” OK, probably true. But it might have done something for the 300 people who bought the book that a decade’s worth of Venti half-caf-half-decaf-two-percent-low-cal-hazelnut lattes could never do.
Bogart once said “you got a message, send a telegram.” That was before lightning fast world-wide communications and the freakin’ Xerox Docutech laser printer.
Go for it, Lisa!
ttfn, rlc