On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 02:30:38PM -0800, James E. Henderson wrote: > Let's look at an author with a little less star power, Richard Lederer, > who recently retired from the KPBS radio show he founded, "A Way with > Words". When Richard wrote his first book, he would sell copies at the > back of the room after giving a lecture. He was then self-published, > having copies of the book printed in batches of a few hundred to a few > thousand. He made his money teaching and lecturing, with the book sales > being just a small part of his income. His book was popular, so he wrote > a sequel, which he also sold at lectures. Eventually he became > well-enough known to get an agent and sign a contract with a publishing > concern, but even now he sells copies of the thirty-some books he has > written at the back of the room after a lecture ... because he enjoys > doing it. He doesn't need to write another word or sell another book > himself: his kids, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke, have seen to that. But > he no longer self-publishes. It got him started cheaply, but he now has > the luxury of having somebody else do a lot of the work for him. His > publisher and several book clubs provide him all of the publicity he > needs because he has name recognition now. For a long time he didn't.
What is interesting about this story is that he succeeded at first without a publisher and likely would have done just fine if copyright didn't exist. I like it. Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
