You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice

So, I learned some stuff today about publishing a book.

• There’s no such thing as an objective authoritative critic who can tell you whether your book is good, bad or indifferent. In other words, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”  If you believe your book is good then you take your chances.  So that puts the onus back on me.  Do I believe in my book or not?
• After you write it and put a cover on it and edit it, then you have to get influencers to tout it and reviewers to praise it. But after all that you have to advertise it on Amazon to the tune of thousands of dollars.  Otherwise, no one will know it’s there.

Well, now I’ll have to search my soul and decide just how much I want to get my book out in the world.  Do I put my money where my mouth is?  I guess I’ll find out.  Now, all this is still preliminary.  I have to get a cover and get an editor to tell me about all my typos and inelegant grammatical constructions.  And get a marketer to “alert the media.”  And for the next month I’m going to be buried under a project that will prevent me from concentrating on anything important.  But by the third week in November, I’ll be available (other than a Thursday where I’ll be buried under cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie).

Well, it was definitely a clarifying experience.  There’s no way to pass the buck on a thing like this.  The author has to search his soul and use the wisdom of Solomon to make the correct decision.  Well, so what?  What’s Solomon got that I ain’t got, in spades?  Darned right!

So, if you drive through Dunwich and you see a disheveled geezer picking up bottles and cans on the side of the road, it may be me trying to raise enough capital for the project.  With any luck I’ll strike oil in the north forty and I can start on the gold leaf hardcover edition that all of us “real authors” like so much.

Okay, so enough moaning and groaning.  The journey is the reward they say.  So, I’ll just follow my nose and see where all this ends up.  Of course, if I get too enthusiastic Camera Girl will wonder why the checking account has gotten so anemic.  And that could trigger all kinds of hazardous situations.  After all she has complete control over my food supply and knows my sleeping habits.  But I won’t allow artistic decisions to be influenced by cowardly and pedestrian concerns. “Ars gratia artis,” you know.

Well, back to something comical; the government shutdown!  I hear Trump is going to permanently terminate “hundreds of thousands” of federal employees to get back at the Democrats for shutting down the government.  That’s a pretty bold move.  I’m starting to believe there are no limits to what he plans to do to the federal government.  He seems to be borrowing Obama’s statement that he would “fundamentally transform the United States.”  And at this rate maybe Trump will actually do it!