Drive-by Sales

My favorite thing about having a published book has been witnessing all the attention and support that my mother (after losing two sons) has received in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts because of it - and if the book were a vacuum cleaner, she would be the salesperson of the month. After the article about the book, "Hull Native Mines Memories for First Book," appeared in the Hull Times Newspaper, my mother had people coming to her house wanting books; some she knew and some she didn't. One woman wanted my mother to sign the book, another said, after reading it, "Barbara, what a wonderful family you have!" Then there was the call from a local hairdresser asking my mother if she could drop by with a book because a customer there wanted to buy one. She doesn't go out without a couple of books in her pocketbook now, just in case. ~ Taken from my web page, Silver and Gold, What’s New? Nov 22, 2003, in which I describe selling the first 300 Jim and Dan Stories in just over month.

Did you know that the well-known author John Grisham self-published his first book and sold it out of the trunk of his car? “The Joy of Cooking,” a book I own, was self-published in 1931 and currently sells more than 100,000 copies a year. “Mutant Message Down Under” and “The Celestine Prophecy” are two books I’ve read that were also initially self-published.

Dan Poynter, author of “The Self-Publishing Manual” (who comes from the Massachusetts city I was born in), compiled a list of authors who had self-published at one time or another. I was surprised by some of the names on the list, which include: Deepok Chopra, Louise Hay, Mark Twain, Ken Key’s, Jr., Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, George Bernard Shaw, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Virginia Woolf, ee. cummings, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau.

If you were going to write a book, what would it be about?

Note: Originally posted on looseleafnotes.com on September 10,2005.